flynn, the former national security adviser, and his business dealing. they re looking at paul manafort, the former campaign chairman, not just for russia stuff but for general banking and financial issues. so there are a lot of irons in the fire for the special counsel and a lot of pressure points. if i m the white house, i see a lot of pressure points that bob mueller has to put you know, to put pressure on my administration. and renato, i m wondering, a, if the fact that we re hearing about the comey piece of this signals that obstruction of justice might be the thing the white house is in jeopardy of here. and b, is there any chance at all that these interviews would not be under oath? so first of all, it certainly suggests to me that robert mueller has already looked at the documents related to the comey obstruction piece of the investigation and is ready to move forward on that basis. a prosecutor like mueller would not interview people until he
turning to the president s finances, to his business dealings, that comes on the heels of months of reporting that the mueller investigation includes the financial and business relationships of trump national security adviser mike flynn and trump campaign chair paul manafort. that storyline about manafort of course cull minminating with nee fbi raided manafort s virginia home two weeks ago reportedly targeting banking records and tax information. the president s lawyer john dowd may in fact now have heard enough to believe that this is all real now. real enough that he wrote an angry 3:48 a.m. e-mail to a wall street journal reporter this week demanding that any evidence that might have been seized from paul man afort s home during that fbi raid, any evidence seized in that raid must be suppressed. that was free legal advice, by the way. paul manafort is not john dowd s client. john dowd s client in this is the president. which you would think wouldn t give him enough time to be work
some team of attorneys and ask for evidence. they go out and get it. but this is a little bit unusual in a white-collar investigation and it does tell me that they were able to go to a magistrate, a federal magistrate, a federal judge, and convince them or that person that a crime had been committed, there s probable cause that a crime has been committed, that there s evidence in that location and there s a distinct possibility that that evidence could be destroyed. that s the only way you get a no-knock search warrant and are able to execute it in that fashion. usually, it s not going announce. these are mostly done in drug cases. interesting. richard, here s what a spokesman this is paul manafort s response, but it s from a spokesman. tells cnn that manafort cooperated with the nba during the raid. he said fbi agents execute a search warrant at unof mr. manafort s residences. mr. manafort has kichbltly cooperated with law enforcement and other serious inquiries and did so on thi
this is the same kind of thing that richard nixon did secretly when he offered clemency to some of the water gate burglars. so when you talk about pardoning, you re getting the attention of the fbi and the investigators in a way that is inconsistent with letting the investigation go on toward a conclusion based on fact. let me ask you this. paul manafort was the campaign manager that time of donald trump jr. s meeting with the it russians. could the need for this raid have strung from that meeting? chris? i think that information that was in that email string is probably the first concrete information i ve seen that states the russian government had an interest in the trump campaign and helping him. so, yes, i think it forms some of the building fwlauks for the
believe the president put it in such a way that they realize they re not dealing with business as usual. they re dealing with a tough guy who s going to protect the american people. fascinating conversation. love having you guys on. thank you so much. when we come back, trump s team was said to be rattled by news that the fbi conducted a raid on paul manafort s house. we ll break down what this says about robert mueller s russia investigation and how it could affect the president and his inner circle. [vo] progress is seizing the moment. your summer moment awaits you now that the summer of audi sales event is here. audi will cover your first month s lease payment on select models during the summer of audi sales event.