Friends. Now it seems like its going to be a g 6. It looks like we are on the verge of getting kicked out of the g7. This is mtp daily, and it starts right now. Good evening imim katy tur in new york in for chuck todd. Welcome to mtp daily. We begin tonight with breaking news. President trumps former campaign chief, Paul Manafort has been hit with new charges involving witness tampering and obstruction of justice. Special Counsel Robert Mueller filed a third superseding indictment against manafort, which also charges one of manaforts longtime business associates. According to these new Court Documents, manafort and his associate conspired to influence two potential witnesses in the case. Guys, to stay that mueller is turning up the heat on manafort would be a major understatement. Todays new charges, manafort is now facing potential jail time for allegations ranging from conspiracy against the u. S. To Money Laundering to acting as an unregistered foreign agent, to false statements. And now, obstruction of justice. Not to mention, mueller has already secured a plea deal with manaforts top deputy on the trump campaign, rick gates. As mueller again turns up the heat on manafort to potentially get him to flip against the president , the president is again flaunting his absolute power to pardon anyone, even himself. Heres the president earlier today. I do have an absolute right to pardon myself, but ill never have to do it because i didnt do anything wrong. The democrats have had massive collusion, massive obstruction, and they should be investigated. Well see what is happening. Im rebounder and you are glue. Joining me now, tom winter, mimi rocha, and our panel, john podhoritz, caitlyn huey burns, and gabe debenedetti. Tom, lets start with you. This is the third superseding indictment on Paul Manafort. What does Robert Mueller have on him now . Todays charges directly reflect something we learned earlier this week. And that is an attempt by manafort, according to prosecutors, to tamper with witnesses to kind of guide their testimony, for them to say and the root of this goes to manaforts political lobbying efforts here in the United States on behalf of the ana kovic regime in ukraine. Basically he was trying to guide them to say, hey, you didnt do any work in the United States, remember . It was all work that was done in europe. Basically an attempt by manafort to kind of guide them. Constantine has been referenced in Court Documents although not specifically named before by muellers team. As we have previously reported he is somebody that the u. S. Government believes has ties to Russian Military intelligence. He is mentioned today. He is one of the persons that was charged along with Paul Manafort. Its two charges having to do with conspiracy to obstruct justice as well as object instructing justice. Those charges are tied to those efforts to try to tamper with witnesses. They say the two of them were together to try to do that. This is now the third superseding indictment in this case. Meaning this is the third time that muellers team has come in with new charges based on evidence they have come up with. Manaforts team has not yeth yet responded to this. He of course pled not guilty to the charges in the past. He has to respond by today. A judge told him to respond today to these tampering allegations that were raised earlier this week. Katy, we will wait to see what he has to say about this. Right now he is on bail under house arrest. Robert mueller is trying to get the judge to revoke that bail. When will a decision be made on that . We expect manaforts team to respond to that, like i said, today, and then next week they will have a hearing to talk all of this over. Its unclear with todays superseding indictment whether or not they are going to wait to hold a hearing on that. So will the judge at that point or will she make a decision next friday on whether to revoke or modify his bail. Its difficult to see where they would modify his bail further as you mentioned he is on home confinement. He has gps monitoring. He is restricted right now in what he can do. It would appear that this is starting to lean towards Paul Manafort being held in jail until his d. C. Trial commences sometime this fall. If i remember correctly, he is wearing two monitoring bracelets on both legs, right tom. I think they have been able to at the time it down to just one. But at one point you are correct, he had both. Mimi rocha, extrapolate for you, the new court filings, where do you think the investigation is going . I want to make one point that tom raised. Now that these new superseding charges have been failed, manafort will get arraigned and brought before the court and have them read to him or explained to him. That could happen before friday. The hearing that is scheduled for friday is about his bail. But it may be that now the courts schedule some kind of arraignment sooner on these charges and the bail issue gets dealt with sooner. We dont know that. I think the fact that mueller has brought the obstruction charges in the indictment as opposed to just alleging them in a letter as he had done previously now makes detention much more likely. Its hard to manaforts lawyers to argue, they havent charged us, these are allegations. No, its been charged now. Its been proven by probable cause. And mueller believes he could certainly prove it in court or he wouldnt have brought the charges. As for where this goes, i think this is significant for a couple of reasons because it shows manaforts really deep ties with constantine who as everyone knows by now certainly has ties to russian intelligence. You have heard the saying you cant be a former russian intelligence officer. Its not just with respect to these obstruction charges. It shows could be stan teens involvement going back many years with manafort, and during the time of the campaign. So manafort was interacting and doing this scheme, this lobbying scheme, this attempt to hide his actions on behalf of the ukraine from the u. S. Government during the time that he was a Campaign Manager with this former russian intelligence officer. So this puts manafort really booep deep in it. This is whatever c word you want to use, collusion, conspiracy, this is it. Manafort is in it. And now the real question is what is he going to do . Is he going to cooperate . If he does, what will he say about trumps knowledge or involvement or other people in the campaign about these activities. I want to talk to you about witness sampering specifically, what the new charges are around. Knowingly and intentionally attempted to persuade another one with respect to testimony in an official proceeding. Could you make the argument that the president has attempted to persuade witnesses himself . He has been going offer Jeff Sessions recently tweeting about him just three days ago, and sessions is somebody who has been interviewed by the special counsel. Look, i mean, thats certainly the one of the things that mueller is looking at. Are trumps repeated sort of you know, attacks on sessions, on comey, on and then the dangling pardons to other witnesses you know, are those attempts to get them to either, you know, shut down the investigation, change their testimony . And you know, i think to a lay person, you know, sort of if you are just looking at it in the sense of, you know, yeah, it looks like it, but in the sense of can you charge that to meet the elements of the crime, im not sure. And i think thats really going to take mueller piecing together a lot of different acts. I keep coming back to the trump tower coverup, the meeting in the trump tower. I think thats very significant evidence of intent to obstruct. I dont think standing alone it would be enough. But i think it adds a lot to the things like you are talking about. Its been a crazy week this the mueller probe, the revelations we had coming out of it. It began with the leak of trumps letter, the legal letter to Robert Muellers team saying that yes, he did dictate the letter about trump jr. s statement. Paul ryan joining trey gouty to say no there was no. In the president s campaign. Giuliani alleging that manafort is trying or that Robert Mueller is trying to frame the president. And now manafort being indicted. I enmomean thats a lot to happn just one week. The manafort story is bizarre. Heres why. There are a bunch of charges against manafort. The least of them is that he was an unregistered foreign lobbyist, something on which only six people have been tried in close to 50 years. Theres a Money Laundering charge, which is much more serious than other charges. This superseding indictment involves him trying to witness tamper on the question of whether he was an unregistered foreign lobbyist. He is trying to tell these two people who are unnamed, send them hints that they should say that they did no work in the United States when they did. Nast bizarre. He could almost certainly get out of being sent to jail for being an unregistered foreign lobbyist. No one ever really has. What do you make of that. I dont know. I mean its stupid. First thing it looks like is that its really stupid. Thats not something that he needed to, you know, like threaten his freedom by witness tampering, which Everybody Knows is a really serious felony. But the obvious question thats raised by this then is well, what is he trying to cover up . If we are going to take it to the logical conclusion its that what he is trying to stop them from talking about, this foreign lobbying arrangement that he had was much more serious than we know about and much more extensive than we know about. That raises even more questions about the broader scope of muellers probe. And you know, we learned one lesson every week, its that this thing is wider than any of us know. We never hear from Robert Muellers team. The only time we hear from them are through the court filings. You have the president trying to go out and tear down their credibility saying spygate, et cetera, giuliani, who is basically acting as the president s spokesperson now saying they are trying to frame him. We are talking about the messages that the president could be sending to others about pardons. Could this be a message from mueller to the president . Dont obstruct justice . This event combined today with everything that happened this week, one of course we dont know where the probe is going. Every other week it seems like there is something coming down and we see the president react this real time. This event combined with what we saw from trumps lawyers and the controversy over the statement that the president made at the time, that the white house made at the time of the donald trump jr. Letter in trump tower with what his lawyers said, that he actually did dictate that creates this additional problem for the president insofar as he continues the weigh in on this he continues put him further and further into jeopardy as it pertains to this case. All the while, while they are trying to denigrate the case entirely they are kind of building themselves back into it in lots of different ways. Mimi button this up for us. What are you looking out for next . Well, i think that all these cries of there was no collusion, there was no you know we did nothing wrong with the russians i think this is that is not true. There has been no finding that there hasnt been collusion or conspiracy. In fact, the more hints that we get from mueller, as you say, he speaks not often. But when he does, you know, we see the russians coordinating with various members of the trump campaign. And this is yet another sign of that. Manaforts closeness with column knick and not in the obstruction, which is serious, and he is charged in that. But constantine shows up throughout this indictment in trying the defraud the u. S. I think we are going to see more of that. Tom winter thank you. Mimi, john, caitlyn and gabe stay with us. Ahead the latest on the Senate Intel Committee drama. A top staffer arrested in connection with the leak of classified information. The newest developments next. Hais not always easy. 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Its very interesting that they caught a leaker, and a very important it is a very important leaker. So its very interesting. Im getting information on it now. It happened last night. It could be a terrific thing. Welcome back. That was President Trump responding this morning to the news that james wolfe, a former Top Senate Intelligence Committee staffer, was indicted on federal charges of lying to investigators about the potential leaguing of classified information. Wolfe was in court today. His arrest is part of attorney general Jeff Sessions evident to crack down on leaks of classified information to the media. At the behest of the president. The Senate Intel Committee is of course deeply involved in the russia probe. And at least one case in which wol allegedly shared nonpublic information did involve the russia probe. Meanwhile, Deputy Attorney general Rod Rosenstein gave a speech this week alluding to the pressure he is under from President Trump. And his republican allies in congress over the russia investigation. He invoked the rule of law, rosenstein did, 17 times in his 20minute remarks to a High School Alumni dinner including say, quote, the rule of law is our most important principle. Patriots should always defend the rule of law even when it is not in their immediate self interest. Our panel is back. Also with us, mimi rocha. Who is Rod Rosenstein talking to . I think there is a lot of ideas that there are lots of subliminal and semisubliminal messages being sent from one part of washington to another. To me, it seems improvisa tory. The other day he said the department of justice will not be extorted. But he is going to speak at at that high school and he talks about the rule of law . What do you expect the Deputy Attorney general to talk about. He said rule of law is our most important principle, patriots should always defend the rule of law even when its not in their immediate self interests. I dont know, that sounds like a message to those in congress who are parroting spygate had he there is no evidence for that and paul ryan and trey gouty said thats not true. One, i hesitate to read into his motivations but its clear that road road has been getting out there, giving speeches and sending some sort of messages. The other half is that its amazing we are at a point where the Deputy Attorney general simply talking about the rule of law as a principle is immediately read as some sort of message to his allies or to the president or his enemies. That does not speak well. Mimi, is this how the d. O. J. Threads the kneeled. You let them pursue weak investigations like the news we have today while Rod Rosenstein is out there pounding the pavement talking about rule of law . I think everybody is right, in a sense. That if the you know the diplomats the lawyer turned diplomat for us now. If his words, if every Deputy Attorney generals words were followed this closely every year we would probably hear a lot of speeches about the rule of law. This is something that d. O. J. Leaders like to talk about. And they talk about it sincerely because it is the ethos at the department of justice. It is something that is grilled into your head from the moment you become a lawyer or a prosecutor with the deputy of justice, that the rule of law is above all else. It is above partisanship. It is above self motive. It is a selfless job that we are doing here, and we do it in the pursuit of justice, which is about truth and facts, not about necessarily convicting people at all costs. And you know, i did read his speech, rosensteins speech, and i thought it was really well done in the universe of these types of speeches that i have heard many, many times. I do think, though, that here he was very cognizant at the least of the fact that what he was saying is going to be read closely and heard. And so in that sense, i think he is sending a message. Its not that he changed necessarily what he was going to say. But his message he definitely said in that speech, you know, this is not we are not supposed to be partisan. We do not let our investigations in fact, we can be penalized, we can be punished if we let partisanship to come into this. He is trying in some sense i think to speak to the American Public and explain something that you know is hard the explain if you are not in that world, which is that there is something above and beyond partisanship and above and beyond simply trying to put people in jail and win cases. Its about truth. And its about finding the facts and following them. Caitlyn, what do you think . If nothing else, the president has given us a giant civics lesson over the past year and a half when it comes to this stuff i think it brings up a r