a ziplock baggy filled with cocaine found just steps from the west wing where guests are often ushered through the white house. now the question who dropped it, setting off sunday s hazmat evacuation. then, the phenomenon unique to the united states, gun violence in america reaching a new level of horror. 356 mass shootings so far this year. a stunning 15 of them just this past holiday weekend. coming up, why these tragic shootings always seem to spike in the summer months and what can be done about it. plus, a federal judge slapping the biden administration with new restrictions on social media saying the biden administration cannot decide what is and is not misinformation. welcome to the lead, i m jake tapper. we begin with something of a mystery in our political lead. who left a baggy of coke at the white house? there was a brief evacuation sunday night after the powdery substance was found in an area of the west wing that is accessible to some tour groups. this
Contact us by the disgust he felt watching Media Coverage of the russia story. Not only were most reporters getting it wrong, they were getting it backward. The russians were in fact deeply involved in american politics, but the real story had almost nothing to do with the 2016 president ial campaign. Intrigued, we agreed to meet with at source today. He just left our offices here in washington a couple of hours ago. The story he told us is astonishing. We will be following up on it, confirming more of it and bringing you details about it this week and after. At first, heres an overview of what he told us. Media reports describe Paul Manafort as a central figure in the russia investigation due to the several months he spent as Donald Trumps campaign chairman. According to our source, thats only half true. He is indeed at the center of this investigation, but not because of his ties to trump. In fact, Paul Manafort spent years working with the Podesta Group on behalf of russian governme
finally come clean, i think you can conclude that what he is seeking to protect is such a deep secret that revealing it would put himself, his family and the person he wants to protect also, donald trump, at risk. so we must assume that it is something substantive in the russia investigation and perhaps he thinks that his only way to save his neck now is a presidential pardon. so i think this is something, as andrew weisman described, is at the heart of the russia investigation. it s also information that occurred during the peak time of trump-russia communications. this is right after the trump tower meeting in june. the republican convention in july when manafort was allegedly involved in taking away the part of the republican plank where we would defend ukraine and also just a couple of weeks before his former partner roger stone intimated that there were more hacks to come against the podestas.
and the person he wants to protect also, donald trump, at risk. so we must assume that it is something substantive in the russia investigation and perhaps he thinks that his only way to save his neck now is a presidential pardon. so i think this is something, as andrew weisman described, is at the heart of the russia investigation. it s also information that occurred during the peak time of trump-russia communications. this is right after the trump tower meeting in june. the republican convention in july when manafort was allegedly involved in taking away the part of the republican plank where we would defend ukraine and also just a couple of weeks before his former partner roger stone intimated that there were more hacks to come against the podestas. so i think we can assume this was highly incriminating information. cynthia, i know you thought you d seen everything as a federal prosecutor and then came the manafort case, and i know it
podesta is going to be in the barrel. based on my research on podesta. so you were telling him that he could use this story even if it wasn t true? absolutely. well, i just want to say that stone absolutely refutes it, that he didn t need to have this alibi of jerome corsi, opposition research. but essentially, corsi made stunning admissions to me in this interview. this is just one of many, actually. this refers to his opposition research on john podesta and his brother. stone asked him to look into the podestas getting money from russians. and that was part of this opposition research operation that he was trying to set up to help get at trump at the time. jerome corsi, what s also in these documents is a series of