mueller report and now an entire day of testimony from robert mueller, before all of that, there was a russia investigation that preceded him. our nation s first and contemporaneous attempt to understand russia s de facto invasion into american democracy in our 2016 presidential election. our next guest was there for the beginning of this premueller investigation. he served as a top official in the justice department s national security division. his work, particularly the steps he took to strengthen the country s laws about registering as a foreign agent, that led to ultimately the biggest convictions we have seen in the scandal, including the conviction of the presidential campaign chairman, paul manafort and michael flynn and the trump transition official, bijan kian. thanks for making the trip. good to have you here. at the justice department, you
the bijan kian case to other federal prosecutors in the eastern district of virginia. they ultimately brought charges against kian for him acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power at the time he was working as a trump transition official. as the number two in the trump transition on intelligence matters, mr. kian apparently participated in key hiring decisions for the new administration. things like who would run the nation s intelligence agencies under president donald trump. bijan kian was taking part in those decisions while he was secretly on the payroll of a foreign country, as determined today by a federal jury. and i mean that alone should be kind of a show-stopper, right? for this or any presidency. you played a role in picking the cia director while you were being paid by another country secretly? that s weird. you would think that would be kind of a hmm.
russia intervening in our election to help put donald trump into the white house, but for all of those dozens of indictments, mueller s investigation has only led to two trials before a jury. the first one, of course, put president trump s campaign chairman paul manafort in prison for at least seven years. that s his federal prison sentence. and that is separate and apart from any time he may get if he s convicted on the state charges. he s also now facing at the same time. so manafort was only the first jury trial that came out of mueller s investigation. only the second jury trial that has come out of mueller s investigation ended in dramatic fashion today, this afternoon, with that jury walking into that courtroom in the eastern district of virginia at 2:21 p.m. eastern time to announce their unanimous decision to issue guilty verdicts on all counts against bijan kian, who was a trump transition official the number two official in the trump transition working on intelligence issues.
several were later charged with traveling to charlottesville with the intention of insighting a riot. it was at that rally, the day after the torch-lit march that a neonazi drove his car deliberately into a crowd of counter protesters. a moment captured by a photojournalist that instantly became the defining image of that terrible moment. he plowed his car and injured dozens of people and killed one young counter protester named heather heyer. immediately there after president trump said there were very fine people on both sides that day in charlottesville. he expressed sympathy with the far right marcher s support for the confederacy and symbols and said the press treated them very unfairly. today the neonazi guy who drove
countries that have worse leaders and inept leaders. we are living in one. he is that president. he is corrupt. he is the worst president we have had. we is inept and we are going to call him out for it. we are going to hold him accountab accountable. we are going to talk about the policies that he is creating that we think are setting our country back and we are going to make sure that not only do we resist him, but insist on furthering policies that are going to guarantee health care for people and provide the proper education they need that is going to make sure they are not forever shackled with student debt and provide the kind of housing that is proper and take care of our veterans and disabled and most vulnerable and our children and elderly and make sure that we are moving the agenda we were sent to move here