Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Considered official white house statements . Well, the president is the president of the United States. So theyre considered official statements by the president of the United States. At least one republican was willing to speak candidly about the reaction among many lawmakers in the capital. Every morning we wake up, he tweets something, and were supposed to respond to his tweet. Mueller is going to finish his investigation and the truth will come out. Our leadopen panel, peter baker, chief White House Correspondent for the New York Times. Jill colvin, White House Reporter for the associated press. John heilemann, coauthor of game change. And harry litman, former u. S. Attorney, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under president clinton. Good evening, all. Peter, i would like to read you what sally y
so i definitely think it could have affected a nonsequestered jury. they may have been exposed to that not gldeliberately, but wi social media being what it is it s hard to avoid. i would think the judge s comments are equally devastating and could have caused a hung jury. the judge was so far beyond what is appropriate for a judge. if he had made the same kind of comments he made about the prosecution, if he had made that about the defense, it would have been reversible error for sure. his comment to rick gates mr. manafort couldn t have been paying attention if you were able to steal so much money from him, that s really devastating to the prosecution, and he made many other comments. and that worried me from the very first moment the judge started making comments against the prosecution. it could have been either one of
reagan, bob dole and many other highly prominent and respected political leaders. he worked for me for a very short time. why didn t government tell me that he was under investigation. these old charges have nothing to do with collusion, a hoax. we ve never seen a president make comments like that during a criminal trial. when you listen to paula duncan tell us about that one hold out on the jury, you have a right to wonder whether that juror, other the other jurors, for example, were they exposed to this kind of tweet? did it make their deliberations more difficult? you may remember, lawrence, i said on your show i thought his tweet was jury tampering. so i definitely think it could have affected a nonsequestered jury. they may have been exposed to that not deliberately, but with social media being what it is it s hard to avoid.
retried for this case. and i assume would be retried if there was a hung jury. and given the impediment that the judge created, i think he alone created the possibility of a hung jury with his comments like to gates, well, manafort couldn t have been watching so closely if you were able to steal that much money from him. that s a devastating comment to have had the jury hear. so it s very distressing. as josh said, with a nonsequestered jury, the chances that they didn t hear about donald trump s tweet that manafort is a good man, and remember he also said that the nazis had a few good people in them, so saying that you re a good person is not a compliment, necessarily, in my opinion, coming from donald trump. but it s a bad thing for the jury to hear. and it could create a problem. all right, josh gerstein, jill wine-banks, thanks to both of you. 81 days and counting until
jacket and all sorts of other very expensive suits. the man likes jackets. councilor, a couple of questions for you. first of all, this is a nonsequestered jury. the president of the united states is tweeting about the defendant in a way they can all see, proclaiming his innocence. where do we file that? what do we do about that? well, it s tricky. the judge will instruct the jury, as every judge does at every trial, do not read about the case, do not watch television about the case. but this is a different world where we re dealing with twitter. i don t know whether the judge maybe rachel knows has instructed the jury not to read twitter. but that s almost what the judge needs to do. they re not sequestered in the way that, you know, we re used to with the o.j. simpson trial, for example. but they likely have been instructed to not pay attention to any news, do not read newspapers, because of the prominence of the coverage. let s interrupt our