REVEALED: Manafort was $17 million in debt to pro-Russian interests before joining Trump’s campaign

Financial documents reveal that Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was millions of dollars in debt to "pro-Russian interests" by the time he joined the president's campaign last spring.

According to the New York Times, Manafort owed pro-Russian groups money via shell companies housed in Cyprus, Russia's offshore banking capital.

Documents obtained by the Times show Manafort at the center of a "complex web of more than a dozen entities that transferred millions of dollars among them in the form of loans, payments and fees."

The documents, which have been independently verified by the Times, came from Manafort's time working in Ukraine for pro-Russia groups, as well as his now-infamous financial relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska.