manafort shady dealings in terms with russia and ukraine and the kind of things that are central to the mueller investigation, much more than we had in the virginia trial. so, actually, if a pardon were coming probably in terms of the president s political benefit, it ought to come sooner than later. you asked the question, mika, we had indications from lindsey graham and john cornyn that this is something they don t like. i think the bigger wall, though, is going to be much more around russia and what the president does around russia. not what the president says and were they really the ones that were doing the meddling that he still seems to be keen to say. but if the president were ready to take action, that is the only wall that the republicans would find really difficult to handle. that is the republican caucus in the senate is being unified on to taking tough action against russia. if we start seeing the president to act on russia to make life easier for the russians, as far
met at trump tower in 2016 and that defense is everybody does it. take a look. i have great respect for what he s done in terms of what he s gone through. you know, he worked for ronald reagan for years and worked for bob dole and worked, his firm worked for mccain. he worked for many, many people. many, many years. and i would say what he did some of the charges they threw against him, every consultant and every lobbyist in washington probably does. according to fox news, the president reportedly said that he would consider pardoning manafort. the former head of the trump campaign was convicted on tuesday on eight counts of bank and tax fraud, as well as failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. the president spent part of the day yesterday railing against the outcome of manafort s trial and the jury being unable to reach a verdict on ten of the other counts against him. he wrote on twitter, the president, a large number of
center. he sits there and talks about the weakness and breaking point. stunning. i want to hear from sam and katty, at what point do they break but, first, benjamin, is a pardon possible and what are the legal avenues anyone could take if that happens? a pardon is certainly possible. the president s power to pardon people for federal offenses is essentially unrestricted and paul manafort has now convictions and a trial coming up and all those charges are charges on which the president could tha could pardon him. he takes an oath to preserve and protect the constitution and to
committed financial crimes alongside paul manafort and at the direction of paul manafort. gates says they had 15 different foreign accounts that they did not report to the federal government and that they knew that was illegal. when the defense gets its chance on cross-examination, they will do everything they can to discredit gates, painting him as the real criminal and not paul manafort. the question is, who exactly is rick gates? where did he fit in to the trump campaign? cnn s jessica snyder has more. reporter: all eyes and ears are on rick gates as he takes the witness stand in the paul manafort trial. manafort s right hand man flipped in february, pleading guilty to lying and has been cooperating with the special counsel ever since. gates is likely viewed as the prosecution s star witness less for what he ll tell the jury and more for what information he could be providing behind the scenes. since this virginia trial is
all just found that trump tower was an irresistible property in manhattan for them, and so manafort s vulnerability here to the case that mueller has against him is quite high. the white house is well aware of it. they re in their usual panic mode, and they re going to th w everything out under the sun. i would be surprised by nothing including trump walking around naked in the trees to change the subject. don t say that. no matter how many times kellyanne conway opens her lie hole saying this has nothing to do with the president, it does have everything to do with the president. i don t need to picture that, but okay. jim, i want to circle back to you a little bit and discuss something that i just you know, i mentioned, i touched on a moment ago. this is the virginia trial. paul manafort is going to face separate charges in washington. talk to me about that. listen, you have these relate to financial crimes in general.