Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Many months later, thats after the inauguration, after the election, when fbi director james comey went down to the hill, where he was testifying and said, yes, there was an open probe. By that time, the fbi had also initiated a separate but related investigation and that has now been broken much into public view, much more, because the break came with this very curious indictment of a woman named maria butina. Now, she was suspected as an unregistered agent of the russian government. That she was trying to mount this covert influence operation through a conservative group, a Gun Rights Group in the u. S. Tonight, the same reporter who had the Breakthrough Scoop about the Steele Dossier has a new and obviously provocative question. Did alleged russian spy, maria butina, cause a Leadership Shake up at the nra . The backstory here is an fbi dive, prior to the fact of trump becoming president , into russian attempts to inf
i could have refused to file the tax return. that would have exposed the firm laporta reported. i could have called them liars. but manafort was a longtime client of the firm. i didn t want to do that either. she added, quote, i very much regret it. and that is immunity witness number one. there are four more people who have immunity who are ready to testify, plus the star witness, rick gates. we turn now to our in-house experts. josh garcia, and joyce vance, a former federal prosecutor as well as an msnbc analyst. they both kept a close eye on the case. josh, you were in the courtroom today. how damaging was cindy laporta s testimony and could you glean at all from the mood of the jury or the faces that she was hurt at all by the fact that she was in on the bad things she was talking about? i didn t get a sense that she was hurt. i mean, they knew that she had immunity.
back at this trial, everything that happens before the trial is speculation. when we look at what s actually going on this week, this could be the turning point. laporta alleging that in september of 2015, this was when manafort was in financial trouble, she gave him an estimate of the taxes he owed, and she was told manafort couldn t pay it. quote, rick that s rick gates, who s also expected to testify said it was too high. manafort didn t have the money. manafort s solution, laporta testified, was to inflate the amount of a loan which would then reduce on paper his reported income, and thus his income tax, and in turn, what he owed the government. in other words, tax fraud, tax evasion. which, as a professional involved in this business, cindy laporta did understand. so then you have mewer s prosecutor ask, what was your understanding at the time of whether that was appropriate? laporta replies, it s not appropriate. and she confessed she went along with it and helped manafort