It’s been an especially turbulent week for Donald Trump’s presidency, but consider this particular sequence of events:

First, a jury in Alexandria, Virginia, found Paul Manafort guilty Tuesday on eight felony counts related to tax evasion and other financial crimes. Manafort, who is 69 years old, now faces the possibility of spending a significant portion of his remaining life in federal prison. It’s possible, however, that the former Trump campaign chairman could reduce his prison sentence by cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian electoral interference.

Second, on Wednesday, Trump expressed sympathy for Manafort and implicitly praised him for not cooperating with investigators. The Justice Department “took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ - make up stories in order to get a ‘deal,’” Trump tweeted, contrasting Manafort’s silence with his former lawyer’s admissions. “Such respect for a brave man!” That night, Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt reported that Trump told her he was considering a pardon of Manafort.

Third, Rudy Giuliani, the president’s media-happy lawyer, told the Washington Post on Thursday that Trump asked his legal team in recent weeks whether he should pardon Manafort. Giuliani said that he and Trump’s other lawyers counseled against pardoning Manafort immediately. “We told him he should wait until all the investigations are over,” Giuliani told the Post. Mueller’s investigation, he added, “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.”

Taken together, these events could suggest that if Manafort does not cooperate with the special counsel’s inquiry, he will receive a pardon at some point in the future. Since all of this has played out in national media outlets, it’s possible that Manafort himself and his legal team have already drawn a similar conclusion.