Takes the stand in the trial of former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort. Will the jury hear what rick gates has already revealed to prosecutors . Im wolf blitzer. Youre in the situation room. Breaking news. The governments key witness is now testifying in the trial of the former trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort. That comes as President Trump is urged to stop tweeting about that 2016 Trump Tower Meeting between his top advisers including manafort and several russians. A source tells cnn is president is told his tweets are only giving oxygen to the topic. That followed the president s stunning Weekend Admission via twitter that the meeting indeed was about getting dirt on Hillary Clinton which he insists was totally legal. Ill speak with congressman and
correspondents and specialists with full Coverage Lets First Go To Chief White House Correspondent jim acosta covering the president in new jersey. Hes letting his twitter fingers do the talking. Reporter absolutely, wolff of. The pre
statement. i talked about that before. reporter: a key question that remains, whether the president knew about the meeting s true purpose ahead of time. do you tell your father anything about this? no. it was such a nothing. there was nothing to tell. reporter: despite that, the president s top advisers defend the characterization that the russian investigation is a hex. the issue for the president i think is the political argument made by the opponents that somehow he conspired with the russians and helped him defeat hillary clinton and thinks that s the hoax. that s what i understand it to be. reporter: now, as for the worries inside the president s team about the tweeting, there s been concerns inside mr. trump s team of legal advisers for sometime now. a past attorney recalled ty cobb stepped down in part from the position over this concern about the president s tweets on the
he clearly had knowledge based on the e-mailed shared with the american people and president trump has a right to be concerned about his son s liability and then the expected testimony of michael cohen, that is very, very concern for the president i m sure. do you think the president s son donald trump jr. could be indicted? well, i don t think there s any question based on what we know that he greed to meet with a foreign national for dirt on an opponent, a representative or got that information from the russian government as part of an effort to help mr. trump and hurt hillary clinton. there s enough evidence there certainly to present this information to a grand jury. obviously mr. mueller and the grand jury will make that determination. on the face, this is prima fascia evidence of a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws and with donald trump jr. s admissions of knowing the purpose of the meeting based on
son donald trump jr. expected to get out of that meeting? reporter: you re right. they have changed the story multiple times and misleading multiple times and had to withdraw from that, retrieve from that when evidence to the contrary s gone public. let s go back to more than a year ago when the e-mails leading up to the june 2016 trump tower meeting revealed. in that first e-mail june 3rd, a quote from it coming from rob goldstone, helped arrange the meeting and wrote to donald trump jr. describing the purpose as follows. this is obviously very high level and sensitive information and part of russia and the government support for mr. trump. so very clear expression there that the russians as far as the trump campaign was concerned were going to give dirt on hillary clinton and also that phrasing there that this is part of the russian government support for trump and we know more about that now based on
happens, it raises very serious questions about his knowledge of this meeting and then add to it michael cohen s expected testimony that the president knew about this. this is a very, very disturbing set of events. the president and the team as you know misleading on this meeting for months now. why do you think he s finally admitting to the real purpose for the meeting after more than a year? well, i mean, i think it s very clear that the president s concerned about this meeting as he should be. i think he s concerned about his son s exposure. donald trump jr. e-mailed with rob goldstone who said, you know, we have dirt on hillary clinton. this is part of the russian government s effort to help mr. trump. he said i love it. so there s a lot of evidence that donald trump jr. knew what the meeting was about when he agreed to do it. fact they didn t produce stuff, i don t know whether that s true or not is irrelevant. this is a conspiracy to violate the campaign finance laws.