Page 2 - Over Manafort News Today

And i have several important messages from him to you. he asked me to go and brief you on our conversation. i said, i have to run it by you first, but in principle, im prepared to do it, provided that he buys me a ticket. it has to do about the future of his country, meaning russia. and is quite interesting. so, if you are not absolutely against the concept, please let me know which dates and places will work, even next week, and can i come and see you. and paul manafort responds to that note, q...

Appropriate to talk to russians before we get into office about some sort of trade in exchange for relieving sanctions with them? he could be a goal mine of information beyond just financial transactions that may relate to paul manafort, if im on the mueller team, i want to know everything about the campaign campaign but about who else drebled it, who else spoke and was involved in conversations about foreign policy in the campaign. >> if muellers team is telling gates that they didnt needs him ...

Embedded and had contacts with russia at that time, the kalitnik thing he looks like, smells like a military intelligence officer and people in the cane knew about that thats a various thing. by far and away for me the most thing that screams out at me most is something we are not talking about right now, which is when paul manafort reaches out to an ol gashing, very close to putin and says, hey, if you need an inside private briefing about how things are going in the campaign and this is when m...

About how russia uses its contacts. it builds networks to get information. do you see that in how they dealt with gates and manafort? >> yeah, i think, yes, absolutely, man a for the has a long record of contact with people that would have ended up you know back at moscow knowing about it the russian intelligent services knowing about it. i think paul manafort is the kind of guy based on his activities in ukraine for the puppet government and yanukovych, they would have said this guy would be us...

Two cnn analysts who work for the obama administration and steve hall, retired chief of cia russian operations. steve, you first. >> one of the central pieces of all of this breaking news is rick gates had knowingly been in contact with a russian officer alleged to be as late as september of 2015 and gates knew he was a spy. he is also a former employee at manaforts law firm. as a russia expert, how do you see this? >> from a counterintelligence, the ka lit nick thing is a bad smelling thing. wh...

Much looking into collusion. he believes rick gates could be an asset in that case. >> how is that camming to light now? >> reporter: part of the sources have been telling cnn. now also there is this case coming out, not in the manafort case, in the case of another lawyer that worked for manafort and gates pled guilty to lying to robert mueller. one of the things he lied about is rick gates interactions with a russian intelligence offering. he is not named in the filing. they found out this was ...

Country, and as a new post yanukovych government, is trying to figure out what happened to all that money, what happened to their countrys wealth when manaforts guy was in charge and stealing all the money. sure, a lot of it went to buy ostriches and toilets with gold feet. but a lot of it went to paul manafort, too. so ukraine has been trying to track that down. and this is the point in the story where the music changes and gets all menacing and dark. because "the new york times" has just broke...

On robert mueller and the russia investigation. i want to go to cnn sarah murray. what more can you tell us? >> reporter: i think he expected he would flip on paul manafort who is his long-time business partner and the campaign chairman of the trump campaign. one of the things my colleague has been learning from her sources is that when robert muellers team the prosecutors on his team were talking to gates, they said, look, we dont really need you to help us win this case over paul manafort and ...

What do you think this tells us about the real target of muellers investigation? >> i think he is back looking where he started with is collusion, i thought gates was a powerful potential witness, given the teal made for gates, it was a very good deal. and it had to be more than nailing his former partner manafort. so i think hes given them a lot of information and he has a lot of information and hes an invaluable witness and could change the whole dynamics of the case. >> mueller and his team d...

Close to the president. this is a guy that stuck around after manafort was fired. he also developed a close relationship with one of president trumps close friends, so after the campaign ended, he stuck around and he helped around the inauguration with one of trumps campaign, the other thing to remember even if rick gates wasnt in these meetings we talked so much about. that trump tower meeting paul manafort attended with a number of russians. he may have heard about it or found out if the russi...