court that s the audience of one. judge ellis said you should apologize. so after the last sentencing, trump came out and echoed the words of manafort s lawyer. there s absolutely no evidence that paul manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from russia. his lawyer went out of the way to say no collusion with russia. so that wasn t about collusion at all. it was about bank and tax fraud. yet, the quakts this alleged russian agent with material to mueller s probe and he s a material person in the case. where are we?
one knows that. what you saw today is the same thing that we had said from day one. there is absolutely no evidence that paul manafort was involved with any collusion with any government government official from russia. and that s not what the case is about. it didn t include that because it wasn t about collusion. outfront now. rung from ohio. mike turner has been looking at all the issues from a different investigative perspective. good to talk with you congressman. thank you. the president always says no collusion it s core to his definition to say that. do you think the comments from paul manafort s lawyer were a direct plea to the audience of one to the president for a pardon? well, you know, i would be just high-speculation. but this case was about collusion. because that s how this investigation began. that s not what he was karjd with. that s correct.
two judges appointed by republicans who come at it a different way. i agree with the sirica approach but in fairness judge ellis is not really viewing this as his job to break open the case. do you think he s being partisan, straight up partisanship on his part? for trump, didn t want to put somebody away for having helped him? i don t think that s right. i think it s a philosophical view on how he uses sentencing. judge sirica had a different view. his view was a big sentence that will break the case open and that s what it did. yeah. one of the challenges people have with what he did and we ll move off of this, is that the cooperator, michael cohen, different judge, mind you, is getting three years. the non-cooperate ter gets one more year than him with time served they could serve the same amount of time. as a matter of law as a matter of advancing the cause of justice, this seemed like a
dropped the mike flynn probe which we heard the move to fire robert mueller, dangling pardons potentially in front of witnesses and wanting cohen to lie to congress. from what you ve heard in the public record and committees have you heard enough to make the allegation that donald trump has been guilty of obstruction of justice? there may be more to all of the growing body of factual evidence relating to obstruction of justice because as you know, there are five house committees that are investigating all of the different things that the trump organization has been doing, and so i think that when you build a case like that, you just keep adding to it. this may not be all that is there for obstruction of justice. let me did you mention witness tampering? uh-huh. yeah. tampering with witnesses. we have it. going after michael cohen and by threatening that maybe his father-in-law has something to
significant to the american people? it s extremely significant because if the tax system isn t working we have a volunteer tax system, money laundering is important, i mean, if people are not obeying the law and a lot of this is self-regulatory and you don t have a deterrent effect on this the whole system can break down. yeah. with respect to this particular situation with the manafort sentencing, i mean, i think one thing that a lot of people missed is that there is a real philosophical difference between judge ellis and john sirico the unsung hero of the watergate case. you had john was willing to give the burglars enormous sentences and basically tell them, he would reduce them if they cooperated. yeah. judge ellis from day one was very hesitant saying this whole case is here because you re trying to get donald trump. right. he just has this philosophical bent.