Person normally. so why do this? why do it for free? what motivated him? that s the big overhanging question. and if not what, who motivated him? also a question of intent. i bring in saul wisenberg, one of the only people alive who s questioned a president in a grand jury proceeding. i appreciate your patience. dealer s choice, your view on all of this? well, one thing to really look at when you re dealing with the mueller investigation, is to look at the plea agreements and to look at the language of the plea agreements. one thing that is striking about the language of the plea agreements and the associated documents is, it doesn t look like, and hasn t looked like for a long time, like he has a case on criminal collusion. you know, conspiracy to violate any of the offenses that have to do with the campaign activity. we see that in the flynn plea
Was investigated, that did meet with mueller s investigators. walk us through just as a line prosecutor, how this kind of thing works, why, for example, is it a secret plea deal? other plea deals have been released in the course of normal investigation. your analysis? i think it couldn t be any more clear to me. i want paul manafort. there were three people in that meeting, kushner, don jr. and paul manafort. they are trying to get someone on the inside of that meeting to cooperate and roll them up on don jr., kushner, and potentially the president. be it an indictment in d.c., an additional indictment in virginia. which as i understand it, is about 300-plus years, and now they ve flipped his son-in-law. let me go to the secret thing. i mean, it s hard to be afraid of a concealed weapon if you can t see it. so why secret if the goal is pressure? i don t know that they didn t tell paul manafort this was
Happens, when there would be a sentencing. you mentioned the timing. one of the most tantalizing things of the wall street journal reporting on this, was that what might have been reached as a secret deal was as far back as january, which means that whoever paul manafort s son-in-law is cooperating with, it s been going on all this year. one of the things in terms of checking back on this, obviously when it initially began, the question was, was it going to be a matter of time? when was the case going to get going? and now, although we don t know the specifics of what the plea deal would be in exchange for, we know that certainly bob mueller s people have been looking into all aspects of his former father-in-law s finances. and in this investment fraud case, it s how does that sit on
January and seth giving us the reason that prosecutors do that, to put more heat on. what s paul manafort holding out for? i don t know. but the question that i would keep brooding about is this who question as well as the what. when paul manafort went to work for donald trump for free, did he do so because he had people to please or people to whom he owed money. people who might come at you with something a little more frightening than a subpoena. final word from you, sir. well, if the son-in-law was wearing a wire while he talked to a federal defendant under custodial control, that would be amazingly aggressive and risky prosecutorial tactics. so again, i think we have to wait and see. i think you need to be very careful not to make enemies with your former son-in-law. i think that s a very important lesson. well, it all depends on what he has on you, like so many things.
Going on. i suspect they had. why secret? it could be they have pro active cooperation going on. in other words, they flipped him, and it could be the case talking about a wire? talking about a wire. that they wired him up and got him into conversations. paul manafort s on house arrest. so in theery, he could still have phone calls and meetings. whether that happened or not, there s a whole host of things that a prosecutor and fbi agent team would use to use a cooperator proactively. i can almost assure that all the defense lawyers for mr. manafort and anyone else indicted, they re saying, don t talk to anyone. don t talk on the phones. david, i ve dealt with mr. manafort in a reporting capacity. you re no stranger to a lot of players in republican politics. walk us through the mind-set here of an individual with this much pressure coming down on him, his deputy flipping who he brought in originally as an intern in his firm. his son-in-law flipping since