President Donald Trump took issue with a federal judge’s decision to jail his former campaign manager Paul Manafort in a Friday afternoon tweet.
Wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other top political people and campaigns. Didn’t know Manafort was the head of the Mob. What about Comey and Crooked Hillary and all of the others? Very unfair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2018
Manafort was jailed while awaiting trial Friday after special counsel Robert Mueller alleged that he repeatedly tried to tamper with witness testimony against him while out on bail awaiting trial.
“This is not middle school,” the Judge said of her decision to jail him, adding, “I can’t take away his cellphone.”
“I mean, I look at some of them where they go back 12 years. Like Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. But I feel so — I tell you, I feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things that he did 12 years ago,” Trump said of Manafort’s case Friday morning.
He added, “You know, Paul Manafort worked for me for a very short period of time. He worked for Ronald Reagan. He worked for Bob Dole. He worked for John McCain, or his firm did. He worked for many other Republicans. He worked for me, what, for 49 days or something? A very short period of time.”