Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said on Tuesday he wouldn’t be shocked if Paul Manafort, the man who replaced him as Trump campaign chairman, was not truthful with special counsel Robert Mueller or if he met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on several occasions.
“I would probably put my money on the other side right now because Paul Manafort is a serial liar,” Lewandowski told MSNBC. “So, look, did he lie to the special counsel? I don’t know, but it would not surprise me.”
On Monday, Mueller accused Manafort of breaking his plea deal agreement reached in September by misleading the FBI and the special counsel’s team, though details regarding his alleged misconduct are still unknown. Manafort’s lawyers have denied the claims from Mueller’s office, which put at risk a 10-year cap on time he will have to concurrently serve in prison as part of the Virginia- and Washington-based cases mounted against him.
Later in the interview, Lewandowski said the Guardian report published Tuesday about Manafort apparently meeting Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London multiple times between 2013 and 2016, the last of which was around the time Manafort replaced Lewandowski in the Trump campaign’s leadership team, also “would not surprise” him. One of Mueller’s lines of inquiry for his federal Russia investigation has focused on whether or not Trump associates had prior knowledge of WikiLeaks’ email dumps that were damaging to his opponent, Hillary Clinton, in 2016.
Lewandowski, however, emphasized that the offenses Manafort has either been found guilty of or pleaded guilty to — including bank and tax fraud, as well as two conspiracy counts — have “nothing to do” with the Trump campaign or Trump Organization. He additionally advised that he saw “no reason” for Manafort to receive a presidential pardon but said it was a decision for President Trump.
