The days biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. Special coverage and handle her own mafia cases. And from the washington post, an allstar panel, if i may compliment you all. What was your view of rick gates taking the stand . Is this a testimonial Turning Point in the trial . What did you see with your own eye, the tension in the room. It was absolutely riveting, ari. I do think it was a Turning Point. Up until now the jury heard from witnesses who worked for mr. Manafort and sold him goods, but nobody who knew his state of mind, his motives. Gates does that. It was incredible to see mr. Gates who worked for Paul Manafort as his protege to see him walk in that courtroom just 10 feet from the defendant and he did this ritual lisk process
boss in charge, with the python jacket, had no clue. The other thing muellers team has done a good job is to support and protect gates beforehand. Every witness who has come to the stand already, the bo
impeachment. pelosi and senior democrats, they don t want to have to focus on impeachment because they know that would be bad for 2020 and their chances for november if they have to defend the position that most americans do not support just yet. what do you think? yes. the august recess will be a big break. all of these members will separate and go back to their town halls. there will not be the mounting pressure to really force them to bring out more proimpeachment democrats. another thing mueller said when he made his one statement in may was that, you know, he s not going to reveal any ig other than what was already said. it doesn t matter. when it was on tv and publicized, you ll see a lot of
was this all about? sound bite number three. rush limbaugh had a similar feeling yesterday on radio. robert mueller made it clear as a bell today that he wants to nail donald trump and he wants donald trump out of office. he just doesn t have the evidence. and so he has asked congress to take over the job. so what was the purpose of this? why do this investigation at all if from the very beginning you could not nail the president? bill: who has an answer for that. i have an answer for that. rush limbaugh likes to focus on how it may be damaging to the president and how the president s enemies may be trying to use this. another thing mueller talked about that is obscured, the russian government through its intelligence services intervened and interfered in the election and did so to help one candidate and one candidate only and it should bother trump and everybody. that is one of the parts of the
as for what happened today in the sentencing, i know a lot of criticism has been leveled at the judges because the sentencing could have been more severe. a lot of people think it should have been more severe. the reason this sentencing today was capped at ten years was because the special prosecutor s office manipulated the conspiracy statutes. manafort should have been looking at a 20 year conspiracy count for money laundering and a 20 year conspiracy count for witness tampering. mueller capped each count at five years so the judge was stuck at a ceiling of ten years. this is the kind of thing mueller has done throughout the investigation. they filed charges with these overwhelming sensational press releases and they plead the case is out to a song and everyone ends up thinking the people must have pled guilty to the cases as advertised and usually that s just not the case.
to trump and manafort. i think that is outrageous. is for what happened in the sentencing i know a lot of criticism has been leveled at the judges because the sentencing could have been more severe. a lot of people think it should have been more severe. the reason this sentencing today was kept at 10 years is because mueller s special prosecutor s office manipulated the conspiracy statutes. manafort should have been looking at a 20 year conspiracy count for money laundering and a 20 year conspiracy count for witness tampering. mueller capped each count at 5 years so the judge was stuck in the ceiling of 10 years and this is the kind of thing mueller has done throughout the investigation. they filed charges with overwhelming sensational press releases, and everyone thinks the people must have pled guilty to the cases as advertised and usually that s not the case.