Sarah Sanders refuses to say Manafort should cooperate with Mueller as she’s grilled by CNN's Jim Acosta

White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders held a surprise press briefing on Tuesday, on a day when the news cycle was consumed with news about the Trump-Russia investigation.

CNN reporter Jim Acosta was back in the briefing room after having gone to court over being banned from the premises and wasted no time grilling Sanders about the news that former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort has allegedly lied to special prosecutor Robert Mueller's team.

"Getting back to Paul Manafort, would the president recommend that Mr. Manafort... offer full cooperation to the special counsel's office?" Acosta asked.

Sanders refused to give a straight answer.

"We can only speak to what our role is in in that process. Not only has the president but the entire administration has been fully cooperative with the special counsel's office, providing hours and hours of sit downs as well as over 4 million pages in documents. We continue to be cooperative, but we also know that there was no collusion and we're ready for this to wrap up," she said.

Acosta then broke the new rule against follow-up questions by asking about Saudi Arabia's murder of a Washington Post columnist.

Watch below.