Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. 2017, quote, the president was not involved and did not issue the statement. In june of this year, trumps lawyers conceded to muellers team and dictated a short but accurate response. Now to our panel, aaron blake, a Criminal Defense Attorney and danny cevallos, msnbc legal analyst. I want to read a little bit more of what don jr. Said. It is sort of the cycle media narrative. The other stuff is not stick sog they are back and tomorrow theyll be back on the 25th amendment. Nothings changed and it is ridiculous. They dont talk about this and half of congresses on both sides and i mean basically, she did not do that to us. She didnt tell us that was going on. There is really nothing beyond that. Aaron, nothing is beyond that and factcheck that for us. The idea that the russian lawyer who was tied to the creme len who was presenting the information to the Trump Campaign is doing this all the time is going at the capital hill, yes, she has lobbied on capitol hill before. Thats not the same as somebody giving them a Campaign Contribution and offering them information from the campaign. Tl there is a fine line when it comes to electing people in the united states, you cant accept or allow help from a foreign country. The other is the idea that this is the kind of thing thats done all the time in politics. This is just Opposition Research. You can certainly get Opposition Research from a lot of different sources and Campaign Money from a lot of different sources. Other party in that transaction is somebody working for a
things occur. Danny, i want to read the Washington Post story. The headline is trump out of a precarious moment in his presidency privately brooding and publicly roaring. He did not believe his son purposely broke the law. The law does not say thou shall not receive. It says thou shall not illicit. Because the statute includes
that language, solicit. You have that in addition to conspiracy laws that draws them in and ever expanding conspiracy law is easy to make out in you want agreements and everybody is on board of the unlawful objective. When trump tweeted what he tweets out. There are a number of problems. Trump is accusing his son knowledge. Did he just learn about this yesterday . Did he learn about it the day after it happened because it is significant. At what point does this knowledge make him complicit in the act that he said his son did. Clearly other people in trumps camp thought this Meeting Smells and for a long
time. Any sense trump said this and said it now . It defines any kind of sense here. Yes, we always like to look for the strategy and pretty much everything that the president tweets out or says. Sometimes it may not be so strategic. I think in this case there is a sense that may be this is not all that different from the things he said back in july of 2017 when he talked about the idea that people always go for Opposition Research. I think this is slightly different. This is an example of him saying directly that was the purpose of the meeting. Before you could maybe argue that it was also about adoption but there was Opposition Research involved or Something Like that. This is him conceding something that could conceivably be appoint of real contention between them and special counsels office admitting purposely of this meeting whether it is collusion or not that it was oppositional research. I want to go back to what you said that we keep on getting a different story about what trump
knew and when he knew it. July 2017, jay sekulow, says he was not aware of the meeting. The times report that trump knew about the meeting and monday, Rudy Giuliani had a chaotic interview on cnn which you only say that trump did note participate. This leg of the story does inch closer to the press, does it . All of these inconsistencies in the public, we can develop an Immune System that we are just used to it now. That does not work with the prosecutor. Make a false statement and even if it is not under oath. They got you for section, they love charging that even if
ultimately there is no under lining crime. As much as we are accustoms to the extent of any of those statements are made. This could be very problematic for team trump. The key part of what donald trump knew and when he knew it is the drafting of that statement on air force one. Here is how jay sekulow defended it or talked about it i guess just yesterday. I think it is very important to point out that in a situation like this, you have Overtime Facts developed. I am sorry. As why collar Defense Attorney, is that a strategy that you want to be using facts developed. Are facts, fact . I think Rudy Giuliani knows
they cant bring him in. Hes going to make the false statement that danny is talking za about and hes going to change the story. This is not a good strategy. It is not a good thing. I think the best thing they can do is keep trump away from mueller along as they can. They knew me and every other Defense Attorney in the known galaxy has had a client burn them with a story that sends you down a rabbit hole as an attorney and you find out later on was not exactly the way it is. Thats not always the clients fault. They want to put their best foot forward for their attorney so hell go out there and fight for them. Clients burn their lawyers. It happens. Danny . Aaron blake, thank you as well. Just when the russia trump saga could not get any weirder. Enter steven seagal. He became a russian citizens a couple of years ago. The Above The Law star says hes humbled and will take this honor very seriously. Testify, a woman known as the manhattan madame has just agreed to testify in Robert Muellers investigation. Removed facebook account and pages linked to the most controversial users. President trump targeting lebron james, he seems to be on an island. Even some of his supporters are backing away from this one. Alice is living with metastatic Breast Cancer,
which is Breast Cancer that has spread to other parts of her body. Shes also taking Prescription Ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor, which is for postmenopausal women with hormone receptorpositive her2 metastatic Breast Cancer as the first hormonal based therapy. Ibrance plus letrozole was significantly more effective at delaying disease progression versus letrozole. Patients Taking Ibrance can develop low white blood cell counts, which may cause serious infections that can lead to death. Before Taking Ibrance, tell your doctor if you have fever, chills, or other signs of infection, liver or kidney problems, are pregnant, breastfeeding, or plan to become pregnant. Common side effects include low red blood cell and low platelet counts, infections, tiredness, nausea, sore mouth, abnormalities in liver blood tests, diarrhea, Hair Thinning or loss, vomiting, rash, and loss of appetite. Alice calls it her new normal because a lot has changed, but a lot hasnt. Ask your doctor about ibrance. The 1 prescribed fdaapproved oral combination treatment
for hr her2 mbc. Related to her work. We dont know about russian collusion and she does not feel she had anything significant to add. Why biring her in and what i her relationship related to stone that may relate to the muellers investigation. Theyre close friends. Hes god father to her son and who knows what he may have told her and all of their personal dealings. She has done web designs and political work with him so maybe it is professional. We dont know. There are a lot of questions but what is clear is she has something really interesting to say, thats according to Robert Muellers team. You dont call her if you dont have anything you want the jurors to hear. Ann Anna Scheckter thank you for
coming in. We could be hearing from rick gates. He was manaforts close aid for decades. A planner for the president s 2017 inauguration in february. Gates pleaded guilty to lying to authorities raising questions for jurors as the Washington Post puts it, who to abeliebeli the accused liar or the admitted one. Ken dilanian is outside the courthouse in virginia this afternoon. What do we expect to happen in court today . Reporter the first thing thats going to happen is the accountant and tax preparer who testified on friday is going to come in crossexamination. It will be a rough afternoon for her. She admitted in participating in tax and Barry Burbank fraud of Paul Manafort and rick gates. Shes still practicing cpa so it is going to be tough questioning for her as defense tries the puncture her credibility. Key points that prosecutors are going to get out of gate and what about the whole creditability issue . Well, it is the big one. Reporter what rick gates does is he takes the jury inside the Manafort Operation and he can speak to things like manafort manaforts mind emotional of state. The witnesses we heard did not know manafort very well. Gates was his prodigy, hell say that he participated and involved. You are absolutely right. Hes going to have a huge issue because he admitted that he lied to the fbi even as he was negotiating his plea agreement. You will be sure that defense
lawyer will want to get him to say i lie and i lie over and over before the jury. All prosecutors can do is try to confront him on bad ax on direct. Levels with the jury and comes clean. He is the bad actor in terms of having taken what millions of dollars out of this whole all these series of transactions . We have not seen that evidence yet. In their opening statement, thats what defense charge. Gates had his hands in the cookie jar and he was in banking. He orchestrated to cover up his bad acts. All witnesses have said they dealt with Paul Manafort. He was in charge of finances and negotiating every penny. It is hard to see where defense gets the idea they can blame gate. We have to see the evidence. Just so folks know, the reason that we dont know if this all started yet whether or not the trial resume, it was
scheduled 23 minutes ago. This is about a locked down courtroom as we have seen in a long time, right . This is ld old school. We are not allowed to bring any devices. I have no way to communicate with our producer whos sitting there and taking notes. Ken dedilaniilanian we appre that. The president takes on the biggest star, lebron james. How the white supremacist rally in charlottesville, virginia, may have shaped trumps decision. R got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. Maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different
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interviewed by dumbest man on television, don lemon. He made lebron look smart which is eanot easy to do. He made us divided. Sports is something that should not be divided. Lets go back if we can to almost a year ago now, charlottesville, President Trump refuses to condemn white nationalists. Politico writes this. In some ways, the experience of charlottesville, as well as his
ability to recover from any shortterm crisis, has empowering for trump and his allies. Three former aids said the take away from charlottesville. There is no question that hes playing to his base and how much contempt he has for his base that he thinks these kinds of you know language actually will stoke up the white working class. These are no longer dog whistles. It is dog horn. It is clear that it is calculated and it is part of his strategy to stoke divisions of our country and unfortunately, we dont see the end of it. In his tweet, he says don lemon and lebron is really dumb. Of course, on saturday, at his rally he called his supporters the smartest people in the world while helicoptering to slam
congressman maxine waters. Let me play it. Maxine, shes a real beauty. Maxine. A seriously, low iq person. Seriously. When people say this is is racism pure and simple, do you agree with that . Donald trump i would love to say i agree with charlie, there are strategies involved here. The president does harbor these feelings. They go back to his treatment of the Central Park Five and even though those people found not guilty, he still wants them to go to jail. It goes to now where hes taking on the soldiers mom the. The gold star parents. He attacked them for their religion. He went after judge curell for
being mexican even though hes from indiana. Lebron james, you can argue about whos the greatest and i have been on the phone with my parents talking about this, right . Nobody can argue that lebron james is more off the court than any athletes at the hype of his career, maybe ali or james brown. You have the president going to lebron james, i am from cleveland and my family still lives in cleveland. We were not happy when he left town but i can tell you going to l. A. , most people at ohio wish him well and they admired him for what hes doing and hes a positive force in the community. He opens the school for atrisk kids which by the way where we can contrast it with trumps university where the president is making a big settlement. Give us a sense of who lebron is
who and who he stand for. You are out of the limb there. You will hear from the Michael Jordan people. Even Michael Jordan, he would even tweeted for lebron james. It takes a lot for Michael Jordan to get into politics. He came from a different era. The guys who were evacuaactivis the 1960s. We are going into a era like that. We are getting involved and speaking up. Lebron has always been i think i trace it back to the time of Travon Martin killing in 2012 when he began to be active and speak out. He said thats sort of a Tipping Point for him. Yeah, you know look at lebron, hes 33 now and that was
six years ago, he was young. Lebron came into the nba out of high school. This is a guy who was raised by single parent and he is married and has three kids and hes a responsible parent. You know hes with the boys when they are playing basketball. You see their highlight films everywhere. He started the school. He talked once about not being able to get to school for a long stretch of days. He did not have a bike. And so everybody who is in the school and lives beyond that two miles radius gets a free bike. Who thinks about things like that only someone who has been in that position not having things. And he did not forgot where he comes from. Lebron james is an extraordinary businessman. He didnt go to college. He started in basketball when hes in high school. I talked to people that known
him, he went to Cleaver Land Ve hes an incredible student who learned how to make millions of dollars and now hes an activist and educator. Melania trump broke with her husband and this is what the first lady broke. Looks like lebron james is working to do good things on behalf of our next generation. The first lady encourages everyone to have an open dialogue about issues facing children today. Then she added that she would be willing to go to akron, not the first time the first lady have shown independence. She visited those Detention Centers near the border of the early family and separation of controversies. She says she will go to akron. I dont remember charlie, have we seen a First Lady Break so publicly with her husband repeatedly. I think people think who she should further. This is unprecedented in the history of first ladies. Thit is really unprecedented. She was not required to make a statement on this at all. There was no obligation on her part to comment on lebron james. She chose to do this. This is an aggressive move. Okay, i am drawing the line here. Is she now basically saying shes going to speak out every time she thinks that the president does something she disagrees with . The other thing was, well, these were apart of her duties as first lady. This was very much her choice. This was a controversy that she did not have to get involved with. I thought that was of all the s aspect of this, that was the most fascinating. Having racist comments, we are used to that. Melania going out of the way to slap him on the risk. Just the idea of a president calling anyone dumb, a Fellow American Dumb and a lot of women, too. We did not get to that. People should read what you wrote about this in the Washington Post thank you for being here. Facebook is following in the footsteps of spotify. Here is facebooks blog post on it. We removed four pages belonging to alex jones Posting Contents that break those standards. Buzz bees reported that apple is removed. Jo lynn kent is following this story for us. Do we know why facebook acted now . There is been pressure over the past months and weeks. It has been all about families from these victims from sandy
hook miamidadeddle school or t vegas. These social Media Company are becoming underneath of the telescope going into the 2018 elections and attempts to m meddle. We are starting to see tr Company Respond a little bit. Given the reach of spotify and apple and facebook it is definitely goin