there was no focus russia in the opening statements today at paul manafort's trial. but the specter of manafort's deep connections to russia and to cell lynn linked oligarchs hovered over the proceedings. manafort was heavily in debt and owed millions. once he became chairman of the campaign, he offered private briefings to one of the creditors, a putin friendly oligarch. mueller's prosecutors have described the ukrainian business partner as having active ties to russian intelligence services. in fact a memo written by rod rosenstein last summer laid out mueller's authority to investigate whether paul manafort committed a crime or crimes by clueding with russian government officials. we know his team has questions for the president on this very subject. mueller wants to ask the president, what knowledge did you have of any outreach by your