be concurrently served with, at which point the judge interrupts him to say, quote, i can t, but she can. i don t believe i can. if you find in the law that i m incorrect, you can bring that to my attention. the judge then adds, i think it is entirely up to her whether any sentence she imposes is to run concurrent to this sentence. it s up to her. anything else, mr. downing? to which manafort s lawyer replied, no, your honor, which is the more diplomatic way of saying of course not! it takes a special level of rich guy privilege to think you could ask the judge who just cut you a massive break to make sure that the next judge makes that break stick. so clearly there is no sense of contrition or remorse from manafort s camp, like none. but rather a pretty bold presumption that the system should and will continue to work for him. next week manafort will be in court before judge amy berman jackson, who first ordered manafort to jail for tampering
and faces two sentences that could add up to decades in prison. manafort is one of several associates that lied. that includes rick gates, michael cohen, fired national security adviser, michael flynn as well. we know that manafort lied about his contacts with a political operative with ties to the russian intel. specifically, it s about a meeting at this cigar bar, which manafort ducked out of trump campaign headquarters to go to with rick gates. they actually handed over data. the question is, why would he lie about obviously, it s a bad thing he was doing but why would he lie about it? that is the big question. what struck out to me is the judge in this case said, look, this wasn t just a lion something that was on the
he says which it was not. but even if it was, it was only a civil case like obama s but done correctly by a lawyer and there wouldn t be a fine. lawyer s liability if he made a mistake, not me. cohen trying to get his sentence reduced, witch hunt. a filing against paul manafort suggesting he had contact with some officials at the white house. how much can we figure out on that one, byron? hard to figure much out on that one. said he had contacts in 2018 early this year with people at the white house. we don t know who they are or what the contact was about. we do know that the mueller office is pretty mad at paul manafort and they accused him of continuing to lie about his business dealings in ukraine. remember, that was the heart of the tax evasion and fraud case against manafort in which manafort was convicted on several counts. so this is something that
jonathan, i don t know if you can hear me. julia, i m going to ask you that if you were able to hear me. yo question. it s absolutely a big deal at this point. as much as the white house says that manafort, these allegations have nothing to do with the trump campaign, manafort was heading the trump campaign for a while. whether the white house an the trump campaign like it or not he is tied to that. republicans and this election which will likely be a referendum on president trump were wanting to focus on other issues and now this is tied to them. thank you so much for that. our coverage of tropical
let s get to the paul manafort situation. all this renewed speculation of what exactly he could be sharing as far as this cooperation agreement with special counsel mueller and whether the information is crucial enough to potentially incriminate the president and his inner circle. when i talk inner circle, talking family, donald trump jr. and jared kushner. is there a sense, julia, that the white house had any idea this was coming from paul manafort? yes, this was certainly a surprise for everyone watching this play out. there were some people that suspected there could be a guilty plea, but i don t think a lot of people suspected manafort would eventually flip. obviously that trump tower meeting in which manafort, jared kushner, and donald trump jr. were present at could very welcome into play with this. what do you think, jonathan in terms of context of this agreement with the latest developments to come out of the investigation. last weekend we talked about george papadopoulos