A recap of the days news. This is cnn tonight. Im don lemon. You want to Pay Attention to this hour. Weve got a lot going on. Its 11 00 p. M. On the east coast. Were live with breaking news tonight. A source tells cnn that white house staffers are stunned by todays news. The men who led the president s campaign for five critical months leading up to the election found guilty in Federal Court. Former Trump Campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty of eight Financial Crime charges. A victory for Robert Mueller in the first trial to come out of his investigation. While the president continues to push the lie that the case against manafort wasnt part of the Special Counsels original mission, i want you to look at what the Trump Appointed Acting Attorney General wrote. Mueller is authorized to investigate any links and or coordination between the russian
even his childrens telephones. Well, now he has stepped up to the line and he can now speak again and he feels liberated. How far is he willi
criminal case. it s interesting, that same day that michael cohen is due next week to testify behind closed doors to the intelligence co committee, friday next week there will be public testimony that day before democratic chairman and house judiciary committee, there will be public testimony from matthew whitaker who is the trump appointed acting attorney general at the justice department right now matt whitaker was never confirmed by the senate and rejected ethics advice from the justice department, which he was instructed or advised he should recuse himself from any oversight role in the mueller investigation. he rejected that advice. did not recuse himself matt whitaker is a hugely controversial figure as acting attorney general for a bunch of different reasons. today, though, ahead of this public testimony he s about to give next week, today he appears to have stepped in it. today there was a press briefing
security clearances, who were nevertheless cleared to be given access to that kind of information. as of yesterday, the trump administration has dropped sanctions on oleg deripaska. he was sanctioned and known to have extensive ties to trump campaign chairman paul manafort whose criminal case is very much ongoing at this moment. 136 republican members of the house, all the democrats in the house and senate, and 11 republicans in the senate all tried to block that lifting of sanctions on deripaska by the trump administration. they fell two republican votes short in the senate and so these sanctions have been lifted as of yesterday. since they failed to stop the trump administration from lifting these sanctions, it has been reported that deripaska won t have to give up effective control of his companies to escape the sanctions.
cars to traffic them across the border while they are all tied up with tape. the president says this over and over and over again. there does not as yet seem to be any known factual basis for the president s repeated claims that this is part of the crisis at the border. there also does not seem to be any factual basis for the president s claims that mexican smugglers have amazing cars like you ve never seen before, cars that are better than any other cars and much faster than the border patrol vehicles and law enforcement can t keep up because the cars aren t as amazing as the amazing mexico cars. we don t know why the president is saying either of those two things about the southern border. the border patrol doesn t know either, and trump appointees were surveying to find out if there was any factual basis. it should be noted that both of those things, the women being
charges, acting attorney general matt whitaker was asked about the status of the mueller investigation, and again, this is a sensitive subject. he has a long record of public comments criticizing the investigation and was appointed to this job by president trump. there is every indication the reason president trump appointed him to this job is because of the long record of public statements criticizing the mueller investigation. whitaker was never confirmed by the senate and got ethics advice from the department that he should recuse from being involved in the mueller investigation. he didn t follow that advice. it s an incredibly sensitive subject when it comes to whitaker. regardless of what you think of him and being in this job as it relates to the mueller investigation, if you are anybody that works at the justice department in any position of authority at the justice department, rule one of that particular fight club is that you do not talk about that particular fight club.