Trump went to his personal criminal lawyers for advice about whether to pardon Manafort, by their own admission. Not the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Not the White House Counsel. Not any US govt employee. His personal criminal lawyers. washingtonpost.com/politics/trump…
Trump's choice to consult his personal attorneys is evidence of an corrupt purpose. The deliberate circulation in the press of this attorney-client conversation implying a commitment to pardon Manafort after the conclusion of Mueller's investigation may well be witness tampering. 
Read Alex Whiting on the exposure Trump's attorneys may face for this sort of behavior justsecurity.org/54356/dangling…
The Special Counsel’s spokesman declined to comment, as expected, on questions about whether they were concerned that the WaPo article reflects an attempt to influence Manafort.
The Washington Post made a huge revision to this story this evening, apparently at Giuliani’s urging. newsdiffs.org/diff/1828909/1…
The earlier version had Giuliani saying that pardoning Manafort “came up” as Trump was venting about the prosecution of Manafort specifically. WaPo allowed Giuliani to take that back entirely and say instead that they only had a general pardon discussion in June.
Obviously the two different accounts have very different legal ramifications, which is why Rudy is trying to clean it up.
What isn’t clear from the WaPo revisions is whether he’s justified in doing so. What did he actually say in the interview?
Along with the above, these are pretty substantial changes to make without a correction (other than “this story has been updated.”).
Why the Washington Post’s late in the day revisions (see above) matter.
