Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Whether a person is too close to the subject of the probe, whether Jeff Sessions would beak be more of a Trump Campaign surrogate who happened to be Attorney General rather than acting as an independent Law Enforcement officer. If sessions didnt recuse after that statement, it would have made him look even more like he was doing trumps bidding. And trump apparently didnt know that making that statement would also as just a general matter of embarrassment, make him look weak and out of the loop about a decision that was already done. Because there were reports that show the Internal Doj Process had already resulted in sessions accepting that nonpartisan Recusal Recommendation from the career staff earlier that week and that Jeff Sessions was already working with doj officials op writing the very rationale they would soon release to the public. In fact, it was barely an hour after trump put that public pressure on session
whether the prosecutors can use photographs of expensive suits as evidence. there were brand names that were greek to this judge. the judge said if it doesn t say men s wearhouse, i don t know it. that got something of a laugh. then what happened did not. we re showing you this because it matters legally. judge ellis hinting these pictures of manafort s very fancy suits may never get to the jury. the big curveball came when he starred questioning other evidence that pertained to rick gates. that s manafort s former deputy who mueller got to cooperate. gates testimony has the potential to be the most riveting pivotal portion of this trial. maybe of the whole mueller prosecution up to point. we re talking about the deputy campaign manager for donald trump who flipped. but look at this. judge ellis says you re going to offer up mr. gates, aren t you? . and mueller s prosecutor says your honor, we re not sure if we are. he may testify in this case, your honor.
they re trying to make paul manafort out like he s sean diddy coves and had fancy coats and fancy brands and that legally, there s not the problem. it s kind of unfair and what they really have to problem is that there was tax evasion. do you think the judge is hitting that right and fairly? i think he is. he does bring it up a lot. i d say roughly every hour or two, he makes a comment about manafort is not on trial for being rich or for having a lavish lifestyle or extravagant tastes and the prosecutors will often agree with the judge but they insys they need to show the value of these luxury goods and that manafort was getting them to really convince jurors that manafort s tax returns could not possibly have covered the lifestyle that he was living in addition to trying to prove his point of the very, very strange payment arrangements, nearly every vendor who came up said they were paid by overseas wire transfers from shell companies whose names they had never heard
cut him off. the prosecutor saying a man in the court did not believe the law did not apply to him and collected over $60 million for his work in a country called ukraine but this man didn t want to report his income so he used foreign bank accounts to funnel and boom, the judge interrupted the evidence you contend will show this? the prosecutor says yes. and judge ellis does a little smackdown. that s the way i would put it. and the prosecutor tried to continue saying to funnel millions of dollars and judge ellis collapsed back and says, did you hear what i said? then we get a more typical response. the prosecutor says yes, your honor. the judge says all right, do it that way please. ellis pressed both sides. he is a known stickler and told manafort s lawyers they also must speaking in evidence telling them it s preferable if you couch in this case your argument or your defense in terms of you will hear evidence
the judge does seem to really be riding the prosecution. now, there wouldn t be any reason for him to be riding the defense because the defense at the moment is putting in a few cross-examination questions at the end of each witness called by the prosecution. so it s really the prosecution s ball on their side of the field at this point. been the judge is beak limiting the amount of evidence that i think the defense might view as prejudicial. as you mentioned, the issues of the photos or the photos of the ostrich jacket, photos of home renovations that were very expensive, photos of all the suits of all the other luxury goods that manafort used pone to buy money that the prosecution says came from his work in ukraine, but the judge is trying to keep this really to facts and figures to the invoices to the paper. let me draw you out on that. do you think this is fair in the criticism of the mueller team is