This morning at the g20, President Trump may be focussed on a different picture back in washington. Lawyers representing Paul Manafort are in federal Supreme Court for the First Time Since the special counsel accused manafort of lying and breaking his plea agreement. We could learn more today from them about what they say manafort lied about. As we get a date for his sentencing. Earlier, the president was still on edge about the guilty plea yesterday from his former lawyer, and righthand man, Michael Cohen. He admits he lied to congress about attempts to build the trump tower in moscow, though as he walked the streets of new york an hour ago, he did not want to talk about it. Lets begin our coverage on the manafort hearing. I understand prosecutors now are suggesting there could be more charges against him, but maybe not. What do you know . Thats right. The hearing has been under way for about a half hour, and the judge is quizzing the lawyers on both sides about how this plea agreement and this Cooperation Agreement fell apart. One of the special counsel prosecutors said in court that i dont know at this time if they will bring additional charges against manafort for the lies that the special prosecutor has said that he had committed. He said we will have to evaluate whether it would be fruitful to take action. Now, one of the attorneys for Paul Manafort, kevin downing, he replied by saying he expects hell ask the prosecutors to give him some evidence of how manafort did lie and how he broke his cooperation deal. And if that happens, its possible that manaforts team will learn some more information about what mueller has obtained through its interviews and its ongoing investigation, how theyre able to say manafort was lying. We do know that manaforts lawyers are talking and sharing some information with the president s team, so theres always a possibility that information could go back to the white house, poppy. Right. Because of what we learned this week about sharing information between manaforts lawyers and the president lawyers. Thanks for all the reporting. With me now is cnn legal analyst paul callan and david sanger. Good morning, gentlemen. No shortage of things to talk about, thats for sure. Paul, if we could take a step back at the week that has been, remarkable. So manafort is accused of lying. We find out that manaforts lawyers have been briefing the president s lawyers this whole time. A draft Court Filing Shows the president s confidante, roger stone, was trying to get ahold of hacked democratic emails from wikileaks. Just yesterday, the president s ficker, a man who said he would take a shot, a bullet for the president , says well, i actually lied to congress about business dealings during the campaign in russia. Of all those things, what is legally the most significant here . Well, its an interesting question because when were covering these stories, they break really hot, as you know. It seems so shocking when you hear something that the president has done, that is so politically off the rails. But at weeks end when the dust starts to settle, the way i see it is this, this new trump tower story involving Michael Cohen, unless the president can be implicated in coaching cohen to lie to congress, its probably a political offense of the president s dealing with the russians during a campaign for the u. S. Presidency as opposed to a criminal offense. The manafort issue, i think the most important thing thats going to come out of that is will mueller use that as a mechanism to fight back and get some information about his investigation to the public or when he proves that manafort was lying, or is he going to back off and say theres a possibility here that manafort will just be sentenced. Manafort is facing, you know, he could go to prison for 20 years under the charges hes already been convicted of. Maybe he doesnt have to go forward on that. That leaves us with one final thing. I think the most important thing of all. Roger stone. Roger stone is a direct connection to wikileaks and its a direct connection to an illegal attempt to tamper with the american election. There we have criminality. If that gets linked back to the president , thats something substantial. All right. So david sanger, to you. For our viewers, if you have not read davids piece in the New York Times, dont read it during this segment, but pick it up right after because its fascinating. This is about an in depth conversation you had with the president back in march of 2016, focused on Foreign Policy. And he made a lengthy case to you about why he, you know, was more supportive of giving the russians more relief when it comes to the annexation of crimea, the aggression against ukraine. Let me read the president to you in 2016. Quote, it didnt seem to me like anyone else cared other than us. He went on to say, the least effected by what happens with ukraine is us because were the farthest away. Explain the significance of what he told you then now given the last 24 hours. Well, poppy, the interview seemed remarkable to us even then, before we know about the degree to which the president s team was still trying to negotiate a building deal in moscow. Now when you go back and look at it, think about the timing of this interview. Its late march of 2016. My times and cnn league Maggie Haberman and i are conducting the first detailed Foreign Policy interview with the president. I ask him about russia because his positions on russia were distinctly different than those of all the other republican candidates. They took a pretty traditional hard line. He was saying why are we doing all these sanctions . Who cares about these . And of course, at this time, poppy, what did Vladimir Putin want most . He wanted relief from the americanled and european sanctions that were imposed on russia after they took crimea. And the president , or the then candidate trump was the only one arguing for giving them that relief. Woo know it was a member of the trump team that worked on changing the republican platform and really watering down the defense of ukraine in the face of that russian aggression. More on that in a moment with you, david, but jumping to you paul and the breaking news we just got in. Paul manafort will be sentenced on march 5th. Thats a major headline. Ahead of that, december 7th, is the deadline for muellers team to file a brief on the factual question of manafort, they say, violating the plea agreement. Meaning theyre going to tell us publicly what he lied about, paul. Significance. Yes, thats an opportunity for the special counsel to lay out part of really his investigation. I mean, this really would be kind of a partial indication of what might come out in an ultimate report. When he goes into these lies individually and what counterevidence he has to the things that manafort has stated. Its an opportunity for him to really be aggressive and fight for his own survival. Mueller, that is, if the president is going to try to tu terminate him. If the president pardons him, which hes not taken off the table this week, that could happen any time. That would happen after a sentencing. I think my own feeling there is the president will wait as long as possible because the moment manafort gets pardoned he can be forced to testify under oath. He has no fifth amendment right not to testify. So best to pardon him after the Mueller Investigation has been shut down. David, bringing us back to your piece and how it ties in to manafort, the republican platform when it comes to ukraine, et cetera. Connects the dots for us here, because now we know when manafort will be sentenced. We know about his work in ukraine for the prorussian regime there,ian acoa ian yanuk. Connect the dots for us. Sure. So mr. Manafort came in to the campaign right before we conducted that interview with the president. And then quickly became the campaign chairman. He was out by august of that year. But during that time, as you point out, the republican platform got watered down to avoid what seemed to be a pretty ritual condemnation of the russians taking over foreign territory. And the president has said and has said since he had nothing to do with that. But what were now seeing is a possible explanation for why Donald Trumps approach to russia during the campaign and during his presidency was so different from the rest of his republican colleagues and of course even the democrats at the time. Now, this does not prove causality, poppy. You cannot say that he changed his view because he had a business deal that was pending. And his view has remained the same even after that business deal fell apart. Thats true. It is pretty interesting that we did not know at the time that we conducted this interview that he still had hopes of making the trump tower in moscow deal come together. And that they were going to people around putin, president putin, to try to make that happen. And all of a sudden, here he is sitting down with the New York Times to describe a policy position that he knew would be music to the ears of Vladimir Putin, who is trying to get rid of the sanctions. I think you rightly note in your piece, there are russia experts who do say, you know, look, in many ways, the obama policy of ramping up sanctions on russia failed so perhaps this was President Trump taking a different tactic, but timing matters. It does not prove causality, but timing matters. Thank you. This just in, President Trump arriving at the g20 summit. Hes going to stand, there you see him moments ago, hes heading in for the socalled class photo whether of the World Leaders. Youll see it here in just a moment. male speaker share the wonder of christmas at Bass Pro Shops and cabelas with a free picture with santa and big savings. Like ladies flannel shirts starting at only 10. And redhead sherpa lined flannel shirts for under 20. 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This is quite a moment for the president to be on the world stage. You cant overstate the importance of the g20. The most significant world economies meeting and the president s most important meeting arguably is the one with the chinese president. Thats right. Trade being a top issue for President Trump coming into this g20. And its been interesting, poppy, to see President Trump coming into this meeting, but doing something, talking about something that is really unrelated to a lot of these issues alt hand here with some of the meetings. Hes been talking about the Mueller Probe. Talking about this issue with his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleading guilty to lying to congress over some issues related to business dealings during the campaign. And this has been really overshadowing this trip. The president even before he left washington has been talking about this with reporters, calling Michael Cohen weak and calling the russia probe a witch hunt. Now, just moments ago, the white house just released a new statement, after President Trump yesterday cancelled his meeting that was planned on saturday with russian president Vladimir Putin, that meeting was supposed to be two hours long. President trump said it was because of the situation with ukraine in which russia had seized ships and sailors but there was some speculation perhaps this was also related to his agitation over the russia probe. Sarah sanders says in this statement that the russian witch hunt hoax which is hopefully nearing an end is doing very well. Unfortunately, it probably does undermine our relationship with russia. However, the reason for our canceled meeting is ukraine. Hopefully, that will be resolved soon and productive conversations can begin. It seems by that statement that statement sounds varo very trumpian, almost as if he had a heavy hand in writing it or drafted it. There, the white house pushing back on this idea that the russia probe and the president s obvious upset with that situation is contributing to the meeting being canceled. Though, the president over the last day or so has spent a lot of time on this issue. According to one of our sources, the president has been distracted by it all. Hes been concerned about the impact this probe could have on him and on his presidency. As he said in the past, he believes the Mueller Probe contributes to undermining him on the world stage. That could not perhaps be more true than this weekend when hes going into such crucial meetings with president xi tomorrow and also with several other leaders later today. Abby, can you see the images were looking at . The class photo coming together. You see these leaders . Yeah. So we have and president you see President Trump there. You see president xi of china, Prime Minister shinzo abe is there. Theresa may, and Mohammed Bin Salman, the crown prince of saudi arabia, you see in the upper right hand corner of the screen. Theres been a lot of talk about whether President Trump will talk to him after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi while hes there. You see him right now talking to shinzo abe, the japanese Prime Minister. Thats right. And shinzo abe being one of the World Leaders that President Trump still has a pretty Good Relationship with. But there is a lot of tension in that room. A lot of tension with a lot of those World Leaders over especially trade, really, but over a number of different issues. President trump at this g20 is in a position where he could be perhaps more isolated than he has been in his presidency. I remember his first g20, when he was first getting to know these folks, he seemed to really enjoy kind of being part of this club. But over the last two years, there have been some serious ups and downs. I think we can expect that even in addition to some of these meetings hes having that are formal meetings, there will be some pullasides and one of the things were looking at is whether or not there will be pullasides with Mohammed Bin Salman, for example, even though theres no formal meeting scheduled. Theres some talk that the meeting with putin might be something informal and they might have some opportunities to interact with each other. Right now or later today. But according to the white house, we are hearing that there are no plans as of this moment for them to do that. Right, and we just saw them take the photo and go their separate ways. You only saw two women, i believe, in the photo, theresa may, and the imf chief were there. It shows you so male dominated, still, World Leadership. All right, abby, thank you. Well get back to you shortly. So right now, Paul Manaforts sentencing hearing has wrapped up in court. Lets get to evan perez. He joins us now. What have we learned today . Hey, poppy. We have learned today that the socalled witch hunt that the president is so upset about is going to go well into 2019. March 5th is the sentencing date, and that may still slide a bit, according to the judge today, who was hearing for the first time from the prosecutors of the mueller team. The concerns they have that they say Paul Manafort lied during his cooperation time of cooperation with prosecutors. They have now laid out a timeline next week, well hear some of the details of the alleged lies that they say have caused them to breach the Cooperation Agreement, and now, this goes to a period of debeat, really, between the two sides. The Manafort Team says Paul Manafort did not lie. Once they get to see what the alleged lies are, theyre going to ask for a hearing, for evidence. So theyre going to be fighting over this now, poppy, for quite a while. This is important because as you know, the president is upset about this investigation in the first place. And that it is taking so long. That it is dragging on so long. The president s team is increasingly concerned that really what this is all about is the mueller team trying to get to the president. And i think that became abundantly clear yesterday in the Michael Cohen documents, the documents that were released in court, of Michael Cohen pleading guilty to lying to the congress. So one