President Trump declined to say Friday if he would consider pardoning Paul Manafort, who is currently awaiting a verdict on tax evasion and bank fraud charges, and said only that what has happened to his former campaign chairman is “very sad.”
“I don’t talk about that,” Trump told reporters at the White House in response to questions about a possible pardon.
“I think the whole Manafort trial is very sad,” he said, expressing disappointment in what federal prosecutors have “done to Paul Manafort.”
[Also read: The rise and fall of Paul Manafort]
Manafort, 69, who served as the Trump campaign’s chairman for nearly five months in 2016, is facing 18 criminal counts in his trial in a federal court in Alexandria, Va. If convicted on all counts, the former lobbyist could be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison.
Jurors spent more than six hours deliberating on Thursday, after the defense and prosecution delivered closing arguments. T.S. Ellis, the judge presiding over the trial, which spanned nearly three weeks, said Friday he was “optimistic that the case might end soon.”
Regardless of the verdict in the Virginia court, Manafort will face a second trial in D.C. next month that is expected to focus more on his work for Ukraine. The charges he faces include conspiracy to defraud the United States, submitting false statements on his Foreign Agent Registration Act form, and witness tampering.
