the ukrainian president eventually fled his own country to russia and to the safety of his friend, vladimir putin, in february of 2014. all the while continuing to be advised by paul manafort. manafort first hit the fbi s radar when the agency began looking into possible corruption and money laundering involving yan covirgin islands federal agents also discovered martin martin and two other consulting groups working with the ukrainians failing to register that work with the u.s. government, a violation of the u.s. foreign agents registration act his company was paid more than $17 million in just two years by the ukrainian political party. we talked about it and he felt i could help him and he made the changes the. reporter: in march of 2016 donald trump brought paul manafort onto the campaign, soon
money charges against paul manafort but a surprise revelation, george pep adopt lus pleaded guilty earlier this month making a false statements to the fbi. his e-mails related to the arrest came out today, couple of things we did not know until now. they provided key points along a time line that robert mueller could possibly build a case that team trump colluded with russia to win the election. ood suggestion that george may have been wearing a wire. we have correspondents covering all the angels tonight. we begun with manu raju on george. what have you been learning? that s true joining the campaign in march 15, george had a meeting with a london base
white house downplayed his role in the company, he graduated in 2009, got a master s degree in london afterwards. the president singled him out in a washington post interview called him an excellent guy. manu, it s also important to point out, after he was arrested and admitted he had lied, he cooperated with the fbi right if. yeah, and that could be significant. we don t know how significant quite yet. the fact he is cooperating with the fbi could signal there was a lot more to this investigation going forward. we don t know the extent of his context. everybody in the trump universe, we tried a number of occasions to reach out to the highest level to the trump campaign and also got some responses. his involvement may be more extensive than we know right
we know also that some of the interviews you were under way. so the fbi is comparing what the interview he s were saying with the data. what i m saying is when jim comey walked into some of those conversation with the president that he knew already some of the president s advisers had liesd to the fbi. that s a federal violation. he already knew the trump team was in trouble. remember, papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the fbi on january 27th july. no. january 27th. that s when he pleaded guilty in july. his statement to the fbi was in january. jim comey wasn t even named until may. so this investigation had been preceding for months. and you have to give the fbi credit. they knew who to ask and what to ask way back in january. and, you know, that suggests that they had accumulated, as phil was saying a good deal of information even before comey
group did. general flynn has a son in the game and and tlaid go after his son as well. and they would go after his son. it s in the dna of every parent to try to protect their child and i think that s going to be part of the reason we see the possibility of flynn cooperating. lauren you wanted to say something? the time line here can t be missed, the efforts by the white house are beginning to try to discredit mueller and people believe that mueller engaged in witch hunt that was accused of him many many months ago when he took the office in may. well, you d have to discredit the fbi not just mueller and his team, but the investigation of the probe before he took the office of special counsel. to do that would have to derail the trust in the executive branchs own action, the department of justice and the fbi. and we were talking a great deal