Washington Post: Manafort’s guilty plea exposes hardball tactics he used to thrive in Washington swamp

Before he was Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort embraced extreme tactics in his lobbying efforts: He schemed “to plant some stink” and spread stories that a jailed Ukrainian politician was a murderer.

He enlisted a foreign politician who was secretly on his payroll to deliver a message to President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.

And he gleefully fueled allegations that an Obama Cabinet member who had spoken out against his Ukrainian client was an anti-Semite, according to court papers.

With his guilty plea Friday, Manafort admitted the lengths to which he went to manipulate the American political system and the media for massive profit, exposing how he thrived in the Washington swamp that Trump railed against during his campaign. …

During his populist outsider campaign, Trump promised to stamp out such influence-peddling, which critics note is still thriving in Washington.

“While Manafort’s violations are brazen, I’m afraid that with a little digging, the Justice Department would find a fair number of violations,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of the watchdog group Common Cause.