President Trump praised Paul Manafort on Tuesday just hours after the former Trump campaign chairman was found guilty of eight tax and bank fraud charges stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
“Paul Manafort’s a good man,” Trump told reporters shortly following his arrival in Charleston, W.Va., for a rally Tuesday night. “It doesn’t involve me, but I still feel it’s a very sad thing that happened.”
[More: Trump’s ‘bad week’: Manafort found guilty, Cohen enters plea deal]
The president repeated attacks he has previously lobbed at Mueller’s probe, saying federal investigators had strayed far from their “original mission” of looking into possible interference by Russia in the 2016 U.S. elections, as well as potential collusion between his 2016 campaign and the Kremlin.
“This is a witch hunt, and it’s a disgrace,” Trump said. “This has nothing to do [with] what they started out looking for: Russians involved in our campaign. There were none.”
“I feel very badly for Paul Manafort,” he added. “Again, he worked for Bob Dole. He worked for Ronald Reagan. He worked for many people. And this is the way it ends up.”
[Also read: Trump refuses to discuss Paul Manafort pardon]
Manafort, who joined the president’s 2016 campaign to help fend off a contested nominating convention, had spent four days awaiting a verdict at a federal court in Alexandria, Va., on 18 counts of tax evasion, bank fraud, and the failure to disclose foreign bank accounts.
Manafort was found guilty Tuesday of all five tax fraud charges, each carrying a maximum of three years in prison. The jury found he filed false income tax returns in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.
Manafort, 69, was also found guilty of one count of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts in 2012, which carries a maximum of five years in prison.
The two counts of bank fraud that he was found guilty of each carry a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. The two bank fraud charges were related to a $3.4 million loan from Citizens Bank and a $1 million loan from Banc of California that Manafort sought and obtained.
He is still scheduled to face a second trial in the D.C. District Court next month on charges of witness tampering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, failure to register as a foreign agent, and making false statements.
