Trump says Bannon's arrest a 'very sad thing'

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump denies any knowledge of an allegedly fraudulent fundraising campaign run by his arrested former aide Steve Bannon.

“Don’t know anything about the project at all,” Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office at the White House.

He says he feels “very badly” and that it is a “very sad thing.”

Bannon, a key player in Trump’s 2016 election victory and a godfather of the Trump administration’s nationalist ideology, is accused of defrauding people who donated to a $25 million fund supposedly for building a wall on the US-Mexican border.

Trump says he is out of touch with Bannon and “haven’t been dealing with him for a very long period of time, haven’t been dealing with him at all.”

— AFP