A member of the jury that found Paul Manafort guilty of tax and bank fraud said it would be a “grave mistake” for President Trump to pardon his ex-campaign chairman.
“Justice was done. The evidence was there. And that’s where it should stop,” Paula Duncan, who voted to convict Manafort, told CNN in an interview that aired Friday.
[More: Majority of voters don’t want Trump to pardon Manafort, Cohen: Poll]
Duncan, a supporter of the president’s, is so far the only person on the 12-member jury to speak out after the jury rendered its verdict in Manafort’s trial in Alexandria, Va., on Tuesday.
Manafort was found guilty of eight counts of bank and tax fraud. The jury, however, could not reach a consensus on the remaining 10 counts.
Duncan told Fox News this week the jury came close to convicting Manafort on all 18 counts against him, but one woman held out and said she still had reasonable doubt.
The verdict form released Thursday shows that for the 10 counts on which they deadlocked, the vote was 11-1 to find Manafort guilty.
Duncan told CNN she agrees with the president’s characterization of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling as a “witch hunt,” but noted that Manafort should still be held responsible for his wrongdoing.
“He should be punished for his crimes,” she said. “It just shouldn’t have come about in the way that it did, in my opinion.”
Duncan said she believes there was enough evidence to convict Manafort on all 18 counts and wanted the public to know how close the vote to do so was.
In a separate interview with Reuters on Friday, Duncan said the Russia probe is a “waste of taxpayer money and a way to harass the president.”
Though the president has not said whether he will pardon Manafort, speculation he would heightened after Trump praised his former campaign chairman, calling him a “brave man.”
But Duncan cautioned Trump against pardoning Manafort in her interview with Reuters and said doing so would be a “big mistake.”
“If President Trump pardons him without him doing any time at all it would look like President Trump was saying it’s OK that you broke the law,” she told Reuters. “It’s not OK to break the law.”
[Opinion: Here’s why Trump will probably pardon Paul Manafort one year from now]
