2017? well, at that point, you know, paul manafort was still in contact with the trump administration and with the president, this investigation obviously hadn t yet unfolded the way it has, but it is you know, it is pretty egregious, and eye popping, i suppose, that manafort was continuing these talks and continuing to attempt to leverage this kind of influence and broker these deals so far into 2017, but again, we will, as you just said, we re going to find out all of the facts and what exactly paul manafort lied about come friday when mueller files this public memo, which i also think is significant in the fact, in the idea that, you know, manafort s lack of cooperation hasn t hampered the investigation as mueller is tieing up loose ends. to that point, the president has weighed in on a lot of
and could that question be answered in today s filings? that s a great question, in fact. w one of the things the white house will tell you it doesn t matter if he did ask jim comey to back off that investigation. they have made the assertion that the president s power is so unchallengeable in terms of running the executive branch, including the justice department that his statement to jim comey even as reported by jim comey would not be obstruction of justice. he does deny it. he s never admitted to it, but jim comey kept contemporaneous notes that were later provided to investigators, so he has something the president doesn t have, which is a document of that meeting. let me ask you, ken, really quickly about the defining two weeks we are in the middle of. when you look at the time line, you ve got friday, mueller gives more information on the busted plea agreement with paul manafort. you also have cohen s agreement, george papadopoulos expected to
in the last week or so, we ve learned about a lot of things that paul manafort allegedly was involved in, whether it be travel to london, discussions with the ecuadorian president, any of those facts may have been facts that he told to the special counsel s team and he may have disemabled about, he may have been incomplete about telling the truth. those all may have been facts that he didn t disclose that may have caused the special counsel to conclude that he was not a viable cooperating witness. is there any clear cut crime resulting from these discussions? not necessarily, but any kind of quid pro quo, any influence peddling, raises significant issues under federal criminal law that i think mueller s team will be looking at. but there isn t anything that radiates out immediately from the mere discussions with ecuadorian officials. so do you think it would be of any significance for the
as to why he s decided to weigh in on roger stone and other players in this investigation, i can t tell you. i can t explain to you the president s twitter impulses. i don t think anyone can, to be quite honest with you. let me ask you danny, really quickly about president trump and his praise for roger stone. we know that he, yesterday at least, had a tweet over the weekend i should say where he talked about julian assange. take a listen. i had no contact with assange. assange himself has said roger stone is a brilliant spin master. we ve had no communication with him whatsoever. so that was roger stone talking about julian assange, the president tweeting about roger stone. paul manafort s attorney saying that paul manafort had a meeting with ecuadorian president to discuss a possible deal regarding julian assange. why has julian assange become a central focal point of this investigation? because julian assange is the connection to wikileaks. wikileaks may be the connection to
mueller s team has already concluded that russians were involved and committed crimes involving the united states election. that is the nexus. roger stone may be telling the truth that he has had no contact, personal contact with julian assange. paul manafort may be telling the truth that he had no personal contact or never met julian assange but all the conspirators need not have personally met or signed an agreement or shook hands or even negotiated the terms of this agreement so long as a group of folks, more than two, get together and agree to some unholy alliance, they can all be held liable for all the other conspirators activities. to that point, there s been a lot of activity in washington, d.c. what is the mood like there with all of the deadlines that are approaching this week? well, obviously washington is preoccupied at the moment with