Kurtz: Mueller Putting Pressure on Manafort as Leaks Continue

Special counsel Robert Mueller is ramping up the pressure on President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, as shown by "troubling" leaked information, according to Fox News analyst Howard Kurtz.

"Suddenly, there are a whole lot of leaks about Paul Manafort," Kurtz wrote on Wednesday about the former Trump campaign chair.

"Could this, just possibly, be the special counsel's way of putting pressure on President Trump's former campaign chairman?"

Kurtz notes that although some of the information given to The New York Times and CNN, such as the claim that prosecutors warned Manafort that they plan to indict him, could come from Manafort's own legal team, the revelation that federal investigators had him wiretapped could not.

"It's hard to avoid the impression that Mueller is trying to squeeze Manafort in an effort to flip him against the man whose campaign he ran for five months," Kurtz wrote.

"Let's say that Manafort, who's entitled to the presumption of innocence, is convicted of money-laundering or lobbying charges. And let's assume the same thing happens to Michael Flynn, who faces allegations of improper lobbying for the Turkish government and has just launched a legal defense fund," he continues.

"It is possible that such convictions would have nothing to do with Mueller's core mandate of probing alleged collusion between Trump and Russia or a possible coverup of such efforts.

"It's obviously an important story that one of the president's three former campaign managers is said to be told he faces indictment. But the media should be careful about not going beyond the evidence."

• Report: Manafort, Russians Wiretapped During Campaign
• CNN: FBI's Probe Into Manafort Reaches Back a Decade-Plus