meeting, whether there was any sort of collusive agreements. so it could tie back to that so-called collusion work-stream, but that s speculation at this point. we just don t know whether the facts support it. i want to ask cnn political commentator and doug hyde to the conversation. doug, when charges with first announced against manafort and gates, the president made sure to point out on twitter they re related to his time before the trump campaign, again dealing with ukraine and some tax evasion, other issues related to being foreign lobbyists. is it possible this deal is totally separate from the grander russian probe do you think? it is certainly possible it is separate from the probe, but it certainly won t be separate from the larger conversation we re having not just about indictments or pleas but everything connected to the trump campaign and russia. i got an e-mail from a member of congress about five minutes ago, republican member from a district that trump won pretty ea
dnc. remember the dirty dossier, uranium. why dou think the president is going after mcmaster when it comes to the obvious when it comes to russian meddling? i don t know. it seems pretty straight forward what mcmaster said. the key thing is to stop it from happening. i think one thing we want to do is to try to see if we can get the price of oil down $10 or $20 a barrel, down into the $30s or at least into the $40s. so russia the main thing itself overseas, oil and gas, that russia is put in a real tight bind economically. i was negotiating with the russians back in 79 or 89, 90, 91 when the berlin wall went down. i tell you, you have never seen such friendly russians, accommodating russians. once they saw the key part of
heavily on a high price for oil, if he can june mine thundermine doesn t have to talk. he doesn t have to say what he has succeeded in doing or not succeeded in doing. reagan and casey did something that very, very badly messed up the natural gas system of the then-soviet union and they didn t say a word about it. russians sure knew what we were doing and they were devastated. what are you seeing this administration do in order to prevent russia from meddling in the upcoming 2018 election or even beyond? because we heard the current cia director pompeo yo say it is happening. this is not a board game. we don t have to respond in the same way that they come after us. they can come after us with cyber. it doesn t mean we go back at them on cyber. we can do something else if it is more effective. what will be more effective is letting people switch fuels in their cars so they can drive on
this case. it was a criminal case regarding financial crimes before he had anything to do with the presidential campaign. now, both of these men pleaded not guilty to those charges. so, you know, it is obviously a worrisome development for paul manafort, the fact his co-defendant in this case is willing to engage in this plea deal and testify against him. according to the l.a. times rick gates could spend about 18 months in prison. to give you context, the charges he was facing he could have faced upwards of ten years in prison if he had gone to trial and if he had been found guilty. this is a person who has a young family. he has four young children. he was facing personal pressure from his loved ones to kind of get this over with, but he was also facing financial pressure. it would have been very expensive for him to continue with this, to go to trial. now, if you are bob mueller, what does it mean for the grand scheme of things? what does it mean for the russia investigation more