defense after returned in that virginia trial a few weeks ago. but the former mayor wouldn t say what he discussed with the manafort team. back to you, paul. once again, we see the trump defense strategy out of the mob playbook. you see these joint defense agreements in organized crime cases and street gang cases. what they allow lawyers to do is to coordinate so that all everything that s said is protected by attorney/client privilege. what they also allow is for the defendants to get their stories straight. to make sure that everybody s on the same page. the other significance of this is it means that trump understands that his interests are aligned with manafort s which makes it but it s collusion. this is a separate legal collusion between manafort and donald trump. correct me if i m wrong, paul, but in few of these cases do one of the possible defendants have the ability to pardon the
makes he pleads guilty in order to avoid the expense of a trial, a second trial which would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that he owes for the first trial. the other possibility is that he decides that he can t count on donald trump for anything including a pardon and so he makes a deal with mueller. but mueller says what you got. mueller isn t going to be willing to make a deal with manafort unless manafort can give him the goods on donald trump. they ve been spending up to five hours negotiating this. is that what they re negotiating? what you got? yeah. mueller is going to say something has to be in it for me. we already convicted you of eight felonies in virginia. this is actually an easier case in d.c. because it s about failure to register as a lobbyist. you either did or you didn t. mueller s saying you can go to jail for another ten years or you can help us make our case. he wouldn t give him a break
agreed to cooperate with prosecutors or is simply conceding to a guilty plea which would allow him to avoid the expense and stress of trial. reuters also saying a possible deal, quote, is close but not there yet. separately rudy giuliani said he was confident manafort will not flip on trump. there s no fear that paul manafort would cooperate against the president because there s nothing to cooperate about and we long ago evaluated him as an honorable man. joining me now is washington bureau chief for mother jones and author of russian roulette. great book out there about the russian investigation. i go directly to mr. butler. what does it mean to you when you hear this? it means that manafort is asking himself whether he gets a better deal from donald trump or robert mueller. if it s donald trump, that means that he s confident that trump will pardon him and then he
1,500 exhibits they plan to present. mr. manafort s attorney said they weren t sure if they would present a defense. this comes as the president s lawyer, rudy giuliani, reveals his own strategy in the mueller probe. telling the new york times that he believes the president s real jury is the public. doug burns is a former federal prosecutor who joins me to weigh in on these latest developments. take us inside what those kind of negotiations would look like. you re already in the middle of a trial in virginia. this other one is coming up. what would that look and sound like do you think? it s common and it s uncommon. it s very common to have the negotiations in a typical criminal case but not necessarily where there are two cases in the middle of the first trial. so i agree with you. basically, it s not really that remarkable of a story. in other words, you know, i just talked to a friend of mine, it s interesting, about what would be in it for manafort s team to try to negoti
virginia trial said in open court to some controversy that he believes the prosecutors in this case are interested in what paul manafort might be able to contribute to a case that involves the president or other high ranking federal officials. once the prosecutors knew their case was in the hands of the jury in virginia, they presumably had some ideas to the strength of their case, what they put forward, the likelihood of getting convictions. wouldn t them having their cake and eating it too if they could get eight felony convictions but then also get cooperation to make the charges go away? you bet. they absolutely want his cooperation. as long as it is truthful. we always think of plea deals, plea agreements where both sides document some understanding and both sides get something out of it. it is also the case that mr. manafort could simply walk into court and plead guilty. straight up as we call it to all the charges and the prosecutors