anything russia-related. that is it the elephant in the room there for the jurors? or can they do that? i have a lot of confidence in jurors in matters like this. the real problem for paul manafort here is there doesn t appear to be any evidence that he paid his taxes. i mean, he got all this money. it was stashed in these foreign bank accounts, and the taxes weren t paid. now like most people who are accused of a crime with a cooperating witness, he s going try to put all the blame on the cooperating witness that is a standard strategy. it rarely works. but it sometimes does. and but it s just going to be difficult for persuade the jury that somehow rick gates is responsible for the fact that paul manafort made millions upon millions of dollars and didn t pay his taxes. jennifer, do you agree that that defense strategy, trying to pin it all on rick gates, who is a cooperating witness, that s basically the kind of defense 101? it is. it exactly. the problem here is that rick
it rarely works, but it sometimes does. and you know, but it s just going to be difficult to persuade the jury that somehow rick gates is responsible for the fact that paul manafort made millions upon millions of dollars and didn t pay his taxes. jennifer, do you agree that that defense strategy, trying to pin it all on rick gates, who is a cooperating witness, that s basically the kind of defense 101? it is. it is exactly. the problem here is that rick gates, of course, was not cooperating until after the charges were filed. so, they were prepared to proceed with this case without rick gates onboard. they have all the documentary evidence. like jeff just said, these are individual income taxes that paul manafort lied about, not to mention some properties on which there was mortgage fraud, had nothing to do with rick gates in the hamptons and in brooklyn. so, he s going to have a really hard time pinning all of this on rick gates, for sure. jason, the push from the president s
natural play from a defense lawyer. this situation in that rick gates has pleaded guilty and when you plead guilty for a lower sentence, you are cooperating. he s cooperating with investigators. paul manafort and his team know rick gates is a significant source if not the primary source against him. their natural defense is to attack his credibility as a witness against manafort. again, i m not a lawyer. it seems remarkable that you would say that you relied on your deputy and blame him, but
his attitude now and over time, where he s going to be more cooperative, frankly. fascinating. and jennifer, let s talk about the recruitment effort to get mr. manafort to sign up with team america. two court appearances this the week, superseding indictment, more charges added. what other screws, what other tools of the trade does mueller and those first-rate attorneys on his team, do they have to get paul manafort to see the light? i think we re seeing the tools. it s the bringing of more charges. it s the fact that gates is now on board. it s the seeing what gates is getting for being on board. he now faces ten years maximum instead of dozens and dozens of years. he gets to go to spring break with his kids now. so things get easier for you when you do come on board. and manafort is seeing that through what s happening with rick gates. you know, i think also just more generally, he s seeing this investigation speed up. he s seeing the indictment against the russians. we think mor
trying to protect against this. but it s in the absence of national leadership from the president to direct the full force of the government to protect our democracy. that s really what this is about. so potentially this cloud could hangover the midterms. you hope just as an american citizen that it doesn t, that we don t have a foreign government meddling in our elections. but who knows, we may be talking about that. remember those words, to protect our democracy. philip rutger gets the quote of the notice. thanks to frank montoya and phil rucker. coming up for us, two former assistant u.s. attorneys are coming here with us to breakdown the night s headlines on hope hicks, on rick gates, on paul manafort, and robert mueller. there are developments on all fronts. that is ahead after this break.