and the things that we believe and prosecutors asked they discussed at that meeting are viewed as potentially very significant. there s something else, tom. as best you can, walk us through where in the calendar of events that resulted in the trump residency this falls this is, what, days after russia if you re listening and 17 days before manafort leaves the campaign? that s correct. and there are a couple other things that go on in the background as we put together this timeline. two days before this meeting, candidate donald trump also offers seemingly sympathetic words to the kremlin. he suggests maybe the folks in crimea were not all that unhappy to have their territory sort of repossessed by russia and becoming part of russia, no longer part of ukraine. the campaign is moving into high gear at this point. and yet paul manafort and his lieutenant rick gates take time
what is this barrier going to look like along portions of the rio grande? it s going to be quite short. the first leg is six miles. much shorter than the wall trump is talking about on the campaign trail. it s going to be on a levee to the height of the existing levee, plus steel on top of concrete. some people might argue this is not trump s wall because it s want the prototypes he unveiled earlier in his term. it s concrete and a barrier so i think that s good enough for trump to say he s building a wall. what percentage do you think at the end of term one of the trump presidency could be completed of his promise from sea to shining sea? it s hard to offer a precise number, but i think it s clear at this point. at least at the end of this first term it s going to be quite small. democrats are not willing to fund much of it. he s had to wring funding for some kind of fencing out of them. it s just not happening. let s talk about another
repair job that was done on existing barrier that you think maybe he uses as his cover? yeah, that s precisely what he s done. as evidence he s put up pictures on twitter. he said, look, i claimed we start building the wall. when he put up those pictures, they ve been of replacement fixing in places like california. these are long-planned projects, not based on trump s prototypes. they re fencing, not concrete. he s used projects that are not his wall to justify his false claim he is building his wall. and in the part of the world where the rio grande is the border between mexico and the united states, obviously we re going to quibble over a term of art, we re building a wall on the rio grande. what is this barrier going to look like along portions of the rio grande? it s going to be quite short. the first leg is six miles. much shorter than the wall trump is talking about on the campaign trail. it s going to be on a levee to the height of the existing
tremendous obstruction and tremendous opposition. that was the claim again today, building a lot of wall on the southern border right now. the president s border wall was also a major part of that rally last night in el paso. this was the iconography we noticed right away before the event. finish the wall banners had been put up. as we mentioned last night at one point trump even said, a wall is being built right there on the rio grande river. engineers will tell you that s tough to do. peter baker of the new york times point out, no new walls have been built or financed by congress based on the prototypes the trump administration unfailed. projects to replace or repair about 40 miles of existing barriers have been started or completed since 2017. construction of the first extension of the current barriers, 14 miles of what s called a levee wall in the rio grande valley sector is slated
committee as vice chairman made very clear today the investigation is ongoing, there are interviews that need to be completed, there are documents that need to be reviewed, and this investigation that the senate intelligence committee is running is quite different than mueller s probe. but third and most importantly, i think there s perhaps in some cases a willful misimpression being peddled of what it means that there s no direct evidence of connecting trump and collusion with the russians. to illustrate this point, there is a senior manager under whom i worked at cia who would lose his cool every time someone told him that we lacked evidence or we lacked proof. and his point was always that the cia and the intelligence community more broadly doesn t deal in it doesn t deal in evidence. we don t deal in proof. we deal in intelligence and analysts make assessments based on those based on that