we're standing by for a ruling in the special counsel's case against paul manafort. a federal judge set to decide if manafort lied to investigators in violation of his plea agreement. robert mueller's office says one of the lies involved a meeting with a russian that's at the heart of the collusion investigation. this as we're learning the man on track to be the next attorney general is already having discussions about how to handle mueller's final report, including if and how it is released. william barr is expected to be confirmed and oversee the russia appropriate this week. i will get reaction from a congressman. our correspondents and analysts are standing by. first, let's go to jessica schneider. rea >> reporter: it's in the hands of a judge. she has gone to great lengths to listen to evidence from pr prosecutors. m manafort's attorneys say he didn't intentionally do this. at the heart of this is a meeting where paul manafort seemed to sneak away from trump campaign headquarters to a secret meeting with a pman who has tied to russian intelligence. tonight, a fed

this is the man that the special counsel and the defensive team has inadvertently leaked that paul manafort provided internal polling data for. this is man that manafort had a secret meeting with in new york where it's believed he discussed, you know, ukrainian political issues there at this meeting in new york. this is man that the special counsel has been very interested in. very interested in the relationship between paul manafort and this russian operative. and they had in court, in these court documents and transcripts, they said this is the heart of our investigation. and when paul manafort came before them and when fbi agents and prosecutors started asking him questions about this man and his relationship and his meetings and his contacts, yet again we saw another person connect today the trump campaign lie about it. that's what the judge said, that he -- specifically she said that he lied about his contacts, about his communications with kilimnik. and this is what has so troubled i think the special counsel and the fbi throughout this entire investigation. >> so what does this do? w

the memorandum on paul manafort is out. iled a new sentencing memo for trump's former campaign chairman. in it, special counsel prosecutors say manafort quote here committed an array of felonies for over a decade up through the fall of 2018. just a few months ago. joining me now by phone is nbc intelligence and national security reporter ken dilanian. you've been parsing this document. it is about 25 pages. there are some other attachments that make it 800 pages. what's standing out to you right now? >> well, there's two story lines. you're right. it's a 25-page document with 00 or so payables of appendixes which our colleague tom winter is saying mostly stuff already been public. so a 25-page document, there is no mention of russia as far as i can tell and no evidence linking paul manafort to any kind of collusion or conspiracy scheme. it essentially sum up the crimes we've already known about from his trial and from public documents and it portrays you know, in aggravated terms a scheme to lobby and violate the loss on for

paul manafort is helping donald trump a lot more than he's helping paul manafort with this alleged lie. >> that's what the mueller folks seem to be alleging here. we'll learn what comes out of that very secretive court process soon. paul,natasha, thanks to each of you. >>> i'm going to dig into donald trump's problems as a dealmaker. i'm going to talk to a former donald trump exec who ran a casino for him. >>> later, i want to tell you tonight why susan collins has gotten caught in a huge, fake, moderate scheme that you need to know about. it involves justice kavanaugh. >>> later i'm joined by congressman akeem jeffries on new investigations democrats say they launching into trump. >>> plus a millionaire say it's time for people like him, people like us, as the talking heads used to say, to be taxed a whole lot more. i'm ari melber. you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. melber you're watching "the beat" on msnbc. that have made the rx the, crleading luxury suvhnology of all time. lease the 2019 rx 350 for $449 a month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer. make ice.d be

paul manafort broke that deal.u think we could get to some understanding why from this filing? >> well, paul manafort lied, and he was engaged in conversations with people, you know, who were at a minimum subjects of the investigation, may have been targets of the investigation, withheld information about those communications from the special counsel. look, paul manafort's story, his life story, but certainly his story in the mueller investigation is that he lied, and then he lied, and then he lied again. and he couldn't help himself about everything. so the cooperation agreement was thrown in the wastebasket, except it's important to understand that all that tearing that agreement up did was relieve the special counsel of the obligations it undertook in that agreement. paul manafort's commitments, including his guilty pleas, stand. so where we stand now is that the special counsel has an opportunity to tell us more. he also has an opportunity to throw the book at manafort by asking for even more time than he's alr

call, or go online today. >>> i've always found paul manafort to be a very decent man. ith the campaign, as you know, for a very short period of time, relatively short time. i think the whole manafort trial is very sad when you look at what's going on there. i think it's a very sad day for our country. he happens to be a very good person and i think it's very sad what they've done to paul manafo manafort. >> new developments this morning after the special counsel in a redacted court filing described donald trump's former campaign manager, paul manafort, as a hard jebd krened criminal who ry violated the law. the government has not located a comparable case with a unique array of crimes and aggravating factors. joining me now is msnbc legal contributor katie fang. good morning. >> good morning. >> what does that tell you about the man the president hired to be his campaign chairman. it sounds like they could not find anyone as criminal as manafort. >> talk about a difference in opinion. we've got donald trump who still hasn't said anything badly about paul manafort and we

judge jackson ruled that paul manafort lied to prosecutors about $125,000 payment that paul manafort disguised as a loan. the prosecutors say and the judge says that that payment was material to the investigation. the judge ruled that paul manafort also intentionally made false statements about another federal investigation being conducted by the justice department. we don't really know what that is. the judge's ruling gave no indication what that part of the ruling was about or who is in charge of that investigation. judge jackson also said that paul manafort lied to the special prosecutor's office, the fbi and the grand jury involving his interactions and communications with constan kilimnik, a business associate with ties to russian intelligence. this includes one meeting in particular that one of mueller's prosecutors says goes to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating. "the washington post" reports that that meeting came at a critical time in the 2016 presidential campaign and is a possible fulcrum to proving the trump campaign engaged in a conspiracy wi

and that is one of the enduring mysteries of paul manafort, why did he lie? and in particular why did he lie about his relationship with this potential alleged russian asset konstantin kilimnik. mueller's team said in court papers one of the reasons is he was seeking a pardon from the president and nbc news reports that the manhattan da is looking at state charges so any potential federal pardon would not get him out of the woods. >> when we look at this, cynthia, with everything that ken laid out for us, is this enough now that you think will get paul manafort to turn and if not, do we know -- do we have an idea or hypothesize why he wouldn't based on the new york attorney general -- it seems like he's cornered here. >> he is cornered. it is amazed me for two years why he hasn't flipped. but he hasn't. and just by point of clarification, he'll be sentenced in the virginia case first. and so the judge won't have an opportunity to see what he gets in the virginia case. even though the guideline range here is 17 to 22 years. he could only get 10 according to th

if paul manafort is pardoned by president trump, manafort might still be looking at significant legaleopardy and potentially significant prison time because a presidential pardon only gets you off the hook for federal crimes and he is staring down the barrel of serious new york state charges, as well. quote new york state prosecutors put together a criminal case against paul manafort they could file quickly if the former chairman of donald trump's 2016 campaign receive as presidential pardon. the array of tax and charges against manafort are being seen as an insurance policy should the president exercise his power to freeman that fort with manaf. the charges could be brought in new york state if manafort were pardoned by president trump. the story was followed by "the new york times" which reported that manafort will be looking at the state charges soon whether or not he'll get a pardon. this could shield him from jail time but isn't a simple thing. if paul manafort has been charged with the crimes, tax fraud and bank fraud, if he's been charged with these at the federal level, he can

first to report today that even if paul manafort is pardoned by president trump, manafort might stille looking at significant legal jeopardy and potentially significant prison time because a presidential pardon only gets you off the hook for federal crimes and manafort is reportedly staring down the barrel of serious new york state charges as well. and a federal pardon can't help you there. quote, new york state prosecutors have put together a criminal case against paul manafort that they could file quickly if the former chairman of donald trump's 2016 campaign receives a presidential pardon. the, quote, array of tax and other charges against manafort are being seen as an insurance policy should the president exercise his power to free manafort with a pardon or a commutation. again, this was first reported today by bloomberg news, which reported that the charges would be brought in new york state if manafort were pardoned by president trump. the story was then followed by "the new york times," which reported that manafort will be looking at the state charges soon, whether or not he's

paul manafort. we're getting to collusion and who else may be involved. >> carrie, we have these little snippets that ellie pointed out that we can read into and there's still larger questions out there. what is your main question after learning what we learned from the judge yesterday, after seeing all of this, what really sticks out to you? >> well, the question is by august of 2016, paul manafort was not at that point the chairman of the trump campaign. so the big question is did the candidate donald trump know at the time what paul manafort was doing, that he was providing polling data, that he was talking about potential policy issues that the trump presidency, if it became that, would adopt. and so that's the question. because the trump supporters and the administration, they can't any longer say that this did not affect the campaign at all. paul manafort had been the chairman of the campaign and he was providing campaign-related information. so the question really is who are the specific peop

but one of the very first meetings that i ever did with paul manafort was with the former senior governmenticial who vouched for the work that paul had done during the reagan years. so look, i didn't know about his financial background. the president didn't know about it. >> i'm not saying you knew. >> but he'll spend the rest of his life in jail. >> the president has known him since the 80s. he met roger stone first. roger stone helped him meet paul manafort. they worked together as you now know. he knows who paul manafort is and was. for him to deny knowledge of what the guy was about seems odd. >> well, you know, chris, i was there the first time then candidate trump saw paul manafort in what would have been march of 2016 and they introduced themselves as they had never met each other. the president said it's nice to meet you. paul said it's nice to meet you. if they had a relationship back in the 80s neither one of them acknowledged it. there was three people there. i was one of the three people when they met for the first time. >> there's photos of them. look, i'm just saying that part

terms of the conversation you were having earlier about what lawyers say about the jeopardy that paul manafort is in, i'm going to agree again. i think mueller doesn't have the responsibility, and i don't think he will reveal a lot of information. manafort, as we discussed, is 69 years old. even in limited circumstances, he's got 5, 10, 15 years. that's a lot of time for somebody that age. so we keep talking about the amount of information that will be revealed in this legal process. i'm not sure that's going to happen. he's already under tremendous jeopardy. he's already going to face jail time. i'm not sure this will be as interesting as people talk about, anderson. >> shen, manafort's legal team have until monday to file their own request for manafort's sentence. given his lies to prosecutors, how much will that really matter? will they recommend will matter? >> i think it will matter a lot. this is truly their last-ditch effort here to try and get him out from under a really bad problem. so i would expect them to both play up his age, his ill health, and probably take another shot at claim

the federal judge in the case of former trump campaign chairman paul manafort has sided with the special counsel, ruling that manafort lied the prosecutors in violation of the plea agreement he struck last fall. most important, one of manafort's lies involves his kakts with kimmic. it comes as we get a glimpse of how the trump campaign may have clueded with the russians. it is a story of secret plans and a smoke-filled room high above fifth avenue. as we first learned monday, this was a meeting in august of 2016 that according to mueller's prosecutor goes to the heart of what the special counsel's office is investigating. it appears central to froofg campaign engaged in a conspiracy with the russians. the meeting took place in manhattan in an exclusive cigar club called the grand havana room who bills itself as an extremely modern setting. it was. in atmosphere that they sat down with the russian operative. all three have been charged in the investigation. rick gates is the one however, cooperating with prosecutors. one subject discussed was a proposed resolution, their word, to the conf

kailey: breaking news on paul manafort.ork state prosecutors have put together criminal charges prepared to file quickly if he is pardoned by president trump. there is a sign of optimism about the latest round of trade talks the gene the u.s. and china. president trump is set to meet with chinese vice premier liu he . on members ofng understanding on key issues. in nigeria, officials are making sure -- scrambling to make sure that general elections go ahead. andpresidential parliamentary elections were called off just hours before there was a to begin on saturday. in the u.k., american and british warplanes soared over sheffield today to honor an american bomber group who died in world war ii. in 1944, a damaged american plane crashed into a wooded area. children that they lobbied for the memorial. global news 24 hours a day, on air and at tictoc on twitter, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. leinz.ley this is bloomberg. guy: thank you very much indeed. socgen,t to french bank con

so it doesn't mean there was no collusion with russia on the part of paul manafort, but it just wasn'ttherefore wasn't before the court for purposes of sentencing. >> in regards of those who manafort is said to have lied to, you have members of congress, his own legal team, the grand jury, the special counsel's office. this list goes on and on and on. how does that look to the judge? because it appears he has lied to just about everyone, including during a period of time when he was allegedly cooperating with investigators. >> and that's key, because when he did that plea agreement wherein he said he was going to cooperate with federal prosecutors, he also, we know, was basically double-timing them. he was communicating with trump and his legal team. but beyond that, the judge is going to look at things like that laundry list of people to whom he's lied, and the judge is going to look at fact that this man has committed a lifetime of crimes. we're not talking an isolated incident or an isolated period of time where in paul manafort's 69 years on this planet he went off the grid or he d

that is not the only federal case against paul manafort. nd of this week we are expecting robert mueller and his prosecutors to also make their case for the sentence that they believe manafort should get from the other federal judge who is hearing the other federal criminal case against paul manafort in the neighboring jurisdiction of washington, d.c. that fairly dire circumstance, the fact that 69 1/2-year-old paul manafort is now looking down the twin barrels of a sentence from the federal judge in virginia and then another sentence from this federal judge in d.c., that obviously is a crisis of his own making. because it was manafort and his defense team who elected to not combine the two sets of felony charges against him into one single case in one jurisdiction before one judge. so manafort is now facing sentencing in two different jurisdictions by two different federal judges on two different sets of crimes, and, yes, he does face the prospect that the sentences in each of those jurisdictions might run consecutively, might run one after

documents to date, a sentencing memo in his case against the president's former campaign chairman paul manafort. manafort's interviews have been a significant part of mueller's investigation to date and with his investigation appearing to wrap up, this could be the last major filing. over the past few months we have learned a lot from the memos like this, last month because of a computer formatting glitch no kidding that's honestly what it was, manafort's attorneys accide accidentally revealed mueller believed he was sharing polling data during the 2016 election and in december mueller revealed man that north was still communicating with the trump administration into 2018 after promising the special counsel he wasn't talking to anyone. so, could tonight offer what everyone is waiting to find out? we will find that out altogether. as we await that, we are learning prosecutors out of new york are preparing to hit paul manafort with state criminal charges which is significant because those charges would be pardon-proof. all comes as mueller is expected to take at least one more week to complete hi

this is on paul manafort. this is not from robert mueller. greg: right. paul manafort is about to be sense to a lot of -- sentenced to a lot of years in prison. the digit attorney in manhattan preparing charges to go against paul manafort. david: if the president was to pardon paul manafort, we do not know if he will, but how can the state try him again? greg: because new york state has a robust double jeopardy law, that protects defendants from being prosecuted on the same crimes at the federal level. so the team has looked at this, and there are some areas that he could go through. one is tax evasion. paul manafort was convicted of evading federal taxes, but he has residence in york state and is liable for state taxes, so they can prosecute on the tax evasion case for the state. and new york has a lot regarding accurate books. if you run a company or financial firm, it is against the law to manipulate books and records. that is another area, it is clear from the evidence presented that there was manipulation and fudging of numbers in his own books. davi

in terms of paul manafort, i think this is a doomsday situation for him in terms of his own fate. prosecutors have already raised to the judge in his case the prospect that manafort has been angling for a presidential pardon. they've raised the possibility to the judge that that may explain some of manafort's behavior thus far, even since he plead guilty and agreed to cooperate. we know from filings in manafort's case that his behavior, specifically some of his behavior that involved that alleged russian intelligence figure konstantin kilimnik, in the word of the special counsel's office, that's something that goes right to the heart of the central matter that robert mueller is investigating. i mean, stepping back for us just as citizens here, big picture, everything has gone south for everybody who has been caught up as a defendant in any of these investigations thus far. nobody has won against robert mueller or any of the prosecutors who have brought cases against these defendants in conjunction with the mueller investigation. nobody has won. everything has gone south for every o

why if you're paul manafort do you lie in that situation? there can be only one answer that comes to mind, which is he's doing it to protect trump. he's doing it to try and angle for a pardon from trump. >> interesting. >> so the implications here at least smell pretty bad. >> so he's doing it -- he's lying to protect trump. so if he continues to lie and they can't prove that the president had anything to do with him because he won't tell the truth about it, then what does that mean for the president? does that mean he's off scot-free? >> well, you know, first of all, you know, there is going to somebody hard evidence. there's hard evidence about the e-mails that were, you know, exchanged at this meeting that, you know, apparently took place on august 2nd, 2016, right after the president -- after donald trump was named the republican nominee. paul manafort, his campaign chair, goes and meets with konstantin kilimnik, this russian military operative like just days after, and he's exchanging some secret information. we don't know exactly what

that's how easy it could have been for paul manafort.s went over tonight a lot of irrational, seemingly irrational decisions from the outside in paul manafort's case when you look at how straightforward it was for someone like sam pattern. >> some nights i ware there is less talk about russians in russia than in this country and on the broadcast on the average night. our thanksav to julia, me and jeremy for straight end something stuff out for us tonight. coming up, trims the plans to look for land mines in this new border deal legislation but one of these closest friend in the senate, you can guess who, warns declaring a national emergency may still be on the table. that will make for an interesting friday night. and later, the democratic candidate mulling a presidential run who may have gotten a big boost this week from trump deep in the heart of texas, that and more when we come back on a wednesday night. does your customers connecting to the wifi ever slow down your business? yes, it does slow things down. aggravating. it's a nightma

for a decade, paul manafort repeatedly violated the law, considering only the crimes charged in this district, they make plain that manafort chose to engage in a sophisticated scheme to hide millions of dollars from u.s. authorities. and when his foreign income stream dissipated in 2015, he chose to engage in a series of bank frauds in the u.s. to maintain his extravagant lifestyle at the expense of various financial institutions. manafort chose to do this for no other reason than greed, evidencing his belief that the law doesn't apply to him. manafort solicited numerous professionals others to reap his ill-gotten gains. the sentence must serve to specifically deter manafort and deter those who would commit a similar series of crimes. that's signed on behalf of the special counsel's office. they are recommending 19 1/2 years to 24 1/2 years in prison and fines and restitution of up to tens of millions of dollars. now, this is just the filing from the prosecutors. we will now expect quickly to see a filing from manafort's defense team that says, seriously, you guys, don't be crazy. he'

i must tell you that paul manafort's a good man. >> are you considering pardoning paul manafort? >> i have great respect for what he's done in terms of what he's gone through. i have not offered any pardons. and i think they asked or whatever would you? i'm not taking anything off the table. >> reporter: now, it's also important to remember that though president trump the last thing we heard from him last fall, kendis, he's not taking anything off the table. there's a separate track. he is issue pardons for federal offenses, he cannot issue pardons for state offenses. the manhattan district attorney isn't known to be investigating paul manafort's transactions with some questionable loans in new york state. they're known to be pursuing that. so if the president were to come forward and pardon paul manafort, there is still this open question of his vulnerability and exposure in new york state. kendis? >> that is the thick thing for paul manafort indeed. thanks to you. >>> with me now is michelle goldberg, new york times columnist and contributor, jim walden, and glenn kershner. bot

rosalynn who cowrote a great report about a meeting that tom was discussing between trump campaign paul manafortrick gates and konstantin kilimnik. that goes to the heart of mueller's probe. rosalynn, what do we know about this meeting and its relationship to the lies or the misinformation that manafort gave to mueller's team that the judge has found tonight? >> tom was talking about how there was this hearing last week, a sealed hearing related to these lies but there was a transcript that was released. fairly redacted. but if you've been following the case closely and you compare it with other documents we've seen, you can get a sense of at least generallily what they're talking about. from that, we learn that apparently at this meeting on august second, there was some discussion about a peace plan for ukraine. peace plan sounds all well and good, but it's important to remember that that's a really top foreign policy agenda item for the russian government. they need there to be some resolution to the ukrainian conflict if they're going to get sanctions lifted. so that's a really key point. the

things come up in filings but it didn't quite play out in public as some of the other stuff for paul manafort in his campaign. >> it is mueller's question to answer in some form, was manafort, and roger stone, for that matter, were they just swamp creatures trying to make money, peddle influence, hoping trump was going to lose? or was there a coordinated effort in the campaign to share information and get help from the russians? >> those two things don't have to be in conflict. they could have been doing both of those things. i think the trump tweet this morning is indicative. we don't know what's going to happen, but i think people around the city feel this is coming to a climax. this is sort of the first part of it and where is it going to go from here? i do hope they actually start to say some things today, because what's gone on so far as given the president and his team a chance to say, hey, this really wasn't about us, this is about something else. but this could be about them. >> one way or the other in the sense that if mueller has spent all this time in what he finds is a bunch of st

did he know paul manafort was having this conversation with kilimnik? lots of ways president's actions are still unknown. that's probably the thing we'll learn the least about, because barr has said you can't indict donald trump under doj regulations. it's going to be tricky. >> the doj flat out shut down the rumors that the report was coming out next week. what do you think happened? >> it's a mystery of when is mueller going to be done. you almost wonder if sometimes it's almost a hurry up mess and to him through the press. there's words like as soon as next week. there is evidence that this is coming to a head very soon. potentially in the next month, in the next few weeks with all the indictments that have come out. you know, there are sentencings that are allowed to happen which remember many of them were postponed for some time to allow further cooperation on investigations. but as phillip mentioned we find out that this manafort sentencing memo is going to have further redactions. we still have the roger stone case to play out. there are still so

paul manafort's plea deal voided. a judge ruling that he intentionally lied to the special counsel, the grand jury making multiple false statements about several material matters including his interactions with long-time russian associate constantine kalymnic. >> reporter: a judge voided the plea deal. the judge said there's enough evidence to show that than for the, the former trump campaign chairman, intentionally lied in three instances during the time that he was supposed to be cooperating with investigators from special counsel robert mueller's office. his lawyers said he simply didn't remember certain details. prosecute vors accused manafort of five specific lies. he pleaded guilty last year to financial crimes and agreed to cooperate with the mueller investigation. the judge issued an order saying that manafort lied in three of those topics. the lies were, quote, material to the investigation. two of those lies, the judge said, had to do with manafort's former business associate. prosecutors argue kilimnik is a

754 of the trump administration and there is new reporting underscoring the poshs of that man, paul manafort, as former trump campaign chairman to the mueller investigation. tomorrow manafort will be back in federal court for a hearing behind closed doors. the judge is expected to rule on whether she believes manafort lied to prosecutors, a decision that could impact his sentencing greatly. that's coming up in march. but it was a manafort hearing last week that continues to be of interest, last night and tonight. this evening "the washington post" has new reporting with revelations from that hearing, particularly the august 22, 2016 meeting in new york involving manafort, his deputy rick gates and their russian counterpart. as they write, quote, it was at that meeting that prosecutors believe manafort and kilimnik may have exchanged key information. they also report a former senior u.s. intelligence official who spoke on the condition of anonymity called the details about what occurred the most interesting and potentially significant development we have seen in a long time. manafort, gates,

if paul manafort lied about that.hat goes to the heart of it whether or not something that happens at that meeting. that's the core of the investigation. those kinds of contact. >> carol, what about you? one thing to remember is the high burden of proof that attaches to a criminal investigation. borrowing an actual recording of a meeting or an untrue witness which we have of manafort. the prosecution's hands are a little bit tied in terms of proving what was said at that meeting. with respect to the special counsel's report coming up, there is a bigger difference between a report and a criminal conviction. so there is a lot of ground that has to be covered and to bring an obstruction count even if the president were to be indicted during his term as president, you know there are a lot of things that makes the president not a normal citizen. he has pardon authority, he is the president of the united states. he is in charge of the department of justice in a sense and so there are things that makes it not a normal citize

prosecutor, robert mueller prosecutors here are asking for the judge to essentially make sure that paul manafort never walks again as a free man. they describe what they say was manafort's conduct after he pleaded guilty as pertinent to sentencing, they say. it reflects a hardened adherence to committing crimes and a lack of remorse. what they describe is years and years of criminal behavior, as you said, they say that he lied and misled his own bookkeepers, his lawyers, everyone from members of congress to the special counsel and the grand jury, as well as members of the trump administration. what paul manafort is facing here is about ten years in the d.c. courts. the special prosecutor is arguing that the judge essentially stacked that on top of whatever paul manafort gets in another case in the eastern district of virginia and alexandria, virginia, where he's also due to be sentenced in the next couple of weeks. over there, the judge is looking to sentence him up to 24 1/2 years in prison. this is a man who obviously is almost 70 years old. he's not in good health. so according to the special

we could learn more about paul manafort's contacts after he was arrested and also his alleged lies to prosecutors. also, there will be a lot of focus on what prosecutors reveal about manafort's contacts with kilimnik, his associate believed tied to russian intel who manafort shared trump campaign polling data with. those communications go to the heart of what robert mueller has been looking at. so we're going to be looking at these court filings when they come out before midnight, to see what prosecutors reveal. this is significant. this is one of the last opportunities for robert mueller's team to provide details on its overarching theory, what they have been looking at about russian influence. >> he does often -- mueller releases details in the court documents. >> he does release a lot of details. that's why every time we get word something is coming, we highly anticipate it. we're always trying to figure out, learn new things. nothing is done quietly in these court documents. there's usually something in there that can give us clues as to where this investigation is going, where th

paul manafort is responding tonight to a rather scathing sentencing memo filed by the mueller team on friday in washington, d.c., federal court. in this new document, federal prosecutors say manafort repeatedly and brazenly violated the law and that he continued to break laws well into the fall of 2018. tonight manafort's lawyers filed their own memo that reads in part, and we quote, "as the government itself notes, mr. manafort committed garden variety crimes and violated the more esoteric foreign agents registration act." they go on to say, quote, "the defendant has not been charged with crimes related to the primary focus of the special counsel's investigation, i.e., any links and/or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of president donald trump, otherwise referred to as russian collusion by the national media." and let's throw in the president there. nevertheless, these garden-variety and esoteric offenses have led to mr. manafort being widely vilified in a manner this country hasn't experienced in decades. now, manafort through

the judge about to get her first sentencing recommendation on paul manafort. she's the one that revoked manafort's bail and the one that ruled manafort lied pto prosecutors and handling the russian military gru case and assignedroger stone case. that judge posted a photo of her that included a cross hairs, like a little target in the corner next to her head and i'm not showing the image because if we don't have to, none of us need to be in the business of showing pictures of federal judges with what looks like cross hairs next to their heads but roger stone did that today and after initially posting that image online, mr. stone later took it down and reposted it a few minutes later with a closer cut version of the same picture, one that crops out the cross hairs from next to the judge's head but still the same written attack on the judge in the caption to the image. and i don't know if roger stone wants to be jailed for threatening the federal judge who is hearing his case or if he just really wants to be subject to a full gag order or i don't know what he want

paul manafort had the same experience.hen he lied he knew they knew he was lying. >> the picture depicted in this transcript is exactly that. it's agonizing to read. you see the judge saying that they would ask him a question, he would answer it incorrectly. the special counsel would then show a little bit of the facts that they knew and then manafort would change his answer but only to the extent that he now knew that some of the facts were known by the special counsel leaving part of the lie in place and then gradually retrench again and do it over and over again. >> pitiful. >> then his lawyers say it's unintentional. how could it be? >> evan, are you still there? sorry, evan. i know you were reading through it. i just wanted to ask you because there's obviously plenty of redactions here. right as you were starting to skim through and read we were pointing out page 49 on and how it's all redacted. just wondering what you thought the significance of that was and how that was all sort of in a row and towards the end here

easy it could be for paul manafort if he cooperated. we know that sam patton has aggrade to cooperate with prosecutors in d.c. because of a referral that grew out of robert mueller's office and also will cooperate about how he tried to use straw purchasers to get russian oligarchs into the inauguration. another thread we'll be pulling on for weeks or months to come but he is someone who has a sentencing date set up. being cooperative. that's how easy things could have been for paul manafort given he was charged with more. he was more involved in the campaign but it was as easy as that. as we've gone over tonight there were a lot of irrational decisions from the outside in paul manafort's case when you look at how straightforward it was for sam patten. >> sometimes i swear there's less talk in russia than there is here. our thanks to our panel for straightening stuff out for us. >>> coming up, president trump plans to look for land mines in this new border deal legislation. one of his closest friends in the senate, can you guess who, war

ken, in this new filing just within the past hour or so, paul manafort has just told the judge who's g his sentence that since manafort isn't being charged with any crimes related to russia collusion in the grand scheme of things his crimes aren't that serious so effectively he shouldn't get a tough sentence. you have been reporting on konstantin kilimnik, and this interesting sort of contention that manafort may have sent kilimnik internal proprietary information at the time they were interfering in the election. can you sum up the importance of that and what we know about it at this point? >> our sources tell us that when this first occurred, when manafort actually instructed rick gates, his deputy on the campaign, and also his deputy during his time in ukraine, to transmit polling polling data to kilimnik who was assessed by the fbi to have ties to russian intelligence, when they first did that, it was in the spring of 2016, which was both right as trump was wrapping up the republican nomination, right as konstantin kilimnik was preparing to go to new york to meet with manafort and

here is why this is a problem for paul manafort.s cooperation agreement was his best chance at getting some of his jail time reduced. he's already facing, you know, a number of convictions in virginia. he was convicted on a number of financial crimes and now has this guilty plea in washington, d.c. the prosecutors in d.c. aren't expected to bring additional charges against him for the lies. he faces potentially decades in prison when he eventually gets sentenced. back to you. >> all right. big deal. thank you very much. laura, to you, what i find so striking about this -- there are a number of things like why the intentional lies, et cetera, but judge amy jackson noted twice in her order in this decision that manafort lied about konstantin kilimnik talking about russia's interests and payments received. the fact he lied about it twice was material to the investigation. >> you know, the idea she's made it clear -- she wants to send a signal what the nature of the investigation is and just how close the ties are to the kremlin. she's

turn 70, that means prosecutors are recommending what is in effect a natural life sentence for paul manafort. you will recall that there is no parole in the federal prison system. so 19 to 24 years. we're going to get to that manafort situation in a little more detail in a second. but the sentencing recommendation from prosecutors not only spells out what they're hoping to get from the judge in terms of manafort's sentence and what is worth taking a closer look at tonight is that they also in making this case to the judge, they summarize what they believe to have been manafort's crimes and their seriousness and whether or not he's done other things on top of those crimes that means he should have more of the book thrown at him. it's worth looking that the in detail and we'll get there in a moment. before we do that, though, we shouldn't let the sort of magnitude of what just happened with the president's campaign chair, we shouldn't let that push aside a couple of other really important things that happened today before we got the manafort sentencie ing memo. there are a couple things that g

first up, we have paul manafort to tell you about. prosecutors want the former trump campaign chairman to get up to 24 1/2 years behind bars for financial crimes, which would amount to a life sentence for a man who is nearly 70, not in great health. they laid out just how serious his crimes were, saying, quote, manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law. let's not forget he's still facing a separate case in d.c. so that's not the end of it. that has prosecutors say in another court filing they have evidence of trump ally and dirty trickster roger stone communicating directly with wikileaks during the campaign. and there's more. we've learned today that mueller's team has interviewed white house press secretary sarah sanders. hopefully she told them the truth because that's not exactly her forte lately, her style. and they're likely to have asked questions about the statements she made on the podium defending the president on the russia investigation. we're going to have more on all of that mueller news coming up