today has been an unbelievably busy day in the news, including what is now tropical storm florence. don't let the name fool you. it is still a 350-mile-wide, nearly stationary fire hose of water and wind. it's now parked over north and south carolina. florence, of course, hit as a category 1 hurricane, came ashore this morning on the north carolina coast. forecasters tell us, typically, thatginning of the end of a storm like this. that's in typical circumstances. this storm is atypical. landfall didn't stop it. it has pretty much been stacked up and stationary on the carolina coast all day long today. it's moving southwest, along the shoreline. it's only moving at a sluggish 3-mile-per-hour pace. that's literally a human walking

pace. that's how slowly this thing is going. and today, that very slow-moving storm has been busy soaking an already water-logged area with up to two feet of rain. the result is predictably disastrous, thus far. when you've got rain measured in feet and not inches, that's one thing. couple that with the storm surge of up to ten feet, that triggered major flooding, for example, in the city of new bern, north carolina. hundreds of people have been rescued from flood waters in new bern. five deaths have been reported so far, including a mother and baby who died when a tree fell on their house in the city of wilmington, north carolina. tropical storm florence is moving west. though its winds have slowed some, it's still strong. and the storm expected to drop torrential rain for days to come.

still a very, very situation again. five deaths attributed to the storm already. we'll have more on the storm coming up in a few minutes. we'll also be talking in a few minutes with the reporter who broke this news today at "vanity fair." on a day that was already a potential disaster for the sitting president of the united states, in terms of his own exposure and liability in the russia scandal, and the investigation by the special counsel's office, led by robert mueller, on a day that was a disaster for the president. emily jane fox of "vanity fair" added significant fuel to the fire with her exclusive reporting that long-time trump executive, long-time personal lawyer to the president, michael cohen, has not just pled guilty to eight felony counts, has not just named the president in court under oath as the person who directed him to commit two of the felonies, campaign finance violations. emily jane fox says michael cohen has begun meeting with the

special counsel's office this month. when he pled guilty, there was no formal corporation agreement filed along with his plea. this new reporting, if correct, it indicates that cohen is cooperating. he's talking with the special counsel. we're going to speak with emily jane fox about that news in a moment. that news comes at the worst possible time for president trump. we have been reporting for the last couple of days that there were signs and anonymously sourced reports that the president's campaign chairman was, himself, starting to talk to prosecutors about pleading guilty in federal court, rather than casing another extended federal trial. he was convicted on eight felonies last month in virginia. he was facing another trial on more felony counts starting next week in federal court in washington, d.c. while this president choosing this felon as a campaign

chairman, which is a scandal as far as presidents go, and there's public interest in the legal fate of the campaign chairman. how many felonies is he going to go down for? how long will he be in prison? what are his prospects for retrial and all the rest of it. while there's interest in all of that stuff, a larger stake in terms of the country and the presidency, not just paul manafort's own fate. and the fact that president trump chose him as the campaign chair, the largest stake here is the prospect that the president's own fate and liability might be significantly jep neopardized by what's going with manafort. that manafort, in an effort to lower his own prison time, might finally decide to cooperate with the special counsel's office, and the ongoing investigation of russian interference and the role by the president and his campaign. that's the big kahuna, right?

it always seemed improbable. campaign chairman for sitting president, pleads guilty for felonies? huge deal. campaign chair pleads guilty for felonies and agrees to cooperate with prosecutors investigating the president himself, that seemed impossible. that has seemed at least very, very improbable. now, that's what happened. and that's bigger than a huge deal. lots of reporting has wondered if a cooperation deal might happen. most observers thought there was no way, no how, that paul manafort would do this. he was not going to cooperate. he would have done so by now if he was going to. he is cooperating, fully. no holds barred. i personally almost can't believe it even now. even though we have it in writing. we just got the transcript. i can tell you how it happened,

word for word. courtroom deputy. your honor, good morning. this morning, we have case number 17-2001-1, united states versus paul j. manafort jr. will parties approach the lech turn and identify yourself for the record. mr. weissman. good morning, your honor. andrew weissman for the government. and with me is greg andress, lorna masher, kyle freeney, genie rhee, and josh wilen from the fbi. the judge. good morning. good morning, your honor. richard westling, thomas zehnie and kevin downling. and i note that mr. manafort is present. i understand the defendant wishes to enter a plea of guilty. is that correct? that's correct, your honor. before we can proceed, he can join you at the lech turn. the courtroom deputy says, are

you paul j. manafort jr. >> paul manafort. i am. are you named in the superseding information? i am. so, this is obviously the very start. this starts with the good mornings. at this point in the breeding, everybody there in the courtroom knows at least one important part of what's going to happen. the judge said, he's here to play guilty. the reason there's superseding information what the court deputy asked of paul manafort. superseding information, what that means is the indictment, laying out the charges that manafort was about to go on trial for next week, that indictment has been replaced with a superseding document. a superseding information. a criminal information instead of an document. that's what happens when prosecutors are bringing charges against you but you're not going to trial over the charges. you're going to plead guilty. at this point, everyone in the

courtroom knows he's going to plead guilty. still a cliff-hanger at this point, though. the judge says, to get to the questions i need to ask you to understand in this morning's proceedings, can you tell me how old you are? defendant, paul manafort, 69. judge, what's the highest level of edgeation you attained. >> jury ris dois doctrine. the judge, you can read and write? the defendant, i can. and where were you born, sir? paul manafort, new britain, connecticut. have you taken alcohol or drugs in the last 48 hours? no. or medicine that would impede the ability to understand what you're doing. no. have you received a copy of the information, the new charges and the indictment pending against you and have you discussed the

case in general, with your lawyers? i have. are you completely satisfied with the services of your lawyers in this case? i am. the judge, have you had enough time to discuss with them and discuss the case? to talk with them and discuss the case and the plea offer and whether or not you should accept it? paul manafort, i have. so, they go through this preliminary stuff. you're okay. you're of sound mind. you are who you say you are. the judge asks andrew weissman to summarize the list of things to which paul manafort is going to plead guilty today. to describe his crimes. mr. weissman, explain orally what he is pleading guilty to and what this case would show if it went to trial. andrew weissman does. you see all of the pages? he goes on for 18-straight pages of transcript without interruption.

i'm not going to read all 18 pages. we'll save that for the special. he goes on and on. the judge is okay, wow. that's a lot. from stage 16, weissman says, let me start with the first one, foreign agent registration act conspiracy. he says, let me speak about the conspiracy to obstruct justice. the false and misleading submissions to the department of justice. let me turn to the money laundering conspiracy. page 32, turning to the witness tampering conspiracy. it goes on on and on. the prosecutor stops talking after going on for 18-straight pages, telling the judge, at the end of his remarks, he says, there's more in the statement. i could go on. it's all there in writing. at which point the judge exhales. and says all right.

thank you. turning to the defense, the judge says, mr. westling and mr. manafort, quote, i believe it's fair to say that that's probably the longest and most detailed summary that has ever preceded this question. but is what the prosecutor just said a true and accurate description of what you did in this case? the defendant, paul manafort, i did. it is. the judge -- did you participate and coordinate in lobbying efforts in the united states on behalf of the ukrainian government and ukrainian government officials and/or political parties? paul manafort -- i did. did you conspire and fact with other to violate the money laundering statute and to make false statements to the department of justice in 2016 in conjunction with that lobbying work in the united states? paul manafort, i did. and the judge, did you conspire with one other person, to tamper

with witnesses in 2018. paul manafort, i did. after 18 ages of laying it out by the prosecutor, the judge sums it up and paul manafort admits to the court, admits to the judge i did, i did these things. and now he has to admit what he is going to give up, because he is pleading guilty. the judge says, quote, you're agreeing to plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy against the united states. do you understand that if i accept your guilty plea in this case, you could receive a maximum sentence of up to five years in prison on each count? paul manafort -- i do. do you also understand that for each count you can pay a fine of $250,000 each? paul manafort, i do. there are a number of forfeiture allegations in this case. without going into detail, i want to make sure that you understand as a result of this plea agreement, you're agreeing to the forfeiture to a considerable amount of property. do you understand that includes

377 union street? paul manafort. also, howard street. >> i do. it includes the jobs lane new york. and funds seized from an contract from capital one. i do. and another federal bank. an insurance policy with northwestern mutual. i do. and real property at baxter street in new york. i do. and real property at fifth avenue in new york. i do. he's forfeiting all of those things, bank accounts, insurance policy, lots and lots of real estate to the government. the government says he defrauded the government of $15 million that he didn't pay taxes on. part of that made up is to hand over his ill-gotten gains and the things he attained as real estate. but that last question there

from the judge, real property at baxter street in new york and also real property at fifth avenue in new york, that's the last one she asks, at that point it's actually the reference to president trump. because the fifth avenue property that paul manafort agreed in court today to forfeit to the government, that is paul manafort's apartment at trump tower on fifth avenue. you might remember that paul manafort used the fact that he had an apartment at trump tower as a selling point in which he pitched himself for the campaign chairman job. well, now the justice department owns paul manafort's old apartment in trump tower. which has to be a little unsettling for the president, i would imagine. but then this very next part of the hearing is the part that is probably what the president didn't expect and definitely what the president didn't want to hear. this is really the boom in today's news. the judge -- quote, do you also understand that pursuant to this plea agreement, you're agreeing to cooperate fully and truthfully with the investigation being

conducted by the office of special counsel, including participating in interviews and debriefings, producing any documents in your control and testifying and agreeing to delays of your sentencing at the request of the government. do you understand that? paul manafort, i do. the judge, and these obligations under the agreement will continue, even after your sentencing here and in the eastern district of virginia. do you understand that? manafort, i do. i believe in the agreement, you waive your right to have your counsel present for every interview and debriefing. is that also correct? paul manafort, that's correct. that's the boom here. that's the unexpected news today. him pleading guilty, which he does a short while later in the descri transcript, the judge says, do you wish to tell me whether you plead guilty or go to trial? and manafort says, i plead guilty. he pleads guilty, from the moment proceedings opened. he said, you're here to plead guilty, right?

we knew he was going to plead guilty from the moment he walked in the door. we did not know he would agree to cooperate. based on the plea agreement based on the back and forth from the judge today, from which we just got this transcript, it appears that paul manafort's cooperation agreement is the full monty. he agrees to be fully debrief and attend all meetings at which his presence is requested. he agrees to give all material relevant to the investigation. he agrees to participate in undercover activities. not sure how that's going to work. hi, my name is mall panafort. could you speak into my lapel, please? no, i don't know why i seem familiar to you. you can trust me, friend. paul manafort is not going undercover any time soon with or without the hair dye. he also agrees to testify at any proceeding, which means both trial or at grand juries. and this one's interesting to

me. he agrees to be interviewed by law enforcement agents and/or government attorneys, and he waives any right to have counsel during these interviews unless he submits the request in writing beforehand. so the judge singled this part out to ask him about. you know you can't have your lawyer there's when you're talking to the investigators here, right? paul manafort as part of this agreement will have to talk to investigators and prosecutors about anything he wants without his own lawyers present, unless he gets written permission in advance to have them there. i am intrigued by that. i'm also intrigued by this confirmation from the judge today that after this guilty plea and this cooperation agreement, paul manafort was sent back to jail today, and he will stay in jail until he is sentenced. and presumably, he will not be sentenced until his cooperation is over to the satisfaction of the special counsel's office. so if you think about what's going happen to paul manafort from here on out, he's going to go from court today back to jail today, potentially to stay there for a very long time. i mean, could that be years while he continues to cooperate with the special counsel?

and then after the end of his cooperation, then he will be sentenced for eight felonies in virginia and these two more in d.c., up to a maximum of ten years in federal prison, and thereafter the judge spells out that his cooperation responsibilities with the government will continue, even after he is sentenced. did i mention that this is the president's campaign chairman we're talking about here? so here's a few things to know. prosecutors say that paul manafort gave his first proffer, his first offer of information, so his first cooperation on tuesday of this week. so he's been cooperating already for four days. prosecutors spelled out that one of the things he plead guilty to today was a foreign-funded illegal and somewhat bizarre effort a few years ago to smear an obama cabinet official as an anti-semite for not supporting paul manafort's client in ukraine, viktor yanukovych.

that was spelled out in detail not only in the written statement of the offense, but also in the verbal presentation by prosecutors today. it seems clearly cabinet that the cabinet official paul manafort was organizing this effort to smear, to promote pro-russian interests back in 2012 was then secretary of state hillary rodham clinton. so if this manafort plea and his cooperation ends up linking back to a -- a later foreign funded illegal bizarre effort to smear hillary clinton for pro-russian interests, not in 2012, but in 2015 and 2016 when she was running for president against donald trump, this is probably the first sign of it in manafort's guilty plea today. he pleads guilty to operating as an illegal unregistered foreign agent running a scheme in this country to try to smear hillary clinton unfairly for not

properly aligning herself with the pro-russian interests he was working for. can't imagine there might be any parallels with that that we're going to hear of down the line, right? this is the eighth person convicted or pleading guilty in robert mueller's investigation of russian interference in the election. robert mueller is now batting a thousand in terms of convictions and guilty pleas from everybody who he has pursued in court. he's also now batting a thousand in terms of securing cooperation from every single american who has been charged in this case. including the president's national security adviser, the president's deputy campaign chair, and now the president's campaign chairman who himself as decades worth of links to the former soviet union and whose business partner is believed by the fbi to be himself linked to russian intelligence agencies. half the world watching this is now expecting a pardon for paul manafort from the president, like maybe as soon as tonight, right? half the world expects that

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on august 21st, michael cohen, the president's long-term personal attorney plead guilty to eight felony charges, including felony tax evasion and making false statements to a financial institution to get a loan. but the two blow the roof off charges were charge number 7 and 8 in which michael cohen claimed under ohs that the president directed him to make illegal payoffs to two different women during the campaign for the purposes of influencing the election. in open court he said he committed those felonies, quote, in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office. there is no mystery as to who that candidate for federal office was. those are words that implicated the president personally, essentially as an unindicted

co-conspirator in those felony counts. now michael cohen is expected to serve time for his role in those payoffs. but how much time is an open question. he is not going to be sentenced until mid-december. under sentencing guidelines, he could be looking at around five years now. if he is helpful to prosecutors, his sentence could be lighter. he didn't file any sort of formal cooperation agrnt, but could he cooperate and lessen his sentence? in cohen's case the charges were brought against him by prosecutors in the southern district of new york. that's where he plead guilty. but he could also conceivably cooperate to his own benefit with prosecutors from the special counsel's office. the cohen investigation started with the special counsel, robert mueller gave sdny the cohen case. well, now we have news that the case of michael cohen appears to be wending its way back to the special counsel's office. emily jane fox reports at "vanity fair" tonight that michael cohen is now talking to robert mueller and his prosecutors in the special counsel's office. quote, it is now common knowledge among cohen's inner circle that cohen has been in contact with the special

counsel's office. on a day when the campaignhair plead guilty to multiple felonies and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel, we learned another one who says he has been involved in felony misconduct with the president already, he too appears to be heading down that path. what a day for the president. joining us now is emily jane fox, senior reporter at "vanity fair," who broke this story. emily, great to see you. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> so you report that he is in contact with the special counsel's office, that he is talking to the mueller team. do you have any sense of the substantive nature othose communications? is he -- are they getting acquainted? is he providing them information? do you have a sense of that? >> it's unclear how far down the line these talks are. i don't know if they're preliminary. i don't know if they are in front of a grand jury. i don't know if they're working towards a cooperation agreement. all of those things are

certainly possible and different people within the cohen orbit have suggested different things. it is unclear how far down the line they are. but it is a step in a direction michael cohen had not gone down before. this is not where he was even about a month or so ago when he pleaded guilty. he was at that time kind of befuddled that investigators were not reaching out to him, were not seeking his cooperation agreement, that they were going to indict him in the southern district of new york without really sitting down with him to reach a cooperating agreement. and he ended up pleading guilty because there was no such cooperation agreement offered to him at that time. it's not entirely shocking to anyone who has been following this case, certainly not to people who are in contact with him and who know him well. michael cohen's light has been on for both the southern district investigators and to robert mueller's team as well. he has been signaling since july that he was ready for business, open to tell them anything that he knew.

and at this point, it seems like he is somewhere in the process of relaying that information to them. >> emily, earlier this week, you reported that one of the reasons cohen decided to plead guilty in the first place was to, in your words, shield his wife from legal jeopardy, which is intriguing in terms of mr. cohen and what brought him to this point in the first place. can you share with us any context there for that reporting? >> sure. there are a number of reasons at the time last august when the sdny first came to him that he decided to plead guilty. one of them was that his wife and family members and people close to him could have been implicated. these are people who signed documents together. he was charged with tax evasion and lying to a bank. i don't believe that he was the only signature on some of those things. so there was a potential for that. there was a potential that the sdny was going to come down with more charges that would have potentially led to more jail time as well. and so there's also the financial burden that has been weighing on him for a very long time, but has increasingly squeezing him.

so the confluence of all of those factors made it a no-brainer for him to plead guilty, and i think it will only continue to weigh on him as he goes further down the line, both with sdny and potentially with the mueller team as well. >> just think about this from the president's perspective. if he's looking at this in terms of his liabilities, if he has anything to worry about in terms of legal exposure, allen weisselberg who was the financial officer at the trump organization for decades is talking to prosecutors under some sort of immunity agreement. paul manafort today after holding out all of this time who is his campaign chair, who has all these links to russia, today not only pleading guilty, but a full sum cooperation agreement with the president. michael cohen pleading guilty, naming the president in court. now according to your reporting, speaking with the special counsel's office. i mean everybody's making their own decisions here on their own

legal liabilities and what they need to do. everybody is doing what they need to do. from the president's perspective, though, do you see this as potentially something that's an important brick in the wall in terms of whether the president is going to find himself answering for things that haven't yet surfaced, that haven't yet become publicly at least part of the special counsel's investigation? is michael cohen a guy who could drag the president in for things that haven't yet been part of this scandal? >> it is certainly possible. michael cohen was not only intimately involved with the president and the trump organization's dealings for a decade, but i keep thinking about -- i interviewed michael cohen when i was writing a book about the first children, the first family. and he knew so much about the daily goings on of don jr. and ivanka and eric. not only do i think he has potentially witnessed things in his decade of working in the trump organization related to president trump, but what did he witness about the children as well? this is a man who was very involved with the entirety of the trump family. so as the president has felt

squeezed in recent weeks by people who are incredibly close to him talking with the mueller team and insular and isolating himself and thinking that his family are the only people that he can trust, if he feels like his family might be in jeopardy, i wonder what that must feel like for him tonight. >> emily jane fox, senior reporter for "vanity fair." this is an acute observation there. kind of makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. thank you, emily. much appreciated. >> thank you. we've got some expert legal advice on what this all means, plus the latest on what's going on with now tropical storm florence. stay with us. busy night.

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. now that paul manafort has pled guilty and agreed to cooperate fully, what would happen if president trump pardoned paul manafort tonight? what would happen to paul manfort and the cooperation agreement that he's now agreed to with prosecutors. what would happen with whatever paul manafort has already told the special counsel's office over the last four days? since one of the things we learned today in court is that mr. manafort made his first offer of information to the special counsel's office on tuesday of this week. if the president pardoned paul manafort tonight, in addition, could that potentially be seen as an act of obstruction by the president? to try to stop manafort from testifying about what he knows about the president. could the president pardon

manafort tonight, what would it do to manafort and what might it do to the president himself. thank you for being here. appreciate your time. >> thanks for having me. >> i am not a lawyer but i read lots of court documents these days. was there anything that struck you in particular about this cooperation agreement that mr. manafort agreed to today? was this a boilerplate cooperation agreement? was there anything that stood out to you as unique or worth paying attention to? >> it's pretty standard. what's interesting about it is the way it deals with the virmg case. obviously manafort has been convicted by a jury. he actually had to at mitt dmit open counts in that virginia case as well as the d.c. case, so thatted a little bit of a wrinkle but this is a fair

agreement. this is what all defendants need to do when they cooperate. they have to plead guilty to all their criminal conduct and give information, any information and all information about anyone and everyone that they know that cannot pick and choose who they are going to give imation about and ultimately they need to testify if they're asked to do that. that's the real critical component to cooperation is the potential to testify. >> the potential of paul manafort testifying either to a grand jury or to a trial about the president in a way that would be damaging to the president or people close to the president. that looms over what everybody's talking about in terms of the president's next move here, the prospect that he might issue a pardon for mr. manafort. i know that there's a lot of constitutional law simplicity around pardoning. the president has the right to pardon anybody whom he wants.

if he does pardon them, in exchange for not flipping, not agreeing to kwoopt, or to stop them from providing evidence to prosecutors, is that something for which the president himself might find himself under legal scrutiny? >> well, this is uncharted legal territory for anyone in the country. nobody has ever used the pardon power to protect himself. we are entering into an area that we haven't dealt with before. but there are many things in criminal law that can be obstructive. there are many legitimate legal things that people can do in their ordinary jobs or lives that can, if used with a corrupt intend can be obstruction of justice. so the fact that the president has this power, this unfettered power does not necessarily mean that he can use it for a corrupt intent. certainly there's a strong

argument that can be made that if the president goes about pardoning paul manafort now that he's cooperated in particular, and that's why it's such an interesting move by manafort to coop rather that play this out for a pardon. but now that he's cooperated tlrs absolutely a strong case you could make under the sort of basic tenants of our law. not case law because there is no case on this topic but the idea of our criminal justice system that you cannot use what otherwise would be lawful authority without intent. it was yesterday or even it would have been if paul manafort had just entered into a plea agreement without cooperation, i think he had a path to a pardon, that it seemed to me he was going down, where he was getting signals from the president, that he's a stand-up guy, he was treated fairly, all the language

the president has used before pardoning other people, but for the fact that he was cooperating, that allowed the president to have some remove between actually pardoning him with the idea of probing himself and just being able say the crimes he was charged with had nothing to do with my campaign, i'm going to pardon him. that was his path and he chose the safer path. that's the only two ways he could get out from under his sentence. >> again, i'm looking through the documents with a lay mans eyes. looks like manafort is going to be staying in jail. he's going to be staying where he is. he'll be in jail for the during of his cooperation. at some point he will be sentenced. he's potentially still looking at up to 10 years in prison depending on how the two judges decide to sentence him and depending on the stoechblt his

cooperation. even after that sentencing he's bound to continue cooperating with prosecutors. they could presumably bring back some of these other charges to which he's admitted guilt. seems like this binds him for life and he's not going to be seeing any day light for some period of time. >> i'm sure that's true but that's an issue of negotiation between manafort's lawyers and the government. the government and his lawyers manafort's lawyers can agree to release him from jail. what i would expect to happen is that he will remain there for some time. the prosecutors do not -- would never want to keep a cooperator in jail for longer than a sentence he may receive. in other words, if he was going to get a significant sentence reduction to six months, let's

say, the prosecutors would not want to keep him in jail for longer than six months. they don't know what his sentence will be. he can always go back to jail after the facts. you never want to keep them in jail for longer than they might otherwise be there. i think at some point the bail will become an issue before he is sentenced. he will likely get released before ultimate sentencing, i think. >> lots going on today. thanks for being here. much appreciate it. >> all right. >> much to come. very, very busy friday night. stay with us. very, very busy friday night stay with us

a single tap offerss to peace of mind.y, uber is giving you new ways to tell loved ones you're on your way. uber is moving in a new direction. forward. . today president trump's campaign chair paul manafort agreed to cooperate fully, truthfully and forthrightly with other law enforcement agencies in any and all matters as to which the government deems the cooperation relevant. in case there's any doubt about

how much he needs to cooperate here. in the run up to this big news there was a lot of fuzzy reporting about how maybe manafort would try to get a carve out, to let him talk about everything under the sun except president trump. but nope. there it is in black an white "in any and all matters" if robert mueller wants him to talk about president trump manafort is on the hook to do that. that was not lost on the top democrat, congressman adam schiff -- ssman adam schiff - >> hmm. joining us is congressman adam schiff. congressman thank you for your time tonight. appreciate you being here. >> thanks, rachel lt. >> so you raised the prospect of obstruction of justice right

away today in response to this guilty plea in this cooperation grammy. in what way is that a concern to you right now? >> i said that r to a couple of reasons. first, manafort tried to essentially subborn perjury, tried to witness tamper and pled guilty to conspireing to do that, to obstruct justice by tampering with witnesses. bob mueller's team is pretty damn good and he got caught. he paid for that in his gllt plea today. i think he understands if he is less than truthful and bob mueller finds out about it he's going to pay a big price. he had to admit to the universal charges in that courthouse but also to the ten charges the jury hung on, which means that if his cooperation is less than completely truthful that not only can he be tried on those

ten counts but his admissions can be introduced. it's basically the nail in the kof ip. -- coffin. he should have gotten the message how old and clear but if he has information pertinent to whether the president is obstructing justice, mueller is going to hear that. also we have to be concerned with the president might choose to obstruct justice and try to take away any incentive that manafort has to cooperate by pardoning him. if he were to do that, then in terms of this cooperation agreement and all the rest of that, that really goes away. the case goes away. there's no repercussion for a look of cooperation if manafort gets parred. so i don't think we're beyond that possibility. >> if the president did issue that kind of pardon for mr. manafort, i think about the application of this. and -- politics of this.

i think about accountability for the. . i think about his su sentability for impeachment. paul manafort has not been a rallying cry for his supporters. nobody is saying that paul manafort was the real hero here and he's been railroaded and everything he did was fine and this is a pitch hunt where this innocent guy got caught up in it. there hasn't been that kind of charge on the right at least yet. if the president parred him and it looked like he was pardoning him tole stop manafort from giving the special county evidence and testimony that might imreply case the president, do you think it's possible that congress might look at that as something as a high crime and misdemeanor? that they want him to be accountable? >> i'm sure bob mueller would

consider it another piece of evidence that the president is obstructing justice. it's part of the report that they get presented to congress. so it would be yet another strong fact in favor of the president being held accountable for obstruction of justice. and i think that if he goes down this road, it won't be, as you say, because this is a rallying cry among his base to help poor paul manafort but rather because the president is motivated as always by naked self-interest. that means for the last months or a year he's been sharing information the defense team presumably knows much of what he has to say. they have to worry about what he has not told them but they may have aligned their stories. they may be aware of things that paul manafort could say to

incriminate the president. that may be the one reason the president would pardon him. the other thing i think is significant and if manafort does cooperate could be enormously helpful to mueller, and that is at the same time the russians are reaching out to the campaign in that trump tower meeting and offering help, dirt on hillary clinton, manafort is reaching out to the kremlin offering them help offering information about the trump campaign in exchange for money, money he thinks he's owed from ukrainian. i think everyone would look to know what happened at that cross section where the campaign is reaching out to the russian it is, the russians are reaching out to the campaign. the campaign dharm is in a pivotal place to tell us what happened before, during, and after the e-mails running back

and forth where he's trying to make it whole. >> congressman adam schiff, thank you, sir. appreciate you being here tonight. >> congressman schiff is talking about in terms of the joint defense agreement. it was only tuesday of this week when bob w50d ward's book came out where we had this first claim that something involved the president. 37 different witnesses called by mueller in the russia investigation. since then we've been heart at work trying to figure out who the people might be. we have lots of denials from lots of people we know are witnesses that no, no, no i'm not part of that agreement. rudy guiliani said paul manafort was part of the agreement. that means that the lawyers have been speaking together in recent months. how that might affect negotiations over a pardon, the dangling of a pardon and how that might affect strategy.

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sway against bret kavanagh in part over his views on productive rights. she said she talked to bret kavanagh on the phone today. they spoke for about an hour. not saying exactly wal they talked about but oh, boy, what a day to schedule this phone call. today is the day we got this report from the new yorker detailing the nature of the complaint contained in the letter that was forwarded to the fbi about bret kavanagh from senator dianne feinstein that concerns an incident when bret kavanagh was in high school. he told the new yorker i categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. i did not do this in high school or tnt. a classmate of kavanagh's have been tracked down. he also dense the allegations. the letter containing the allegations was sent to senator

finestein. they added the letter containing these allegations to kavanagh's background final at the white house. that means both the white house and 100 u.s. senators now have access to the letter. in person if they want to see it, although the accusers name, the woman's name in the letter is itself redacted. nbc news reports that the chair chuck grassley says he has not read the letter even though he is one of the senators who have access to it. the judiciary committee is voted to vote in less than a week. if they vote him out on party lines that means he gets voted out of the committee and it gets out of committee. if all the democrats voted against him, they'd still need two republicans. after the hour long conversation collins wouldn't say what they

discussed. nbc news approached her personally to ask if she had any comment on the letter. senator collins would not respond to questions about that. but the clock is ticking. republicans are moving this nomination forward even as new questions about the nominee continue to emerge. i fully expect this story, this particular story about kavanaugh to continue to develop through the weekend. republicans definitely want to steam ahead with voting on him as soon as next wednesday or thursday. it is hard to see how that happens while this story is still developing, but watch this space. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again on monday. it is time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell. >> good evening, rachel. you know how this show starts at 10:00 or i should say is supposed to start at 10:00, and every once in a while it starts 15 seconds late or 30 seconds late or whatever happens. >> my fault. sorry, yeah. >> and it is a pretty organized and ritualistic thing and that's the way it is supposed to work, but we can change that. we can hang that on t