manafort s incarceration telling the new york daily news, when the whole thing is over, things might get cleared up with some presidential pardons, adding i don t understand the justification for putting him in jail. you put a guy in jail if he s trying to kill witnesses, not talking to witnesses. he later downplayed those comments in an interview with nbc news saying he would advise a pardon. some mixed signals there. ken dilanian, national security reporter for nbc news, mike the schmidt with the new york times and msnbc national security contributor, mimi rocah, and carolyn poly zee a criminal defense attorney. thank you for being with us. ken, let me start with you. in terms of the bottom line now, paul manafort s in jail. he s probably till september at least now. explain what exactly it was that caused the judge to make that decision today.
pivoted from mueller to deputy attorney general rosenstein. nobody asked. the president just brought him up. that was no coincidence. according to the new york times reporting the president s tirade last night copied in private at the white house as he fumed whether he should fire rosenstein before the times broke the news today it was rosenstein himself who was the one who personally signed off on the decision to raid cohen s office. mike the schmidt is one of the reporter who s broke that story as well as tonight s breaking news the president sought to fire mueller a second time in december. michael, i m trying to get a clearer sense of what exactly happened in december as your reporting indicates? into there were several reports at the time that a there was a mueller subpoena that had been sent to deutsche bank for records directly related to trump. now, if you remember, trump talked last summer about a so-called red line, an area that he said mueller should not be looking at.
it. you have to ask michael. mike is my attorney. you have to ask michael. do you know where he got the money to make that payment. i don t know. michael cohen officially said is he used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment. he was paying for it. things changed when rudy guiliani trump s new lawyer told sean hannity the president did in fact pay for it. they funneled it through a law firm. funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it. when i heard cohen s retainer of $35,000, when he was doing no work for the president, i said that s how he s repaying it. giuliani then made things more confusing when toe he told the new york times a day after that sbav that the president s reimbursements to mr. cohen were roughly $46,000 in that total. in the same financial filing, the office of government ethics