today maria butina's american boyfriend paul erickson himself plead guilty in federal court to wire fraud and money laundering charges. now mr. erickson was never charged directly with anything related to his relationship with or his assistance to maria butina when she was operating as the kremlin's foreign agent here in republican politics. but his funding of maria butina's efforts and his facilitation of her efforts inside republican politics, it does kind of get a wink in his plea agreement today in term of what he has just admitted to prosecutors in exchange for what looks like it's going to be a more lenient federal sentence. see in this document that we just got tonight, united states of america plaintiff versus paul erickson, defendant, quote, defendant states the following facts are true and the parties agree that they establish a factual basis for the offense to which the defendant is pleading guilty. quote, my name is paul erickson. i am a resident of sioux falls, south dakota. i falsely represented to investors that i would use their money to purchase real estate in the constru

>> butina: well, lesley, paul told me to write that. >> stahl: paul erickson, her former boyfriend, andlican operative. >> butina: i hesitated to write that, but i thought it might, you know, it was a certain way to show off to torshin and say, "well, maybe i have high-level contacts here." >> stahl: do you think she had influence over who was chosen? >> demers: i doubt it. i think she intended to have influence over who was chosen. and i think what makes her dangerous is that, at the end of the day, we don't know. >> stahl: one of the things she wanted to talk about were the conditions in the washington, d.c. jail where she was first held. cockroaches were everywhere, she claimed, no mattresses or blankets. and... you told me that you found faith? >> butina: no. god found me. he was always there. and helped me to go through all these tough days. >> stahl: that included over 100 days in solitary confinement. >> butina: it is a torture. it is not normal for a human being to be locked for 23, 20, 22 hours in a cell by your own. do you really think for not filing the paper, you deserve 18

. >> and the paul erickson plea stuff all came in today, and there's the roger stone stuff to digest, and there's the stuff that came in over the weekend, right? we got the williams and morrison stuff over the weekend, plus we got new public witnesses. this is drink from a fire hose time in american news, and it's our jobs to do it, and it's fine. >> and we have cardiologists on tv wondering why we haven't seen the president since saturday afternoon. but this is where we are. rachel, go back to your homework, get some rest. we're going to be watching wednesday night, and of course we'll be watching you tomorrow night, too. >> thanks, dear. >> thank you, rachel. >>> i remember it vividly. i've never seen anything like this. that's what david holmes said under oath on page 54 of his deposition transcript released today in the breaking story of the night. it's about the incident that made david holmes an important witness in the impeachment investigation of donald trump. david holmes is an important witness who we did not even know existed at this time last week. the first public referen