Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's lawyers, whose client remains in solitary confinement in Virginia, disputed that he violated the terms of his plea deal. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images White House Trump won't rule out pardon for Paul Manafort

President Donald Trump won't rule out a pardon for his embattled former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, comparing special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 election to the chaos of McCarthyism.

During an interview with The New York Post on Wednesday, Trump expressed admiration for Manafort, even after allegations emerged earlier this week that he repeatedly lied to the special counsel and other federal investigators, potentially violating his plea bargain.


Manafort was convicted of several counts of financial fraud in August in a major win for Mueller's team, which had gathered swaths of information incriminating the former Trump campaign leader.

"It was never discussed, but I wouldn’t take it off the table," Trump told The Post regarding a presidential pardon. "Why would I take it off the table?”

Manafort's lawyers, whose client remains in solitary confinement in Virginia, disputed that he violated the terms of his plea deal.

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In his Post interview, Trump, without providing evidence, accused Mueller's team of coercing Manafort and Trump associates Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi into lying, dismissing the whole investigation as a sham. He has repeatedly denounced the investigation in the past as a "witch hunt" and dismissed any claims his team colluded with Russian agents to influence the election.

“You know this flipping stuff is terrible. You flip and you lie and you get – the prosecutors will tell you 99 percent of the time they can get people to flip. It’s rare that they can’t,” Trump told The Post. “And I’m telling you, this is McCarthyism. We are in the McCarthy era. This is no better than McCarthy."

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that Manafort's lawyer continued to brief the president's legal team after Manafort had agreed to cooperate with Mueller's investigation. Several legal experts thought the arrangement was a way for Manafort to vie for a presidential pardon, the Times reported.

Trump has hosted a few other Oval Office interviews this week with national news publications, including The Washington Post and POLITICO, where he has spoken candidly about a slew of topics, from blaming his Federal Reserve chairman for the tanking stock market to threatening a government shutdown over his border wall.