but some of the people he defrauded were you and i. i just find it an astoppishing sentence and i can assure you that every defense lawyer is america is going through cases and we will be flooded with stories of people selling an ounce of marijuana or stealing quarters from a laundry room with an equal sentence. we talk to talk about the disparities between white collar crime and street crime. do you think he was intentionally setting himself up for a potential pardon from the president? well, that is really hard to say, but the president s reaction that you just read before the break about no collusion, this trial wasn t about collusion. that was the other thing that
president trump. in a tweet today the president called cohen a liar, saying he directly asked trump for a pardon, but the president had a kinder, gentler response to paul manafort, his former campaign chairman convicted on several counts and now sentenced by a judge to 47 months in prison for financial crimes. that sentence was far shorter the 19 to 25 years recommended by robert mueller s team. the news sparked sharp criticism throughout the legal and political world. the president, however, praised the decision. i feel very badly for paul manafort. i think it s been a very, very tough time for him, but if you notice, both his lawyer, a highly respected man and a very highly respected judge, the judge, said there was no collusion with russia. this had nothing to do with collusion. there was no collusion. it s a collusion hoax. i don t collude with russia.
stretch, these are still very long sentences for someone his age. we heard the president say on his way to air force one did you want to comment on that as well? you have to remember that that the sentencing next week the judge will be looking at a very different set of crimes and so she will sentence based on the guilty plea that s in front of her. so i think you will see a different sentence, much more harsh. on the issue of collusion, the president seemed to jump on some words from judge ellis saying that the sentence means no collusion, he tweeted both the judge and the lawyer in the paul manafort case stated loudly and for the world to hear that there was no collusion with russia. you want to make sure our vursz are very clear here, the judge said he was just giving a reminder that is this sentence specifically is not for anything related to 2016 election interference, but he didn t say there was no collusion, period. so kevin, is the president misrepresenting the judge
to add. thanks very much. shepard: the addendum would have mad it inaccurate. we ll get to john roberts in a moment. a couple things they talked about at the beginning, the russia report, the indictment. sarah sanders went on to say that we know from the russian indictment that there was no collusion. that is not true. the collusion according to fox news reporting is a separate investigation and there was no mention of that. it wasn t what this indictment was about. this indictment was about russian meddling. this indictment was about the russians. this indictment wasn t about meddling. this indictment wasn t about collusion. there was no ruling on collusion. that s an open matter. as far as impact on the election goes, that too is an open question. the white house is trying to say that it is incontrovertible that russian meddling had no impact on the election. that s not true. it s an open matter. what they did, they staged rallies, set up advertisement.
feeding trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including democratic presidential candidate hillary clinton for several years. a new link has surfaced between the president s name sake and a russian lawyer. we now know at least nine trump associates had contacts with russian officials during the campaign or the transition. meetings happened in new york, in washington, in europe, in russia. former trump adviser carter page has told congressional investigators that despite his previous denials, he did meet with high-ranking russians in moscow in july 2016. christopher steele had reported as much. at the time in the dossier. been forced to acknowledge he had encounters with senior russian officials continuing to say it was meaningless and wasn t about collusion and the things in the dossier are not true but the account significantly changed. what is now the most notorious trump campaign/russia meeting happened in june 2016 at trump tower. donald trump jr., paul