Working behind the scenes even without the white house getting a lot of advance notice. kimberly atkins and caitlin huey-burns, thank you so much. coming up, a house republican who defied the president on the tax cut vote explains why he went against his own party and whether that approach will last.
To flip. that is actually a method that andrew weissmann, one of the prosecutors on robert mueller s team, that s the way he pursued the enron investigation in the early 2000s. he targeted people around the high level targets in order to kind of get them to talk and tell him more what they knew about the investigation. you know, you wrote a tweet last month. i d like to post that right now. you re reflecting exactly what you re say. you write that so essentially manafort was linked to trade info for his huge personal gain which is a huge flag for the experts. what is the likelihood that he or anybody will remain loyal to president trump throughout this process? well, paul manafort is very vulnerable because he has a number of, you know, shady financial deals that he s done in the past. he has a lot of ties to foreign governments. he has been recent lis last week the wall street journal reported there s a new money
Nbc/ wall street journal poll showing the president s approval rating at just 38%. all is the compiling of numbers were taken last week after the intense scrutiny over his response to the niger attack amid rising tensions between the president and senators corker and flake. how concerned are you that the president s response to these twos issues in particular are taking a toll on his presidency? well, given the beating he s taken from many quarters, i think actually his approval rating is kind of high. but i think the real test for the administration and for congress is to get things done. that s why getting the tax bill done right is a critical ingredient to the success of our country. and i think you know, the politics will be what they are and the different sides will say what they want to say. the average person really wants washington to get things done. they re concerned that we have too slow an economic growth. they re concerned about wage
Katelin, what are you hearing about this expected indictment and how big a milestone it is? certainly a milestone because we ve been waiting to see what is going to come out of this investigation. remember over the past week, we saw the president tweeting about the investigation alleging that as many people say, there is nothing there. here we have something. so this is an important marker in the investigation. i m also looking for the president s reaction to all this when the indictment does come down. he has been quiet over the weekend on this, but remember, next week is going to be a very big week for the white house and for republicans in congress. republicans are unveiling their tax plan. this is a really important legislative week and, of course, important to the president s agenda. and then the president himself is preparing this overseas trip to asia which is key to foreign policy and economic policy. so with all of that going on, this is going to be hanging over, i would not
Your instinct, what do you think in terms of who is the target of this indictment that will be revealed tomorrow? well, my first instinct was it was either trump s former campaign chairman paul manafort or his former national security adviser michael flynn but a new report this weekend has cast some doubt on that because apparently their attorneys have not been notified after a possible indictment which is customary in investigations like this. that being said, you know, i think that paul manafort s son-in-law jeff yoh ty there s been a lot of scrutiny on him over past real estate deals could be a target of the indictment or it could be michael flynn s son, michael flynn junior who did a lot of work with his father as part of flynn intel group as part of these lobbying campaigns with foreign governments and foreign entities. so the way that robert mueller could be approaching this is by targeting family members of these very, very high level targets in an effort to get them