John Kelly: It’s ‘distracting’ for Trump to be investigated

White House chief of staff John Kelly said Monday that the Russia investigation is “very distracting” to President Trump, despite the White House saying that the indictments have “nothing to do” with the president.

“It is very distracting to the president, as it would be to any citizen, to be investigated,” Kelly said in an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham.

Trump and the White House have repeatedly denied that the president is being targeted in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s influence on the 2016 election.

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On Monday, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business associate Richard Gates were indicted on a number of charges, including conspiracy against the United States, and former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos was revealed to have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

Kelly’s comments seem to contrast with those of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders on Monday told reporters that Papadopoulos’s guilty plea had to do with activities that took place before the campaign and, therefore, were not a distraction.

“It has nothing to do with the activities of the campaign, it has to do with his failure to tell the truth. That doesn’t have anything to do with the campaign or the campaign’s activities,” Sanders said. “We’re not worried about it distracting because it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”