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
the special counsel, gates has already admitted to plaegd guilty to all these crimes. this is the way it goes. what s important is that at the end of the day this morning you had e-mails and they were between gates and manafort and they re all about moving this money to avoid taxes. and you have gates explaining those. at the end of the day the fact that gates lied about things, does that mean he s not telling the truth when you have the physical documents i guess that s the point. he s almost a cherry on the top but you already have the documents to show it. it s a roller coaster to the end when the prosecutor and the government puts all that together. as you look at it in mueller s decision obviously to put gates on the stand, you think gates may not have taken such a big hit today. yeah. i think what he saw actually in the cross-examination was entirely consistent in some ways with the tale that he was telling yesterday on direct examination, that this was that this was
trusted adviser, a trusted fixer turn on you. so if you re sort of looking at this investigation right now thinking what could maikel cohen deliver on donald trump given his years of working sort of as, you know, donald trump s rick gates, this could be a pretty devastating push if the president faces michael cohen turning on him. after michael cohen faces serious tax or bank fraud charges, which is what he s been reported to be under investigation for. because those are very serious charges and, again, charges that can come pretty much with just some paper research and indictments. which harry, gets us to the point if mueller sits down sxint views with the president he said it could be about obstruction of justice. he has explicitly not said, right? it s not about any kind of fraud. but to the point garrett s making, that doesn t mean that they may not be looking at that with the president of the united states himself.
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