washington might be working with a state level attorney general? well, that s because of how this might intersect with the prospect of president trump pardoning people in the trump-russia investigation. according to politico.com tonight, quote, the new cooperation could potentially provide mueller with additional leverage to get manafort to cooperate in the larger investigation into trump s campaign has trump does not have pardon power over state crimes. so if the flip strategy with paul manafort is to put so much pressure on him in terms of his potential criminal liability, that he says, uncle, okay, i ll tell you what i know about the trump campaign, that pressure was presumably alleviated by his hope or expectation that president trump would pardon him and render him not touchable by the mueller investigation in terms of federal crimes. that alleviation of pressure doesn t apply to the states. a federal pardon doesn t get you out of state prosecution. if there is a potential state
trump campaign, that pressure was presumably alleviated by his hope or expectation that president trump would pardon him and render him not touchable by the mueller investigation in terms of federal crimes. that alleviation of pressure doesn t apply to the states. a federal pardon doesn t get you out of state prosecution. if there is a potential state level prosecution, then the flip strategy got all its leverage back, no matter what the president does. joining us is the reporter who broke the story tonight for politico, josh dowsey. thank you for joining us. thanks for having me, rachel. let me ask if i understand the gist of what you ve written. if they are working together, obviously it raises the question of whether or not manafort may not be able to rely on a presidential pardon to get out of prosecution here. but it also means that there s