conversations that they had with the president about potential pardons for former aides under investigation by the special counsel. that s according to two people briefed on the interviews. the breakdown of manafort s cooperation agreement and questions on what about behind manafort s decision to repeatedly lie to investigators, c some of the most unhinged attacks from the president on the special counsel including this tirade this morning. the fake news media builds bob mueller up as a saint. he s the exact opposite. he s doing tremendous damage to our criminal justice system where he s only looking at one side and not the other. heroes will come of this and it won t be mueller and his terrible gang of angry democrats. we ll see. all of these developments leave more questions than answers, but together, they may very well become an inflection point in mueller s investigation. what if donald trump s team has signaled to manafort that a pardon could be in the works?
just pull this thread out for us, about how it is that he s talking to rudy giuliani, how is he talking to the president s legal team all the time? are his if his interests are still aligned with the president s, what does that say? right it. it s very unusual once a person has flipped to the government s side that that person s lawyer keeps in contact with other people, with the lawyers for other folks who are under investigation. so the whole dynamic is strange. we, frankly, have to take giuliani at his word sometimes that those conversations are happening, and i it s my understanding that giuliani has said a few times that, well, we don t talk about everything, but we talk about some things. he s been very unclear as to what exactly that means. again, i don t know that giuliani is necessarily the best narrator of some of the legal conversations going on in this case, but i do think it s bizarre that you have essentially some semblance of a joint defense agreement still after m
think it s an open question, what does that actually mean for mueller s investigation? does that have a real-world consequence for mueller s investigation? and could this breakdown in the plea be one of those consequences? and so i do i appreciate that devlin gives rudy this sort of curve that he may not be the best narrator, but he is, again, the person the president chose to represent him in this matter. where nothing short of his presidency is on the line. so we re going to, for the purposes of this conversation, take rudy at his word and he said this. all during the investigation, we have an open communication with them. defense lawyers talk to each other all the time. where as long as clients authorize it, therefore, we have a better idea of what s going to happen. that s very common. so if you take that analysis that defense lawyers talk to each other all the time, he is essentially acting as trump s criminal defense lawyer, manafort s lawyer is acting as manafort s crimina
information that is part of an ongoing investigation. is that right? yes. thank you. i certainly would not want you to reveal any classified or sensitive investigative information in this setting. we have repeatedly gone back andford with that and i don t understand why we have to repeatedly repeat things to such an intelligent group of people. in march, chairman gowdy stated on national tv and i quote and if you believe as we have found that there s no evidence to collusion, you should want special counsel mueller to take all of the time and have all of the independence he needs to do his job. chairman gowdy stated and i quote when you re innocent, the allegations of collusions, there s no evidence of collusion, you are not innocent of that.
you appear to so you re out of seat with an answer that was received from the department of justice. that is an interesting answer that you just gave that you may have been out of seat. now the question is policies procedures failed or not failed, this is a serious investigation that i take seriously. if you were read out, you should have been read out. that is my final statement. i yield back. the gentleman from rhode island is recognized. i look forward to a couple of extra minutes as each of my republican colleagues have had. serving on this committee and representing the state of rhode island is one of the greatest honors of my life. the conduct of this committee today has been tremendously sad and embarrassing and really dangerous to our democracy. i want to apologize to you for the way you ve been treated by this committee. for the american people watching, you ought not wonder why they have lost confidence in congress and are sick of the kind of circus that they sought i