Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Seated, the judge will give fairly long explanation. On. Reporter after the jury is seated, the judge will give fairly long explanation. Were not going to hear Opening Statements today. Its possible we could hear them tomorrow or thursday. Got it. Pete williams. Thank you very much. Let me bring in National Political reporter for the Washington Post and msnbc political analyst. Two msnbc contributors. Charlie savage. Let me go over briefly this reminder about Paul Manafort and why the Special Counsel is interested in him. Starts with donald trump. He hired Paul Manafort to run his president ial campaign in march 2016. Prior to his work on the Trump Campaign, manafort did political work overseas. Some for the prorussian
highlights which as you indicated, rick gates, all eyes will be on him. He was the right hand man to manafort. What hell have to do in order to fulfill his cooperation agreement, for the government
man, was replaced long before the election took place. he was only there for a short period of time. he was with the campaign for a short period of time. i ve always known him to be a good plan. he s a nice guy. he worked for me a short period of time. literally for like a couple of months. it s like manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. bob, i asked sarah sanders at the last briefing if there was a message to paul manafort, she said not that she s aware of. i think back to our time back in cleveland. you were taking out rich gates and paul manafort talking to them all the time. we were trying to get quotes. paul manafort, rick gates were at the head of the republican party, at the head of the trump campaign. you could argue that manafort wasn t a formally the campaign chairman for his entire time working for then candidate trump but he came in pretty early in