-The president keeps insisting
the Russia investigation has found nothing,
even after his ex-campaign chairman lied to the FBI.
For more on this, it's time for "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
Democrats might control the House right now,
but Republicans still control the Senate.
The GOP-controlled Russia investigation in the Senate
led by North Carolina Senator Richard Burr said this week
they didn't find any evidence of Russian collusion,
despite not looking at most of the actual evidence.
And Trump has been touting that fact in rallies
and TV interviews all week.
-They've been investigating this Russia hoax for two years.
They found no collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.
What's happened to me should never be allowed to happen
to another president,
with investigations on things
that never took place, like Russia.
You know, the Russia collusion delusion we call it.
Oh, wow, Trump found two words that rhyme.
[ Laughter ]
If he gets kicked out of office,
at least he'll have a second career in advertising.
-Beanz meanz Heinz.
[ Laughter ]
And Trump wasn't just whining about the Russia investigation
to friendly crowds at rallies and at Fox News.
He's also been screaming about it all week on Twitter.
These are all different tweets he posted in the last week.
-Highly respected senator Richard Burr,
chairman of Senate Intelligence,
said today that after an almost two-year investigation,
he saw no evidence of Russia collusion.
Not only did Senator Burr's committee find no collusion
by the Trump campaign and Russia,
it's important because they interviewed 200 witnesses
and 300,000 pages of documents.
-The mainstream media has refused to cover the fact
that the head of the very important
Senate Intelligence committee,
after two years of intensive study
and access to intelligence that only they could get
just stated they have found no collusion
between Trump and Russia.
-Senator Richard Burr,
the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee
just announced that after two years,
more than 200 interviews, and thousands of documents,
they have found no collusion between Trump and Russia.
Is anybody really surprised by this?
-The Senate Intelligence committee, there is no evidence
of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
-My God, they doubled the character limit on Twitter
and it still wasn't enough for him.
At this rate, they're going to have to start sending us
bound copies of Trump's tweets in the mail.
[ Laughter ]
"Honey, I just saw a roach in the kitchen.
Hand me that Trump tweet."
The thing about Trump screaming on Twitter all the time
is that it's easy to just start ignoring him.
Sure, two years ago when you woke up
and saw that the president of the United States
posted an all caps tweet at 4:00 in the morning,
you were like, "Start digging a bomb shelter."
Now we all react to Trump's tweets
the same way we react to a telemarketer call during dinner.
"Yeah, sorry, no, America isn't home right now, bye."
[ Laughter ]
The Senate investigation that Trump has been tweeting about
is a partisan Republican investigation
that didn't even look at most of the evidence.
By contrast, when Democrats took over the house,
they announced their own investigation of Trump,
and Trump freaked out.
-Today the president targeted
the committee's Democratic chairman writing,
"So, now Congressman Adam Schiff announces after having found
zero Russian collusion,
he's going to go look at every aspect of my life
both financial and personal
even though there is no reason to be doing so.
Never happened before.
Unlimited presidential harassment."
The president went on to add,
"The Democrats and their committees are going nuts.
The Republicans never did this to President Obama.
There would be no time left to run the government."
-No time left to run the government?
You don't run the government now.
You're -- you're basically the security guard
in every heist movie.
"Murph, wake up!"
"Ugh, I was just resting my eyes!"
Also, the reason they didn't do this to Obama
is because he didn't have any corruption scandals.
I know this is hard to believe,
but we used to have a president who made it eight years
without anyone who worked for him being indicted.
Meanwhile, you rack up indictments
like you're trying to fill up a punch card.
[ Laughter ]
Obama didn't have --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Obama didn't have real scandals,
so Republicans had to make up fake ones.
In fact, Republicans subjected Obama
to so many ridiculous investigations,
one guy even freelanced
and started his own investigation
of Obama's birth certificate --
The guy who's currently complaining
about hoax investigations
literally sent investigators to Hawaii
for a hoax investigation into Obama's birthplace.
-I have people that actually have been studying it
and they cannot believe what they're finding.
-You have people now down there searching in Hawaii?
-Absolutely, and they cannot believe what they're finding.
-It sounds like the real story
is you sent investigators to Hawaii
and they lied to you to get more time in Hawaii.
[ Laughter ]
For a scam artist, he is very easy to fool.
So Trump's been screaming all week that he's been vindicated
and that all these investigations are hoaxes.
Now, that was already untrue,
but Trump's lie got even harder to believe Wednesday night
when we found out his ex-campaign chairman
Paul Manafort had lied to the Special Counsel's office.
-A federal judge ruling that Paul Manafort,
President Trump's former campaign chairman,
intentionally lied to the FBI.
He lied to the Special Counsel's team,
and also to a grand jury in the ongoing investigation.
-Judge Amy Berman Jackson says there is sufficient evidence
to say that Manafort broke his plea deal with Robert Mueller
by lying about three of the five matters
the Special Counsel singled out for cooperation.
-This guy actually thought he could lie to Robert Mueller
and get away with it?
I'm sorry, but have you met Robert Mueller?
I mean, look at him.
Mueller doesn't need a polygraph to tell you if you're lying.
He can just hold your wrist
and monitor your heart rate himself.
If you whisper a lie to your girlfriend in California,
Mueller sits up in bed in a cold sweat.
Also, this isn't even the first time
Manafort has committed a crime while he was being investigated
for committing other crimes.
In June, for example, a judge jailed Manafort
after prosecutors claim he attempted to tamper with
the testimony of two potential witnesses in a criminal case.
That was after he had already been indicted.
Every time he commits a crime to make things better,
it makes it worse.
When Manafort goes to prison,
he's going to tunnel out of his cell into a smaller cell.
[ Laughter ]
And this isn't just --
[ Applause ]
This isn't just some sort of so-called process crime
that has nothing to do with
the core question of Russian collusion.
Mueller's office said Manafort's lies go to the heart
of what the Special Counsel's office is investigating.
For example, Manafort lied about the fact he shared
Trump campaign polling data with a longtime associate of his
who the FBI thinks has ties to Russian intelligence.
He shared polling data with a guy
tied to Russian intelligence
while Russian intelligence was helping Trump win the election.
That is the definition of collusion.
If someone said, "I don't understand collusion."
Can you give me an example?" You could say that.
It's like if the cops got up in court
and said the suspect handed money to a drug dealer
while the drug dealer was giving him cocaine, and we're all like,
"Oh, I wonder if the two are related."
[ Laughter ]
And the arrangement they had to share polling data
wasn't just some casual get together.
The details of the meeting themselves
were incredibly suspicious --
from where they met to how they left the meeting.
-The "Washington Post" reports court records show Manafort
met with a Russian political operative,
a guy named Konstantin Kilimnik
at a midtown Manhattan cigar bar near Trump tower.
-That meeting occurred on August 2, 2016.
The meeting between Paul Manafort and Kilimnik
happened in a private cigar room
called the Grand Havana Room.
They were joined in that meeting by the deputy campaign manager
and Manafort associate Rick Gates.
The meeting appears to have been so clandestine that it,
"Ended with the three men leaving through separate doors.
-They met at a private cigar room in Manhattan
and left through three separate doors.
There are only two explanations here.
Either they were coordinating illegal election interference
with a foreign adversary and trying to hide it
or they were filming a sequel to "Goodfellas" called
"Goodfellas 2: It Happens at the White House Now."
[ Laughter ]
Now, the central question at the heart
of the Russia investigation still remains unresolved.
We don't have all the details.
But what we do know for a fact
is that everyone involved keeps lying about it.
Michael Flynn lied about his contacts with Russians.
Paul Manafort lied about his contacts with Russians.
Michael Cohen lied about the deal
to build a Trump tower in Moscow.
Donald Trump Jr. lied about his meetings with the Russians
and Jared Kushner lied about his age.
[ Laughter ]
"Sir, you can't come into the cigar room."
[ Voice cracking ] "But I just turned 18."
[ Laughter ]
There's still a lot we don't know
about the Russia investigation, but one thing we do know
is that almost everyone who's under investigation has lied.
Either they're lying to cover up something really bad
or they're suffering from a serious case of...
-Russia collusion delusion. -This has been "A Closer Look."
[ Cheers and applause ]
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