that paul manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from russia. interesting talking point. sounded similar to what the president said just about 12 or 24 hours later. was this a deliberate appeal for a pardon from the president? i don t know what s going on inside of his head. one thing that was interesting about it, the word government official, because one of the things that the manafort trial did bring to light that he during the campaign while working for donald trump had shared internal polling data with konstantin kilimnik, that russian businessman that the government says has links to the russian gru intelligence agency that had hacked the democratic emails. i don t know if that was amounts to collusion but it was some kind of conspiracy action. the other thing to pay attention to here, of course, is not only does judge jackson have the opportunity to sentence him to up to ten years that would run after these 47 months, if she
pretty tough. you saw how she dealt with roger stone. i think she s going to rectify this, not because she s on a policy rant or some social justice rant but because she gets the next shot at this. amy jackson there in d.c. will be taking up the manafort case on wednesday. we ll be taking up that gag order against roger stone on monday. many people are saying that the mueller team took an l here, that they took the loss. the mueller team has a bye that this is not their case. they handed off a fair amount of the, you know, criminal side of this to federal judges and they, you know they gave there was a broad mandate to prosecute manafort on things that were very different than the mandate to look into russia and alleged
notice, both his lawyer, a highly respected man and a very highly respected judge, the judge, said there was no collusion with russia. mike viqueira is joining us at the white house following the development and, mike, it seemed as if the president looked as if some sort of vindication, the lenient sentencing for manafort? reporter: well, in a sense, but the president misrepresented what the judge said. the judge said that paul manafort was not before his court for the purpose of investigating collusion with russia or russian interference in the u.s. election, rather he was being sentenced for bank fraud as well as tax evasion and you re right to point out, kendis, that next wednesday comes another reckoning for paul manafort where he appears at a different federal court just down the street here at the foot of capitol hill in the federal courtroom of judge amy birmen jackson who is sentencing him on separate charges involving the
wants to, but he has already agreed to forfeit something like $46 million in assets unrelated to the jail time he s going to receive here. that penalty is another gigantic piece of discipline that should be part of the discussion of what s happening to him. so you ll have manafort in front of amy jackson. let me ask you this because you tweeted this. don t despair at today s horrific injustice at the hands of judge ellis, the conspiracy indictment is coming, in my opinion. don t confuse mueller s silence on the conspiracy front with lack of evidence on conspiracy. justice is coming back. what i mean by that is, after spending 30 years as a prosecutor, the evidence i have seen even in the public reporting tells me that there was a conspiracy between the
let s talk about this. there are a lot of people who are behind bars for doing a lot less. i do recall one woman in texas who got five years for trying to vote. voting illegally. what does this say to the public about the criminal justice system? first of all, we have to deal with the issue of privilege. white collar criminals have always been given privilege in the criminal justice system. the sentencing guidelines are exactly as you say, they are there for a reason because they want you to stay within those guidelines. judges always have discretion, but in this issue of paul manafort, here s a man that had six passports, is alleged to have done all kind of things with respect to foreign governments, not in the best interest probably of the united states in many ways. here s a guy that i don t feel like russian collusion has or hasn t been proven yet because mueller hasn t, you know, issued his report. the point is this, however, leave it to judge jackson. i believe she s go