Welcome to a special twohour edition of the beat. Im katie phang. Were nearing the end of the first Criminal Trial of a former u. S. President donald trump. Next week the case could be in the hand of the jury. Before that happens, Michael Cohen will be back on the Witness Stand Monday for a third day of cross examination by trumps defense attorney todd blanche. The defenses focus so far has been to try and portray the states key witness as a serial liar, someone who cannot be trusted and who is only out for revenge against his former boss. The word lie was used more than 60 times in court yesterday. Through what felt at times like A Meandering Cross Examination Blanche may have been able to poke a hole in cohens credibility as a witness during questioning about one of the phone calls from october 2016 that cohen testified earlier in the week he had made with trump, allegedly telling him the payoff to Stormy Daniels was being handled. Yesterday cohen admitted that he was having trouble
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alongside manafort and even stole several hundred thousand dollars from him. i want to quickly go to our justice correspondent jessica schneider, monitoring all these developments. what s the biggest takeaway so far from today s dramatic testimony? the biggest takeaway, woman, just how elaborate this financial scheme was and how involved is paul manafort really seemed to be, directing the movement of money here. rick gates has been testifying about these hundreds of e-mails where manafort actually signs off on transferring the money their consulting company earned throughout these various foreign bank accounts. paul manafort would always write back, approving these transfers and signing it with his initial p. this is the prosecution laying out that it was, in fact, paul manafort in charge. also, rick gates is talking about some of these fake invoices that he actually created. we heard about them from the ac
Rachel Maddow takes a look at the day s top political news stories.
as has peter baker, correspondent for the new york times thanks to all three of you for staying up late. congressman, again, just a civics and kind of a physical plant question. the winner gets to be an incumbent member of congress. the winner will go, will get really bad office space. they ll be on the bottom of the seniority list. he ll get his predecessor s office. you do inherit the office space? how does that work? i replaced the most senior member of congress.for eight months as a freshman, i had the best office on capital little. you had a beautiful view of the dome. then reality sets in. but they can t move in. they can t feel as much as anyone can move in with a two-year term. let s say it s 12 weeks before the next election. house is out till labor day. because it is an election day, they ll be in for about three
weeks. whoever the incumbent is, they will be an incumbent for all of about t
Brian Williams examines the day s top political stories and current political-campaign news.
will not be counted. if it is received tomorrow, lost in the mail, if that ballot gets in, it will be counted. so some are going to be counted terms of absentee ballots favored o connor. you would expect that whatever comes out of this would give him a little boost. and there are going to be a couple hundred, we would think, a small number of military ballots. it may be a bigger wedge the provisions and all of that math i m talking about does have the potential. i don t think to etrace 1750 for. but to get it inside half a percent. to cut it in half. it seems to have potential. so we have to wait. and again, state law saying they
have to wait ten days before they can even look at counting these provisional ballots. just a terminology question. our viewers have heard us talk about provisional ballots all night. remind folks what that means? yeah. there s a question about the status of th
Brian Williams examines the day s top political stories and current political-campaign news.
Brian Williams examines the day s top political stories and current political-campaign news.
remind folks what that means? yeah. there s a question about the status of the ballot. maybe a question about the status of the voter. they tend to be, i keep saying, they tend to be democratic ballots. they tend to be voters, especially in franklin county, from delaware county. oftentimes, you find that sometimes in nonwhite areas. you start having i.d., voter i.d. requirements. maybe it is folks who won t have i.d. so you end up getting a situation. when you look at the provisionals, they tend on come more from provisional counties. i think the number was something like 1,400. came out of franklin. i think it may have been in the
democratic part. a lot of them end up being counted. they re cast provisionally and then they re reviewed afterwards. all right. we ll be back. thank you so much. le