crimea from what i ve heard, would rather be with russia than where they were. that was not the issue. the issue was that it was annexed illegally against all international laws. reporter: paul manafort s, trump s second manafort has done an amazing job. reporter: he was there for roughly a decade and was paid in part by russian old gargs, according to a 2020 senate intelligence committee report. during manafort s time as campaign chair, the campaign pushed sometimes bizarre and seemingly random disinformation that could have been written by the kremlin. you had the nato base in turkey being attacked by terrorists. you had a number of things that weren t appropriate to this campaign, were part of what mr. trump has been talking about. reporter: when the republican national committee s 2016 platform proposed to provide lethal defensive weapons to ukraine in the face of the russian threat, that language was quickly tabled and softened,
however rich. however influential they may seem. reporter: fight the system, interfere in politics and face his wrath. exiled russian oligarch mikhail who was convicted of tax evasion and fraud, spent ten years in a russian prison, he says, for not playing putin s game. he claims putin is paranoid, dangerous, and must be stopped. translator: all the accounts of all the old gargs who function as putin s wallet must be stopped. they must all feel pain and it must continue until the war ends. reporter: newly imposed sanctions from the west have made it hard for them to do business outside of russia. yachts, bank accounts, frozen. inside russia, the economy shows signs of crumbling. but chipping away from putin s economics will take time. from his actions, it is believed his strategy is far beyond personal riches. he wants to rebuild russia as
press conference in helsinki when he said, well, putin said he didn t do it. our guys said he definitely putin has a point. so again and again and again, he took an oath to defend this country. and he is not defended against this attack from russia. in fact, he help the attack occur by denying it was happening. and now we have this collusion. that s the word for it here between his campaign chairman and the emissary of putin s closest oligarch, one of the closest old gargs in the middle of the campaign. you ve been around washington a long time. we ve seen many campaign and political skanls, you don t know about it but your chief of staff does something, you get held responsible. so he s responsible, at the request of deripaska to cut a