Page 3 - Con Manafort News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

And we heard manafort's contacts with kilimnik, as one prosecutor put it, to the heart of what the special counsel is investigating. we learned from the same transcript a possible reason why manafort breached his plea deal by lying to investigators as judge ruled last kweek. they said manafort might have lied to increase his chances of getting a president pardon. that is not the craziest idea on manafort's part. after the president has said a pardon for his campaign manager is still a possibility. but now state prstate prosecuto planning to hold accountable. the manhattan district attorney is ...

That's one. two, to your point, why lie? i mean this is pretty significant. this is a really, really important investigation. why would you lie to someone with such authority who could dictate where you spend the rest of your life wearing an orange jumpsuit? >> judge amy berman jackson said that manafort didn't meet the threshold on two other things, his interactions with the white house officials and about kilimnik's role to try and influence witnesses. what does it say about the special counsel that he didn't meet that? is that a normal part of an investigation, a prosecution, not meeting ce...

>> let's hone in on manafort lying about his interactions with kilimnik. again, manafort was the campaign chairman, right? and kilimnik is a russian associate who shared campaign polling data -- he shared polling data with. why lie about that? who is he protecting? >> he's tied to russian intelligence too. isn't kilimnik -- he's got ties to russian intel. he's got ties to oleg deripaska, who is an incredibly powerful oligarch. you know, people who have crossed russian intelligence, some of them have ended quite badly. >> right. >> you know, so nicin this case we're certainly going to think may...

Did it affect sanctions? what do they have on donald trump as well as on manafort? so i think that what mueller has to be looking at is all of those things, not just manafort. >> and, jill, when the special prosecutor looks at e-mails, obviously this was an e-mail traffic that time magazine is aware of, so the special prosecutor has seen all of that e-mail traffic. and this is -- this is one of the reasons why we all presumed paul manafort was cooperating with the special prosecutor because he was in this deep, and the special prosecutor has all this information. now that that cooperation has ...

Him in connection to manafort. paul manafort is scheduled to be sentenced on march 5th. joining us now is jill wine banks. and jill, what is the special prosecutor looking for in this kind of situation? is there anything illegal about offering a briefing to a russian oligarchs about the presidential campaign? >> i think the major thing that is really standing out to me is what is the quid pro quo here, and why was he working for free for donald trump when he owed so much money that he couldn't repay it? and he was clearly being pressured. did that influence how the platform got changed, the re...