Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Shopped copies of the same picture. Look. They turned them into exactly the same dude. So throws xlams of hair cut a in this environment. But dont be fooled into thinking that the aesthetic range is singular. They will also occasionally accept a cover mod we will hair cut b. Which you see here. So if you cannot swing hair cut a for whatever reason, you are also allowed to be el ubaldo. Especially if you have some other kind of prop, a vaguively hair like prop to distract that the baldness. So the aesthetic window here is only open a slightal. A pretty tight line here. They do occasionally break out and do something a little different. For example, heres a man in a hat. Heres a man on a motorcycle. Heres harrison ford, i think, taking his own pulse maybe. Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Model, a woman who said she had a long Running Affair with president trump, the journal reported that she would be placed on of all things, mens journal for their september issue. Despite what appeared to be total bewilderment by the magazines own staff. Mcdougal would be a rare solo woman on the cover of the highend mens Lifestyle Magazine which typically show cases male celebrities. The males chief ref new officer and Content Officer have told some employees that they unsuccess appealed to david pecker, the ceo of america magazine, who reportedly ordered the cover. They asked him to consider replacing her on the cover. The executives said they argued that would it hurt the reputation making it tougher to attract top talent for future ever coulds and potentially alienating hardwon advertisers. In which American Media basically told, basically did donald trump the favor of making sure that embarrassing story about this alleged affair would never run in print. So American Media paid miss mcdougal in august 2016, late in the game, right . Donald trump was already the nominee for president at that. Did the president have this affair . She said yes. He says no. You say stop talking about this matter. I dont want to know. I understand. But federal prosecutors are looking into whether that was an effort to influence the outcome of the election. An effort that was potentially illegally coordinated with candidate donald trump and his campaign. That is a matter of federal criminal investigation. An audio tape apparently made surreptitiously has since been released which has trump with cohen on tape discussing it. Right, they went to such lengths to scrape this together at the last minute that they didnt even actually take her picture for this Magazine Cover or even talk to her for this Magazine Cover. Quote, miss mcdougal has not participated in a Photography Shoot or interview with mens journal staff, according to American Media employees and a person familiar with the matter. The editor planned to use old pictures and to recycle archived conten for a piece about her fitness routine. So thats the first new thing. Putting together this Magazine Cover, scratching it together. All of a sudden to make it look like that 150,000 deal with Karen Mcdougal to cover up the president s alleged affair, trying the make it look like wasnt that at all. They were really after her for her mastery of the cable pulley. Or whatever. According to the reporting on this, according to their own employees, to take advertiser Hit Torsion Take editorial hit to the magazine which this entailed, we know they were warned that that by their own senior employees. American media to think this was worth it. They had to be scared enough by the legal jeopardy they thought they might be in when it comes to that contract. This woman and what they can with her for trump during the campaign. They thought it was worth it and they really did go ahead and publish it. Thats one new thing. The other new thing that has happened is this. Federal prosecutors considering a criminal case against the president s lawyer, michael cohen, are now officially in possession of all the evidence they are going to review to decide whether to try to bring federal criminal charges against mr. Cohen. Now, the Court Appointed official, the Special Master who had been appointed to review all the evidence to see if any of it had to be covered by
chairman Paul Manafort has been facing, one of the charges under considering by prosecutors is Michael Cohens involvement in that alleged payment to cover up that alleged affair. I mean, to compensate Karen Mcdougal for how much mens journal needed and wanted to put her on the cover instead of ben affleck again. Why would the president be talking about reimbursing American Media for their contract to Karen Mcdougal . If the contract was really just to put her on Fitness Magazines . Why would the president be talking on his lawyer about paying that money back . So its tick tock at the u. S. Attorneys office in the Southern District of new york. For what its worth, that is the same federal Prosecutors Office that brought multiple charges against chris collins. Chris collins was the first member of congress who endorsed trump for president. He served as a Senior Member of
because almost the whole day in court was taken up today in a mysterious series of conferences at the judges bench between the judge and the lawyers on both sides. Also, meetings apparently in the judges chambers where nobody could see them. At one point the judge himself left the courtroom and appeared to walk off. Not in the direction. Chambers but in the direction of where the jury usually comes from when they enter the court. We have no idea what happened for most of the day today at the Paul Manafort trial. We know that the prosecutors did file another motion asking the manafort judge to correct something to the jury that the Prosecutor Says he messed up. You might remember this happened earlier as well. Earlier this week they file a motion informing the judge that he had improperly scolded the prosecutors in front of the jury for something the prosecutors say they didnt do wrong. They asked him to tell the jury that he had been in the wrong. That prosecutors hadnt done anything wrong and he should correct that for the jury. The judge acquiesced that. Last week, the prosecutors asked again. They asked him to clear up something as well as the jury. During proceedings yesterday the judge interjected, as he is wont to do. The judge interjected to tell prosecutors basically that they were barking up the wrong tree. They shouldnt be trying to prove something with this witness that wouldnt end up being legally relevant to the charges manafort was facing. As a matter of law, it looks like prosecutors were right and the judge was wrong. And so prosecutors asked the judge late last night to clear up that point with the jury as well. Now, we have no idea if the judge did or did not clear that up with the jury as prosecutors requested. If did it happen, it wasnt in the courtroom in front of spectators and reporters today who had little idea of what was going on as well as any of the
rest of us. So an unexpected day in the case of Paul Manafort. Prosecutors at the end of the afternoon, they finally did. They brought the jury back in and finally did start bringing on witnesses that we had expected today about this allegation that Paul Manafort had offered a Trump Administration job to a bank ceo who had arranged for manafort to get millions of dollars in loans between the election and the inauguration. We had previously seen evidence in the trial that the guy from the bank thought he would end up being secretary of the army for his troubles. Today, an employee of the bank fetched the bank ceo said he thought he would be secretary of the treasury or secretary of housing and urban development. And thats apparently, those apparently were dangled. So whether or not there was some quid pro quo with the bank ceo thought he would get something from the Trump Administration, we thought that would be the finale today. That tale has started to be told. They didnt start until late in the afternoon. Honestly, The Big Question now, the big mystery now is, what happened during those hours long delays . What happened in the sealed discussions out of earshot all day long. We know it is late at the end of the case. There will be more witnesses on monday for the prosecution. Were told that closing arguments will take place only as early as tuesday. Particularly if the defense doesnt call its open witnesses, which they might not. Given this strange turn, is this
the kind of thing that is a normal occurrence . Not too strange an occurrence . In a trial that has been running as fast as this one in this kind of a court where it seems to be run on such a tight schedule . Can we tell if it had something to do with the jury . Do we think Hit Something to do with the fact prosecutors keep trying on correct the judge . For him in their words, screwing stuff up . And when do we find out . This was the note we got today. We tried to get the formal record of what happened in this courtroom today. Quote, the transcript is under seal and will not be available to the public. Some day that may change. Until that happens, we have to ask people who were there what happened. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Was it frustrating or fascinating or both when things sort of took off out of earshot . If some cases, out of sight . It was surprising the way things screeched to a halt. As you were talking about, weve been moving at a Break Neck Pace for prosecutors to keep it short, keep it short, and cut all the witnesses down, sometimes spending half as much time as they intended. To then see the judge consume about five hours today with procedures either being held at side bar or in secret in the judges chambers was a pretty startling development. I would say interesting but at the same time, frustrating because we couldnt get a good idea why the trial had been put into some kind of suspended animation. One thing happened was this request from prosecutors for a second time they wanted the judge to correct something that
they thought that he got wrong before the jury. We saw the judge did correct himself. He agreed that they had blamed prosecutors for doing something wrong that they didnt get wrong. They asked him to correct something that was more of a matter of law in front of the jury. We know thats something, there was a motion about from the prosecution. It wasnt something they were fighting about orally and in person. Is there any way to know if that might have been part of why things went so differently today . Why the jury wasnt called in until so late . Why the first thing happened when the doors opened was Bench Conferences where the lawyers were talking out of earshot of everybody else in the room . That i think could be part of it. I think it is highly up likely that that motion accounts for all the delay that we saw. There was enough other weird action going on with the judge moving back and forth to the jurys chamber at the side of
the courtroom. I dont think what the judge said yesterday, while significant, he said that attempted bank fraud isnt very important and is maybe something the prosecution should be trifling with. No one would expect an attempted bank robbery wouldnt be prosecuted as a crime so it is hard to see why it would be dismissed. That was the issue the prosecution got upset about and filed a motion overnight. It was confusing that there was no public ruling on that motion and no instruction to the jury. The judge didnt give any explanation on the record. There was some speculation morning maybe the defense or the prosecution was seeking a mistrial on that account and it might be difficult for the judge to fix his mistake without saying that manafort was guilty on that charge, and there could have been an argument of that
sort. I know it has been long hours all week. Thank you for being our eyes and ears there. Thank you. This trial, thank you so much, chuck, for being with us. I appreciate you being here on a friday night. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. As an experienced prosecutor and someone very, very experienced in the Eastern District of virginia, a lot of houston are nonlawyers and not frequent observers of federal trials were totally flummoxed. How weird is this . Is it going off the rails . Everybody was trying to read the Paul Manafort body tloong suggest if this meant the trial was blowing up in some way. As someone who has been there and knows what this means, how
weird was today . Have you seen stuff like the happen before . Especially right toward the end of a trial . Ive seen things like this happen before. I dont think it is going off the rails or blowing up. Maybe i can explain. Sometime judge has to take three or four hours to straighten out an issue. It is frequent but it is frequent enough that we can make an educated guess. It usually involves a jury issue. It may be something as benign as a juror has something at home. That doesnt seem to be the case here. Ive seen it happen in my own trials once or twice over many years, a juror accidentally sees something or hears something. Maybe overhears hears a conversation, a bathroom or a hallway or calf tear. I cant maybe saw something at home at night after a court recess for the day. Overheard a conversation and more likory than not, reports
that to the judge. Why does it take hours to straighten it out . The judge has to essentially call a timeout and question the jury. And the juror. What did you see or hear . What you saw, what you heard, did that challenge your opinion of this trial . Can you put it aside . So the judge probably has to make some sort of inquiry. Some sort of factual finding. Thats likely. When you see a trial shut down, it is usually along these lines. In terms of when this will become clear, i showed the note from the Court Reporter in terms of this being a sealed transcript. Is this the kind of thing we should expect to eventually become public . Whatever happen today, will the discussions remain sealed indefinitely . I would imagine it will eventually become public. The courts really want to make
all their proceedings public. Unless their theres a compelling reason not to. For instance grand juries are sealed. Perhaps soon well know precisely what happened. My guess is it is a juror issue. One where the judge had to inquire and had to satisfy that this juror, whatever he or she saw or heard Consideration Put that aside and consider the case fairly and even handedly. There is Something Else that happened today. I want to ask you. Can you stick around . Yes. Ow. Aah . I would have said you were crazy. But so began the year of me. I discovered the true meaning of paperless discounts. And the indescribable rush of saving drivers an average of 620. Why does fear feel so good . I fell in love three times once with a woman,
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you never before had to know name Andrew Miller. Andrew miller is an american man who apparently works now as a House Painter in the suburbs of st. Louis, missouri. In 2016 around the time of the republican convention, he worked for a long time friend and aide to donald trump. He worked for a man named roger stone. It is a little fuzzy exactly what did he for roger stone. But whatever it was, it was enough that he told Andrew Miller that he needed to testify before a grand jury. On may 18th, Andrew Miller was told he