A pardon for Paul Manafort may or may not be in the works, but President Donald Trump did say he has a great deal of respect for his former campaign manager, who was found guilty in federal court for several counts of bank fraud.
"I have great respect for what he has done, in terms of what he has gone through," Trump told Fox News' "Fox and Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt, after she asked him directly if a pardon is in the works.
"You know, he worked for Ronald Reagan for years," said Trump. "He worked for Bob Dole, he worked, I guess his firm worked for [John] McCain. He worked for many people. All the charges they threw against him every lobbyist in Washington probably does."
Wednesday night, Earhardt said in an interview on the network's "Hannity" program that Trump had told her "he would consider" pardoning Manafort.
On Thursday, however, she pointed out that he didn't say if he was going to pardon Manafort, but "it sounded like to me he might be considering it. He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no."
During the interview, Trump pointed to his former campaign foe, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and her campaign manager, John Podesta.
"I mean, look at the crimes that Clinton did with the emails," he said. "She deletes 33,000 emails after she gets a subpoena from Congress and this Justice Department does nothing about it?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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