Donald Trump’s crew just gets messier and messier. In the most recent incident of embarrassing Trump minion moments, former Trump campaign chair in 2016 Paul Manafort was removed from a plane in Miami on Sunday for carrying a revoked passport, officials said Wednesday. Miami-Dade Police Department Detective Alvaro Zabaleta confirmed to The Associated Press that Manafort had been removed from an Emirates Airline flight to Dubai on Sunday night.
"His U.S. passport was revoked and he could not take his flight," Zabaleta, a spokesman for the police said, adding that there was "no further incident."
While Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials were on the scene and denied his boarding. They declined to comment: "For privacy reasons, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is unable to discuss a specific individual’s arrival or departure into or from the United States."
According to CNN, the Justice Department said in a 2017 court filing that Manafort submitted 10 passport applications over the last decade, in addition to having three active U.S. passports, each with a different identification number. This was "indicative of his travel schedule," prosecutors said.
While Manafort has spent years as a high-paid consultant for political figures around the world, including countries like Ukraine, the Philippines, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—the purpose of his travel to the UAE is unclear.
Like other Trump fans, this isn’t the first time Manafort has made headlines for a negative reason. In 2018, he was convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud by a Virginia jury, CNN reported. In that case, Manafort allegedly partook in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on income he received for working as a political consultant for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine. He was also accused of making misleading statements about his overseas work, conspiring to launder money, and attempting to tamper with witness testimony.
He was sentenced to a prison term of more than seven years in 2019, but released early in 2020 to finish the sentence at home. Trump pardoned Manafort in Dec. 2020. According to NBC News, Manafort’s passport was revoked in Oct. 2017 after his arrest, but it was physically returned to him by the FBI after Trump pardoned him.