Say about this controversy after the sort of the statement after statement that changed the story a little bit on donald trump jr. s meeting with this russian lawyer. He basically said my son is a high quality individual, hes been transparent and open. Hes come out and given the whole story. But there are a lot of questions that still remain and in the white house i think theyre very well aware these are not questions that are going to go away and theyre not questions that theyre prepared to take. Theres a lot of legal jeopardy around this meeting. Theres a question of whether the president himself knew about it. Of course we heard donald trump jr. Say in the interview last night that he had not discussed it with his father. But that is going to really hamstring their ability to get ahead of this story. I think there are a lot of questions about what more the president can say without getting a little too close to what is really one of the more damaging revelations of the last few week
under the obama administration for violating a campaign finance law, one that s rarely ever punished like this. president trump is considering a pardon for martha stewart. even for the democratic governor, former democratic governor o illinois, rod blagojevich. while the media barely yawned over obama s pardons and clinton s infamous pardons for absolutely spinning out of control because the president is using his absolute power of the pardon. he has a right to do whatever he wants on this. too bad. take a lookn. raise questions on whether the president is sending a message with these pardons, sending a message to paul man afort and michael flynn. those are the questions going to come about here. he s throwing raw meat to the far right here, de souza for over three decades has been an extreme peddler of far right ideology and you have to say hatred. president trump seemingly passing out pardons to heros of
case, why didn t you do that with manafort? there s nothing in your filings that says it s about elections, why do this one as a special counsel prosecutioning and stave off the other one? i think there is a reason for that. because there is a relationship between the manafort charges and russian interference with the election. cohen is someone that, i m sure, the justice department would like to see flip just as much as manafort. the judge accused the prosecutors of only charging manafort because they want him to flip. but the fact that they said we followed the money, it seems to me that the conduct that s charged both in virginia and d.c. against paul manafort all arises from that work he did from the government of ukraine with associates of russian and oligarchs, so even if they don t have concrete proof that this is about russian interference with the election, looking at the flow of money is important to
instead they referred that one out to federal prosecutors in new york. sought judge today really lambasted all the special counsel s prosecutors. but then he asked this really, really interesting and sort of intriguing question. if the michael cohen case can become just a local prosecution in new york, why can t the paul manafort case become a local prosecution in d.c. or indeed in virginia? decent question. why does one of them get halved off and one of them still pursued by mueller s prosecutors themselves? so far we ve seen nothing in the prosecutor s filings in the manafort case that shows a connection to russian campaign interference in the presidential election. if the manafort crimes are a separate discrete matter, if they re all about his bank fraud and tax fraud charges related to his work in ukraine years ago, then why wouldn t those also be handed off to separate federal prosecutors like they did with michael cohen? well, here s how the government responded to that today. th
mission it was assigned in examining russian interference in the 2016 election, adding that if it uncovered criminal activity that wasn t necessarily relateed they would refer it to another office. if the criminal activity by paul manafort was not related to russian interference in the election in 2016 they d refer it to another office. that s why they haven t referred it to another office. that s what the prosecutor said in court today. does that mean this case unspooling in these two jury dicks jurisdictions is related to russian interference and we can t see it? if so when can we find out? is this judge going to make them show their hands on it? how weird is it the judge screamed at everyone and then asked that really good question? turns out there s an answer. stay with us. the classics you l,