Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Chairman, Paul Manafort. He has pleaded not guilty, but heres why this really matters. The first trial to come out of the Mueller Investigation will give us the most detailed snapshot yet of what cards Robert Mueller really has. And as soon as this week, the president s lawyer says he could decide whether to sit for an interview with the mueller team, although weve heard that one before. Right now the president s not happy with mueller. Donald trump firing off a whole bunch of tweets, trashing the investigation, offering up new details, too about his previous claims of mueller conflicts of interest, claims the Justice Department has shot down. Lets go to the white house with nbcs kristen welker, here to get us started. Rudy guiliani had more to say about all of this, just a couple of hours ago, including what seemed to be a shifting of the goalpost, no . Reporter it was striking, hallie, to hear Rudy Guiliani, yes
does that hold up no matter how many times we play that? department of justice saying none of these are problems for us. yeah, also keep in mind that paul manafort is about to go on trial. i think this is the big buildup this week. and the president is sort of trying to get out ahead of that to discredit this investigation as much as possible. it s also taking hold. polling is showing that particularly among republicans, that there is less and less that there is less and less they believe robert mueller less and less, as this thing goes on, as the president continues this relentless twitter campaign against him. so i think he sees it so far as at least paying some dividends. you talk about, tom and john i want your take on this, the idea that there is a public relations strategy now. 24 hours ahead of the start of jury collectiselection for the manafort case, in which the president is bringing up concerns with the special counsel investigation more broadly. his own lawyer, ho