to accept the truth of the matter. the truth is that trump tower moscow communications occurred between the trump team and the russians in 2016. they have not tried to escape from that fact because it s pretty damning and pretty incontrovertible. and of course even rudy giuliani has admitted it. i do love the meeting of lanny davis and rudy giuliani on this. next our breaking news continues. what if president trump decides to pardon paul manafort now that he s been sentenced to 47 months? a member of the powerful house oversight committee joins me next. (this is the avery s. this is the avery s trying the hottest new bistro. wait.and the hottest taqueria? and the hottest.what are those? oh, pierogis? and this is the avery s wondering if eating out is eating into saving for their first home. this is jc. (team member) welcome to wells fargo, how may i help? (vo) who s here to help with a free financial health conversation, no strings attached. this is the avery s with the support they
this has been a very, very long proceeding, as you know. and we expect that this will count toward that. and obviously, erin, he has another sentencing scheduled for next week with a judge who has shown very little patience for him. i think judge ellis, i will say, has had has treated him more kindly. i mean, frankly, he has treated the government more roughly. as a matter of fact, today, he said one of the things that was not going to be under consideration, one of the things that the judge said he was not going to even think about, was the allegations of whether paul manafort was part of some conspiracy to collude with russians to interfere in the 2016 election. that s something that he sort of just freelanced and mentioned, interjected, in the middle of the proceeding, which is, again, a little bit of a surprise because, again, you remember those comments last year where the judge sort of just went off script and scolded the special counsel s office. as a matter of fact, today, he
that stanford for paul manafort? that s your reading between the lines? he may well have decided, that is the special counsel may well have decided we need to have a conviction here, we re going to charge what we know we can prover refutably, in fact, meeting that dan dard and may be a lot more evidence of collusion that hasn t come out. right, patrick healy, that s going to be the crucial question here. right. i think that is. what is ultimately in robert mueller s report and findings, there may be a great deal, you know, more evidence, this may be just one step, i mean, for paul manafort, certainly, steps in a process. let me ask you, jack, about next week s sentencing as you and the senator have been talking about, this being sort of the middle act. this is obviously significant. first, actually, evan, let me just get from you what is the range, right? i know we ve been talking about ten years. is there a range? is that the top, the bottom? can you frame it for where we are
that? are those was there anything more along those lines? or are we picking up on the right phrase, otherwise blameless life ? reporter: right. i think that s exactly what the judge was sort of getting at. he said that, essentially, he felt that while paul manafort had many people who had written letters to the judge, to sort of say what a wonderful person he was, what a good friend he was, all the good works that he had done, he also raised that these were very serious crimes, and so one of the things he talked about was, again, he said, you know, i hope you reflect on the fact that you did not comply with the law, and, again, he raised the idea that people pay their taxes, and paul manafort chose not to not to report those bank accounts that he was hiding his money overseas for. and he says that this is, you know, this is you sorry, i m trying to read my own
and i want to be clear, a jury, right, a jury of his citizens, fellow citizens, is. who convicted him after a three-week trial on all of these counts. evan perez was in the courtroom. all right, evan, you ve been inside all day. you ve been waiting. you saw the four minutes of manafort addressing the judge. tell us everything you can. reporter: well, erin, you could hear a pin drop inside that courtroom as manafort finally spoke. and let me tell you, one of the things the judge raised, when he finally announced the sentencing, is that nowhere in manafort s statement did he say that he was that he was sorry for violating the law. and he said, the judge said, i was surprised that i did not hear you express regret. he says i hope you reflect on that. and the fact that you did not comply with the law. and i think that s one of the things that the judge was struggling with here today. he said that 19 to 24 years was way too much. he says it was excessive. he says it was out of whack w