It does not get into 16. He only managed for about four months in the summer of 2016. Harris why do you think bob mueller is perched . For the reasons that this judge has said, what you only one Paul Manafort, you are only squeezing him, the judges phrase, they do not speak this way from the bench. Harris this judge has been very candid. Very colorful, you are only squeezing Paul Manafort because he want him to testify against the president. The response to that is we are lawyers and we have ethical duties. We are prosecutors. If we find evidence of crimes, we must pursue that criminality whether it is our original mission or not, that is a truthful statement of the obligation, they can pursue it themselves or pass it on and have their pursuit. Harris you are judge looking at this case, how much time could Paul Manafort face . Thats where the pressure comes in, right . He could be convicted to 60
years in jail, exposed to more, but thats what it will come down to if he is convicted of
president. harris: thank you very much. let s bring in james freeman, assistant editor of the editorial page, author of the brand-new book borrowed time great to see you. there has been a lot of breaking news in your paper in the last hour or so, you have to michael cohen tax fraud investigation going on. but i want to talk specifically about where we are with a sitdown interview and you know, i have been reporting based on what we know that once robert mueller would get to the president we might see a quick wrap up, so it is easy to understand why the president might want to sit down. yes, i think this is part of a negotiation that is been going on for a while, maybe we are thinking that it is not going to wrap up so soon if there is an impasse, the question of kenny obstruction questions be written or do they have to be done in the life interview, and it seemed like he recently had said, okay, some of them can be written, but he won some
of come to the conclusion that there s you know, a serious obstruction of justice investigation going on. you know, into the president s motives. zbllt president s lawyers making the case that there was no obstruction of justice here. i want to go to one element of the writer from the new york times, some remarkable reporting here, don mcgann, the white house counsel explained to the president that even by firing james comey, that would not end the russia investigation. and according to the times, the president s response there was that he knew that. but he still felt that he had to fire him. could that still be one element of the defense for the president that there was no obstruction of justice, that he acknowledged that by firing comey, he wasn t going to stop the russia investigation? i think that s one of the arguments of the president s lawyers, would use in the event that this became a big issue. but there s also a great deal of confusion that was bred from the chaos in th
to say? was it after he talked to holt on tv and admitted this is a case where you have trump doing something nixon never did. instead of shooting himself in the foot, he shot himself in the head and it s metaphorical but it s critical. do you think rosenstein should recuse himself? if there is any evidence that this investigation is about obstruction of justice in the firing of jim comey, then he has to. i mean, that is a direct conflict. but i took rod s strange tweet he didn t tweet. the statement from last night about not believing the leaks and the unsubstantiated sources and unknown sources that we shouldn t trust those, i took that to mean that there wasn t an obstruction of justice investigation going on. we have president trump added another lawyer to his team. i discussed it in the last segment. plus, we ve seen a number of
do you think rosenstein should recuse himself? if there is any evidence that this investigation is about obstruction of justice in the firing of jim comey, then he has to. i mean, that is a direct conflict. but i took rod s strange tweet he didn t tweet. that was the president that strangely tweeted. the statement from last night about not believing the leaks and the unsubstantiated sources and unknown sources that we shouldn t trust those, i took that to mean that there wasn t an obstruction of justice investigation going on. we have president trump added another lawyer to his team. i discussed it in the last segment. plus, we ve seen a number of associates of the president lawyering up. and there they are. what does that tell you? well, first of all, because of what bob mueller is doing by adding a dozen lawyers to his team, this is an expanding investigation and the response to that is, as you would expect, those who think that they may be in the crosshairs of this