written answers. he submitted those written answers before he was aware that mueller s team knew that manafort was lying. so whatever information manafort was sharing with trump potentially the circumstances have dramatically changed in the intervening weeks. remember, sara, to you, this cooperation only came after manafort was found guilty on a number of counts and then the president praised him as a good man, et cetera, after he was found guilty. so the suggest that some have made that perhaps there could have been, you know, a move by manafort to essentially fake cooperation with mueller s team, inform the president, hope for a pardon and in the interview with the washington post last night the president would not go on the record when asked about a potential pardon for manafort. that s as good a theory as any because why, if you are paul manafort, and you had vowed you were going to fight this investigation, you were going to fight this investigation would you then say, never m
this follows the bombshell news that the cooperation agreement between manafort and the special counsel has collapsed in spectacular fashion. robert mueller charges that the former trump campaign chair has breached his plea agreement by repeatedly lying to investigators. the stunning reversal comes with potentially devastating consequences for both manafort and mueller. for the special counsel, the more than two-year-old probe has now lost a key cooperating witness, and any information manafort provided is tainted. prosecuted can t credibly call someone to testify who they ve labeled a liar, after all. for manafort, mueller s filing means more prison time and possibly even more charges. in his plea, he promised to tell the government everything the special counsel wanted to hear, and he s made it clear that any promises of leniency are now null and void and that manafort could be prosecuted for even more crimes than what already put him behind bars. so the big question we re asking tod
kara scannell on the scene for us. joining us former federal prosecutor and legal analyst laura coates, and sara murray. the report is he s met multiple times now with mueller and his team, presumably provide something pretty useful information. s in a significant development. it is. i think one of the thing that will be interesting to see is whether the judge can fehr et out any details about just how much cooperation he s given, how useful he s been to prosecutors so far. we don t have a good sense right now of what kind of information manafort is providing mueller s team. we know he worked on the campaign during key moments, and he also had his own private interactions with a number of ukrainian officials and also ties to russians that we know that mueller is interested in. so it s a big question, what exactly mueller could be provides, but you pointed out it
obama white house counsel greg craig. prosecutors are now considering bringing charges against craig related to his lobbying work on behalf of a political group also associated with ukraine. craig, like manafort, is believed to have conducted the work without ever registering with the justice department as a foreign agent, something that s required by federal law. eric? eric: thanks so much. arthel? arthel: for more on the manafort plea deal and what it means to the russia investigation going forward, let s bring in david hawking, congressional expert and former senior editor at roll call. let s ask you first of all, can you add more to this story for us? what can you add in terms of what did manafort proffer? do we know and who might get stung by the information manafort is providing mueller? no, we don t know any of that yet. mueller s investigation has been really remarkably good at holding its cards to the vest until they are ready to put them
say, they will say the president s legal team isn t worried. they know everything he knows. there s been lots of communication between the president s lawyers and manafort s lawyer. they don t view the president as someone who would be in the cross hair based on any information manafort has. that said, you have to take that with a very sizable grain of salt because of the people who are making those assertions. it s important context here. what i think is important is that the prospect of a manafort pardon had always been something that was very much in the gray area. i spoke to a person close to the president who said that his view of the president s thinking was if the president was going to pardon manafort, it was after the 2020 re-election bid because it was so toxic. thank you all for joining us. coming up, the latest on tropical storm florence as the catastrophic storm moves along the east coast. we ll check in with reporters on the ground to get an update. supreme intrigue.