'Stark raving mad': Questions remain about Trump wanting convicted felon at RNC

Paul Manafort is backing off his plan to help manage the Republican National Convention, but a columnist said it's crazy that Donald Trump wanted the convicted felon to take part in the first place.

The decision came just one day after the Washington Post revealed that Manafort had been engaging in foreign business dealings in China, Japan, South Korea and Latin America, and MSNBC columnist Steve Benen wondered why the ex-president was so determined to have his scandal-plagued former campaign chairman return to his orbit.

"Let’s not miss the forest for the trees," Benen wrote. "The fact that Manafort was brought in in the first place was stark raving mad."

Manafort oversaw Trump's political operation in 2016, before he was forced out due to his associations with pro-Russian oligarchs, and he was later convicted of tax fraud, bank fraud and other felonies for which the former president pardoned him on his way out of office, and the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that he “represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”

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"It was against this backdrop that Trump was 'determined to bring Manafort back into the fold,' for reasons that have never been explained, and the operative started providing his services to party officials ahead of the upcoming Republican convention," Benen wrote. "The question isn’t why Manafort is backing off from his latest role on Team Trump, the question is why in the world the convicted felon was provided with this role in the first place."