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to roll the dice and gamble. i think the question of a pardon is huge. and intimidating to the whole process here and the president is wise to step back and not do that because the act of that and interesting to see. the mueller team can look at that as destructive conduct. in these circumstances what is best for him and, honestly, the best thing to do is not to plead but to cooperate, as well. reverend al sharpton who is one of the few people that michael cohen has reached out to to discuss where his head is at but right now where his head is at but what about exactly is going to happen. he has come to an agreement with the prosecutors in the southern district of new york. that is not the mueller investigation. we need to figure out what role the mueller investigation is going to have in this agreement. in the end, this all has to be presented to a federal judge,
which we believe is happening in one hour fr
Plea agreement that we saw on friday, manafort had to do what we call a proffer. his attorneys had to approach the special counsels team and show them that manafort had information that was worth it to them to enter into a plea agreement. not just a plea agreement but a cooperating witness agreement or cooperation agreement so that manafort would provide information and the government would agree to allow him to plead to lesser charges. and they are significantly lesser. the conspiracy to money launder had a statutory maximum of 20 years. he pleaded to conspiracy statutory maximum of five years. that will give you an idea of the deal he s getting under this agreement. he has to have offered up something more than what mueller already had, right? even more than that. he had to offer something that was airtight because the government attorneys are very stingy when it comes to giving out these agreements. they like sure things and they had manafort had to give them
Cooperating witness agreement to assure them that the witness is cooperating, and sell the prosecutors on the cooperation of your client. because those prosecutors are very, very skeptical and very cautious about whether or not they re going to give that precious motion. and michael cohen has real stuff. he is the one person at least who knows where the money that went to pay stormy daniels came from. he is the one person at least who knows why karen mcdougal received money from the national enquirer. and he may well know what the president knew about that june 9th meeting in trump tower. michael cohen, whether he chooses to share it with the southern district of new york or not, knows a lot of stuff that s got donald trump very, very nervous tonight. danny, we ll stay close to you. this wraps up this hour for me. i will be back here at 6:00 p.m. eastern for the beat.
Have the fbi back off, if he knew he had violated the bag, he had violated the logan act, if he knew mike flynn violated the logan act and poeshlgly knew mike flynn lied to the fbi about because remember, he wasn t fired when sally yates gave the warning. that would meet the standard that prosecutors have to show. he wasn t asking the fbi to back off because he thought mike flynn was a good guy. he was asking the fbi to back off because he thought mike flynn had broken the law and mike flynn could point the finger and testify to the president himself had broken the law. danny, is there any concern from a prosecutorial standpoint of leaning potentially leaning so much on a witness like general flynn who in court this morning admitted to lying to the fbi? this is a standard problem with any cooperating witness agreement. i mean, routinely the government and state prosecutors, too, will
Prosecutors, particularly u.s. attorneys, are very tight-fisted when it comes to giving out deals, even cooperating witness deals. so, in order to get that deal, flynn had to impress them with what he knew. then that leads us to what we call an information, him, flynn pleading to an information, which is standard operating procedure for a cooperating witness agreement. and you see the sentencing held to way off in the future. that way the u.s. attorneys can see if flynn s performance meets their heightened standard for deciding whether or not he s complied with his cooperating witness agreement. . i believe a week ago there was word that this joint agreement that existed between general flynn and the white house was no more, correct? that s correct. what do we make of the timing