they re trying to get dirt, the russians are trying to help donald trump, was there a meeting of the minds? so that goes to the heart of the collusion or conspiracy issue. is it possible that with all this circumstantial evidence, it really is just a bunch of coincidences, that paul manafort, in a desperate move, donald trump was afraid of the ted cruz at the convention, stealing the nomination, he s told to hire the manafort guy and doesn t do a background check. and those russians connections just has been to be coincidence. what s the likelihood of that based on your investigation? manafort is the one to help unwind whether this is the most improbable string of coincidences or whether this was an active conspiracy. the bottom line is manafort knows. will manafort cooperate? only one thing mueller already knows & the leadership cut this.
giuliani continued to say, according to sources close to manafort s defense, that this cooperation agreement does not involve the trump campaign. first of all, what is rudy giuliani referring to? is this something he may have learned during the joint because they have a joint defense agreement of some sort? the joint defense agreement has to be over at this point if he s cooperating. and congressman schiff correctly pointed out, you can t control what you have. manafort is on one side, he says one thing, on the other side he says something else. i didn t know how you can say the deal is limited. the deal as i understand it is that manafort will cooperate with anything that the special counsel asks about. there are no limits. this wasn t a deal that we re only going to talk about so-and-so, but we re not going to talk about trump or the trump tower meeting, obviously one of the first questions they re going to ask him, is did donald trump s son know about the subject of the meeting
i wasn t in the room so i don t know what manafort has to say. i do know this. this is, i think, a couple of the pro found implications of this. this sends a message to anyone who is in bob mueller s cross hairs right now. you better get to the special counsel and make your deal down. because anyone who gets indicted by bob mueller goes down. and the longer you wait to come clean, the worse deal you re going to get, the more time you re going to face. i think there was a need for the trials which gives mueller time to focus on other things. it gives him a key cooperating witness who has already seen what happens when you mess with bob mueller. i mean, he tried to essentially tamper with witnesses, he got caught, he went to jail, he better come clean. he s been convicted in one court of law, he has witness tampered as you just brought up. why should mueller believe paul manafort? paul manafort seems like he will
professor desh der dershowitz, always good to have you on. you have said that the deal that mueller got from manafort was a pretty good one as far as mueller is concerned. explain. i think both manafort and president trump acted too late, manafort, if he was going to make a deal, should have made it before he was convicted, he would have gotten a better deal. and president trump, if he was going to pardon, he should have pardoned before manafort agreed to cooperate. so there s not going to be any pardon now, manafort has a deal. his sentence will reflect how much cooperation he gives. there is always the risk, you know, a man like manafort has to walk a tight rope. if he s caught lying, the deal is offer. is off. on the other hand he knows he gets a better deal if he can help support the narrative of the prosecutor. so we may see, and there s
so, look, i understand why rudy giuliani, who s a good lawyer wants to put this in the most positive light. but this was a very bad day for the trump administration. it s bad because he doesn t know what manafort is saying and he can t count on manafort saying only things that the special counsel already knows, and when you don t know what a corroborating witness will say it s a bad day for you because you re vulnerable and exposed. so you wouldn t put any credence in the deal that rudy giuliani or manafort s defense team, you wouldn t put any stock into any of the assurances they might have felt from the manafort team before he cut that deal? well, i would use that information, if he ever testified in cross-examination. he would have told the trump team to under cut his credibility, if he says something different, if he s lying now, was he lying then,