Trump 2020 campaign manager delivered paid speech in Romania

Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale recently delivered a paid speech to politicians and elites in Romania, according to a report published Tuesday.

Parscale, who heads President Trump’s reelection campaign, did not break any laws as long as he does not lobby for foreign entities without registering, legal analysts told The Washington Post.

{mosads}Parscale told The Hill in a statement that the “handful of international speeches” he has given were approved in advance.

“We did not grow up with the opportunity to travel internationally, and speaking opportunities have allowed me to share my talent with other professionals in a university setting while having a brief break from the rigorous campaign schedule that I maintain,” he said. “This speaking engagement was fully vetted and approved through the necessary channels in advance.”

“This is yet another effort by the biased fake news media to systematically target another person in President Trump’s orbit,” he added.

Following the report’s publication, Parscale also slammed the Post on Twitter.  

The @washingtonpost is as much of a newspaper as I am a ballerina. #FAKENewsKing

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) April 30, 2019

Parscale is listed as a speaker with the Worldwide Speakers Group, and his speaking fee is between $15,000 and $25,000, according to its website. 

Campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told The Hill in a statement that Parscale went “as a private citizen, not to discuss official U.S. policies” and “followed the Trump campaign’s approval process governing invitations for outside speaking engagements.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said on Twitter that the speech is more evidence that “the potential for the appearance of impropriety” does not bother the Trump campaign.

After all the issues of foreign campaign influence, President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager gave a paid speech in Romania. As I said to @washingtonpost, the potential for the appearance of impropriety? It’s just not something that concerns them. https://t.co/Ikub5VvsX0

— Noah Bookbinder (@NoahBookbinder) April 30, 2019

Trump’s onetime 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered foreign lobbyist for the Ukrainian president as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Justice Department investigation, while the charges to which former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty included lying about activities involving the Turkish government. 

The Mueller report released in redacted form by the Justice Department earlier this month detailed multiple instances in which the Russian government attempted to influence the U.S. election, but did not establish that there was a conspiracy with the Trump campaign. 

—Updated Wednesday at 3:49 p.m.