To Charm Trump, Paul Manafort Sold Himself as an Affordable Outsider

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WASHINGTON — Paul Manafort is the rarest of professional pitchmen: one who knows how to sell to a salesman.

That was evident by the effort he made last year to gain a foothold in President Trump’s campaign, a successful pitch documented by letters and memos that were made available by a former Trump associate.

On Feb. 29, 2016, Mr. Manafort, the former lobbyist and Republican operative who now sits at the nexus of investigations into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, reached out to Mr. Trump with a slick, carefully calibrated offer that appealed to the candidate’s need for professional guidance, thirst for political payback — and parsimony.

The letters and memos provide a telling glimpse into how Mr. Trump invited an enigmatic international fixer, who is currently under investigation by United States intelligence services, a Senate committee and investigators in Ukraine, to the apex of his campaign with a minimum of vetting. The answer? Through family and friends, handshakes and hyperbole.

Mr. Manafort, who has not been accused of any crimes — and who denies any wrongdoing in his political, business and investment dealings — is nonetheless a central figure in the investigation into the interactions of Trump campaign officials with foreign governments. How he got to know Mr. Trump, and how he rose from overseeing the candidate’s operations at the Republican convention to the entire campaign, is very likely to be a focus during coming Senate hearings about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

“Donald Trump and I had some business in the 1980s but we had no relationship until the Trump campaign called me,” Mr. Manafort, who did not dispute the substance of the documents, wrote in an email forwarded by a spokesman. “A role at the convention was all I was ever interested in; the fact that this role expanded was quite unexpected.”

But it was Mr. Manafort who initiated the process for getting a job on the campaign, the documents show. It began when he sent two succinct memos to Mr. Trump through Thomas J. Barrack Jr., a mutual friend.

A couple of weeks earlier, Mr. Barrack met with Mr. Manafort for “coffee and snacks” at the Montage hotel in Beverly Hills, according to Jason Maloni, Mr. Manafort’s spokesman. He added that Mr. Barrack wanted his old friend to help the struggling campaign deal with potential challenges at the convention.

Mr. Maloni said that the memos were intended only to be talking points for Mr. Barrack’s pitch to the Trump family, but that after reading the packet, the candidate requested a one-on-one meeting with Mr. Manafort.

Mr. Manafort, for his part, was eager to join up: At the time, he had told another friend, who was also close to the campaign, that he was eager to get back into the game of presidential politics.

Mr. Barrack, in turn, appended an effusive cover letter to the memos that described Mr. Manafort in terms that Mr. Trump would like, calling him “the most experienced and lethal of managers” and “a killer.”

Mr. Manafort touted his overseas work, now the subject of investigations in the United States and Ukraine, as proof he was not part of the Washington establishment that Mr. Trump hated.

“I have managed Presidential campaigns around the world,” Mr. Manafort wrote. “I have had no client relationships dealing with Washington since around 2005. I have avoided the political establishment in Washington since 2005.”

“I will not bring Washington baggage,” he added.

Mr. Barrack passed Mr. Manafort’s pitch to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, who were Mr. Trump’s closest advisers, as they are now.

Ms. Trump printed it out for her father — who hates reading documents online — along with Mr. Barrack’s recommendation that Mr. Manafort be hired to manage the Trump operation at the Republican convention in Cleveland. Mr. Manafort was brought onto the campaign by the end of March.

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Mr. Manafort and Mr. Trump, who were not close until the campaign, had brushed shoulders over the years. In one of his memos Mr. Manafort refers vaguely to work he performed, years ago, to clear noisy airspace over Mr. Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago — which he incorrectly spells “Mar a Largo.”

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, has tried to minimize Mr. Manafort’s relationship with the president.

“There is a fine line between people who want to be part of something that they never had an official role in, and people who actually played a role in either the campaign or transition,” he said, amid a smattering of laughter in the briefing room last month. He added, “Obviously there has been discussion of Paul Manafort, who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

But Mr. Manafort and Mr. Trump worked closely for about six months during the crucial middle passage of the campaign, when Mr. Manafort urged the recalcitrant candidate to restrain his attacks on fellow Republicans, to stick to a script and, above all, to spend more money on organizing and ads.

At the time Mr. Manafort was brought on, Mr. Trump was surging — and flailing. He had won the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, but he was deeply worried about an establishment-strikes-back scenario that could result in his defeat at the Republican convention.

He decided that Mr. Manafort should replace Corey Lewandowski, his campaign manager, in June after a push by Mr. Trump’s adult children and Mr. Kushner. But Mr. Trump thought Mr. Manafort was not tough enough, and he was gone by the fall, replaced by Stephen K. Bannon, who was much more of a raw-rage outsider.

Still, Mr. Manafort made a good first impression. Mr. Trump, several aides said, reacted favorably to Mr. Manafort’s initial pitch and his experience, and he also remarked on Mr. Manafort’s tanned, no-hair-out-of-place appearance — telling staffers that his new associate looked much younger than a man in his late 60s.

In five single-spaced pages of punchy talking points, Mr. Manafort showed how as a onetime lobbyist he had adeptly won over rich and powerful business and political leaders, many of them oligarchs or dictators, in Russia, Ukraine, the Philippines and Pakistan.

He began by telling the candidate he lived on an upper floor of Trump Tower. This was no trivial point: It signaled his wealth and a willingness to work 15-hour days in a building that housed both his lavish apartment and Mr. Trump’s bare-bones campaign. It also meant Mr. Manafort had already put his money — in the form of an apartment purchase — into Mr. Trump’s brand, which meant a lot to the candidate, a transactional developer and politician, aides said.

Mr. Manafort’s friendship with Mr. Barrack, the private equity investor, helped, too. Mr. Barrack, who did not respond to a request for comment, is one of the few people whom Mr. Trump trusts.

Regarding politics, Mr. Manafort cast himself as a onetime insider who had turned on the establishment — and a tough guy who would go after Mr. Trump’s harshest critics among the Republican elite.

At one point, he described Karl Rove, a former adviser to George W. Bush who was organizing an anti-Trump effort, as “my blood enemy in politics, going back to the College in the 1960s.”

Mr. Rove said Mr. Manafort was referring to a bitter fight for leadership of the College Republicans that pitted a candidate backed by Mr. Manafort and his close friend Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant, against Mr. Rove and Lee Atwater.

Mr. Rove said he did not view Mr. Manafort as an enemy. “Jeez, it seems sorta silly,” Mr. Rove wrote in an email. “I frankly haven’t had any dealings and only rare sightings of him in the years since.”

Mr. Manafort also cast himself as a warrior against the party’s conservatives, even at a time when Mr. Trump was reaching out to the right wing and courting evangelical Christians. Speaking of his previous experience as a convention manager for several Republican presidential candidates, Mr. Manafort wrote, “I have had to confront the Extreme Right, Tea Party, Rush Limbaughs etc.”

Plus he had a powerful closer’s move: He would work for free.

“I am not looking for a paid job,” Mr. Manafort wrote.

Mr. Barrack drove home the point in his cover letter, writing, “He would do this in an unpaid capacity.” And over the next few months, according to several associates, Mr. Trump would repeatedly boast about the value he was getting from Mr. Manafort.