The days biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. Ricochetting across the political universe tonight which are the ones that involve appear to involve the president of the United States. That he was directed to make payments in coordination with the candidate and with the campaign of President Donald Trump to two women. One was in one involved a payment to a woman 150,000, believed to be Karen Mcdougal. The second to a payment believed to be Stormy Daniels in october of 2016, rather, for 130,000. And for that payment Michael Cohen told the court that he received restitution for that payment or he received the money back for that payment from the candidate who is believed to be donald trump. Throughout this investigation, this particular investigation which stemmed from the Special Counsels office, from robert mueller, has been done in coordination with that office and prosecuted by career and seasoned Public Corruption Public Corruption
this has nothing to do with russian collusion. ty is a federal prosecutor and justice lawyer where she worked for rod rosenstein. seth wax man is a former federal prosecutor. ty, let me just ask you, at this point what s the signal that you read into donald trump saying what he said about what a great guy manafort is and how he worked for reagan and bob dole and it s terrific and it s awful what s happening to him? is that a signal to manafort, his legal team, don t fold? well, i mean, it could be looked at that way, but i think that president trump is doing what he s always been doing, which is to distance himself entirely from whatever he can. this is a significant conviction for paul manafort. even though there s a number of mistrials, the significance of the criminal convictions are large, and so just to distance himself from someone who has
after the first trial that took place in virginia. you look at rudy guilliani s teat the same time after this happened yesterday. and you wonder what is going through his head and the president s head. what was the pardon dangled that we have heard about over the last months? paul manafort is not behaving like somebody who believes he will get a pardon from the president. he is behaving like he has the final years of his life, whether they re free or in jail, on the line, and somebody who may be concerned that a pardon by the president could be part of an obstruction of justice conspiracy. this is basically someone who folded in the final and glenn spoke to this. this is somebody who basically admitted to everything that robert mueller charged him with. he s not waiting for a pardon. he has changed his stance. the president has changed his stance towards manafort. he is no longer beating his chest about what a great guy manafort is. it turns out when you surround yourself with crim