basically under pain of perjury. our lawyers can talk about the exact language but it is a criminal offense to lie, whether you re the president or anyone else to special counsel, so what was his answer to the question about business dealings with moscow, what was his answer presumably and we re trying to get to the bottom of this, specifically about conversations he had with michael cohen? because its hard to imagine robert mueller not asking that specific question of the president knowing what he knows and having the conversations for months that he s been having with michael cohen that we now know about. that s first and foremost. another thing that hasn t been discussed but it is all related to this in this time period, the summer of 2016, is another question that we know that the special counsel wanted the president to answer and that is
president of the united states you set a standard for the world that you don t lie to the press. we don t know that s why robert mueller s investigation is so important. we will ultimately know all of the facts because he seems to have more of the facts and more people plead guilty and are found guilty at the end of the day, but what we do know is there are far more tentacles into russia than had previously been disclosed. and so one has a legitimate question as to whether, number one, he does have economic interests there that are affecting his judgment, whether oligarchs have invested in his business and lastly, does all of this affect the way in which he responds to russia which seems to be incredibly benign as a time in which putin is violating the international order left and right and putin only understands strength and so long as he continues to do what he s done for example, in ukraine in
it was material fact that is relevant to what the committee was investigating at that time. can i throw one other thing in there? donald trump then and now operates how he communicates, he s not an emailer. he s not a texter. and so the other open question that we just got a little piece of is what the evidence that robert mueller and his team have that back up what michael cohen is saying. that makes them comfortable. that michael cohen is telling the truth when he says i had these conversations with donald trump. we don t noel tknow the answer that. he did have tapes. was some of that on tapes? there are some tapes in that regard. gloria, one thing that the president said as he was leaving and i want to make sure i get it correct. he says that michael cohen is weak, unlike some of the other
gave to the public and you assume he said the same thing in his sworn statement which is i knew nothing about it. uh-hum. you immediately go as a human being if there s nothing to be worried about, why aren t you telling the truth about it? what his lawyers are thinking about right now, we know that from some of his other answers, for example, they built in that legal wiggle room of to the best of my recollection, this is what i know. could that save him here? it depends on how he answered the question. he could use some kind of legalese like that, but, you know, i think that at the end of the day what s going to matter is the weight of the evidence that mueller has collected and i think what elie is saying that mueller has the goods, he has the goods to back up what he s putting on paper and everybody who s testified in front of congress, dana mentioned there are other people that testified, they should be worried. mueller would be willing to come after them.
house. the president didn t miss a single opportunity before heading out of town to tell reporters, essentially, in his view there s nothing to see here. reporter: that s right, kate. he came outen prompted before any reporter had even shouted a question at him and began addressing the situation with michael cohen painting him as a liar, saying he s just trying to get a reduced prison sentence and saying that the only reason he hired him was because he did him a favor a very long time ago. he was convicted of various things unrelated to us. he was given a fairly long jail sentence and he s a weak person and by being weak, unlike other people that you watch, he s a weak person and what he s trying to to is get a reduced sentence. so he s lying about a project that everybody knew about. reporter: so, kate, the president was clearly irritated but you could tell he was trying to downplay the discussions about trump tower and moscow and