Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Whether a person is too close to the subject of the probe, whether Jeff Sessions would beak be more of a Trump Campaign surrogate who happened to be Attorney General rather than acting as an independent Law Enforcement officer. If sessions didnt recuse after that statement, it would have made him look even more like he was doing trumps bidding. And trump apparently didnt know that making that statement would also as just a general matter of embarrassment, make him look weak and out of the loop about a decision that was already done. Because there were reports that show the Internal Doj Process had already resulted in sessions accepting that nonpartisan Recusal Recommendation from the career staff earlier that week and that Jeff Sessions was already working with doj officials op writing the very rationale they would soon release to the public. In fact, it was barely an hour after trump put that public pressure on session
whether the prosecutors can use photographs of expensive suits as evidence. there were brand names that were greek to this judge. the judge said if it doesn t say men s wearhouse, i don t know it. that got something of a laugh. then what happened did not. we re showing you this because it matters legally. judge ellis hinting these pictures of manafort s very fancy suits may never get to the jury. the big curveball came when he starred questioning other evidence that pertained to rick gates. that s manafort s former deputy who mueller got to cooperate. gates testimony has the potential to be the most riveting pivotal portion of this trial. maybe of the whole mueller prosecution up to point. we re talking about the deputy campaign manager for donald trump who flipped. but look at this. judge ellis says you re going to offer up mr. gates, aren t you? . and mueller s prosecutor says your honor, we re not sure if we are. he may testify in this case, your honor.
that dot, dot, dot. now right out of the gate that has been the issue. today the judge didn t mellow out at one point scolding the prosecutors and defense team to rein in their facial expressions. it s been reported that lawyers upon leaving the bench roll their eyes communicating to those watching them essentially why do we have to put up with this idiot judge. don t do that. obviously, if i were to see it, i might be a little upset. you can see that running a courtroom sometimes is no different than dealing with well, your average teenager at least in the view of this judge on the record. put aside the facial expressions and what s going on is the judge is trying to trim the sails of aggressive lawyers and that includes mule he s aggressive prosecutors. he took issue with the word oligarch, arguing it is just despot tick power exercised by a privileged few and by that definition, principles of high schools are oligarchs, too.