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Rachel Maddow takes a look at the day s top political news stories. after his ukraine work dried up. and that is important because that s when he went to one of trump s closest friends and said i really need to get to trump. and then offered to work for trump for free. how and yes became the campaign chair is still a weird so far unexplained thing. today in court prosecutors began laying out the evidence for the dire straits manafort was in when he joined one trump s campaign for free. that s something to keep an eye on as the trial goes forward. joining me, senior white house political reporter, a close observer of the manafort case cynic it began. he was in the courtroom today. and i get to announce that as of today, he is an msnbc contributor. i ve seen some of the early reporting that there were audible gasps. take us through some of the more audible moments. well, this reference as having embezzled from manafort was something that grabbed my was there a sense in the ....
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the day s 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 trump s name or even that manafort lives in trump tower. the judge in the case has warned that bringing up manafort s 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 presidential 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 today s hearing. i m not going to be able to act out a whole conversation but here s one little bit of the prosecutor s opening statemen ....
Pieces of payment that manafort has either touch or signed to prove its case and they ll jazz it up a little bit. they ll have rick gates and others to narrate the case which the jury will undoubtedly find a little more interesting than looking at paper. still, you have to wonder why he was holding out. why he wasn t pleading guilty. i thought we might see a bit of a twist. what his defense would be during opening statements. instead we got the my underling defense did it. it s a bit of a yawner. something juror there s occasionally show interest in. it doesn t seem like a strong defense. i was surprise that had we didn t see a better opener. are you able to answer the question, why is manafort holding out? there are a couple of ....
Joining us former u.s. attorney joyce vance. thank you for being with me, joyce. take me through what stuck out for you. i m struck by some of what josh was talking about, that the entire manafort defense is blame that guy, my deputy. that doesn t seem like a solid legal strategy to me. just from the evidence that we ve seen publicly it looks like the government has a very good case here. as you noted, it s a paper case. that means the government will largely rely on paperwork, many pieces of paper that manafort has either touched or signed to prove its case. and they ll jazz it up a little bit. they ll have rick gates and perhaps others to narrate the case which the jury will undoubtedly find a little bit more interesting than just looking at paper. but still, with a case that have strength, you had to wonder why manafort was holding out, why he wasn t pleading guilty. and so i thought we might see a little bit of a twist today when we got a little bit of an ....