US President Donald Trump said he fired Paul Manafort as his campaign chairman to avoid \u201cpotential conflicts\u201d with \u201ccertain nations,\u201d according to excerpts of an interview released Saturday.<\/p>\n
Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were placed under house arrest this week on money-laundering charges linked to an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.<\/p>\n
The charges relate to allegations that the then Republican presidential candidate\u2019s campaign colluded with Russia in the run-up to the November, 2016 election.<\/p>\n
The US Congress is also conducting three separate investigations into the allegations, which have dogged Trump since his election and which he has strongly denied.<\/p>\n
Asked who recommended Manafort manage the campaign, Trump said \u201cit was a friend of mine who was a businessman — a very successful businessman and a good person, and you know, Paul was not there very long.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we found out something about (how) he may be involved with all — with certain nations, and I don\u2019t even know exactly what it was in particular,\u201d he told Sharyl Attkison\u2019s syndicated television show \u201cFull Measure\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut there was a point at which we just felt Paul would be better off — because we don\u2019t want to have many potential conflicts,\u201d he added in the show which airs in full on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Trump said he has no current plans to fire Mueller.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I hope he\u2019s treating everything fairly, and if he is, I\u2019m going to be very happy, because when you talk about innocent, I am truly not involved in any form of collusion with Russia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelieve me, that\u2019s the last thing I can think of to be involved in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The president said he was not aware of any plans to be questioned by the special counsel. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, I haven\u2019t been told that we\u2019re under investigation, I\u2019m not under investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manafort and Gates have pleaded not guilty to charges that they allegedly hid millions of dollars gained from work with Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych and his pro-Moscow political party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US President Donald Trump said he fired Paul Manafort as his campaign chairman to avoid \u201cpotential conflicts\u201d with \u201ccertain nations,\u201d according to excerpts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9440,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9438\/revisions\/9440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}