Not russia, though russia looms large in the background as it seems to in Everything Else these days. Manaforts being tried in Federal Court in alexandria, virginia. He was, of course, Trumps Campaign chairman, ran the rnc convention. Its the first of two trials for him, and this one hes looking at 18 counts of bank fraud, tax evasion, conspiracy charges in relation to his work for a prorussian party in ukraine before he went to work for the trump campaign. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. This trial is off to a lightning start. So far a jury has been seated. Opening statements have been delivered, and a witness has testified, all on day one. Manafort was a March To August Chairman back in 2016. He helped trump secure the nomination, make no mistake, and trump said so at the time. I have fantastic people. Paul manafort just came on. Hes great. He didnt need to do this, but he wanted to. Paul manafort has done an amazing job. He is here some place where. Is paul . However, more
Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Considered official white house statements . Well, the president is the president of the United States. So theyre considered official statements by the president of the United States. At least one republican was willing to speak candidly about the reaction among many lawmakers in the capital. Every morning we wake up, he tweets something, and were supposed to respond to his tweet. Mueller is going to finish his investigation and the truth will come out. Our leadopen panel, peter baker, chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Jill colvin, White House Reporter for the associated press. John heilemann, coauthor of game change. And harry litman, former u. S. Attorney, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under president clinton. Good evening, all. Peter, i would like to read you what sally y
Analysis and discussion of the days top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence ODonnell. Analysis and discussion of the days top stories and compelling issues from Lawrence ODonnell. Rudy giuliani told politico today that the trump team wants to rule outofbounds about half of what Robert Mueller wants to discuss the president. Quote, we dont want questioning on obstruction. They would have to concede that. Robert mueller would not be allowed to ask President Trump what he said to james comey about the fbi investigation of michael flynn. James comey says that the president told him, i hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting flynn go. Hes a good guy. I hope you can let this go. The only area that the trump team would consider allowing is how donald trump and his campaign interacted with russians during the president ial campaign. A week after reports that trumps personal lawyer Michael Cohen is willing to testify that donald trump knew about the meeting in tru
The fact is that we dont need a direction from the president to the intelligence chiefs to be on guard against russian interference with our elections, number one. Number two, as far as what the president says on any given day, frankly he says a lot of things. He is, i think, campaigning against impeachment rather than saying anything that is designed to affect the outcome of the case. So i kind of brush that off. But to go back to your first point, that we dont need the president for the intelligence community. Thats a little counterintuitive. We expect the leadership from the president to be of paramount importance when were dealing with threats like this, which to the democracy is basically existential. So for him to not be on the same page seems to be highly counterproductive. Its counterproductive, but it is not at all necessarily critical. These intelligence agencies, particularly in an administration where statements
get made all the time, i think are pretty much doing their job
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Whether a person is too close to the subject of the probe, whether Jeff Sessions would beak be more of a Trump Campaign surrogate who happened to be Attorney General rather than acting as an independent Law Enforcement officer. If sessions didnt recuse after that statement, it would have made him look even more like he was doing trumps bidding. And trump apparently didnt know that making that statement would also as just a general matter of embarrassment, make him look weak and out of the loop about a decision that was already done. Because there were reports that show the Internal Doj Process had already resulted in sessions accepting that nonpartisan Recusal Recommendation from the career staff earlier that week and that Jeff Sessions was already working with doj officials op writing the very rationale they would soon release to the public. In fact, it was barely an hour after trump put that public pressure on session