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yesterday, trying to defend his client, talking about a lot of these issues related to michael cohen. seemingly, creating more chaos and confusion in his wake. after an interview with cnn yesterday morning, giuliani seemed to open two new fronts in this whole saga, claiming, first, that collusion may not even be a crime, which is different from what we have been hearing from the president. the president has been saying there was no collusion all along. now we are seeing president trump backing giuliani up in a tweet this morning, reiterating that collusion isn t a crime, even though he himself just two days ago suggested that democrats should be investigated for what he claims is their collusion with the russians. then on a second matter, giuliani starts talking about a meeting, a planning meeting that he claimed happened before that infamous trump tower meeting with don junior and russians promising dirt
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but there s no doubt the white house is watching this unfold just across the river. he was the president s campaign chairman at a crucial time to help get those delegates on board and make sure there wasn t a revolt at the campaign. and now if robert mueller didn t have any success, i think it is going to be a big success for the president because look at what he s got on the table against manafort. 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, 35 potential witnesses for their prosecution, 500 pieces of evidence. yeah, i mean, paul manafort is low-hanging fruit as far as this probe goes. this should be a slam dunk for robert mueller. if he doesn t make the basket, to belabor the metaphor, that will be an enormous fluke. the other thing i think this really draws out is donald trump know this doesn t directly
implicate him, but it does draw out he s surrounded himself essentially with crooks or at the very least very seedy
The latest news from around the world with hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow.
things we re uncomfortable with, things the north koreans are uncomfortable with. hopefully, we see a denuclearizdenucleariz denuclearized verifiable north korea. you said the mueller probe has to be allowed to proceed and come to fruition. the president s lawyer rudy giuliani yesterday in his words said the special counsel needs to, quote, put up or shut up. do you agree? i would love to see this probe wrap up. it needs to wrap up after all the work is done. this has been over a year now in the making. it s really torn the country apart. there s been no evidence pointing to collusion. i m looking at this saying, i want the special counsel to finish it because americans if this thing ends prematurely, it s going to be this division in our country going forward forever. it s going to cast a shadow everywhere. get the report. i m sure he is not watching me right now. but if he is watching, i would say
The latest news from around the world with hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow. reporter: well, poppy, probably the headline at this point is, out of the earshot of the jury this morning, judge t.s. ellis who is a veteran of these sometimes complex and controversial criminal cases in eastern virginia advised attorneys on both sides in an attempt obviously to avoid any prejudicial inferences being drawn by the jury, told attorneys on both sides to avoid, if they can, the use of the word oligarch. and that s important because some of the bosses and people in power in ukraine have been referred to as oligarchs. obviously the meaning of oligarch is a member of a power structure in which the power rests with the few, as opposed to suggestion or inference that an oligarch might be a criminal.
this case is the defense strategy and the defense strategy here, susan, is my client, paul manafort, knew nothing, did nothing wrong, hands are clean. it was all his deputy, rick gates. that s
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alongside manafort and even stole several hundred thousand dollars from him. i want to quickly go to our justice correspondent jessica schneider, monitoring all these developments. what s the biggest takeaway so far from today s dramatic testimony? the biggest takeaway, woman, just how elaborate this financial scheme was and how involved is paul manafort really seemed to be, directing the movement of money here. rick gates has been testifying about these hundreds of e-mails where manafort actually signs off on transferring the money their consulting company earned throughout these various foreign bank accounts. paul manafort would always write back, approving these transfers and signing it with his initial p. this is the prosecution laying out that it was, in fact, paul manafort in charge. also, rick gates is talking about some of these fake invoices that he actually created. we heard about them from the ac