joining me now is nbc legal analyst danny cevallos. how clear is it?ation will conclude. if he's still collaborating with special counsel, will this minimize the leverage he had over manafort? and how soon before they complete the process? >> it's never clear how long a defendant needs to cooperate because that information is wholly within the realm of the federal government and prosecutors. they do not like to be rushed when questions a witness. it would only occur when they have completed their investigation and the witness has completely cooperated. in the case of paul manafort, this is no ordinary cooperation. this is a white collar-type case and it's very broad. for the government, for being bamboozled is equally broad. not don't they have to debrief him and get all the information, they have to vet every single piece of information they get from him. for that reason, the federal government was ndoes not want t rushed. >> what does that tell you about his importance in the investigation? >> the fact that manafort has met with the government multip

let's bringing in msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. danny, what can you tell us. >> pete, we'll go right to you, danny. >> the federal government has taken jurisdiction over they away from the commonwealth of pennsylvania which is the state of pennsylvania. ordinarily under federal law, the law presumes that the state will prosecute in cases can of hate crimes. there are exceptions however. if the state asks the federal government to prosecute or if the federal government believes that it is especially suiteded to handle this hate crime, that's an exception to the general rule that states are responsible in the first instance for prosecuting hate crimes such as this. in the federal system, there are a number of different kinds of hate crimes, several of which provide for a potential death penalty depending on the circumstances. of course, pennsylvania also has the death penalty but similar to federal law or the federal system, no one's been put to death in pennsylvania for over of two decades. so it's not used very often. >> now, we do

. >> joining us onset danny cevallos.s is all very, very serious, but legally speaking, where does this put us? >> there are several different categories of bomb when it's mailed like this. it could be something that would have gone off but law enforcement got to it in time. in this case, it's definitely a destructive device as defined by federal law, which actually subsumed destructive devices and bombs under the definition of firearms, strangely enough. moving forward if it's a dud, what does a dud mean? does this mean that all the component parts were there but something went wrong and the bomb didn't go off? in that case, it's still considered a firearm, and by that i mean a destructive device under federal law. let's say instead it's something that looked like a bomb but never had anything explosive in it, never had any ability to detonate. in that case, it won't be a firearm or destructive device under federal law. but if it contains something like butane or something potentially flammable, it's at minimum something

. >>> let's bring in msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos and michael balboni, a former new york statey adviser. seconds ago, the president just tweeted, "all of america is in mourning over the jewish-americans at the tree of life synagogue. our hearts go out to the brave police officers who sustained serious injuries. these evil anti-semitic attack is an attack on democracy. we must unite to concur hate. mr. balboni, the president making those statements, and certainly i have a lot of issues with the president. but he said earlier we should have armed people at every church. first of all, i don't know how feasible that is because a lot of houses of worship are small and can't even afford that. in your advising homeland security here in new york, is that something that is even possible? >> i don't think it is. it's not sustainable. when you take a look at this type of violence across the country, it is obviously horrific when it happens but it is not the real problem facing school districts or house of worship. take a look what happened in florida. you had the parkland shooting and man

. >>> i want to bring in our legal analyst, danny cevallos. more than a dozen state charges. suspect likely to be charge we're told under the federal hate crimes statute. but he is not going to be charged with so far at least, we don't understand he's going to be charged with domestic terrorism. why not? >> there's a strong argument that this conduct does fall within the federal definition of domestic terrorism, and the magic words in that statute are the efforts to intimidate or coerce a civilian population. that is definitely something that could apply here. but practically speaking, some of the terrorism statutes not all, require a finding of a foreign terrorist organization. there may be some difficulty extending that and finding that this is the acts of a domestic terrorist organization. >> yeah. >> it may just be that the conservative approach here is for prosecutors to charge what they know they can prove, what they feel strongly they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt which is that this was a killing or the interference with someone's religious exercise of their righ

joining me danny cevallos and matt miller. great to have both of you with us. one hand is saying that his bombs never intended to hurt anyone. he didn't want this to kill anyone. but then you also have the director of the fbi saying these bombs were not a hoax. they meant to kill. how does that factor, the narrative coming out of the defendant play into this? does it have an impact at all? >> not in this case for the most part. that's your short answer, because the crimes he's charged with, some of which don't even require that a final explosive bomb device be the thing that was sent through the mail. for example, one of the crimes he's charged with is just mailing nonmailable items. those can be things that are flammable, drugs or something else. you don't need a completed, fully operational bomb for some of these charges. there are federal charges that require a destructive device. as long as you have all the component parts of a bomb, then that is going to have enough. it doesn't have to be a bomb that actually goes off or a bomb that has all of the wires pe

. >> joining me now, former federal prosecutor, cynthia oxney and danny cevallos. brett kavanaugh was clearly prepared and trained for last thursday's hearing. is it not committing perjury, and why would he do it when saying no big deal, it was legal? >> the key to either the perjury statute or the false statement statute often turns on the knowing falsehood of the statement. so if somebody is lying about whether or not they were drinking under age, that means that we have to conclude that he must have not known that drinking was illegal at that particular age. >> but wouldn't he prepare for testimony last week? >> wouldn't he prepare? yeah, i would expect him to prepare, and maybe he was caught off guard in that clip that we just saw. but it goes back to whether or not that he knowingly make a false statement about his awareness of the drinking age. if it can be proved that the drinking age -- he could not have been of age. and it's probably not and it's not realistic. whether you drink or doesn't drink like president trump, we are generally aware whether we're ot

ben collins is also with us, nbc news reporter and msnbc legal analyst danny cevallos. obviously we know there's forensic evidence. there's now ten of these bombs. there's envelops, tapes, stamps, but where would you start in terms of profiling who this person might be or people might be? >> the first thing that struck me about this and what helped me in developing a profile is what the person's motivation is. the obvious might be said this is a right wing individual full of hate and wants to hurt these people. however, ali, no one has been hurt. no device has gone off. what if it's the opposite. that it is someone to the left politically and trying to create sympathy for left wing public figures? we don't know yet. >> we bring ben collins in. a small detail that you picked up. a device that was sent to brennan at cnn. it had a parody of an isis flag on the device. what does that tell you? >> sure, it was a parody that says "get 'er done" on it, prfr larry the cable guy, comedian. it's a troll on the bomb itself. which maybe that means it wasn't supposed to go off. we d

i want to bring danny into this, danny cevallos is our legal analyst.ually and legally, that's an interesting concept. why we think the same act committed in the act of a foreign organization is terrorism and domestically we don't. your thoughts? >> there's always some overlap between federal laws but the main reason there isn't a specific domestic federal terrorism law is that they're sort of already is, in that the fbi and federal law defines domestic terrorism as any attempt to intimidate or coerce a civilian population. on the other hand, you have hate crimes, which are crimes that are based on the motive of the crime. which normally we don't care much about motive in criminal law. we care about intent. whether or not when i shot the gun, i intended that the bullet hit you. >> understood. >> why i did it is usually not an inquiry. so it's been argued that hate crimes present a further challenge to prosecutors in proving their case. >> ah. >> because they can prove intent, but they have to prove nottive. >> whereas terrorism, you don't have to do tha

i want to thank danny cevallos, adam liptek for being with us. a quick break but when we come back, we're going to pick things right back up. following the scene there, you see the protests earlier. you see the activity on the senate floor. the clock is ticking. we'll be right back after this. the clock is ticking we'll be right back after this so a tree falls on your brand new car and totals it. and as if that wasn't bad enough, now your insurance won't replace it outright because of depreciation. if your insurance won't replace your car, what good is it? you'd be better off just taking your money and throwing it right into the harbor. i'm gonna regret that. with new car replacement, if your brand new car gets totaled, liberty mutual will pay the entire value plus depreciation. liberty mutual insurance. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ howdoing great dad!r does this thing got? looking good babe! are you filming. at booking.com, we can't guarantee you'll be any good at that water jet thingy... but we can guarantee the best price on a hotel

danny cevallos is an msnbc legal analyst and an attorney who focuses on civil litigation.tormy daniels' attorney says this is not going to affect her main case and that is the case around michael cohen's guilty plea to criminal charges around that $130,000 payment. >> there are two civil cation the central district of california. this case as for the defamation of the con job remarks by donald trump is in all probability over. michael avenatti has appealed that, he says, but it's likely just playing the odds that that is the end of this case. the court did not permit the plaintiff to fix their complaint to meet the legal issues that it raised. so that case is probably over. of course, michael avenatti points out there's still another case pending against both michael cohen, essential consultants, then also of course donald trump. >> i want to stay on michael cohen because there's a "vanity fair" report out about him specifically that says despite not having a formal cooperation agreement with the government, cohen has willingly assisted and provided information critical to

joining me michael balboni, a former new york state homeland security adviser and legal analyst danny cevallos are here. thank you for being here. michael, i'm reminded of the conversation we had, you were jetting updates from colleagues in law enforcement. and when we heard the word about the long gun and the handguns that were being used, your sources told you that this man came with al intent to kill because of what? a remarkable amount of ammunition. tell me what you've been told. >> he carried a bag full of weapons knee this event and many more than he would need to just -- if he just wanted to kill 20 people. in other words, he really wanted to create havoc in what he did. it was a high capacity magazine for the ar-15. we don't know what yet what the handguns were. the semi-automatic. we believe they were semi-automatic. if they were, we don't know that yet, they would have 15 round magazines typically. if you take together just the magazines, you're talking upwards of certainly over 60 -- 70 rounds. >> yeah. >> in addition to which the firepower itself, it's a 223 round that the ar-15 u

with us by the way are legal analyst danny cevallos and linda fairstein. kristen, first of all, a lot of questions in there. many of which sarah huckabee sanders wasn't going to answer. >> she was defiant to the questions of president trump's comments last night regarding christine blasey ford, a number of reporters said that he was mocking ford. she really disputed that characterization. she said, look, he wasn't mocking her. he was laying out the facts. essentially trying to lay out the fact that she wasn't able to answer some of the questions that she got while she was testifying under oath. she was also asked repeatedly about that tax story that you're talking about. i thought it was striking when she was pressed on whether or not the president would, in fact, use this moment to release his tax returns. no indication that that is going to happen. according to sarah sanders but i anticipate to get more questions about that. you're absolutely right. she said this story was totally false. it was boring. and tried to put the highlight on the relationship b

i'm joined by ben collins and danny cevallos. ben, you've been digging around this guy's social media, which looks a lot like that van. why don't you and i walk over here and take a look at this van that he's been driving. you've been on social media, so you know that already on social media, people are saying this must be made up. this is a new van or whatever the case is. but you've got hillary clinton's face here with the crosshairs. you've got pro-trump stuff. this is sort of like a look into who this guy is. >> all that falsified garbage is pretty easily dispelled because there's a time line on his facebook. on his facebook page in 2015, there's this white van. there's none of this stuff on it. then in 2016, it has this stuff on it. over the course of time he got -- by progressioprogression more extremist over time. ending up with hillary clinton in crosshairs. this next to it is a meme of donald trump on a tank that's very prevalent. >> i've never seen this, but you say this sort of thing exists? >> yes. this is very big on