After Trump’s Pardon, Paul Manafort Is Back and Looking for Foreign Work

Four years after receiving a pardon from President Donald J. Trump for crimes related to foreign lobbying, Paul Manafort is again seeking business from political interests abroad.

Mr. Manafort, who led Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign for a few months, has assembled a team of consultants who helped run Mr. Trump’s 2024 effort and is looking to advise campaigns for opposition and far-right political factions in Latin America and Europe, according to documents and interviews.

Mr. Manafort has discussed working for a French billionaire supporting anti-immigration politicians including Marine Le Pen, as well as an ultraconservative Peruvian mayor seen as a possible presidential candidate. Mr. Manafort has even engaged with interests in Ukraine, the country where his work for Russia-aligned interests led to his downfall.

The circumstances around his re-emergence on the international political consulting scene are murky and fraught, particularly in Ukraine, where there are concerns about Mr. Trump’s commitment to supporting the defense against Russian aggression and where Mr. Manafort’s previous activity remains infamous.

A memo detailing the team’s members and pitching its services recently circulated in political circles in Kyiv, generating anxious buzz.

Mr. Manafort said in a statement that he has been contacted “by numerous parties in Ukraine,” but “never submitted a proposal on any matter to anyone in Ukraine,” and has not signed any contracts with interests there.

He did not answer questions from The Times about his other international business development efforts, and their status is not clear.

Among those named in a version of the Manafort memo reviewed by The New York Times are Chris LaCivita, who helped manage Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, as well as a firm started by the campaign’s political director, James Blair, whom Mr. Trump recently named as a deputy chief of staff for the next White House administration. Also named is Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster who has previously worked overseas, including for Mr. Manafort’s Russia-aligned Ukrainian clients.

The team and its solicitation of foreign business, previously unreported, seek to capitalize on international interest in forging connections to Mr. Trump amid his emergence at the center of a populist movement of immigration critics sweeping parts of the world.

Mr. Trump’s election, and his rapport with Mr. Manafort, has opened a new chapter in the 75-year-old operative’s long career in international politics.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mr. Manafort helped pioneer a model of consulting in which he was paid millions of dollars to run campaigns for foreign politicians and to lobby for their governments in Washington, partly by positioning them as allies of the Reagan and Bush administrations in the fight against communism.

Mr. Manafort appeared poised to capitalize on his ties to Mr. Trump by pursuing international consulting contracts after the 2016 election. Instead, he became a focus of the special counsel’s investigation into ties between the Trump team and Russia, and was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for financial and tax crimes related to income from Ukraine, and for conspiring to violate foreign lobbying laws.

During the final weeks of his first term, Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Manafort, who then quietly began exploring business opportunities abroad. His prospects expanded after Mr. Trump’s victory in November, according to associates and competitors.

“People that knew Paul all around the world always were very surprised to see what happened to him,” said Hector Hoyos, a longtime friend and former business partner. “He’s always been in demand. Why? Because the guy is, I think, one of the brightest political tacticians of our generation.”

In the pitch memo reviewed by The Times, Mr. Manafort’s team promises to “develop a state-of-the-art and multidimensional campaign plan” to boost “center-right political parties” in France by targeting and mobilizing supportive voters, while using opposition research and attacks to undermine opponents.

The pitch appears to have been prepared for the Périclès project, a venture started in 2023 by the billionaire Pierre-Édouard Stérin and his associate Arnaud Rérolle to invest more than $150 million over a decade to help French right-wing parties, including Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party.

Mr. Manafort and John Harkrider, a low-profile Texas native who works in international finance and politics, held a call with Mr. Rérolle to discuss a possible engagement, after which the Manafort team agreed to provide a proposal, Mr. Rérolle told The Times.

Mr. Rérolle said the Périclès project decided not to sign any contract with the team. Mr. Stérin’s team maintains close ties to Ms. Le Pen’s National Rally party, but four top party members said they had not heard of a potential future collaboration with Mr. Manafort.

Mr. Manafort’s pitch comes at a time when right-wing parties are on the rise in France, and are expected to perform well in future elections. Mr. Manafort previously worked in France, having written a campaign strategy for a leading center-right candidate in the 1995 French presidential elections.

Mr. Harkrider and Mr. Fabrizio did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. LaCivita said in a statement that he and Mr. Fabrizio “are not currently under contract” as part of the Manafort coalition. But he said “successful political consultants on both the right and left routinely do political consulting overseas,” and added “we always welcome the opportunity to assist those who seek to make their countries great again and who align with American foreign policy.”

Mr. LaCivita and Mr. Fabrizio last month were announced as advisers to a nonprofit group expected to air advertisements to support Mr. Trump’s agenda.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump said that Mr. Manafort has no role on the transition team.

The memo indicates that the team also includes Mr. Harkrider, as well as the digital advertising strategist Vincent Harris, who worked briefly for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Mr. Harris, who did not respond to requests for comment, has international experience, according to the memo, which indicates that he worked for hard-right international politicians including Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Three people familiar with Mr. Manafort’s efforts to rebuild an international political consulting practice, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations, said he has explored the possibility of working in Peru, which is headed into a presidential election in 2026 after years of political tumult, violence and dissatisfaction with the political class.

Last month, according to one of the people, Mr. Manafort spoke to a representative of Mayor Rafael López Aliaga of Lima, a business mogul and leader of the Peruvian right who is considered a prospective presidential candidate in 2026.

Mr. López Aliaga, who came in third in Peru’s 2021 presidential race, attended a gathering of Trump associates and far-right global politicians in Buenos Aires last month. He has echoed false claims that Mr. Trump won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and railed against what he describes as a cabal of leftists who are invested in keeping Peru from developing and reaching its potential.

It is not clear if Mr. Manafort has any formal relationship with Mr. López Aliaga, whose office did not respond to requests for comment.

In his statement, Mr. Manafort said he hears rumors “almost every week” about his return to Ukraine.

“The answer is that I have not been in Ukraine for about 10 years and have no plans to visit,” he said.

Still, a version of the Manafort pitch memo made its way to several Ukrainians allied with a prominent political figure who is considered a possible rival to President Volodymyr Zelensky in a still unscheduled future election, according to people familiar with the situation. They said those Ukrainians had no interest in Mr. Manafort’s services. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared a backlash from Mr. Trump if they publicly called out Mr. Manafort.

Some members of Mr. Manafort’s coalition were surprised to learn that they had been cited in a memo circulated in Ukraine.

“If we had known it was a prospect, we would have politely declined to be named in said pitch as we wouldn’t work there at this time,” Ryan Smith, the president of Rapid Loop Consulting, said in a statement.

Rapid Loop Consulting was founded in 2013 by Mr. Blair, whose work for the Trump campaign was featured in the memo. He fully divested from the firm after the election, Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Smith said that Rapid Loop agreed to be included in pitches with Mr. Manafort’s coalition “when they see an opportunity for the company to provide value,” but he added that he had not discussed “any specific prospective engagement or client” with anyone in the coalition.

The concerns about working in Ukraine stem partly from the ongoing war and Mr. Trump’s skepticism about U.S. military aid for Ukraine’s defense, and partly from Mr. Manafort’s history.

He was paid tens of millions of dollars by oligarchs and other interests supporting the party of Viktor F. Yanukovych, whose successful campaign for president of Ukraine Mr. Manafort guided in 2010. After the collapse of Mr. Yanukovych’s government in 2014 amid street protests over its corruption and pivot toward Moscow, Mr. Manafort continued quietly courting the oligarchs who had backed the Yanukovych government. Mr. Manafort offered to serve as a liaison to Mr. Trump’s team and advised a new Russia-aligned party.

Mr. Manafort and an associate who prosecutors later labeled “a former Russian intelligence officer” discussed a plan to end hostilities that could have ceded control of part of Ukraine to Russia, and reinstated Mr. Yanukovych as the leader of that region, according to a report by the special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump’s team.

Mr. Manafort was also among the Trump associates who privately fomented distrust about Ukraine with Mr. Trump and his team. It culminated in a White House pressure campaign against Mr. Zelensky’s government that backfired badly, leading to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.

Yet Mr. Manafort maintained his standing with Mr. Trump, and re-entered his orbit after receiving his pardon. He accepted a volunteer role helping to plan last year’s Republican National Convention. The arrangement ended after a report in The Washington Post revealed that he had continued pursuing international business, including in China.

Mr. Manafort has been spotted at the private Trump resort Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., since the election, according to people familiar with his whereabouts.

“Trump and him,” Mr. Hoyos said, “they don’t hide the fact that they’re friends.”

Mitra Taj contributed reporting from Lima, Peru.