Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Their way to keep trump out of the trial. Abc news reports that prosecutors have been coaching their witnesses not to mention trumps name or even that manafort lives in trump tower. The judge in the case has warned that bringing up manaforts ties to trump could unduly influence jurors. There is at least one thing about this trial that is important to the relationship between Paul Manafort and donald trump. The first witness today was tad devine, chief strategist for Bernie Sanders an president ial campaign who worked with manafort on political campaigns in ukraine. The prosecution called him as their first witness to have him describe how much work manafort was doing in ukraine and how lucrative it was. Before we came on the air, we got a rush version of the transcript from todays hearing. Im not going to be able to act out a whole conversation but heres one little bit of the prosecutors Opening Statement worth hear. Th
Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. The issue of adoption, did that come up . Like i said, that was the primary thing we had spoken about in the meeting. Thats not the premise that got them in the room. Then it was essentially a bait and switch to talk about that 6789 everybody has basically said that in. The already. There is this another intere interesting thing over the weekend. Hope hicks boarded Air Force One and flew to the president s rally in ohio and back. You may recall, hope hicks resigned from the white house one day before a Congressional Committee that she had told white lies on behalf of donald trump. She is now living here in manhattan and she too has come under scrutiny for crafting that
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Interviews with political figures and news updates. Looking at. If you are looking at, as Robert Mueller had been known to do, how tweets fit into a larger pattern of obstruction of justice, the contrasting this weekends tweet and the statement that the president put out, helped put out in july of last year, obviously, will go to, you know, that argument. Does that constitute an illegal act or as jay sekulow says, is it not relevant to the law . And elli, what is elvent to the law . Its hard to tell what mueller is looking at. But we hear from a lot of reporting that youre looking at that june meeting. June 2016 meeting. Yeah, andrea, and they should be. If im prosecuting a case for soliciting illegal Foreign Campaign aid and a witness testified to exactly what the president tweeted yesterday, my next move is to say no further questions. Its really an astonishing admission by the president. He essentially admits to 95 of a crime and the other 5 is obvious. We can break it down. The pre
Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Brian Williams examines the days top political stories and current politicalcampaign news. Selfinflicted wound. We dont know the entire back story but our understanding is this was not a strategic legal tweet. This was not a Communications Shop messaging tweet. This was the president waking up and doing what we reported him doing in our story which was privately sort of brooding and then publicly feuding and roaring. And he sent this tweet out to refute a bit of our story but in doing so actually pushed his own narrative much further into a place that is not particularly helpful for him or his namesake son. That may be an understatement. Phil rucker, lets talk about dj t. J. To your knowledge and to the best of your reporting, has anything about don june,s case changed materially that has motivated the president s
behavior, his change in mood . You know, the truth is, brian, we just dont know. Bu
Offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton, he wrote no details or supporting information was required. Later, emails between don junior and the man who organized the meeting said it was supposed to damaging email on Hillary Clinton. Quote, if its what you say, i love it. To get out ahead of that story, don junior changed his line again. The information they suggested they had about Hillary Clinton i thought was political Opposition Research. Just after this we heard this from trumps lawyer. The Statement Released was donald trump jr. And his lawyers. The president was not involve in the that. The president was not involved in the drafting of that statement. It came from his son. July 31, trump himself personally dictated the statement. Then hater this year it was revealed trumps own lawyers admitted in a momentumo to Robert Mueller that yes, the president himself did dictate the trump tower statement but added there was no collusion. This weekend, the president s same lawyer jay