Of a very busy newsweek for the president and his attorneys. At. Trumps week began with Opening Statements on monday in his criminal trial in new york which was followed by the prosecution calling its first witness. David pecker, over the course of four days he testified about crucial 2015 meeting between himself, trump and trumps then personal lawyer michael cohen. Prosecutors allege that it was at that meeting that the trio hashed out a plan to help trumps political chances by suppressing potentially scandalous stories about him. That strategy came to be known as catch and kill. Now it may not seem like there are any similarities between trumps criminal trial in new york and the fake elector scheme but for one thing both involve the falsification of documents or records. On top of that both cases allege the former president worked with others in addition to a crime. 16 people in michigan were charged with felonies last year for their roles in the fake elector effort. Six others in ne
assistant water gate special prosecutor. jill, correct me if i m wrong, has any other attorney general in modern history ever had unilateral right to declassify secrets over the dni, cia, over the agencies? i don t think there has ever been anything comparable to this. that s because almost nothing is comparable to any actions that donald trump takes. and it s dangerous to allow the president to have the unilateral authority to declassify things. he has used it improperly in my view when he gave israeli intelligence to the russians. and he could use this again especially to an attorney general who is showing his political bias and who will misrepresent and pick and choose what he is doing without regard to national security. so it s a bad idea to have
their russia contacts. let s bring in our panel now frank, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the fbi, jill wine banks former assistant water gate special prosecutor and kimberly atkins, chief washington reporter for the boston herald. i want to start with paul manafort s statement after gates pleaded guilty. you see here on the screen i continue to maintain my innocence, i had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. for reasons yet to surface he chose to do otherwise. this does not alter my commitment to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me. so, frank, what is mueller trying to do here with the gates deal and these new charges against manafort? well, he s taking a page right out of the playbook for organized crime cases. you need to flip people and get to your target and get people informing on the person above them and keep going.
mueller investigation standing on its own. and the republican talking points about this whole being a political witch hunt are really being undermined in realtime. all right. nbc s jeff bennett and mike, we appreciate you both. we re of course going to stay on top of this. if anymore developments happen in the next hour or so, we will bring that to our viewers here. also today major developments in the russia investigation as the special prosecutor continues to put the squeeze on president trump s former campaign manager. paul manafort facing new criminal charges including additional counts of tax and bank fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. and rick gates, manafort s wingman in business and on trump s campaign pleading guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators. prosecutors dismissed some other criminal charges against gates in exchange for his cooperation in the russia investigation. gates is the third ex-trump associate to plead guilty. former national security adviser mi
with vladimir putin, we know they spoke by phone yesterday. today the president elaborated on the conversation. it was great. he said very nice things about what i ve done for this country in terms of the economy. then also said some negative things in terms of what is going on elsewhere. but the primary point was to talk about north korea. because we would love to have his help on north korea. china s helping. russia s not helping. we would like to have russia s help. very important. to our lead-off panel for a busy and confusing friday night. peter baker chief white house correspondent for the new york times and msnbc political analyst and former assistant water gate special counsel and legal analyst and matthew noosebum, white house reporter for politico. peter, to you first. ronald reagan used to pretend the rotor noise from the helicopter was too