A look at the days news and headlines. Manafort into paying his American Express bill and may have fraudulently submitted personal expenses to be paid by the trump inaugural committee. The defense team says they exposed him as unreliable. After all the laws youve told you expect this jury to believe you . Gates said im here to tell the truth and take responsibility for my actions. Mr. Manafort had the same path. I am trying to change. He says if there are charges of financial funny businessman fort always knew where the money was. The judge jumped in to say manafort wasnt that great knowing where his money was if gates was able to steal as much as he was admitted to stealing. Gates was told that the Manafort Defense Team will have at least another hours worth of questioning for him this morning starting at 9 30 local
time. We dont know who the mueller teams next witness would be that they might call. We know they plan to wrap up their case, rest their case sometime this week. Sandra. S
intentional, whatever argument they want to make, but if a decision is that this is a violation, you have to take immediate action not only because they violated a order, but because of the effect on the composition of the jury. this is not what you re entitled to do. you have challenges, two ways to challenge within the law, the colt position of of the jury. public harassment of jurors is impermissible. finally to your point about how long we have been continuing to do this, i remember very well and it s in the mueller report, donald trump tweeting about the jury and about paul manafort during deliberations of the paul manafort criminal trial. and that was listed as a form. that was one of the ten grounds of potential obstruction of justice in volume two of the mueller report, because why on god s green earth would the
violated the gag order seven times since monday. prosecutors saying, it s ridiculous and it has to stop. adding that the, quote from waters is the most disturbing post in light of what just happened this morning referring to the juror coming in and asking to be excused. the chaos at trial today and the ongoing fight over trump s are the risk is nothing new. the country has been grapping with the dangers posed by rhetoric from donald trump and his allies ever since the ex-president descended the etc. ka later. the difference now, of course, is that it threatens to kick sand or something worse into the gears of trump s first ever criminal trial. a scholar tweeted, this is what authoritarians to. violence against anyone seen as having the power to harm the cult leader. this is designed to make it very difficult to find jurors. and let s proceed with the trial. it s a form of sabotage of our democratic justice system. it s also where we start today with some of our favorite reporters and f
von hilliard is outside of the courthouse for us today. with us at the table is susan craig is here. she spent today inside the courthouse. plus senior executive editor at bloomberg opinion tim o brien is here. also joining us former top official at the department of justice and msnbc legal analyst andrew weisman. there s so much happening. i don t know where to start. i m going to go in order. von hilliard, tell me what you re seeing. reporter: yesterday you and i were having that discussion with the crew about the ecosystem we live in. it s not even necessarily just the pressures that could come from a criminal defendant like donald trump. when you re dealing with such national attentions, such community attention on trial like this, with such high political stakes six months out from a general election, there are bound to be individuals who will be juror who is have family friends fellow church members
like planes at laguardia? so people wanted to know why is he going to wait a week to take up the contempt motion? i think it s because under new york state law, there are different kinds of contempt. if you if the contempt is committed in the presence of the judge, that s like in the movies the judge can bang the gavel and summarily say i hold you in contempt. if the contempt is not committed in the presence of the judge, then the new york state law provides the defendant is entitled to notice and an opportunity to defend, and i think that is why judge merchan set them off for about a week. they re going to pile up, and i think donald trump is going to continue to behave badly, and then judge merchan is going to have a decision to make. and do i do what i would do to any other litigant in these circumstances and put him in a jail cell. so again, donald trump has never been a defendant in a criminal trial, but he and his allies have intimidated witnesses to his alleged bad behavio