That does it for us. Now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Here we are on memo eve. Tomorrow could be memo day. Possibly two, the 10page democratic memo is due out a week later according to what the committee kind of agreed to. Unless the president blocks it. Yeah it has to get through that same stage. The president ial filter. And what are the odds that one memo gets treated one way and the other memo gets treated another way by the Trump White House . A bet i would not take. Paul ryan says he agrees with devin nunes that said the democratic memo should get out there, too. So well see in a week who agrees. If you can remember one threatening about all of the investigations under way about the president of the United States and his president ial campaign, the one thing you should always remember is that special prosecutor Robert Mueller knows more than anyone else who is investigating the president. And we dont know what Robert Mueller knows. That is always the most important thing to remember in this story. Especially on this night, which as i just said, might be memo eve. This might be the night before the great memo release of 2018. Heres how the big memo release thing is going to go down. The three and a half page memo written by members of the house intelligence republican Staff Committee may come out tomorrow. Unless the president realizes the memo doesnt help him at all. But if it does come out. A week later, a 10page memo written by the democrats will come out and that will refute the republican memo. And in the meantime the republican memo will be treated like the bible by Trump Supporters and picked apart by experienced reporters and analysts and lawyers, including on this network. The republican memo will have little credibility left by the time the democratic memo comes along and blows the whole memo story away. Unless the republican memo is used as a pretext for firing Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein or special prosecutor Robert Mueller, a month from now, the great memo release will mean nothing. Nothing. In the march toward the truth in the investigation of the president of the United States. Even though the memo story is not going to add to our understanding of where the investigation is now and where it is going, it is still important for other reasons. I grant that. It has definitely solidified, for example, paul ryans place in history as an unprincipled failure as speaker of the house. Future historians will note paul ryans role in this being described in the new lead editorial in the Washington Post saying paul ryan is tarnishing the house. And that is very sad, if you care about the house of representatives as an institution as i hope you do, paul ryans performance in the first year of the Trump Presidency is much more sad than the president s performance. Donald trump is performing exactly as advertised during the president ial campaign, where he revealed himself to be a pathological liar, a selfconfessed assaulter of women, a racist, a conman who would defraud students in a fake university, and a thorough ignore ray mouse on all matters. But paul ryan used to be one of the more admired and respected in the house. Even democrats who disaagreed with him on issues used to respect him. But paul ryan is not a republican any more. He is a trumpist. And so he hasso little b oblite separation of powers. And that is a very, very important and sad historical development. But that wont stop Robert Mueller from pursuing the truth. And thats what hes doing tonight right now. Thats what hell be doing tomorrow if the memo is released, and thats what hell be doing a month from now when the memos are forgotten. In what might turn out to be the most Important News in this day that was drowning in memo talk, one of the people who Robert Mueller has charged with a crime who has not yet pleaded guilty might be moving much closer to pleading guilty tonight. Youll remember that half of the people the special prosecutor has already charged instantaneously pleaded guilty thats former Trump Campaign aide George Papadopoulos and National Security advisor Michael Flynn, both charged and pleaded guilty immediately. Two other people involved in the Trump Campaign have also been charged and they have pleaded not guilty, Campaign ChairmanPaul Manafort and his associate r rick gates. Rick gates got new lawyers today and that is the biggest news in the investigation today. Three lawyers representing rick gates filed a motion today withdrawing from the case and a motion to withdraw as counsel of record, they said they move to withdraw as counsel of record for the reasons set forth in exhibit 1, which is the subject of a motion to be filed under seal. So their reasons for withdrawing were filed under seal, which means the reasons will remain secret. Now theres more than one possible explanation for lawyers withdrawing from a case like had. Rick gates might not be able to afford the lawyers, rick gates is not as rich as he needs to be to survive the litigation. Prosecutors have been lenient in the collateral rick gates used to secure his 5 million bond. That was a big number for rick gates and he had trouble meeting the requirements for the bond. The judge in the case rep pri manded rick gates in december for appearing in a video that was used to try to raise money for his Legal Defense funds. Rich people dont need Legal Defense funds. The judge said that appearance in the video violated the gag order that she issued in the case. But rick gates probably isnt going to save any money by switching lawyers because he has replaced the old group of lawyers with a new group of very, very expensive lawyers. And those lawyers have been seen by reporters entering the special Prosecutors Office and spending some serious quality time there. And at this stage of the case, it is possible that they are working out an evidencesharing agreement with the prosecution so that they can properly prepare for trial. But it is also possible that they are trying to save rick gates, married father of four, from being sent to prison. It is possible that they are trying to save rick gates the massive expense of a trial that he might not be able to afford by pleading guilty and cooperating with the special prosecutor. Telling the special prosecutor everything rick gates knows about Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn and donald trump and donald trump jr. And Jared Kushner everything. If rick gates pleads guilty, he will have to testify against his former boss and associate, Paul Manafort. No one knows more about Paul Manafort than rick gates if the rick gates pleads guilty, the pressure on Paul Manafort to plead guilty increases dramatically. The pressure on everyone increases dramatically if rick gates pleads guilty. And thats why a month from now we will still be talking about rick gates long after the memos will most likely be forgotten. Joining us now jill winebanks, matt miller, and ron klain. Hes also the former chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary committee. Jill, first of all, i want to get your reaction as a trial lawyer, prosecutor, to this switching of lawyers by rick gates at this stage of the proceedings and the reporting we have that the new lawyers have been seen spending some extended period of time in the special Prosecutors Office. Sure. Bu before i do. I have to say listening to your wonderful opening i was thinking you said everything that needs to be said. Theres nothing left to say. In seriousness, tom green is an excellent lawyer whos now the lawyer, probably, of record. And the nafact that hes been sn in the Prosecutors Offices likely means hes working on some sort of arrangement for cooperation, and thats why the other lawyers with drew. That would be good for the case and probably mr. Gates as well. So its probably a move in a very good and healthy direction. Jill one quick follow up on this. Why would you need to change lawyers in order to change your plea . You wouldnt necessarily need to. But you dont need two different firms and four different lawyers to do that. And there probably is an expense issue of how many lawyers do you want to pay for. And it could be that the first group of lawyers felt that they really were anxious to go to trial and that was not what gates wanted. So he decided to go with a lawyer who would help him to take another route. But you could have all of them working together if they agreed to do that. In the team that he just left, there was a couple of those lawyers from new york, one from washington. That looked like an expensive way of going through this. Ron klain, i want to get back to the memo story as we are here on what appears to be possibly memo eve because the worst Case Scenario is that this is a first step that the president believes hes going to take on the way to either getting rid of the special prosecutor or getting rid of Rod Rosenstein. Thats right, lawrence. Look, i think that this memo is going to turn out to be the most overhyped trump production since the 2012 christmas Celebrity Apprentice special. I dont remember that particular episode. So i guess it was an overhyped episode because i cant even remember. Perhaps, yes. So i dont think its going to do the work that donald trump and devin nunes thinks its going to do for him. The fundamentals of why we are talking about donald trump and russia dont change, and nothing in that memo is going to change it. So i think this is super duper overhyped. What i think is important to remember here, just to step back for a second, is donald trump ran all around the country in 2016 and told us that Hillary Clinton could not be president because she had done something that the head of the fbi said was extremely careless. In releasing this memo, donald trump will do something that his head of the fbi says is extremely reckless, even worse. So its hard to imagine how doing this is going to help him in the long run in any way, shape or form. Matt miller, the pressure on the fbi director is kind of its unimaginable, weve never seen anything like this before. And there is this speculation and this question of if this is released against all of the fbi directors advice, does he have to resign . Would that help if he resigned . What do you think the feeling would be inside the fbi about this . You know, its a very difficult question that only chris wray can answer. Only he on the inside knows both how damaging the release of this memo could be. Remember, theyve not just said its not true. They said it could harm National Security and the case. For those of us who have not seen the underlying information, dont have a way to balance the interest. The only thing he knows is the pressure that the president has brought to bear on him, the same way hes done with every other senior official. So thats the question chris wray will have to face. I will say over the last week hes shown an impress i have amount of integrity standing up to the president. Its clear the president wants to do something extraordinary unethical here but really asked the fbi to sign off on something extraordinary unthet cal. And hes stood up privately and publically to the president in a way that i think will earn him the respect of the career men and women of the fbi. So what chris wray does in the aftermath of the release, from my perspective, it would be nice to have someone in the job whos shown this willingness to stand up to donald trump because this is not the last time hes going to do something inappropriate, unethical and maybe illegal. Jill, what would be the special prosecutors interest, if any, at this stage in whats going on with the memos . First let me say i agree with what ron said about this being the real nothing burger of this case but i would go further and say it could backfire because when the democratic memo comes out, it will show how skinny and unfortunate this release is and it could backfire by people realizing that theyve been had and theyve been deliberately diverted from focussing on the real issue which is whats happening with the russian interference in our election and did any americans help them, and whats going on there is what we should be talking about. As far as what a prosecutor would do with the memo, we would look at it and then wait for the full facts. Right now what youre getting you would never in a trial say to a jury, one youre going to get some information from the prosecution and think about it and talk amongst yourself and in a week well give you another side. That would never happen. Jurors are advised they cant discuss the information they hear in the courtroom until theyve heard the full case. Thats why this is unfair to have this be out there for a week. But as a prosecutor you will wait and you will see what comes out because you dont have access to the underlying documents either. So you have to rely on someone else summarizing it. And that sounds a lot like what Richard Nixon did by saying to us he would summarize the tapes for us and theyd be verified by a nearly deaf senator, and then we could have that summary. And that would not be admissible evidence so it was useless. Thats what led to the saturday night massacre, so could be really dramatic. We have no evidence that the president has read the memo, other than john kelly and others at the white house telling us the president has read it. The Washington Post is reporting it this way, that jrk brought the document into the oval office this, of course, was after the president was seen leaving the state of the Union Address saying, of course, he was going to release the memo he has not yet read. And then john kelly saying they were going to release the memo long before the president read it. They said after john kelly gave him the memo, the president was then left alone to read the memo in its entirety. This is a man who we know, from Michael Wolffs reporting and others cannot read anything beyond one page. The chances of him reading a three and a half page document that might be big words in it, very unlikely. The last page of the memo may have been the loaniest thing in the office that day. But to go back to jills point there may be one other thing that Robert Mueller may be interested in the memos. Is that donald trump reads his stage direction aloud. He said im putting this out as an effort to derail muellers investigation. He is essentially announcing that whatever the memo does or doesnt say, his intent to do it is to obstruct the investigation. So i think the memo itself isnt important but his act in putting it out is consistent with firing comey and all these other things hes done along the way to try to stop the russia investigation. As i said before, innocent people dont work that hard to stop an investigation. Jill winebanks, ron klain, matt miller thank you all for joining us, appreciate it. Coming up well take you inside the room in a House Committee meeting when the republicans voted to release the memo. One of the members of the committee who challenged devin nunes with an important series of questions in that meeting will join us. Later, a special rewrite about what has happened to john kelly in the white house. John kelly tell us that, through the Washington Post, he recommended that the nunes memo be released. 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