Manafort spokesman says investigations 'entirely politically motivated'

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President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman believes the investigations into his actions are “entirely politically motivated,” Paul Manafort's spokesman Jason Maloni said Thursday.

Maloni referred to a CNN report this week, alleging that U.S. investigators conducted surveillance of Manafort under secret court orders before and after the 2016 presidential election.

The CNN report “is all you need to know about this case. When CNN’s story broke about the revelations of not one but two FISA warrants, that made this crystal clear a political story,” Maloni told NPR’s “1A” on Thursday morning. “Paul’s feeling is this is entirely politically motivated.”

Manafort, through a statement released by Maloni on Wednesday, called for the Justice Department’s inspector general to look into the FISA warrant leaks and find the motivations behind surveillance of his communications. He also urged DOJ to release any transcripts it had of his communications with non-Americans.

“Why it’s coming to light now is for someone to investigate,” Maloni said Thursday. “Paul Manafort earlier in the week begged, said, ‘Please, somebody conduct an investigation.’ First of all, who revealed the fact that one of the most classified and valuable tools at our intelligence community’s disposal, the FISA court, why was this violated, and who’s behind it and why? Those are questions that need to be answered.”

FBI agents raided Manafort’s home in July, in what Maloni on Thursday called a tactic “reserved for violent offenders” that should shock the American people on the same scale as Chelsea Manning’s leaks of classified information to WikiLeaks.

And Maloni signaled that, as a result,

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