Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. After his ukraine work dried up. And that is important because thats when he went to one of trumps closest friends and said i really need to get to trump. And then offered to work for trump for free. How and yes became the Campaign Chair is still a weird so far unexplained thing. Today in Court Prosecutors began laying out the evidence for the Dire Straits Manafort was in when he joined one Trumps Campaign for free. Thats something to keep an eye on as the trial goes forward. Joining me, senior white house political reporter, a close observer of the manafort case cynic it began. He was in the courtroom today. And i get to announce that as of today, he is an msnbc contributor. Ive seen some of the early reporting that there were audible gasps. Take us through some of the more audible moments. Well, this reference as having embezzled from manafort was something that grabbed my
was there a sense in the courtroom today that this was an air tight case . I think a lot of people feel it is a strong case with gates testimony, you get the offshore machinations but these questions of bank fraud that arose in some part during the Trump Campaign. The applications for large loans that went from, i think, the middle of 2016 through early 2017. Rick gates allegedly had direct involvement. In so hell be an important witness on at least some of the charges. Most people watching believe the defense is trying to pitch to maybe get one or two Holdout Jurors who will buy the fact rick gates engineered this fraud and somehow manafort was just along for the ride. Even though he was the one at the top of The Food Chain here. And hes the one with the
history of Doing Business in this part of the world. Take us through Jury Selection. I read that that was the most animated you all saw Paul Manafort. Yeah. Maufrt seemed real subdued in these hearings, here and in virginia. He ended up being jailed for the last month and a half or so. Which was something his lawyers tried to avoid and that seemed to dampen his emotions. He was very involved during Jury Selection when they were trying figure out which jurors to strike and which to keep. He was flipping through the pads. He was chatting with his lawyers rather animatedly and even seemed to be making notes, or having lengthy discussions about which of his jurors might be more advantageous to him. They ended one six men and six women who will decide his fate,
at least in the first trial. Tell me if i led the correctly. He was wearing suit today. The jurors will not be informed or see any images of him wearing the jump suit. Why would that be . They typically would not. Usually they are only used for arraignments. When someone is in front of the jury, theyre usually brought in in street clothes. Usually jurors are not told whether the defendant is in custody or free on bail. It is considered that would be prejudicial. There is whole implication of guilt. Especially in a Violent Crime case, if you see somebody brought in in shackles. A lot of jurors may think this person is guilty. So it usually takes place outside the courtroom where the jurors cant catch a glimpse of it. But no ostrich coat, right . No. A pretty standard business suit. Probably more expensive handle the my suit but i doubt it is one of the special 10,000 or 15,000 numbers that he was wearing in new york. Lucky for us, a brand new msnbc contributor. Thank you. Were lucky to have you. Joining me, joyce vance, thank you for being here. Im struck by what josh was talking about. The entire manafort case is blame that guy. That doesnt seem like solid legal strategy to me. Just from the evidence were seeing, it seems like the government has a very good case. It is a paper case. That means the government will largely rely payment work, many
pieces of payment that manafort has either touch or signed to prove its case and theyll jazz it up a little bit. Theyll have rick gates and others to narrate the case which the jury will undoubtedly find a little more interesting than looking at paper. Still, you have to wonder why he was holding out. Why he wasnt pleading guilty. I thought we might see a bit of a twist. What his defense would be during Opening Statements. Instead we got the my underling defense did it. Its a bit of a yawner. Something juror theres occasionally show interest in. It doesnt seem like a strong defense. I was surprise that had we didnt see a better opener. Are you able to answer the question, why is manafort holding out . There are a couple of
reasons. Frankly, we all speculate. Is there someone that manafort fears more than he fears mueller . Spending the rest of his life in jail . Does he think that trump will pardon him and make all of this go away . I suppose thats a possibility. Then a third possibility some of the defendants like to see how the evidence come in at trial. Bank on cutack late deal with prosecutors if they believe evidence isnt coming in favorably to them. I understand this is about bank fraud, tax fraud, things other than Paul Manaforts time and ten youre as chairman of the Trump Campaign. Clearly this trial is about the southern district. Just based on the claim of
collusion, he pivoted today, maybe it is a quince against it is the same day as the trial no, longer is he saying there was no collusion. Now hes saying collusion isnt a crime. Now does this fit into russian influence over the Trump Campaign . This case i think is the preamble to russian collusion. This is setting the scene for manaforts past dealings and past crimes. Some of it may well sbleek his time with trump. It will clearly set the stage. And weve seen mueller stage other cases this way. Indicting russians in hacking. And we see the possibility that there may be americans who were involved. Now we are learning more of
russias history with dictators in ukraine and it seems this is headed in that same direction. Could you take this case, would it be a Building Block if youre trying to put together some broader picture, some broader conspiracy case . The information coming out of Michael Cohens camp is putting donald trump as someone who may have had knowledge of that Trump Tower Meeting, Paul Manafort happens to be one of the other people in that Trump Tower Meeting. There are a lot of connections. If you were looking for a russian plant, Paul Manafort would be your guy. It is remarkable that we have this. Suddenly he shows up despite that and volunteers to work for free on the Trump Campaign. And then during his tenure, he
offers to debrief him on whats going on. This is a remarkable string of coincidences and i think jeremys analysis from pretty far out will be accurate at the end of the day. So we could see this come together. Im sure they would prefer to have him cooperate with they will. But at the end of the day, even if he doesnt cooperate, once this trial concludes, they will likely be able to compel his testimony and although it is always better to have someone testifying as a result of cooperation, manafort can likely shed light on a lot of these issues. Joyce vance, former u. S. Attorney from the Northern District of alabama. Were always grateful to have you but especially on nights like tonight. President trump and his personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani keep changing their minds about what the president is willing to be asked about should he ever agree to sit down with robert mueller
for an interview. Collusion confusion and some new news about what prosecutors are looking into tonight. Thats next. Of our new unlimited wireless plans. It comes with a ton of entertainment options. Great, can you sign for this . Yeah. Hey, uh. Whats in that one . Thats a shark. New and only with at t, you can get unlimited data, 30 channels of live tv, and your choice of things like hbo or amazon music. More for your thing. Thats our thing. Visit att dot com. Gacan start in the colon, n, and diarrhea and may be signs of an imbalance of good bacteria. Only Phillips Colon Health has this unique combination of probiotics. It helps replenish good bacteria. Get fourinone symptom defense. There was no focus russia in the Opening Statements today at Paul Manaforts trial. But the specter of manaforts deep connections to russia and to cell lynn linked oligarchs hovered over the proceedings. Manafort was heavily in debt and owed millions. Once he became chairman of the campaign, he offered private briefings to one of the creditors, a putin friendly oligarch. Muellers prosecutors have described the ukrainian Business Partner as having active ties to russian intelligence services. In fact a memo written by Rod Rosenstein last summer laid out muellers authority to investigate whether Paul Manafort committed a crime or crimes by clueding with russian government officials. We know his team has questions for the president on this very subject. Mueller wants to ask the president , what knowledge did you have of any outreach by your
campaign including by Paul Manafort, to russia about potential assistance to the campaign. Last week began with the president s lawyers saying they were willing to let the president answer questions on possible collusion, but not on the issue of Obstruction Of Justice. But now with the president s exlawyer Michael Cohen reportedly alleging the president knew about the Trump Tower Meeting in advance, democrats stay president may be on the hook for both. Theres credible evidence that the president of the United States has committed Obstruction Of Justice and possibly a conspiracy to undermine our elections. And the latest messaging from the president and his team of lawyers, there was no collusion. Even if there was, collusion isnt a crime. In case anyone is wondering they are now unwilling to answer questions on that topic either. You said maybe would you let him answer a few limited questions on collusion. I dont want him to answer
questions. Weve been driven further away from the idea of answering any questions from them. We dont think they have a legitimate investigation. Joining us now, chuck rose yepberg, former cia official. Thank you both for being here tonight. So you have both banned the word collusion from any broadcast on which we all appear together. Talk about how the real sort of pot at the end of the rage bow for an investigation is a conspiracy. I guess collusion irks me. Youre not easily irked. It means agreeing with somebody else to do something. Thats what a conspiracy is. The fact collusion doesnt
appear in the code as mr. Giuliani says is nonsense. Couldnt spearcy does. And what the mueller team is looking into is whether they conspired to interfere in the election. When they finally charge it, it will be charged as conspiracy. The notion that collusion isnt a crime is a complete red herring to mislead people. It is for the court of Public Opinion but not for a court of law. Are you seeing enough pieces come to light that you believe there will be enough to charge someone with a conspiracy to coordinator receive assistance from a hostile foreign power . It is an educated guess but yes. There are bits and pieces in the republican record that suggest. It was just russians. The timing of the statements in
doral, florida, are urging the russians to go find the missing emails, hack into the dnc computers. All of that is tied to russian activity that mr. Mueller recently charged when he brought a case against the russian Intelligence Officers. I think there are other calculations like whether mr. Mueller believes he has the authority to charge a sitting president. There is some debate on that point. The Department Of Justice has weighed in on it in the past and has opined that you cannot. I think the pieces are there. I have a well attuned ear to everything Chuck Rosenberg says and i have never heard him say that before. Do you see enough public facing evidence at this point to believe, make another educated guess for us, that there is enough evidence to charge someone with conspiracy to coordinate with a hostile foreign power . I dont know we know, i dont think we know all the facts yet. If you want to understand it, just take your july 13th indictment of 12 russian Intelligence Officers on 11 counts. In there bob mueller and his team lay out exactly what conspiracy looks like. If people want to use the Google Machine to research it, 18 usc 371. Conspiracy to defraud the United States. And a couple of interesting things about that statute. First of all, it states that if two or more people agree to do something to commit an offense against the United States, and one of those people actually goes ahead and does it, then both people are guilty of conspiracy and shall not be imprisoned for more than five years. A classy felony. If there were people inside trump tower, at the trump tower
meeting, or inside the Trump Campaign, or even donald trump himself, who knew what the russian government officers were doing, and if the russian government officers did it, even if they didnt come back and report it back to the Trump Campaign. The Trump Campaign knew about it. In effect, mere knowledge establishes a conspiracy. And there are other places in the mueller indictment. If you look at paragraph 21 d in here. It talks about how one of them created a spear fishing email attack. It is clear that all the other 11 defendants didnt know or participate. Yet they were all under the indictment terms, conspirators and guilty of the alleged offenses. So i think you have to understand the way bob mueller and the special counsels office is approaching the crime of conspiracy to see if there will be a charge at the end of the day. Okay. I love both of you. I love spy models. You said theres a 96 chance the reason donald trump has taken a pro Putin Position is because of money, because of longstanding financial ties with the Trump Organization and people around the russian government. I want to ask but that and Something Else you said. You talked about oneonone meetings. You talked about donald trump clearing the room which is what we understand trump did with putin. He cleared the room when he asked jim comey to see the investigation on mike flynn go. How do those two hang together in your mind in terms of what an investigator or a prosecutor when does donald trump want someone to leave the room . When he wants to do something where he doesnt want others to hear what hes doing. One of the concerns that i have, and Many National security investigators have with putin, and we still dont even know if the translators were in there
for the entire time or if the american translator was in there the entire time. One of the problems is there is no record of what was said. And i think even to this day the director of National Intelligence spoke publicly about this. And mike pompeo was questioned about this. They have not received a full debrief about it. It harkens back to putting this arm on jim comey. If i give you a twopart question here, if could you weigh in on the news tonight that bob mueller has sent more cases to the southern cases. The reason you though everybody out, the reason you want Something Quote Unquote Off The Record is youre going to do something underhanded. It seems like a number of these conversations are underhanded. I want to echo what he said. He did a nice job explaining the law of conspiracy. One thing i would add, it doesnt require that you would succeed. You and i could agree to rob a bank. We could get jeremy to be a part of this. He goes out and buys a getaway car. And then we get stopped on the way to the bank. Were still guilty, all three of us of conspiracy to rob that bank. So when i said i think theres enough information to see a conspiracy, i dont necessarily mean that they succeeded. Or that everybody knew every part of the conspiracy. What is required is that somebody took a step in that direction. And referring mort cases to the southern district. These were more lobbyists doing more pro russian business in the ukraine and other cases. Right. T its not at the core of it to look into the election. You have a Binary Choice when youre a prosecutor. You come across criminal behavior. I face this myself in my time as a prosecutor. You either do something with it or you do nothing with it. And it is very hard for a prosecutor to do nothing when they come across evidence of a crime. So it makes perfect sense that these other folks will get farmed out to u. S. Attorneys offices around the country and face consequences of their actions. All right. Thank you for taking me to law school. Coming up, president trumps new best friend is reportedly still
working on missile thats could reach all the way to the u. S. More about t