Paul Manafort, who came aboard Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at the moment of its greatest peril and then muscled his way to the top of the operation, resigned Friday in the wake of a fresh round of senior hires for the campaign.

Trump announced Manafort’s departure in a short statement emailed to reporters.

“Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”

“This morning Paul Manafort offered, and I accepted, his resignation from the campaign,” Trump said in the statement. “I am very appreciative for his great work in helping to get us where we are today, and in particular his work guiding us through the delegate and convention process. Paul is a true professional and I wish him the greatest success.”

Manafort’s first title with the Trump campaign was “convention manager.” Trump hired him in March to help the campaign compete with the well-oiled political machine of Sen. Ted Cruz, who was snapping up loyal delegates in state after state during the GOP primaries. At the time, the prospect of a contested convention was a real possibility — and Trump supporters feared Cruz would have the upper hand under such a scenario.

Manafort did not find much success in out-dueling Cruz for delegate loyalties. But the Trump campaign pulled off an outright victory by casting Cruz’s efforts as part of a “rigged” system that allowed the Texas senator to walk away with the lion’s share of delegates in states that did not hold primaries or caucuses.

It quickly became clear that Manafort, whose political experience dates to Gerald Ford’s 1976 presidential campaign, was much more than a delegate counter. He won a power struggle with campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who left the campaign in June. By then, it was clear that Manafort was the man in charge.

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He attempted to professionalize the Trump campaign, hiring more staff and working to persuade the candidate to adopt more of the practices of a traditional candidate. Trump began delivering more speeches from a teleprompter, and the campaign put together a rapid-response team to counter statements from Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

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For all his tactical success, Manafort was unwittingly dragged into the distractions he was trying to eliminate. Reports emerged that Manafort’s name was on a ledger showing he was designated to receive $12.7 million in cash payments from the pro-Russian party of former Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych.

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And The Associated Press reported that a firm run by Manafort orchestrated a secret lobbying effort to influence American public opinion in favor of the country’s pro-Russian government — and that he and his deputy, Rick Gates, never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.

Signs that Manafort’s tenure with Trump might be short-lived emerged earlier this week with the hiring of Breitbart News Executive Chairman Steve Bannon to be the campaign’s CEO and veteran Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway to be campaign manager.