Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski says that he has yet to be contacted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of the ongoing Russia investigation.
Lewandowski, who was interviewed by WABC’s Rita Cosby on Sunday, also confirmed reports that he will be interviewed on either Wednesday or Thursday by the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia probe.
“I have nothing to hide. I didn’t collude or cooperate or coordinate with any Russian, Russian agency, Russian government or anybody else, to try and impact this election,” Lewandowski says he plans to tell the House panel.
Former White House strategist Steve Bannon is also slated to meet with the committee.
Lewandowski’s claim to not have been contacted by Mueller’s team is a surprise given his top position on the Trump campaign. Mueller’s prosecutors have interviewed most of the campaign’s top officials and have reportedly been negotiating with Trump’s lawyers about an interview in the near future.
Because of his role on the campaign, Lewandowski was in contact with two of the campaign advisers who reportedly were the catalysts for the FBI’s investigation into possible collusion.
Lewandowski approved a trip that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page took to Moscow in July 2016. That trip reportedly caught the FBI’s attention and was part of the bureau’s rationale in opening the counterintelligence probe.
Lewandowski was also reportedly in email contact with George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about contacts he had with Russians during the campaign.
Papadopoulos reportedly told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that he had received word that the Russian government had possession of emails stolen from the Clinton campaign. Papadopoulos’ claim, which he made during a drunken conversation with the diplomat, was reportedly also part of the FBI’s rationale for opening its Russia investigation.
Lewandowski says that he is more than willing to meet with Mueller should he come calling.
“I will speak to anybody who wants to have a conversation about it, because there’s nothing to hide here, and it’s time to put this whole issue behind us, and this has been dragging on now, to the cost of taxpayers’ dollars, I think, seven million, eight million dollars, and it’s been going for what is now 16 months or longer,” he said.
“No one has ever claimed that I’ve done anything wrong, because I never did. You know, I never worked with any Russians, I never spoke to any Russians, that I am aware of,” he continued, adding that if anyone did collude with Russians, “those people spend the rest of their lives in jail.”
Lewandoswki, who remains an informal adviser to Trump, did not say whether he believes Trump should sit down with Mueller. But Lewandowski says if an interview does occur, Mueller’s team “will come to the same conclusion that everybody else has already come to, which is there is no collusion.”