Exploring issues that affect leaders in the U. S. And around the globe. Howard fineman, an nbc news analyst who spent his tuesday in judge ellis courtroom marveling at Paul Manaforts wardrobe. Anyway, mimi, let me start with you. Define Obstruction Of Justice and is it something that has to be done in secret for it to be a crime . Sure, chuck. I want to answer the second part first. It does not have to be done in secret. The definition of Obstruction Of Justice, there are different prongs of it, depending on whether youre trying to interfere with witnesses or tamper with evidence. Its basically trying to impede an investigation corruptly, with corrupt intent, which simply could mean youre trying to stop an investigation because you dont like that that investigation is zeroing in on you or your close friends, so it cant be it has to be for a bad purpose and those would be bad purposes. And thats why this tweet right now looks so incriminating because whats happening you believe its very
incriminating . You have said you thought this was obstruction In Plain Sight . I would say its a good piece of evidence of obstruction In Plain Sight. And heres why the plain sight part doesnt matter. Take what he wrote in the tweet, put it in a text to a close confidant and assume lets pretend the government found that text and read it. Would it look like evidence of obstruction . I think here what were saying, as you said, i mean you said it perfectly. If he called sessions into his office and told him to fire him or if he wrote what he thought was a secret email to sessions saying you should end this investigation, that would look really bad. And should versus must . Thats what giuliani thats what this is going to come down to . That shows the weakness of where their argument is. Let me play Sarah Sanders response here for the panel. She too they clearly they clearly colluded on the idea that twir tter is now an opinio page for the president. Take a listen. You know, going back months seem to be trying to almost pressure certain witnesses. You know, there were tweets that he didnt want people to sort of it seemed like he was trying to get people to not be cooperative with the special counsel. Now this seems more about trying to get it to end. And, you know, the idea that he can just end it any time, yes, i guess thats true. But even trump knows that that would cause quite a political storm and hes trying to get somebody else to do is dirty work for him. Thats the way i look at it. I was just going to say, mimi, could you actually say the president , as leader of his political movement, is sending a signal to all his supporters, hey, harass Jeff Sessions. Harass Jeff Sessions. He has the power here to stop this investigation. Exactly. Is that evidence of obstruction, if hes trying to rally political supporters to essentially harass Jeff Sessionsto do this or get matt gates or mark meadows from the house to continue on this path. Could you make that an Obstruction Case . Yes. And again, this is not standing alone, right . Its going to be a piece of evidence together with many other tweets, many other statements and the actual acts that he did. Remember what just is starting to come out now, that when he fired comey, it sounds like his Close Associates have told mueller that he knew flynn was under investigation, something he has denied. That could be a very strong part of an Obstruction Case. So you dont have to look at each act individually. A prosecutor would look at them altogether. Well, Jeff Sessions spoke today. Heres it seems to us he was sort of responding to the president s tweet. Take a listen, susan. The day i was sworn in as attorney general, the president , President Trump, sent me a clear order. He can send out orders pretty
does that goal really amount to because muellers findings will be muellers findings. So you can jump up and down, set your hair on fire and scream how tainted it is. Facts are a terrible, difficult thing to get around sometimes. And thats what this president is trying to buffer himself against, the facts. The fact that he had so many of his comrades in arm already linked into this spider web thats being weaved by mueller, and this is the same crew trying to define collusion, all these things, lost their minds when bill clinton tried to redefine the word is. So its not believable. Its clearly political theater to say, hey, mr. President , were with you, but mueller at the end of the day holds every card in this thing. Mimi, i want you to assess if you think al capone or Paul Manafort is getting mistreated worse by the federal government. This is the president s tweet today. Looking back on history, who was treated worse, alfonse capone, legendary mob boss, killer and Public Enemy Number One or Paul Manafort, political operative and reagan dole darling, now serving solitary confinement, although convicted of nothing. Where is the russian collusion . The president has gone back and forth on whether to be nice to manafort or distance himself from manafort. Today it was be nice to him. He fears a lot about this trial. What were not 100 sure of yet. Right. What he fears is probably not going to come out in this trial because ironically, even though the president keeps talking about manafort, the government is prohibited from talking about any links to russian collusion with manafort, even though they very well may know them that they exist but theyre not allowed to talk about them in this trial. For the president to say wheres the collusion is just a joke. And the al capone reference is
very interesting because of course he was taken down by tax fraud acti fraud, even though nathat was n the only crime that he committed. That was what they got him on and that may be the case here. I dont know if the president wants to go down the tax return trail. Ive known and covered manafort longer than i actually want to admit, but probably more than 30 years. And i looked at him very closely in the courtroom yesterday. Hes 69. Hes trying to put on a very strong and brave face. He very much participated in the jury selection process. Hes a detail guy, which is significant, because his defense is going to argue that he didnt know anything that was going none his own business. I watched him doing that very carefully. And i think if donald trump, even though its not on television, Donald Trumps got to be worried that paul
manafort, at this age and station, if hes facing a long jail sentence, and they threw the book at him just in this tax and fraud case, is going to want to is going to want to flip. And i think the president is calculating now, number one, whether when he can pardon manafort. If. If and. When and if and when he can fire or somehow get mueller off the case. And i think hes looking to see after the rally last night, after the rally last night where he was absorbing all the fan love, whether hes got the power and the timing to do it. Youre right, i can just picture a guilty plea on monday. Pardon tuesday. Tweet storm on wednesday. Mimi rocah, ill let you go. Much appreciate it. Thank you for your expertise. Susan, michael and howard are penalized and stuck with me for the rest of the hour. We are only two days into the trial. As you heard, things are already
looking pretty tough for Paul Manafort. Well go live to the courthouse in Northern Virginia for the highlights from todays testimony. A hotel can make or break a trip. And at expedia, we dont think you should be rushed into booking one. Thats why we created expedias addon advantage. Now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. Addon advantage. Discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. Only when you book with expedia. Xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. Were in a small room. What . welcome. [ gasps ] a bigger room . how many of you use Car Insurance . Oh. Well, what if i showed you this . [ laughing ] hohoho wow. Its a computer. We compare rates to help you get the price and coverage thats right for you. Thats amazing the only thing that would make this better is if my mom were here. What . an unexpected ending are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool . Is if my mom were here. Try zyrtec®. Its starts working hard at hour one. And works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. Stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. New laptop with 24 7 tech support. Yep, thanks guys. I think he might need some support. Yes start them off right. With the School Supplies they need at low prices all summer long. Save 200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. Welcome back. Its day two of the trial of President Trumps former Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort. So with everything thats going on, lets not lose sight of this fact. The man who ran the president s campaign is on trial. True, this trial is about Paul Manaforts work for russian friendly ukrainians, not the 2016 campaign, but it is the first trial resulting from the special counsels investigation. And, wow, is this trial moving pretty quickly. The prosecution spent today telling the jury about manaforts lavish lifestyle. That he paid for in an unusual
way. He would buy his fancy suits with International Wire transfers. Not credit card, not diners club, not paypal, not cash. You know, wire transfers from your normal international institutio institutions. Nbc news intelligence and National Security reporter ken dilanian joins me from outside the court house. Ken, i believe we have recessed for the day so the good news is you dont have to run back into the courtroom. Correct. It seems as if it was a battle of the prosecution trying to paint a very lavish and elite lifestyle of Paul Manafort while a judge was trying to convince them not to do that. Help me out. That was part of it. Yeah, that was part of it certainly, chuck. This judge, t. S. Ellis, is trying to restrain the prosecutors from Graphically Illustrating of just how lavish and strextravagant Paul Manafor Lifestyle was. He tells them he is not on trial
for being rich or spending lavishly, youve got to show the relevance. But they did bring in a series of vendsors. Paul manafort spent more than a Million Dollars on suits over like a fouryear period. From two custom makers, one in beverly hills. There was testimony that he bought a house for his daughter for 2 million. 3 million in improvements on his Hampton Properties for a Home Improvement contractor. All of this was paid for by wire transfers from an account in cyprus that prosecutors are going to allege later was parked there to avoid u. S. Taxes. Let me stop you right there. That is the important fact here. Its how he paid for all of this. Its not that he bought all of this, its how he paid for it. Thats right. The transaction he used, a wire transfer. Anyway, go ahead, ken. Absolutely. Because, look, in theory he should have been able to afford all of this stuff anyway. He was paid 60 million, or his firm was, for his work for this ukrainian politician. What prosecutors are saying is he was so greedy, he still had to avoid american taxes on this. Heres another important thing that we learned from today, chuck. All of these witnesses were asked by the prosecutors, do you know who rick gates is . And they all said no. Unless they have heard of him in the news. The point the prosecutors made was while the defense was trying to say that rick gates was behind this illegal conduct and theyre going to blame rick gates, thats essentially their defense, each of their witnesses said they never heard of rick gates, he had nothing to do with these transactions. Paul manafort paid these bills with money from cyprus. Its not clear because the prosecutors wont talk to us whether theyre tailored their case to respond to this defense of hail mary trying to blame rick gates but thats certainly whats happening. And now we dont know if rick gates is going to testify because one of the prosecutors raised the possibility that he may not testify at the end of the day. The evidence that was presented today, yes, you had
people on the stand, but it was a lot of paper that was presented to the jury today, right, which seems to indicate you may not need rick gates for this. They may have him just with ledger sheets. I think thats a very important point. Yes, each of these witnesses were used to enter into evidence documents, invoices, emails, describing payments of the aand government indicted Paul Manafort and rick gates together so they are prepared to go to trial and convict both of these men. Gates was gravy, he flipped, he turned states evidence. It would be nice to have gates to walk through this. And they may need him in the d. C. Trial because thats failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. But its not clear that they need him in this case. And its very possible they dont want manaforts lawyers beating up gates in this trial, which would then harm him a little bit for the next one. Let me ask you a final question, another lecture that the prosecution got today from the
judge on the use of the word oligarch. Explain. Yes. Judge t. S. Ellis makes a lot of these proceedings about him. Hes been on the bench since the Reagan Administration and he went through a whole discourse about how the word oligarch is pejorative and possibly you could call High School Principal an oligarch in some certain sense and the prosecutors shouldnt use it. They replied judge, were not using it, witnesses are using it to describe some of these ukrainian funders. But at the end of the day the judge is the judge and the prosecutors surrendered. What are they using, extraordinarily wealthy russians who got their money from Vladimir Putins government . Do you just say it like that . The judge is proposing to use the word funders. Well, thats no fun. Anyway, ken dilanian, just two days down. Prosecution still calling witnesses tomorrow, we assume . They are. Were going to hear from some bookkeepers and accountants. They actually told us today they may be ready to rest their case by next week. This trial is moving must faster than we anticipated, chuck. Could be finished in two and a half weeks. Well, its the rocket docket. Thats its nickname, so all of our experts tell us. Ken dilanian, thank you, sir. Up ahead, President Trumps unbelievable florida rally. Really. Much of what he said last night was not to be believed. You know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card. You need i. D. Dear foremothers, your society was led by a woman, who governed thousands. Commanded armies. Yielded to no one. When i found you in my dna, i learned where my strength comes from. My name is courtney mckinney, and this is my ancestrydna story. Now with 2 times more geographic detail than other dna tests. Order your kit at ancestrydna. Com. The new united Explorer Card makes things easy. Traveling lighter. Taking a shortcut. woooo taking a breather. Rewarded learn more at theexplorercard. Com
abolish i. C. E. In other words, they want to let ms13 rule our country. Thats not going to happen. Or there was this sort of fantasy, if you call it. Remember the attack on Merry Christmas . Theyre not attacking it anymore. Everyone is happy to say Merry Christmas. Right . And thats because only because of our campaign. Literally bill oreilly invented that controversy. It does not exist. How about this dishonesty. Fake news, fake news. They are fake. Look, you may say youre exhausted from the outrage and we get it. But when you ignore this, you get this. And this kind of unfocused visceral anger at the other side of really neutral people like folks in the press corps, it can lead to this. Look, according to todays Washington PostPresident Trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims in 558 days in office. Thats an average of 7. 6 a day. This is not normal. We shouldnt be in the business of just shruging our shoulders and normalizing it. Well be right back. Alright, i brought in new max protein
rhetoric that the president throws out to his supporters. Are you willing to take his word for it, whoever trump says to vote for, you vote for. I do. Anything he says. He hasnt everything he says is true. It comes true. Trump is a genius. Put your mind his mind and my mind together, we dont match trumps brain. The mans a genius and hes cut from a different cloth, a different material. Well, there you go. With me now from orlando is nbc news political Reporter Ali Vitali who was at last nights rally, spoke with those trump supporters. During the 2016 campaign was in that pen quite a bit, as they call that press pen there. Ali joins our roundtable of susan, michael and howard. So, ali, first just give us a taste of that rally last night. It just seemed a little rowdier than weve seen a trump rally in a while. I think thats a pretty fair assessment, chuck. I have a really high tolerance
of these rallies after being at hundreds and hundreds of them and even i was pretty stunned last night as i was standing in the press pen watching these folks go after jim acosta and try to screw up the cnn live shot. The thing thats stunning to me is they were doing that even before the president got on stage so its not like they were being egged on. It was more a matter of they felt this was the thing they wanted to