Under advice from his lawyer Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump said he would wait to pardon Paul Manafort until after the special counsel's investigation is over.
The Washington Post reported that when Trump sought advice from his lawyers "several weeks ago" on the prospect of pardoning his former campaign chairman, they advised him against doing so immediately.
According to Giuliani, the president was upset about the way federal prosecutors "beat up" Manafort, which led to the topic of pardoning.
Giuliani and fellow Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow "told him he should wait until all the investigations are over,” the attorney told the Post. “This [special counsel] case 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.”
