Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. After his ukraine work dried up. And that is important because thats when he went to one of trumps 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 Trumps Campaign for free. Thats 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. Ive 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 courtroom today that
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
reasonable doubt about the entire investigation. this is a big part of your case in trial three, jurors, you re seeing some shabby police work here in terms of investigation. fell right into our theory of the case. reporter: testimony in the third trial streamlined by both sides took half the time the others did. that was another part of the new defense team s revised strategy. there had already been five holdout jurors in the previous two trials. now todd caldwell worried that the new team had produced a cloud of even more reasonable doubt. okay, if i was on this side, that s kind of how i would have handled it. they re doing a pretty good job. i m con vinesed going to be convinced going to be another hung jury. why wouldn t it be? reporter: coming up, todd and just about everyone else are in for a surprise. has some jury reached a verdict? verdict?
mueller s team doesn t want released. back to the jury deliberations. we know that the defense feels good right now. they came out and they told the cnn cameras, this is good news, the jury came back with these four questions. do you see it that way? is it good news for manafort? when i was a prosecutor, the two words that frightened me the most were reasonable doubt, because defense attorneys always say, there s reasonable doubt all over the case. when the jury comes back and says, could you define reasonable doubt again, judge, you know that they are focused on that. however, i would issue this warning. when you see jurors ask questions, sometimes, it doesn t always mean that the whole jury is interested in this. a lot of times it means there are one or two holdout jurors and the majority of jurors are saying, all right, let s have the judge tell you what reasonable doubt is. you are wrong on it. it s hard to read these tea leaves. they are good questions for the defense overall,
that went from i think the middle of 2016 through early 2017. rick gates allegedly had direct involvement in that the in doctor some of the paperwork involved. so he will be an important witness on at least some of the charges but most people i think watching believe the defense is trying to pitch to maybe get one or two kind of holdout jurors who will buy the fact that rick gates engineered this fraud and that somehow manafort was just along for the wide even though he was the one at the top of the food chain here, and he was the one really making the big bucks. he s the one with the history of doing business in this part of the world. take us through jury selection. i read in your note or some other reporting that was the most animated you all au saw paul manafort. the yeah, manafort seemed subdued for a long time in a lot of these hearings both in d.c. and virginia. he obviously ended up being jailed for the last month or month and a half or so which was something that his lawye