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Senator richard bloomenthal live on manafort and the other big story, democrats saying they're making progress on holding brett kavanaugh accountable. we're back in 30. brett kavanaugh accountable. we're back in 30 welcome back, the other big story tonight, abc news reporting, and this is for the first time, former trump campaign chair paul manafort has reached a plea with special counsel bob mueller. as i mentioned nbc news has not confirmed this report yet. it's all unfolding right now.

>> well, we live in the united states of america. you're presumed innocent until proven guilty. we believe the government cannot meet that burden. >> source close to the defense told fox news that they want to keep the focus on manafort's former business partner, rick gates. this is the government's star witness and they want the focus to be on questions about gates credibility as a star witness for the government rather than on their client and as a final note, manafort faces a second prosecution in the district of columbia. so if he took the stand here in virginia, that could complicate that...

They used money from from cypress. those facts are really relevant to the overall question of russian influence on manafort and gates if not trump campaign directly. so those are the things that i would really pay attention to. this isn't just about a bunch of grifters running around the international consulting scene. this is about russian money and being deeply in debt to russian figures some who were connected allegedly with russian intelligence. >> every time the prosecution tries to introduce certain types of evidence about the nature of these russians or ukrainian oligarchs, the judge se...

Joining me "washington post" national security reporter develin barrett. he is the author of that piece in "the post." back with us, former u.s. attorney joyce vance. what should we expect this week? >> i think this is going to be where both sides go pretty hard at each other. the prosecutors, because they think rick gates really puts all of the blame for this on manafort, and the defense because they think that rick gates is a weak enough witness, a witness who brings so many problems to the table that maybe, if by making rick gates look bad, they can make the entire prosecution case look bad...

Week of robert mueller's star witness is set to take the stand. we are talking about rick gates, manafort's right hand man. he's expected to testify before his former boss. his testimony is expected to focus on square ly on manafort' business practices. gates stayed on the trump campaign even after manafort was pushed out through the election and during the early days of the trump presidency. ken dilanian is joining me now back home. let's talk about rick gates here, what we think he's going to say? >> there is a chance because this judge is moving things along. there is 15 minutes at the end ...