Dan coats, kirstjen nielsen, National Security advisor john bolton and the head of u. S. Cybercommand and director of the nsa each delivered stark warnings about ongoing Election Interference donald trump was on stage at a rally in pennsylvania calling the entire investigation into russias effort to attack our elections a hoax. In helsinki, i had a great meeting with putin. We discussed everything. I had a great meeting. As i have said consistently, russia attempted to interfere with the last election and continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day. But i got along great with putin, and everybody said, wow, that was a great. The russians are looking for every opportunity regardless of party, regardless of whether or not it applies to the election to continue their pervasive efforts to undermine our
fundamental values. Now we are being hindered by the russian hoax. Its a hoax. Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs. If i get along with vladimir putin, thats a good
about the judge having interspersed comments about rick gates, undercutting the key prosecution witness. julia, in this way that dan goldman has just described, and you were in the courtroom, is it likely to try to take away the key defense argument? they didn t put on any character witnesses, they didn t obviously put on paul manafort, so their only closing argument is going to be that rick gates did it, he was the bad guy, not paul manafort. that s right. i think every piece of the argument that we just heard the prosecution lay out was preemptive of what they expect the defense to do when we come back from lunch. they went after rick gates, saying, look, we re not asking you to trust every word he says, we re not asking you to like him, we re asking you to look at the documents and the other witnesses and see if what he said was consistent. they also said, look, paul manafort didn t hire a boy scout, he hired someone who would commit these criminal acts with him. so they re going
long/slow guilty pleas, which is what i think we see unfolding across the river in alexandria. i was talking to a source close to manafort and i asked them why paul manafort refused to make a plea deal, and the person told me that manafort s lawyers told manafort that he was innocent, that this was not a strong case, and that they would get him off and manafort was begin winly surprised when he went to jail before the trial for allegedly tampering with witnesses. why would a defense tell a defendant that the case is strong, if i take this source s word for it, when you see the prosecution lay out what you called a slow guilty plea or a slow plea deal? i actually question that information and that recitation of events because typically defense attorneys will not give