Days after his former campaign manager was indicted for money laundering, President Trump says he’ll be proven innocent in the Russia investigation if special counsel Robert Mueller treats “everything fairly.”
“Well I hope he’s treating everything fairly and if he is, I’m going to be very happy because when you talk about innocent, I am truly not involved in any form of collusion with Russia,” Mr. Trump told Sharyl Attkisson in an interview to be aired Sunday on Sinclair Broadcast Group. “Believe me — the last thing I can think of to be involved in.”
In excerpts reported by The Hill, Mr. Trump also said he’s not a target of the special counsel’s investigation.
“As far as I’m concerned I have not been told that we were under investigation. I’m not under investigation,” he said.
The president also said he hired Paul Manafort as his campaign chairman in 2016 at the recommendation of a friend. Mr. Mueller indicted Mr. Manafort on Monday on 12 counts, including a charge of hiding payments from Ukraine in offshore accounts and failing to pay U.S. taxes.
“Well it was a friend of mine who was a businessman, very successful businessman and a good person. And you know Paul was not there very long,” Mr. Trump said.
In explaining why he let go Mr. Manafort after just a few months, Mr. Trump said, “Well I think we found out something about him may be involved with … certain nations and I don’t even know exactly what it was in particular but there was a point at which we just felt Paul would be better off because we don’t want to have any potential conflicts.”
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.