paul manafort was found guilty by a federal jury in virginia, and then paul manafort pleaded guilty in a separate federal case in washington, d.c. and so paul manafort has no defense. paul manafort has no defense, when his lawyer claims to have been participating in a joint defense agreement with the president. that was not a legitimate joint defense agreement. paul manafort's lawyer, kevin downy, may in serious jeopardy for information obtained through his attorney-client privilege with a third party who there could be no joint defense agreement with. one of the president's lawyers, rudy giuliani, has confirmed as if perfectly normal, that the president of the united states has been obtaining information from a convicted felon who is also a self-admitted felon who has pleaded guilty. no president in history has ever publicly welcomed such an association. no president in history has ever publicly trafficked in such a relationship, in such an information gathering relationship with a convicted and admitted felon. and no president's lawyer has ever deemed it a survivable piece of public

if paul manafort is a rational actor, and that's a big if, but if paul manafort is a rational actor, the only reason to stop cooperating with robert mueller is that he has been promised a pardon by president trump. today was one of those days when the breaking news was actually scheduled and expected because today was the deadline for the filing of a so-called status report in paul manafort's case. this is report in which both the prosecution and the defense explained to the judge where the case stands before paul manafort has to be sentenced. that status report was filed this evening, and the shocker came on the second page where the special prosecutor says, after signing the employee agreement manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the federal bureau of investigation and the special counsel's office on a variety of subject matters. the government will file a detailed sentencing submission to the probation department and the court in advance of sentencing that sets forth the nature of the defendant's crimes and lies including those after signing the plea agreement herein. as

there's all this other news related to paul manafort. last night he lost his whole plea deal with mueller, for lying. and all this comes as a key roger stone associate says he's turning down his offer of a blae deal which related to allegations that he lied about contacts with assange. we have the reporter on that as well tonight. after trump submitted his answers to mueller, all of this comes when he had allegedly addressed collusion questions. >> they've been finished. finished them yesterday. the lawyers have them. i assume they'll turn them in today or soon. >> one thought there, all this new stuff about paul manafort and wikileaks and collusion? if donald trump and his lawyers didn't know about this stuff that's in the news tonight, gosh, i bet they wish they did before they turned in those answers. i do want to be clear. we know manafort lies all the time. we don't know whether he is lying this time about this meeting, in his public defense or what he said to bob mueller. but we do know he, according to mueller, lied about somethin

manafort because if paul manafort is a rational actor, and that's a big if, but if paul manafort is a rational actor, the only reason to stop cooperating with robert mueller is that he has been promised a pardon by president trump. today was one of those days when the breaking news was actually scheduled and expected because today was the deadline for the filing of al

manafort because if paul manafort is a rational actor, and that's a big if, but if paul manafort is a rational actor, the only reason to stop cooperating with robert mueller is that he has been promised

for paul manafort. he's going to be in jail for some time, unless he gets pa pardoned. but there are some people that suggest that paul manafort is working as some kind of mole for the president's team. >> if you're cooperating with the government, you should not be sharing information. unless it's been understood. hey, you have got to be transparent. if you are not transparent, is that a cooperating witness? the government is going to come down really hard on you. yeah, if he's been sharing very helpful information, just call it a bad move in terms of his situation. >> let me ask you about matt whitaker. the former attorney general wrote a piece suggesting that matt whitaker might answer some of the questions about his appointment by doing two things. number one, making a public proclamation that he could not interfere or intervene in the investigation. number two slightly different making a promise to the american people that he wouldn't share information about the investigation with the white house.

for paul manafort the signal wouldn't make sense. state charges would still apply for the money laundering and tax charges he was exposed to. for jerome corsi it's a federal crime. no analog state charge to prosecute him. if he was promised a pardon or dangled the possibility of a pardon, maybe that explains why the plea negotiations would break down. otherwise it makes no sense. the document he released today makes clear, as you said, mueller has him dead to rites on false statements. >> cynthia, what seems striking to me is that mueller has established allegations in the criminal indictments of a criminal conspiracy to subvert the american election, to tip it over towards donald trump, away from hillary clinton, engineered by a foreign agent, russia under the direction of vladimir putin. open question is, were there american participanted who aided and abetted that conspiracy, members of the conspiracy to commit the federal crime, and what seems clear now is they are clearly zeroing in on some people they think kid did that. >> the

this was at a fraught time for paul manafort. just yesterday he was accused of repeatedly lying since he struck his plea deal. manafort committed what they called crimes and lies on a variety of matters and subjects. the mueller team asked that a date be set for his sentencing. brianna . >> thank you for that report. we have cnn legal and national security analyst carrie gor dero and political reporter hender and chief political analyst, gloria borger. the guardian is unclear why manafort wanted to see assange and what exactly was discussed. we have also seen the adamant denial and we are trying to get to the bottom of this. this is reportedly a major development. >> rudy giuliani saying that this never happened. if it did happen, it places the trump campaign and manafort was going to run the campaign in places someone at a high level in the trump campaign in communication with wikileaks. that is a dangerous place to be. we know that mueller is so careful, he would not do this unless he had corroborating information. we do not kn

him paul manafort and wikileaks have issued strong denials. any connection can be a major development into special counsel's probe into collusion. tonight, a secret report between wikileaks paul assange and john manafort. the "guardian" says he traveled to the ecuadorean embassy in london to meet with assange in 2016 and one meeting around march, 2016. the same month manafort joined the trump campaign. cnn has not confirmed the newspaper's reporting and it is unclear why he wanted to see assange and what was discussed. the news outlet base it in part on an intelligence document that lists paul manafort as a well known guest at the embassy, but manafort's visits were reportedly not officially logged. cnn has learned the special counsel has been investigating a meeting between manafort in cuito in 2017 and asked if wikileaks or assange were discussed in that meeting. assange has been holed up at the embassy since he was granted political asylum in 2012. in the months leading up to the election, assange's wikileaks hosted hacked e-mails from the

he's keeping it on the table, a possible pardon to paul manafort? >> he seems to be dangling that idea of a pardon. manafort seems to be angling for it. we have here sharing of information by manafort with the president's lawyers. we have the president talking openly about a pardon and the president seeking to discredit and lay the ground work for suffocating or strangling the special prosecutor's resources and authority which makes all the more necessary the bill that was stopped on the floor today which i've supported for months and work to past. we need a vote on that. >> do you see this as possible obstruction of justice? >> a pardon could well be obstruction of justice if done with criminal motive. criminal ends of ending or stopping an investigation or suffocating it. very likely there would be consideration of this move of a pardon. >> if the president were to pardon this chairman, would that be an add mission of guilt? >> it depends on when and how it's done. it would be of serious interest and should be to the special counsel. i hope that b

did paul manafort lie to robert mueller? if he did, why? some say the former trump campaign chairman lied more more than a year. the questions swirled around manafort for more than a year. >> what is the story on the trump tower meeting with russians who claimed to have incriminating information about hillary clinton? we may never her manafort testify about any of it. cnn's jessica schneider has more from washington. >> reporter: christine and dave, the latest question after the filing, what did paul manafort lie about? the special counsel saying he lied on a number of matters. they will not disclose until they file a sentencing submission with the court later. paul manafort has been working with mueller's attorney after pleading guilty to two charges. that plea was in september. on top of that guilty plea, paul manafort was found guilty by the virginia jury in august. now the special counsel is saying no more talks or opportunity to cooperate. they are ready for a federal judge to sentence manafort. manafort's attorneys responded. they bel

has the president offered paul manafort a pardon? will he offer manafort a pardon? and giuliani did not a answer that question, but he chose the take aim at the special counsel investigation, and this is what he told me earlier today in part. he said it is possible in their zeal to get the president maybe going too far, and that is striking, because it is echoing what we have been hearing from the president today, andrea, because he was up and tweeting about the special counsel investigation, he said it is a phony witch hunt, and the angry d dems are only looking at one side and not the other, and this is in line with what we have seen from the president, and frankly now his legal team stepping up their attacks gai against the special counsel as this special counsel investigation does in fact enter a new phase. now i can tell you that we are going to be having a briefing here with sarah sanders in a little bit, andrea, and the first official briefing this month, and the first briefing since the 29th of last month, and we will have a chance to ask her about all of th

and big surprise, paul manafort is denying that accusation as well. we don't know what the special counsel is accusing him of lying about yet but we will, when mueller's team gets closer to manafort's sentencing. this story is a big deal. perhaps an even bigger deal in lieu of the report "the guardian" and that report shows you how manafort's testimony could be central to investigators figuring out the trump campaign's russia connection. but now investigators are all but telling us manafort's testimony is no good because he's a serial liar. meanwhile, nbc news has obtained a draft court document sent to one of roger stone's associates, which includes an e-mail asserting stone sought documents from wikileaks in 2016 and then he was told by an sort that wikileaks would be releasing information damaging to the clinton campaign, which as you all know, it did. i'm joined by barbara mcquade, who is an msnbc contributor and former u.s. attorney. she is here with tonight's panel, jonathan, nbc news political analyst and ap white house reporter. a former clint

paul manafort was around. you sort of have the same universe of individuals who were in the trump tower meeting where they willingly and gleefully went to get dirt on hillary clinton from russians, now under scrutiny for potential contacts with assange. >> well, and also as you pointed out, they were at the rnc convention, too. >> right. changing the plat tomorrow ffop >> you have kislyak, you got k.k., you got paul manafort's right-hand man who's been indicted. you have all these various players who were interacting with the top levels of the republican national committee. >> it's so bizarre. i've been to all the republican conventions and i was usually working on speeches and loading teleprompters. never rubbing shoulders with russians. >> and remember what got changed at the convention. >> right. >> it was u.s. policy toward ukraine. >> ukraine. >> which had been front of mind for vladimir putin. paul manafort had done work for years prior to the presidential campaign in ukraine on behalf of kremlin-friendl

the idea of even paul manafort. you have to actually convince the prosecution you really don't recall. that can't be a feigned amnesia. so you've got a whole lot going on here. but ultimately, yes, if you lie to special counsel or if you are feigning amnesia, it is akin to committing perjury and telling falsehoods to the media. >> jeffrey, what's your take on to the best of my recollection umbrella? how much protection is that? >> it's a lot. especially in this context. because remember, this is a take-home open book exam. that these answers were scrutinized by his lawyers before they were turned back to the mueller team. so you can be sure that they presented these answers in a light that is the most generous, broad answer so that it's very difficult to pin down to be false. and the best of your recollection is a serious defense, as laura said. and in fairness, you know, donald trump has a lot on his mind. he's the president of the united states. a lot of facts come to him every day. these are events that are two y

lawyers for paul manafort briefed trump attorney after coming to that plea agreement. manafort is accused of blowing up his own plea deals. the president says he has no intention of trying to stop the mueller investigation even with all those attacks on twitter. nbc news obtaining documents showing jerome corsi sent an e-mail to roger stone anticipating that 2016 wikileaks document dump which revealed stolen clinton campaign e-mails. to to it off, guess who is weighing in this morning. president's daughter. we'll tell you what she has to say about the mueller investigation. >>> let's set it upstarting with nbc news intelligence reporter and ken to you first. let's start with this new reporting.reporter and ken to y. let's start with this new reporting. it's something for somebody to turn around and and talk to somebody else's legal team about what's going down. >> it's so unusual that most lawyers have never heard of anything like it. one person said she had only seen it in organized crime cases. it's interesting, i've been reading through paul manafort's plea agreemen

robert mueller was able to catch paul manafort in a lie. that's basically the simplest explanation we have. there are other explanations on top of that, maybe paul manafort thinks this is a play for a pardon. he'll take one for trump and trump will pay him back on the back end. that's problematic because there's a bunch of state charges that paul manafort faces. the other thing that's important is that this is now going to become public. they will go before a judge and they will talk about what it is that paul manafort allegedly lied about. and that will become part of the public record. i believe that is immune from executive privilege because it's a court proceeding. so whether inadvertently or not robert mueller has found a way or a vehicle to get some of this information out. >> what does the president think about the answers he wrote to those questions mueller is happy to cut people loose. >>> there's an editorial this morning entitled "putin tests trump on ukraine." the russian leader is watching the response to his latest military ag

the idea that he is going public with possibly pardoning paul manafort. if you flash back just to yesterday, the "washington post" asked him the same question. he wasn't willing to go on the record publicly to talk about this. and now we have him going on the record publicly. in some ways, it's not surprising. because we have heard the president in the past speak pretty, you know, favorably about paul manafort, even as he tried to separate himself from him. he called him a brave man. at some point he suggested he was being unfairly targeted. but he was being treated worse than al capone. i think the question now is why is he doing this? and essentially breaking from the advice of his team around him that wanted him not to talk about pardons publicly, because they feared that mueller might see this as interfering in an ongoing investigation. why he is doing this at this point, just as paul manafort is facing probably more time than he was facing a week ago, because of the breakdown of had plea deal. >> yeah, he was convicted of various crimes, and now he's

then you have paul manafort. remember paul manafort, what has he done for the latter part of his career? he's in places like ukraine. he's in places doing dirty deals with crooked politicians, corrupt magistrates, dirty businessmen, russian mob roadsters, all these people. that guy is the guy who thinks about the fact that he could become a character in a double-agent plot that would somehow end up with it all working out fine for him and getting the presidential pardon. that's the kind of thing if you're a political consultant in the ukraine, ten years ago, that you are advising your clients, hey, we'll work it out. we'll pay the magistrate. we'll payoff the new president. this is how it works. all systems are gamable. that's the paul manafort kind of touch stone of how he operates. and, of course, when he then found himself in jeopardy, he would think about it the same way. >> that is such a great point about manafort. within his experience in dealing with russians and the ukraine, this is simple stuff. >> yes.

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>> he's very open about the fact that he's in communication with paul manafort's attorneys. and there's nothing wrong with that. >> attorneys can do that. >> absolutely. and it's done a lot when you have multiple people who are represented by different lawyers, who have common interests. and at this point, the trump legal team and the manafort legal team believe that they still have common interests, which i think is noteworthy. but he also explained -- to giuliani said that he have known for some time that paul manafort was sort of moving away from this plea deal, because he felt that he was being pressured, according to manafort, to not tell the truth. but also explained why the president has been, you know, even more aggressive on twitter, going after mueller, is because of what he's seeing with manafort and what he's saying with corsi. which he argues, he the president argues in private, just as publicly he's done on twitter, that this is exhibit "a" of the mueller investigation going way too far, going after people as a way to get at and get to and take down the preside

manafort and says paul, put up a good fight. we know you thought you'd do great here, but you're getting cream and you're going get killed in court. so here's what you do. we know you wanted to be a good soldier and not flip, and you criticized rick gates when he flip and all that we know your loyal. we know that's a very important thing for you, but flip go. ahead and flip. plead guilty. agree to cooperate. if you just become our mole, if you just tell us everything that you can learn from that position, don't worry about it. we'll hook you up with a pardon. you're already screwed. you're already convicted. do this now and that's your way out. this is the way that you can prove your worth to us. that's, again, i'm imagining that that's the way this could have gone in a very dramatic version of this. if anything like that happened, would that itself be a criminal conspiracy of any kind? >> again, i think it could be. it depends on the fax. the part that sounds borderline illegal is the part where you said go in and be our mole.

roger stone and paul manafort have had a 30-year business relationship, black, manafort and stone, it goes back to the '80s when they had a business relationship. >> i get the impression you don't think they are truthful. paul manafort, the plea agreement he had with the mueller investigation blew up. who are you more inclined to believe? >> i don't know mueller, but he seems to be a man of character, and i hope he has a true and honest investigation. i want the whole investigation -- >> you don't want matt whitaker to table the whole thing? >> if the report comes out, the entire thing should be given to the american people and it should show, and i hope robert mueller does it, what also took place on the other side of the aisle, like clinton hiring a russian spy, and i hope they release the whole thing. >> it was clinton's lawyer that hired a firm that hired steel in terms of the timeline there. you talk about the november 9th club. i like clubs, and you talk about the november 9th club in terms of the president and explain what that is and if people are still around? >> the november

paul manafort is back channelling the team on what his client told robert mueller and highly unusual game, and lead s to questions of what type of game he is playing? >> i can't tell you how unusual this is. >> he is a con man out to play three sides against the middle. >> it is hard to believe that good smart lawyers thought that they could get away with this. >>> and mia, and senators briefed on what the u.s. knows about the killing of journalist jamal khashoggi, but not by the cia director who actually heard the tape of his murder. coming up, the insooider's viewf the former cia chief john brennan. >>> and unopposed, nancy p pelosi no competition as she seeks to take the speaker's chair, but will she be able to control the e e vvolving caucus? >> i think that the caucus is coming together very well, and we all agreed on everything all of the time, then there would not be much growth. >> hi, and good morning, everybody. and goodday, rather. andrea mitchell here with a shocking fallout of a new york times report that paul manafort's lawyer has been secretly briefing president trump'

he could pardon paul manafort, roger stone, if it ever came down to it, donald trump jr. whoever he wants, the president has that power to pardon him, which would likely cause him a ton of headaches from capitol hill if he does. >> so there's all of that. kaitlan, thank you. i want to get to the breaking news, exclusive here to cnn, the details of what president trump told robert mueller in writing about two key issues that are significant parts of this russia investigation. the answers he provided pertain to wikileaks in the 2016 trump tower meeting. what did the president provide to mueller, dana? >> this is interesting. it's the first insight we've gotten to what president trump responded at all to the questions. number one, the president told the special counsel that roger stone did not tell him about wikileaks. number two, that the president was also not told about that 2016 tower meeting between his son, campaign officials and that russian lawyer promising dirt on hillary clinton. now the president's answers were described to us without providing any direct quotes,

that paul manafort cooperate with the mueller investigation. she went on to say that the white house is cooperating and producing documents and answers and so on in the investigation. no question about it, a cynic out there could look at that answer and say not only is she not recommending that manafort cooperate with the mueller investigation, she could be sending the signal that he should not cooperate with the mueller investigation and that is the reason why there is so much speculation and conversation here in washington that a pardon offer has been dangled over paul manafort's head in some way, shape or form. when sarah sanders was asked about that she said she knew of no conversations about pardons going on inside the white house. >>> we have breaking news on all of this, here is what the president's tv lawyer rudy giuliani told the wall street journal. right now would not be the time. it would be misunderstood. it doesn't mean you give away your presidential prerogative to do it at the right time. manafort should get the same considerati

sources telling them that paul manafort met with julian assange. this follows the bomb shell news that the special counsel says manafort lied repeatedly. all about turnout. voters in mississippi head to the polls today in the senate special election there. the president betting his star power will push the republican candidate over the finish line. democrats hoping they've mobilized enough voters. >>> 2020 vision, democrat beto o'rour o'rourke, the breakout star of the party changing his tune and says he is no longer ruling out a run for the white house. what that could portend for the field of democrats eyeing the white house. we'll dig into that a little bit later. we start with that

manafort and says paul, put up a good fight. we know you thought you'd do great here, but you're getting creamed and you're going to get killed in court, so, here's what you do. we know that you wanted to be a good soldier and not flip and you criticized rick gates when he flipped and all that, we know you're loyal. we know that's a very important thing for you, but flip. go ahead and flip. plead guilty. agree to cooperate. if you just become our mole, if you just tell us everything that you can learn from that position, don't worry about it. we'll hook you up with a pardon. you're already screwed. you're already convicted. do this now and that's your way out. this is the way that you can prove your worth to us. that's -- again, i'm imagining that that's the way this could have gone in a very dramatic version of this. if anything like that happened, is -- would that itself be a criminal conspiracy of any kind? >> again, i think it could be. it depends on the facts. the part that sounds borderline illegal is the part where you sa

the surprising thing, ari, is that in the past, paul manafort's crimes have been about helping paul manafort. >> right. >> his lies to mueller help donald trump and they put manafort at great risk. >> let's pause on that. i want to let you build on that, because it's very important what you just said. we are dealing with -- you call him a thug, i would call him a guilty convicted felon, but those are words of art, they mean the same thing. so here is this felon who previously was busted for witness tampering to try to get out of his own prosecution for foreign lobbying crimes. so that was for him. your point is the new thing going on is not necessarily to duck his own crimes, because he was going to get leniency for mueller. so what's it for? >> yeah. now he puts himself at great risk for exactly what happened which is he's likely to spend the rest of his life in prison. >> right. natasha? >> i think what you said is really important. it's hard to distinguish between manafort's general recklessness and whether there was a strategy here. i think it might be a combination of both. manafort had

is this a non-sketchy reason paul manafort would have had meetings? this is "guardian" reporting, we can't verify it -- with julian assange? >> it's a good question. why else would he be there? what would he be doing? it was right about the time one of the meetings alleged to have taken place in the spring of '16. right before he jump joined the trump campaign. wikileaks had for several years been in the business of releasing classified information, so facilitating the unauthorized disclosure of really sensitive and high volume of classified and very sensitive u.s. government diplomatic and classified information. so that is what we know and that is what he should have known at the time about wikileaks. whether or not there was some other nonnefarious reason to be there, who knows? also with respect to whether or not the meetings took place, he denies them. "the guardian" has his reporting. i would say these are verifiable facts. >> right. >> he was either -- so investigations whether it is news organizations' investigations or whether it is law enfor

we know paul manafort is not an extremely stupid individual. or you are angling for a broader strategy here, a pardon. we have seen how forgiving donald trump has been to paul manafort. he feels awful he has been put in this position. >> the president also said at times, well, paul manafort only worked for me for a little bit of time. you wonder if his personal interests are more important than paul manafort's alleged suffering. but if i could ask you this question, so the second half of sara's piece here which gets at this possibility of communication between trump world and assange and i also remind viewers wikileaks was seen as a middleman between e-mails stolen by russia to influence the campaign, wikileaks the way to get that out into the public eye here. early on in this investigation an intelligence source of mine said look at public commentary here. roger stone had a lot of public comments in advance of these releases which sara referred to. the president talked about this as it was happening. as you look at the evidence as it is trickl

manafort entered is void now because according to robert mueller, the special counsel, paul manafort lied repeatedly to the feds. it's two separate stories. the one i mentioned is confirmed the guardian one is where paul manafort entered a statement. >>> there's a lame duck congress right now and it's to avoid a shut down. that's all lawmakers have to do before a new congress starts up in january and gets going again. this time instead of being simple there's drama. it has to do with the special counsel, robert mueller. remember, he say -- is a government employee. but even if someone cut off his cash, say in a government shutdown it would be a tough slog. our producer reporting live. >> reporter: they have to work out seven of the remaining spending bills to avoid a partial government shutdown it has to do we commerce justice and science spending bill and if there's a shutdown any one deemed not essential can't go to work. here's something that protects robert mueller. there's a definite appropriate definition. to protect the special counsel investigating iran contra and the congres

the most likely scenario is paul manafort wanted to minimize his own conduct. the congresswoman just referenced treason. we don't quite know exactly the extent of paul manafort's international connections, what he was doing during the campaign, but bob mueller certainly has a good indication of it, and paul manafort would have to admit to all of his additional criminal conduct as part of cooperating, and he may have to plead guilty to more conduct. he might be trying to avoid that by minimizing his conduct. so i understand the pardon rationale, which i don't buy. if he wanted a pardon, he shouldn't have. >> let me start with the congresswoman. everything trump's been saying lately and his surrogate, rudy giuliani, suggest they're intended to discredit. it's a witch-hunt. so he's trying to set the backfie battlefield. so i'm going to pardon the guy. why does he keep doing this, trump? >> his whole goal is to discredit everyone. that's his anti-social behavior in full display all the time because he gets great pleasure out of discrediting people. what he doesn't

we start with that breaking news on paul manafort. a harsh spotlight just got brighter after a major bombshell report from "the guardian yts. manafort held secret talks with julian assange at the ecuadorian embassy during the presidential campaign. quote, a well placed sourced has told the guardian that manafort went to see assange around march 2016. that would be the month manafort joined the campaign. "the guardian" says months later wi wikileaks release add stash of stolen e-mails. manafort has previously denied involvement in the hack, this news coming a day after the special counsel's office said it is seeking to break its plea deal with manafort. bob mueller's team says the one-time campaign chairman lied to them and the fbi quote, on a variety of subject matters. manafort's team insists that he was truthful. the result speculation of a presidential pardon. today the president attacked mueller in a series of three tweets. he put quotation marks around justice in one of those tweets, around justice department. he said mueller's t

manafort, but here's the thing about a pardon by the president for paul manafort. even if he were to do that, he would then potentially face state charges for some of these crimes that he's admitted to committing, whether it's bank fraud or tax fraud. so even if president trump wanted to pardon him, that would not procollueclude any action be prosecutors and potentially paul manafort would still face jail time. so it's not clear how that would actually help him. >> all right. let's go back to hans nichols. can you elaborate on what exactly sarah huckabee sanders said when asked about this? >> reporter: when asked about a pardon, she said she wasn't aware of any conversations between anyone on a pardon. that's not a flat-out denial. that's just saying she doesn't know anything about it. she also said on a question about firing mueller that he had two years to do so and he did not have any intent to do so. so to answer your question about what was a response to, the intent was no intent to fire mueller. >> all right. and sort of no absolute denial that any conversati

manafort, if there was going to be anything in this for paul manafort and the president didn't want to talk about it on the record. he went off the record, discussed this with them. then they asked if there was any version of what he said off the record that he wanted to put on the record about potentially pardoning paul manafort and he said no because he didn't want to get in the middle of this. brooke, that doesn't seem to be a problem today. now he's telling "the new york post" a pardon for paul manafort is not off the table. >> kaitlan, stay with me. i want to stay on this. chief correspondent dana bash is with me, who just broke the story on the written responses and trump to mueller and shimon prokupecz is with me as is dan whitney, attorney general. dana, it's fast and furious this week and it's only wednesday. but the notion that the president would on the record say pardon's not off the table, why would he do that? >> look, he's angry. that has been blatantly obvious for a while. it's escalated this week with his tweets. as we talked about yesterday, the motivator for that

the prosecutors have found paul manafort not to be credible. they wanted to use paul manafort to have him cooperate with their investigation, and now they found him to not be credible and now they don't want any parts of that any more. that's what that filing was about the other day, and we're going to see more details unfold associated to that. >> at the sentencing. >> let's not forget, chris, that paul manafort has been charged with nothing relative to his conduct during the campaign, nor has he been charged with conspiracy associated with the same. >> right. >> so to say that the president, even if he starts, you know, rattling the saber as it relates to pardons in paul manafort, is somehow doing it inappropriately, there's no nexus at this point as it relates to the campaign. so i don't see it. >> well, is that the end of the analysis, kerry, whether or not it's connected to the campaign? or is it about anything where they find out there was a coordinated story between manafort and the president and it was a lie, and the president exercised

>> i thought, how stupid can paul manafort be. because a plea deal, a cooperation agreement is a chance to reduce a very long sentence he was facing. >> right. >> that was his ticket out to spend some time out of prison. that deal is now torn up. he's going to get a very long sentence, unless he gets a pardon. obviously the question of the pardon hangs over this. we don't know what his chance are. but certainly, he threw away a very big opportunity. >> does this complicate things also for the special counsel, michael, as jeffrey says, if they now call him a liar, is the information that they've gotten from him, it useless? it tainted, in some way? >> well, it depends upon that which he lied about. you know, gates lied as well. remember, he was required to plead guilty, as part of his settlement with mueller to one count of lying during the interview process. but i expect that gates is still a helpful witness to mueller. so, manafort could be a helpful witness to mueller, even though he failed to corroborate what -- it looks to me

paul manafort was not in court. what we learned was important and that is that paul manafort could face more charges. there could be things he's facing that we don't even know about yet and the other thing what we have learned is this case will go on for quite some time. the judge now intends to sentence him sometime around march 5th. she's going to rule before then whether or not the government's claims that paul manafort violated his plea agreement are the case and whether or not she should extend his sentence. whether or not she's going to be more harsh on his sentencing and pa paul manafort who is 69 will probably face the rest of his life in jail. >> michael cohen, the president's long time lawyer yesterday said he was working on a deal for the trump tower project in moscow well into the 2016 presidential campaign. could ivanka trump and donald trump junior be in more more scrutiny based on what michael cohen has now said? >> that could be the case. we know that don junior as has been reported testified through

and that takes us to paul manafort. he has one thing that we know and one huge question that we don't know. but we're going to know soon. here's the part that we know. the special counsel says manafort has been lying even after he made the deal. the big question, therefore, is what? about what? one of two things. one is he's been lying about where he had his money, how he stashed his money, and how he got his money. we don't care about that for the purposes of this discussion. the other is he's had something to do with the campaign and the interference. the "guardian" comes out with a piece and says that's exactly what it is. he met with julian assange several times for many years back to 2012. why? this is what makes this part interesting. that's why i wanted to finish where we started. because of the work that paul manafort did in ukraine that made him very wealthy and in a lot of trouble with the u.s. government, he had access to these kinds of people, either directly or indirectly. and that is an interesting triangl

more lying allegations against paul manafort. the one-time trump campaign chairman is breaking the terms of his plea agreement by lying instead of cooperating. the president's lawyer accuses the special counsel of unethical behavior. something that plays well with the boss. >> you have deep state, but one by one we are getting them out. we have deep state bad people. a lot of phony stuff going on. you know what, one by one, we're winning, winning, winning. >> we begin the hour with major new wrinkles in the russia interference investigation including new reporting that drives at the very thing the president said doesn't exist. collusion. the guardian newspaper said paul manafort in the spring of 2016 paid a secret visit to the wikileaks founder, julian assangea alleged to have happened in london. the paper said it's unclear why he went to see assange. manafort met with assange three times. first in 2013 and then 2015 and finally in 2016. manafort's lawyers refused to answer questions about the alleged meetings. wikileaks said thi

there has been mixed messaging from paul manafort as well as from president trump. these latest unravelings with paul manafort's meetings with julian assange will lead to more questions. in a few short weeks, democrats will take over the house of representatives, and that means they have the power to subpoena. they will certainly try to get to the bottom of some of these questions. david: we want to head over to london. david, one of the things we taught you to pay attention to it was theresa may's trip to belfast. here is what her ally had to say. >> we will not be supporting this. chamber, whether they are remain or leave voters, they are not going to this. instead of wasting her time, she should be trying to find a way that is acceptable to everybody. david: she said she is wasting her time. it does not sound as if she is changing many votes at least at the dup. for beingnot known flexible or changing her mind. she says theresa may is wasting her time. she needs to go back to brussels and renegotiate this specific thing that the dup and the tory party dislikes, w

special counsel was going after with paul manafort. this is not a joint cooperation, joint defense agreement officially but it's cooperation, the type of cooperation, laura, you don't normally see after somebody pleads guilty and agrees to sing before investigators. >> of course you don't because it disincentivizes for the government who has the upper hand in the plea agreements to actually be forthcoming and be open minded about what you are giving them because they have to actually assume or believe that you, in fact, are a truthful and credible witness who is providing information without an axe to grind or some sort of bias or ulterior motive. you have to ask yourselves whether or not manafort was sharing the information with trump's legal team because he was jockeying for a pardon, perhaps, and he has followed the line, listen, it's akin to the perjury trap you were speaking of mr. president all this time through your counsel, and it's a perjury trap. that plays to his ear quite well. the question for people looking forward is has