Paul Manafort presided over the most calamitous stretch of presidential campaigning in modern political history. Behold the trainwreck.

I want to respect that empathy comes hard to monsters. But I don't think video of this transparently craven stunt will wear well. It's like someone told Richie Rich he needed more extracurriculars on his college app. Video after the jump ...

We've got a lot of news today. But I wanted to make sure you saw this. You likely saw the headline about the violent hater who terrorized an Arab-American family in Oklahoma before finally murdering the son. Allegra Kirkland took a closer look at how the horrifying tale unfolded.

As I've mentioned a number of times and as recently as the piece I wrote last night, the FARA enforcement system has always been a bit of a joke. There are various ways to tiptoe around compliance and the folks in charge of the office - at least back when I was actively reporting on these kinds of stories - were hardly interested in aggressive enforcement. But having perused some more materials and talked to a few more people, I think Paul Manafort likely has serious legal problems on his hands.

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[ed.note: I wrote this post last night, prior to Paul Manafort's resignation from the Trump campaign. His departure doesn't change the story, if anything it tends to confirm it. But the rapidity and totality of his departure looks to me much more tied to his mounting legal trouble and efforts to protect Trump from those troubles than anything tied to the 'pivot' to Breitbartism or last night's regrets speech. There's also a big store of new information in this tour de force piece by Ken Vogel out this morning from Politico - particularly Manafort's connection to a man named Konstantin Kilimnik, with an apparent background in Russian intelligence, and Manafort's on-going and quite recent effort to get paid money he believes he's owed by the party of ouster pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. All the new information tends to confirm me in my belief that Manafort's 'business' in Ukraine is hardly unprecedented for a US political operative on the make. But it's the kind of stuff that seldom gets bright light investigative media attention or the kind of sustained legal attention it's now getting. That will likely end badly for at least Manafort.]

I wanted to provide some context for this new AP report outlining Manafort and company's influence campaign in the US on behalf of a now-deposed pro-Russian President of Ukraine. It's both more and less than it seems.