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In 1996, Fabrizio and Manafort collaborated in the failure of the presidential campaign of former Kansas Republican Senator Bob Dole. Then, as in 2016, Manafort was initially hired to handle delegates to the 1996 Republican National Convention, while Fabrizio was the pollster for the Dole campaign.
Since then, Fabrizio has also worked for some of Manafort's most controversial clients. In 2012 and 2013, foreign lobbying records show that Manafort paid Fabrizio $ 278,000 for the work it did to help Manafort's political clients in Ukraine.
Fabrizio's role in the Ukrainian lobbying of Manafort was revealed only a year after Trump's election, however, when Manafort was forced to file a registration form. 39, foreign agent with the Department of Justice. He reported five separate payments to Fabrizio, as well as payments to various other subcontractors.
Three years after working together for the post in Ukraine, Manafort recruited Fabrizio again in May 2016, this time to work for the Trump presidential campaign.
At the time, the hiring of Fabrizio was greeted with fanfare in Republican circles, which was perceived as a sign that Trump's chaotic and skeletal primary operation was becoming a presidential campaign national, able to attack the huge machine of the Democratic Hillary Clinton. .
Meanwhile, the fact that Trump hired an investigator was worthy of attention, as after months after the candidate insists that political investigators were a waste of money.
"One of the best decisions of Paul Manafort was to engage Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio to figure out how to beat Hillary Clinton," writes Roger Stone, a longtime friend of the Manafort, Trump and Fabrizio groups, in " The Making of a President ".
"In the end, Fabrizio, a bulldog-and-pugnacious man, insisted that the Trump campaign was to expand the map to Wisconsin and Michigan, while doubling Pennsylvania," Stone writes.
Stone was arrested earlier this year on charges of lying to Congress over his contacts in 2016 with Wikileaks, which had published thousands of allegedly stolen emails from the Clinton campaign by Russian hackers. He has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. The charges against Stone are not related to the prosecution of Manafort, they have nothing to do with Fabrizio or Gay.
Two weeks after Manafort hired Fabrizio to vote, Manafort and Tom Barrack, a longtime Trump ally, created the super PAC of Rebuilding America Now to raise millions of funds from rich GOP donors at a time. in order to help Trump his own money to finance his campaign.
Five days after the creation of Rebuilding America Now on June 2, the campaign's funding records show that it made its first payment to MMSC, Fabrizio's ad buying company, for a million-dollar purchase. According to prosecutors, Rebuilding America Now has engaged MMSC "at the suggestion of Manafort".
The rapid succession of these recruitments – first Manafort to chair the campaign, then Fabrizio to vote for the campaign, then Gay to lead Rebuilding America Now, then the advertising company Fabrizio to buy the antenna time from Rebuilding America Now – offers a striking example of how Manafort has transformed its unpaid role in the Trump campaign into an opportunity to secure lucrative work for its long-time associates.
In hindsight, however, this work seems to have cost a lot to those who did it.
On March 4, Fabrizio was one of more than 80 members of Trump's extensive political and professional orbit to have received an official letter from the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Jerry Nadler, DN .Y. Nadler wrote that the committee was investigating "Trump's and others' allegations of trespass, public corruption and abuse of power."
According to the letter, the documents requested by the Nadler committee in Fabrizio include everything about "discussions or attempts to provide or receive election information, campaign data, or campaign communications with foreign entities or US-related particulars 2016 Presidential primary or general elections. "
The letter adds, "This includes, but is not limited to, voter data, survey information, political ad targeting, voter lists, social media data, and campaign emails. or parties ".
The interest of the special advocate to hear Fabrizio however is prior to the Judiciary Committee 's letter of more than a year ago. In early February 2018, Fabrizio was seen by CNN. leave the special council office in Washington. The network later confirmed that he had met with members of Mueller's team.
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