time he joined trump s campaign the guardian has been told. sources say manafort went to see assange in 2013, 15 and the spring of 16 during a time when he was made a key figure in trump s push for the white house. wikileaks released a stash of democratic e-mails stolen by russian intelligence officers. manafort, assange, and wikileaks all deny that any meetings took place and nbc news has not confirmed the guard yian s story. the report follows a line of questioning that s been central to mueller s investigation since the beginning. what did members of the trump campaign know about the russian hack of hillary clinton s e-mails? and when did they know it? joining us at the table, alice jordan, former aide in the george w. bush white house and state department. now an msnbc analyst. matt, frank, and tim are all still here. frank, let me start with you. this seems like the line of questioning that reinforces what devlin just said about where this investigation is pointing toward n
simple. easy. awesome. stay connected while you move with the best wifi experience and two-hour appointment windows. click, call or visit a store today. many news organizations including this one spent at least part of today chasing a new report in the guardian that if true would be of significant interest to mueller s investigators in the russian collusion investigation. from that report, donald trump s former campaign manager paul manafort held secret talks with julian assange. inside the ecuadorian embassy in london and visited around the
he sort of lied his way out of his cooperation agreement? i think it would be a clear case of obstruction of justice. look, the president has untraveled power under the constitution to grant pardons. but if he does it for a corrupt purpose, it can without i think, you know, there are some constitutional scholars that would disagree with this. i think most would say it is a crime and i think it s a relevant precedent that bill clinton when he granted pardons to mark rich at the last days of his term was investigated as part of a criminal investigation by the southern district of new york, whether that, you know, he basically accepted a bribe in the form of campaign contributions. you could apply some of the same analysis here, and conclude that the president s obstructing justice. i think that would be relevant if the justice department ever wanted to charge him criminally after he left office and of course it would be relevant in any sort of impeachment inquiry that could begin whi
mean, just deranged, to be blunt. but he s done this so much that i think at the beginning of the administration, when he would attack the justice department, it was really breaking news. people would talk about the way he crossed the norm and tried to politicize the justice department. he kind of shifted the window so far in his direction, while we all still recognize that for what it is, you kind of brush it off. the danger is, what happens, he s then able to do something like, you know, put matt whitaker in charge of the investigation. bypassing the traditional role, you know, the traditional way that you fill those jobs and putting someone that appears to have no qualification other than his public stated hostility to the administration, and you see for the most part silence from republicans. i think at the beginning of the administration, you wouldn t have seen it be able to get away with something like that, but he is just so kind of repeatedly attacked the justice department, an
investigation. if there was any contact or knowledge on manafort s part, as to what the russians were conspireing to do to meddle in our elections. he could be that missing link into the trump campaign to prove the conspiracy. but what s going on with manafort? how does a defendant, someone this important to the president of the united states, plead guilty before his second trial then blow up his own cooperation agreement by lying repeatedly? well, there s a couple scenarios and frankly we re all sort of waiting to see mueller s next court filing to explain this a little better. but i can tell you, this comes up pretty frequently in fraud cases, frankly, that a lot of times if someone has built a career on lying, sometimes it is actually difficult for a person like that to just tell a straight version of a story. and just act tell a version that is convincing to prosecutors and stays consistent from one telling to the next. i do think it s interesting that the prosecutoe erors are