new reporting by the new york times today raises a jaw dropping question. here it goes. did the trump administration trade favors to ukraine and sell them weapons in exchange for shutting down investigations into paul manafort? according to the times, after the u.s. approved the sale of anti-tank missiles to ukraine earlier this year, the country froze four cases involving the former trump campaign chair manafort and allowed con tan steen kilimnik a potential witness to the russia probe to leave for russia. kilimniking is an old colleague of manafort who the mueller investigation identified as a russian spy. manafort e-mailed him about his work on the trump campaign asking how do we use ovd
it looks horrible because at at very least, the message the trump administration is sending out, the tone they re setting is you know, it s like what you said in your first segment. he s not standing there with a bat but he might as well be. i don t think there was some explicit black channel that said we ll give you x for y. donald trump has a kind of, he s very good at where other people s leverage is and making these kinds of sort of tacit deals in some ways that s the big question that hangs over the entire russian collusion thing. so much of the manafort story and the story around this investigation ultimately do route through ukraine. ukraine is central. manafort you mentioned konstantin kilimnik his associate in ukraine, august 2nd, two weeks before manafort was fired from his role as chairman of the trump campaign, because it was believed his
for rod rosenstein is under control. but i think at this point, we kind of all just need to stand behind him and you know, when he says the justice department will not be extorted, that is exactly what he should be saying and that is exactly what the stand he should be taking at this point. benjamin and natasha, great to have you both. for more on the campaign against the justice department by the president as allies in congress, i m joined by david cicilline, a member of the house judiciary committee. your colleagues are requesting that unredaktd document from rod rosenstein which would lay out the scope of special counsel s investigation. what do you think that s not appropriate? well, it s an absurd request. the idea that you would ask an investigator to turn over a document that describes the scope of the investigation when these are individuals who are acting on behalf of the president who is the subject of
the investigation. it s an absurdity. i think what they did was in making that request they are beginning to try to continue their effort to really undermine the special counsel with this crazy notion of impeachment articles. this is part of a larger campaign of the white house and many of the president s allies in congress to undermine the justice department, to undermine rod rosenstein to, call into question the legitimacy of this investigation. i think this is just the most recent example of it. it s very, very dangerous, completely disappointing. these republicans have taken on the role of being the president s protector rather than protecting the independent counsel, the integrity of the investigation apartment department of justice. do you think they re actively at the staff level or principal level coordinating with the white house? i mean, it s hard to know that. it s hard to know that. but there were some reports maybe the white house played some role in helping to put thi
as they can to find ways they can please the president by attacking the investigation and the department of justice. they have the an oversight responsibility. they ve completely abandoned that in favor of basically being an advocate for the president. and it s really undermining rule of law in this country, certainly undermining their functions as a member of congress and disappointing. > do you think they re making requests intentionally knowing they ll be rejected to lay a predicate for impeaching or moving against rosenstein? i think anyone who knows anything about the way investigations are conducted would know this is an absurd surd request and, of course, it wouldn t be granted. you have to wonder why did they do it. and i think the answer is they expected it would be deny aden looing for a reason to attack rod rosenstein to create some doubt about lis legitimacy as an independent counsel. the work that the investigation is doing. and this is part of a pattern we ve seen for m