importantly his brand-new book is called the soul of america, the battle for our better angels. and we re happy to report it s on a lot of nightside tables across this country tonight. jon, before you even begin, i want to go to a quote from a fellow tennessean, a man whose words, if you were of age during the watergate hearings, most americans were able to quote this passage from memory and are still able today. this is senator howard baker, republican of tennessee. my primary thesis is still what did the president know, and when did he know it? so, jon, other than rocking a seersucker suit as so many tennesseans have learned to do, you re asked all the time how is this similar to watergate? how is it unlike watergate? there is your setup. right. well, there s legal time and there s political time. and robert mueller, like archibald cox, like leon jaworski, is moving according to a more geological clock than the politics or the media would like it to be. senator baker there, y
both washington, d.c. and the commonwealth of virginia. the charges range from tax evasion to bank fraud. manafort has pleaded notably not guilty. he s slated to be tried later this year. jeffrey yohai was once a manafort business partner, was divorced from manafort s daughter last august. both reuters and nbc news are reporting mueller has been focusing on yohai for the past six months, and reuters says mueller s team has already interviewed him. meanwhile, there are also developments in robert mueller s fight to keep the judge in paul manafort s virginia case from tossing out some of the charges. today mueller s team gave the judge a full, unedited version of the justice department memo that lays out the scope of this inquiry and what crimes he is authorized to pursue. as we mentioned, the president weighed in today on twitter on the russia inquiry. here it is. congratulations, america. we are now into the second year
colleagues pointed out in the piece, it has ripped the shingles off the fbi. absolutely. jill, to the point michael just made, what has worked in quotes for the right in the past, does their choice to zone in on this talking point tonight, effective tonight, does that speak to you of confidence or a desire to grab a hold of the next shiny object? well, look, i mean this is convenient timing for them. rudy giuliani has been saying for the last couple of weeks that he wanted to really highlight this is thursday. this is the one-year anniversary of the mueller probe, and they were looking for things to be able to kind of make a big deal of this and to try to drive home to the american people that this is a hoax, that this is a witch hunt just like the president was saying this morning. so this is a convenient thing for them to grab on. but i agree with what michael was saying earlier, with the idea that they really have been kind of throwing things against the wall here, trying to fin
else more senior than him like maybe jared kushner or donald trump jr., or he has to hope and wait for a pardon. those are his only options because the weight of the evidence against him is pretty serious. yeah, it s not looking good. counselor, i m going to give you the last word after reading this to you about how they intend to perhaps prep the president for sitting down with mueller. this is from politico. the planning meetings to be held during off hours at the white house and perhaps over games of golf at trump s private courses, giuliani said, will mirror trump s 2016 debate preparation in which aides briefed an impatient president in several brief sessions over many weeks. giuliani said the briefings would likely begin after trump returns from that june 12 summit in singapore with north korean leader kim jong-un if a mueller interview is agreed to. that s what i want to get you on. i don t know if you do predictions. do you think mueller and the president ever sit down as clo
they re seeing and what they re hearing when they go into a meeting in the oval office, and they just can t believe it. so they leak it. and i think that s a lot of what you get in the press today. and, matthew, this of course adds to a paranoia which has been kind of an operating thesis in that west wing you cover. that s exactly right. we know the president sort of feels this paranoia about the deep state or other leakers. but to touch on what jeremy said earlier, it is sort of a paranoia of back-stabbing in the west wing that leads to so many of these leaks happening. donald trump does not engender a lot of loyalty in his staff, either to him or to each other. so i think what leads to so many of these leaks is if you re worried that the only way to protect your own job is to leak negative things about your colleagues or you think they re leaking about you, so you have to fight back by leaking about them, it sort of creates this