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WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. President Donald Trump says he feels very badly about the indictment of his former campaign manager Steve Bannon.

Bannon and 3 others were charged with fraud on Thursday and later appeared before the courts where he was freed on bail.

Bannon who headed the right-wing Breitbart news service, and was a major architect of Mr Trump’s 2016 victory was aboard a yacht owned by a Chinese tycoon in Connecticut on Thursday when he was arrested.

He is one of four people who set up and promoted a fundraising project “We Build the Wall,” designed to provide funds to help build Mr Trump’s controversial border wall. Bannon and the others are charged with defrauding donors of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The project promised all funds raised, every penny would go to the wall. However a not-for-profit allegedly set up by Bannon was used to siphon off more than $1 million for ‘expenses’ incurred by Mr Bannon and others.

Asked what his reaction was to the indictment of his former campaign aid, Steve Bannon, the U.S. president replied: “Well, I feel very badly. I haven’t been dealing with him for a long period of time, as most of the people in this room know. He was involved in our campaign. He worked for Goldman Sachs. He worked for a lot of companies. But he was involved, likewise, in our campaign, and for a small part of the administration, very early on. I haven’t been dealing with him at all.”

“I know nothing about the project, other than I didn’t like – when I read about it, I didn’t like it. I said, “This is for government. This isn’t for private people.” And it sounded, to me, like showboating. And I think I let my opinion be very strongly stated at the time. I didn’t like it. It was showboating and maybe looking for funds. But you’ll have to see what happens”.

“I think it’s a very sad thing for Mr. Bannon. I think it’s surprising. But this was something, as you know, just by reading social media and by reading whatever it is, and by speaking to Mike and Mike and all of them, I didn’t like that project. I thought that was a project that was being done for showboating reasons,” Mr Trump said Thursday.

“I don’t know that he was in charge. I didn’t know any of the other people either. But it’s sad. It’s very sad.”

The questioner at the press conference then noted that it wasn’t just Steve Bannon, but Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, and Michael Cohen had all been in trouble with the law, asking what it says about the president’s judgement in that these are the kind of people he’s been affiliated with and the culture of lawlessness.

“Well, I have no idea,” replied Mr Trump. “Well, no, there was great lawlessness in the Obama administration. They spied on our campaign illegally. And if you look at all of the things and all of the scandals they had, they had tremendous lawlessness.”

“But I know nothing about it. I was not involved in the project. I have no idea who was. But I can tell you: I didn’t know the people; the three people that were talked about were people that I did not know. I don’t believe I ever met them.”

“I don’t think that should be a privately financed wall. I don’t think – it’s too complex; it’s too big. And we’re now up to 300 miles, almost. In another week, week and a half, we’ll be up to 300 miles of wall at the highest level. They were even having construction problems,” Trump said.

“I was reading – the little I know about it, I got from you. I was reading, where they were having construction problems with the wall that they were – they had a small area just to show people that they could build a wall, and they were having a lot of problems where it was toppling over and other things. And I didn’t like it because I didn’t want to be associated with that.”

“We built a very powerful wall. It was a wall that is virtually impossible to get through. It’s very, very tough. It’s very strong, and it’s everything the Border Patrol wanted. And I didn’t want to have a wall that was going to be an inferior wall. And I felt this was going to be an inferior wall,” the president said.

Asking if it was true, as the founder of the “We Build the Wall” project, Kris Kobach stated, that he, Mr Trump, had endorsed the the project, the president replied. “So I didn’t – I didn’t know – I didn’t know that. I didn’t know about Bannon’s involvement, but I didn’t know any – I didn’t know the other people. And I – but I do think it’s a sad event.”

“And, again, Steve has had a great career at Goldman Sachs. He’s had a career with a lot of other people. I haven’t dealt with him at all, over years now – literally, years. And I guess this was a project he was involved in, but it was something that – in fact, you can see I made statements about it a long time ago. It was something that I very much felt was inappropriate to be doing.”

(Photo credit: Mandel Ngan | AFP).