Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Elections is something that actually the fcc should be looking into. Theyre preparing for impeachment and theyre trying to win hearts and minds. Ken, they did so, i imagine not being a lawyer but a layperson, at some professional peril. Listen to what mimi rocah said. I suppose it could attract some attention, American Bar Association type stuff. Does the base need that much bolstering that these guys have to dog and pony it across xm radio . Brian, its very much a part of the pr strategy that the president himself has led and set the tone for, and it just shows frankly how far Rudy Giuliani has come from when he first started on the legal team and famously was sort of chastised by donald trump for not having his facts straight on the Stormy Daniels payment, the 130,000 hush payment to Stormy Daniels. Now you see him very much channeling the president , talking about a witch hunt, suggesting that there needs to be an investigation of muellers
team, and we do see that strategy having some effect. If you look at the polls. Its not just the base, it is numbers rising of folks who are skeptical of Robert Mueller and therefore might be less inclined to accept the results of his investigation. That i think rather although it may be partly what frank was saying, a preparation for impeachment, but its certainly also a preparation to try to undermine any adverse findings that Robert Mueller might come with in his report. Annie, have we ever seen anything like this . Youve got the fox news involvement with sean hannity handing off to two lawyers for the president of the United States. I mean, it goes it speaks more to the odd role that hannity is playing too, that hannity is a white house adviser, and the interchangeability between i mean, its one thing to have these guys on his show as guests and another thing to actually hand over the reins as hosts, ac taking calls from listeners. The lines are blurred between all the roles here with lawyers playing the role of spokespeople, tv hosts playing the roles of advisers. Theyre all on the same team at the bottom line, and thats what we saw here today. Lets not forget sean hannity, Michael Cohen client. Hey, frank, lets talk about the signs that things are tightening around roger stone and tell us where you expect this to be going. Roger stone is going to turn out to be a bigger fish than many people realize. Weve all been focused on manafort and the Trump Tower Meeting and gates, but while were focused on that muellers been ratcheting up the effort on stone. And why is he doing that . Because i believe that stone can put the crime in the collusion concept. By that i mean the mysterious connections between stone, wikileaks, julian assange, and the hacking into the dnc and the release of those emails. Mueller is focused on that like
ken, given what you know and talk about what stone has called his 40year friendship with donald trump and the kind of damage a guy like that can do. Yes, i also think that roger stone, frank used the phrase, trip into, roger stone has made a long career of sort of exaggerating this role and his significance in some of these episodes of dark arts and dirty tricks. All the way back from watergate, where he was just the tiniest bit player in the nixon operation but has managed to make a whole career out of this sort of personification of himself as a dirty trickster. And i think this ends up being a little bit of careful what you wish for. Its true that he was sort of a bit player by the end on the Trump Campaign but that he also continued to try to insert himself in ways that were sort of at the margeins and that he did interact with an internet
persona, this guccifer 2, that mueller one of his recent indictments has revealed was in fact operated by russian intelligence. So he sort of by almost by accident became the very sort of character that he portray himself as and ultimately be his undoing. Annie, i have been reading and following you all day. I need you to perform a service on a friday night in august, we send them off into the good night knowing everything there is to know on all of the stories out there. Thats where you come in and you get to tell our Audience Everything they need to know about this new book by Omarosa Including but not limited to a scene where the president is eating paper and the fact that she gave an npr interview apparently that conflicted with a tale in the book about the president s alleged use of the n word. Have at it. Its a lot. So omarosa was fired from the white house last december, and
she she gets the prize for being the first tellall memoir out of this white house. And its a weird one because theres questions about omarosas credibility, what is true. Her allegations are serious. She claims first out of the gate that she calls the president a bigot, a misogynist, all the bad words she says that he used the n word and she has tapes to prove it. This is where She Couldnt Rah dictated herself. In the book she writes that she has not heard the tape of him calling the n word but she has confirmed its existence. In the npr interview she claims that she heard him say it herself. I think thats what it is. She claims that he ate a piece of paper when Michael Cohen i think was walking into the office to hide it from his lawyer, he ate it. She claims that ivanka trump, the first daughter, was responsible for ordering up the list of leakers in the white house who would be fired. This like apparently, ivanka tries to stay or project a
persona who was above the fray and cares about womens empowerment only. Omarosa portrays her as cutthroat as her father. As her father in a wig. So the allegations are tremendous. Where this falls on the Credibility Matrix with Michael Wolffs book suffered from some questions of credabilities and whats real and whats not. How do you judge omarosas book is a big question. But she certainly has a nice runway on a nice august weekend to have the news cycle to herself. All the kids watching, Dont Eat Paper if youre seeing this at home. This from the generation that thought it was a good idea to eat paste in school. Cant thank you guys enough 37 frank figliuzzi, ken vogel, annie karni, our omarosa correspondent for just tonight. Thank you all so very much. Have a great weekend. Coming up for us, what we think might have been happening behind the scenes during that lengthy and unusual delay in the manafort trial today. And later, preparing for a tense weekend in charlottesville on of course the oneyear anniversary of that fatal confrontation. And then in washington, where White Supremacists and counterprotesters will square off, some of them within earshot of the white house. The 11th hour on a friday night just getting under way. Booking a flight at the last minute doesnt have to be expensive. Just go to priceline. Its the best place to book a flight a few days before my trip and still save up to 40 . Just tap and go. For the best savings on flights,
go to priceline. Provides the most Wifi Coverage for your home, and lets you control your network with the xfi app. Its the ultimate wifi experience. Xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. It was a mysterious and rather dramatic ending to week two of the manafort trial with the president s name Coming Up In Court Again today. Before the day could even begin proceedings came to a screeching halt. With the jury out of the room the judge and attorneys spent much of the day huddled in private conversation and in recess officially with no explanation as to why. Transcript of what went on has been placed under seal. At the same time the prosecution is once again asking the judge to revisit comments he made in front of this jury. This time they were unhappy with
what the judge said while prosecutors were discussing a loan that they say manafort fraudulently applied for but did not receive. In the motion they argued, the courts statement that the government might want to spend time on a loan that was granted misrepresents the law regarding bank fraud conspiracy, improperly conveys the courts opinion of the facts, and is likely to confuse and mislead the jury. Well, when witnesses finally did take the stand, jurors were told that manafort may have used his position to dangle possible Trump Administration jobs including some big ones in exchange for massive bank loans. With us to talk about all of it we welcome back danny cevallos, a veteran criminal defense attorney, and we welcome chad day, an Investigative Reporter for the associated press. He was inside court today for all of these proceedings, or lack thereof. Danny, i heard Chuck Rosenberg on this Network Earlier tonight. He was u. S. Attorney for this district at one time. He was theorizing that this
could be one juror who came in today and said your honor, i looked at a device, i saw television coverage, someone talked to me, i talked to another juror, which would still take a lot of time to churn through, correct . Absolutely. Could have been a juro juror ri on the subway or seeing a newspaper or glancing at if or a Juror Overhearing another juror. But either way, this is a process that takes a long time. They have to take the juror aside in the presence of counsel, remove the other jurors, ask that juror, hey, what did you find out . And a lot of the time gets burned up as the attorneys huddle in their corners and decide not really so much whether the jury did or didnt do something but how can we spin this to our sides favor . Do we like this juror . Because there may not even be a consensus on the team whether they like that juror. One attorney for the defense may say thats a good juror for us and the other might say no, weve got to get him out of there. And thats why this can take so long, because it is a lot of back and forth just because a
juror might have flipped on the tv at the wrong time. So chad, you were there. What was it like again, we dont know what it is you witnessed. But what was it like witnessing it . Right, so we expected the prosecution to come in and rest their case today. Instead we were greeted by a 20minute huddle between the attorneys and judge ellis and like you say there wasnt any kind of explanation for why there was a delay. He recessed until the afternoon. We did get a couple of things to kind of back up what danny is saying is that the judge at one point actually left the courtroom toward the jury room and then later on when the proceedings actually started he admonished the jury several times to not discuss the case amongst themselves, not discuss the case with anyone else. And even kind of cracked a joke about dont even comment on the attire of the witnesses. So i think all signs are kind of pointing toward thbing some kind of jury issue. But like you say, the transcript is under seal and we wont know for some time. Danny, we get into your line of work. The defense goes to work. Theyre under no obligation to call any witnesses. What work do they have to do, and what do you think theyll do . Many times youre right, many times the defense calls no witnesses at all, they rely on just attacking the governments case. In a case like this there are not many defenses in such a paperintensive case. But heres what the Manafort Team needs to do. They need to focus on gates, that the orders came from gates. They need to focus on that which the bank employees, when they testify, they dont have a dog in the fight, theyre not biased witnesses, theyre not cooperating witnesses. Some of them, they just have to defense has to point out that this isnt necessarily fraud. He may have put it this way and air bnb has another policy that allows this and thats not really inaccurate and at least if it is inaccurate its not intentionally so. So the defense has a lot of work to do because this has been a paperintensive quas with a cooperating witness who got up there on the stand and for all his sins pointed out the
defendant and said thats my former cohort, he done did it. Hey, chad, i love covering trials. If only to test all the theories that people have. Like among journalists and lawyers you often hear people say if you watch the jury, a jury that has just cleared the defendant is going to come in and make strong eye contact. Theyre proud of what they did. A jury that has just nicked him or her, found them guiltys going it avert their eyes. Stuff like that that we journalists watch the jury box for. Having said that, whats the dynamic with the jury which i know youve been watching sitting there . Right. So i know ive been in the trial the last two weeks. The jury seems to really have been paying attention. There have been some times where the subject matters gotten quite dry. We have seen the jury kind of maybe not nod off but not be paying thatch attention. Rick gates testimony definitely got their attention and i think theyve really been keying in on a discussion of the lavish lifestyle and also really following the tax case. The prosecution put on an Expert Witness who was testifying about how much money, 16 million that he says should have been reported on his taxes, and i could tell that they were taking notes and they were keeping up with that testimony and so its a complex case but these are really kind of simple charges. Did you report offshore Bank Accounts on your taxes . Did you pay your taxes, pay enough taxes that you were supposed to, and did you lie to get loans . So i think that so far theyve really been keeping one what the prosecutions been putting in front of them. 16 million on a tax return, sooner or later youre talking about large amounts that might attract . Attention. Cant thank you gentlemen enough after a long week, after a long final day of that week, and this trial which is stretching into what, week three. Danny cevallos, chad day, really appreciate it, gentlemen, thanks. Coming up, security tied around the University Of Virginia and the streets of that town as well. One year after the violent protests with White Supremacists. We are live in charlottesville. Well have that when we
continue. Ahead of this anniversary. Many streets are closed. No Protest Permits were granted by the city. And this weekend w5shd washashi d. C. Is bracing for a march organized by that same altright group. That march plus several counterprotests expected in d. C. On sunday. Some of it in Lafayette Park right across from the white house. With us from Charlottesville Virginia is our own cal perry. There is really no other question except to ask you what it feels like tonight. That is, were all imagining it feels quite haunting. Yeah, very much so. You can see the outer edge of the Security Cordon behind me. It is not subtle at all. It is not designed to be subtle. It is designed to send a message that people should stay out of charlottesville. The eight to nine blocks in front of me are going to be completely shut down. No vehicle traffic. Pedestrians only. But by way of geography, listen, charlottesville is a blue dot in
a sea of red. This is a liberal town in a conservative part of the country, in a conservative part of the state of virginia. And so for that reason you have a statue of robert e. Lee just 500 meters in front of me that was supposed to be gone by now because in the heated aftermath of what 457d a year ago of course it was decided that statue was going to be removed. But not so easy when you start hearing from other voices, especially around the state of virginia. Theres a long list, brian, of prohibited items that youre not going to be able to bring into this area. Hairspray, bottles. But you can bring guns. People are open carrying tonight in downtown charlottesville. Theyre making that point, that it is their Second Amendment right to carry weapons. But a lot of people are questioning the police and why it is that thats allowed to happen at the state assembly line. All of that is to paint a picture that charlottesville is a microcosm of america and all of issues that this town is going through, that it has not healed from, is what america is talking about. As we stood outside, brian, today in this area, a number of people asked us to leave. They said the media is not helping, we dont like the
media. Theyre not allowing this town to heal. And its a town that just has not healed. So to answer the question that you started with, i think the police have done a great job in sending that message that they understand they did not handle the situation well a year ago. The mayor is gone. The police chief is gone. So they are letting people know if you you want to protest you are going to do it in washington, d. C. , homefully not here in charlottesville, brian. Thank you for that report on that summation from charlottesville, virginia. Cal perry on the scene for us tonight. With us to talk about all of it and where weve been and where were headed Clarence Page, veteran journalist and columnist for the chicago tribune, and jon meacham is with us, pulitzer prizewinning author and historian. Importantly his latest book is called The Soul Of America the battle for our better angels. Paging our better angels. Hey, john, what is the year later Damage Assessment from charlottesville . Well, theres obviously the
memory of Heather Heyer who stood as civil rights activists did throughout the long and tragic jim crow era, stood for what we should be. Not necessarily what we are all the time. And so i think thats perhaps one of the most important things to take a moment and realize that someo