manafort and rick gates. these men are under indictment for money laundering charges and failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. this lawyer has pleaded guilty to making a false statement about his conversations with gates and what experts tell me, witnesses lie to investigators all the time. they don t often prosecute and file these charges. they do so when they want something out of the witness. it stands to reason this young lawyer has something to give about paul manafort and rick gates because the ultimate end game is for mueller to flip manafort and get him to talk about what he knows about potentially collusion between the trump campaign and russia. i believe the domino theory in this case. they ll go to vander zaun to get gates, to get to manafort and trump. that s the dominos right across. they re doing a careful job following the facts. in this instance we have a plea deal with somebody who lied to the special prosecutor days
against trump s former campaign chairman. even if you were to fire mueller, which i don t think he will, that indictment is still there. that case still has to go to trial. this investigation now has so much momentum that it s pointless to think about that indictment sorry. right now is not necessarily campaign related. think mller is trying to flip manafort. i m sure he is trying to flip him but remember, that indictment charges a conspiracy that includes the time when manafort was the campaign chairman. so to say it s unrelated i think is not well i think it s just wrong. this is the campaign manager talking about. the the person brought in that summer to make sure there s no rebellion within the republican convention. it is automatically campaign related. he s accused of covering up
be good because even his supporters are not happy with his tweets. as to manafort, i think it s also important to keep in mind when we look at how aggressive mueller is being that he may be trying to flip manafort. so that depends on whether manafort actually has some interesting knowledge of some of these actions. we don t know that because he wasn t there during some of the key times. but he does have, from everything that we ve learned about him, some very potential legal liabilities in terms of money laundering and foreign representation that could get him in legal trouble so that there s a good way to pressure him. they have some leverage if he has knowledge. and that may be what all this is about. hey, elisabeth, that s quote in let s call it robert s paper, about people are going to wish they d been nicer to sean is so washington.
aggressively to flip manafort. i want to ask you more about other new york times reporting, specifically the comment by ty cobb, the president s attorney, specifically brought into a deal with the questions about russia. he said that the white house counsel, don mcgahn, has a couple documents locked in a safe. what kind of information would mcgahn have in a safe that he wouldn t be sharing with the rest of the legal team? well, i will tell you my first thought was something from an earlier new york times piece where they talked about how don mcgahn saw an early draft of a letter that stephen miller wrote at the direction of the president about why he wanted to fire james comey. and what the new york times had said in that earlier story is that mcgahn had deleted parts of that letter, had edited that letter, and had comments he put in that letter with his advice. that would be extraordinarily important evidence for mueller because it would tell mueller what advice the presiden
letter it s very likely they will indict him unless he decides to cooperate. go ahead. yeah. i have a very similar answer. what i would say is that this indicates both to me. it certainly indicates, as john said, that mueller is intending to indict manafort, but the fact that he is telegraphing that to manafort in an aggressive way is something that is fairly commonly done in my experience when you are trying to flip someone. and so really one thing that i took from that new york times story is that mueller is trying very aggressively to flip manafort. okay. let s talk i want to ask you more about other new york times reporting, specifically the comment by ty cobb, the president s attorney specifically brought in to a deal with the questions about russia. he said that the white house counsel done mcgahn has a couple documents locked in a safe. what kind of information would