joining us is eric who has a seat on the judiciary committee. great to have you here thanks for being here tonight. thanks for having me back. what s your reaction to the indictment of the president s long-time advisor roger stone today? the white house said this has nothing to do with the president at all and do you believe that it does? do you know how this fits into the larger scandal it certainly has all the markings of something the president would be involved in and so you see here an intense interest by the trump campaign and the president s decades-long friend to get the russian hacked goods that would help donald trump and so rachel, what we want to know next, it s a follow the shovel s theory, i think, what you laid out earlier which is why would they lie about
on and they are both open questions for me but in terms of where my head is at in terms of figuring out how this fits intoed scandal and how close we are to the end here and how close we are to getting the biggest and most important questions answered, these are the two things that i am sort of stuck on the first one is a dynamic, a pattern that we are seen over and over and over and over again in this scandal when it comes to people surrounding the president and even the president himself this is something we saw from the very beginning from december 2017 when trump national security advisor mike flynn turned up in court pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors what mike flynn admitted to lying about, remember, was his contact with the russian government during the transition his contact with the russian government about u.s. sanctions on russia. what never made sense about flynn and him pleading guilty is
very large real estate deal in russia, trump tower moscow deal that would involve the permission of the russian government now we know that he and his business were pursuing that during the presidential campaign and the president says it s perfectly fine he was doing that after all, he s a real estate guy all over the world, that s what he does and as he says, everybody thought he would lose the presidential election so why should he forgo business opportunities that might otherwise elude him if he put his business career fully on hold while running for president. there was nothing wrong with him pursuing that deal that s what he says now. whatever you think about that explanation from president trump, [expletivexplanation woue held the same water during the campaign instead for months he explicitly lied and said he s not pursuing any deals in russia. it wasn t illegal. he has proved himself capable of
does it matter, barb, if the attempted intimidation or pressure does it matter if it works? it does i m asking because of michael cohen cancelling his testimony this past week before congress, saying that he was too intimidated by the president s remarks. he felt that his family was in defense of marriage act. yeah, actually, it doesn t matter whether it works or not even the attempt alone is enough so even if the person stands firm and decides to go through with it anyway, what the person did to try to intimidate them, to persuade them not to testimony is itself a completed crime. when you look at this indictment today, barb, obviously one of the things that jumped out for me is that it appears mr. stone had never had any contact with the special counsel s office before this indictment today he was charged with lying to congress and with witnessing tampering with a witness who could potentially undo the allegedly false cover story that he gave to congress. that really
country and off every moment of tv news in the country was not just what was going on at that moment with his already convicted campaign chairman, it also moved this. the indictment of the president s long-time friend and longest serving political advisor, the self-promoting republican party roger stone we will be talking about the end of the shutdown tonight at the moment that the president declared the end of the shutdown today. it displaced from the headlines momentarily this indictment. roger stone was actually it turns out indicted yesterday under seal the special counsel s office requested that the federal court in d.c. keep that indictment secret yesterday, keep it under seal until stone could be arrested this morning. quote, the united states of america by and through special counsel robert s. mueller the third respectfully moves this court to seal the indictment and arrest warrant and delay entry to seal all related matters