Rudy Giuliani revealed that President Trump sought advice from his legal team on pardoning Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, while he was on trial in federal court for bank and tax fraud, a report on Thursday said.
The former New York City mayor who’s representing the president in the Russia probe told the Washington Post that Trump believed federal prosecutors had “beat up” Manafort during the trial and raised the idea of pardoning him.
But his legal team advised against it, arguing that Trump should at least wait until special counsel Robert Mueller completes his probe.
“We told him he should wait until all the investigations are over,” Giuliani told the newspaper. “This [Special Counsel] case is a strange case. It won’t be decided by a jury. It will decided by the Justice Department and Congress and ultimately the American people. You have to be sensitive to public optics.”
