federal crimes. and i would hope that federal judge, mr. ellis, doesn t overlook that. and you mentioned rudy giuliani and we ve seen these statements after statements after statement, some cleaning up the previous ones from rudy giuliani about the stormy daniels case. i guess what do you what do you make of that? are you shocked to have seen something like this happen from somebody like rudy giuliani in politics for a long time and a federal prosecutor, worked with federal agents in new york city after 9/11 and so on, what do you think? i think rudy giuliani, who shoots from the hip a lot, really shot from the lip this time. in his mind, he was trying to clear the decks of the obstruction of justice charge. but in doing is, and the way he did it, he made everything worse. for one, he finally revealed that it was president trump himself who reimbursed his lawyer mr. cohen for the $130,000 of hush money to sto
olly. breaking news as president trump ramps up his criticism of robert mueller s investigation going off script during a speech to the national rifle association. president declared i love fighting these battles and read the crowd a reports of a judge complaint that mueller s team seems to be getting out of out to get the president. let s get to our specialist and to jeffrey toobin first. what do you make of what the judge said today? did that surprise you at all? it was unusually harsh. it was unusually harsh and a bad day for the mueller team which is not had many bad days in court. but it is not really the bad day the way you might think about it. the odds that judge ellis are going to dismiss the case are remote. if you look at the law, it just doesn t seem like the judge has
any basis on which to dismiss the complaint. however, good days like this make manafort let likely to plead guilty and cooperate. and that is a problem for the mueller office. because clearly that is something that they want. the other reason a day like this is a problem is that it contributes to the pollicization of the office. like it or not, that it creates the impression that they are out to get trump, they are out to get republicans and that is not a healthy thing for this office, fair or not. so i don t think there is any sort of fatal damage in the works lear here but this is certainly not a good day for the mueller office. and it worked to his advantage. lets a let s take a listen here. reporter: jud judge ellis, who is very respected, suggested the charges before the u.s. district court
he s been getting beaten up in the federal charges here in washington. but this judge ellis down in virginia, he raised some questions about in particular a bank fraud charge that manafort is facing one of 18 counts in alexandria, virginia and here is a couple of quotes. that this investigation is become about the president and he said you don t really care about mr. manafort s bank fraud. he said, this is about trump s prosecution or impeachment. that is what you re really interested in. and he also said that essentially that the the council that the special counsel had too much power and said we don t want anybody in this kiernts with unfettered power and it is unlikely you ll going to persuade me that the special counsel has power to do anything he or she wants. and of course, president trump took up the charge there from the judge and he was addressing the nra convention today and he enjoyed what the judge had to
those intervening months is illegal, essentially. and so the judge really for the first time here challenging the special counsel and said the special counsel had to turn over to him, the judge, a copy of this unredacted memo because so far the only version that we ve seen in public is one that is heffel he heff illy redact and then we ll see what he decides to do with it. evan perez, thank you so much. and let s get more from congressman gerry connelly. good to be with you. does judge ellis have a point when he goes after the special counsel office saying that essentially they want to impeach the president and will do whatever they can i think that was an outrageous statement from the bench. i don t think any judge should be saying that kind of thing. robert mueller has impeccable credentials. he s a republican.