Federal judge in washington d. C. The prosecutions sentencing submission related to president Trumps Campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Now just to be clear about what this is, what we are waiting for tonight, youll remember that Paul Manafort was actually brought up on federal charges in two different neighboring jus dictions. He was brought up on charges in virginia and also in washington d. C. He could have combined those two. Seems like in retrospect, that might have been a good move but he didnt. So a week ago tonight we got prosecutors sentencing submission from manafort in the virginia case where they recommend he serve 19 to 24 years in prison and that he pay fines and restitution ranging from several Million Dollars to several tens of millions of dollars. Were still waiting on the defense, excuse me, the defense submission in response to that from Paul Manaforts defense team in virginia. We actually think well get that response from them a week from tonight on friday march 1st. Thereafter, that judge in that virginia case will look at that submission from the prosecution and the judge will look at that submission from the defense and look at the sentencing guidelines what manafort was convicted of in that trial in his courtroom and two weeks from tonight on friday, march 8th, manafort is due to get his sentence handed down in that case in virginia. So thats everything thats happened thus far. What we are waiting on tonight has nothing to do with the virginia case. Tonight we are waiting on prosecutors recommendation for what sentence Paul Manafort should get in the other case. With the case that was brought against him in washington d. C. And that will again start this whole recourse of process where we get the submission of prosecutors and manaforts defense team will submit their own recommendations from the sentence. That is expected to come in on monday and the d. C. Case, the d. C. Judge will consider both of those submissionsubmissions. The judge will look at the sentencing guidelines and look at the circumstances of manaforts case and the ultimate sentence for that jurisdiction on march 13th. So both of these things are coming to an end. Manafort is coming to an end of the line in both of these jurisdictions where he was charged with federal crimes and the reason there is so much anticipation about this particular sentencing document by tonights deadline is that for everything weve been through with manafort thus far, with the charges in d. C. And charges in virginia and him mounting a defense and rick gates being a cooperator and Standing Firm and saying he wasnt going to plead guilty and cooperate and manafort got convicted of a bunch of felonies and did decide to plead guilty and did say he would cooperate and his cooperation deal fell apart. There was witness tampering and revocation of bail and jailing him and allegations of him lying to prosecutor after his cooperation deal. There is so still a dangling thread of the russian codefendant. His former employee who prosecutors and the fbi say is linked to russian intelligence actively now. For all of the drama around the prosecution of Trump Campaign chairman Paul Manafort, what we are expecting tonight in all likelihood will be the last word from Robert Mueller, the last word from the special counsels office about this case and about this defendant. And, you know, anything can happen but the way it looks like things are going, this will sort of be it. I mean, in this document, in this kind of document, prosecutors can say as much or little as they want and be aztec nickel as they want or sweeping and narrative as they want but as far as we know, this sentencing recommendation tonight from the special counsels office about Paul Manafort will be kind of the final scene between mueller and manafort. If mueller is ever going to spell out for the public and for the court the full gravity and the full scope of what the president s Campaign ChairmanPaul Manafort did wrong, this sentencing document in d. C. Is likely to be the document in which he does that. So because of that expectation, me and all the prosecution all the producers that work on this show and everybody else in the country who covers this story, weve been like kittens with their claws out hanging from a tree limb all day long waiting for this thing to come out. Now the deadline is technically today. That definitely doesnt mean close of business. I guess it means as long as you can stay up. There is the possibility that the prosecutors will meet the courts deadline but they will submit something that needs to go through some sort of unredax pr we were expecting to see it today. We shall see. Few hours left. Well have more in a second. Well be covering tonight a big curveball thrown into the manafort case at the last minute today and a story broken by greg ferrell at bloomberg news. And that is all still ahead but you should also know, that we also got an unexpected news break today from reporters juliette and lisa reign at the Washington Post about the possibility of a criminal indictment of a recently departed trump cabinet official. No, not that one. Not labor secretary alex acosta. Well talk about his potential criminal liability later on this hour, too. But thats not who i mean. See, alex acosta is still u. S. Labor secretary, which makes it all the more amazing that were going to be talking about his potential criminal liability tonight. This unexpected news we got this afternoon from the Washington Post is about a former trump cabinet official, about ryan zinke. The trump cabinet official you may remember assigned to run up to the roof of the Department Headquarters and put up his personal ryan zinke flag up every time he entered the building. He had a special flag that meant ryan zinke is in the house and it was a persons job to run and put that flag up wherever ryan zinke walked through the door. By the time ryan zinke announced his resignation as interior secretary, he was not only famous for that but having found his way into no less than 15 different ethics investigations covering the tenure of his less than two years in office. Although ryan zinke has characterized his december resignation as voluntarily, he had reportedly been told if he did not resign as interior secretary he would be fired. Ryan zinke upon being told that then told white house staffers that okay, he would resign but he wasnt going to resign until after he was able to throw himself a Christmas Party at the department of the interior, which he did. Part of the reason we know he did because he posed for photos in front of a large stuffed bear wearing a santa cap. He had to stay until he could do that. Literally the following day, the day after he had his interior department Christmas Party with the stuffed bear, the party he invited lobbyists to so they could take pictures with him with the dead bear with the santa hat on, the day after that he finally consented to resign. Once he got that important task done with. One of the things that ryan zinke got in trouble for as interior secretary is getting rid of the independent Inspector General that brought several of these inquiries on ethics issues. He was not able to get rid of the interior department Inspector General despite his best efforts and urn thes oturn of the inquiries launched into him that concerned ryan zinkes decision about casino gambling and indian tribes, the Inspector Generals inquiry into that matter went especially pear shaped for ryan zinke when officials kacame to believe he lied to them over the course of their inquiries into that particular scandal. So in late october, the Washington Post reported that that had resulted in ryan zinke bei being referred for criminal investigation for potentially lying to investigators. Now tonight the Washington Post reports that the Justice Department didnt just sit on the criminal referral, federal prosecutors begun presenting evidence to a grand jury in washington d. C. With an eye toward indicting zinke for lying to investigators. As of today, the post reports that zinke hill selfhas not been called to appear before this grand jury but they have two sources confirming that in fact this grand jury has been convened. And, down next although a lot of trump cabinet officials or nominees or other senior Trump Officials have been driven out of washington trailed by very serious scandals, depending how this goes, ryan zinke may be the First Official to face a federal criminal indictment, which is a very serious thing and if that is where this is going, somebody please save a seat in the courtroom for the stuffed bear. We will be watching that closely. I should tell you as of yet, there has been no comment from the white house on this reporting at all but tonight, i can tell you, one of our producers from the show was able to reach mr. Zinke by phone to ask him personally for comment he did give us a comment on the story tonight. His comment was quote, have a great day. Bye, bye. Better than no comment. Here is Something Else we are watching tonight. As we have been waiting all day on the prosecutors sentencing memo related to Paul Manafort, the New York Times also just broke some new news on President Trumps longtime lawyer Michael Cohen. As you know, Michael Cohen had been ordered to present himself less than two weeks from now. He had been ordered to present himself on march 6th to start his federal prison sentence. Earlier this week the judge granted him a delay for his prison sentence start date. Instead of march 6th. Hes expected to start his prison sentence on may 6th. Thats an extra 60 days before she has he has to show up and serve his term. Michael cohen and lawyers asked for the delay for two reasons. They said he had shoulder surgery and needs time to recover from the surgery. But secondly, they said he is wanted in congress and thats been very time consuming in terms of him getting ready to go to prison. Over three consecutive days Michael Cohen is scheduled to give testimony to three congressional coal mitt mmittee. Hell talk behind closed doors tuesday and thursday to the Intelligence Committees. In between the Intelligence Committee hearings on tuesday and thursday, on wednesday starting at 10 00 a. M. Eastern, there will be what everybody is expecting to be a blockbuster day of testimony from cohen in open session before the House Oversight committee under the leadership of democratic chairman Elijah Cummings. And the reason everybody is expecting this to be a bit of a blockbuster is not just because its going to be an open hearing. Its also because of the list of topics that chairman comings publicly released ahead of the testimony to give us a sense of what cohen will be testifying about. Chairman cummings said he does not want to step on the toes of committees so he will not be asked questions about things that can only be discussed in the secure classified environment the committees will offer for closed door testimony. But that doesnt mean that in the open hearing they are only going to be asking Michael Cohen about the weather and what hes packing for his trip to prison. This is the list of topics that Elijah Cummings announced. Quote. After consulting with the department of justice and with chairman adam schiff of the house intelligence, chairman comi cummings set the scope to address the following issues. Number one, you can just stop me here. Number one, the president s debts and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election. Now the only debts we know about for the president involve supposedly business related bank loans with institutions like bank and related to efforts to influence the 2016 election. Let alone why that committees payments of some kind. They think Michael Cohen will be able to testify. If that were the only issue they said they would be discussing with Michael Cohen, that would probably make for a lot of people watching that hearing with great interest. We dont know what they mean by that. That will be fascinating to see. But that is only one of ten according to elijahcummings, the president s compliance with Campaign Finance laws. The president s compilliance wi tax laws and conflicts of interest. The president s Business Practices will come back to that one in a moment. The Trump International hotel in washington d. C. For which the president has been sued for allegedly violating the clause of the constitution and also quote the accuracy of the president s public statements. Oh. God. Also quote potentially fraud length or inappropriate practices by the Trump Foundation the Trump Foundation is the president s sort of charity that has already been the subject of considerable legalwrangling and the tenth topic they want to go through in the open hearing on wednesday is quote public efforts by the president and his attorney to intimidate mr. Cohen and others to testify. That is the agenda for Michael Cohens testimony wednesday morning 10 00 a. M. Eastern time. His expected attendance at that hearing and the other closed door hearings plus the time and effort needed to prepare him for the hearings, those are things sited by cohens defense counsel in asking the judge in his case for a delay in his report date to start the federal prison sentence and the judge agreed and gave him an extra 60 days. You have to keep in mind that expected public testimony for cohen and how he got into the pickle in the first place. It was august of last year when cohen pled guilty to two pham felo felony Campaign Finance charges and President Trump directed and those felony charges were brought against cohen by federal prosecutors operating out of the u. S. Prosecutors office. That was august. But then surprise, in november, Michael Cohen turned up in federal court. That was not brought by sdny but prosecutors from Robert Muellers office and working for the special counsel and that one additional felony that Michael Cohen pled guilty to in november was a charge specifically of lying to congress, lying to the Intelligence Committees about something related to the president s business. Specifically efforts by the president s business to develop a trump tower moscow. The negotiations to build a trump tower in moscow ex end te much later than he previously admitted and admitted to lying about the extent to which those efforts to pursue that moscow project involved direct contact and negotiations between the Trump Organization and the russian government. So he pleads to most of that stuff in august. He pops up again in november to plead to the one additional felony and in december, soon after he popped up in court to plead guilty to the one additional felony. Michael cohen was back in the same courtroom before the judge to be sentenced on all of those felonies put together on the one from the special counsels office about lying about trump tower moscow plus all the earlier felonies including the Campaign Finance felonies he pled to after being charged by sdn, sdny. You might remember that the special counsels office basically asked for lenience for the judge for cohen. They described him as a valuable cooperating witness but the other prosecutors, the prosecutors for sdny, the prosecutors who brought most of the charges for which cohen pled guilty, they did not ask the judge for considerable leniency for Michael Cohen. Despite the fact he offered this very effective cooperation to Robert Mueller and the special counsel. Thats all well and good but according to the prosecutors, Michael Cohen shouldnt be considered a full cooperating witness. They thought there was a lot more cohen should have and could have coughed up if he really did want a break. They told the judge quote, with respect to cohens provision of information to this office and two meetings with him, this office assessed cohen to be forthright and credible and the information he provided was largely consistent with other evidence gathered. Had cohen actually cooperated, it could have been fruitful. He did provide what could have been useful information about matters relating to on going investigations being carried out by this office but as cohen ly his decision and declined to provide full information about the scope of criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge. Indeed cohen only met with the office, the sdny prosecutors about the participation of others in the Campaign Finance<