sam patten was an eagle with paul manafort -- an equal with paul manafort.hery: could this push paul manafort to cooperate with the mueller investigation? >> it could. sam patten is not pleading guilty to the special counsel investigation of russian interference, he is pleading guilty to the justice department national security, several prosecutors. the fact he could support the government's case against the other man and is corporate in may be annexed or factor that team paul manafort is weighing before the second trial. shery: they had a conviction in virginia and 10 counts there was no agreement on. could we see a retrial? >> an interesting point, it was quiet this week with a deadline coming for the special counsel robert mueller to decide whether to retry paul manafort on those 10 counts. they asked a judge for more time and got an agreement from defense counsel to waive the deadline. possibility both sides may be thinking about paul manafort cutting a deal. no evidence but circumstantial evidence the fact that paul manafort's team and robert mueller's

i said oh, yeah, it looks like sam patten just had a guilty plea. remember. maybe he is at a different level, but he is someone close to constantine kilimnik who was a big fish, a russian oligarch in all of this. he is the type of person who could have been on the radar. like any lawyer, any defense lawyer, and the president has a team of them beyond just rudy giuliani, they try to know as much as they can. they do really try and do their due diligence. the lawyers who go in, they have a joint defense agreement, do debrief the president. they definitely will be aware of how many things they don't know. >> joyce vance, we've been hearing over and over again from the president's team that it's time to wrap it up. the president said that several months ago to my colleague, andrea mitchell. what based on your knowledge as a former prosecutor do you sort of deduce about the stage of this investigation? does it appear to be anywhere close to wrapping up? >> well, every criminal target of an investigation wants prosecutors to wrap it up before they have ti

sam patten a former associate of paul manafort pleading guilty today. for failing to register as a foreign lobbyist. admitting he made a $50,000 illegal donation to trump inauguration committee. acting as a straw donor for a russian and ukrainen banned from making contribution themselves. he is cooperating with the mueller investigation. i'm joined now by my panel. thanks for being with us. tom, i'll start with you. sam patten pleading guilty today. illegal donations, straw man for trump committee. what do we know about who he is, how he fits into trump world. >> he's something smoeshted with the trump campaign. but somebody associated with kim nick. this is somebody who has connections to people inside the trump orbit. somebody has done business in ukraine. the big headline here today is that we have a legal foreign donation coming in to the trump inaugural committee. no indication from the court paper work that the donations the fact it was the original source of the money came from a foreign person. with something that the trump committee knew. but y

sam patten today convicted. twelve russian spies chargedp 13 russian nationals charged. rick gates convicted. a couple of other small fries for lying to the fbi. and again, i think bill is right. at the peak of that attack on the justice department, had mueller started tripping and falling, and frankly had they lost the manafort case, we'd be in a different position. but so far they are batting 1,000 and that's pretty good. >> so to that effect, francesca, what are you hearing in terms of the white house's sentiments with the president's approach, trump's approach. is this attack -- we've heard this from rudy giuliani, he's wanted to make this a public argument against the credibility of the mueller investigation. you can't look at it and think it's working when you have 3% of americans m's on this pole support the mueller probe. >> the white house has been letting him do the talking. we didn't have a white house broefg although the president has addressed reporters and taken questions in different settings. the white house distancing themselves from the mueller probe an

sam patten saying that he sees that it caused the foreign money to be paid into the inaugural committeehat he is admitting to charges in a pre-agreement -- plea agreement filed in court. on patten has been charged friday with failing to register in the u.s. as a foreign agent for his work lobbying on behalf of a ukrainian political party. we are now hearing that he caused foreign money to be paid to the inaugural committee here in the u.s. we will get you more updates as we get them on this developing story. for now, let's get a quick check of the major averages. we are seeing u.s. stocks a little mixed at the moment with the dow falling 3/10 of 1%. the s&p 500 is also losing ground. the downhe fact that days for u.s. markets, we have seen a very strong august, which could be the best august since 2014. tech stocks gaining ground at the moment. deadline whenrade it comes to the nafta negotiations between the u.s. and canada. energy and financials are leading the losses on the s&p 500. take a look at auto stocks. they are underperforming the broader market. ford, which is her this mornin

. ♪ shery: let's get straight to the news about sam patten, the paul manafort ally who

the lobbyist's name is sam patten and he pled guilty to failing to register as a foreign agent. he agreed to cooperate as part of his plea. he also admits he made an illegal donation to president trump's inauguration committee acting as a straw donor for a ukrainian man banned from making the contribution himself. to get more i'm joined by ken dilanian and tom winter, one of our investigative reporters in new york. tom and ken, welcome. ken, we've done a little bit of leg work here explaining who mr. pat tten is to our viewers. how important does he appear to be? >> it's not clear. he appears to fit in the manafort orbit and he's pleaded guilty to lobbying in the u.s. even though he was paid for by this ukrainian -- russian-backed ukrainian political party. he said he wasn't lobbying at all and it turns out that he was. more interestingly he's also pleaded guilty to funneling a $50,000 to trump's inaugural committee so his yukrainian client could attend the nomination. was that because he wanted to curry favor or just go to the parties. >> or was paul manafort trying to make goo

patten,ciate, sam charged with this. let's check in with the first word news. here is kailey leinz. iley: according to a toronto newspaper, negotiations hit a roadblock last night. canada has offered concessions in an attempt to maintain independent trade mechanisms but robert lighthizer will not go for it. erdogan erdogan is sounding defiant about the u.s. and president trump. he said no one can make turkey neal with dollars or succumb to economic pressure. president trump said everyone let him down by not releasing an american pastor being held in turkey on terrorism related charges. president trump said the iranian regime may collapse because of policies. when he took office, it was a question of when it would take over the middle east. now it is a question of whether the regime will survive. president trump pulled the u.s. out of the nuclear agreement and reimposed economic sanctions. the president says democrats should not try to impeach somebody who is doing a great job. strong economy, his performance on foreign policy and the danger of setting a precedent of making it too ea