Rachel Maddow takes a look at the days top political news stories. Their way to keep trump out of the trial. Abc news reports that prosecutors have been coaching their witnesses not to mention trumps name or even that manafort lives in trump tower. The judge in the case has warned that bringing up manaforts ties to trump could unduly influence jurors. There is at least one thing about this trial that is important to the relationship between Paul Manafort and donald trump. The first witness today was tad devine, chief strategist for Bernie Sanders an president ial campaign who worked with manafort on political campaigns in ukraine. The prosecution called him as their first witness to have him describe how much work manafort was doing in ukraine and how lucrative it was. Before we came on the air, we got a rush version of the transcript from todays hearing. Im not going to be able to act out a whole conversation but heres one little bit of the prosecutors Opening Statement worth hear. Th
you. you said when had he finally charge it. are you seeing enough pieces come to light in just what is public facing in this investigation that you believe there will be enough to charge someone with a conspiracy to coordinate or receive assist, from a hostile foreign power? it s an educated guess. i hope it s a well educated guess. i hope it s a well changed guess, nicole. yes, i am. there are bits and pieces in the public record that suggest that it wasn t just russians. the timing of the hack into the dnc computers, all of that is tied to russian activity that mr. mueller recently charged when he brought a case against the russian intelligence officers. so i think there is enough. i think there are other calculations that are really important here like, for instance, whether mr. mueller believes he has the authority to charge a sitting president.
would be used. we read in the wall street journal they also made an attempt but not a successful one on the rnc. let s go back in time a little bit. sort of what the u.s. government knew and when. back in june of 2015 the u.s. became aware that russians were hacking in the form of cozy bear and fancy bear. we have heard about them snm explain to people who cozy bear and fancy bear are. they are russian hackers who are known to have a certain cyber signature. it was determined by u.s. intelligence that they were, in fact, hacking systems in the u.s. that was back in 2015. by april of 2016 it wasn t just russians, but the russians. that means the government involved in this. that the russian government was behind various hacks in the u.s. by this summer, u.s. intelligence had determined that vladimir putin was running this