Transcript for Manafort's lawyers briefed Trump's legal team: Report

No warning. All right, thank you, Eva. "The New York Times" reporting that lawyers for Paul manafort were briefing president trump's legal team on what manafort was telling the special counsel, Robert Mueller. This information sharing came before manafort's plea deal with Mueller collapsed. Want to break it down with Dan Abrams and this idea that he was telling trump what he was telling Mueller is not illegal, but it is pretty unusual basically playing both sides. Joint defense agreements are pretty Normal particularly in kind of mob cases and gang-related cases where the defense team share information. What makes this different is effectively manafort was saying with his plea, I'm on your side now. I'm with you, prosecutors, and I'm going to assist you in whatever way you need. In effect, he wasn't doing that. It's starting to feel like he was on a fact-finding mission for the trump team to figure out what do they want, what kind of questions are they asking, et cetera. How could trump's team use that. They could use it publicly. Some of president trump's tweets were a direct response to manafort's team and allow him to prepare for a defense and his report that he's going to use as a response, et cetera. But I think most importantly it becomes a kind of cudgel for them to use against Robert Mueller by saying, you know, that he's trying to get witnesses to say certain things, et cetera. It also reinforces what you were saying yesterday, manafort might be playing for a pardon. I don't think there's any question that he's playing for a pardon here. By saying I'm with you, prosecutors, and then not just not cooperating, but according to prosecutors, lying repeatedly. They're saying they can prove it. They're saying they can prove it. You have to believe he thinks he's got another option here. But if at any point the president or his lawyers told manafort don't worry, you can get a pardon -- The question becomes is the pardon absolute? Don't help or lie or tell me what they're saying. That sure feels like witness tampering. Some argue that the power of the pardon is absolute. That's the sort of question that would be resolved down the road. Dan, thanks very much.

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