manafort? yesterday, we did hear president trump s name come up for the first time. is it just the beginning? well, it depends, right? this trial is moving at a fast pace which is pretty remarkably considering everything that s involved. while the president, you know, can argue rightfully that this specific case doesn t have anything with his campaign, of course, paul manafort was the campaign manager. rick gates was his deputy. rick gates stayed on after manafort left the campaign. again, i just think about what this prompts the president to do and how he responds that could entangle him in this even if it s separate. all right. we re glowing to take a quick turn because we ve got some breaking news. republican congressman chris collins from the state of new york has been arrested. you hear what i said, arrested by the fbi on charges of securities fraud related to snyder trading. collins surrendered to federal authorities this morning and is expected to be in court later
takes the stand in the trial of former campaign chairman paul manafort. will the jury hear what rick gates has already revealed to prosecutors? i m wolf blitzer. you re in the situation room. breaking news. the government s key witness is now testifying in the trial of the former trump campaign chairman paul manafort. that comes as president trump is urged to stop tweeting about that 2016 trump tower meeting between his top advisers including manafort and several russians. a source tells cnn is president is told his tweets are only giving oxygen to the topic. that followed the president s stunning weekend admission via twitter that the meeting indeed was about getting dirt on hillary clinton which he insists was totally legal. i ll speak with congressman and
multiple shell companies, over a dozen, he set up with manafort and never disclosed to the irs. and each time the prosecutor asked him questions about this, gates said it was at the direction of mr. manafort and telling the jury that manafort directed him to commit the crimes and a willing participant in them. this goes back to a relationship that started in 1995 when gates was an intern at manafort s company and he said he met him at the office christmas party, wolf. did gates admit to other crimes? he did. he said that he had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from paul manafort by filing fake expense reports, by overreporting his own income and lying to his own account and. but this also goes to the point thap making the point today saying that gates embezzled from
thanks very much. clearly some major bombshell testimony on the part of rick gates. we ll see what happens next. we ll get back to you. coming up, the president may have stirred up more trouble for himself and his son by admitting the purpose of that 2016 meeting over trump tower was with the russians was to get dirt on hillary clinton and that leads the president s lawyers to urge him to stop tweeting about that trump tower meeting altogether. stay with us.
see the president in the course of two tweets, peter strzok sent tests, should have recused himself but jeff sessions who dealt with russian directly, part of the campaign, he should unrecuse himself some who you. good point. thank you. we have more on this coming up. day two of paul manafort trial. already a huge surprise. the prosecution s star witness rick gates may not testify. hear why. and a cnn exclusive robert mueller handing off several of his cases to new york federal prosecutors. what this could say about the russia investigation. and president trump escalates the trade war saying u.s. farmers hit by tariffs, quote, can take it. we ll talk to an iowa soybean farmer coming up. you re watching cnn, i m brooke baldwin.