Yesterday. It was chronicles by long time aide, timber wolfs detail concluded. God speed former president george h. W. Bush, youll be missed by all of us. That is our broadcast on this friday night. Thank you for being with us. Have a good weekend. From nbc headquarters here in new york. Bob mueller revealing Michael Cohens crime as well as new detail on his crimes with russia. Calling for substantial prison time. Lets get right two it. T two major Court Filings that are out tonight. Michael cohen has been helpful in his investigation. Prosecutors up in new york say he deserves years in jail. All of this is a week before a judge will sentence cohen for all the above. Lets look at the latest in the mueller filing. Bob mueller says he is not taking any position on how much time Michael Cohen should serve, but he knows that cohen first came into his office and lied to them. Not just about anything, but specifically about money. Now then mueller says in the new filing that we just got in our news room that cohen has taken steps to mitigate those lies and other crimes. That he gave crucial information. He started telling the truth mueller says and he told the truth about russian attempts to reach the Trump Campaign dating back to 2015, and also russia
related matters that are quote core to his investigation. Learned about all of these things because of his quote regular contact to unnamed people in the Trump Organization. Could be employees could be family members. Federal prosecutors in new york not impressed at all. I was reading the filing and it is a thrashing. They hammer him and they note that he wasnt ever actually a cooperating witness, that he didnt do everything he could have done. And committed four distinct federal crimes they say that he was motivated by personal greed, that he used his own power and influence for deception. And they note where the law
comes insuri comes in. And they say while he should get a little bit of credit for what he did do for cooperating, he shouldnt get much. They call for roughly four years. All of this as we are learning about Michael Cohen, bob mueller just filing a big, big document, you may have heard about. This is for Paul Manafort. Now that document i can tell you has been filed under seal this means as of this hour we dont know whats inside it. But what we do know it is a big day for bob mueller. I want to get to it with myra wiley, and Nancy Gertner who has served as a federal judge and bringing that perspective. She is a professor at harvard law school. Why your former colleagues are coming down on Michael Cohen, and why they also put in there President Trump directed one of Michael Cohens campaign crimes. I think you just said it, ari, what is relevant is one, you have a document that makes very clear that there have been significant contact between those in trumps spheres and russia. We actually already knew that. What we see now is the reverse side of it. Meaning we have a long history between George Papadopoulos, beginning with George Papadopoulos in march in 2016 who understood his job and in april and may communicated about
the meeting in russia. We found out trump moscow tower deal was happening at the same time and the russians were reaching out to the trump world. There was lots of contact with russia even before this document. And what were seeing is there is a lot more that we did not know about. We know there is going to be a continued investigation to it, that is clear both from the Michael Flynn filing. In terms of the Southern District, it is kind of quite clear. What they are saying quite frankly is look, this guy didnt Do The Right Thing. And by the way, he was a lawyer, his obligation to Do The Right Thing was heightened and he came in and he was not really, he didnt formulate a cooperation agreement, he didnt agree to talk to us about things that may
be crimes that he was not already pleading guilty to. And that should bring us right back around to the Trump Organization investigation that they are still conducting. Nancy, i am thrilled that we have the benefit of your expertise to want because this is now going right into judge lane. How does a judge take these two very different recommendations, mueller saying basically, he lied but he helped, you figure it out. And the sdny saying this is a bad dude. He is a criminal, he is a liar. He thinks he is above the law and he should get four years. What does the judge do . The judge has two alternatives. On the one hand, this is a train that is driven by the prosecution. It is the mueller that it is the big question. If it was just the sdny part,
then cohen would get time and how much. The fallacy of all that we are talking about, is even if cohen were sentenced tomorrow to four years or three years or whatever variation that is, he will continue to cooperate with the government. The government can file after the fact a reduction in the sentence. This didnt happen in the orderly fashion, the rule 35 will continue to hang over him. Do you think the judge will give him years . You know, i have been speculating all day. I think the judge will give him years in the face of the sdny recommendation, i dont think the judge will give him four years. He is before a very tough judge. He is not someone who has been
lenient on white collar offenses. And if you look at the four corners of the sdny stuff, because of the amount of money this guy will get four years. But that is speculating. The court can impose a sentence and stay the sentence, he continues to cooperate with mueller and there can be a subseque subsequent adjustment. Sure, but this is real stuff. Real crimes, real felonies. We are going to cover this in a couple of ways throughout our show tonight, but i want to under score, it is not normal to have every day events saying we proved this campaign crime. Your view of that piece of this tonight. Well that is significant. Almost nothing comparable since
watergate with this. And to have a lawyer coming forward follows that parallel. But the thing that is interesting here, you have a good guy Bad Guy Presentation by the Special Counsel versus the Southern Districts. And the Southern District gave tough language, but the result of five years frankly looking at his exposure and what he did which can be much more substantial than that. I agree they can come back and revisit t but they dont want to reward somebody who cabined off what he was prepared to do so. On the other hand we have the statement by the Special Counsel. How do we justify that as a Justice System . Well, you know, they group together. I mean, this is the lawyer sounds like you dont know. I thought you had an answer, but then you said birds of a feather, birds of
a feather. Not eagles, perhaps, but birds of a feather. That is my answer. We see, if you look at his history of lawyers, mr. Trump, we go from cohn to mr. Cohen. I would revise your remarks and then i will let you build on them. I think what you have is someone who is as clearly criminal and deceptive as roy cohn, but less effective. And that is what i want to ask both of my prosecutors about. Fascinating narrative here. I am reading from the documents, i hope folks will bear with me. It is interesting. Explaining that the first time they talked to Michael Cohen was on august 7th at cohens request. And they are saying he did
provide relevant information. They write quote, cohen provided false answers in what he later explained in an effort not to contradict his congressional testimony which we now know was perjury. What does that tell you about the way they gathered and squeezed Michael Cohen. And why are they revealing it now. They are revealing it so we know what they are dealing with. They have the advantage to press him to tell the truth by taking his Tape Recordings and letters and emails and to come firm what he had to say. They say we have by other means confirm what they are telling us. And he had help. And gave him credibility as a cooperative witness. I think that is substantial. The real question is if we have what is going to happen. And if we move from whitaker to barr. You are talking about news that any other night we would have mentioned but i literally havent yet, President Trump announcing a new pick for an Attorney General william barr. You might say mat whitaker is as low a bar that you can get in terms of credentials. It is possible that what interested donald trump most about this new Attorney General nominee is that he went along with the group of political
pardons. Maya i want you to way in on the same questions as john. We are getting a strong, very public signal that there is Corroborating Evidence. Thats the way i read it. We dont have to just rely on Michael Cohen. He walked in there, the mistake he made which is not one that a very, very accomplished lawyer would make, by the way. He walked in assuming he knew what the prosecutors knew and thats the thing you never want to do. He walked in and he was surprised. He wasnt expecting to be asked those questions about the trump tower moscow. He then, lied which was dumb. After that lie, and in the remaining six sessions that he
had, he came clean and that is the kind of complexity of the story we are told, a guy who is a career liar, cheat, perfectly willing to do it again, but like any good solid prosecutorial team, they had good information. They can prove it without him. Even if his credibility is somewhat impugned, they have additional evidence. Which if you put it like that and we just got all of this, what you are saying is it is a very elegant implicit rebuttal to the donald trump claim that well, Michael Cohen is saying anything to get out of trouble so he brought this seemingly bad stuff to mueller and now they are all chewing on it. What you are saying is this footnote says no, here is the timeline that we had this bad stuff and now he is one extra witness but not perhaps our
primary one. And corroborate with us. Cooperate with us, you will be in a better position, because if you dont, we will get you. Stay with me everyone, there is another filing regarding Paul Manafort. Heavily redacted but i want to get your view of what if anything that we gleaned from there. Reporter it is significantly redacted. We did learn that the Special Counsel is saying Paul Manafort lied. Ongoing ties to russian intelligence, and there is a reference to a meeting to an individual whose name is blacked out. And the Special Counsel alleges that he lied about that. And also lied about a wild
transfer to a firm linked to manafort. And lastly, the Special Counsel says Paul Manafort lied when he said he wasnt in contact with anyone in the trump administration. And because of all of that, the Special Counsel has canceled manaforts Plea Agreement and now facing up to 15 years in prison. Is it possible to say to obstruction or since cal lili c. Reporter im sorry, i am e the what part of the probe that
hits . Reporter he has always been a Mystery Figure in terms of collusion. It goes to the question of Paul Manaforts role. Because of the redactions we dont see the full picture. Copy. And i appreciate your precision on that. I want to go to some of more of what mueller has said basically through the cohen filing because he is getting into the trump tower deal. A lucrative business opportunity. It required the assistance of the russian government and company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from russian sources. Nancy, do you view this as a indication that finances may be at the heart of bob muellers probe of what a Collusion Conspiracy looks like, money and
not just where it started. Thats why they followed manafort in the litigation over whether or not the Special Counsel prosecutor had a right to go after manafort, what they said was they were following the money, following the money from the ukraine sources to manafort. Getting back to the sentencing issue, i am reminded that john dean when he testified before congress, i believe he did some time for his role in nixons obstruction of justice. So the notion that cohen would get some time would make some sense. That was apropos of your other question. With respect to the russian issue, we have to step back. There is almost like we thought this case was about flynn, Michael Flynn lying about his contacts to the russians. If you recall, sally yates saying that was an issue. Might be willing to extort from donald trump, a way of influencing them because people were lying about russian context. So even a failed Trump Tower Project opens the door to the russians basically exercising influence on all of the trump players because they were lying about it. And the more significant, the contexts are, the more significant and substantial the financial dealings were, the more the russians had on him and therefore, that raises a host of other questions about russian sanctions et cetera. So its a weve now opened the door much broader of russian influences. John, you almost get the
feeling that they are good at this, and people with more ethics or more Government Experience may have better resistance and this crew clearly didnt. I think thats true. And nothing can overcome the greed motive, until the recent disclosures, i didnt appreciate how much trump hoped to profit lifting the sanctions. And because he was being blocked by the same sanctions that were compromising the autocrats in ruc russia, he had that. Also the question of the sanctions lifted benefitted putin and himself. It is interesting to read the manafort document. Basically where they said he lied. That tells us what they had was
true and could be proven. On a couple of occasions he said something and when confronted with the fact he changed it. And he at the same time sending information back to the trump team as to what he is being questioned about in this investigation. So you have him lying and you have obstruction and cooperation with the west wings team representing trump. Thats significant. Thats such a significant point you raise because there is a lot of this that is boiled down to Black And White while people wrongfully think, do you go after a sitting president or not and where does that go. As you allude to, john, at a minimum, we now have as of tonight, bob mueller putting boo the record and into court two key people came in and lied to
him. The question any investigators question becomes what does that fit into at the white house, who knew about that, did other lawyers know about that. Going to come into play if you have employees of the white house or lawyers actively committing new criminal conspiracies. I want to thank nancy for joining us. I want to thank maya, john, and ken, and i might come back to each of you. Stay close to your cameras i want to bring in neal, a striking detail here. They say, Michael Cohen not only made illegal payments, we heard about that, but they say in court, he made them quote in coordination and at the direction of individual one. That is donald trump. I am thrilled as part of our
special coverage, neal joins us. And he argues as a legal matter, prosecutors have concluded that donald trump is on the hook for that felony. Of course you served in many high profile positions. I know when you speak about what constitutes a felony, you dont do so lightly. Give us your analysis of that part of tonights news. To me, the big news is not about Michael Cohen, it is about one person, donald trump. And this filing that was made today in the Michael Cohen case really does for the first time, you have federal prosecutors essentially saying that donald trump committed a felony. And here is the way that it works. First of all, this is not a document by mueller, this is filed by trumps own Justice Department by the Southern District prosecutor in new york and three pieces to the claim. The first piece is on page 11 of
the filing which said that cohen made these Campaign Finance payments at the direction of trump. And what we are talking about here are payments made to two women for their silence. And what happened was that cohen paid those folks and did so at a time when you are only supposed to give 2,700 to a campaign. And congress has said we dont want rich people buying elections. So on page 11, the Southern District prosecutors say that was done at the direction of trump. And the next page, page 12, Quote The Agreement Principal purpose to suppress this womens story. Prevent it from influencing the election. They are taking away the trump defense. I was doing it to protect my
private life. No, this was done for the purpose of influencing the election and lastly, page 23, a long description by the prosecutors of just how serious this violation, how it strikes a blow to our democracy. You put all three of these things together, the Southern District federal prosecutors are alleging that the president committed a felony. They are not indicting him. He has any number of defenses available to him, but thats the document they filed and that is the document that i have not seen in my lifetime. You are saying you havent seen it in your lifetime, you are speaking to that language of direction you are saying legally makes donald trump in the eyes of the prosecutors culpable for the Campaign Violation that cohen has admitted to. Corrects. And so is that the end of it. Or anyone watching is going to
say, okay, counselor, that sounds like a big deal, do they do more with that, this is separate than the mueller probe, do they do more than that. So if this were any ordinary individual, prosecutors then would be entitled to bring a case, what they have said here, they are saying we have reasonable grounds to believe this and presumably they have evidence besides Michael Cohens own statement, some Corroborating Evidence to suggest this actually happened. And they could, under those circumstances indict an ordinary person. The Justice Department and two opinions said you might not be able to indict and try a sitting president. There is some dispute about that. There is one question about what can mueller do, what can the Southern District do in terms of can they indict the president. A separate realm of what happens
in terms of impeachment, high crimes and misdemeanor. And before we get there, i want to pause on that piece of your analysis because some of this gets into, as you say uncharted territory. Are you basically telling us tonight, neal, that if donald trump had lost the election, this is the kind of thing that as a citizen he would be indicted for along with Michael Cohen, and it is because he won the election, that there is a kind of reward then, a bonus . Right, exactly. If those three statements that i isolated from the prosecutors memo taken together establish a federal felony and we do have a principle in america that no person is above the law. And the thing that is protecting the president from indictment appears to be not that he is a lawabiding person, there is a lot here to suggest that there is a crime that has been
committed and the only get out of jail card that he seems to be holding is that i am a president , you cant indict me. Go home. What you are suggesting in terms of journalistic rigor and fairness, i want to make sure we explore the other side of this. We are talking about a filing that talks directly to court about the president being an unindicted coconspirator. Making it worse for the president. And on the flip side apart from the constitutional argument of indicting, isnt there a defense to the president that he may have been dealing with someone who was overzealous and did this the wrong way. He didnt direct quoteunquote the criminal intent. To a degree that it became a
crime the president is going to be able to say, going to try to Say Something like, look, I Didnt Intent It for Campaign Finance violations. I intended it to protect my family and my personal life and all i am saying is what the allegations are in the filing today at page 12 when they say the principle purpose of agreement was for Campaign Finance violations, if that is true, it knocks out that defense. And it has to be proven up in a court like any indictment. What we are looking at today is really seriously implicates the president directly in federal felonies. I would ask you how the president might understand this, but i will go ahead and share and spoiler alert, it is not much. But he is posting tonight, totally clears the president , thank you. Im not sure he has read the
filing. If you read the three pages of the filing and add them up, it is a damning document and i can assure you no one i know would want to be cleared in this way. I got to tell control room, someone is holding down the button, so i am not hearing neal. Say Something Else or give some analysis so they can fix my audio. Now i hear you. Great. The president , like many people willfully reading things that he is seeing, oh, you know, this isnt a big deal, i am cleared. The words are the words, and the words are damning right now. And if i am the president to want, i am besides myself and frankly frightened. We know the president has capacity for selfdelusion but this one is a hard one. Those words are Black And White. While i have you, is william barr appointed to be the new Attorney General taken over for whitaker, what is your view of that appointment . Well, first of all, it is a relief we have right now a fake Attorney General, someone i dont believe is constitutionally empowered to do the job. Anyone the president nominates is a step up from right now. Barr is a qualified person who served as a great Attorney General a while ago, two decades ago. What are his views now and he has taken his views some have found troubling. And calling for the president s targets to be investigated in the light. We will have to see and figure
out whether or not he has changed. People change in two decades. And it is his Current Record now that we have got to evaluate. And i think on the Special Counsel stuff, i can tell you back in 1999 when we were drafting the regulations he saw eye to eye which is the way we saw it, the independent counsel act. And that the Special Counsel regulations struck the right balance because they allowed for an independent prosecutor and they went and testified on the hill and celebrated that idea of an independent prosecutor sometimes when you have a politically sensitive investigation. If his old views are still his views today, that is a heartening step. So you know, may judgment is kind of reserved at this point
because i want to see what he said today. But certainly his old views were good. Interesting coming from you and particularly at a time where there is a rush with some reason to criticize this president. You are looking at the depth of this individual, his record on these issues. Neal, i want you to stay with our rolling coverage as well, there are key parts of the cohen filing that go into not only how the trump tower was being developed but also why it was of such import. Mueller writing new tonight, it was a lucrative business opportunity. And saying cohen was approached to set up a meeting between individual one, thats trump, and yes, vladimir putin. A phenomenal impact. And there was no bigger warranty in any project and the consent of yes, that would be putin. Now here is cohen talking about a trump putin meeting. Theres a better than likely chance trump may even meet with putin. People want to meet donald trump. Yes, they do. Bringing in u. S. Ambassador fall. Ambassador mcfall, this is a legal document but also in many ways a peak inek into the probe. Do they check out . And what is your wide reaction
on what we are learning . We are learning that Michael Cohen wanted to get rich after the election. Getting guidance about how to do that. And thats why he had this theory that he needed to secure this meeting with putin. If you are trying to secure a Big Business Deal in russia, it is always good to have President Putin as your partner. And they didnt think they were going to win the election when all of these contacts were happening. And Michael Cohen was looking to cash in with the president to do this deal in russia. Thats a great point. You have a sense of how normal government and officials run. This was a man who according to
the evidence we have didnt think donald trump was likely to win the campaign although he took all sorts of acts on trumps behalf and didnt think he would end up in jail and both these things are on the table. How does that contrast to say the way it is supposed to be done when people that might be in your position or are advising president s and campaigns get into this murky world of becoming targets or of interest to foreign officials . Well, you know, i worked on obamas campaign and to the best of my knowledge, nobody was trying to do Business Deals with foreign governments. Lets be clear also, we need to learn more, but it sounds like the candidate himself was also
involved in this and in these deliberations. That would be consistent with other kinds of of negotiations and conversations he had. And number three, you talked about it before the same interlocutories that they have, the moscow projects are the same people arranging the meetings to help trump win allegedly. It is the same group of russians that they are dealing with. Ken dilanian, your view . Whereas the Southern District
was not satisfied, cohen cooperated with these documents. I dont think we should lose sight of that. My colleague flagged one part of this. The document says he cooperated with contacts within and around the white house in 2017 and this year. And thats the first mention of the Mueller Investigation reaching into the white house. This document makes clear that donald trump lied. And i dont use that term lightly, when he said in his first News Conference as president that he had no dealings with russia. This document says that in december 2015, trump conferred with Michael Cohen about reaching out to the russian government and it seems to be related to the Trump Tower Project, it seems to be the same individual who offered the
political synergy on a government level. It sure looks like Michael Cohen was a target of recruitment here by the russians, cohen also talked about the circumstances about why i lied to congress. The implication was it wasnt just Michael Cohens decision to tell these lies and there is more to come. Other people may have been involved in these things. Neal, i am curious what you think about this odd use of the word synergy, those of us in normal life think of that as a meaningless word that is thrown out in corporation meetings. I am not aware of it as a legal
signifier. It seems like bob mueller went out of his way to refer to an alliance, a synergy without using the word collusion. Do you read it that way or differently. I think it is clear. I think there is something po t important going on here. And three things that i would look to. Number one, the trump tower meeting. Today it was reported that at least former mayor giuliani is saying that they believe, mueller believes that manafort lied about trumps knowledge and trump actually had knowledge of that meeting before it took place. Trumps son was contacted by the russians and you know said if this information is what you say it is, i love it, and so on and the claim by some has been that
trump has said i never knew anything about this and so on. We dont know what he told mueller in his statement. The second thing to think about is evidently there was going to be a 50 million for putin paid for by trump and so on which would be a violation of the foreign corrupt practices act. And number three, as ambassador mcfaul saying, why is everyone lying about this. And then they say it is no big deal, just russian business. And these are Campaign Officials and trumps personal lawyer dealing with the russians and then lying about it. Not just ordinary russians but the kremlin itself. The American Public should have known that before the election and this was hidden from them. And that goes against the
american tissue here. Basically campaign crimes. And no one could replay that. Some of the incriminating information about Donald Trumps lifestyle, and then in the manafort filing, which we are just digesting. And some of it i will hold up. Some of the hottest stuff is clearly redacted. What is not redacted for your analysis is that there is basically the idea that there is an obstruction of conspiracy, muellers term. That manafort lied about more than one thing. He provided information about a different doj investigation. Saying here is a trump witness that is going to help us with Something Else and manafort changed his story about that, and finally what is not redacted
is mueller saying that manafort initially claimed he didnt have any type of communication with anyone in the trump administration. That is contradicted about Rudy Giuliani and others. And i am reading from the new filing, a text exchanged in this year manafort authorized a person to speak on manaforts behalf. Why is it in the filing. Why is it redacted. I dont want to speculate on that yet. So i am going to punt on that one, maybe ken or others have views. This is what we do around here. No, im kidding. I appreciate your precision. Ken, and john flanery. Saying, john Paul Manafort lied to us. The plot continues. You said it for me. I would say ditto. The thing about the obstruction here is so strong, all the lies and everything we talk about, what are they . Consciousness of guilt. Even when we pretend to cooperate, we lie and then we run away. It is, the fox is going to ground. And mueller is as close as he can be to ramming speed. I dont know that we are going to have a seasonal present, but he looks ready to me. And i think a lot of people are going to be unhappy and the question is it going to be a family plan, are we going to start with the trump family and the moneys they have. Or look at the old began,
manafort again and his former partner, stone. The possibilities seem reasonable. I thought from the beginning this is the third act in a three part act. One, equipment we put into place, two, this is how we dispense it, and three, these are the americans who betrayed their country, and these guys could fulfill their greedy inclinations. A lot of it goes to what is mentioned tonight, why are you lying, manafort saying he has no contact with anyone in the administration than anything. You can be a defendant and you can talk to a friend who is in government about baseball or about policy even if that is your passion. And it wont go anywhere near what your lawyers are telling you what to talk about. And mueller busts him and saying no, you were doing it in
writing, the arrogance, a text message in may to the administration. It says in this filing, Unredacted Manafort also said he had been in communication with a quote Senior Administration official through february of 2018, and a review of documents demonstrates similar contacts with quote, administrative officials. Who are they . Did they lie . This is the trojan horse approach. He is in a corner. He makes a false agreement and a plea figuring at the end of this trail, if he does it right, he will get a pardon from a questionable source, mr. One, mr. Trump, and so what he does is he cooperates, he lies when he can, and he conveys the information back to the trump people so they can prepare a defense and attack on the investigation. Pure obstruction. Now i cant remember seeing a
trojan horse strategy like this, certainly at a visible place, but the reason we are able to get at these guys ask because they are not that good at it. They are terrible liars. They talk public all the time. They have strategies that kids on the street wouldnt have. And luckily because of it, the republican may be saved. Not to make light of t but you only have to get through the first through episodes of season one of the wire to know not to send text messages. There is another piece not only for lies but for doing the opposite of what he has claimed that he was cooperating. In the new filing we have, prosecutors say he wasnt cooperating enough and thus they
represent that he should gelt substantial prison time. And they detail that, the willful tax evasions, false statements to a bank, and of course false statements to congress. Rebuking cohen for what they call a criminal mindset, that he is above the laws of the united states. Weve got all our experts back for this. And i want to go to maya who has basically worked in that office. This looks to a lot of people like a stronger rebuke. And they go out of their way to say it wasnt full cooperation. I think it is an understandable rebuke. This is an attorney, this is someone who took an oath when he passed his Bar Agreement saying he was going to uphold the law
and uphold highest levels of ethics as someone charged with the law. Now, what he also did was walked in as we have said, you know, he didnt walk in and cooperated. Is he pled guilty and then started trying to cut a deal for himself. There was some indication in some news report that suggested that he was in fact holding out for a pardon and felt like he was getting thrown under the bus. So maybe in his best interest to paint a picture for himself. Look, we dont like people who violate the law, particular when they do it over the course of years s and then come in and try to play us. They make a reference essentially to that argument that somehow he hasnt done anything as bad as some others. And you know, and then finally, finally, they are making quite
clear while he has cooperated, it does think he has done it in a way that was really about his best interest. Let me say one other thing why it was in his best interest, the District Attorney of manhattan and the Attorney General are investigating what we are calling campaign. So what that is really saying, is you are not going to get a pardon if they find reason to indict you in this, at the level of the city or at the level of the state. Some have avoided jail time maybe Michael Cohen should get that light a sentence, a slap on the wrist. And as maya alludes to, that was rejected in this filing today starting with the fact that they layout this was not a choice of full cooperation, and he was dragged to if by his decreasing outlook of what he could get way with. I agree with maya. And i would add one thing to what she said. Prosecutors went out of their way to say this Campaign Violation was really severe. They didnt have to use all the soaring language they had to use. It is powerful language and to me, it suggests that they are
real really steeling themselves. Two people involved, Michael Cohen and donald trump are very, very serious and so, i think there is a second piece on the chess board that is going on when you look at that filing today, it is not a filing by mueller, it is a filing of prosecutors in the Southern District of new york that is significant. And i want to bring in Jennifer Rubin and also go to a broader point. Jennifer is a Washington Post columnist and a conservative and a critic of donald trump. I dont want to wax too poetic here, but i wonder if we could begin by noting, jennifer, this is a president who has taken extraordinary measures identified by his own lawyers, some of them as potentially impeachable to try to shut down and undermine the doj and prosecutors and rule of law. I wonder if having gone through a lot of the details tonight, its fitting to turn to you and
look at what is working. Career prosecutors doing their job, Career Prosecutors identifying individual 1 for directing this, because thats what the facts show. Apparently theyre not afraid of what that means or that donald trump will get in there. They dont have the same buffers that the Mueller Prosecution Team does. And that i should note is the Southern District of new york where donald trump famously invited then u. S. Attorney Preet Bharara to trump tower for the very rare and unusual step of having a meeting with the person who is the prosecutor for his jurisdiction, trying to cultivate him, when it didnt work out, firing him. Preet bharara has gone on to detail all of that. Gosh, it looks pretty different now that we know that that is the office that was going to go forward and give a fouryear recommended Jail Sentence to trumps then lawyer cohen and say that trump directed it, jennifer. Right. I think there are about four or five key reassuring things that we can draw from the events over the last few hours. The first is that facts matter,
and the facts in this case do not turn on the credibility of a single individual, whether its cohen, whether its manafort. Obviously, the Special Prosecutor has a wealth of information. The Southern District has a wealth of information, documentary, other witnesses, emails, texts. And so facts do matter. Weve gotten so use to saying well, nothing matters because trump makes stuff up. That doesnt work in court because finally we have the facts that are presented to a court. A judge is going to rule on sentencing. This is the real show. So facts do matter. Secondly, you have a slight difference of opinion here, which shows how independent that Southern District of new york is. Remember, the Southern District of new york is only involved with cohen on the issue of the Campaign Finance issues. Mueller with everything else. He has perhaps been more helpful with mueller, which is why mueller is willing to be more lenient, but he really hasnt given enough or in the opinion
of the Southern District enough to justify a significant reduction in penalty. And so you see these two branches of the Justice Department, which are all under the executive branch, taking slightly different positions. Thats not bad. Thats reassuring. Thats saying people are exercising their independent judgment based upon the specific case before them, which is different, and based upon the facts before them, which is different. So that should be reassuring, that all this bullying of the Justice Department has really amounted to nothing because people are doing their job and proceeding. I think the third point we should have is that it is going to be impossible i think at this point to either withhold a final report if we ever have a final report and or fire mueller, because what he is doing and what the Southern District is doing are now creating a parallel report, if you will, in the Public Domain through the courts, through these filings. So we are getting to know in
realtime the extent of that information. You cant put the genie back in the bottle. You cant put the Toothpaste Back in the tube once thats out there. So in some ways theyve created some protection for themselves. And i think the final thing we should keep in mind is knees people who have been enabling trump, whether it is Rudy Giuliani, whether its people in the white house who think its fine to lie for this guy, its fine to lie to the public, you can do whatever you want because your only client, your only responsibility is to trump, those people are in a heck of a lot of trouble, because those people may now be involved in action which constitute obstruction of justice. The Fraud Exception will make it impossible for lawyers to hide behind the Attorney Client privilege. And this should be a warning to people who work in government and to lawyers that you must conduct yourself within the confines of the law. Right. That you have ethical and legal obligations. Exactly. I want to do a Lightning Round with my large mueller
friday Brady Bunch Panel here. Yes or no, Lightning Round, yes or no, do the events and filings of today increase the legal exposure of individual 1, donald trump . Yes or no. John . Absolutely, yes. Nancy . Absolutely, yes. Maya . Oh, yeah. Neal katyal . 100 . Jennifer . Oh, yes. Ken dilanian . The answer is yes because this has been the most consequential day yet of the Mueller Investigation. That is quite a Statement Given how many days there have been. I want to give a special thanks to our entire panel and the legal analysis here. And if you are joining us right now, youve been watching The Beat With Ari Melber on a day when bob mueller spoke through speaking indictments and the Southern District of new york spoke. And what we heard were two different stories that intersect with Criminal Activity confessed
as well as alleged in the case of company hen confessed and alleged with manafort and obstruction by people tied to the president of the united states. Individual 1, donald trump, identified for the first time for directing a campaignrelated felony, a big day indeed. Thank you for watching our coverage. You can always check out the beat