President Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to promise that he wouldn’t use a presidential pardon on his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

“It was never discussed, but I wouldn’t take it off the table,” he told the New York Post in an interview. “Why would I take it off the table?”

Trump then bemoaned the fates of Manafort, Roger Stone and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, all three of whom have recently been in the special counsel’s crosshairs.

“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 said. “But I had three people: Manafort, Corsi – I don’t know Corsi, but he refuses to say what they demanded. Manafort, Corsi and Roger Stone.”

“It’s actually very brave,” he continued, referring to the three men. “And I’m telling you, this is McCarthyism. We are in the McCarthy era. This is no better than McCarthy.”