analyst jeffrey toobin and analyst michael zeldin who once worked for special counsel robert mueller in a different capacity. jeffrey be tooin , we talk about the developments, the fact that at this moment may be pleading guilty and may be cooperating, this could be the most significant development to dade date? i don t think there s any doubt it s the most significant because the only guilty plea so far has been george papadopolous, who i think everybody agrees is a fairly minor figure. michael flynn is anything but a minor figure. paul manafort is a major figure but he s only been indicted. they haven t proved he has committed anything, any crime, the fact that such a senior figure is pleading guilty is, obviously, of immense significance. historically as well as legally. let me just raise one point that i think is really important.
which he ended up stepping down from the campaign. that s exactly right. and this indictment says they re looking at activities between 2006 and 2017. so all the way through. great to see you. thank you so much. the panel is back with me to discuss this element of this and there s a lot to go through. it seems, you said it, jeffrey, this is you would know, i do not, this is a long indictment. it seems complicated reading it. it is. talk to me about these charges, though. you ve got conspiracy against the united states, conspiracy to launder money, misleading statement, false statements, failure to report. what does it all say? that s a good that s a good question. like what s the deal with this? what is the government saying he did wrong? yeah. the gist of it is that he was a representative of the ukrainen government at a time when it was very pro-putin. he was paid millions of dollars and he wanted to cover that up,
to figure, these are the first indictments coming down. if there are other indictments, which there undoubtedly will be, let s say hypothetically this one gets tried first and i agree with jeffrey, six months is an optimistic trial date, those subsequent indictments are probably going to push into late 2018, maybe even into 2019. so we re looking at a very long investigation. even though it appears that mueller is moving quickly. would you expect these to be the first charges out of the gate? well, once we knew that the fbi had executed a search warrant at manafort s house. right. you don t execute a search warrant at someone s house unless you have very good suspicion you can t get a search warrant unless the magistrate agrees that there is probable cause the way they did it. right. that there will be evidence of criminal activity there. we ve known he was investigating manafort in a serious way for a couple of months.
zeleny that the president did meet with white house lawyers this morning to go over these charges for manafort and rick gates and they weren t expecting to make a statement until they more fully grasp the scope of these charges. but it looks like the president is going ahead and making his own statements on twitter. now we are scheduled to hear from the press secretary, sarah sanders at a briefing at the white house, at 1:00 shortly before gates and manafort appear in court and we will likely hear more from them on that then unless, kate, the president tweets about it before then. and we will all we will stand by and see. already amazed he tweeted about it once already today about his former campaign chairman and what has happened. let s get to it right now. paul manafort and paul manafort is not here, paul callan is here. former prosecutor and cnn legal analyst, jeffrey be tooin is here cnn s chief legal analyst, chief correspondent jim sciutto joining us from washington. jef