Did you hear about it . No. At the reagan dinner, this person is sitting at a table with other republicans at the cpac dinner and says the following, we elected mike steele as chairman because he was a black guy. That was the wrong thing to do, unquote. Apparently there were audible gasps at the table when he said this. So john lavene is tweeting it out. So you know what happened next, we tweeted Michael Steele and said, do you want to come on last word and respond . Hes going to do that tonight. Thats excellent. In a normal word wed hear that and the guy is resigning and theyre sorry. Its possible he said that because hes about to be the new number two person at the department of Homeland Security and this is his warmup act. In this era is that a firing offense anymore. He doesnt need a security clearance he can do the job. Thats true for all of us. Who needs that. Thank you. Good luck. Conspiracy against the United States. Those are the magic words today in trump world. Because today former trump aide, rick gates, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy against the United States after being indicted on that charge by Robert Muellers grand jury. Gates also pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the special counsels office just three weeks ago while he was negotiating a plea deal. Another trump official was charged with conspiracy against the United States today, Paul Manafort, he was hit with a super ceding indictment laying out new charges, including conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, failing to register as a Foreign Agent, making false statements about being a Foreign Agent and making other false statements. Its been a busy day for mr. Mueller. Well get to Paul Manafort in a moment but lets first focus on the Top Campaign Official to plead guilty. The second highest to plead guilty since former National Security advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi back in december. And someone closer to the trump inner circle than George Papadopoulos who pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi in october. Heres rick gates today walking out of federal court. Hes not some coffee boy, volunteer or unpaid intern. He was the Deputy Campaign manager at one point. Unlike Paul Manafort who resigned after a few months, gates remained with the campaign until election day, he was on the Transition Team and inaugural committee. And once Trump Took Office rick gates formed an allied group to help support the president s agenda and he was a regular at the white house. He could supply valuable information about the inner workings on the trump operation. According to a document, rick gates conspired to lie to the United States regarding money he and Paul Manafort earned while working for a Political Party in ukraine. Work they did without registering as Foreign Agents per the law. He also lied in an interview this month about a 2013 meeting between Paul Manafort, a congressman, dana rohrabacher. Both men were hit with a 32count indictment in virginia on thursday. The New York Times notes the plea deal could be a Significant Development in the investigation. A sign that mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his long time associate and the former campaign chairman. He faces up to nearly 6 years in prison. In the plea agreement rick gates agrees to cooperate with the government, which includes providing documents and testifying at further proceedings. And he has to publically admit to other overt acts, including critical conduct even though rick gates is not being charged for those acts. As ari melber notes its important because it means rick gates could testify against Paul Manafort about critical acts they were both involved in. Tonight ty cobb released this statement. The white house as it has said from the outset will not be commenting on matters involving mr. Manafort and mr. Gates as the matters are dated and have nothing to do with the campaign. Joining us now is barbara mcquad, stephen harper, and tim obrien, the author of trump nation now, barbara, i want to go to you first on what it means that rick gates was charged with Paul Manafort, and they were sort of aligning their defenses what does it mean for Paul Manafort that rick gates has pleaded out . i think its a significant developlement to the detriment of Paul Manafort. It was such a document based case. Documents dont lie, its easy to prove them objectively. Now that you have this very close associate, rick gates pleading guilty now you have someone who can connect the dots, provide a narrator to the trial, he likely knows things that happen between them, conversations that they had, and i think this news has to be devastating to Paul Manafort. Rick gates wrote a letter to his family and friends, which was obtained by abc news earlier, he wrote despite my desire to defend myself, i had a on change of heart. He said the cost and the circus like atmosphere are too much. How hard do prosecutors like bob mueller press someone like gates and what will they give him if he cooperates and gives them something of value. He may suggest i felt like i had no choice, when someone pleads guilty they have to say in their own words what they did to make them believe theyre guilty of the crime charged. So i think he put it on the record today and explained in his heart why he believes hes guilty. We did see instead of the charges he was indicted on, hes now charged with two counts with a statutory maximum of 10 years but a calculated guidelines rang of 4 1 2 to 6 years. In addition to that, if he cooperates and testifies, the judge could give him a sentence less than that, so he helped himself a lot. His prior exposure was 8 to 12 years its now probably Something Like 4 1 2 years. So in exchange he has valuable information that he has sat down and discussed with Robert Mueller and his team before they made that calculation. You know, tim, lets talk about the relationships here. The white house im sure would love to write rick gates off as another coffee boy. But first of all he was a partner of Paul Manafort, who wrote, notwithstanding the rick gates plea today, i continue to maintain my innocence. This does not alter my commitment to defend myself. Come up, rick. We have a great group of people and a group of people that wants to win and i think knows how to win. We also have been winning all our lives. This group of people in front of me, i know so many of you, weve been winning all our lives. Rick gates is sort of the senior part to the campaign. If he can give up something on manafort, why would donald trump be concerned about that . He could supply valuable information about the inner workings on the trump operation. According to a document, rick gates conspired to lie to the United States regarding money he and Paul Manafort earned while working for a Political Party in ukraine. Work they did without registering as Foreign Agents per the law. He also lied in an interview this month about a 2013 meeting between Paul Manafort, a congressman, dana rohrabacher. Both men were hit with a 32count indictment in virginia on thursday. The New York Times notes the plea deal could be a Significant Development in the investigation. Come on up, rick. We have a group of people that really wants to win and i think knows how to win. The fact is just over there in trump tower today, the core four, trump, gates, myself and manafort, we have met and they have done a phenomenal job building up this campaign over the last five or six months. So i look forward to continue to work with both of them. Well bring in the first panel on another busy friday night. Ken delanian and National Security reporter, jennifer but the most perilous thing in this is quid pro quos with russia or representatives of the russian government who are looking for policy changes like lifting economic sanctions in return for financial favors to trump or to members of his family, like Jared Kushner. To the extent manafort has knowledge of that stuff or has transactions that are parallel or touch on some of those things, thats dangerous to the president. A lot of this falls on manafort himself. This constellation of twobit advisers around the president is perhaps the most felonious group of characters youve seen in an administration, certainly since the nixon administration. One of the ways manafort got himself in trouble is he didnt know how to convert word files to pdf. It looks like he was a money launderer, he was a tax evader, he lied to the feds. Hes a pile of problems. Stephen, you did this time line that is really great and i was wading through today trying to draw a chart of all the trump questions. I think to tims point, the way that rick gates feels like he fits in here is he and manafort had lots of clients, the ukrainian election was one of the things that was important to them. You had the incident during the summer, during the Rnc Convention where the Trump Campaign pressed for one change in the platform and that was to change the ukraine to make it more russia friendly. Is that the nexus that mueller might be lacking at is what relationships were gates and manafort bringing to the table that might be russia friendly offerings the Trump Campaign could make . I like to put these they become friday night episodes for us i guess in terms of indictments in context of the larger picture. I agree with tim, the thing to remember here, the first counts and the indictments, which is conspiracy against the United States. Lets remember what that conspiracy is, although it varies in terms of the factual allegations in each of the indictments but the underlying problem here, the underlying crime is interfering with the democratic process of electing a United States president. And we now know, from last weeks indictments and other indictments, that what was happening was that russia was proceeding along a multipronged, multifront battle looking for vulnerabilities in the Trump Campaign, looking for points of penetration, points of connection, and was wildly successful, frankly, and why. They wanted trump to win. Why . And were back to tims point, although i would add for conviction under the election laws you dont even need a quo in terms of the quid pro quo you need unlawful interference. Gates for manafort is problems for indictment facing manafort. But gates is a guy, as you opened the segment with, transports himself through a very clear continuity of events. When manafort came on in april, gates went with him. When the nra, you were talking about the nra earlier in the broadcast with chris matthews, and when the nra when the Deputy Governor of the Russia Central Bank was looking for an entrance at the Nra Convention to have dinner with donald trump in may, he settled for second place but rick gates was on the emails. At the same time thats happening, George Papadopoulos is also sending messages to manafort, whos passing them onto gates about russians want to meet with trump. And papadopoulos at that point knows they have dirt on trump. So there are a series of dots that are going to connect, and barbara can speak to this at length im sure, but if it works out, gates can provide you the continuity that takes you through a lot of events. Lets go through what of these are crimes. It appears in the indictment that the motivation is money. Manafort and gaits want to have lots of money. Theyre doing this with associated entities, raking in money and hiding it from the government. But theyre also looking for ways to bring the Trump Campaign closer to russia. You have gates on the nra memos. And then the George Papadopoulos memos, who also pled guilty, who said he could arrange a meeting between the russian president and donald trump. And then in july 2016 you have the possible role in switching the platform. Then august, gates moves to the rnc. What would be the crimes if, in fact, gates and or manafort were trying to bring the campaign closer to the elections. I think its conspiracy to defraud the United States by obstructing the administration of an agency of the United States. This is the crime the 13 russians were charged with last friday. It was the function of the election process. So if they were slitting things from a foreign government, receiving things of value from a foreign national. That would disrupt the fair administrations of our elections and could be conspiracy to defraud the United States. Another count. I think the indictment that was handed down last week, naming the 13 russians, provides that foundation on which Robert Mueller can build if he finds the evidence linking americans to be coconspirators with the russians. You can say with gates and manafort, the motivation is money. Papadopoulos said he was from the u. N. Could they all be trying to build a relationship with russia without telling donald trump. I think a lot of people who worked for him never thought he was going to be president and they never thought some of the things they were doing to line their pockets were going to see the light of day. Lo and behold he gets elected and a special prosecutor lands, who is an epic special prosecutor and theyre looking back over their shoulders at all these various things they did that they thought no one would ever take a look at. Especially for people like George Papadopoulos, carter page, some of these people who floated around trump who are not sophisticated people, who are not a tate team players, dont have deep experience, now theyre getting called out. Thank you guys very much for joining us. Coming up, new report tonight that the person in charge of overseeing the mueller probe, Rod Rosenstein called the white house about Jared Kushners security clearance problem. Later, a cpac official said the only reason Michael Steele was elected to be the head of the rnc was because he was a black guy and that was the wrong move. Whos getting the last word tonight . Michael steele. No, please, please, oh shrieks in terror heavy breathing and snorting no, no. The running of the bulldogs . Surprising. Whats not surprising . How much money aleia saved by switching to geico. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more. With todays guilty plea by former Trump Campaign adviser rick gates, the pressure is now building on Paul Manafort. So far the mueller team has indicted 19 people. Of the six mon russians all have pleaded guilty except one, manafort. Today the team hit mueller with a super ceded indictment. Charging him with five counts including conspiracy against the United States. They say he retained a group of politicians to take positions favorable to the ukraine, including by lobbying in the United States. He used four offshore accounts to pay the former politicians. And while the white house distances its from any of the charges against Paul Manafort or rick gates, saying they have nothing to do with the campaign. These charges may make manafort more willing to cooperate with the mueller team, in exchange for less jail time. What could he offer . Information on the june 2016 meeting he attended at trump tower. The meeting that russia offered dirt on hillary clinton. Information that don junior said if its what you say i love it. Joining me now is harry litman and david frum. Harry, ill start with you on this. Paul manafort is 68 years old. He seems to have nothing to gain by going to prison for donald trump. And there isnt much that he can offer that would be higher than himself. He was the chairman of the campaign. Ill ask you the same question i asked in our previous block. Whats the biggest thing that donald trump would have to fear . Would it be that manafort is willing to give up jared or don junior . We dont know. We do know that trump himself, the president , has said privately, at least its been reported, that he thinks manafort could, in fact, incriminate him. How could that happen . One of two ways it seems to me, something that really puts the finger on trump, as you mentioned joy, say its true as steve bannon has said that trump knew about the meeting in june