Pressuring Manafort News Today

Post he has not ruled out a pardon for paul manafort, quote, it was never discussed but i wouldnt take it off the table. why would i take it off the table? the president says. he also alleged manafort was political advisor roger stone, and his associate jerome corsi were pressured to lie, quote, you flip and you lie and the prosecutors will tell you 99% of the time they can get people to flip. it is rare that they cant. on the senate floor bill to protect robert muellers investigation was blocke...

Reaction to president trump saying that a manafort pardon is not off the table. >> well, thats par for the course, i guess, to hold that and dangle it out there. is what the president is kind of doing on this investigation. i just cant for the life of me understand why more of us here in the senate arent concerned about this investigation. the attorney general is fired, somebody is brought in that is hostile to the mueller probe. i think that we ought to be much more concerned than we are right ...

>> im not sure why he said that, he talks on the record about the investigation a lot. and he basically said that this was something that was helpful to them, that allowed them to learn it. and he said it was fine and legal so he was defending it. and i think he thought maybe if he talked about it on the record he could defend it better. im not sure. but what this did do is it gave them real insights into what was going on and it helped feed the presidents anger about the mueller investigation. ...

What kind of information was shared, as far as you know, by manafort to trump through the intermediaries of their specific lawyers and how did the presidents lawyers according to your reporting take that information and weaponize it, my word, not yours? >> the most significant thing we learned about this was that muellers investigators, led by andrew weissman, were pressuring manafort, this is according to manaforts lawyers, to tell them what he knew about the 2016 up from tower meeting and what...

I have no intention of doing anything. well, lets bring in our lead-off panel on this tuesday night, michael schmidt, pulitzer prize-winning reporters and one of the by-lines on this latest story from the "new york times." philip rucker, bureaucrat from the "washington post" who interviewed the president the other day, and frank faluzzi, investigator for counter-intelligence who am the past has worked for and with robert mueller. robert, id like to begin with you. what information, if any, was s...

Yours? >> the most specific thing we learned about this is muellers investigators led by andrew weissman were pressuring manafort -- this is according to manaforts lawyers -- to tell them what he knew about the 2016 trump tower meeting and what specifically the president knew. did the president know that his son was going to be meeting with russians who are offering dirt on hillary clinton and what did the president know about it afterwards? giuliani says that they hammered on manafort about thi...

Welcome back. time now for "the lid." the panel is back, nick, susan and jonathan. guys, "the wall street journal" has a bit of breaking news. they say trump campaign chairman paul manafort before he was convicted last week tried to resolve a second set of charges, but they didnt reach a deal and the two sides are now moving closer to a second trial next month according to people familiar with the matter so he tried to cut a deal with prosecutors but it didnt work out. if this is true, i mean th...

Manafort into cooperating. roger stone views it about the same. >> its about pressuring manafort to plead guilty so the gvt doesnt have to go in on trial. the government refuses to turn over to manafort in discovery any information gleaned through surveillance. they insist he was never under surveillance. >> while the president distanced himself from manafort today as someone who was only with the campaign for a short time, there was this tweet of support. wow, what a tough sentence for paul man...

Were going to talk about that and more with my panel right now. cnn political commentators maria c cardona and paris denard joining me. >> good to see you, fred, welcome to d.c. thank you, always great to be here. manafort is maintaining his innocence. is this an issue of pressuring manafort to cooperate, that perhaps there is more? or is there simply about prosecuting manafort? >> i think its pushing manafort to see what he knows. we clearly have seen that this is a very serious effort on behal...

Thats what hes done with gates. but its fascinating to watch how hes pressuring manafort. think about this, aaron, if youre facing taking your last breath in federal prison if you dont cooperate, what is it thats motivating you to not cooperate? theres only three options here. one is youre certain of your innocence, which manaforts asserting. but ive got to tell you in the charging documents weve read, these are solid paper cases, multi-million dollars in money laundering around the world, not p...