Monday on ABC’s “The View,” former Trump aide Omarosa Manigault Newman played a newly released tape she said was from a White House meeting last October.
Trump was referring to reports about the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee using a law firm to retain Fusion GPS to do research about potential connections between candidate Donald Trump and Russia.
Fusion GPS hired former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele who authored the controversial dossier.
Partial transcript as follows:
DONALD TRUMP: I think Hillary is getting killed now with Russia. The real Russia story is Hillary and collusion. Somebody told me, Hope you told me it was $9 million they spent on the phony report.
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Closer to six.
HOPE HICKS: Yeah, someone just said, ‘She’s far worse for the country than we thought, she didn’t know her own campaign was spending $9 million dollars.’
DONALD TRUMP: Did you see? Nobody knows who spent. No I heard it was nine. I heard it was 5.7 but now they say it was nine. It was spent through a law firm so that way they can’t trace it. But they trace it, one thing in this business they trace it. And yeah, close to nine million dollars I can’t even believe it. The reason a law firm, you don’t have to give any papers. But they found out. It’s definitely illegal and it’s illegal from a campaign standpoint, from a campaign financing standpoint. So the whole Russia thing I think seems to have turned around. What do you think, Sarah?
SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: Absolutely.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN