Charges related to bank fraud, tax charges. So this is the moment where this courtroom will now finally be hearing from manaforts essentially his number two, his former right hand man, rick gates. And gates is the prosecutions key witness. He will be the next person to testify. Lets go first to cnns caris beganel. She is just outside the courtroom in alexandria, virginia. Tell me, when will this happen . Mere minutes . We have one more witness to finish testified today. Thats manaforts accountant. Rick gates is the witness thats up next. Many of thes attorney said that in court. This all came about as one of manaforts attorneys sort of dropped a bombshell alleging that rick gates embezzleled millions of dollars from Paul Manafort. He asked the accountant would that have been something she would have looikd to have known. She said she would. He teed all of it up by making
it appear that rick gates was the main person he dealt with. And he tried to suggest through his questioning of her
Was actually dictated by President Trump himself, saying this, we primarily discussed a program about the adoption of russian children. With no mention of dirt on Hillary Clinton. It wasnt until the New York Times was going to break the story that trump junior was promised damaging information on clinton back in july of last year. That was the New York Times reporting. At the time, trump junior and the trump team started changing their tune, saying the promise of damaging information turned into mainly an adoption conversation. They get into the meeting, and it quickly turns a pretext for Russian Adoption, according to his statement. The comments are about any type of information on Hillary Clinton were vague, meaningless. As you can see from the emails, the pretext of the meeting was, hey, we have information. There was some small talk. I dont even remember what it was. It was sort of nonsensical. Then it quickly went on to, you know, a story about Russian Adoption and how we could po
Michael Smerconish tackles the American political and news stories of the week, offering only one kind of talking points his own. The times, by the way, standing by her hire saying they understood her twitter past and understand it for what it was. We had candid conversations with sarah as part of the thorough vetting process which included a review of her social media history. She understands this rhetoric is not acceptable at the times and we are confident she will be an important voice for the Editorial Board moving forward. Interestingly, the fact that the times already knew about her tweets is significant due to another hire in february, quinn norton. When some of miss nortons old tweets surfaced which included racial slurs and an Internet Troll which works for a neonazi website she ended stepping down that same day. In that case, it had not been aware of her tweets before it hired her. We reached out to miss jeong, but we were told she was unavailable. Go to smerconish. Com and a
So we know she met with muellers team. Do we have any idea what they asked her . We dont right now, anderson. What was asked by muellers team to davis. But we know this woman, as you said, known as the manhattan madam voluntarily spoke with investigators. And what she knows and how she fits isnt exactly clear. But sources tell cnn muellers team would like her to testify in front of a grand jury. This really points to the fact that the Special Counsel seems to be focusing on stone as they continue this Overarching Investigation into russias interference in the 2016 election. And davis really has a very close relationship with stone. Theyve known each other for a decade. Stone is the godfather to davis 2yearold son. Stone put davis on his payroll. And conversely, when davis made a new york gubernatorial run, stone worked on her campaign. Perhaps she has information on his finances, his connections, his friendships, any other personal life matters. We should mentioned, anderson, that ston
She joins us now. What did these emails between butina and gordon reveal . Yeah, they showed that the two met at an embassy event, a party at the Swiss Embassy in late september 2016. So really in the final weeks of the Trump Campaign. And then paul erickson, the republican operative who she was apparently dating kind of connected the two of them over email, and they show that the fact that j. D. Gordon had this trump tie appeared to be important to the email relationship that they then struck up. Paul erickson referred to the fact that he was an important person likely in a trump transition, and then j. D. Gordon himself sent back to ms. Butina at some point a copy of a story from politico noting that he had a role in the trump transition. And there was an invitation from gordon to her to attend a concert as well as his Birthday Party in the fall of 2016 . Yeah, thats right. They have a series of emails. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and inv