Judge tonight is calling the Trump Administration reunification efforts unacceptable. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york, im chris hayes. At the close of the first week of Paul Manaforts trial, things do not look good for the former Campaign Chairman of the trump campaign. And today in particular, the testimony about manaforts alleged tax evasion and bank fraud took on a Very Human Dimension when his accountant admitted under oath on the stand that she had in fact knowingly falsified Tax Documents in order to save Manafort Hundreds Of Thousands of dollars in taxes. Manaforts accountant, Cindy La Porta testifying i knew it was wrong, i could have refused but that would expose the Accounting Firm to the risk of litigation or i could have called longtime clients liars. I very much regret it. This is the first of two trials of Paul Manafort being brought by special counsel robert
wire transfers to prove that Paul Manafort was hiding millions of dollars of income from the irs, tax evasion. Heres the thing. It got worse for manafort. After the testimony of his bookkeeper, his tax preparer, now his accountant, and today jurors as well as manafort himself were shown one by one the tax returns from the years 2010 through 2015 in Which Manafort had again and again checked no on the very direct and explicit question about whether he had any Foreign Bank Accounts. Paul manaforts wife, kathleen, wiped her eyes with a tissue and walked out of the courtroom for a moment when manaforts cpa said she had no knowledge of more than a dozen foreign entities that we now know to be owned by manafort. For more on todays dramatic testimony, im joined by two reporters who were inside the courtroom today. Nbc News National security and justice reporter Julia Ainsley and tierney sneed. Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. Important for this reason. Part of the reason i think of the defense to the extent theres been one has been like whatever is being done, he didnt know about maybe was all a mistake. Oh, i didnt know that you had to check the box that says you have a foreign bank account. Laporta is up there saying i knew what they were doing, they knew what they were doing. They were committing crimes. Yeah. Well, laporta was able to take us through the time period where you see Paul Manafort really be in a financial crunch and need more loans to keep up his lavish lifestyle. So what we saw through her testimony are these Accounting Tricks and allegedly fraudulent Accounting Tricks that they used to convince banks to give them more money and Paul Manafort was cced on these emails, he was instructing gates sending doctored financial documents so they could secure these loans. As i read testimony in the case and as i page through some
report them on his income taxes. He failed to disclose these Foreign Bank Accounts. Today we saw evidence of bank fraud. In fact so well that it makes me wonder whether theyll have to call rick gates to testify as the cooperator. As weve discussed before, paper cases are a lot safer. You dont have to worry about a witness going south. Will he or wont he testify i think still remains a little bit of a question because the evidence is coming in so well for the prosecution. I totally agree. The defense that the defense put on in their opening, its just falling apart. They have not been able to substantiate that this was all rick gates fault. In fact the evidence is just the opposite. They have it in emails, both manafort and gates are cced on everything. Theyre both in Conference Calls with the tax preparers. I mean in fact i think there was an email in evidence today if im not mistaken, in which the tax preparer says to manafort, hey, do you have any Foreign Bank Accounts . And he writes back in all caps,
no. You cant get any clearer than this. So whatever theory the defense had of this case, it has really gone down the toilet today. It is not there. He is absolutely gone on this case. And i agree with barbara. As i said the other night, i just dont think theyre going to be calling on rick gates. Theres no reason to at this point. I mean even on the issue of conspiracy, that the judge spoke to the prosecutors about, they have got them conspiring on emails. They have got them conspiring on phone calls with the accountants. There was a sidebar, barbara, that was interesting because it reminded me of a kind of defense that Rudy Giuliani has used for the president , which is when talking about the president s possible obstruction of justice, he says, well, it cant be on struck, hes doing it in broad daylight. Hes saying it on camera. Thats not how you do obstruction. Theres an analogous argument made by mr. Downing, the lawyer for manafort today. He says in a sidebar, therefore, only a fool would give that kind
of information to his accountant if he was trying to conceal that information from the irs. So the court says so he now wants to provide evidence for the jury that says look, there is a trail in these documents that could lead to the truth in that. That seems like a pretty flimsy argument. I agree with you. The person sitting next to me said, wow, if thats the best argument youve got, hes in big trouble. The facts were that Paul Manafort had disclosed to his accountant the names of some of these entities that he controlled, but he told them that they were clients, not that they were his own entities. So its about three steps removed that hes disclosing this and doing this crime in broad daylight. So if that is the best argument that they have, i agree with this spectator that they are in some trouble. It does seem to remember, this is a mueller prosecution. Weve got all of that lurking in the background. This is adjacent to the case, it doesnt have to do with the trump campaign, doesnt have to do with collusion, thats been
very clear both in terms of what the court will allow and what the case is being tried on. But you cant but look at it and say this guy was so desperate. Hes so desperate theres even an email in there where he is basically trying to squeeze his daughter over Furniture Purchases for a shared piece of property they have. Thats how squeezed the guy is, right . He writes a stern email. Hey, weve got this shared property, ive got to see those receipts for that furniture. That same dude during this period goes and works for free on the trump campaign. Nothing is for free, lets start with that premise. What he was doing was also trying to ingratiate himself with various oligarchs. Deripaska was one in particular. He was willing to provide updates on the campaign as it went along. That was one of the people providing him with all that money during that time period. Remember, the email let me just read that. When he gets the job he goes to
const cont conconstantine clim neck and says how do we use my job to get whole. Have they seen that i have this job . Thats what he was using this for, to try to get back into that russian money, the exact same thing. There was a motive to his madness here. Barbara, what is your sense about the arc of this . This trial, the judge has been cracking the whip, the testimony has gone very quickly. I think the prosecution has made this case quite quickly. They have moved through the witnesses pretty quickly. Crosses have not been particularly long. What do you see for next week . Maybe we will or maybe we wont see rick gates. I also think they are teeing up a summary witness for many of the witnesses who have testified, the prosecutors have put in front of them a chart that has not been published to the jury but they have just been asked have you verified the accuracy of the numbers in the chart. I think what were going to get is an fbi agent or irs agent to sort of make it Crystal Clear to the jury what these numbers
mean, what numbers were going in, what was going out. So i think we are likely to see that coming out next week. Someone to sort of tabulate it all and basically be like, look, im the one who made the case. Heres the evidence youve seen and heres what we were able to make out of it . Yeah, i think so. Just to make sure that the jury draws the appropriate conclusions. They have heard all the raw evidence, but it can be difficult to keep up. Theyre long days, its tedious. Some of these witnesses are testifying about lengthy testimony about tax returns, line 17, line 22. And so i can imagine having a summary witness in the form of an fbi or irs agent who kind of pulls together the relevant numbers that they have already heard about but puts it into context. Ive been getting my daily update from you guys and im wrapped. Thank you both. Next, why a woman known as Manhattan Madam spoke with special counsel Robert Muellers team. Well tell you that story in two minutes. To find my dream abode. Right away, i could tell
his priorities were a little unorthodox. Keep going. Stop. A little bit down. Stop. Back up again. Is this adequate sunlight for a Komodo Dragon . Yeah. Sure, i want that discount on Car Insurance just for owning a home, but im not compromising. Youre taking a shower . Water pressures crucial, scott its like they say location, location, koi pond. They dont say that. Its like they say location, location, koi pond. We cantwhy . Y here flat toilet paper ill never get clean way ahead of you. Charmin ultra strong. It cleans better. Its four times stronger and you can use less. Enjoy the go with charmin. Once upon a time in new york city in the tabloids, at least, there was no bigger story than the Manhattan Madam scandal. The madam was Kristin Davis and before she was arrested in 2008, she ran a highend Escort Service that provided sex workers for rich and famous businessmen, athletes and at least one politician, the former governor of new york, eliot spitzer. Wednesday Kristin Davis met with the team of special counsel Robert Mueller. See, davis is apparently good friend of Trump Confidant Roger Stone who was her Campaign Strategist when she ran, very unsuccessful unsuccessfully, for new york governor back in 2010. The key difference between the mta and my former Escort Agency is that i operated one set of books and my former agency delivered on time and reliable service. Thats a good line. Now, roger stone has recently been making super, super weird instagram posts about davis,
like the ones you see there with her child, and he says, quote, why do fbi agents dispatched by Robert Mueller keep asking my friends if i am the father of this baby, and what does that have to do with Russian Collusion in the 2016 election, fol followed by a lot of hilarious hash tags. Today he says Kristin Davis is a long time friend and associate of mine. I am the godfather of her 2yearold son. She knows nothing about the alleged Russian Collusion, wikileaks collaboration or any other impropriety related to the 2016 election which i thought was the subject of this probe. Joining me now is michael isikoff. What is going on . Good question, chris. Look, i can, first of all, attest that Kristin Davis was very close to roger stone at the crucial period that Robert Mueller is looking at. I interviewed i remember interviewing roger stone at the offices of yahoo in new york in the closing weeks of the campaign and Kristin Davis showed up with him handling
logistics, side by side and then they left together. So, you know, clearly whats interesting here to me is that mueller obviously stone obviously remains very clearly a subject of muellers investigation. Mueller has farmed out other aspects that hes come across, such as Michael Cohens taxi stuff and the election the illegal election money to the Southern District of new york. He hasnt done that with roger stone. When that indictment came out a couple of weeks ago about the hacking of the dnc, there was an explicit reference to stone. Not by name but there was no question it was stone he was talking about as somebody who was in regular touch with donald trump during the 2016 campaign and was in communication with guccifer 2. 0, the russian
military intelligence persona. So most likely this relates to information that she may have about who stone was in communication with. Right. And how he was communicating during that crucial time in september and october. Yeah. I mean that part of it to me the only way to make sense of her talking to mueller is if shes talking about stone. Maybe theres something that we dont know, right and stone having something to do with Stones Communications in 2016 in the closing months of the campaign. Which again is part of andrew miller, who is an associating of stone who just was ordered to testify after losing a lawsuit against the constitutionality of the entire mueller operation. It just seems very clear that we dont know whats going to happen, but to your point hes farmed other stuff out, stone seems like hes sitting right there in the tractor beam of the mueller investigation. Yeah. Look, all the signs are that
mueller is closing in on stone. I think if were going to see a case, i think its extremely likely we could be seeing it in the next few weeks. The expectation is mueller is not going to do anything after labor day. He doesnt want to be accused of bringing cases in the course of the election. So, you know, this may drag out until post election, but i would think given the pace of activity that its reasonable to think that we could be seeing something very soon. One other thing worth mentioning, yes, weve all been focused on those communications that stone appeared to have or his advance knowledge, appeared to have about what wikileaks was going to be releasinreleasing, podestas time in the barrel, theres going to be an october surprise. There was the podesta emails. Stone also was running this operation he called stop the steel, which was kind of an Election Poll watching event
that was clearly designed to intimidate voters or suppress africanamerican participation in the election. You know, there may be questions about the funding of that that mueller is interested in and that Kristin Davis could provide some answers for. I didnt realize, the broll was running before and you were testimony to this, the closeness of them and these are two people hanging out all the time. It all makes a bit more sense in the context of that. What doesnt make sense are the bizarre instagram posts of roger stone, which maybe theyre asking about the child, but its just weird. Those are weird. Theres a lot of things that roger stone has been doing of late that is weird. He seems to be somewhat unhinged. Ive seen some of the texts hes sending to various people caught up in this investigation and they are quite intemperate and provocative. So i think stone is clearly feeling the heat. Michael isikoff, thank you so much for being here. Any time. Next, remarkable new reporting from the Washington Post that shows the president s New York Hotel reaping Windfall Profits from the saudi royal family. Ill talk to the reporter who broke the story after this. Hair and scalp and keeps you flake free. Manolo . Look at my soft hair. I should be in the shot now too. Try head and shoulders two in one. At the Marine Mammal center, the environment is everything. We want to do our very best for each and every animal, and we want to operate a sustainable facility. And pg e has been a partner helping us to achieve that. Weve helped the Marine Mammal center go solar, install electric vehicle charging stations, and become more energy efficient. Pg e has allowed us to be the most Sustainable Organization we can be. Any time you help a customer, its a really good feeling. Its especially so when its a customer thats doing such good and important work for the environment. Together, were building a better california. Hypothetically, just spit balling here, if you wanted to bribe the current president of the United States, i think the simplest, cleanest way to do so would be just to throw money at his businesses. So just think that of a second. Now, a story today, pretty remarkable report from the Washington Post, it looked as if the Trump International hotel here in manhattan was all set to take a loss in the First Quarter of this year. In fact trump hotels in blue areas of the country have been
struggling. Then came a lastminute visit to new york but none other than the crown prince of saudi arabia. This information comes from a previously unreported letter from the hotels General Manager