Special counsel. Is he hoping for a pardon from President Trump . Not only is he not hoping for, he would not accept a pardon. We all knew that this was going to be used as a hush money kind of payment from Campaign Finances. You knew at the time . We knew. The conviction of Paul Manafort is another blow to President Trump and a boost for Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Mr. Manafort is disappointed of not getting acquittals all the way through or a complete hung jury on all counts. He is evaluating all of his options at this point. Its a bad day for the president and im sure he understands that. It looks like manafort and cohen only have more to say, only may cooperate more. This could get worse. I dont think he can be indicted while sitting in office, but well just have to see where this all works out. The heart and soul of this is about collusion with the russians and obstruction of justice. First of all, the House Of Representatives draws up articles of impeachment. Think of the hou
Interviews with political figures and news updates. Will he offer Paul Manafort a pardon . That remains to be seen when our own Peter Alexander asked him that question last week. He said hes not really thinking about the. But he didnt dismiss that its on the table. I would also point out, andrea, it was striking to hear the president last night at that Campaign Rally in West Virginia. Yes, he referred to the witch hunt. Yes, he took aim at the media, some of his familiar targets. But he really largely stayed on message. And you have to ask the question, if some of the wind has been taken out of his sails when to comes to attacking the Special Counsel, andrea. On his way to West Virginia as he was arriving, he said he felt badly for both manafort and cohen, clearly he was asked about both, he said he feels badly for both. Thats before the transcript from the court was released. Once the transcript was released and it was very clear that Michael Cohen had very explicitly implicated the
b
from a prosecutor s perspective. everyone is playing the pardon game and no better intersection of politics and criminal justice than a pardon. first we saw downing the lawyer for manafort basically going to the microphone and unleashed this mercenary begging for a pardon, totally misleading statement about oh, two judges have said no collusion, not at all what the judge said. the timing of the d.a. in manhattan announcing these judges minutes after the sentence really smacks of a political move by the manhattan d.a. and you re exactly right. in any normal case you get in the room, the feds, the state and the county level people and you do what we call deconflict. who has the best case? let s all sort of share evidence and get behind the one prosecution. this idea of serial prosecution one after the other i don t like is a former prosecutor and kara s right. this is not necessarily going to pardon proof anything because manafort will have a real double
he s facing he s in jail. he s facing jail time. but notably, he didn t testify and his defense was the government didn t meet their burden. those are both very consistent with post-conviction cooperation. but once he goes to trial again, i do not think that there s really going to be an opportunity for him to cooperate. and notably, what was interesting yesterday is his defense attorney, after the verdict came down, came out of the courtroom and unlike most defense attorneys who say we re going to appeal, we have a lot of our options and we re going to pursue them through the appellate courts, he instead said, we re going to evaluate our options, which is a very different sentiment than we re going to appeal. so in the next three weeks or so i would imagine we will know whether or not paul manafort is going to cooperate or whether, as i ve been saying for quite a while, he s really waiting out the pardon game and looking for a pardon from the president. and as you just pointed out
manafort s lawyer when he got out of court yesterday did not say as many defense lawyers do, we will appeal this, we have considering all his options. we are evaluating our options which indicates they re thinking about a lot of things. i thought for a long time that manafort is playing the pardon game in part because there s no other sensible rational to choosing to have two trials. it only benefits the government and so when you start to see donald trump s tweets and statements about you re a good guy and he s treated unfairly which mirrors some of the statements he made about other people that he s pardoned, the writing is quite obviously on the wall. as to flynn and papadopoulos, we re starting to see a little bit more into the recesses of mueller s investigation, not the substance but some of the background stuff. first of all, papadopoulos apparently attempted to cooperate, but was unsuccessful because he didn t tell the truth. so he s wiped out. he s lower level so he s no