founded by paul manafort, these russian-backed ukrainian interests. patten was arranging some lobbying, some meetings with congressional staff for them in the united states and he had not registered to do. so and that s a felony, and he has admitted that. he also admitted was not charged with but admitted funneling $50,000 to a straw donor to donald trump s inauguration so that a ukrainian, his ukrainian client paid this $50,000 illegally so he and another person, a russian, could attend trump s inauguration. what s interesting about this case, it is was brought brought by the district columbia, not by mueller s office. when it first emerged we were trying to figure out what connection to the mueller investigation. but now it s clear that patten has agreed to cooperate with robert mueller. and that clearly comes out of the manafort investigation of illegal foreign lobbying. and this straw donation to the inauguration. he is very interesting. and joyce vance, can i get you to weigh in
mueller. and how much does, that shannon, in your view, play into the president s i think you called it earlier in the hour a morning obsession that he has to get out of his system. it s simply not knowing. i mean, his lawyers do a good job, or at least they try to calm him down, to tell him everything s going to be okay, everything s going to be okay. you re fine here. but as each one of these new pieces come out and this new name today, sam patten, i was on the phone with rudy giuliani this morning when the headline came out. and i mentioned. i said oh, yeah, it looks like sam patten just had a guilty plea. rudy giuliani said oh, who is that? i don t remember. maybe he is at a different level, but he is someone close to constantine kilimnik who was a big fish, a russian oligarch in all of this. he is the type of person who could have been on the radar. like any lawyer, any defense lawyer, and the president has a team of them beyond just rudy giuliani, they try to know as much a
talk to me a little bit about this idea of a counterreport. you guys mentioned you wanted to put out your own report. that done to undermine mueller s credibility? it s done to answer it. it s not going to come out until he puts out a report. of course i think even the president s enemies would imagine that his lawyers would put out a counter to an attack on him. if they don t attack him, no report. chuck rosenberg, what s your take on that? he is essentially saying well, if they don t attack the president in the report, we ll keep our mouths shut that seems like the political version of the report wouldn t that be nice? they haven t really shown a capacity for keeping their mouths shut. every time they octuplet, they tend to make matters worse. here is my sense of it there will be some counterreport there will be a rebuttal. it s not going the matter very much. what matters are the facts that are produced through a thorough, professional criminal investigation. and i should add
and how much do they what kind of knowledge do they possess about what mueller has? very, very, very little. they have been involved in document production, so they know, you know, what documents out of the white house were provided to mueller, what white house e-mails, for example, white house memos, things like that. they have some visibility into what the testimony has been. that is what white house officials who have been called as witnesses have told mueller because they ve debriefed with ty cobb who was the lawyer at the time and others on the team. but beyond that, they really have no convict. they don t know, for example, what michael flynn is providing as a cooperating witness with mueller. they don t know what other information mueller may have subpoenaed from outside the current white house staff, and the president has very little information about about what mueller has his hands on. for example, he was said to be surprised that don mcgahn, the white house counsel
it doesn t straighten out properly, i want them to do their job, he will get involved and i ll get in there if i have to. disgraceful. a lot of noise from the president about robert mueller s russia investigation, but new reporting from the associated press suggests he s gone quiet on what he fears the most, the growing lift of one-time allies who are now ensnared in the investigation swirling around him. the ap reports, quote, trump has angrily told confidantes that he feels betrayed by a number of former allies including attorney michael cohen and new engla nat enquirer david pecker. and seethed over the pressure on pecker to agree to an immunity deal. and just today a brand-new threat, another guilty plea in an investigation spun off mueller s probe. sam patten, a one-time manafort