actually serving the population that really is representative of that district now. and gene, joe crowley had the kinds of problems that people who have hung around these offices for too long sometimes pick up, stories about a relative who is a lobbyist and perhaps gaining some benefits in his lobbying activity because of that. whenever you have a fresh challenger to an incumbent who hasn t even had to get in the boxing ring. right. right. in a couple of decades, it s always ripe for an upset. right. it has to be sort of a perfect storm, and it was. obviously, one element of this has to be that crowley didn t pay enough attention to this race. but nonetheless, he raised a lot of money and he certainly outraised and outspent ocasio-cortez. look, she talked about issues that resonated with the voters
should possibly shield cohen on that front unless cohen was specifically promising some sort of outcome on the deal. that s an interesting point. and so, you know, for this to be a lobbying act violence, you wou violation wrour have to have cohen engaging in lobbying activity and that s not clear right now. at&t s first, one of their several press releases that they put out said they use this vague term for insights into the president. i guess there s no law in providing insight. which, if michael cohen wasn t conflicted working for the president, it is normal. 100%. you might think it s shady. totally right. you might think it s swampy, but it s norm tool hire foam help you understand especially if they were an outside liar like trump was. if he were an exlawyer, i would totally understand it. the fact that he stills works for the president of the united states and then was, would for
to you, these charges, do they signal where the investigation is going? we saw new charges come in against paul manafort. not in terms of new counts, but new narrative about some of his lobbying activity with further extensive relationships with european politicians, which is sort of some interesting intrigue. other thing that s new is in the virginia indictment, talked about how paul mrt seemed to be sort of desperately trying to generate cash by getting false mortgages and loans on some of his properties. when you will couple that with some of the reporting we ve seen already about offering a free briefing to a russian oligarch about the trump campaign and perhaps owing a large debt to a russian oligarch, it does suggest that all of these financial crimes might be related to links to russia as well. okay. so joyce, manafort released a statement. here s what it said, not with standing that rick gates pled guilty, i continue to maintain my innocence. i had hoped and expected my bus
until there is some thaw in their media coverage. but viewers don t want to hear that. we want to know the answers. that s true. i think sometimes, not at cnn pleased to say, but that leads to speculation. you hear what is mueller doing? is mueller thinking? i want to be very judicious in answering those questions because sometimes you have to say the three words that are never allowed on cable news and those are, i don t know. and sometimes i just say i don t know. what are the biggest unknowns heading into 2018? you mentioned the possibility of more indictments. what are other big questions? they break into three areas. the first is financial and, you know, is there some sort of financial i m pmpropriety and lobbying activity. in that case for ukraine. the broad question of was there
presidents political opponents. shady does not begin to describe this operation. even some of his own employees thought the whole thing was disgusting. today s indictment confirms our reporting on this, it describes the center for modern ukraine as a fake organization, merely a mouthpiece for the ukrainian president, yanukovych. it also confirms that the lobbying groups he hired in washington, including tony podesta s knew perfectly well that it was fake when they signed onto represented. according to the fence, his company was called explicitly they would be lobbying on behalf of the ukrainian president. in november 2012, the indictment says, manafort s business partner explicitly requested reports on lobbying activity by both those companies so that he could brief the president of ukraine. it couldn t get dirtier. but despite apparently knowing they were acting as foreign agents, agents of a foreign government, the podesta group