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Manafort reveals how Mueller’s FBI team pressured him ‘to talk about facts that were not true’

January 13, 2022 | | Print Article

Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort has suggested that the Russian collusion delusion hoax was a premeditated effort to undo the 2016 presidential election and that then-special counsel Robert Mueller’s team was willing to do anything, including pressuring him into lying, to make this happen.

Speaking on Fox News’ “Hannity” this Wednesday in what was his first post-pardon interview, Manafort said that he’d “always felt” this was the real truth.

“Frankly, you know, from day one I always felt they were targeting me and a couple of others to try and get at then-candidate Trump and then President Trump,” he said.

The irony, he continued, is that all the Russian collusion delusion hoaxers are now hyperventilating in rage over the one-day Jan. 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“I find it sort of ironic what’s going on today with this these claims about Jan. 6th, when the people who are pushing the Jan. 6th allegations are the very ones who for four and a half years refused to recognize the results of the 2016 election,” he said.

Manafort has returned to the spotlight thanks to the recent announcement that he intends to release a memoir, “Political Prisoner,” in August of this year.

Continuing his remarks, the former Trump campaign manager said that “there were moments” during the collusion hoax “when they were putting pressure on me to admit the facts that weren’t true,” claiming “that I would be treated in a very lenient way.”

What they failed to realize, he added, is that he wasn’t going to lie, period.

“They didn’t understand that there was no way I was going to lie. There was no way that they could force me into giving up the president. And I never felt uncomfortable talking to them, because I knew that as long as i told the truth there, I had nothing to fear. But I was wrong,” he said.

Indeed, he wound up being convicted on a litany of charges, including bank fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering.

But before giving up on him and throwing him to the wolves, it appears Mueller’s team tried every tactic available to them, including needlessly tossing him into solitary confinement. The typical reason for tossing inmates into solitary is for their protection from other inmates, but in this case, Manafort didn’t need any.

“The prisoners were never an issue with me. The special prosecutor was. They’re the ones who put me into into what I viewed as harm’s way,” he explained.

“What it did was put me into a situation that was, you know, in an eight by ten room with no windows, with no access to people, no access to outside and limited ability to communicate with my lawyers. I talk about that in the book, about how it’s inhumane what they call solitary confinement.”

They even tried sending him to Rikers Island, which is known for being particularly harsh, but were cut short by the Trump Department of Justice.

“Fortunately, thanks to the Department of Justice, that didn’t happen because there was a fear for my safety,” he said.

At this point in the Fox News interview, Hannity cut in to ask Manafort about who exactly among Mueller’s team had led the efforts against him, since it clearly wasn’t Mueller himself leading the charge.

“My sources have been telling me for a long time that Robert Mueller, he was kind of checked out. … In other words, he kind of suffered from the same cognitive decline that Joe Biden has. Is that true? Did you see him much? And if it wasn’t him who is putting all this pressure on you, was it his hitman, Mr. Weissman?” the Fox News host said.

Manafort said that it was indeed Mueller’s infamous pitbull, Andrew Weissman, who, after leaving the DOJ following the Russian collusion probe, became a frequent CNN guest.

“I saw Robert Mueller walking down the hallway once. Other than that, I had no contact with him. And frankly, he didn’t look like he knew who I was when I saw him. So yes, it was Weissman. I mean, he was the one that was the lead prosecutor from day one,” he replied.

“He was the one who so overcharged me in my case that Judge Ellis in Virginia actually admonished them from the bench, saying why are you bringing all of these charges — you want to put this guy to jail for forever. And they were trying to put me in jail forever unless I would cooperate. That was what they were promising to do.”

As the discussion approached a conclusion, Hannity zeroed in on what Manafort had said earlier about being pressured and asked the former Trump campaign manager to list out some of the things about Trump that they’d wanted him to claim.

Manafort refused to list anything specifically, in part because he wants the American people to buy and read his book for the full answers.

“I’ll be definitely talking about some of those details in the book, because there was no doubt in my mind from day one that I was a means to an end,” he said.

The book is set to be out on Aug. 16th.

Vivek Saxena
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