to his alleged mistresses. that s between him and mrs. trump. what the evidence suggests is that these hush money payments were about trying to get donald trump elected in office. we know from cohen that these conversations got heated after the access hollywood tapes came out, the last thing trump needed was more evidence of his problem with women and if the payments were on the up and up, why try to disguise them. it s always the cover-up. trump directed cohen, according to mr. cohen, to either pay the money, pretending like it was a retainer payment to him, trump told cohen to pay it from his home equity line, so it couldn t be traced to the campaign. we were talking about the sentencing guidelines, jill mentioned those earlier, one reason they were so high for paul manafort is because it s an aggravating factor if you direct a scheme, in this case according to the southern district,
this is what they warned us about. even the sexual affair with clinton. that became the crux of the whole argument this this case covered up with payoffs becomes a separate crime. on the conspiracy piece have you seen thus far, have you seen much so far as a journalistic point of view to be able to say confidently donald trump s election as president of the united states was aided and abetted by a foreign government? there is no question, joy, the foreign government attempted to do that. there is a lasting debate over how effective that was. what did it achieve in terms of a very, very narrow victory for trump in the elect tractor-trailer college? and there the a good argument made by academics and others who studied the data that it did have an impact. the social media and other interventions by the russians that we know occurred had a measurable effect on the election. yeah. but to me, it doesn t matter whether you can prove they swung
this had nothing to do with collusion. it s a collusion hoax, a collusion witch hoax. i don t cole collude also made statement that keep the hoax going. it s just a hoax. mr. president, you can be honored all you want, but the judge never said that. the judge said that collusion had nothing to do with the trial. this particular case wasn t about collusion, but it was manafort s no-collusion sign-off, we wonder if that s a signal to donald trump that he s still on board and he would very much like a pardon.
trial was about, right? this was bank fraud. this wasn t about collusion. this was failure to pay taxes, and so that it s not about collusion, not surprising. that s not what he was on trial for. that will wait for mr. mueller s report. bakari, i want to get your take on freshman congresswoman omar s comments. an article in the jewish journal criticized this move. all lives matter instead of black lives matter. is that a fair comparison? no, i do believe that not only were not only has congresswoman omar s language been troublesome or beyond troublesome, something that needs to be dealt with in conversations with leadership, but many of our house leadership s response to this has been disappointing at best. democrats should not have any
just to be clear, despite what you just heard the judge in this case did not say there was no collusion only that it did not pertain to the charges in this particular case. asha rangappa is a national security analyst. first, let me start with the president of the united states saying point-blank today michael cohen directly asked for a pardon. what is mueller now do with this? could his boost his case that the president needs to be interviewed? mueller would definitely be looking in to that conversation and i think it s important here to remember the difference between their relative positions. people petition, you know, the white house for pardons. that s what people do. they ask for mercy or leniency. that isn t running afoul of any kind of law or constitutional provisions. the question is what it trump say on the other side? did he dangle it in any way? did he use it as an enticement