Top of the gop field in 2016, is now behind bars. Paul manafort is spending his first night in a virginia jail, this after a federal judge in washington, d. C. , revoked his bail privileges and ordered him detained. All of this coming after allegations from Robert MuellersTeam Manafort had tampered with witnesses in the russia investigation. Manafort is already facing charges of Money Laundering, fraud, and conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty to all of those counts. He will now be held in pretrial detention until september. The criminal case against manafort is not directly connected to allegations about Russian Election interference, but his role in the campaign and his ties to russianbacked politicians have made him a target for muellers team. Reporter Josh Gerstein of politico, who is standing by to join us, sums up the importance of this latest development, writing, sending the 69yearold manafort to jail could boost the pressure on him to cut a deal with mueller, whose main task is to determine whether the Trump Campaign coordinated with moscow on its election meddling efforts. Manaforts onetime client, President Trump, had this reaction. Quote, wow, what a tough sentence for Paul Manafort, who has represented ronald reagan, bob dole, and many other top political people and campaigns. Didnt know manafort was the head of the mob. What about comey and crooked hillary and all the others . Very unfair. But this morning as manafort was beginning his day in d. C. Federal court a few miles from the white house, this is how the president described him. Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. But i feel i tell you, i feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things he did 12 years ago. He worked for me, what, 49 days or something. A very short period of time. As we said, manafort served as Trumps Campaign chairman and he spent 144 days in 2016 working on getting trump elected. What have you learned about donald trump since you started working for him that you didnt know before . Well, ive known him a long time, and ive always known him to be flexible. Ive always known him to be driven. We have great people. Paul manafort. He doesnt have to do this, but he wanted to because he saw something. He called me. He said, this is something special. Paul manafort has done an amazing job. Hes here someplace. Wheres paul . Paul manafort. And trump attorney Rudy Giuliani had his own thoughts on manaforts incarceration, telling the New York Daily News that, quote, when the whole thing is over, things might get cleaned up with some president ial pardons. However, giuliani later dialed back those comments in an interview with nbc news, saying he would advise against a pardon. Then just a few hours ago, giuliani added this. Let me make it clear right now. Please. Anybody listening. Thats why i wanted you on. He is not going to pardon anybody in this investigation, but he is not obviously going to give up his right to pardon if a miscarriage of justice is presented to him. Meanwhile, the pressure is ratcheting up on another trump associate, Michael Cohen, who is under criminal investigation by federal prosecutors in manhattan. There are more reports the president s former personal attorney is said to be open to some sort of cooperation with the government. According to court filings, prosecutors have, quote, extracted more than 700 pages of messages sent using encrypted programs on phones seized from cohen and have reconstructed 16 pages from the contents of a shredding machine. Also cohens request for an emergency gag order against michael avenatti, the attorney for porn star stormy daniels, has been rejected by a federal judge in los angeles. The president had his own comments about cohen earlier this morning. Are you worried that Michael Cohen might flip . Look, i did nothing wrong. You have to understand this stuff would have come out a long time ago. I did nothing wrong. Is Michael Cohen still your friend . Ive always liked michael. I havent spoken to michael in a long time. Is he still your lawyer . No, hes not my lawyer. Your personal lawyer . But ive always liked michael. Hes a good person. Are you worried hell cooperate with investigators . No, im not because i did nothing wrong. With that, lets bring in our leadoff pane the aforementioned Josh Gerstein, senior White House Reporter for politico. He was in court today in washington where Paul Manafort was. Barbara mcquade, former u. S. Attorney for the Eastern District of michigan and an msnbc legal analyst. And chuck rosenberg, former u. S. Attorney, former senior fbi official and current msnbc contributor. Thanks to all of you for being with us. Josh, let me start with you because you were where the action was this morning. Weve learned that tonight apparently Paul Manafort has been booked in a jail in warsaw, virginia, apparently about two hours outside washington, d. C. The events that resulted in him being sent there, though, in that courtroom, tell us what the scene was like there. What was the expectation when you walked in there, when his lawyers walked in there today. Was the expectation that the judge might take this action, or was this a complete surprise . Oh, it certainly wasnt a big surprise, steve. I think everybody going into that courtroom realized that this was at a minimum a significant possibility that manafort was going to be sent to jail. And certainly by the time they finished with the argument section, which lasted maybe a little bit over an hour to an hour and a half, we saw the fbi agents conferring out in the hall in what seemed to me to be them making some preparations for what was going to come next for mr. Manafort. I dont think they knew exactly, but i think they had a sense of what was coming. So certainly very tense. It was the most packed courtroom ive seen there for any manafort hearing since his arraignment last october. And the judge gave sort of a head fake when it was time to give the ruling. She suggested maybe that she was maybe going to give him one more chance, but eventually said she couldnt trust manafort. There had simply been too much a history of him seeming to skirt her orders and another judges orders, and she just didnt think she could trust him to abide by whatever conditions she may impose. And just quickly, could you discern, could you read from his body language, from his any kind of a reaction to all of this from Paul Manafort . I didnt see much in the way of reaction. His facial expression was pretty neutral. He seemed rather resigned to the situation. In court hes generally been resigned. He seemed a little bit more dour maybe than on previous appearances, and he gave his wife sort of a half wave, a somewhat feeble wave as he was leaving the courtroom, led away by two marshals. He wasnt handcuffed or anything, just taken out after the judge ordered him to be put into custody and taken into the back there and eventually, i guess, hours later moved to this jail south of washington. Barbara mcquade, let me bring you in on the decision this judge made. We can show a couple of the quotes as she issued the order today in court. She said, this isnt middle school. I cant take his cell phone. If i say, well, dont call the 56 witnesses that mr. Westling tells me i need clearly list in the order, will he call the 57th . Mr. Westling the attorney for Paul Manafort in court today. She also said about manafort, you seem inclined to treat these proceedings as just another marketing exercise and not a criminal case. How unusual is it in a matter like this, if there are other matters like this, for a judge to make a decision like this . Well, i think its not unusual that a judge in a situation where there is allegations of witness tampering and theres been a probable cause finding by a grand jury to revoke a bond. Its considered a very serious crime, especially by judges, because its a crime on the integrity of the criminal justice system. And so i was not surprised to see the judge revoke bond here. In fact, the detention statute says the bail reform act, that upon a finding of probable cause of the commission of another crime, the judge shall revoke bond unless the defendant can rebut the presumption of detention. And here i think she wanted to hear whether Paul Manafort had any explanation that might change her mind. But upon not really hearing anything that persuaded her otherwise, found that she just couldnt trust him again to comply with the conditions of bond now that he has breached it in a very serious way. And, chuck rosenberg, from the standpoint of mueller, of the investigation that really sort of started all this, the question, the issue thats been raised here is does it make it more likely for Paul Manafort to want to cooperate, to want to seek some kind of a deal with the special counsel . From muellers standpoint, do you think those odds in his mind went up because of this . Well, yes and no, steve, and heres why. Paul manafort was already facing a lot of counts and a lot of time in jail. He had every incentive. He has every incentive to cooperate. That hasnt really changed very much. Whats changed is that he was on bond, and now hes not. So i think the calculation perhaps changes slightly. Perhaps it sharpens his senses a bit. Perhaps it brings the question to the fore. But in the main, no. Hes always had incentive to cooperate. Its just a question of whether or not he wants to go to trial or plead and cooperate. I dont think it changes very much. It does seem here, at least from my sort of laymans perspective when it comes to legal matters, there is a wild card here in what President Trumps attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is saying today about this question of pardons. Because he says at one point this whole thing, this whole investigation might end with a series of president ial pardons. Then he says its not going to happen. Then he says the president still reserves his right to do it. Does that, barbara, from the standpoint of Paul Manafort and his defense team here does this enter into their strategic calculations . Do they discern some kind of message being sent to them here from the president , from his attorney . I dont know. But, you know, Rudy Giuliani, its hard to know whether hes sort of bumbling or whether hes being very strategic and just sort of dangling it out there and letting Paul Manafort know that that is something that President Trump has the power to do and reminding of that and maybe sending him a message. Its difficult to know. I think its still risky, however, for Paul Manafort to count on that, and i think he still has a lot of pressure on him to decide whether to go to trial or to plead and cooperate. He doesnt have to decide just yet. Hes got some time. He still has some pending motions to suppress evidence. He may want to see how those come out. Thats actually quite common to see how a judge decides on motions like that because a favorable decision could make the case against him weaker, or, you know, hes got until july 25th until his trial begins, so hes got a little time to see how things shake out. So much happens in a day in these cases that hes got a little time on his hands. But i think as we see that date approach and the decisions on those motions be decided, that we may see Paul Manafort face the music and have to make a decision here. Josh, do you have any sense from the standpoint of Paul Manafort himself, maybe just his lawyers, how theyre interpreting the Public Comments that President Trump has made about him, about his relationship to the campaign, the comments from Rudy Giuliani tonight . How is that all being interpreted on the manafort side . Well, what i can tell you, steve, is that they have gone out of their way on the manafort side to stress again and again, whenever they have the opportunity, theyre in court or in public in some instances, that these charges have nothing to do with the Trump Campaign. I find that to be a message of trying to get on the president s good side, to try to underscore some of the themes the president has struck in the course of this investigation. You heard the president in the clip you played making a comment about how these charges go back 12 years, and it seems like theyre digging things up on him. The tweet where the president says, why is manafort being treated like a mob boss . So theres definitely some maneuvering that seems to keep manaforts messaging aligned with the white houses messaging. But in terms of a pardon, i think thats something they want to stay away from reacting to in public, but it simply has to be part of their calculus and part of what may have led manafort to hold out as long as he has in negotiating with the special counsels office. You know, chuck, i guess when we talk about the possibility of some kind of a deal, some kind of cooperation from Paul Manafort, it presumes that he has information that mueller and the special counsels team would find valuable, would find useful. The president , you know, has been insisting there is nothing to the idea of collusion between his campaign, between his sort of political orbit and russia. If that is correct, if that is true what the president has been asserting and Paul Manafort couldnt shine any light on that subject, would he be of any value to the special counsels team in terms of cooperating . My guess is he probably would, but its just a guess, steve. Look, not every defendant has information thats valuable. But the way the United States sentencing guidelines are constructed and those are the guidelines that help the court, the judge fashion a sentence you still get credit. You still get some consideration for accepting responsibility. So defendants always have some incentive to plead guilty. They have more incentive, get more consideration if they have valuable information. That said, steve, its really hard to imagine that this guy doesnt have valuable information. Perhaps its not about the president. It could be about Michael Cohen. It could be about kushner. It could be about a whole bunch of other people, folks whose names have not even surfaced yet. Either way, i think he has incentive to plead and cooperate. Lets remember most defendants become convicted felons. Most convicted felons become cooperators. On that note, we will end this discussion. Chuck rosenberg, barbara mcquade, Josh Gerstein, thank you all for being part of it. Coming up, what this all means politically for President Trump, his west wing, and his party. Later, the president wrongly blames democrats for separating children and parents hoping to cross the border even as his administration keeps enforcing the policy. 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Its a new day at wells fargo. But its a lot like our first day. Wells fargo. Established 1852. Reestablished 2018. With the lexus is. E thrill of the moment lease the 2018 is 300 and is 300 awd for these terms. Experience amazing at your lexus dealer. I know mr. Manafort. I havent spoken to him in a long time, but i know him. He was with the campaign as you know for a very short period of time, relatively short period of time but ive always known him as a good man. That was President Trump last summer seeming to distance himself from his former Campaign ChairmanPaul Manafort after a predawn raid on manaforts house. Today the president echoing the same message. Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign, but i feel i tell you, i feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things that he did 12 years ago. You know, Paul Manafort worked for me for a very short period of time. He worked for ronald reagan. He worked for bob dole. He worked for john mccain or his firm did. He worked for many other republicans. He worked for me for what, 49 days or something. A very short period of time. As weve said, though, manafort was Campaign Chairman for trump for 144 days, and the two reportedly have had a business relationship for years. Back in 2016, trump ally Newt Gingrich told fox news that manaforts impact on the campaign should not be underestimated. I thought paul did an