Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. His plea agreement, including that he stole some hundreds of thousands of dollars from Paul Manafort, rick gates did, by filing false expense claims. So really, just a long list. It was remarkable to be there in the courtroom as rick gates over the course of 80 minutes detailing that long list of alleged crimes. So allegedly, theyre both Stealing Money through not paying taxes and other means, and then gates is also Stealing Money from manafort . Thats exactly right. So you have listen, this is one of those cases when i was inside there, anderson, having followed a mob priel or two, it struck me as you had the case of the bob boss there with his capo testifying against him. Of course in many cases like this, the person who is gates witness doesnt have the cleanest record himself. And that certainly holds true for rick gates. I should mention he also pleaded guilty to lying to federal prosecuto
Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Knowing that was illegal. Cnn chief National Security correspondent jim sciutto is covering the trial. He joins us. Now what more did gates say on the stand . Anderson, you had the deputy there sitting within ten feet of his former his longtime boss, documenting by his accounts numerous crimes, alleged crimes by his boss, Paul Manafort. And the list started with them setting up 15 Foreign Bank Accounts which they did not report to the government for the purposes of hiding taxes. He said that they filed false income tax returns. He said they failed to file as foreign agents even though they were working as agents for a Foreign Government, in this case the prorussian Government Of Ukraine at the time. And rick gates said he did all of this, his words, all of this at the direction of Paul Manafort, saying these are crimes we did together, in
and that certainly holds true for rick gates. I should
totally legal, done all the time in politics, and it went nowhere. so when the president dictated or crafted the statement for don jr. that it was primarily about adoption and not mentioning kremlin intelligence, he was lying. when his press secretary denied he did anything more than offer fatherly advice on that false statement, she was lying, or possibly she had been lied to as well. maybe she didn t know she was lying, but she had been lied. to maybe. but what she said was not true. and when the president s attorney publicly said that the president didn t write that statement, didn t dictate that statement, he was also either lying or he had been lied to. this is what his attorney now says about that. i had bad information at that point. i made a mistake in my statement. i ve talked about that before. that happens when you have cases like this. i agreed to go on your network and others days within being retained on this and had a lot of information to process. i got that one wrong
i did not know about it. now, before going any further, we should just say this last bit, that he did not know about the meeting is now in question, with sources telling cnn that michael cohen is apparently ready to testify that he did in fact know, which would contradict don jr. s sworn testimony to congress. the notion that everyone does it, that s just flat-out false, and we ll talk more about these things shortly. right now, i just want to focus, though, on the larger item. this is the first time the president of the united states has point-blank unequivocally said, and we re going put up the tweet again, that, quote, this was a meeting to get information on an opponent, period. now remember, before word of the meeting even broke, donald trump jr. was lying about meeting any russians in any campaign capacity. here s what he told the new york times way back in march of 2017. i did excuse me. did i meet with people that were russian? i m sure. i m sure i did, but none that
and so the president is not sitting here going on the attack. he is responding to. that s a distinction. that s the response of a 12-year-old. a 12-year-old can t stop themselves if somebody says something, they say something equally mean or worse, or a 5-year-old. this is the president of the united states. i mean, he watched an interview in which lebron james is talking about, you know, this extraordinary thing that he s doing, and speaking about it in a really beautiful way about getting kids the power of a bicycle and a helmet for a kid that when he was a kid and going out and being able to see other worlds and giving him a sense of freedom, you know. and his he took none that of away from this. all he said, he tweets don lemon made lebron look smart, which isn t easy to do. i mean that s anderson, you can gloss over the facts of what lebron james actually said about the president, which was not positive. i don t understand why he was even talking about president trump in t