Im leaving this set and going to get a latte because i will be here tonight at 9 00 for my good friend rachel maddow. There will likely be no shortage of breaking news from now until then. For now, my thanks to jonathan, doug, matt and elise. That does it for now. Who do we blame for no cameras in federal courtrooms again . You can blame me. Boy do i wish we had a camera in a courtroom right now. Thank you, nicole. If its tuesday, Paul Manaforts trial is officially under way. Tonight, collusion confus n confusion. The wild evolution of the president s alternative explanations with yet another dimension of denial. Plus, midterm sabotage. Our democracy itself is in the cross hairs. Facebook you have . S snuffs out coordinated attempts of Election Interference but as the u. S. Government done you have no protect the integrity of the vote . Mark my words, america wont tolerate this meddling. And day one of trial number one for the special counsels office. How the Paul Manafort tax evasion and Bank Fraud Case has nothing and everything to do with the russia investigation. This is mpt daily and it starts right now. Chuck todd here in washington, welcome to mpt daily. You are looking live at the federal courthouse in virginia where the criminal trial against former Trump Campaign chief Paul Manafort is now under way. The prosecution has just called his first witness, ted divine, democratic consultant who worked with Paul Manafort on the ukrainian project. Moments ago, the jury heard Opening Statements, muellers prosecutors basically argued
that manafort felt like he was above the law. While the defense tried to pin the case on manaforts top deputy at the Trump Campaign, rick gates. This is high legal and Political Drama going on in this courtroom and well speak with nbcs Pete Williams who has been inside the courtroom in just a moment. Remember, no cameras in a federal courtroom. First well dive into the other legal troubles impacting this president. Folks, if the trump teams arc of denials are any indication of whats coming, buckle up. Weve gone down this road and well go back to the summer of 2016. Are there any ties between mr. Trump, you, or your campaign and putin and his regime . No, there are not. Thats absurd and, you know, theres no basis to it. So think about that, july of 2016 manafort says that and heres where we are now. Collusion isnt a crime. Collusion is not a crime. Russians, they would have used it. And now investigators are turning up clues suggesting that information may have been exchanged between trump advisers and russian conspirators. It seems as if the denials are morphing into justifications to such an extent that what the president s legal team seems to be arguing is that breaking the law isnt a crime at least not when Hillary Clinton is your opponent. They werent arguing that back then but now they feel like they have to bring that in now. Tonights panel, Julia AinsleyRanesh Fanuru and rick marcus, editor at the washington post. Julia, we have gone down this road, moved from nothing, there was no contact with the manafort fitting we didnt just choose to pick manafort, manafort was the Campaign Manager then to where we are today, collusion isnt a
crime. Were mincing words between words that are synonyms, chuck, so we do know as you pointed out conspiracy is a crime. Theres a federal statute against conspiracy and when i went back today to look at what muellers mandate was it was to investigate pulled it here coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of donald trump. Thats another synonym. It could be coordination, it can be collusion, whatever you want theres a lot of cs. Its a c word. It doesnt even have to start with a c. It could be conspiracy to defraud the United States. That starts with a d. But for the Legal Defense of the president and his campaign to hin hirng on this, the fact that collusion is not illegal doesnt past the smell test and the timing that we can put in a vacuum here as manafort goes to trial. We may never hear the words donald trump in this trial but we know he was the Campaign Adviser when they were at the
republican convention and put a prorussia platform on their platform. So it seems like the timing to start mincing words is a little too conspiracy for me. Ramesh, how quick are we . How soon is it where some of the president s maga defenders go this far. T atlantic wrote Skimming Maga Twitter short for make America Great again for those of you that arent familiar its easy to see the outlines of the prorussian Meddling Argument emerging. America interferes in other countries elections so it cant be that bad. Exposed democrats hacked emails was a victory for transparency, keeping clinton out of office was so urgent and important that it warranted foreign intervention. How long before thats Donald Trumps rationale . Its going to pick up. I think it will be a bigger part of the Talking Points for his fiercest defenders, partly because all of the previous ones
gone a day. There of a second meeting . But that meeting doesnt exist . But the interesting thing going on here and maybe the president and his lawyers and mouthpieces are agitated because of the manafort trial but maybe theyre agitated because of Something Else going on because it made sense the way mueller has preceded to have the indictment about the facebook and social media interference, to have the indictment about the hacking. Theres another indictment that could be coming. Maybe that is being teed up, an indictment that mentions americans colluding, conspiring, whatever. Maybe theres a subpoena in the air that has them agitated. I dont know what it is. Im with you, it feels like something, yes. The ripple effects feel like even bigger than the pending manafort trial. Even looking at the timing, were in late july and we know theres an ambiguous deadline of labor day because we wouldnt regularly see the Justice Department come out with an
indictment related to politics like this so close to an election, meaning the midterms so with that deadline, were expecting something of a windfall, we think, if thats what mueller has been holding on to, during the month of august, maybe theyre preparing for that. Detective be the report. I dont buy the report. Were not even halfway done with the average. I think its indictments not a report; i want to make another point about our shifting standards. Under normal circumstances, leave aside the larger scandal. The mere fact that the Campaign Manager for a sitting president is revealed to have been an unbelievable crook would itself be a Major Political story and we are passing by it. Probably you could make an argument, if you would have asked me that 20 years ago i would have said impeachable offense. It would have felt like that is and its like its not even we joke today it ees barely a because its a one off trial, theres not cameras in the courtroom. And its one of the defenses
Exploring issues that affect leaders in the U. S. And around the globe. Dirt and if someone offers it you listen to them, nobody will be surprised. There are some things in politics you take for granted. You dont think this has any longterm impact . He wouldnt be the first politician or president to misrepresent things. Businessmen listen to almost everyone that might be helpful and they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away. Ill be honest, hes going down this oh, donald trump is inexperienced line which i find to be an insult. The other thing coming to mind is the drain the swamp motto. If youre going to drain the swamp of people who you think in washington who have been doing politics as usual, working for big money like hes saying, this is just politics as usual, you drain the swamp of whats happening domestically and fill the swamp up with foreign influence. Darrell issa used to care about this stuff. He used to care about rule of law and things like this. Especially with clinton. The shifting explanations undercut the inexperience
argument. If it was no big deal, why so much deception . Also we dont grade our president s on a curve. We elect them president and give them all the toys at the president s disposal, we dont say youre not experienced enough to have these toys. Thats ridiculous. Maybe we should. Are you saying we should have more than just 35 now . Training wheels president. More than just an age limit. And his legal team. We are talking about names we never thought wed had in the headlines, giuliani or lanny davis working for michael cohen, these are people steeped in the way this works so to have to go back again for someone like Jared Kushner they have advisers. But is giuliani a lawyer or is he spinning. Just sort of like desperately trying to spin like he doesnt seem to be thinking about a case, hes just spinning like a top. If you think its impeachment. If you think this is
fundamentally about impeachment, the political spinning is the case. It wont be an indictment of the president. That may be. If its about impeachment and the spinning is related to completely undercutting mueller and and arguing hes a corrupt republic, i assy from with what you said, giulianis spinning doesnt seem to me to be effective spinning, its just wobbly spinning out of control. By the way guys, think of todays three topics were discussing, Facebook Says the russians are at it again, the president s Campaign Manager is on trial and the president said its okay to break the law. Because collusion isnt a crime now or its tuesday. We got through one of these stories, well try to get through the next one in a minute. Youre sticking around. Up ahead, well get inside that dramatic first day of the trial against former Trump Campaign chief Paul Manafort. This is a story about mail and packages. And its also a story about people. People who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams theyre handing us more than mail theyre handing us their business and while we make more ecommerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. That your business is our business the United States postal service. Priority you we really pride ourselves on temaking it easy for youass, to get your windshield fixed. Teacher lets turn in your science papers. Tech vo this teacher always puts her students first. Student i did mine on volcanoes. Teacher you did . oh, i cant wait to read it. Tech vo so when she had auto glass damage. She chose safelite. With safelite, she could see exactly when wed be there. Teacher you must be pascal. Tech yes maam. Tech vo saving her time. [honk, honk] kids bye tech vo . So she can save the science project. Kids whoa kids vo safelite repair, safelite replace
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matters. Hes the one that he says hid the income from the irs and he said for the first time we never heard this before that gaits was embezzling money from the Lobbying Firm that he and manafort worked for. Yanukovychs supporters, as the prosecution says, ukrainian oligarchs, deposited the money in Bank Accounts in cyprus and they were transferred to manaforts accounts in cyprus and used to buy luxury goods and buy and do work on properties here in the u. S. , the prosecution says. They also say that that whole scheme was the idea of the ukrainian oligarchs. Lets not hear about ukraine. Pete williams, we know you have a lot to work to do with our Sister Broadcast at 6 00. Joyce, youve been on the prosecutions side. First of all, we went from jury selection, Opening Statements and our first witness in a days work. A bunch of us didnt expect that much today. Its a surprise in the district of virginia with its notorious rocket docket. Even trying to ferret out things and find forcause strikes, jurors who might have reasons where prosecutors would havent to exercise one of their voluntary strikes to have them excused so that process moved quickly with the jury being struck by the end of the morning and then moving on to the Opening Statements and now this
first witness on the stand. Let me is you this. Im not a lawyer, i swear i dont play one on tv. It seems like things have gone in a standard way, is that a fair take . For someone not playing a lawyer on tv, youre doing a fine job. This is white collar 101. I wondered if we might not see a little bit more nuance, frankly, of a story about gates that they might not have portrayed him as down on his luck and being forced to plead because of his financial situation rather than turning on him. But here they have today hell be the bad guy and this will be the boss trying to put it all off on the underling. Thats a strategy that only
rarely works for a defendant. This case was already in process before mueller took over and it was likely the first situation that presented it to hiss team. Weve heard the judge repeatedly admonish the prosecution but it may be that the evidence in this case ties up somehow with the larger russia and the Collusion Investigation in ways we dont see yet. But even if it doesnt this is a prosecutors job, when you here in the middle of an investigation and you have a Prosecutable Case you go ahead
and do it. About this early on in the investigation, they would have had the capacity and resources to move forward. Obviously manafort is a tempting target for the government. Hes someone i suspect they would like to have flip and cooperate because he can narrate much of what went on during the time he was the head of the campaign and during the time where the Campaign Plank about russia changed. It was about a 72hour period over the last week where it looked like where manafort decided to drop the civil suit against mueller and suddenly its obviously they had a plan b here to try to make rick gates the bad guy. It almost looked like they were trying to curry favor with the special counsels office. Do you think its possible this Trial Doesnt Go To its conclusion . That it gets stopped because they cut a deal . Thats always a possibility. Some defendants dont plead
guilty until they see the whites of the eyes of the jury and decide that they dont like the looks of the juries. Other times a defendant wants to hear the evidence come in, maybe hear gates before they make a decision but my read on what happened in the civil case and this was the challenge that was made to muellers Lidge Egitima that was likely dropped at the appellate stage for financial reasons. It would have been expensive to go forward, they were unlikely to succeed. Hes probably a little light on resources. Mueller cant afford to lose this, can he . The pressure on him since this is basically the one test hes got prewhatever hell file against the president . Prosecutors never like to lose cases but the job prosecutors have is to tell the jury what happened. To relate to them the evidence
and the facts and thin its up to the jury to make a decision so sometimes unusual curious things happen with juries but the bottom line here is that even more so than in most cases mueller will want to win and a win here will both signify that he is here for serious legitimate reasons, not a witchhunt and give him an edge going into the rest of this years precedings. Joyce vance, msnbc contributor thanks for coming on, much appreciate it. Thanks for having me. Up ahead, the new facebook threat, yet Something Else that could have been the lied story today, the social media site says its uncovered a new campaign to undermine the midterms and russia seems to be behind this one, too. My gums are irritated. I dont have to worry about that, do i . Actually, you do. Harmful bacteria lurk just below the gum line. Crest gum detoxify works below the gum