Upon touching down in West Virginia for a campaign rally event tonight, President Donald Trump was barraged with questions about the flurry of activity in court today regarding both his former attorney AND his former campaign chairman. Chiefly, reporters wanted a reaction to the guilty verdict in the Paul Manafort case, which will carry a sentence of up to 80 years once the court reaches the sentencing phase.
Trump told the gathered press that he felt “very badly” for his associate, but argued that the verdict had nothing to do with him or his campaign for the presidency:
It doesn’t involve me. It has nothing to do with Russian collusion. This started as Russian collusion. This has absolutely nothing to do…This is a disgrace. This has nothing to do with what they started out…looking for Russians involved in our campaign.”
However, Manafort’s main draw in his hiring for the Trump campaign was the fact that he had such extensive experience with lobbying foreign governments, primarily that of Ukraine on behalf of Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russia former president of Ukraine who was driven into exile.
The Manafort case has been only half the news today, however, with Trump’s former personal lawyer admitting in open court today that he had paid off multiple mistresses of Trump’s in a direct effort to affect the outcome of the election, contrary to the statements of literally everyone on Team Trump since the Stormy Daniels story broke last October.
Trump did not answer any questions regarding Cohen.
Featured image via screen capture
