to do a deal with prosecutors. according to the reporter at the wall street journal, manafort s defense team started conversations with mueller s prosecutors about a potential plea deal while the virginia jury was deliberating over manafort s fate in his first trial. quote, paul manafort s defense team held talks with prosecutors to resolve a second set of charges against the former campaign chair. the plea discussions occurred as a virginia jury was spending four days deliberating tax and bank fraud charges against manafort. the talks between the defense team and prosecutors were aimed at forestalling a second trial for manafort which is scheduled to begin on september 17th. although paul manafort and his defense team started those talks with the special prosecutor s office, it did not result in a deal. and this is where it gets very intriguing. the plea talks on the second set
vanity fair .com that the president is so committed to the idea of pardoning paul manafort now that he is willing to do it even over the objections of his white house counsel don mcigan. the president has said he is considering bringing in a new lawyer to draft a manafort pardon if mcgahn won t do it. in that context tonight, the wall street journal reports that he was trying to do a deal. manafort who would not flip. manafort, the guy going all the way to trial of not once but twice, the one guy implicated in the trump/russia scandal who absolutely would not do a deal with prosecutors and was praised by the president for that, manafort has apparently trying to do a deal with prosecutors. according to the reporter at the wall street journal, manafort s defense team started conversations with mueller s prosecutors about a potential plea deal while the virginia jury was deliberating over manafort s fate in his first trial. quote, paul manafort s defense team held talks with prosecut
michael cohen has information that would be of interest to mr. mueller, he said, okay, and again this is paraphrasing here. he said i won t call it a smoking gun information. someone would have to characterize it, but he does have information that would be of interest and it pertains to a crime most people would call the fbi about. well, don, i think the biggest problem right now for donald trump is that he has lost control. he s lost control over manafort. he s lost control over cohen. these two individuals now are going to be looking to do whatever they can to cut their own criminal sentences, to protect their families, and there is not a lot that donald trump is going to be able to do about it. i will just tell you, though, if there is a wire transfer receipt for a $130,000 payment from the trump organization, that is nothing short of a bombshell. i do want to say one thing, though. and i respect lanny, but i disagree with him about, you know, what we just heard in the following r
embarrassing and awkward enough for him that when it was first revealed in the american press, it got him fired off the trump campaign. but it remains of interest to prosecutors here in this country because of moneylaundering and tax evasion, and it remains of interest to prosecutors in ukraine because ukraine as a country and as a new post yanukovych government is trying to figure out what happened to all that money, what happened to their country s wealth when manafort s guy was in charge and stealing all the money. sure, a lot of it went to buy ostriches and toilets with gold feet. but a lot of it went to paul manafort too. so ukraine has been trying to track that down. and this is the point in the story where the music changes and gets all menacing and dark. because the new york times has just broken a really important story on this subject today. andrew cramer in the new york times today reports that the four investigations into paul manafort that had been opened by prosecutor
team and the ukrainians running their investigations into manafort. that anti-corruption prosecutor now says since he has lost the authority to investigate manafort, that offer to cooperate is now, quote, moot. so, bottom line for us here in this country, does robert mueller, does the special counsel s office actually need these prosecutors in ukraine in order to nail paul manafort to the wall? judging from their progress, in their cases against him and two federal jurisdictions so far, probably not. probably not. it looks like they re doing fine. but we now know flat-out based on this remarkable new report from andrew kramer in the new york times today that the government in this other country spiked those active investigations and effectively spiked the offer for their prosecutors to cooperate with mueller specifically to curry favor with donald trump and the u.s. government. because they wouldn t want to help mueller. that might make trump mad.