Trump doesn't rule out pardon for Paul Manafort

US President Donald Trump has said that a pardon for Paul Manafort is "not off the table," while stating that it has never been discussed by him before.

"It was never discussed, but I wouldn't take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?" he said during an interview with The New York Post.

Trump further lambasted special counsel Robert Mueller's probe and stated that he (Mueller) had asked Manafort, Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi to lie.

"If you told the truth, you go to jail. You know this flipping stuff is terrible. You flip and you lie and you get - the prosecutors will tell you 99 percent of the time they can get people to flip. It's rare that they can't," The New York Post quoted Donald Trump, as saying.

He backed the trio by calling them "brave" and stated, "And I'm telling you, this is McCarthyism. We are in the McCarthy era. This is no better than McCarthy. And that was a bad situation for the country. But this is where we are. And it's a terrible thing."

Trump's statements come just a few days after Mueller claimed that Manafort had breached his plea agreement with the Justice Department by lying to him and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Mueller is investigating the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections, during which Trump surpassed Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton to become President, and a possible collusion between Moscow and Trump's electoral campaign.