A news and interview program, anchored by Erin Burnett. Have Breaking News about President Trumps former Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort. His righthand man rick gates face a grueling crossx admitting to an afarks a secret life, and lie after lie about money. And the question now is who will jurors believe, the acued liar Paul Manafort or the admitted Liar Rick Gates . Cara scan nell is outside the courthouse. How did it go for manafort . Well, manafort was really trying to put Rick Gates On Trial today. His Defense Lawyers were Hammering Gates about his lies about his admitted lies to the special counsels office, about false filings and Bank Accounts that gate had done in his own personal life, and really they were putting the focus on whether he embezzled from Paul Manafort. And there was a bit of a jockeying between gates and manaforts Defense Lawyer about where the money came from. Gates was not making many admissions. At various times he said he couldnt recall things whereas on dir
point. this is one of the more effective parts of the defense cross today, was just the fact that there s no honor among thieves. they re both right? manafort is sitting there accused of bank fraud and tax fraud and gates is admitting not only to that but also to having stolen money from the person who s having him steal money. it s sort of like this very complex web of deceit. it s pretty incredible. garrett, we re also learning that federal prosecutors tonight are now investigating michael cohen, trump s former lawyer, for tax fraud, right? which is exactly what we re talking about with rick gates and paul manafort. you now have three people from the trump inner circle during the campaign under scrutiny, charged or have actually pleaded guilty to the charges of tax fraud. does this mean mueller is zeroing in on the president himself? well, it s hard to say. obviously the michael cohen investigation is by the southern district of new york. a separate investigation. but where you
he s trying to pin on manafort were in fact done by gates without manafort knowing. if manafort didn t know about this, maybe there are other things he didn t know about. i think that s actually a good line of cross-examination because it doesn t just say hey, this is a bad guy. if he s a bad guy, paul manafort s partner for all these years was a bad guy. you need to if you re the defense show why he s lying about the crime. so ann, to this point the jury s not just watching gates. they re also watching the judge. according to the washington post, at the end of the day today gates said what all of the accountants and bookkeepers and landscapers and mercedes-benz dealers have said, which is that manafort was in charge and he kept a close eye on things. but the judge, judge ellis, interrupted and said, he didn t know about the money you were stealing. sew didn t do it that closely. now, this comes from the judge. obviously, we know this judge reprimanded the prosecution, has repeat
a tremendous amount of impeachment material. sought start of the cross-examination usually involves something like what we saw today from kevin downing. so ann, the defense, you know, they forced manafort to repeat that he lied to the special counsel. let s just be honest here. because we don t lie. 20 times he met with the special counsel. 20 times. before they agreed to do a deal. which means he lied a whole lot to bob mueller before he decided to stop lying to bob mueller. he admitted to stealing from manafort, helping manafort cheat on his taxes, said he may have taken money from the inaugust ralt committee funds which there s a brig brouhaha over where that money went because there s no trail. lied to his wife, had an affair. on and on. was it way good idea for gates to go on the stand? i think harry s point is exactly right which is this is like a roller coaster. yesterday you saw just gates on the stand with the prosecutor going through all this evidence. it looks like wow, th
the day unfolded. we re xpth cross-examination to continue tomorrow when court begins. that could go for about an hour, erin. all right, kara, thank you very much. kara will be in that room again tomorrow. and now let s go to harry sandek, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. ann milligram former prosecutor and former new jersey attorney general. and garrett grapher author of threat matrix inside bob mueller s fbi and the war on global territory. the manafort attorney who questioned gates today, he was aggressive and he did a good job. his name is ken down sxug know him. you used to work with him. as he left court today he said, mr. manafort had a great day. do you agree? well, it s hard to know to say this is a great day. there was in the morning a lot of very incriminating evidence being laid out. the cross-examination, it s never a surprise that the defendant comes right at the cooperating witness. and that s because the government by federal l