White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders quickly responded to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, saying Friday it was “unrelated” to President Trump’s 2016 campaign.
“This had absolutely nothing to do with the president or his victorious 2016 presidential campaign,” Sanders said in a statement. “It is totally unrelated.”
Manafort pleaded guilty to two charges from Mueller on Friday, and reached a cooperation agreement as part of the deal.
{mosads}He pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy against the United States and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice by witness tampering.
Trump has often claimed that Mueller’s investigation into possible collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia is a “witch hunt.”
The White House has previously said that Mueller’s charges against Manafort are unrelated to the Trump campaign or to the president.
Trump last month called Manafort a “good person” after the businessman was convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, but told reporters that the convictions had “nothing to do with Russian collusion.”
“Doesn’t involve me but I still feel, you know, it’s a very sad thing that happened,” the president said at the time. “This has nothing to do [with] what they started out looking for, Russians involved in our campaign. There were none.”