department look at this and not deem that the crime of something valuable on a political enemy, joe biden, being sought wasn t a crime worth investigating? so it is useful to step back and think about what does the public know that has been issued by the department of justice on that issue about what is a thing of value in a campaign finance charge? and the only thing that i know that is public on that comes from the mueller report. where you have the former number two in the solicitor general s office saying that a thing of value this is all public, everybody can read it in black and white is it can be a thing of value and cites the law for the fact that that law should be interpreted broadly. and it also makes common sense, as anyone in the business knows, it is a thing of value. you make ads out of it. you put mailers out of it. so how did the justice department not? so we don t know the answer to that.
good evening. glen, i want to start big and wide. what does it tell you about the issues beyond the actual narrow case against mr. stone that these prosecutors including a former mueller prosecutor are ladling out to the trial and thus to the public these bigger leads from the e-mails? yeah, a couple of take-aways, ari, if we kind of full back to 30,000 feet. one was that i thought steve bannon s testimony yesterday was pretty remarkable. when he said that roger stone was the trump campaign s access point to julian assange and wikileaks. that was his characterization. now, it had to be pulled out of him. he tried to back away from it, and he had to be shown his grand jury transcript to be reminded your description, mr. bannon, was that roger stone was the access point. that really does connote just a
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justice department opening arguments that they made today about an hour long presentation. it was made in a very layman way for the jurors. right, simple. who are coming into this probably pretty darn for people watching this who may not be that concerned with this case s outcome, how rare is it for the justice department to go out of its way to say something, and this is a mueller prosecutor speaking, not just anybody and say something that suggests trump lied to mueller? yeah, that s pretty remarkable. clearly president trump and attorney general bill barr have been on a lot of the same pages since the mueller probe ended, what, about seven or eight months ago now, but aaron zelinsky who is a key part of the robert mueller investigation clearly remembers the investigation and everything that they ve put together, all the evidence that they collected, he had an opportunity today to lay it all out there. put all the cards out there. it felt to me watching this like a cliff no
turning now to an extraordinary development inside a courtroom in washington today featuring opening arguments in the trial of roger stone. prosecutors with the trump justice departments laying out a case suggesting president trump may have committed a new crime in office by lying to the mueller probe. this was all part of the blockbuster opening statement by former mueller prosecutor himself aaron zelinsky now a regular do j, line prosecutor. he s telling jurors they can convict stone for lying to congress because stone lied about the fact that he twice spoke to trump before the 2016 election, something trump shot down by telling mueller i have no recollection of any communication with stone. we ve heard allegations trump was lying about that before. what s new here is that it is trump s own justice department insisting that it s false in