text: President Trump recently asked his lawyers for their advice on the possibility of pardoning Paul Manafort and other aides accused of crimes, his lawyer said Thursday. 
   
   The subject of pardoning Manafort came as Trump’s former campaign chairman faced multiple charges of bank fraud and tax evasion in an Alexandria criminal case, Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani said in an interview. 
   
   Trump’s lawyers counseled the president against the idea of pardoning anyone linked to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, according to Giuliani, saying Trump should at least wait until special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has concluded his probe. Giuliani said the president agreed and did not push the issue further. 
   
   “He said yes,” Giuliani said. “He agreed with us.” 
   
   Giuliani said Trump was seeking advice in the wake of a spate of pardons he granted earlier this summer, including for a woman whom Kim Kardashian had lobbied the White House to release. Giuliani said he and fellow personal attorney Jay Sekulow had advised waiting to see whether Mueller delivers a damning report that accuses the president of trying to block a federal probe of his campaign’s contacts with Russians. 
   
   White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters Wednesday that she “wasn’t aware” of any discussions of Trump pardoning Manafort and that the topic was “not something that’s been up for discussion.” 
   
   On Thursday, in the wake of Giuliani’s comment, Sanders said the pardon topic is not under active consideration “in the White House.” 
   
   “This pardon is not something being discussed in the White House and the president has not made a decision on pardoning Paul Manafort or anyone else,” she said in a statement. 
   
   The exact timing and nature of the pardon discussion is unclear. 
   
   A senior administration official said the president discussed the pros and cons of granting pardons to Manafort and others linked to a probe of his campaign “a few weeks ago.” 
   
   Giuliani initially said he and Trump had the conversation “three to five weeks ago” but later corrected his statement to say he believed they discussed it several weeks earlier, in June. Giuliani clarified in a follow-up call to The Post that his conversation with Trump was a general discussion about potential pardons for a range of people under investigation, including but not limited to Manafort. 
   
   Some experts have argued Trump could expose himself to more legal danger if he were to pardon aides who are witnesses in the Mueller probe, because Mueller is examining the president’s own conduct and whether he sought to obstruct justice. 
   
   Giuliani acknowledged that risk. 
   
   “We sat him down and said you’re not considering these other pardons with anybody involved in the investigation. He said yes, absolutely, I understand,” Giuliani said. “The real concern is whether Mueller would turn any pardon into an obstruction charge.” 
   
   Other Trump associates who have pleaded guilty as part of Mueller’s investigation include former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and Trump campaign aide Rick Gates. 
   
   Mueller’s findings are supposed to be provided in a report to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who would then decide whether any evidence of wrong­doing was serious enough that it should be presented to Congress to consider for impeachment proceedings. 
   
   Trump has repeatedly decried the government’s treatment of Manafort — who a jury found guilty Tuesday on eight counts of tax- and bank-fraud charges. Manafort refused to cooperate with Mueller investigators seeking his information about the Trump campaign and instead took his chances at trial. 
   
   On Tuesday, the president told reporters that Manafort was a “good man” and that he felt sorry for him. 
   
   Trump tweeted his support of Manafort on Wednesday while criticizing Michael Cohen, his former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to five counts of tax evasion, one count of making a false statement to a bank and two campaign finance violations: willfully causing an illegal corporate contribution and making an excessive campaign contribution. 
   
   “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,” Trump tweeted. “ ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to ‘break’ — make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a brave man!” 
   
   Inside the West Wing, the prospect of a Manafort pardon is met with near universal opposition. Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, White House counsel Donald F. McGahn and attorney Emmet T. Flood are all opposed. Aides are trying to keep Trump from even discussing the matter. After Ainsley Earhardt, the Fox News anchor, said Wednesday night that Trump discussed a pardon while appearing on Fox News, Sanders asked her to clarify her comments that she did not hear Trump say that, according to a person familiar with the matter. Officials are increasingly frustrated with Giuliani inside the West Wing. 
   
   Trump has admiringly talked about how Manafort did not “flip” on him and was ebullient when Judge T.S. Ellis said that the prosecution only wanted to go after Manafort to get him. Asked about a pardon, one senior White House official said: “What does it accomplish? You pardon him, it doesn’t get rid of the Mueller probe, it causes you more headaches, he still has another trial, you have more Republicans coming after you.” 
   
   “Legally he’s entitled to pardon Manafort,” said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard professor that Trump likes to watch on TV. “My advice to the president is don’t tweet, don’t pardon, don’t testify, don’t fire.” 
   
   That was a major shift for Trump, who in April called it a “national disgrace” when federal investigators raided Cohen’s home and office as part of an investigation into his efforts during the campaign to squelch embarrassing stories about Trump. 
   
   Cohen implicated Trump directly in some of his acts when he pleaded guilty Tuesday, saying he arranged to pay off two women to keep their stories of alleged affairs with Trump from becoming public before Election Day — in coordination with the then-candidate. 
   
   Trump has repeatedly expressed his anger at how federal prosecutors had “beat up” and mistreated Manafort. The president’s critics argue that Trump’s public tweets are a thinly-veiled message to Manafort, that he supports his refusal to cooperate with Mueller and is willing to pardon him in the future. 
   
   Giuliani said Trump’s concern for Manafort is what motivates him to consider a pardon. 
   
   “He feels Manafort has been mistreated. Nobody in a case like this gets raided in the middle of the night, put in solitary confinement,” Giuliani said. “They tried to crack him and it didn’t work. Over the last two to three weeks, he’s expressed anger and frustration about how he’s been treated.” 
   
   This story has been updated. 
   
   Rosalind S. Helderman contributed to this report. ||||| On Wednesday, several aides dismissed the news about Mr. Cohen as just another bad headline lacking the silver bullet that they say the special counsel would need to prove that the president conspired with Russian officials. 
   
   Mr. Trump spent the early hours of Wednesday tweeting — he called the convicted Mr. Manafort a “brave man” who, unlike Mr. Cohen, “refused to ‘break’” or “make up stories in order to get a ‘deal.’’’ He also monitored headlines, as he did after his news conference with Mr. Putin. In the interview with Fox News, he asserted that money for the payments to the women had come not from his campaign, but from his own accounts. 
   
   “I don’t know if you know,” Mr. Trump said during the interview, “but I tweeted about the payments. But they didn’t come out of the campaign.” Campaign finance laws still prohibit Mr. Trump from making unreported payments related to the campaign, regardless of where they came from. Neither payment was disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. 
   
   On Air Force One on Tuesday night on the way back from a rally in West Virginia, Mr. Trump repeatedly minimized the news, telling aides that the legal developments were not about him, but about Mr. Manafort and Mr. Cohen. He also groused over the optics of the rally, telling a person close to him that the crowd seemed flat and that some chairs were empty. 
   
   By Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers were arguing privately that Mr. Cohen’s admission and guilty plea to violating campaign finance laws was a punch but not a knockout blow, and were assessing what options they had for fighting back. They stressed that Mr. Cohen had said repeatedly in previous accounts that Mr. Trump was not aware of his payment to Ms. Clifford, known as Stormy Daniels.
target: – President Trump has discussed the political fallout of a potential pardon for Paul Manafort, whom he believes "has been horribly treated"—and understands a pardon is off the table, at least for now, according to Rudy Giuliani. The president's personal lawyer made the comments to the New York Times on Wednesday before elaborating to the Washington Post. Claiming the conversation occurred "three to five weeks ago" then correcting that timeline to June, Giuliani said Trump had brought up the possibility of a pardon but both Giuliani and fellow attorney Jay Sekulow advised against it, at least before the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. "We sat him down and said you're not considering these other pardons with anybody involved in the investigation," Giuliani said. That would ostensibly include former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, and campaign aide Rick Gates, all of whom have pleaded guilty as part of the Mueller probe. "He said yes, absolutely, I understand," Giuliani continued. "The real concern is whether Mueller would turn any pardon into an obstruction charge." Still, the president has been publicly praising Manafort since his Tuesday conviction on eight counts of financial fraud. "Some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does," Trump told Fox News on Thursday, a day after he took to Twitter to praise Manafort for refusing to "break" for prosecutors. "Such respect for a brave man!" he wrote.