Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Their way to keep trump out of the trial. Abc news reports that prosecutors have been coaching their witnesses not to mention trumps name or even that manafort lives in trump tower. The judge in the case has warned that bringing up manaforts ties to trump could unduly influence jurors. There is at least one thing about this trial that is important to the relationship between Paul Manafort and donald trump. The first witness today was tad devine, chief strategist for Bernie Sanders an president ial campaign who worked with manafort on political campaigns in ukraine. The prosecution called him as their first witness to have him describe how much work manafort was doing in ukraine and how lucrative it was. Before we came on the air, we got a rush version of the transcript from todays hearing. Im not going to be able to act out a whole conversation but heres one little bit of the prosecutors Opening Statement worth hear. Th
all three of us of con sire speiering to rob that bank. so when i said earlier i think there is enough public information in the record to see a conspiracy it, i don t necessarily mean that they succeeded. or that everybody knew every part of the conspiracy. again, that s not required. what s required is that folks agreed to do something that the law for bids and that somebody took a step in that direction. it seems to be coming together to me. and on the question of robert mueller tonight referring more cases to the southern district, these were more lobbyists doing pro-russian business in the ukraine and other places? right. so it s sensible. it s not at the core of his mandate. it s not at the core of the directive to him that he look at russian interference in the election but again, you have a binary choice when you re a prosecutor or an investigator. and you come across criminal behavior. i faced this had myself in my