White House tries to ignore Manafort trial

After weeks of silence about Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday that the charges against his ex-campaign chief have nothing to do with collusion and amount to a “Hoax!” | Oliver Contreras - Pool/Getty Images

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Trump’s aides and allies are trying to be utterly uninteresting to keep the public from paying attention.

The White House and its allies are trying to put as much distance as possible between Donald Trump and his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort — even if the president doesn’t always stick to the strategy.

Manafort’s federal trial in Virginia on tax and bank fraud charges is not being televised. And the case centers on intricacies of Manafort’s finances related to his consulting work in Ukraine for a Russia-aligned political party — a complex and detail-heavy tale the president’s team believes lacks the drama that fuels TV ratings.

In other words, the trial might be exceedingly boring. Too boring to break through on cable news. And the White House is perfectly happy with that.

Trump’s aides and allies are limiting TV appearances and refusing to comment on the case, they said, on the theory that if they can be utterly uninteresting, they can keep from stoking the story — and keep the public from paying attention.

“In all of that complexity,” said Mike McCurry, who served as President Bill Clinton’s press secretary, “they may try to stand their ground and see if people just get tired of it.”

More than a half-dozen of Trump’s most vocal TV surrogates told POLITICO that they weren’t provided White House or campaign talking points on the case, as is customary for important, headline-generating matters. Some interpreted that as an attempt to keep them from talking about the trial on TV and to starve it of oxygen.

Still others in the president’s orbit insist that the Manafort trial is getting so little buzz — and poses such a minuscule political threat to the president — that it’s not worth their time to even follow the proceedings. None of the allies appeared concerned about the lack of coordination by the administration.

The White House did not respond to requests to comment on the media strategy. Trump administration aides also would not say how they were keeping up with the case. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani has previously said the legal team would not send anyone to follow the trial in person.

The Manafort trial is still in its early stages and could eventually require a bigger Trumpworld response. So far, the jury has heard from consultants who worked with Manafort in Ukraine and from people with insight into how he spent money, but it’s still to be seen whether Manafort deputy Rick Gates, who also worked on the 2016 campaign, will be called to testify.

A second Manafort trial in September, when he faces charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for his lobbying work, also could provide more drama.

In the meantime, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders barely mentioned the Manafort trial in her Wednesday briefing while fielding several questions about Trump’s Twitter missive that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should step in and halt special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

But after weeks of refraining from tweeting about Manafort, Trump upended the approach Wednesday by complaining that he wasn’t notified by the government that his former chairman was under federal investigation before the 2016 presidential election.

Trump wrote that the charges, brought by Mueller, are related to old activities, have nothing to do with collusion and amount to a “Hoax!”

And he went on to compare the treatment of Manafort to that of an infamous gangster who spent seven years behind bars, asking “who was treated worse, Alfonse Capone, legendary mob boss, killer and ‘Public Enemy Number One,’ or Paul Manafort, political operative & Reagan/Dole darling, now serving solitary confinement – although convicted of nothing?”

Trump last month groused about what he deemed was an unfair move when a judge ordered Manafort sent to jail in response to witness tampering allegations.

Retired Harvard law professor and frequent Trump defender Alan Dershowitz predicted ahead of the trial that it would draw some important eyeballs.

“Of course the president has to watch,” he told POLITICO of the coverage. “He has to watch everything Mueller is doing, everything SDNY is doing, and everything all the other districts are doing.”

Administration officials, meantime, are leaning on the fact that none of the charges against Manafort, a senior campaign aide for five months whose work included coordinating national convention strategy — but who remained in Trump’s orbitafter he left the campaign — are directly linked to the then-candidate’s 2016 bid.

“The judge has very strictly instructed no mention of Paul Manafort’s role in the Trump campaign, no mention of Trump, Russia or collusion,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Tuesday, as jury selection in the bank fraud trial got underway. “This trial obviously centers on matters that have nothing to do with the campaign.”

But McCurry, the former Clinton aide, suggested another reason why Trumpworld isn’t leaning into the Manafort trial: Once a case is before a court, no amount of outside spin can get in the way of the legal process.

That’s not for lack of trying, he added.

“You put enough rabbits out to chase and the opposition gets a little diffuse,” he said.

One former White House official said Trump allies might be ignoring Manafort for another reason: They’re more concerned about Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney, who is reportedly considering cooperating with federal prosecutors.

While Manafort is not facing charges related to his activities on the 2016 campaign, Cohen is under investigation for, among other things, paying a woman shortly before the election to keep quiet about an alleged affair with Trump.

“There’s only so much bandwidth that’s available, and that seems like a more clear and present issue,” the former official concluded.