we welcome jack abramoff in a fox business exclusive.ood to have you back. >> thanks for having me. liz: which one of the developments whether it's weisselberg or cohen pleading guilty or manafort being convicted on quite a few of the charges, do you feel is the most important and is sort of heading toward one of the toughest prison situations? >> well, i think clearly manafort, if he doesn't get a pardon, and the president seemed to speak lovingly about him and maybe he will give him a pardon, but if manafort doesn't get a pardon, based on what he was convicted on, even using the guidelines, the two sentencing levels. one is statutory which is decades and one is called the sentencing guidelines which is not mandatory but it reduces severely, but either way manafort is likely based on the counts he was convicted on look at a lot of time in prison. and he hasn't started the other trial where the judge is hostile to him. so we'll see what happens there now. absent a pardon, the irony, of course, could be that cohen is also likely to go pri

item in the edge and i think that it's a very tall order giving the institutional conditions that abramoff to actually prosecute this in courts of last around the world is really what is what is directly in front of him ok mountain always good to talk to detail these religious affairs correspondent martin get. we're going to turn our attention to venezuela now estimated two million people have left the country in recent years fleeing food shortages poverty and economic chaos u.n. officials are now saying the region is heading towards what they describe as a crisis moment similar to the one in europe's in the mediterranean back in twenty fifteen with neighboring states trying to hold the influx across their borders. has been accompanying one group of venezuelan migrants in colombia. they've got so much luggage they need help carrying it down hill. these two families have come together travelling from caracas all the way through colombia to the ecuadorian border. the crossing point here isn't as full as it had been during previous weeks as ecuadorian authorities were only letting those in wh

you have the abramoff and scooter libby and the house pages and explicit messages sent. and this just all came crushing down on the republican party. and i think that you're looking at a situation that is, if not as serious, even more serious than that. >> all right, well then, that's not a bhwhiff, that's a stink. president trump just tweeted again. i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice took a 12-year-old tax case among other things applied tremendous pressure on him. he refused to break make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man. what do you think? >> look, the president hired as his chief campaign adviser, a man who would have been susceptible to russian blackm l blackmail, had he not been exposed by "the new york times" in july or august of 2016. that's what people ought to understand about the danger that manafort posed. not that he was just in office for with the campaign a few months or that these charges go way back. it means had he remained influential in the trump campaign you would have had a man possib

i look at '06, you had the mark foley situation, the jack abramoff situation had blown up. it was in addition to the iraq war. >> there's a lot happening here. there's corruption, there's everything surrounding trump from his corruption just to the person that he is to the fact that republicans really haven't done anything since they have been in power. they haven't passed any meaningful legislation. the tax cut is totally unpopular with people. they don't feel the effects and if they do, it's negative. >> i have an idea. this is a good time to have a fight over funding for the border wall. maybe a good government shutdown is what house republicans need in september. no? david, is that good strategy, the white house is contemplating it? >> i tending not to think it is, chuck. >> i'd call it inadvisabilivisi >> one of the fascinating things about ohio 18 is national republicans came in saying, hey, look at this tax cut, isn't that great? it didn't work. people didn't respond to it, so it shifted to a cultural message talking about the liberal resistance, going after illegal

part of this -- and we look back to the days of jake abramoff. he's going to look like a piker when this is all said and done, right? in the age of manafort. and it's not paul manafort alone. there's a lot of paul manaforts out there across washington, d.c., and people right now are feeding at the public trough, ripping off the american taxpayer, breaking all manner of rules, ethics, laws. and so far they haven't been called to account on it. but what's always been the case is that corruption has worked as an issue in political campaigns and that to be the reform party, to be the good government party, to be the clean government party is a powerful place to be. >> i think democrats are prepared to be that. i mean, if you look across the section of candidates who are running and who are winning now, a lot of them are coming in as reformers. they're not business as usual. they're not your typical politician. and they're coming in to reform the system so that they can do things for people at home. and i think that that is a message that's going to r

bush, eight members of his administration got caught up in the jack abramoff lobbying scandals. there were 21 guilty pleas and ten prison sentences including scooter libby who was later pardoned by president trump. bill clinton's administration was definitely beset by self-inflicted scandal, but in terms of actual convictions, there were two, former hud secretary henry sis narrow police guilty to a misdemeanor for lying about investigators to payments to a former mistress and the chief of staff in the agriculture department scooped up into the investigation about mike espy. espy was acquitted on all counts and is running for senate in mississippi. bush 41, only one conviction but it was the u.s. treasurer on charges of tax evasion, obstruction and making false statements. it might surprise some of reagan's acolytes that his administration saw a whopping 24 convictions and guilty pleas largely related to the iran-contra scandal. some were safe from jail time thanks to pardons from bush 41 who thought the investigation was politically motivated. jimmy carter and gerald ford saw on