them. the only reason we wouldn't, we were talking about difference to interest like the coal industry. >> yeah, if we get our act together and invest now, it's a better future in both directions. david walls wells, thank you. if you want to hear more, the uninhabitable earth, check out our discussion "why is this happening." "the rachel maddow show" starts now. >> good evening, chris. thanks my friend. thanks to you at home for joining us. nothing like this has ever happened before. almost. ish. there was that one other time. >> today a limousine brought john mitchell to court. they used to call him enchalada. when the time came for a final statement, mitchell and his lawyer had nothing to say. all eyes were on the man known as maximum john, the judge

wasted no time on a speech. mit they must serve two and a half years in prison, maybe eight. the judge would not comment as he left the courthouse. john mitchell left growling it could have been worse, he could have sen menactenced me to spen rest of my life with martha mitchell. >> could have been worse, could have sentenced me to spend the rest of my life with martha mitchell. john mitchell was richard nixon's presidential campaign manager. when nixon won in '68, john mitchell's marriage had broken up in 1973 in the midst of the watergate scandal and nixon resigned in scandal and he at least was pardoned for watergate related crimes but in 1975 when nixon campaign manager and ex u.s. attorney general john mitchell was sentenced for his

own crimes in the watergate scandal and he was sentenced for conspiracy and obstruction of justice and perjury and lying to investigators, his only comment to the press upon getting his federal prison sentence handed down was that at least he wouldn't have to spend any more time with his darn wife. sure, i'm going to prison but could be worse. you know, every generation thinks it invents the newest and worst kinds of scum bags in public life. history gave us good ones, too. do not give history short shift on historic days like this. today for the very first time it was the sitting president of the united states whose campaign chair was sentenced to federal prison. john mitchell didn't get his sentence until nixon was out of office and was a former president. john mitchell was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 1975.

mitchell ended up getting released from prison after serving 19 months because of poor health. today it was president trump's campaign chairman paul manafort and he beat mitchell's record today because he was given a much longer sentence than mitchell was. manafort today was sentenced to 47 months just shy of four years in federal prison. now there is no parole in the federal prison system anymore so even though we don't know exactly how long manafort will serve on this sentence, you can sort of do a little bit of a math in your head and start at 47 months, which is what he got today. you should then subtract nine months credit. they are giving him credit for the time he served. he did get a little bit of good time credit for that. if you do that math, it's maybe a ball mark figure of three years realtime that he will serve on this sentence-ish.

we'll get expert advice but this is a remarkable thing. this is history. it's the campaign chairman for the sitting president of the united states going to federal prison for years, for multiple felonies. only half way through that president's term in office. paul manafort was the first indictment announced by special counsel robert mueller back in 2017. manafort was originally charged alongside his deputy campaign chair from the trump campaign rick gates. the two of them appeared from the outset to have linked fates both in terms of what they were charged with and how their cases would proceed through the criminal justice system and appeared to be peas in a pod until gates bailed. gates decided to plead guilty and become a cooperating witness working with the prosecution in their case against his former boss paul manafort and working with them on other on going investigations, as well. and now manafort's case is coming to an end. manafort is learning how much

time he will spend in prison. meanwhile, rick gates' cooperation with prosecutors continues. gates doesn't yet have his own sentencing date. but his life is very different than paul manafort since he pled guilty. unlike manafort, rick gates is at home all this time and hasn't been in jail for a day, although there is still the prospect that's where he's heading when his cooperation is fully over and he's finally sentenced. the convictions for which paul manafort was sentenced today were the only jury verdicts so far special counsel robert mueller and scandals and the grand jury verdict, everybody plead. nobody else has yet faced a trial other than paul ma that fo -- manafort and he didn't take the stand in his own defense. there was tons of testimony

against him from among others rick gates, his former deputy, also from accountants and bookkeepers. in the end that jury in virginia convicted manafort on five felony counts of tax fraud, two felony counts of bank fraud and one felony count related to him not reporting his foreign bank accounts and the best news manafort got that day is despite the fact that jury in virginia convicted him of eight felonies, as john mitchell might say, it could have been worse that day. because paul manafort that day was actually facing 18 felony charges at that trial and remember, of the 12 jurors in the manafort trial, there was just one holdout. 11 jurors wanted to convict him on all 18 felonies but one juror held out and said no on ten of them. and that's -- it been a little weird to figure that out since. that one juror went along with

his or her fellow jurors on the other eight counts and there didn't seem to be the amount of difference on the evidence put forward on ten counts where the juror held out versus eight where the juror went along but nevertheless, that's how it went. juries are juries. paul manafort came out of the trial, lucky guy with eight felony convictions to his name. and when a jury can't come to a unanimous decision, that's called a hung jury. so he got a hung jury on those ten felony counts and on those ten felony counts where there was a hung jury, the prosecutors from mueller's office initially reserved the right to try paul manafort again. you can do that in the case of a hung jury. it's very interesting to me and i've never quite understood the strategy behind this. mueller's prosecutors initially reserve the right to bring manafort up on the ten charges where he had the hung jury again if they decide they want to but never went through with that decision and tried him again on

the ten felonies and ten on which there was a hung jury. but they did make sure that when manafort later plead guilty in a different federal court in d.c., his guilty plea and that other court included him explicitly confessing that yeah, maybe he wasn't convicted on those ten other felony charges where there was that one juror who was the holdout and maybe hadn't been convicted but manafort confessed in his plea deal that actually he was guilty of those ten felony charges, too. why didn't they charge him with those again? why have him admit that he committed those crimes later on in a different proceeding while giving up your right on those changes again. that was one of the amazing curveballs in the case. manafort pleads guilty to 18 felonies and goes to trial and the jury squashes him, guilty.

the other ten are floating around out there for awhile until on the eve of his next trial where he was going to be tried for another seven felonies, this time in d.c., he surprises everybody. right? he does what appears at the outset to be this u-turn and he admits guilt to those ten charges on which there had been a hung jury in virginia and pleads guilty to two conspiracy charges. prosecutors agree to drop the charges against him and he says he's going to become a cooperating witness, right? that, you know, part of that plea -- he pleads guilty, he says he's going to become a cooperator and drop the other charges. he admits he was guilty in those ten felonies. they didn't bring him up on trial again for. and they could have potentially been brought on trial again. that was supposed to be the start of a whole new paul

manafort. all right? at that moment when they decide to plead and become a coopera r cooperator, that was him joining team usa. the first trial guilty but before the second trial, it's a new paul manafort. he is joining team usa and admitting his guilt. it turns out it didn't work out that way, right? the cooperation aspect of manafort's case is another fascinating curveball. i mean, before tonight, prosecutors had never given any substantive public account as to what manafort had given them and how helpful he was as a cooperating witness. today in court the special counsel's office was as blunt as they have been on that subject ever. tonight in federal court, they told the judge in virginia manafort quote did not provide valuable information to the special counsel. after manafort's defense team

tried to raise this issue of him having spent tons of hours in meetings with the special counsel and trying to get him credit from the judge and prosecutors told the judge tonight the number of hours paul manafort spent with the special counsel, that number is not reflective of the value of the information we received. quote, he told us 50 hours of things we already knew. he did not provide us information that was useful. so that's important from the prosecutor's perspective because it means they didn't want this judge to give manafort any credit for cooperating because cooperation was useless. he gave them information they had and lieed d to them and no matter how much time he spent, they found him worse than useless. that's interesting in informing the judge's decision how much time to give manafort but for us, watching from the outside trying to figure out how the manafort case fits into the larger scandal here and into

potential other cases against other people, that was also a signal from the special counsel's office that there was no way they would be relying on paul manafort as any kind of witness against anyone. once you're telling the judge one way this guy repeatedly lies even to prosecutors who he supposed to be helping, that makes him useless as a potential witness against anyone else in any other case. and you'll remember during manafort's trial in virginia, the judge there, the famously judge, he basically yelled at the prosecutors in court, right? it was this big dramatic moment in court and hearing before the trial started, the judge said in open court you don't really care about mr. manafort's bank fraud, you can give information that would reflect on mr. trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment. you don't care about manafort. you're using him to get his

testimony to get evidence and information he can give you to get bigger fish, to go get the president. and he sort of reamed the prosecutors out for that and scolded them, mocked them in the court because he could tell that was their real intent. the prosecutors fundamentally rebutted that. right? they rebutted that outburst from the judge tonight when they came to him at paul manafort's sentencing and said this guy, we can't use him for anything. we can't use him against anyone. we can't use him for any other case. all he does is lie. he's pointless as a witness. he's of no help. this case is just about his crimes and that's it. this judge, though, judge ellis in virginia was super aggressive with the prosecutors throughout the manafort proceedings and when it came time to sentence manafort, the ball was completely in that judge's court. judges have freedom with sentencing in federal court.

the sentencing guidelines spelled out manafort should get 19 to 24 years in prison but those guidelines are merely a guide. judges are free to depart from those guidelines in either direction as far as they want to. the only thing a judge can't do is exceed the statutory minimum sentence to find a by law for the crimes for which manafort was convicted. when it came time to decide tonight how much time manafort would actually spend in prison, the judge went way below that sentencing guidelines range. he didn't go 19 to 24 years. he gave him a little less than four years. and he took time to criticize those sentencing guidelines in open court. the judge said these guidelines are quite high. he said quote, i think this sentencing range is excessive. paul manafort has already spent nine months in that federal lockup in virginia. you'll remember he ended up in jail when he had his bail

revoked and had to go to federal lockup awaiting trial and during his trial and until today, awaiting sentencing. since he's been in jail all this time, all these nine months, his defense team told the court he's really fallen apart physically. manafort's defense team told the court manafort now has severe gout, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, s cholesterol so cholesterol anxiety, panic attacks and claustrophobia and will get credit against his sentence. this four-year sentence he got, he'll get credit for the nine months that he's already served in that federal lockup but his fate at this point really is still an open question. manafort's next stop will be the federal courthouse in d.c. he's due to be sentenced in d.c. next wednesday for more felonies for those two felonies that he pled guilty to and that will be

a different judge who has been through a different proceeding with him. for that sentencing next week. the maximum sentence that d.c. had to hand down would be ten years. but that judge next week has the benefit of knowing what manafort's sentence was tonight. amy berman jackson will not. she will also be decide should run concurrently or be consecutive. she could give him up to ten years. let's say she gives him five. if they are concurrently, he'll start both sentences day one and end up serving a total of five years in prison because the five and four will run at the same time but judges, if they want to be harsher, they have the ability to sentence you to serve your other sentence first.

right? then when you're done with that one, you can start this next sentence that i'm going to give you. you can start the next sentence thereafter. if that happened with the four years he got in virginia tonight, let's say he got five years next week in d.c. that would mean he would be looking at nine-year sentence in total. if the judge next week completely throws the book at manafort, that would be a ten-year sentence from that d.c. judge next week. if she gives him the maximum that she could give him, ten years and she has it run consecutively, the total maximum manafort could look at would be under 14 years in federal prison. to be clear, he could get anything under that including no additional time beyond the sentence tonight but the max prison time he could be looking at again just shy of 14 years. so historic day. we've got this one bottom line, right? the presidential campaign chairman for the sitting president of the united states

just got a four-year federal prison sentence. but another shoe is about to drop for that campaign chair in the next few days that will make the difference in terms of his ultimate fate. when his defense lawyer was asked outside of the courthouse if he thought this four-year prison sentence was clear, manafort's lawyer wouldn't answer that until they get the other sentence, too. >> reporter: what do you think about the sentence next week? >> we look forward to it. >> do you think the sentence is fair? >> i will speak to that after we're done in d.c. >> do you have any comment on the sentence handed down? >> do you have any comment on the sentence handed down? no. so for paul manafort, one sentence down, another to come in less than a week. i have lots of questions about all of these things including what it was like in the court

while it was happening today but before we bring in folks to answer those questions, let me interject one last thing into this conversation and story before we bring in people who actually know these things and can give us perspective here. here is the one last thing. and it's actually the other thing paul manafort's defense lawyer said tonight on the courthouse steps after this sentencing. and it was i guess it shouldn't be a surprise to me at this point but it was a surprise when he got up there and said no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. >> good evening, everyone. as you heard in court today, mr. manafort finally got to speak for himself. he made clear he accepts responsibility for his conduct, and i think most importantly, what you saw today is the same thing that we had said from day one, there is absolutely no evidence that paul manafort was involved with any collusion with any government official from russia. thank you, everybody. >> what do you think of the

sentence? >> was he involved with collusion with anybody else in russia who wasn't a government official? also, why bring that up? and why is that the most important thing? i think most important, what you saw today, is that the most important thing? not only was manafort not charged with anything have to do with rush ssia in this case, th was the trial judge ellis banned any discussion of russia collusion at all in his courtroom. so nobody could have tried to prove anything like that against manafort in this trial in virginia. no collusion, no collusion public arguments from the manafort defense team we've been seeing increasingly from them in public filings and today in the courthouse steps as manafort has come to the end of the rope, these arguments are absolutely outside the four corners so why do they keep bringing that up and why would that be the most important part about this case where the judge ruled that that could never be discussed in this

case? why keep going back to that issue? especially when there are in fact collusion questions that remain about paul manafort's case. you might remember there was an accidentally unredacted filing paul manafort's team submitted in d.c. a few weeks ago and in that filing we learned that one of the things manafort lied to prosecutors about and he was supposed to be cooperating with them was the number of meetings he had with a russian guy who prosecutors say is linked to russian intelligence. specifically, manafort also lied to prosecutors about providing trump campaign polling data to that russian guy who prosecutors say is linked to russian intelligence. that was also supposed to be under seal but accidently peaked out because they screwed up a redaction and even though we've never seen charges on that subject, right, we have never seen any criminal charges about the trump campaign giving internal secret polling data to

russian intelligence, you know, as potentially related to russian intelligence interfering in the election, that reference in manafort's case and the fact that it was supposed to stay redacted, it does raise questions about manafort's involvement with russian intelligence during the campaign. as "the new york times" said today, the special counsel's office had wanted that information kept out of the public eye to protect an open investigation. what open investigation? quote, it remains unclear why mr. kilimnik would want such polling data. also, it remains unclear what he did with it. and whether the data transfer might have helped inform the russian government's covert operation to interfere with the american election. so that's -- i mean, manafort's fate still to be settled in terms of next week's sentence but in terms of the story and scandal and how manafort fits into this, the one big dangling thread here is not what can

manafort tell prosecutors about the president or anybody else, they aren't interested in anything he has to say. they think he's a liar. they don't think he's useful. the big dangling thread here with manafort now learning his fate, next time we'll know if he'll spend more time in prison he was sentenced to tonight, manafort's fate becoming clear and his case ending, there is this thread, there are uncharged allegations described in the manafort case about alleged contacts and the provision of secret data from the highest ranks of the trump campaign to russian intelligence while russian intelligence was interfering in the election to help trump win. prosecutors told the judge in manafort's case in d.c. that allegation, that thing he lied to profession c to prosecutors goes to the heart of the investigation but those charges aren't being adjudicated. his case is coming to an end in two federal jurisdictions so why

is the government redafacting tt allegation and trying to keep all references to those allegations under seal in his case? the government says they wanted those redactions from those documents in order to protect on going investigations. what on going investigations? if they aren't using those allegations in the case against paul manafort, where are they using those allegations and in what case against who? joining us now is josh senior legal affairs contributor for po po politico.com. big picture, what did you think of this sentencing hearing today and the behavior of the judge and defendant, mr. manafort, what was your biggest impression? >> the top line, of course, is the take away of it being just a 47-month sentence i would say the consensus of most of the

people i was sitting amongst in the room, lawyers, observers, journalist is we would see somewhere between seven or ten or 12 years, maybe not up in that guidelines range of 20 to 24 years but a substantial sentence nonetheless so four is a lot lighter, four is lighter than many people were expecting. another thing that struck me was the lack of any public contrition from paul manafort. his statement was very brief. we were in the courtroom for about three hours all together today, and his statement amounted to four minutes. the strongest thing he said was he recognizes it's his conduct that brought him here but there was no regret really. certainly no remorse and no kind of granular description of what he did wrong or intended the break the law or recognize the severity of what he had done. it was mostly a statement of,

you know, thanking his family, praising the judge. he must have done that on think three different occasions and sort of apologizing for the trama that his friends and loved ones had experienced. but very little interest beyond that and then the final thing i really took away, rachel, this judge continues to have a deep reservation about mueller's operation. he said at one point he snapped, we all know why we're here and one prosecutor at one point said the government's position on this is that we don't recommend -- i'm sorry, he said the special counsel's position on this is we don't recommend specific sentences for specific defendants and the judge snapped, don't say special counsel's office, say the government's position. you're talking about the government. so it seemed like judge ellis still has an issue with special counsels generally and maybe mueller specifically and the degree that may have colored the

sentence he delivered today, i don't know. he insisted it didn't but it's a lighter sentence than many expected. >> to that point in terms of him insisting that wasn't a factor for him, a bunch of people who have argued trials in this courtroom and observed this judge over the course of his three decades on the bench told us to expect that any allocution today from manafort would be important, that it's very important to the judge that people do accept responsibility, that they do express regret and they do appear to be sincerely remorseful. that's like the notes we were taking today watching for that from manafort. for manafort to not provide that and not give the judge any of that and the judge to nevertheless give him a big downward departure from the guidelines, did the judge give any indication of why he was giving such a lighter sentence than the guidelines would have suggested he might have? >> well, the judge did say he was surprised that manafort

didn't make a more remorseful statement or regretful statement or even acknowledge that he was wrong to have broken the law, but then the very next thing the judge said was that that's not going to affect my decision here today. the best explanation he gave about why he was going way below the guidelines was that he felt that they are out of whack compared with the way people are generally sentenced in cases that involve primarily tax evasion and not reporting your foreign bank accounts. he said a typical sentence in cases such as that is usually somewhere in the range of six months to a year, many of them result in probation only. this particular judge had a case about a year or two ago where somebody had hidden $220 million overseas and stashed, i think, avoided about $18 million in taxes and got something only on the order of switeven-month pri

sentence. it seemed like the judge, judge ellis felt manafort's case was maybe a little more severe than a garden variety tax evasion case, but he wasn't buying the notion that this was an incredibly dangerous scheme that really needed to be punished with an extraordinary long sentence. >> senior legal affairs contributor. can i book you to go to the d.c. sentencing. are you busy? >> i'm planning to be there with bells on. >> i'll talk to you then. >> thanks. former u.s. attorney barb mcquaid will join us next. we got a lot more to get to. stay with us. next. we got a lot more to get to. stay with us drive safely.. . with drivewise. it lets you know when you go too fast... ...and brake too hard. with feedback to help you drive safer. giving you the power to actually lower your cost. unfortunately, it can't do anything about that.

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the president's campaign chairman paul manafort received a sentence of 47 months in federal prison for tax crimes and bank fraud, just under four years in federal prison. but that is also well below the sentencing guidelines that were spelled out for manafort's crimes. before the sentencing today, it's interesting, we contacted former fbi chuck rosenburg to

ask chuck because he used to be the u.s. attorney in the eastern district of virginia, we asked him what we should watch for today at the sentencing, what we should expect and chuck told us quote, if he goes low, don't be shocked. i don't know if i'm shocked by the amount of time that paul manafort is getting. i think i still remain the capacity just to be shocked by the fact that the campaign chairman for the sitting president of the united states is going to prison at all, but for some perspective, now that we've got these numbers, joining us now is barb mcquaid. she was in the courtroom for much of manafort's trial in virginia. thanks for being here. good to have you. >> thanks for having me, rachel. >> having seen a lot of that trial and knowing what you know about judge ellis and the sentencing guidelines and overall contacts in manafort's case, what is your reaction to the sentence that manafort got tonight? >> i still think this is an absurdly low sentence in light of the sentencing guidelines.

i observed the judge to be corky and also to have expressed some hostility about this case, and the special counsel and manafort's connection to president trump. i don't know that those things informed his decision. one of the things you see in cases is judges who impose very lenient sentences against white collared defendants. the sentencing guidelines are based on data they collect from around the country. it's based on real cases and the idea behind it is we don't want unwarranted disparities between sentences. if you commit a crime in washington d.c. or new york or texas you're likely to get the same sentence regardless of where the judge is who sentences you. so that's what the guidelines are there to serve is that purpose to give you that baseline so that equal crime is being punished equally. to drop down from 19 years to 24 years, all the way down to four years, i think suggestions that the wealthy and powerful do better in court than many other

defendants do and i think it is an attack on the legitimacy at the criminal justice system. if you're lacking in power, you look at a sentence like this and it causes people to have less trust in the criminal justice system. >> barb, separate and apart from what paul manafort will face in d.c., imagining that's not going to happen just with this sentence he got tonight, which again you're describing as absurdly low, absurdly light given the guidelines here, how long should we expect he'll serve? i keep hearing there is no parole in federal prison but people can get time off for good behavior, can't they? >> yeah, since 1987 when the guidelines went into effect, the reform act, there is no parole in the federal system. so unlike what you might see in the state system where after somebody serves a portion of the sentence, they are eligible to go before the parole board and be able to be released after that. that does not exist in the federal system. but there is something called good time where defendants can

earn up to 54 days per year to provide an incentive for them to behave themselves while in prison. if you do the math, four years, 54 days per year removed from that, that adds up to 216 days, about seven months. so seven months off of the 47 is at 45. you mentioned the nine months for time served off of the 40 gets him to 31 months and so i think that's the actual time he will serve startsinged ing toda >> provided he gets the time. >> if he doesn't behave himself, he wouldn't and judge jackson has the ability to impose up to ten years and could make every bit of that consecutive. so he could see an additional ten years added on to that. >> when judge jackson makes that decision, that will be fascinating to watch. she's looking at a totally different set of felony knies a there is a big difference of the

circumstances with guilty plea and botched cooperation deal and she's the judge that revoked his bail in the first place so he had to serve time in jail while he was awaiting trial in the first place. there is a whole different narrative that goes into explaining what judge jackson will decide next week. specifically, though, in terms of how judges make their decisions, is she allowed to take into consideration the length of time that he was sentenced for this week? is she essentially allowed to pass judgment and factor that in? >> not necessarily but she can decide whether that's concur rent or consecutive. judge ellis was looking at the case before him that involved financial fraud, bank fraud and tax counts and that's his case. she's going to look at a very different case as you mentioned that involves obstruction of justice, the failed cooperation agreement. she knows a lot about this case, too, because of the hearings that she's had to hold to have fact-finding on his failure to

cooperate in the breach of that cooperation agreement. so she's looking at a very different case and so no, i don't think she should be considering what judge ellis did in his case but i think she can decide that ten years is an appropriate sentence in her case and that it is appropriate to make that consecutive to the sentence that judge ellis imposed. >> one last quick question, manafort as i was just discussing didn't really express remor remorse or take responsibility for his crimes the way a lot of defendants do when it comes to allocation at sentencing. we don't have a transcript because it went late but he told us that the judge basically expressed surprise that manafort didn't express remorse when he had the opportunity to in court before ellis handed down the sentence. should we think of that in terms of manafort angling for a pardon do you think? him not saying i did anything -- still even at that point not saying i did anything wrong or saying he's sorry for what he did and not saying that he feels bad about it or there was anything wrong about his

behavior is that -- should we think about that behavior in court when we think about the prospect of a presidential pardon for manafort? >> i don't think so. i don't think it matters. remember, he pleaded guilty in the district of colombia to all of the remaining counts in the eastern district of virginia case, as well as that case. and so i don't think so. in fact, a pardon doesn't mean -- it's not the same as an appeal. it doesn't mean you're innocent. what it says is we are expressing mercy and forgiveness for you for committing this crime and ordinarily, part of the pardon is in accept tensean responsibility and remorse. this is arrogance and you see it in white collar cases where the defendant says i feel so much shame, your honor, i've been punished already. i can't go into my country club without getting a sense of shame and etgetting letters from prominent people. tell that to the indejen dent

people. >> it is an honor to have you as a colleague but especially on nights like this. barb, thank you. >> thanks, rachel. >> a lot more to get to. stay with us. rachel. >> a lot more to get to. stay with us and struggle. we actually... seek it out. other species do difficult things because they have to. we do difficult things. because we like to. we think it's... fun. introducing the all-new 2019 ford ranger built for the strangest of all creatures.

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manafort 47 months instead of a possible 24 years under those guidelines, as i mentioned earlier there remains some interesting and potentially important dangling threads when it comes to the special counsel's case against paul manafort. one of them is about konstantin kilimnik that's russian and have active ties to russian military intelligence. as part of their case against manafort in d.c., prosecutors said in court that manafort shared trump polling data with kilimnik related to the 2016 campaign while the campaign was going on. and no, paul manafort was not charged with colluding with russia in their attack on our election. but this thing that looks like potential russia collusion really is sitting there in the middle of his case. if we don't hear anything more about that in court because the manafort case is wrapping up, what happens to that? does that part of the story become sort of bread crumbs for other investigators for

potentially congressional investigators to break up? who runs with that? manafort didn't get charged with that. it only accidently got spelled out in a publicly facing filing because of a botched redaction. we learned because manafort failed to refact filings for it properly but that allegation is out there for us to read because of that mistake. the trump campaign provided trump polling data to a guy assessed to be part of russian intelligence while russian intelligence was mounting a campaign to help trump during the campaign. does somebody else, does congress now take up that question? that's one. here is another one, though. as you know, manafort is due to be sentenced in d.c. wednesday of next week. when prosecutors filed their sentencing for d.c., they said they needed to refact part of the memo because quote, the redactions relate to on going law enforcement investigations or uncharged individuals. and public decembisclosure coul

unduly risk harming those efforts. and then in the sentencing memo itself, they refer to this. manafort having his lobbying firms contact numerous members of congress engaging in back room lobbying using personal contacts and confidential congressional information obt n obtained secretly by redacted from congressional staff. this is one of these other dangling things for the manafort case that is driving me a little nuts. what name is redacted there in the part about manafort lobbying congress? again, what they are saying here, they have said there need to be redactions in the filing because of on going law enforcement investigations and uncharged individuals and then they say as part of one of manafort's criminal schemes, somebody obtained personal contacts and confidential congressional information from congressional staff. well, who has access to congressional staff from whom

they can obtain confidential congressional information? i mean, doesn't that have to be -- who has access to congressional staff and congressional information. is that a member of congress? is that a congressional staffer? that's left dangling, as well. is there somebody else out there that takes up with that question? i mean, we now know what paul manafort's sentence is and next week we'll learn from the second trial but when it comes to loose and dangling threads and questions raised and unanswered questions about the involvement of other people or handover of polling day to to russia while russia was interfering in our election, what happens to those things and if there aren't other investigations at least that we can see in which those bread crumbs are being used, does congress pick those up and make a snack of them. joining us now is democrat of

rhode island and a member of judiciary committee. nice to have you here. >> my pleasure. >> it's a historic day. we never had a sitting president be sentenced to federal prison. i want to get your top line reaction to that being news today. >> well, obviously, this is a big event. this is a serious conviction and sentence. there are 199 criminal charges and 37 indictments or pleas and now five individual sentence to prison. so this is a significant but i agree with your earlier guest. it's extraordinary for the breath of these offenses, giving away $55 million outside of the ira and avoiding taxes on that fraud and bank fraud and the like that he would receive a sentence so different from the guidelines. those guidelines are designed to prevent disparity and sentencing because that disparity brings incredible disrespect for the judicial system and that's why they were created so the idea that the court would depart from the guidelines which were 19 to

24 years so significantly and give mr. manafort only a four-year sentence seems extraordinary and i think is very much a response to white collar criminals we too often see in the criminal justice system. our prisons are filled with people serving much longer sentences for small drug offenses. so i'm disappointed. i don't think it did justice but it's only the first part of his sentence. he has another next week and i'm hopeful that the judge will sentence him appropriately in the next week and send a strong message about this kind of corruption and this sort of conduct and impose a sentence consistent with that. >> one of the things that i've found interesting, i initially found it unusual and now interesting that in public facing filings in the manafort case and now increasingly just speaking out loud, his defense team -- not charged with having

interacted with russian government or intelligence officials at the time that in any way facilitated their attack on our election to benefit mr. nevertheless, despite the fact he's not charged with that, they're making this public-facing defense, that is no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. you would think it was beside the point for mr. manafort's case, but they are making this case publicly. and to me one way that may make sense is if they are trying to make the case that the president should pardon mr. manafort and it shouldn't reflect on the russia case at all if the president does that because mr. manafort's case is totally separate from the russia scandal. i wonder on the judiciary committee if it is a matter of concern or potential investigation on your committee the prospect of the president discussing pardons with people, including michael cohen, including mr. manafort, including mr. flynn and others as a way to try to protect himself in these various investigations. >> absolutely. i think there is tremendous

interest in that, and we will certainly continue to conduct oversight on that very issue. i thought it was very strange to see his lawyers come to the podium and say oh, by the way, no collusion. it was as if president trump wrote his lines. it was very bizarre. sort of unrelated to the case in virginia. but i think, you know, the idea that conversations were had or pardons were dangled in an effort to perhaps persuade people not to cooperate orrin be truthful is of considerable concern to the judiciary committee and something i know we will investigate as part of our overall investigation. i think the other thing that's really ironic is on the very week we're about to pass this enormous democracy referral cracking down on corruption, raising ethical standards, getting money out of our political system, there are these serious convictions that continue in this administration for corruption that undermine the rule of law in our country and it's kind of an interesting contrast. >> yeah. to have the president's campaign chair sentenced to years in

prison for various kinds of fraud and next week he'll face sentencing on his unregistered lobbying stuff, to have that happen while the house tomorrow is likely to pass this huge democratic reform anti-corruption bill. it's as if it is -- well, it sort of seems scripted. congressman david sis lynni of rhode island of the judiciary committee. >> it's a pleasure. >> the great dan rather, we have tracked him down in texas because we wanted to get his reaction to this historic news today. i am told we have found dan rather in texas. he'll join us ahead. stay with us. liberty mutual customizes your car insurance, so you only pay for what you need. nice. but, uh... what's up with your... partner? oh. well, we just spend all day telling everyone how we customize car insurance, because no two people are alike, so... limu gets a little confused when he sees another bird that looks exactly like him. [ loud crash ] yeah. he'll figure it out. only pay for what you need.

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rather, veteran journalist and a letting us track him down tonight in texas on zero notice. sir, thank you for being with us. i really wanted to talk to you pont. >> always an honor. thank you. >> my pleasure. that does it forlw us tonight.

of course the other thing we didn't get to tonight because of the time the sentence broke is the fact that the president's long-time personal lawyer michael cohen filed a lawsuit against then president's busins tonight saying that the president through his business hade agreed to essentially pay mr. cohen's legal fees through the russia scandal and they stopped doingal that once he became a cooperator with prosecutors. that lawsuit, again, a civil lawsuit filed today by mr. cohen, becomes yet another wrinkle in that part of this ongoing scandal. and tomorrow's friday. and you know how fridays tend to go these days. we'll see you again tomorrow. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrenceno o'donnell. good evening, lawrence. >> good evening, rachel. and i've been in courtrooms during sentencing. and it's very easy in the courtroom to identify just on a human level with anyone who's facing prison time. i'm not going to be one of those people who's outraged that a federal defendant didn't get 25 years in prison tonight. but i would like to see -- i would like to see paul