switch off the giant speakers a ball cost of music news and propaganda to the north part of a change of tone ahead of friday's historic summit between the two groups. i'm filled welcome to the program but as duchess of cambridge gave birth to a baby boy on monday morning it's the kate's third child with husband prince william and just moments ago admirers of the roles family were treated to what they'd all been eagerly awaiting kate's. baby did outside the profit of some areas hospital in the queen's six great grandchild this fits in line to the throne prince charles his father and siblings george and shopped new goals name has not yet been released. to london that. when we join the correspondent to
better get mass on the phone welcome back it's how people reacting to this news. well of course when i was here at the hospital and people have said it's a boy it was really happy oh cases and there was an outcry just a test of joy and it's a really positive news i think that a lot of people have been nothing waiting for of course there's always a loss of where wishes anything royal attracts many people that obviously re facebook or the royal family and some people have gathered and have waited outside the hospital for four days or some i think even weeks and then of course all the media outside the hospital it's quite a scene. and what news on a name yes is philip in the mix. and i don't think it's very high up from what i seen it's also is the frontrunner and then the second one least
at ladbrokes one of the main bookmakers is james and that would seem to you kate the duchess of cambridge is the family because james is her brother bob also another albert and frederick is quite far down the list as i know all these are quite traditional english names baggett mass in london sorry for interrupting the year that we thank you. media's time mr sajjan has resigned after more than a week of on to government protests which today which joined by groups of soldiers so sheehan was previously the country's president but sought to retain control by becoming prime minister and extending the roles powers a move the brought some unions on to the streets.
economic turmoil. and there's been disquiet about zante and close ties to russian president vladimir putin. back on the streets of yera van and it's the main opposition leader nicole passion ian who's received a hero's welcome armenians are hoping it's the start of a new era. for independent research. s.f. area welcome to how are people reacting to this news. well you see even as we speak there is a massive rally going on in the public square. following the announcement there was an outburst of jubilation people down thing on the street are stopping their horns music playing loudly i heard fireworks even though with broad daylight this is
a historic day and i mean you know. who will replace him who will replace the prime minister. well it's not clear at the moment what exactly will happen next but there need to be both a legal and a political process so with the new constitution there has the prime minister has resigned but the party is still in power in parliament but the opposition leader has called for a process with a transitional government that will receive a vote of no confidence. in a new elections which will be free and fair soledad that process has remained to be seen. bring us up to date on the back ground into this why did people love the prime minister to go after such political figures in armenia and from issues of credibility and legitimacy say sarkis not themselves have been
people but for his part in the dramatic shootout that led to his arrest currently being held in a french prison he's still awaiting trial on charges in connection with paris. at belgium's palace of justice to slum received the maximum twenty year jail sentence for his role in the police shootout just before his arrest in brussels two years ago at a complex was handed the same sentence but neither of them were present for the verdict the lawyer representing the police praised the judge's decision. of course to all of our demands have been met i think we can be satisfied he said to say. but after slums lawyer said he still had some doubts. i'm not convinced of anything in this verdict but i review it with my client it's a verdict so i respect it but i think there are things that need to be said it remains to be seen of disallowing wishes to appeal and if you appeals that will decide the next steps. for today's
verdict was just the first step in what could be years of proceedings against up to slam the twenty eight year old french citizen is believed to be the only surviving suspect in the paris terror attacks that left one hundred thirty people dead in nov twenty fifth dean after four months on the run of the slum was arrested in brussels in march twenty sixth in following the shootout with police for which he's been sentenced today i his role in planning and executing the paris attacks is not yet clear it's only at the much bigger trial set to take place in france isolated eight that prosecutors will judge whether abd islam was one of the masterminds or just a low level follower. has been following the case and sent us this update from outside the courthouse in brussels. this conviction and twenty year prison sentence for attempted terrorist murder won't have much of an impact on solid disarms life
in the near term if ever because of course he's facing much more serious charges related to the paris attacks of november twenty fifth teen where one hundred twenty nine people were killed but what this trial has done is given us more insight into who is and what he believes because he had an outburst here on the first day of the trial in which he said that he believes muslims are always discriminated against that he doesn't even recognize the mandate of the court and he said he put it he put his faith in all his hands not the judges and so while the defense was trying to portray him as too stupid to have taken part in a complicated terror plots like the ones in paris and brussels he proved himself to be both articulate and angry so we'll see if that plays any role in his defense's strategy heading into the paris trial. south korea switched off the giant loudspeakers used to broadcast propaganda across its border with the north seoul says it is a gesture of goodwill ahead of friday summit between the two countries the
broadcasts usually include pop music news and calls to north korean soldiers to defect to the. these south korean weapons can reach several kilometers into north korean territory. high decibel propaganda speakers line the demilitarized zone between the two countries blasting the isolated north with pop music and news broadcasts. who are. but now they are switched off as the two sides prepare to meet for the first time in over a decade the south korean government aims to send a strong message through silence you wanted to go we hope this decision will lead both koreas to stop mutual criticism and propaganda against each other and also contribute to creating peace and a new beginning. both sides use propaganda speakers and while the north has not said it will silence its own recently announced a halt to nuclear missile testing. divided for seventy years the two koreas marched
that's taking the easy answer son. i. think my father would be angry sometimes i think the intent. starts joining. hello and welcome to focus on europe i'm michel henery good to have you with us turkey's citizens head to the polls to determine the fate of their country's future for months now many have said that the reelection of president great czech tayyip erdogan is a foregone conclusion and no matter who wins the vote brings in major constitutional change one that would transform the next presidency into one with unprecedented
executive powers richard tayyip erdogan has ruled turkey since two thousand and three that means an entire generation has grown up with only him in power and with half of the population under thirty the country young people will be the ones who dictate the outcome of the vote despite recent polls suggesting most would likely vote in line with their parents our reporter met with two of them a young woman who passionately longs for change and a young man who is one of the current governments biggest supporters. when the ferry docks at the pier in iskandar and the passengers disembark i mean saudi olo is there waiting he's complaining here in istanbul for the a.k.p. president their demands justice and development party. the best game in his twenty eight and studied sports management he's admired the president for as long as he
can remember. in the last one with. her some say that our president is tired but it's not true you're aware he has so much energy or emergency there to young people and that's are very motivating you was here and he isn't tired young folks shouldn't be either. gets married you have controlled us going it's always oh you don't love what you do you don't get tired we love this country this nation all fight for it or you can resolve it you'll be going to what was it that we will be saying no to this one man regime on june twenty fourth when you're still behind in the neighboring district of. cullen there is drumming up support for the pro kurdish people's democratic party. its presidential candidates . has been in custody for nineteen months on terrorism related charges xanga dish it's time for a change people are being detained without reason and nobody asks why this is
happening to send the money up to this photo of the nineteen year old john sue trained as a legal assistant like many young people in turkey she come from member a time when alderaan wasn't turkey's leader but unlike a k.p. campaigners she's had enough of him in a thread he invests in rather than in education he behaves like a racist a warmonger or a nationalist he doesn't care about the people that's why we say it's enough to add one he and his people say we build roads and bridges for you but in fact so many people don't have her. or anything to eat. turkey is the youthful country roughly fifty percent of those alledged will to vote are under thirty an entire generation that's grown up with the address and the religious conservatism of his justice and development party. fashion design everything has an expiry date an error one is already out of date done done talked on titan dish
but they've changed their minds. they voted to begin with or wanted turkey a lot of good but things have taken a turn for the worse it's time for a change in new blood. still many in the turkish community are hostile to exiled turks such as shuffle should live. together with some two thousand other academics he signed a petition calling for peace in turkey's kurdish regions he could now face trial in turkey for supporting terrorism. has been welcomed by germans who have a lot to do with the turkish community. does usually see people in rich berlin where there are artists among them activists academics. i know some of them from the days of the guese park protests. hosted it's very nice for us to have them here and but i would say it's a very difficult situation for them fish like. joshua and his german wife
little face that turkey will be getting a new government any time soon. as turkey transitions to a presidential system experts say the country is nearing an economic crisis not only is tourism a major source of income down but their currency is losing value and investors are losing confidence and any successor would also have a tough job on their hands uniting the fronts for many people the term suburb evokes images of medicare vons childline streets and a sense of tranquility and frats however the bone you suggest neglected high rises torched cars and lighting young people residents many of whom are working class immigrants feel stigmatized by society and forgotten by the government our reporter metal man who grew up there and is now determined to transform not just the general
perception of paris the suburbs but the outlook for its young people. training is just getting under way at the deadly boxing club and sixteen year old at leo is warming up he trains every day together with his three siblings. and i e says proud that she can take heart she especially loves her pink boxing gloves. at leon who will finish high school next year takes his education seriously but boxing here in luck on the outskirts of paris is his life. off a lot of my big brother started boxing and i went along with him so he took me under his wing and i've been boxing for five years now. looks at the brokenness uncle. the brothers trained together for three hours a day every day the atmosphere is respectful and caring though it might look
otherwise. this boxing club is one of the best known in the band use of paris lack of nerve is no hotbed of crime but it's hardly a borzois suburb although boxing coach mohammad doesn't pull his punches either. he works in a warehouse but volunteers his time to train the kids i know i don't doubt it everyone is welcome girls as well as boys provided they abide by the rules discipline politeness and respect to our prerequisites. for. moxon allows you to restructure to be more disciplined to learn how to deal with others and share those are values we teach here at the boxing club that's very important. values that they might not learn at all so we'll focus on convict. but here they certainly do. they're taking
a weekend excursion to the stadium just north of paris kids come from all the suburbs of the french capital they're not here for a soccer game but for a mad. of a different kind of a dictation competition it's in french and it's voluntary. mohammed is here with his entire group of young boxers from lack of it's a matter of honor. secrets of our pop off the top of what happens here is very important it shows that things are not how they're often portrayed in the media they say people from the banu are just good for nothings who don't succeed at anything that's not true because we're not second class citizens we have a head on our shoulders in addition to legs and hammers. that's why mohammed registered all his boxers for the dictation it gets you going for the new club is like a family which is why we all came together and we want to talk i really want to when there was a guy. who was at leon gets down to work along with the
other one thousand four hundred seventy three participants of well heeled and this is the man who dreamed up the idea of the big dictation because she did some turkey grew up in the manual himself so he boxed at the same club atlanta now does and had problems at school today some talk he is a well known writer going to an adult but they wants to pass on his passion for the french language want to shout you. lose i want to motivate these young people thank you. see i want them to say i was in the dictation of that was cool because of it maybe it will awaken something in them i desire to do something new to pursue a new direction given for me that would be a good start once i did. in forty minutes it's all over so how it helps to hand out the gifts for the children not watchable so much support for me it's not about
winning the news it was just fun it's easy you. know grades are awarded but a winner is named volunteers correct every single dictation and in the end the winners are announced to great applause. the young boxers from lack of nerve aren't among them and maybe a little disappointed but knowing they gave it their best shot they all go home happy. ever since the conservative law and justice party came to power in poland it's been tightening its grip on the country's media insulting the president or the country may now result in a jail sentence and such laws are now being used to crack down on the cultural sector too like comedy was satire is considered a clever way to be critical of society especially the government and poland it
seems the punch line can be a prosecution. polish satirical puppets here cloudier your hero with her very own miniature version of you know it's love kaczynski the chairman of the country's ruling law and justice party piece. them at the time supposing it's got to them said i'll be peace i take issue with what the ruling party is doing and how it's ruining my country. and satire is ideal for lampooning just graceful actions. it's very effective when you're telling it like utilities so funny out of a thirty devoid of words it on dr raj you his her videos online here she plays a doctor who diagnosis kaczynski with suffering from national idiocy him and ten year old don't get a woman has a ten year in an ironic commentary about poland state affiliated t.v. channel t.v. she used the station's logo now she's being accused of copyright infringement and i
have the u.p.s.'s that the public prosecutor is investigating my case for political reasons for this i can't believe i could end up in jail because this is an example of everything that's wrong the opponent today. and tony has been producing satirical sketches since the one nine hundred seventy s. now he also pens newspaper articles lampooning polish politics. just shutting down a few ideas here i have our political leaders in mind who are absolutely adore. and one article criticized polish lawmakers for cozying up to religious figures like when they attended an event by catholic radio station maria. to players to the bottoms of us called poland stupid and narrow minded now he's accused of disparaging the polish state. my article was only
a page but the police report about my article was a full thirty five pages just it must have been written by somebody especially brainy. you such expert this. spock is charged with defaming the nation police have questioned him his trial could begin soon. as there are still is a lot of this is a horrible accusation to make against someone in a free country where the constitution guarantees press freedom so a satirist a journalist is entitled to criticize the government that's all i'm doing. in a statement the prosecutor merely confirms spock is being investigated and that he could face up to three years in jail in accordance to section one thirty three of poland's penal code poland satire show the presidency here is hugely popular here the german chancellor is visiting kaczynski to get his endorsement of european council president donald tusk why don't you support donald running for a second term i mean your polish he's punished i don't understand that.
you assume you don't understand just what kind of an interpreter are you. it's something sticky. and ends up. so far poland's authorities have not taken action against the show it's an issue even so its creator expresses solidarity with his colleague and tony spock in a slightly satirical manner of course. if our colleague is sentenced i'll be the first to go to court to protest and free and that is that with the book we will dig a tunnel to his prison or our modern attack on the broad daylight or to meet them. at that we haven't been within the. puppets here cloudy a hero has been questioned by the police as well she could face a two year jail sentence and then she receives endless sexist hate mail just for critiquing polish politicians. themselves yesterday i thought i was part of the happy generations of that for the first time in two hundred years can enjoy life in
a free country it gives me goosebumps just talking about this because i love the free and open conant a place cough i looked in law and justice party has unleashed opponents demons sort of it's all about us political thinkers have them on their well germany celebrated twentieth century satirist kurt to hold ski famously proclaimed that satire should be allowed to target anyone and anything these days some in poland seem to disagree . whether cloudy or anthony's cases ever which trial is uncertain but even without a verdict the threat of punishment has already proven effective with many performers no longer commenting on politics and that's no laughing matter a trip to rome would not be complete without a visit to the trevi fountain the eighteenth century landmark was made famous by films such as three coins in
a fountain and the dolce vita but the countless numbers of people who make a wish after tossing in a coin probably don't realize that they're not merely making a romantic gesture but in fact helping the needy. sand but if you throw a coin into the trevi fountain you will return to room but you can wish for other things as well you just have to stand with your back to the fountain and toss the coin with your right hand so what are people wishing for the border door here goes his have beautiful city it got be that interview stage so i hope my interview we are to be passed. health and happiness for my family. lots of wishes means knots of coins three times a week the municipality sends a team around to collect the cash they vacuum eats into a big pot the pickings are rich up to eight thousand euros per connection in the
summer season when the tourists are out in force. we explain to people that the koreans will go to those less fortunate to also have dreams and hopes in their hearts and would also a tosser corner near if they could but i can't afford to. see what i mean. the cash is taken to a catholic charity with. only and his team clean the coins sort them and remove all kinds of other objects and trinkets. some coins come wrapped in a piece of paper with a message written on it. but shows over this huge sometimes very heartfelt wishes or even prayers usually written by foreign visitors where that sort of thing appears to be common. we still felt. last year the coins are these up to one million four hundred thousand euros. there's still much here before
they take into the bank ultimately the money goes to charities that are within one of the most of the money goes to help families in need of the city's social services department decides who gets. to be to try to do the money back at the trevi fountain the. goings keep on flying and suddenly she is not even fulfilled on the spot but whether they are fulfilled or damaged at least the coins go to a good calling so. if you ever get a chance to go perhaps throw in a coin or two your wish might not come true but at least you'll be helping someone that's all for today if you would like to find out more about any of today's stories visit our facebook page d.w. stories or better yet send me a tweet do join us next week for more personal stories from all over europe until then good bye for me and the whole team.
to. cut. a move. into the conflict zone two suggestions afghanistan is fighting on many different fronts these days not just with the militants but also against human rights abuses condom aasif corruption my guest this week here in london is abdullah abdullah peace country's chief executive why are you so so much disunity in what is supposed to be a unity government conflict so for thirty minutes most of the for.
most of. you accidentally shattered some of. the traumas of. time in the field. how can you get out. with him because. oh a serious. shift this week on the w. . we make up obama we watch as a caucus. legislators we are the civil service or. the want to shape the continent's future. to be part of enjoying african youngsters as they share their stories their dreams and their challenges. to seventy seven percent. platform for africa charge.
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howard fineman, an nbc news analyst who spent his tuesday in judge ellis' courtroom marveling at paul manafort's wardrobe. anyway, mimi, let me start with you. define obstruction of justice and is it something that has to be done in secret for it to be a crime? >> sure, chuck. i want to answer the second part first. it does not have to be done in secret. the definition of obstruction of justice, there are different prongs of it, depending on whether you're trying to interfere with witnesses or tamper with evidence. it's basically trying to impede an investigation corruptly, with corrupt intent, which simply could mean you're trying to stop an investigation because you don't like that that investigation is zeroing in on you or your close friends, so it can't be -- it has to be for a bad purpose and those would be bad purposes. and that's why this tweet right now looks so incriminating because what's happening -- >> you believe it's very
incriminating? you have said you thought this was obstruction in plain sight? >> i would say it's a good piece of evidence of obstruction in plain sight. and here's why the plain sight part doesn't matter. take what he wrote in the tweet, put it in a text to a close confidant and assume -- let's pretend the government found that text and read it. would it look like evidence of obstruction? i think here what we're saying, as you said, i mean you said it perfectly. if he called sessions into his office and told him to fire him or if he wrote what he thought was a secret e-mail to sessions saying you should end this investigation, that would look really bad. and should versus must? that's what giuliani -- that's what this is going to come down to? that shows the weakness of where their argument is. >> let me play sarah sanders' response here for the panel. she too -- they clearly -- they clearly colluded on the idea that twir tter is now an opinio page for the president. take a listen.
you know, going back months seem to be trying to almost pressure certain witnesses. you know, there were tweets that he didn't want people to sort of -- it seemed like he was trying to get people to not be cooperative with the special counsel. now this seems more about trying to get it to end. and, you know, the idea that he can just end it any time, yes, i guess that's true. but even trump knows that that would cause quite a political storm and he's trying to get somebody else to do is dirty work for him. that's the way i look at it. >> i was just going to say, mimi, could you actually say the president, as leader of his political movement, is sending a signal to all his supporters, hey, harass jeff sessions. harass jeff sessions. he has the power here to stop this investigation. >> exactly. >> is that evidence of obstruction, if he's trying to rally political supporters to essentially harass jeff sessions
to do this or get matt gates or mark meadows from the house to continue on this path. could you make that an obstruction case? >> yes. and again, this is not standing alone, right? it's going to be a piece of evidence together with many other tweets, many other statements and the actual acts that he did. remember what just is starting to come out now, that when he fired comey, it sounds like his close associates have told mueller that he knew flynn was under investigation, something he has denied. that could be a very strong part of an obstruction case. so you don't have to look at each act individually. a prosecutor would look at them altogether. >> well, jeff sessions spoke today. here's -- it seems to us he was sort of responding to the president's tweet. take a listen, susan. >> the day i was sworn in as attorney general, the president, president trump, sent me a clear order. he can send out orders pretty
does that goal really amount to because mueller's findings will be mueller's findings. so you can jump up and down, set your hair on fire and scream how tainted it is. facts are a terrible, difficult thing to get around sometimes. and that's what this president is trying to buffer himself against, the facts. the fact that he had so many of his comrades in arm already linked into this spider web that's being weaved by mueller, and this is the same crew trying to define collusion, all these things, lost their minds when bill clinton tried to redefine the word "is." so it's not believable. it's clearly political theater to say, hey, mr. president, we're with you, but mueller at the end of the day holds every card in this thing. >> mimi, i want you to assess if you think al capone or paul manafort is getting mistreated worse by the federal government. this is the president's tweet today.
looking back on history, who was treated worse, alfonse capone, legendary mob boss, killer and public enemy number one or paul manafort, political operative and reagan/dole darling, now serving solitary confinement, although convicted of nothing. where is the russian collusion? the president has gone back and forth on whether to be nice to manafort or distance himself from manafort. today it was be nice to him. he fears a lot about this trial. what we're not 100% sure of yet. >> right. what he fears is probably not going to come out in this trial because ironically, even though the president keeps talking about manafort, the government is prohibited from talking about any links to russian collusion with manafort, even though they very well may know them that they exist but they're not allowed to talk about them in this trial. for the president to say where's the collusion is just a joke. and the al capone reference is
very interesting because of course he was taken down by tax fraud acti fraud, even though nathat was n the only crime that he committed. that was what they got him on and that may be the case here. >> i don't know if the president wants to go down the tax return trail. >> i've known and covered manafort longer than i actually want to admit, but probably more than 30 years. and i looked at him very closely in the courtroom yesterday. he's 69. he's trying to put on a very strong and brave face. he very much participated in the jury selection process. he's a detail guy, which is significant, because his defense is going to argue that he didn't know anything that was going none his own business. i watched him doing that very carefully. and i think if donald trump, even though it's not on television, donald trump's got to be worried that paul
manafort, at this age and station, if he's facing a long jail sentence, and they threw the book at him just in this tax and fraud case, is going to want to -- is going to want to flip. and i think the president is calculating now, number one, whether -- when he can pardon manafort. if. if and. when and if and when he can fire or somehow get mueller off the case. and i think he's looking to see after the rally last night, after the rally last night where he was absorbing all the fan love, whether he's got the power and the timing to do it. >> you're right, i can just picture a guilty plea on monday. pardon tuesday. tweet storm on wednesday. mimi rocah, i'll let you go. much appreciate it. thank you for your expertise. susan, michael and howard are penalized and stuck with me for the rest of the hour. we are only two days into the trial. as you heard, things are already
looking pretty tough for paul manafort. we'll go live to the courthouse in northern virginia for the highlights from today's testimony. ♪ a hotel can make or break a trip. and at expedia, we don't think you should be rushed into booking one. that's why we created expedia's add-on advantage. now after booking your flight, you unlock discounts on select hotels right until the day you leave. ♪ add-on advantage. discounted hotel rates when you add on to your trip. only when you book with expedia.
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and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. new laptop with 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. yes start them off right. with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. save $200 on this dell laptop at office depot officemax. welcome back. it's day two of the trial of president trump's former campaign chairman, paul manafort. so with everything that's going on, let's not lose sight of this fact. the man who ran the president's campaign is on trial. true, this trial is about paul manafort's work for russian friendly ukrainians, not the 2016 campaign, but it is the first trial resulting from the special counsel's investigation. and, wow, is this trial moving pretty quickly. the prosecution spent today telling the jury about manafort's lavish lifestyle. that he paid for in an unusual
way. he would buy his fancy suits with international wire transfers. not credit card, not diners club, not paypal, not cash. you know, wire transfers from your normal international institutio institutions. nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken dilanian joins me from outside the court house. ken, i believe we have recessed for the day so the good news is you don't have to run back into the courtroom. >> correct. >> it seems as if it was a battle of the prosecution trying to paint a very lavish and elite lifestyle of paul manafort while a judge was trying to convince them not to do that. help me out. >> that was part of it. yeah, that was part of it certainly, chuck. this judge, t.s. ellis, is trying to restrain the prosecutors from graphically illustrating of just how lavish and strextravagant paul manafor lifestyle was. he tells them he is not on trial
for being rich or spending lavishly, you've got to show the relevance. but they did bring in a series of vendsors. paul manafort spent more than a million dollars on suits over like a four-year period. from two custom makers, one in beverly hills. there was testimony that he bought a house for his daughter for $2 million. $3 million in improvements on his hampton properties for a home improvement contractor. all of this was paid for by wire transfers from an account in cyprus that prosecutors are going to allege later was parked there to avoid u.s. taxes. >> let me stop you right there. that is the important fact here. it's how he paid for all of this. it's not that he bought all of this, it's how he paid for it. >> that's right. >> the transaction he used, a wire transfer. anyway, go ahead, ken. >> absolutely. because, look, in theory he should have been able to afford all of this stuff anyway.
he was paid $60 million, or his firm was, for his work for this ukrainian politician. what prosecutors are saying is he was so greedy, he still had to avoid american taxes on this. here's another important thing that we learned from today, chuck. all of these witnesses were asked by the prosecutors, do you know who rick gates is? and they all said no. unless they have heard of him in the news. the point the prosecutors made was while the defense was trying to say that rick gates was behind this illegal conduct and they're going to blame rick gates, that's essentially their defense, each of their witnesses said they never heard of rick gates, he had nothing to do with these transactions. paul manafort paid these bills with money from cyprus. it's not clear because the prosecutors won't talk to us whether they're tailored their case to respond to this defense of hail mary trying to blame rick gates but that's certainly what's happening. and now we don't know if rick gates is going to testify because one of the prosecutors raised the possibility that he may not testify at the end of the day. >> the evidence that was presented today, yes, you had
people on the stand, but it was a lot of paper that was presented to the jury today, right, which seems to indicate you may not need rick gates for this. they may have him just with ledger sheets. >> i think that's a very important point. yes, each of these witnesses were used to enter into evidence documents, invoices, e-mails, describing payments of the aand government indicted paul manafort and rick gates together so they are prepared to go to trial and convict both of these men. gates was gravy, he flipped, he turned state's evidence. it would be nice to have gates to walk through this. and they may need him in the d.c. trial because that's failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. but it's not clear that they need him in this case. >> and it's very possible they don't want manafort's lawyers beating up gates in this trial, which would then harm him a little bit for the next one. let me ask you a final question, another lecture that the prosecution got today from the
judge on the use of the word "oligarch." explain. >> yes. judge t.s. ellis makes a lot of these proceedings about him. he's been on the bench since the reagan administration and he went through a whole discourse about how the word "oligarch" is pejorative and possibly you could call high school principal an oligarch in some certain sense and the prosecutors shouldn't use it. they replied judge, we're not using it, witnesses are using it to describe some of these ukrainian funders. but at the end of the day the judge is the judge and the prosecutors surrendered. >> what are they using, extraordinarily wealthy russians who got their money from vladimir putin's government? do you just say it like that? >> the judge is proposing to use the word funders. >> well, that's no fun. anyway, ken dilanian, just two days down. prosecution still calling witnesses tomorrow, we assume?
>> they are. we're going to hear from some bookkeepers and accountants. they actually told us today they may be ready to rest their case by next week. this trial is moving must faster than we anticipated, chuck. could be finished in two and a half weeks. >> well, it's the rocket docket. that's its nickname, so all of our experts tell us. ken dilanian, thank you, sir. up ahead, president trump's unbelievable florida rally. really. much of what he said last night was not to be believed. >> you know, if you go out and you want to buy groceries, you need a picture on a card. you need i.d. ♪ dear foremothers, your society was led by a woman, who governed thousands... ...commanded armies... ...yielded to no one. when i found you in my dna, i learned where my strength comes from. my name is courtney mckinney, and this is my ancestrydna story. now with 2 times more geographic detail than other dna tests.
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abolish i.c.e. in other words, they want to let ms-13 rule our country. that's not going to happen. >> or there was this sort of fantasy, if you call it. >> remember the attack on merry christmas? they're not attacking it anymore. everyone is happy to say merry christmas. right? and that's because -- only because of our campaign. >> literally bill o'reilly invented that controversy. it does not exist. how about this dishonesty. >> fake news, fake news. they are fake. >> look, you may say you're exhausted from the outrage and we get it. but when you ignore this, you get this.
>> and this kind of unfocused visceral anger at the other side of really neutral people like folks in the press corps, it can lead to this. look, according to today's "washington post" president trump has made 4,229 false or misleading claims in 558 days in office. that's an average of 7.6 a day. this is not normal. we shouldn't be in the business of just shruging our shoulders and normalizing it. we'll be right back. alright, i brought in new max protein
rhetoric that the president throws out to his supporters. >> are you willing to take his word for it, whoever trump says to vote for, you vote for. >> i do. anything he says. he hasn't -- everything he says is true. it comes true. >> trump is a genius. put your mind -- his mind and my mind together, we don't match trump's brain. the man's a genius and he's cut from a different cloth, a different material. >> well, there you go. with me now from orlando is nbc news political reporter ali vitali who was at last night's rally, spoke with those trump supporters. during the 2016 campaign was in that pen quite a bit, as they call that press pen there. ali joins our roundtable of susan, michael and howard. so, ali, first just give us a taste of that rally last night. it just seemed a little rowdier than we've seen a trump rally in a while. >> i think that's a pretty fair assessment, chuck. i have a really high tolerance
of these rallies after being at hundreds and hundreds of them and even i was pretty stunned last night as i was standing in the press pen watching these folks go after jim acosta and try to screw up the cnn live shot. the thing that's stunning to me is they were doing that even before the president got on stage so it's not like they were being egged on. it was more a matter of they felt this was the thing they wanted to do. i also think that in the course of talking to several voters who were there last night, i asked them point blank when you hear the president talk about fake news or the media being the enemy of the people, they all told me, yes, that's true. one man summed it up so perfectly and he said it's because they're saying things that i don't believe. it's not even a matter of fact anymore. anything that goes against what they believe in president trump or what they believe themselves is suddenly fake to them. >> was it rowdy for rowdy sake or shall we say did we have the too many open concession stands last night? >> i didn't see anything like that there. but i will say i've seen this
kind of across the country. it does depend where you are, but people here obviously were very in the pocket of the president and they wanted to show that they supported him. i think they see this war on the media as one way that they can show trump that they're there to have his back against people who they feel are constantly maligning him every day on the air waves. >> well, let me play for you sarah sanders, play this for the panel here. here's how she responded to a question about it where when you listen to her answer, i want you to ask yourself this. is she condoning verbal abuse of the press? take a listen. >> this is a two-way street. we certainly support a free press. we certainly condemn violence against anybody. but we also ask that people act responsibly and report accurately and fairly. >> no one was being violent last night in terms of hitting anybody and no broadcaster was broadcasting state secrets. they were trying to do stand-ups at a public rally and you had
people trying to yell over them, prevent them from doing their jobs and yelling that their network sucks on live tv. do you support that or not. >> while we support freedom of the press, we support freedom of speech and think that those things go hand in hand. >> again, i presenting it to the three of you. she didn't use the phrase. sounds like she's condoning verbal abuse. >> she's not saying it's a bad thing. she didn't say the president wished they hadn't done that. you know, i think this is the same phenomenon we see with his tweets toward robert mueller. i think this is an effort to undermine faith in the institutions that could hold the president accountable down the road so that when the press does stories that are critical of the president or they expose malfeasance by the administration, that they just won't be believed by his followers. >> the press has become othered by -- in trump world. >> in many respects, that's very true. and it is the place where he likes to keep the press, because that way it's impersonal. it's one of those things --
>> dehumanize them. >> dehumanize them, it's a generic wash, it applies to everyone who has journalist as part of their background or media. but let's be clear here. all of this craziness stops if one man says stop. so we sit here and we want to parse it and try to intellectualize it and understand it and psychoanalyze this, this is trump's creation. and whatever comes of it rests on his head. no one else's. you can't blame the people in that audience. you can point fingers at them and say you shouldn't have done that, you shouldn't have gone after that reporter. but this rests on the man who perpetuates it and allows it to happen in his presence. >> howard, it does feel like -- just remember, as candidate, he said the following. i love the old days. you know, what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this. they'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. that's candidate trump. >> when i was covering rallies
of donald trump in 2015 and 2016, i felt at times he was dangling that dangerous possibility out there. but in a way that he could still drawback from it. what sarah sanders said today, i guarantee you is one-third of what donald trump must have said to her in the oval office. in other words, i think he was probably even harsher than she was right there. what she's essentially saying is, hey, you ask me tough questions that i consider to be unfair here in the white house. that's what you're going to get out there. susan is absolutely right and you're right. this is part of the campaign by donald trump to measure the intensity of his support in places like tampa. the dislike of the press within his group, to see what he can get away with when it comes to the question, again i say, of shutting down mueller or pardoning manafort and gates.
that's what he's sitting there calculating right now. and this rally last night was his way of gathering strength to see when he can pull that off. i'm convinced that's what he's thinking. >> ali, you've been through a lot of these and i know only a handful of times have you ever expressed your concern for your personal safety. were you at that point last night or no? >> i mean i was not at that point last night, but that's only because there was no one physically threatening me. i have been in those situations where i have felt threatened before. but the point i want to circle back to and the thing that is the most potentially dangerous to me is that when you guys talk about this being devoid of the humanity, it's like the faceless media. most people are okay with going against a person that they don't know. but i even had folks saying to me last night, one of the women i was talking to, jim is bad at his job but you're very professional.
so then delineate between the point of cnn sucks and talking to an independent reporter who's just standing in front of them asking them questions at a rally. >> i was wondering because the other experience i know you've had and i hope you share with viewers, the president will do this rally and beat the living day lights of the press and see the jeers come in. and then there's the whispers, hey, by the way, i respect what you do. did you get some of that last night? >> actually, no. >> welcome to tampa, i guess. >> they were not willing to say good job, by the way, so no. >> and by the way, the president has only begun to fan the be bellows on this this fall. he's trotting this amped-up version of it out and it's going to be major all the way through the fall, even more than you saw in the 2016 campaign. >> you know, i spoke to a class of army folks, young officers in the army last week, and i always thank them for their service. two of them thanked me for my
service. >> i had that by somebody and it totally threw me off. whoa, whoa, whoa, you put yourself in harm's way. no, you are too. i hope not, frankly. >> that is striking to me that there are americans who see this as -- americans who are not journalists who see this as threatening. >> he's effectively declared war on journalists in this country. he's made them the scapegoat for all of his shortcomings and failings and it's an easy target to go after because, again, you represent a broader piece of a narrative that he can go after. >> the fact that you think, and i think there's a lot to what you say, that the president has concluded that we're an easy target is in and of itself a sea change. i'm old enough -- >> we don't have a political party to defend ourselves. we're a neutral entity. >> even richard nixon, who was out after the press, in many ways did it through subterfuge and secret through the irs, not always in public and not as part of a open, front and center
political strategy the way this is. >> spiro agnew. but those were gentle. that was gentle. that sounds mild. ali vitali, thank you for sharing. i know it's uncomfortable to talk about yourself as a story. but thank you for your professionalism and for the way you represent nbc news out there. >> thanks, chuck. >> you got it. all right. one more segment, panel, much appreciate it. up ahead, welcome to august. it's the final primary stretch. wait until you see the loaded primary calendar we have ahead for you for the next four tuesdays. ♪ this is a story about mail and packages. and it's also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they're handing us more than mail they're handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget... that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you
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>> kids vo: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace ♪ welcome back. tonight in meet the midterms, we're in the home stretch of primary season. august is not a sleepy month. august marks the last big month for primaries. there are five election days this month. starting tomorrow tennessee thinks thursday should be election day. nine states are holding august primaries, tennessee, kansas, susan page's home state, michigan, washington, hawaii, minnesota, wisconsin, arizona and florida. it's those last ones that we're watching the closest. wisconsin's august 14th primary features a tight republican primary. the winner gets the chance to take on tammy baldwin and our latest poll shows baldwin up double digits. on august 28th, it's establishment versus outsider versus extreme outsider in
arizona. the establishment's choice is hoping to come out on top ahead of kelli ward the official outsider and pardoned ex-sheriff joe arpaio, the extreme outsider. august 28th is also the big day in the governor's race for both parties in the state of florida. the democratic side, gwen graham is trying to hold off three men. tallahassee mayor andrew gilham, phil levine and jeff greene. and ron de santis appears to be writing his trump endorsement to the republican endorsement against lifetime candidate for governor, adam putnam. by the end of this month, we'll have a pretty good idea of what the midterm slate will look like in november. boy, though, there are some exciting primaries to follow until then. back with more "mtp daily" after this. ♪
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panel is back, susan, michael, howard. okay, you devisguys, other than quick little mastnafort shoutou you didn't get a chance to weigh in. this is a a fast-moving trial, feels like this is -- i feel like we're watching a pre-season football game and we're sort of getting a taste of what's to come. >> this is not a trial that's about obstruction of justice, not about the russia interference allegations but it sets the stage for what's going to follow. if robert mueller in his first trial gets an easy win against donald trump's former campaign chairman that makes it harder and harder to call his inquiry a witch hunt. >> people forget here that -- some people thought the charges were what was going to squeeze manafort. it's the conviction that mueller wants to do, it seems like, to squeeze manafort. >> that's right. that's what susan is saying. and i agree with that. which is why i don't think it's a pre-season game. it's more like the regular --
the opening day. >> not the playoffs yet, but regular season. >> it's opening day without the bunting, in both senses of the word. so i was watching everything very carefully, including the prosecution team. it's very interesting, because it's in the eastern district of virginia, the irascible famous judge, judge ellis, wanted somebody who had practiced before him to be the lead attorney. so it wasn't mueller's team, per se. >> oh, interesting. >> it was the local guy from the eastern district. and that showed shrewdness on the part of mueller and his team. >> you know, if that's what the judge wants, then give the judge what he wants. >> yeah. and then also they have so many charges across tax and banking and so forth. my sense of juries having covered a lot of trials is they will find a few. there's multiple, multiple, multiple charges. they're not going to buy everything the prosecution is going to lay out there.
but the chances of paul manafort getting off scott free are extremely low, extremely low. they've got a paper trail a mile long. >> how mad do you get, michael, when you watch somebody and find out that guy got away without paying taxes? nothing to do with how much it was, ten bucks or ten thousand. >> that's where this gets really interesting for a lot of folks as they watch this narrative unfold. the one thing, going with your football, opening day analogy. >> he went to baseball too. he went all over. >> is the optics of it. and that's the one that i think that donald trump can't control here is the images of the court. you know, we don't have tv inside the courtroom. so the narrative coming out of the courtroom he can't control. the optics from what's being drawn and the artist sketches can't be controlled. and so mueller has a keen -- i think a keen advantage here in laying out the case in a way all he needs is one conviction on the 18 to 20 or whatever charges are before him. he doesn't need all 18.
that's where he scores. >> howard, why are you so convips convico convinced a pardon is coming for manafort? >> let's assume the prosecution is good enough to get a couple charges here, you're talking five to ten years on any one of the charges. manafort will appeal, play for time as much as he can. they'll look for technical errors. we'll go to the further circuit. then it goes to the supreme court. my question is, when does donald trump think that he has -- i have no doubt in my miebd mind, and from people i know who talked to him that he wants to pardon manafort and wants to get rid of mueller. it's not a question of whether, it's a question of when. >> his other problem is a pardon may not work. >> it's not going to work on federal -- it will work on
federal charges, but not on state charges. >> it also doesn't get you out of testifying. >> yeah. but he'll refuse to testify. >> not after a pardon. >> my point is, that donald trump has absolutely no regard for the rule of law, for the procedures of the courts, for any of the things that he spent his whole career rolling over in new york as a real estate guy. and he views it, he does view it as political. and he will roll over it any way he possibly can. >> even as a political matter, i think there are lines that donald trump may be very reluctant to cross. and getting rid of bob mueller, i think, is one of those that really risks the reaction we have not yet seen from republicans on -- >> senate republicans today did not like to answer the question about the tweet today. imagine if he actually fired him. >> we have spent two years or more positing every time the republicans are going to finally say, oh my god, donald trump,
that we thought it would happen at the beginning. mitch mcconnell said it would happen at the beginning. when's it going to happen? >> it's a fair point. it is possible to cross a red line. >> everybody's red line is in a different spot. >> but it's still red. >> yes, it is, well said. thank you all three. up ahead, beware, the honey badger, vicious, and litigious. -welcome. -[ gasps ] a bigger room?! -how many of you use car insurance? -oh. -well, what if i showed you this? -[ laughing ] ho-ho-ho! -wow. -it's a computer. -we compare rates to help you get the price and coverage that's right for you. -that's amazing! the only thing that would make this better is if my mom were here. what?! an unexpected ending!
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well, in case you missed it, apparently honey badger does care. remember this viral video from 2011? >> this is the honey badger. watch it run in slow motion. it's got a snake. oh, it's chasing a jackal. oh, my gosh. the honey badgers are just cra s. it's got a cobra. oh, it runs backwards. watch this, look, a snake's up in the tree. honey badger just takes what it wants. >> oh, honey badger, 87 million views, people. that one tube video gave birth to an entire cottage industry, t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers. there's a honey badger book. there was supposed to be a honey badger show too. nobody cared. you know what honey badger does care about, apparently royalties. the video creator is suing
Brian Williams examines the day's top political stories and current political-campaign news.
you need a recount. if that is correct and get what it is, the other thing we know is they have apparently under state law until august 24th to certify this election. we're sitting here on august 7th, we've got 17 days, more than two weeks until this has to be certified. if you have that ten-day waiting period and then it comes under 0.5, you know, you're short of that certification. so the law isn't putting a real lot of pressure on them here to get this certified. the law as we understand it is saying it's going to be ten days before they can open these. again, if i'm a betting man, if you come out here and say, kornacki, your life is on the line, who is going to win this thing, i would tell you balderson, he looks in much better position than o'connor to win this thing. are you telling me are you sure he's going to win it by more than 0.45 points and therefore avoid a recount, oh, no, i wouldn't tell you that at all. recounts, the history of these things doesn't suggest o'connor
will overcome a deficit of that magnitude, but you have to have the recount and you have to see. meanwhile of course these two candidates are both going to be on the ballot as their parties' nominees for this district in november. the clock ticks, maybe we're in november before we get a final answer and in two months they go to the polls again in this district. >> i would never ask you to bet your life, you're too good at what you don't. and we don't allow wagering. steve kornacki, please don't move, i believe balderson is coming out onstage shortly. in the interim, garrett haake, our correspondent, is standing by at danny o'connor's campaign headquarters. you saw, we heard from the candidate. garrett, on nights like this they try to give neither a victory nor concession, though they've got to hit certain markers. as we've mentioned, tonight is the night to pivot to november for both of these guys. >> reporter: yeah, brian, this was even more of an in tweener speech than you might otherwise
see in a race like this, effectively too close to call, because the race doesn't really stop tomorrow. it's just another marker. now we have a quasi incumbent. now we're going to go to balderson. >> very honored to represent the voters of the 12th district. i have so many people to thank tonight. behind me right here, my john joshua, his fiance, he's getting married next april. my girlfriend melanie. i want to thank god. more importantly, my mom and dad who weren't able to be here with us this evening. the thousands and thousands of volunteers that worked this grassroots campaign. thank you all very, very much for all that you have done.
the phone banking, the door knocking, all of it. it's been phenomenal. it's a great honor for me. i would like to thank president trump. i would also like to take the time to thank vice president pence for coming. and the big shoes that i'll be filling, i wouldn't have got through a lot without him through this process. congressman pat tiber. i would also like to take this opportunity and time to also thank chairman steve stiver, he's been a great asset to me through this process. chairman, thank you. there's many others.
i could just keep going on and on. but tonight i'm going to promise to you that i'm going to work relentlessly, relentlessly for this 12th congressional district. america is on the right path and we're going to keep it going that way. it's time to get to work. over the next three months, i'm going to do everything i can to keep america great again. so that when we welcome -- when we come back here in november, get ready, we got to come back here in november, i have earned your vote for a second time. danny o'connor ran a hard race
and i look forward to campaigning against him again this fall. thank you all so much for all your support. god bless you and god bless america. >> all right. troy balderson. and let's repeat the way we opened the hour from our decision desk, and this is boston germane and important to everything we're watching and trying to understand tonight, this race is too close to call. we will not be calling this race tonight. so look, there's a possibility you'll see other news organizations give estimates or the like. we are not. that's where we stand, separated by 1,754. as steve kornacki has so ably laid out for us, we have something north of 3,400 so-called provisional ballots.
we believe this is triggered the state's own system to look back through all the votes cast. this is going to be a while. and let's not forget, they get to run again in november. before we were interrupted by the republican candidate, we were talking to garrett haake at democratic headquarters. garrett, you were talking about how it has to be half victory speech, half concession speech, although officially neither. >> reporter: that's right, danny o'connor leaving the door open to continue campaigning. the speech he gave sounded like his typical stump speech. he considers this a midway point in the race towards november. you didn't hear that from troy balderson at all. you heard much more of a traditional victory speech with the acknowledgement that he's got to do this all over again in november. the other big thing you heard from balderson, i think this is important, the big thank you to donald trump. you showed the president's tweet earlier, brian. i think you would be hard pressed to find a republican in
ohio who disagrees with the central premise, namely that it was donald trump who was able to carry troy balderson across the finish line here. he did not have a great last couple of days campaigning. but he did get a big boost from the president who in some part had to essentially remind republican voters that there was a special election happening this week and his agenda was on the line. every republican strategist i talked to this week said that balderson needed that boost to juice his numbers in the more reliably republican voters who just weren't huge troy balderson fans coming into this weekend. >> how about a word about this district? our viewers along with us kind of fly into these districts where on nights like tonight there's no more important stretch of real estate in this whole country politically. but what an interesting part of the country it is. you've got the terrific city of columbus, ohio, its northern reaches, then stretches the
countryside that look just like the american midwest. >> reporter: yeah, absolutely, brian. it is that mix of suburban, a little bit of the city of columbus, and a whole lot of rural, expansive ohio here that makes up this district. the democratic candidate here is 31 years old. in his life he's never been represented here by a democrat. the mix of voters here have always elected your pro-business, country club, chamber of commerce types of republicans. john kasich represented this district before ultimately becoming governor of this state. pat teaberry very much in the same model. republicans voted for the donald trump party. the operating theory was do people who drive volvos and go to country clubs in those suburbs around the district, these well-educated, wealthier voters, are they really going to stick with donald trump and really stick with his agenda in the face of what we've seen over the last year and a half?
the answer appeared to be yes on those moderate republicans, the swing county, and i don't want to get two steep into steve's lane. delaware county did stick with the republican here. but you did see this enormous turnout of democrats who have turned their back on this president from that suburban part of this. brian, there are dozens of districts that look enough like this in numbovember that they'le picking this apart based on the lessons they learned tonight. moral victories do not a house majority make, they have to get across the finish line in these districts in november. >> garrett haake, thanks, buddy, for your live reporting this evening, we really appreciate it. our lead-off panel, kimberly atkins is back with us. chief washington reporter for "the boston herald." she, as you see, is on the hill. here with us in new york, john heilemann is back with us, long time political journalist, co-author of both "game change" and "double down."
we did a little bit of both tonight in ohio. and el eli stokols is with us tonight. what do you think they make of a barn burner in this district in ohio during this time? >> i think there is some concern. i'm talking and texting with some as we talk right now. there is a lot of concern. look, dozens of districts that are up in the midterms are not as red as the ohio 12th. and the fact that this was such a squeaker, even if they come out with a "w" at the end of it, it's quite an erosion of support for donald trump, who won that district by 12 points. i know the president is claiming victory tonight, and it might be the case that he energized
republicans enough just to squeak over, to squeak out a win here. but he also energized democrats in a way to really get out the vote. one thing that the president tweeted that is true is that it's august, and it's a time when a lot of people are on vacation, a lot of people aren't thinking about politics. democrats were still able to mobilize people, it sounds like particularly in the suburbs, which is going to be a crucial battleground. i think republicans have to be really concerned about that. >> all right, john heilemann, here in our new york studios, as they like to ask during moments like this, what have we learned so far this evening? >> i'm a big fan of the one is a win school, you win a race. it looks like the republican has run this race. hats off for winning the race, because that's all that matters. >> we have to hasten to point out we can't declare at this point. >> that's why i said it looks like. >> absolutely. i got your modifier. >> the second thing i'm a big fan of in analysis is context
and kimberly has provided some, and people on this network have been providing it all night. the fact that it's a squeaker, a nail-biter, that we're still too close to call at this hour, means that democrats should have a lot to be happy about here. they've looked at this race and said, you know, but for a couple of -- a few votes here, we could steal this race and we have 90 days to do that with these same candidates on the ballot. democrats are right to feel good about what they've done here tonight. this should not be a contested race let alone a race that's a razor thin margin. but again, republicans get the win and you can't take that away from him, assuming that things hold, they get this win, and, you know, you can't gainsay that. >> eli stokols, i heard a noted political expert on another network tonight say the following. quote, if democrats can do this well in a district 88% white, they will retake the house.
>> and i think right now that's what i hear when i talk to analysts and consultants on both sides. at least when it comes to the house, the wind is at the democrats' back, the numbers look good. if they're running double digits ahead of where they ran in 2016, they are going to take the number of seats that they need to win a majority, most likely, better than 50% chance at this point. but i think, you know, you go back to the president's tweet, there have been a lot of donald trump tweets that ring less true than what he said tonight. yes, he's going to take a lot of credit for this. that's obvious. but pollsters on the ground in it ohio have said that they saw better numbers, especially in those rural precincts, after he was there. he's also right that it is an interesting time to vote. what he didn't get into in the tweet, but what he said on saturday and what he's been saying over the last couple of weeks, he's got the loudest megaphone in the country. when he can hang his hat on
democrats, just a couple of, it only takes two new york democrats to say abolish i.c.e. to remind voters who are on the face, you may not love me and everything, but here is where the democratic party is going these days, that is also effective. i know danny o'connor said i'm not going to support pelosi for speaker but he bungled that in the interview with chris matthews and that wasn't convincing. democrats have a win at their backs but it does take candidates and it does take some convincing some of these voters. >> i love my friend eli stokols, but i will say this, this isn't the biggest lie the president has told on twitter. the governor of ohio, john kasich, who is the anti-trump governor, who came in and cut an add for balderson in the last week of the race. >> but waited very late. >> waited very late, but it's
late in race this close. who had more effect on this race at the end? governor kasich by coming in at the end, a guy with a 65% approval rating in the state, or donald trump coming in, especially the way balderson performed in some of the republican suburbs where the president didn't help him, john kasich did. >> who did balderson thank? he thanked the president, vice president, congressman teaberry. he didn't mention john kasich. john is correct that the turnout may have been because he didn't just have the trump wing but he also had kasich vouching for him as well. s in -- this is a case where you have the two wings of the republican party pulling for him. the fact that he didn't come onstage and even say john kasich's name also tells you something. >> he's afraid of the trump base. and again, you're not going to see this in many races where
republicans have the money to spend in a race that they should easily win where you're going to have outside democratic groups outspending them by five times and where you'll get a republican governor with a 65% approval rating and the president of the united states on the same side. this is an unusual set of circumstances that barely pulled the republican across, if the results hold. >> we have part two of the trump tweet tonight on this race. it seems he wasn't done. congratulations to troy balderson on a great win in ohio, a very special, i think that means special election, and important race. >> what has he ever done, brian? you said it seems like he's not done. when is he ever done? >> that's true, it all seems like a continuation. is there a vetted process for the campaigns the president will visit? we just learned he may make a
stop in texas for ted cruz, for example. there was some hubbub about who cleared the president to come into ohio, who requested it, who gave their permission in this case. but it's also indisputable, he moved votes. >> yeah, i mean, you're using words like vetting and permission as if it that's something that the -- as if that's something that the president ever goes by. it will be a matter of the president choosing his gut and getting into this. this, which he's calling a win and other republicans are calling a win tonight even though it's still technically too close to call, will probably boost him in that effort. one thing you have to watch is there are still some contested primaries coming up between candidates who are more mainstream republicans and others who are very trumpy candidates who the president is going to be eager to back. so in this case you did see kasich and trump on the same
side, the same candidate, bringing those voters together. that's going to be a big factory moving forward if the republicans are going to be able to create that unity, to get behind people, to get them over the finish line in november, if those fights are nasty, it will be a lot more difficult to do. that's one of the many factors, including how nancy pelosi plays in these races. we still don't know the answer for sure yet. we have to take a closer look at how these precincts voted. president trump is definitely going to be on the campaign trail, whether the candidates he's backing like it or not. >> hey, john, a moment for civics. so let's say, again, to take your point for the purposes of argument, the republican wins, let's say we don't have an official call for days. they become a sitting member of congress. you don't get to inherent the seniority of the republican you're replacing. you get bumped down, get terrible office space and not much of it.
as a practical matter, you inherit much of the staff from the last member of congress, just so you can hit the ground running. you put some stuff on the walls, you get letterhead printed, but you never feel permanent. two-year terms, it's tough to feel permanent because you've got to go out and sing for your supper in november. >> look, both these guys said in their speeches tonight they have to get out there and start working again, have to start raising money again. >> and serve constituents. >> they'll try to serve constituents, although in reality, after labor day, congress will probably go out of session. the house, people will go home. >> with as hard as they work? >> i know, shocking, right? the reality is, unless the president tries to engineer a government shutdown between now and november, the amount of legislative business that gets done on the house side is relatively limited. you'll be involved in the national discourse, the national dialogue. you might have some things to vote on, you won't be completely
useless, but essentially from now until the race is run again you'll be engaged in the act of full-time politics even though you need to pretend you're involved in other things like constituent service and occasionally filling that office in one of those three buildings on the house side. >> eli stokols, how legitimately happy do you think the president is, assuming, again, at the end of this race, that the republican wins. we certainly won't know tonight. >> when donald trump gets anything that he can portray as a victory, he is a happy guy. and he is going to play that up. and i think that's why you've seen two tweets tonight already. he may call the pool back to bedminster tomorrow and hold a press conference. you never know. but this is a guy who is going to, for better or worse, insert himself in every election race, every one of these races that he can. republican consultants, a lot of them don't want him in this race, they think there are
certain places where he will be helpful, others where he should stay away. but this election is about donald trump. he's already in there. he's proven when he goes and does these rallies he can juice the republican turnout, the base vote. the question is what happens in those districts that are closer, how does he also animate those voters who are already predisposed to vote against him, does he bring more of those out? especially on the house side, that's something the republicans are worried about. >> i like to talk about the '90s with brian, because we both remember the clinton administration and we're both old men. you remember vividly in 1994 when bill clinton was out on the campaign trail after labor day. there came a point when the situation was so dire, there were a lot of democrats saying to bill clinton, go home, don't campaign. >> that happens. >> it's not unusual. this was a big wave of democrats who said stay home and the president listened, i went off the campaign trail at the end of 1984 and said, you guys know your politics better than i know your politics, i'm a political
animal, i'm going to sit around the white house and watch college football for the last few months. a lot of republicans are saying, if you can just take the itinerary not through my district, can you imagine donald trump hearing that and saying, you know what, i'm going to defer to the congressman on this matter? >> i'll be here in the residence. that's the sentiment kim atkins was picked up tonight when we went to her. our thanks to our initial panel tonight. to kimberly atkins on capitol hill, and here in new york, john heilemann, eli stokols, much obliged, thank you all for coming out on a busy night. coming up, paul manafort predictably began gnawing at the star witness on things like implement and adultery. and later, new criminal suspicion surrounding president trump's former fix and her long term personal lawyer michael cohen. his problems, while they still do not number 99, now may
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it's the ultimate wifi experience. xfinity xfi, simple, easy, awesome. mr. manafort had a great day. >> rick gates, the star witness in the financial fraud trial of former trump campaign chairman paul manafort, was back on the stand today, day six of this trial. and the defense was quick to go after the credibility of the witness. manafort's lawyers pressed gates on his lies to mueller's team
before he agreed to a plea deal. they brought up an extramarital affair that gates had and asked him about the money he had embezzled from manafort's operation. most of the testimony centered on the financial schemes that prosecutors say manafort developed to avoid paying taxes and maintain his lifestyle even as his income dried up at one point. gates told the court that manafort directed him to disguise millions of dollars in foreign income as loans and to funnel money through shell companies outside the u.s. gates portrayed manafort as a man who essentially went broke after his income stream as a consultant to russian-linked candidates in the ukraine vanished. also today donald trump's name was mentioned in front of the jury for the first time in this trial. and prosecutors presented evidence that manafort tries to use his leverage in the trump campaign to get one of his lenders a job in the administration. it never stops. with us tonight, barbara
mcquade, former u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan, who was inside court for today's testimony. she's at the end of a long day for herself. eli hoening is with us, former assistant attorney general for the state of new jersey. peter baker, chief white house correspondent for "the new york times." good evening too you all, i apologize for the late hour. barbara, i have to hear about the parts of this that we are not allowed to see, cameras are not allowed in the court. what were the atmospherics like, especially between gates and mueller? >> it was very interesting to see gates testify. he never made contact with paul manafort. he would look at the
prosecutoring and tprosecutoor or at the jury. i thought gates did fairly well on his direct examination. they used a lot of documents that he connected the dots. a lot of it was corroborated with e-mail and other documents. i thought he didn't do well on cross-examination, he seemed evasive and argumentative. i think he admitted to a lot of fraud and a lot of lies and i think the body language of the jury was that they weren't liking rick gates very much. they put him in the middle for a reason, they used to call it the cooperator sandwich, you start strong, end strong, put someone at the end to allow you to recover. the prosecutors will say, we didn't choose rick gates to be our witness, it was paul manafort who chose him to be his associate. >> no one needs to tell you, barbara, federal judges have enormous power in our society. they are nominated by the president. they have to be approved by the
senate. and they sit on the bench for life. that said, this particular bridge, nominated by president ronald reagan, has played an interesting role in this case. and a lot of people have come away with interesting opinions. today he kind of participated in the case. tell us your assessment of what you've seen. >> well, throughout the trial he's been very hands-on. he injects himself quite a bit. he asks questions of witnesses. he seems very smart and very engaged, in many ways those are positive things. you know, i've never seen any judge get so involved in the case. and today some of the questions he asked were things lawyers might not want to ask but today he actually made astatement, when rick gates testified that paul manafort was deeply involved in financial matters, the judge said something to the effect of, obviously not very involved, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to steal so much money from him.
a really inflammatory comment as this supposedly independent authority figure in the courtroom, an expert on the law, i worry about the impact of a statement like that in front of the jury. >> barbara, if you're the prosecutor in this case, was gates wobbly enough to worry about? >> i would be a little bit worried about him. i think they can probably rehabilitate him. again, i think that there's enough corroborating evidence in the documents that have come into the case and it's consistent with what other witnesses are saying, that they should be all right. the only worry i have is that the jury, who did seem to have some very negative body language about gates, is so put off by h him. but if they look at this objectively, there is still sufficient and significant evidence to convict paul manafort. >> eli, barbara is the one who invoked the word sandwich, it's late and we're hungry.
here is your star witness. he's in an interesting location within the trial. it's mostly a paper case. i guess this means you've got to end strong. you've got to have a great closer and wrap it all up for the members of that jury. >> the most important thing you can do as a prosecutor when you're putting on a cooperating witness, you know they're going to take some damage. you know the defense is going to score some points on them. you have to be able to rally back with corroboration, independence evidence that backs up the corroborator, so you're not just saying to the jury, take this criminal's word for it. what we've seen so far, the mueller team has done a great job of doing that. all the witnesses leading up to rick gates, the accountant, the bookkeeper, the vendors, have had a common theme of, man aenforcememanafort knew where every dollar went.
in one e-mail, manafort said, it's in pdf, can you send it back to me in word? because you can alter a word document but not a pdf. that kind of evidence can stick in the jury's mind. >> you need a great closer here. >> or in some instances, a boring closer. it doesn't sound like they have a superstar like a rivera ready to go, it sounds like they have a couple of guys with 350 eras to get you to the end of the game. but look, boring can be good after an explosive cooperator like this. put a little distance between the cooperator and the closing arguments, let things settle back down, call a couple of more straight-up financial types, and then let it go to closing. >> peter baker, you have a great 30,000-foot view of all of this. and bring us back to this question, why did paul manafort offer himself up to donald trump and why did he do so for free?
>> right. that's a really good question and one we're unfortunately not hearing addressed yet at this trial, anyway, and one that goes much more to the central point of the president of the united states and what does this mean in terms of our understanding about donald trump and the campaign that he waged in 2016. by the time that paul manafort becomes involved in the campaign, he has been cut off from his sources of funding in the ukraine, from his russian-backed, you know, money source, and therefore he's offering himself with no money asked from donald trump. why? one might suspect, of course, that he's using this to try to rehabilitate himself, perhaps to offer some sort of advantage to his russian backers to whom he apparently owes some money. he did at one point offer private briefings to oleg deripaska, the oligarch to him he was indebted. that's not what the prosecutors
are trying to prove today, they're trying to prove violations of tax law and so forth. to the larger electorate who cares about the president and cares about the leadership of the country, trying to figure out what this means, that's the central question. >> and for the larger public who has heard perhaps the president try to diminish paul manafort, was with us for just a very short period of time, there will always be the president taking the other side of that argument. here is an example of that. >> we have great people. paul manafort. he doesn't have to do this. like i don't have to, he didn't need to do this. he called me and said, this is something special. >> peter baker, how will we look back on that sound bite perhaps in six months? >> well, like a lot of things president trump has said or tweeted in the past, he probably wishes he could take it back or at least the people around him wish they could take it back. he was impressed to have paul manafort volunteer because manafort had a long history of republican politics.
he had been involved in the 1976 campaign for gerald ford, 1996 for bob dole, et cetera, et cetera. this is something of a validation for trump at that time to get somebody with manafort's experience in national politics. however, a lot of people around town knew that manafort had these sort of shady connections. a lot of people around washington knew to keep away from him. therefore you have to say did the president of the united states or the candidate who wanted to be the president of the united states have any knowledge of that? if not, why not? we judge presidents by the character of the people they put in place around them. the president will say, i didn't know anything about this, it didn't have anything to do with my campaign, fair enough, but you have to ask, why do you surround yourself with people that have clear issues in terms of honesty, in terms of legal behavior? >> as we thank our guests, a special note to say that we are honored to have a former u.s. attorney as in effect our special correspondent inside that courtroom. court starts early, and barbara
mcquade has pushed on through into the late night. thank you so much to barbara mcquade, to eli honing, to peter baker, we appreciate it. coming up, steve kornacki back at the big board. a deeper look at the lessons from the numbers out tonight when we come back. this is amazing. with moderate to severe ulcerative colitis, are you okay? even when i was there, i never knew when my symptoms would keep us apart. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira can help get, and keep uc under control when other medications haven't worked well enough. and it helps people achieve control that lasts. so you can experience few or no symptoms. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb.
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this. let me just explain quickly here. again, the lead for balderson right now is 0.9. the state law says 0.5 or less is an automatic recount. right now this would not be an automatic recount. we've been telling you, and i'll put this up here again, there are 3,435 provisional ballots to be counted across the district. this is not going to happen for another ten days. when they're counted, we expect democrats will win them. we expect the margin will be potentially considerable, enough potentially to knock this number not down to zero or anywhere near zero but maybe under a thousand, maybe knock it in half, maybe knock it enough that the 0.9 margin falls below 0.5 and then the automatic recount is triggered. i say there is another wrinkle. i put this out there. take this with a pinch of salt.
the secretary of state is saying there are also 5,048 what they are terming uncounted absentee ballots. the question becomes what is an uncounted absentee ballot? we believe that a small, small sliver of this 5,048, we're talking in the low hundreds, probably, would be military ballots. so the military ballots, you know, let's say 250, ballpark figure here, we expect those to break more republican than democratic, a small number. what about the rest? what are those? what we think, but we don't know, we are trying to get confirmation of, but the suspicion is that what this might reflect is, absentee ballots that were made out to people and that weren't returned. so they're then being counted in this category of uncounted absentee ballots. that has not been confirmed. that has not been told to us. we don't know. it's sitting there, it's on their website. they haven't explained fully what it means.
if that did mean this early vote, absentee ballots that were cast early, we certainly saw o'connor do better, much better than balderson in the early vote. they're from all around, from each county that's in here. again, even going by how we saw the early vote break, would that be enough to ghetto conner over balderson. hard to see. would it be enough to get it under .5, that's a different story. no confirmation, no word. we're trying to track it down. anybody who is curious and wants to look is going to see that number on the secretary of state's site and the truth is, i'm not sure what that is. sti suspect that's absentee ballots that weren't returned. they haven't confirmed that to us. >> sooner or later you're talking about real numbers here. it will be interesting to find out. steve, i can't thank you enough. it gets more and more interesting as the hour gets later. with just 90 days till the midterm elections, one former trump rival is now asking for the president's help. is the houston chronicle
headline reads "ted cruz asks trump to campaign for him in texas." at the this go on to explain during a campaign stop late monday, cruz said he has reached out to his form rival for the white house, lyin' ted was the president's nickname to help him against bate o'rourke. with us tonight, charlie sykes, now contributing editor and podcast host for the weekly standard. charlie, what are the rules in politics? you can brand an opponent lyin' ted, a nickname that still springs to mind along with low energy jeb bush and little marco and then all things can be equalled up if you have a tough race back home in texas? >> yeah, apparently. who knew that ted cruz was quite this elastic? it's not just lying ted. this was a campaign in which
donald trump made fun of ted cruz's wife's likes, implied his dad had assassinated john f. kennedy, his trolls at the "national enquirer"er spread rumors about his personal life. he got booed off the stage at the republican national convention when he suggested the people vote their conscience. but you know in, politics, apparently it's easy to fib and ted cruz has proven that he is willing to get in line with the trump administration. i mean, he is not just on the trump train, he's enthusiastically on the trump train. >> charlie about tonight and what we're witnessing and what steve kornacki's been covering all night, what does tonight mean for you? >> okay, let me give you three data points. i don't want to be misunderstood that whoever wins tonight matters less than trend that you're seeing. this is a district that the democrats won once since 1938. the last republican congressman
pat teberi won by 36 points. and there are 68 republican house seats that are less republican than ohio 12. so yes, the republicans is can celebrate the fact that they may have eked out a victory but the trends here have to be incredibly trouble together republicans. you know, if you're adding double digit democratic numbers across the board, this is going to be a very, very, very tough election. you know, so donald trump can claim that he in fact might have tipped this election in the very last few days but this should not even be close. we should not know these guys can names, not spent five minutes talking about it. the only reason we're talking about is what donald trump has done to theply landscape. >> i hate the way the politics business reduces people to just straight up demographic groups but i'm going to go ahead and quote this political veteran that i quoted earlier in the
broadcast. someone i saw tonight on another network. "if the democrats can do this well in a district 88% white, they can retake the house." >> yeah, there's no question about it. if -- we're really seeing a microcosm of the way in which the suburbs that had been traditionally reliably republican are now turning to the democrats. we're seeing how rural areas are becoming more republican. but again, if you see this pattern extended throughout the country, it is just -- there's no way that you can spin this as a good night for the democrats. the fact this took place in a state as crucial as ohio has got to be another one of those troubling omens i think. >> and john kasich, emerges from this. what do you think is in his future? >> well, who knows. you know, as we sit here right now, it's hard to imagine any successful republican primary challenge to donald trump unless
something really catastrophic happens. john kasich is about the only guy who appears to be expressing some interest. and you know, so it's certainly possible that if republicans start looking around saying, is there an alternative to donald trump in our future, do we want donald trump to define the republican party going into the next decade, they might look to a john kasich. i think it's a long shot. >> and the rest of the summer calendar you think been l be consumed with all things trump and russia investigation with sporadic interruptions for politics i guess? >> i think it's that, and i expect that the rhetoric over immigration will get much more toxic. i think that the rhetoric will be much more divisive. i think the rhetoric you saw in the final few days in ohio is a pretty good indication of what republicans are going to try to
do between now and november and they'll see what works and what doesn't work. obviously, the immigration card is going to be something they'll be pounding away on. >> charlie sykes, all a pleasure to have you on. thank you for reacting to the news we've been covering late tonight. really appreciate it. for those just joining us, our decision deck has put it this way. the race we've been covering in ohio tonight, too close to call. we will not be calling this race tonight. and that goes especially to all the reasons steve kornacki has been laying out for us. we have another hour of special live coverage to come. for now, we'll take a break. i can do more to lower my a1c. and i can do it with what's already within me. because my body can still make its own insulin. and once-weekly trulicity activates my body to release it.
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become a reality among democrats. up first, a tale of two felons. president trump praises paul manafort, his former campaign chairman, now convicted on eight federal counts of tax and bank fraud. the president tweeted this, i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. justice, and he puts the word justice in quotes took a 12-year-old tax case among other things applied tremendous pressure on him and unlike michael cohen, he refused to break. make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man. the president took another swipe at michael cohen, his former lawyer and personal fixer for more than a decade who pleaded guilty to eight charges and implicated the president of the united states in a hush money scheme. the president tweeted this. quote, if anyone is looking for a good lawyer, i would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of michael cohen." let's bring in our white house
house, thank you. republicans, meanwhile, in congress for the most part, they failed to act as a check on president trump, but will these guilty verdicts, plea and guilty plea serve as a moment of reckoning for a party hoping to stay in control in november? at the same time, can democrats use this to their advantage to try to stall brett kavanaugh's nomination for the united states supreme court. let's go to our congressional correspondent phil mattingly. he's up on capitol hill. what are you hearing from both sides, phil? >> as you would expect, republicans not rushing out to talk about this. and those who are, certainly not willing to do so in a critical way. look at where republican leaders are. i ran into mitch mcconnell earlier today. he chose not to respond when i asked him about this. speaker paul ryan said they need more information. scra john cornyn said while this was serious, this had nothing to do with russia. also orrin hatch saying there are issues here, but we're not really sure what else we can do. take a listen.
>> they can't be ignored. >> high crimes and misdemeanors? >> i wouldn't go that far. >> do you think this opens up the president to being indicted while sitting in office? >> no, i don't because i don't think he can be indicted while sitting in office. we'll just have to see where this all works out. >> wolf, it's somewhat of a familiar refrain up here where something happens at the white house. some republicans have concerns. others don't want to weigh in on it at all. behind the scenes, aides make clear how serious this is. they just aren't sure what their bosses should do about it. on the democratic side, you've seen democrats led by chuck schumer coalesce around a single strategy. take a listen. >> the president identified as an unindicted co-conspirator of a federal crime, an accusation made not by a political enemy but by the closest of his own confidantes is on the verge of
making a lifetime appointment to the supreme court, a court that may some day soon determine the extent of the president's legal jeopar jeopardy. in my view, the senate judiciary committee should immediately pause the consideration of the kavanaugh nomination. >> senator schumer referring to brets c brett kavanaugh, the president's supreme court nominee. when you've heard from democrat after democrat this morning, it's not impeachment. many of them don't want to touch the issue at all. it's all about that nomination saying as long as this is an issue hanging out there those issues should be postponed. a member of the judiciary committee has canceled her one on one meeting with kavanaugh. the reality is republicans control the chamber. republicans have the votes if they are unanimous to move this nomination through. right now democrats hoping this issue helps their push, not just to block the nomination on the floor but to pause the hearings
Wolf Blitzer looks at politics, breaking news and international stories.
e-mails, which is a computer crime that was the subject of the indictment of the 12 russians. >> let's discuss this and more with our experts. cnn political analyst molly ball, ross garber and carrie cordero. do you think michael cohen has enough information that would be worthwhile to robert mueller, the special counsel, to go ahead and bring him in for questioning and maybe work out some sort of deal with him? >> well, that's the big question. what information of value does michael cohen have? i have tended to think over the last few weeks as his public messaging continued to go along the same lines as lanny davis just said. that michael cohen has information to tell. i've tended to think if he really had information that the investigators needed, that they would have already been talking to him. and so i'm inclined to think the investigators may not need michael cohen as much as michael
cohen needs a deal to lessen his jailtime sentence when he comes up for sentencing. >> he can get five years in december. that's when he's scheduled to be sentenced. >> according to his current plea, he could get five years. so i think it's in his interest and that's why we're seeing his lawyer out front arguing that he has information of value. but all of this time, the special counsel investigators could have been talking to michael cohen and if they haven't, then i'm inclined to think that maybe they don't need him as much as he might need them. >> you saw those tweets posted this morning. paul manafort, now a convicted felon stealing millions of dollars from american taxpayers in these various schemes. he calls him a brave man who refused to break and make up stories to get a deal. and he contrasted that with michael cohen. so you think the president is setting the stage for a pardon for paul manafort? >> it seems hard to read it otherwise. that's the message. the message is, hang in there, buddy. hang tough.
and i think those are really the big issues right now. >> here's the one problem. i'll get to you, molly. the one problem if he issues a pardon, he could be subpoenaed -- we're talking about paul manafort -- testify before congress. he condition no longer plead the fifth if he has a pardon from the president of the united states? >> maybe, maybe not. some of them were tax fraud charges which may expose him to consequences -- criminal consequences in state court. and so his equivalent to the fifth amendment right is available in that context. and it's very rare for a judge to say, no, you can't invoke the fifth. you have to testify. i think as a practical matter he probably still could decline to testify. >> molly, how do you see this unfolding? >> with all due respect, there's a way to read it that is not just as a signal that trump is going to pardon cohen. if he did intend to pardon him -- >> sorry, to pardon manafort.
he's had a lot time of when he could have done that and hasn't seen fit to do it. and his insistent all along, including after the verdict, this case has nothing to do with me. this is stuff manafort did long before i ever knew him. and, you know, there is a point to him announcing this in public on twitter rather than simply sending a private message. he is speaking to the public. he is speaking to his base and his supporters and to republicans. he is sending a message about the whole narrative he's been shaping of this investigation. the narrative of the witch hunt. the narrative of loyalty and disloyalty. these characters that he's created in the public imagination to say, here is a good man who has been loyal to me. here's a bad man who is not loyal to me and we can't trust him. he's continuing his ongoing campaign to discredit anything that michael cohen says by creating this contrast with the character of manafort. >> i agree. i think the fact it's happening in public and that we all get to see it is -- you are exactly right. it's still fascinating and extraordinary. >> some have suggested, carrie,
manafort's association with the president, the odds were good manafort would not have been prosecuted and tried and convicted. >> we wouldn't have known about his crimes. >> exactly. >> now that we know about his crimes, the president is still praising him. >> and still praising him and the president might also think it was unfair that he was jailed pretrial. so the president may actually believe that paul manafort was treated and has been treated unfairly. >> we've got a lot more to discuss, guys. thank you very, very much. everyone stand by. all eyes now on house republicans, how they'll handle this news. i'll speak live with one of them who also happens to be a key member of the house intelligence committee. plus, the sheer number of people in the president's orbit who are now convicted criminals or in serious legal trouble. that number is growing. we'll break it down for you. one democratic senator is standing by to join us live after she just cancelled her meeting with the u.s. supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh suns the president is, what she
calls, an unindicted co-conspirator. stay with us. this is cnn's special coverage. -omar, look. [ thunder rumbles ] omar, check this out. uh, yeah, i was calling to see if you do laser hair removal. for men. notice that my hips are off the ground. [ engine revving ] and then, i'm gonna pike my hips back into downward dog. [ rhythmic tapping ] hey, the rain stopped. -a bad day on the road still beats a good one off it.
-i can still taste it in my mouth! my ci can worry about it,ine. or do something about it. garlique® helps maintain healthy cholesterol naturally. and it's odor free. and pharmacist recommended. garlique.® a very dramatic conclusion to a month-long scandal. admitting in federal court he paid off a porn star and a playmate to prevent their alleged affairs with mr. trump from becoming public during the 2016 campaign and that he did so under the direct direction of mr. trump. michael cohen's admission is shocking on its face but also because it exposes the alarming number of lies voters were led to believe by the president and those closest to him.
january 12th, 2018. "the wall street journal" reports michael cohen arranged a $130,000 payment to adult film star stormy daniels just one month before the 2016 election to keep her from going public about an alleged affair with mr. trump. in a statement, cohen called the allegation about the affair outlandish. then, on february 13th, cohen told "the new york times" he used his own personal funds to pay off daniels saying neither the trump organization nor the trump campaign was a party to the transaction and neither reimbursed me for the payment. on march 5th, "the wall street journal" reported cohen wired the money to daniels' lawyer just 12 days before the election. cohen responded with a two-word e-mail statement, fake news. two days later, the white house weighed in. >> i've had conversations with the president about this. there was no knowledge of any payments from the president, and he's denied all of these
allegations. >> on april 5th, president trump broke his silence on the stormy daniels payments, denying involvement. >> did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? >> no, no. >> why did michael cohen make this if there was no truth? >> michael is my attorney and you'll have to ask michael. >> a few days later he acknowledged michael did represent him in the deal with daniels. >> he represents me like with this crazy stormy daniels deal, he represented me, and, you know, from what i see, he did absolutely nothing wrong. there were no campaign funds going into this. >> why is he pleading the fifth? >> on may 2nd, rudy giuliani took it one step further. >> no campaign finance violation. so they funneled it through a law firm. >> funneled it through a law firm and the president repaid it. but he did know about the
general arrangement that michael would take care of things like this. >> the following morning, mr. trump added that cohen received a monthly retainer. then on july 24th, cohen's lawyer released a secret recording between cohen and mr. trump discussing the logistics of another payment. this time to former playboy model karen mcdougal. >> when it comes time for the financing, which will be -- >> what financing? >> i have to pay -- >> cash. >> no, no, no. >> on august 21st, cohen officially flipped on his former boss and plead guilty to campaign finance charges stemming from those payments to stormy daniels and karen mcdoug ap. he also told the federal judge the mcdougal payment was for the principal purpose of influencing the election. we should note that president trump denies these affairs with these two women. joining us now, utah congressman chris stewart, a republican. a key member of the house intelligence committee. very nice of you, congressman,
to join us today. so many of your republican colleagues are sort of run away from tv cameras right now. but thanks so much for joining us. i want to get your reaction clearly to michael cohen, the president's longtime personal attorney and fixer. what he told this federal court yesterday about the president's direct coordination, direction in these payoffs to these two women. >> well, wolf, it's a mess. and, look, i honestly don't know what to believe at this point. mr. cohen has been very inconsistent. the president hasn't been terribly consistent in things that he has said. it's going to take a little while for us to really understand what really happened here. i do want to say this, though. >> go ahead. >> and that is that, well, there's this allegation or this pleading that he made these payments. and that would only be legally effective if it was an illegal
campaign contribution of some kind. and fec law is a click margin -- it's very complicated, but i talked with an fec attorney and he said i don't think that would be illegal. there are others who clearly think it would be. i'm interested to hear what the fec has to say. >> would it be illegal if you're running for the u.s. house of representatives and gave someone else money to pay off, only days before an election, these kinds of allegations from emerging? would that be illegal? >> well, i mean, if i use my campaign founds, it clearly would be illegal. if i use my personal funds, i don't know that it would be. i'm not trying to defer or protect. i genuinely don't know. >> if that money was being used as an in-kind campaign contribution, the money that you are giving someone else being used as an in-kind campaign
contribution, and it isn't disclosed to the fec as an in-kind campaign contribution, wouldn't that be illegal? >> i honestly don't know that. and john edwards was tried on something very similar. he was not convicted on that. i think it's -- >> john edwards? >> yes. it's a very niche area of law, and not much expertise in this. but if i could draw one other comparison, if i could. i know, wolf, you may not agree with this. but i think it's fair to do this. and that is the american people hope that, two things. one is that no one is above the law. mr. manafort, though he was a friend of the prrkesident, he should be held accountable. i hope the president doesn't pardon him. but it would be a terrible mistake just to pardon someone because they were a friend of the president. the american people want everyone to be treated the same. they don't want anyone to be above the law. but i think you could ask the question, was it illegal for the hillary clinton campaign to hire
fusion gps and foreign agents to dig up dirt on mr. trump? i mean, this is an area that, again, i don't know we know the answers to these questions. they are something we'll have to look at and see what the fec has to say. >> we know the justice department spent more than a year looking into all of these allegations against hillary clinton. we know what the result of those allegations were, what they concluded at the time. but let me basically get your thoughts on this. it's a very sensitive issue right now. and i want to be precise. are you saying you would be upset, you'd be disappointed if the president were to issue a pardon for paul manafort who was convicted yesterday on these eight counts of tax fraud and bank fraud? >> oh, absolutely. absolutely, i would be upset by that and offended by that. why should he be issued a pardon for something that had nothing at all to do with mr. trump. these were transgressions that took place years before he was
working as his campaign chief. he should be held accountable for that. and for the president to pardon him, and by the way, i want to say, i have no indication at all that he's considering that. i don't know that anyone has suggested that. anyone close to the president certainly hasn't. i am just speculating that if he were, that would be a terrible mistake. no reason to pardon him just because he's a friend of the president's. >> i saw his tweets this morning about paul manafort. he said i feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. and justice took a 12-year-old case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and unlike michael cohen, he refused to break, make up stories in order to make a deal. such respect for a brave man. the president is praising someone who has just been convicted by a jury of his peers of stealing millions of dollars from american taxpayers. is that appropriate? >> well, look, i think the president considers paul manafort a friend. they worked together. if you have a friend or
associate, a family member, someone that you have liked or had a relationship with and they're going to prison, i can understand why the president feels badly for him. but i don't consider mr. manafort a brave man. i don't consider him someone i would hold up in high esteem. look, he broke the law. he should be held accountable for that, just like anyone else should be. >> in the aftermath of these convictions, the plea deal and everything else we've learned over these past several weeks and months, do you think it's appropriate for your committee, the house intelligence committee, to reopen your investigation and, for example, re-interview michael cohen? his lawyer says he's willing to come back without immunity and testify in open session. would that be appropriate to do that with the house intelligence committee? >> you know, wolf, as you and i have talked about many times. the house intel committee's focus is on counterintelligence, protecting national security.
when there are allegations of collusion between the trump campaign or others and russia, that's clearly falls under our purview and area of responsibility. this is something quite different. this is fec law. this is, you know -- >> well, let me rephrase the question. would it be appropriate for another committee in the house of representatives, the oversight committee, judiciary committee, for example, to take a close look at what has just happened? >> well, and that was the point i was about to make. not under intel committee but under judiciary or as you said perhaps government oversight. i think, though, the more effective way to oversee this and prosecute that is through the courts, through the southern court in new york city, as it has been placed. they are the ones who have the investigators, the expertise. it really is a court proceeding, not so much a political proceeding, which it would become if any one of the committees were to take and reopen this. would they have a responsibility for oversight? they have a responsibility to ask these questions. if they feel that's necessary, i
wouldn't object to that. but i don't think it should supplant the judicial process. >> we know there was a judicial process under way during watergate and the nixon impeachment process, yet the house judiciary committee, they went full speed ahead and they opened up a full oversight committee hearing in that area when john dean, the white house counsel stood up and testified and said what he said about those secret tapes. we know what that eventually resulted in. and i want to pick up this conversation, congressman. i know you are going to stand by with me. we have a lot more to discuss, including michael cohen's bombshell sparking calls for president trump's impeachment. we'll discuss that among other issues. also, there's more breaking news. we're getting word right now that the democratic national committee headquarters right here in washington, d.c., has again been targeted in what's being called the sophisticated attempt to hack into voter database. issues, the details just coming in.
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then his former hhs secretary, tom price, scott pruitt from the epa, they've resigned under fire. what do you say to your colleagues, your friends, your constituents about the president's initial promise to surround himself only with the best people. >> well, i mean, that clearly hasn't happened. not in every instance. i think he does have some amazing people around him, some very capable people. especially his national security team. general mattis, mike pompeo, and so he has had a very good team in some cases. in some cases, he's clearly had people who have disappointed him. you have to differentiate degree and scale here as well. mr. manafort and mr. flynn under very different circumstances. the accusations against them are very different. general flynn served his country for many years. you know, the accusation about lying to the fbi is one incident with a very minimal potential jail sentence. that's very different from mr.
manafort and mr. cohen. in fairness, it's important to draw that distinction between those two. >> all right. while i have you, i want to shift gears dramatically. you're just back from a visit to south korea where you have had a chance to assess what's going on with north korea, the aftermath of the president's meet wiing w the north korean leader. what's your bottom line assessment as you look back at where things are. >> the reason is, i'm encouraged. if you'd asked me a year ago, do i think there's any way kim jong-un is going to agree to denuclearization, i would have said no. no possible way we're going to convince him of that. and that wasn't just me. it was the cia analysts and others who shared that view. but i really think there's an opportunity now. last fall, military members there, and as you said, i was just back from the trip. spent a lot of time with cia and other agencies and military. they were actually preparing for the possibility of war some time this spring. and they feel now they've got a
breath of relief. they feel there's an opportunity for diplomacy and for negotiations which we just didn't have before. and such a good thing for the people in korea. such good thing for the american people. it's not going to happen by the weekend. it's going to take years. just like our negotiations with russia took years and the s.a.l.t. and s.t.a.r.t. negotiations. we may be able to do something that just a year ago we thought impossible to do. >> the president keeps praising kim jong-un, saying he's ready for another summit with the north korean leader. we'll see if that happens. welcome back to the united states, congressman. thanks for joining us. as i said earlier, so many of your republican colleagues are reluctant to speak out on this day. you're a good man. appreciate it very much. >> thank you, sir. more breaking news we're following. getting president trump's first reaction to michael cohen's guilty plea and implicating the president in a new interview. stay with us.
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trump. here's what he said just moments ago. this is the president of the united states when asked about his knowledge of those payments. >> later on, i knew. later on. but you have to understand. what he did, and they weren't taken out of campaign finance. that's a big thing. that's a much bigger thing. did they come out of the campaign? they didn't come out of the campaign. they came from me. and i tweeted about it. i don't know if you know, but i tweeted about the payments. but they didn't come out of campaign. in fact, my first question when i heard about it was, did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey. and they didn't come out of the campaign. and that's big. but they weren't -- that's not -- it's not even a campaign violation. if you look at president obama, he had a massive campaign violation. but he had a different attorney general. and they viewed it a lot differently. >> all right. let's assess what we just heard
with our crime and justice reporter shimon prokupecz who is with us and our politics reporter and editor at large chris cillizza. what's your reaction? >> two things. first, donald trump saying he didn't know at the time runs directly counter to what michael cohen said in the plea agreement. mr. cohen said it was directed and coordinated with the president of the united states. >> this is what he told the federal judge in new york. he made these two payments to these two women, quote, in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office. and he then said it was designed to, quote, influence the election. >> okay. so you can say, well, it's a he said/he said. sort of. michael cohen is testifying under oath in that plea agreement and the southern district of new york, the prosecutors have to believe that he is testifying truthfully in order to say, okay, we'll give you a plea agreement. that's point one. point two, i don't know that
donald trump understands what he's talking about as it relates to campaign finance law. sure, if it didn't come from the campaign, that's one thing. but even so it would mean that he was loaning money to michael cohen as sort of an in-kind contribution to his campaign. that would then have to be disclosed. put aside the fact that, according to cohen, this was all part of an attempt to influence the election by keeping these two women, stormy daniels and karen mcdougal, silent. he's not on solid legal ground here. i defoer to shimon. >> this is being done to influence the election. so what does it matter in terms of whether this was a personal, whether this came from the president personally or the campaign. they made it very clear. and michael cohen in court made it very clear. i was doing this to influence the 2016 campaign at the direction and the cooperation of donald trump. so, you know, i think this is going to probably be one of
trump's perhaps arguments in all of this. he keeps changing the story as we know when he knew, what he knew about these payments. you know, and it's better off for him. he has to defend himself. but legally, when you think about it, he should let his lawyers deal with this. >> one other thing to add because in a tweet this morning and in that clip, he mentions the obama thing. barack obama campaign paid a massive fine. >> his campaign. >> now what was that in regards to? it was in regards to, basically in the last, i think it's -- in the last 2 1/2, 3 weeks of a campaign of a primary or general, legeneral election you have to report contributions you get in the last 48 hours. it's so that it's not backlogged in the last months of the campaign. that's what he was fined for. not adequately filing those 48-hour reports in detail. that's a very different thing than directly coordinate --
again, testimony under oath, coordinating and directly sort of advising him, michael cohen, to use money to silence two women making allegations about the president of the united states. and let's remember, stormy daniels it was 11 days before the election that michael cohen had a shell company pay him. >> i'll never forget the payment was $130,000 to stormy daniels. $150,000 to karen mcdougal. >> you have to assume here because prosecutors have been working this investigation for quite some time that there's other evidence here. this isn't just the word of michael cohen. they're not going to just do that in this situation. so there's got -- they have text messages, there are phone calls they know of, e-mails. remember they did the search warrant. they have all this information, thousands of documents and text messages. so it's a problem, i think. for the president to say, you know, he's just kind of picking and trying to figure out exactly how he can perhaps maybe explain all of this. i don't know. the bottom line is we know what the prosecutors here have said.
watergate. and basically that's what's out there. michael cohen did this under oath in open court, and it seems, i think the president obviously realizes that this is a problem for him. his people certainly realize it is a problem for them, and they need an explanation for this. >> to be clear, what he is offering in that interview and in the tweets is in no way well, 50% of people say this and 50% say this. we're talking about results of an extensive investigation. we're talking about seizure of home, hotel, and office, document after document, e-mails, texts. donald trump can tell a fox news source or tweet out something and make it apples and not even orange, apples to a car about barack obama, but that doesn't change the fundamental facts that we know according to sdny and michael cohen. >> and on almost every occasion goes after the attorney general
of the united states and the justice department of the united states. even though he says you've got to support law enforcement down the road, clearly he's got issues with the attorney general, jeffrey toobi sessions. stick around, there's more news we're following. we'll take a quick break, we'll be right back.
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criminal counts, including campaign finance violations. what's your immediate reaction? >> my immediate reaction is that the mueller investigation must proceed and must be protected to its course. so what's happening is i think the walls are closing in on the president and he must be taking this whole situation as real now. he cannot continue to call it a witch hunt because there have been so many indictments already and his former campaign chair has been found guilty of 8 counts, his former fixer has pled guilty to 8 counts, implicating the president who is now an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal matter. >> as a result of this, you announced dramatically today you're actually cancelling your scheduled meeting with the u.s. supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh. tell us why. >> the president is an unindicted co-conspirator and i do not owe this president the courtesy to meet with his nominee, brett kavanaugh, who by
the way is being nominated because the president expects justice cavanaugh should he make it to the supreme court to protect the president. >> your colleague on the committee, richard blumenthal is calling for delay in the scheduled hearings, supposed to start september 4th for brett kavanaugh. is that realistic? you're the minority, republicans are the majority. >> from the beginning we democrats have called for delay in terms of the hearing and we said what's good for the goose is good for the gander, whatever the saying is becau, mitch mcco held that seat for a year, we are asking for delay until this election so the american people can weigh in. we called for delay. even more so now with what's
transpired, we think it is important for us to get all of the documents we need and what is the all fire rush to get the person on the supreme court. i think the rush is, the president wants somebody on the court who will protect. >> let me move to what the president is strongly signaling, that he might be ready for a pardon for paul manafort convicted on 8 counts yesterday, what do you think reaction would be if he were to pardon manafort? >> i think the president has no concept of the limits to his power and yes, he does have discretion to pardon people, but in this case i think it would be all admission of guilty. conspiracy to effect the elections and conspire with russia. i think that's what it would
telegraph to me. i hope that's what it would telegraph to the american people. >> finally, i want to switch gears. a category four is moving closer and closer to the hawaiian islands. first of all, is your state prepared? >> yes. there's already been a declaration of disaster. some schools have been closed, offices are closed, and i want to urge all of the people of hawaii to take care, and also let's be kind to each other. tempers flare at a time like this. one more thing regarding judge brett kavanaugh, he can make this claim to this nomination, make his case in open hearing under oath. i at this point will not be voting for him. >> let's see if he gets other democrats to vote for him. if any republicans vote against him. we'll see what unfolds in the coming weeks. senator hirono, thanks for being here.
Kate Bolduan gives a fresh take on today's top stories.
reporting violations where they failed to report some things inadvertently. i think in the obama case it was what are called 48-hour report, failure to report contributions. in none of those cases that i'm aware of has the actual candidate or the president been implicated in ordering it be done. it wasn't that obama said let's not report these contributions. those are kind of the more -- the regular violations that you see in presidential campaigns. here we have an allegation that the president directly ordered cohen to pay money to prevent people from talking about alleged affairs. that's a potential violation on several counts. one, people talk about the reporting violation. these were contributions that weren't reported. that's true. but, they were paid by the trump organization. that makes it a corporate contribution. it is illegal to make a corporate contribution. it is also illegal for an officer of a corporation to authorize a corporate contribution which sounds like what trump may have done. trump is also the candidate. it is illegal for the candidate
to accept is the corporate contribution. there were also excessive contributions from cohen. same thing applies. it was illegal to accept those contributions by the candidate. so this is very unusual in that we have the candidate being implicated in directly coordinating and directing the actual violations of law. that's not what we've seen before. >> so you don't agree obviously with the president because you laid out that very well. when it comes to michael cohen though, page, how credible is michael cohen at this point? >> well, erica, i think obviously that's the strongest argument that the white house has is, look, this guy's clearly not been truthful with the american people. he's committed felony crimes that he's now pled guilty to so how can you believe what he is saying about me. that's especially true when we hear his lawyer saying, look, he's ready to talk more, he feels somehow betrayed by the president. so i think it is certainly from the president's standpoint the right move to attack his credibility. i agree with larry that what's
been alleged here are certainly criminal acts but they don't have to be. i mean these particular statutes also allow for civil punishment -- fines and things of that nature -- which you don't see in say a bank fraud statute or something like that. so there is discretion where a prosecutor can decide not to pursue this as a criminal indictment or criminal information and leave it as a civil fine. >> larry, it's also important to point out here that this could ultimately handled very differently if the president were not the president today. >> right. if the president were not the president today, then there would not be this question about whether he could be indicted. it's clear that if he had not won he would have been indicted for these things. i think it is also true these can be prosecuted by the fec as a civil violation. difference is when they become a knowing and willful violation and core violation of the law, then they can be prosecuted as a criminal violation. that's what's going to be alleged here. one other point -- i agree that
michael cohen has credibility issues. but it is somewhat ironic that the president, who is known to regularly lie about things, has serious credibility issues, and in fact lied about this very thing. first said he had no knowledge of the stormy daniels payments, then had to admit, yes, he did know about the stormy daniels payments is attacking the credibility of michael cohen, i think there are credibility issues on all sides. >> there are questions about what else can be said here. lanny davis said directly this morning michael cohen may have more things he wants to talk to the special counsel about. that does not include cooperation in this plea deal. when you hear those words from lanny davis is it in some ways a public push on his part to come up with a separate deal perhaps with the special counsel? >> that's certainly possible, erica. but it is a strange legal strategy. if he really has good, solid information that the special counsel's going to be interested in, then set up a proffer meeting.
set up a time for michael cohen to sit down with the investigators, with the prosecutors, from bob mueller's office and tell him, this is what i have. or even the lawyer can do that. lanny can sit down with those folks and say, let me give you an attorney proffer. i'm going to tell you what my client would say. instead of doing it in the news media. because as we've seen, the special counsel's office is really not inclined to use the media as part of their investigation. so from a legal strategy, i think you would be doing that behind closed doors and not in front of the camera. >> it's fascinating, too, larry. i know that you said this plea deal itself could form the basis for impeachment proceedings. not as many people are jumping on that impeachment bandwagon. but you think it is okay to go there. >> well, look. i think it has to be discussed. if there is serious evidence the president committed a felony, then i think impeachment is one of the things that's on the table. as a practical matter, is it going to happen in this congress? very doubtful. but i think it is something that has to be talked about.
we talked about whether or not a sitting president can be indicted. there is the office of legal counsel's opinion that he can't be. that's not settled law. but if you aren't going to be able to indict a sitting president, and if you're not going to talk about impeachment, that means he's above the law and that's just something that's hard to accept in a democracy, that the president is above the law, that he can do what he wants. >> none of us can ignore the fact that in has all become so political. as one of you just pointed out, we aren't hearing anything from the mueller camp on this. but it is what we are hearing from other folks who are either directly or indirectly involved who are really trying to paint this investigation in whichever way is most favorable to them. looking at it from that political standpoint, no matter what's in that report, in some ways are we kind of past the point of no return? >> i think so, erica. that really to me is the most troubling part of all this. i'm on the front lines in federal criminal courts in red states all the time. and i'm defending people who are
charged with federal crimes. whenever i see bombs thrown by the president, by the white house, at their own department of justice, at the special counsel's office, i see the long-term effects that's going to have on the ability of the government to prosecute cases in courts across this country. these credibility issues -- he may be talking about michael cohen one day and challenging his credibility, but he's also talking about the rule of law. i'm concerned that the consequences of those actions will last far beyond his presidency. >> page pate, larry nobles, appreciate it. thank you. coming up, why is the president defending paul manafort in the wake of his convictions? could this be a signal, a possible pardon, perhaps, for his former campaign chairman? plus, republican leaders in congress largely silent after michael cohen implicates the president in a crime. how long can they dodge the issue? you wouldn't accept an incomplete job from any one else. why accept it from an allergy pill? flonase relieves sneezing, itchy, watery eyes
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years in prison, plus there is a second criminal trial on additional charges next month. the president's open sympathy for manafort begging questions about a possible pardon unless manafort decides to work with the special counsel in hopes of reducing his sentence. cnn legal analyst paul cowan. yesterday the jury sent the note saying we can't decide on one count. it led the impression everything was set on the other 17. eight guilty -- eight counts they found manafort guilty. the other ten a mistrial. is 8 out of 18 a win? >> it is a win because the jail sentence that can be attached to those eight counts is probably as great as if he was convicted on all the counts. i say that because you always hear about these cases. they say he's facing 90 years in prison. that's not really true because when you apply federal guidelines, it will come down to a much shorter sentence that a judge is likely to impose. probably around 10 years.
even if he had been convicted on all the counts, the sentence might be the same. so it really is a victory for the prosecution even though they lost ten counts. >> even though they lost ten. we know that narrative's already out there. you didn't even get a conviction on half of these, so you know what? what is this sort of sham of an investigation and everything else we are seeing come out of that. is that a fair point? >> i don't think it necessarily is a fair point. i think the fair point is that watch out for juries and watch out also when you have a president of the united states send is messages to deliberating jurors. now remember, the president was out making speeches about what a great guy paul manafort is, how this investigation is a witch hunt -- or as he now calls it a rigged witch hunt, that word gets around in a jury pool and you have to wonder, are people thinking this is a political prosecution and therefore they're more skeptical than a normal jury would be? >> what's fascinating, we know this jury was not sequestered. when they came back they were
asked if they saw or read anything about the case. they said no. but sometimes it is hard to ignore it. the president's been speaking out. we saw the tweet this morning about paul manafort calling him a brave man. looking at all this, he has this other trial coming up. his tweets, his comments, do you see those at as a message to paul manafort? >> oh, yes. i think manafort is telegraphing that a pardon is coming down the road, sit down, be loyal, don't cooperate with anybody. that's how i read those tweets with the president so actively supporting him, especially if you just look at the eight counts. i mean there are really legitimate income tax evasion counts here and other serious counts that were proven by prosecutors. for the president to continue supporting manafort is really hard to believe. >> anything to -- as we look at what happened in this first trial, next trial comes up in september in washington. anything that we can glean in terms of where you think that
may go? they have three times as much evidence that they say said they are bringing. >> the big thing is the pool included counties that are as much as 60% for trump. if you get hard core trump supporters on a jury thinking that this is a political prosecution, he had a better shot in northern virginia of getting a hung jury on various counts. washington, d.c., it's like 90% of the vote went for hillary clinton. so he's not going to get a friendly jury pool in washington, d.c. that's why mueller is bringing those charges there. so i think he's got a rough road ahead. >> paul callan, thank you. coming up, republican leaders largely silent on the major news about michael cohen and paul manafort. something though democrats don't want to talk about either connected to all of these latest connected to all of these latest developments.
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feel like 50? how can i share new plans virtually? how can i download an e-file? virtual tours? zip-file? really big files? in seconds, not minutes... just like that. like everything... the answer is simple. i'll do what i've always done... dream more, dream faster, and above all... now, i'll dream gig. now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america's largest gig-speed network. republican leaders largely silent on the michael cohen's bombshell plea implicating president trump in a crime. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell and house majority whip steve scalise's responsibility -- no comment. john cornyn says it had nothing to do with russia or the president and house speaker wall ryan says he needs more
information. we should point out as we try to track down lawmakers and get some response from them, either on capitol hill or even on their vacations -- because it is kinds of important -- we did just get some sound from senator orren hatch weighing in. >> well, these are serious charges and they can't be ignored. >> do you tink this opehink thp the president to tk indicted while sitting in office? >> no, because i don't think he can be indicted while sitting in office. we'll have to see where this all works out. >> rachel, can republican leadership really continue to ignore this? >> they can't continue to ignore it, no. they're going to have to answer for it of course when they are on capitol hill and reporters are pressing them. they're going to be dodgy on this. republicans agree, when president donald trump was elected in 2016 that they were going to plug their noses and basically ignore anything he might say that they find unsavory or sings that things t
that they do not like. there is no reason to think that in just less than three months from a critical mid-term election they're going to dessert the president when they think they actually need him to keep their house and senate majorities. this really puts them in a pickle because they have a lot of republicans in swing states, in swing districts, especially in the house, who are going to need to appeal to independent voters, people who perhaps don't like the president or are a little skeptical of the president. if they just turn a blind eye to what michael cohen said in court the other day? then that could be a problem for them. they are in a tough spot here. >> voters will likely be asking candidates obviously on both sides of the aisle about this. when it comes to robert mueller, lindsey graham saying it is important to let this process continue without interferences. what about, though, republican support to make sure nothing happens to robert mueller? chances of that? >> i think you will see a renewed push in some quarters for that to happen. but it all depends in that regard on mitch mcconnell.
in a sense he said, i see no evidence that donald trump is going to fire bob mueller and therefore we don't need this. i would note that we know that donald trump wanted to fire bob mueller last -- earlier this year, was talked out of it by don mcghan, the white house counsel who's obviously been in the news a lot, of late. so i don't know that this changes much of anything. remember, republicans control the house and the senate, which means they make the rules, effectively. if -- this is to rachel's point. they made a deal a while back with themselves that they were going to have to kind of accept whatever came with donald trump. i'm not sure they thought it was going to be this but whatever came with donald trump because they thought they could get supreme court justices, a tax cut bill through. now donald trump remains quite popular with the republican base, one of the most popular presidents among republicans ever. i don't think they abandon him this close to an election. >> one of the things that can certainly be a rallying cry for the bases of both parties here, talk of impeachment.
it is something that democrats are shying away from. here's what senator warren had to say. >> do think that alone is grounds for impeachment? >> i think that what congress needs to do right now is we need to make sure that special prosecutor mueller is fully protected from being fired by donald trump. >> senator warren obviously moving more towards the protect mueller front on that. steve bannon though making the case that this is sort of a tough road for democrats to take. he's got a point, rachel, yes, it energizes both the democratic base and the republican base when there starts to be talk of impeachment. this is something again that voters are going to ask about. how do they balance that, rachel? >> so far on the hill, we are seeing democratic leaders and democrats in general like warren take a cautious approach to impeachment which might surprise some because yesterday you had obviously michael cohen, the president's personal lawyer, implicating the president
legally in federal court. so it is interesting because in the house about one-third of the democratic caucus voted last december to begin a debate about whether they should impeach the president. that was well before we heard anything about potential campaign finance charges. they were just talking about trump and the way he acted, saying he basically demeaned the office of the presidency. so we sort of expected this morning to come in here and see a bunch of house democrats, now that they are actually talking about criminal allegations, to be talking more about impeachment. so far, not the case. they are concerned apparently that it will backfire in the mid-term elections and that it might actually donald trump up the republican base, turn them out and keep them from winning the house and potentially senate this fall. >> quickly before we let you go, chris, i want your take on this. the charges against duncan hunter and his wife are -- i mean astounding when you read through this. almost $38,000 in overdraft fees and insufficient funds in terms of -- around it's remarkable to
read it. yet, duncan hunter's kind of lucky that all of this happened yesterday because it is certainly being overshadowed. >> it is being overshadowed but it is not being forgotten. it remains a story. we are talking about it and we should be talking about it. what is alleged in that 47-page charging document is widespread corruption and misuse of campaign funds for personal use. essentially what you see is a member of congress and his wife who have almost no money to their name, repeatedrepeatedly, allegedly, using their campaign account for things that are all over the place. i read through it. i have a piece up on cnn.com about what you should know from it. one -- just one -- piece that i'll note is duncan hunter asked his wife if he could buy shorts for their hawaii vacation. she said they didn't have the money but to charge it to his campaign account and then tell the campaign treasurer that it was for golf balls for wounded warriors. that is some remarkably cynical
and dark stuff. >> we'll have to leave it there. thank you, both. coming up, facebook strikes another blow to foreign actors hoping to sow discord online, this time removing hundreds of pages linked to iran and russia. those details ahead. if you have psoriasis, ... little things can be a big deal. that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats moderate to severe plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla . it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with... ...an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts,... ...or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines and if you're pregnant or planning to be.
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down nearly 700 accounts after exposing a, quote, coordinated disinformation campaign. those pages linked to russia and iran. we have the latest from washington. these accounts, alex, actually reached a fair amount of people. >> globally, correct. this was a campaign not directed at the united states which we talk about so often, but people around the world. specifically in the united kingdom, in the middle east, latin america, and here in the u.s. what facebook announced is that they took down some 652 accounts and pages, both on facebook and on instagram, which, as you know, they own as well. they called it a coordinated inauthentic behavior. we should note, these were two different campaigns that all these pages were part of. the first one, the bigger one, was coordinated out of iran. these inauthentic pages, as they say, were promoting pro-iranian national stances, for example anti-israel, anti-saudi arabia, pro-palestinian, pro-iran
nuclear deal. then the second campaign was coordinated by russia. this was not to do with the u.s. or u.s. elections. again, it was promoting pro-russian views like -- including their actions in syria and ukraine. and all told, these pages reached some 1 million people. then shortly after facebook made this announcement, twitter did pretty much the same thing, saying that they were de-activating almost 300 of their accounts, also part of a campaign coordinated out of iran. so iran is not a country that we do a lot of talking about but they are a real force in the cyber world. this really does show that even as companies like facebook and twitter are stepping up their efforts to identify and take down nefarious actors, any are stepping up their efforts, as well. >> alex, thank you. on wall street the bulletins to charge hitting a new
milestone today. the longest stretch of non-stop gains in american history. can it keep going? cnn chief business correspondent christine romans is at the new york stock exchange for us live. good morning. >> reporter: hi! good morning. this is realably remarkable whe we've come from. remember the dark, dark days of 2009 that was the beginning of this bull. we don't know it then. but the s&p 500 has almost quadrupled really since 2009. the dow jones industrial average is up 19,000 points. this was really driven by central banks, remember they tried to rescue the financial system. but the last couple of quarters you've seen s&p 500 companies have 200% government growth two quarters in a row. they're making a ton of money. that's why some say this bull could keep going here. the bull market driven by a whole host of things but really
a strong economy now, corporate profits are doing well and the federal reserve still has relatively low interest rates. we've seen the fed raising interest rates. we've seen the president complaining about that. but indeed interest rates are still relatively low. so this bull market, now the longest in history, it tops a bull market, by the way, that started in 1990 and ended with the dotcom burst. you remember that? this was longer than that one. here we are. >> christine, thank you. coming up, a top democratic senator says the country is now in the midst of a watergate moment. does the michael cohen bombshell though really rise to that level? we'll discuss. former watergate prosecutor -- next.
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the ghosts the water garrett ma watergate making a little noise in washington. some democrats quickly drawing a comparison. >> wolf, we're in a watergate moment where the two parties need to come together. we need bipartisanship now more than ever to protect the special counsel and to stop -- i must underscore stop -- any consideration for pardons. >> here to discuss, man with some intimate knowledge, former assistant special prosecutor for the watergate investigation, richard benveneste. thank you for joining us. you are probably one of the best people to ask on this front. do you agree with senator ba
bloomen shbloom bloomen thal -- this a watergate moment? >> so clear in analogies to watergate. in watergate there were payments of hush money to keep the watergate burglars, quote, on the reservation, keep them from telling what they knew. here we have hush money payments to girlfriends allegedly of the president not to talk prior to the election or the primary in fact. here we have discussions of pardons. in watergate we had secret offers of clemency to burglars to keep their silence. here we are hearing about the president considering a pardon for paul manafort, for example. this is a moment i think -- and i take senator blumenthal's
point very strongly -- that bipartisanship has to come together and apply some sense to what's going on. how can the president be thinking about pardoning an individual who's just been convicted by a jury of 12 decent americans in virginia for hiding $60 million from uncle sam, where republican constituents pay their taxes. here's an individual who flouted the law, flaunted his obligations, and lived the life of a mega rich individual while never paying taxes. does it bring to mind the fact that president trump himself has continued to refuse to release his own tax returns? maybe that's part of it. but people have to come together
and the president is talking about a witness, mr. cohen, as a rat, as though he were the leader of a new jersey crime family. a tony soprano. instead of being the head of the party of lincoln. what in the world are we going through in this country? >> you laid out a lot for me in that answer. let's start with michael cohen. looking at him, it's clear how the president feels from what we've heard. but from your view, is he credible? >> sorry. >> can you hear me? >> please repeat. >> okay, sure. i was just saying, when it comes to michael cohen, to you, is he credible? do you believe him? >> well, i think michael cohen has a credibility issue because he's pleaded guilty to a variety of federal crimes. and so anything that he says beyond he said/she said needs to
be corroborate and to the extent that he's got corroborating information and there are millions of documents that have been seized from him and there are tape recordings that apparently he has, this is corroboration. and this is what prosecutors do. they start with a statement, and they get leads. cohen may be able to point them in directions that they hadn't thought of or cement ideas that they had been thinking of with some recollections. so this is all very important. cohen was with him for a long time. cohen was involved in various dealings with russia in projects that the president had talked about doing. so all of that information i am quite certain will eventually wind up in the hands of mr. mueller and his team. >> you laid out a lot when we
asked you whether you agree with senator blumenthal. >> i'm trying to read your lips because i'm getting no sound -- now i get you. >> real quickly, as you were answering that question about whether or not this is a watergate moment, one of the things that stood out, when you were calling on, as well, agreeing with him that there needs to be a bipartisan effort in washington. politically, it's a slightly different place than where we were with richard nixon. this has all been politicized. if something doesn't change -- i guess what i'm trying to say is, can this rise above politics, do you believe, in this country? and if it doesn't, what does that say about the state of the united states? >> well, it's a bizarre situation if it doesn't. yes, it's entirely different because both houses of congress are now controlled by mr. trump's party.
and if party loyalty continues to trump dedication to the constitution and to the american public, then we will see nothing approaching watergate done. but if there is an awakening of conscience and patriotism that allows for the kind of bipartisanship that senator blumenthal and many, many others are talking about, maybe we can have an objective investigation, and congress will perform its duty as it is supposed to as a check against the executive department. and maybe we'll get answers. >> richard ben-veniste. >> i don't think we'll get them from mr. trump because he continues to do this kabuki dance about talking to mr. mueller. it's gone on for eight months, and it seems unlikely, as i said
eight months o s ago, that he w ever sit down and give testimony under oath. >> richard, always appreciate your insight and thanks for sticking with us on those audio issues as well. >> thank you. a missing college student in iowa is found dead. authorities say the suspect is an undocumented immigrant. how the tragic crime is now turning political. i'm really into this car,
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and you saw what happened to that incredible, beautiful young woman. should have never happened. illegally in our country. we've had a huge impact, but the laws are so bad. the immigration laws are such a disgrace. >> the body believed to be that of 20-year-old mollie tibbetts found in a corn field. an autopsy will be confirmed to confirm how and when she died. they spent nearly a month searching for her. police did arrest christhian rivera. he confessed to approaching tibbetts after seeing her running and he pursued her, then abducted her. thanks for joining me today. "inside politics" with john king starts right now.
political life as senior ministers deserve him and contest his leadership but he says he will quit politics if his liberal party no longer supports him in a second leadership vote on friday the government has suspended parliament to try to resolve this crisis no australian prime minister has succeeded in serving a full three year term in over a decade. let's bring in australian journalist roger maynard for more on this good morning roger is australia on the verge of getting a new prime minister it certainly seems that way it's very likely that australia will have the new i mean but tomorrow let alone one hundred percent. depends on whether a lot illusion for a spill succeeds tomorrow if that does happen then nothing to the prime minister said he will resign and he will stand down and open the way flora here's
a is near misses to stand along with also be two other candidates the treasurer scott morrison and possibly the foreign minister julie bishop so it's all up at the moment very very undecided about exactly what's going to happen but humans are likely to be an interesting day to say the least ok roger what prompted all of this what was there a galvanizing issue. well the brahmanist has been on the outer if you like in the past few months now he's full and dramatically in the opinion polls and so has his party the liberal party that's partly because of the government's an energy policy prime minister up turnbull is seen as a center left if you are going and some people say he has more in common with the opposition labor party than he does with his own conservatives and he's very supportive of the climate change action mission targets and that has coincided with
a dramatic increase in energy prices here in australia almost over the past year and a lot of people are rightly that and that's what the criticism and his a slump in the opinion poll as of late ok well let's take a listen to how now to what prime minister turnbull had to say about what's going on. the reality is that a minority in the party room. supported by. others outside the parliament have sort through. bullied intimidate others into. making this change of leadership that they're seeking. ok allegations there of bullying of intimidation why are australian part of politics so turbulent. well i suppose it's partly because of israeli and generally pretty cynical about their politicians they're disillusioned
with most political parties and that's right what one of the reasons why many prime ministers don't stay in power for their long we've had eight or sort of fall from ministers in the process eighty years one of them sir twice but that's an indication of you know how cynical people are about politicians and how that they simply don't trust them and whether or not you you take malcolm turnbull's word for it a lot you know he's i was thinking from his his own viewpoint there but generally speaking the electorate don't really have much time for either the liberal or labor party roger maynard for us are from sydney today roger thanks for bringing us up to date i grimaced. well mark is here now at the business desk because just a few hours ago the u.s. slapped a twenty five percent tariff on sixteen billion dollars worth of chinese imports and of course it's the second round off a tariff there against china and because donald trump and his administration says there are unfair practices from beijing that need to be punished and of course
china responded immediately as it announced also with some three hundred american products ok and all that means tough times ahead for american regions that export billions and products to china take the city of wichita for example in kansas according to the brookings institution no other metro area in the u.s. is being impacted more by the u.s. china trade dispute alexander phenomena visited wichita to find out what business people there are saying in the american heartland. from handrails and. john hood and his brother own the company in which that hope for a wide range of aluminum however should trump decision it's becoming more and more difficult for the brothers to calculate their contract big impact here for a deal in about six months now but if. we didn't affect our market
we had to be very careful and we did project to give it a project let's say in january and then it goes up thirty percent by march in your bid is not very good anymore and i'm going to hurt a lot tear of our taxes on imports and exports says karen paige c.e.o. and president of kansas global partners one twenty five years he's been working to help local companies to improve their position in global markets now she has to deal with more and more businesses suffering from trade policies it we're hearing from companies they they may have to lay off people they can only. so or you know the head on their profit margins for so long and then they'll not be competitive that competitive they can't south they can't sell they have to lay off. according to a recent analysis which should tell with its focus on aerospace manufacturing and agriculture more exposed to chinese terrorists than any other us metro area but it's not easy
to find business people ready to talk about that some of them it's off camera that they don't want to be seen to contradict president in this deeply conservative state for now many manufacturers here say they're holding their own but with one in four dollars in which the us economy coming from exports to tariffs are expected to have a huge impact an estimated twenty thousand jobs are at stake and at the moment it's the farmers who are paying the biggest toll one of them is kids the male are at third generation farmer he's been the rat for the last two years now he's afraid of losing china as the market dropped despite the fact that he soybeans are doing just fine. her prices are we are receiving are and you are from a dollar to two dollars less than there was three months ago and it's called. her real concern whether we're going to be able to get those prices back in
the near future and we're we're definitely worried about the worth of the income is going to come to the fore nevertheless keith miller still supports. his the first president fighting for you ask interests he says the farmer hopes to try him can strike a deal with china and most of all hopes that this will happen soon. well before the u.s. and china can strike any kind of deal those tariffs are causing ripples certainly on stock markets monica what's been the reaction of the markets of course that we can see reacting our asian markets and stocks in shanghai hong kong and shane say in slipped in early afternoon i'll be you know dramatic reactions as those tariffs were expected of course hong kong's hang seng for example was down more point seven percent shanghai indices lost more point three percent but the chinese commerce
a trade perspective and this isn't having a knock on effect in terms of the companies reinvesting into their businesses and this could have a knock on effect in terms of productivity growth so there were chinese government is calling this in or aware of this issue which again bring it back to the point why why we do think that they could be a resolution sooner rather than later and just very very briefly catherine from your perspective which side is more interested in resolving the dispute. i think both sides are and when we look at the the sectors of the industries that the americans have so far been really targeting it's very much the industries that a comment about a change that internet related industries and again that's why with likely that the resolution could come in terms of more old economy china which again is energy related so we wait for the americans because of the deal being struck in china giving in to the americans and for china we do have a lack of energy sometimes from a seasonal perspective so be a win for them too right cats if again very busy days right now in washington d.c.
president trump has accused his former lawyer michael cohen of lying under pressure from prosecutors investigating campaign finance violations the white house is grappling with the allegations the president orchestrated an illegal cover up to buy the silence of two women who claimed he had affairs with them now as a result the president is confronting mounting legal and political threats. in his guilty plea michael cohen to admitted to violating campaign finance laws during the twenty sixteen u.s. presidential election he said he was instructed by a candidate's understood to be tunneled trump to make payments to two women to finance their obligations they had extramarital affairs with trump in an interview and fox news trump denied breaking the law. did they come out of the campaign they didn't come out of the campaign they came for me and i did about it you know i put i don't know if you know but i tweeted. about the payments but they didn't come out
of campaign fact my first question when i heard about it was did they come out of the campaign because that could be a little dicey and the line out of the white house is clear. as the president said we've stated many times he did nothing wrong there are no charges against him he did nothing wrong there are no charges against him in the us he did nothing wrong there are no charges against us congress which wales as much authority is the executive branch at least on paper may see things differently impeachment becomes a possibility when this evidence of what the us constitution calls high crimes and misdemeanors but no make is a treading carefully prepared i just don't think that engaging in speculation is the way to go and certainly i think impeachment talk is something that is not something we should be engaging in right now i don't think i've witnessed anything like witness over the last year and. probably the american people haven't in modern times if there weren't people in our view of your show you wouldn't expect
me to. to make it be sitting on impeachment and do you hear what the house of representatives very do that's because it's the house that votes to open an impeachment trial which then takes place in the senate republicans control both houses of congress that might be of some comfort to trump but by no means office total security. we want to talk now for some of the other stories making the news today the democratic national committee in the u.s. an attempted hack into its voter database has been thwarted now this comes two years after russian operatives hacked into d.n.c. computers during the presidential election facilitating the release of tens of thousands of emails it's not known who was behind this latest hacking attempt. half the or hinge of children crossed into bangladesh without parents were orphaned by violence of me in march it was previously thought that they had simply been separated from their living parents now this new finding by the charity save the
children comes one year since me and more began forcibly expelling seven hundred thousand one hundred muslims. the leader of so-called islamic state appears to have resurfaced after more than a year recording from here although gaddafi has been released by the group the secretive i as leader has been reported killed or wounded a number of times the authenticity and date of the latest recording have not verified. the german chancellor angela merkel begins a trip to three former soviet republics today georgia armenia and azerbaijan have all been caught up in ethnic conflicts and territorial disputes security issues will be on those agenda as well as political and economic ties to are just keen to join the european union and nato that for protection from its much larger neighbor russia the chancellor's first stop will be the georgian capital tbilisi earlier this year demonstrations in that city exposed deep divisions in georgian society
thousands took to the streets in protest after police raided a number of night clubs searching for drugs the city's community spearheaded the push back calling for a more liberal society. sure one takes a closer look. this is the soundtrack for social change in georgia. techno clubs like he did. part of a movement pushing for bt rights and to ease the country's unusually strict drug laws there islands of freedom in a conservative post soviet society. club culture is growing very fast but. the years to change the mentality of the people who. many. people like.
strange. don't deserve to be part of this society so. change. trying to change that. dancing became political in may after armed georgian police raided two of to be most renowned clubs gallery and looking for drug dealers in response to what many saw as the heavy handedness of authority these hundreds took to the streets to protest the government and to fight for progressive values by down say. gay rights activists live on video need to organize the regular night at one of the clubs that was raided he says the community often faces abuse and violence in georgia and that's why they are a key group in the push for a more liberal society community as well as other groups have enjoyed by see any as a safe space as a space where they can enjoy a very quality freedom. which is quite lacking outside of.
those club scenes it's very conservative site and though the club rates for presenting this threat to the safe environment. georgia. is to be at a crossroads between its past and its future but conservative forces including the georgian orthodox church are also very powerful in the country and in recent years several nationalist groups of appeared on the georgian political scene. i. mean he is a musician and he's also the co-founder of the ultra nationalist movement georgian march which has rallied crowds against migrants and for what he calls traditional family values. me feels georgia is losing its national identity to western liberal values. we want to know why pushing towards why are we rushing
towards darkness where we can see anything. saying georgia is european country is absurd this is the caucasus country. at the bottom of. a candidate from georgia in march will be running in georgia's presidential elections in october but with different groups and generations pulling the country in different directions it will likely take much longer for georgia's future to take shape. we have some football news now and for the very first time in the fee for corruption scandal a major figure in international football has been sentenced to jail sentence being handed down in a new york courtroom yok speight did abuse forces here to talk about it yeah this is a watershed moment for what happened yes so this is the former head of brazilian football joe samaria marine and he's been sentenced to four years in jail on corruption
charges and stems from an investigation led by u.s. authorities which started almost three years ago but we have a report to give us a bit more background information on this particular case. just say maria marine until his conviction and u.s. court in december spent a lot of time moving between his temporary digs at new york's trump tower and a federal courthouse that ended with guilty verdicts on six counts related to taking over six million dollars in bribes while handing out broadcast and marketing rights for major soccer tournaments. the former head of brazilian soccer marine was one of the qadri of men at the top of the sport's governing body. on a cold december morning near feed his headquarters in zurich in two thousand and fifteen swiss and u.s. investigators coordinated a raid on a luxury hotel. marine and a handful of other futile power brokers were arrested some extradited to the u.s.
it was an exclamation point to the corruption crisis at fever. the fever corruption case ranks as one of the largest criminal prosecutions by the u.s. in recent years with some forty defendants most foreign nationals half of them have pleaded guilty marine did not. nor did codefendant one and held up coat of paraquat who once was head of south american soccer he'll be sentenced next week almost certainly to prison based on the judge's comments for taking over ten million dollars in bribes himself. this was one of the biggest u.s. court prosecutions in years this must be terribly significant for its present and its future yeah it's massive i mean it's the biggest investigation into full stop the allegations. really allegations of corruption largely revolved around bribery now in football big contracts are awarded to media organizations for the rights to
broadcast football tournament so we're talking millions if not billions of dollars here and these officials were accused of taking bribes to ensure certain media organizations won those lucrative contracts so that's what we're looking at here forty two people weren't dictated and we saw marine has been jailed the first high profile official to be jailed and perhaps the pope will follow next week ok how did this all unfold what happened to bring all this to light yes so i mean the the investigation from u.s. authorities started almost three years ago when they charged through the rick hotel and this really took faith by surprise no one before had really tried to interfere with the way faith does a business and from this stems an internal investigation by faith as ethics committee and from that sepp blatter was banned from play for eight years on different charges. and then new president johnny infantino came in and he came in
on a promise to clean up football's governing body ok everyone's looking at him right now in france to see if he will do that job thanks so very much for that. it is being hailed as a giant leap forward for weather forecasting after sixteen years of intensive planning testing and construction a new satellite was sent into orbit last night to monitor when systems around our planet. begin to see the satellite was launched from the european space agency's spaceport in french yeah it's been named eolus after the keeper of the winds in greek mythology scientists hope the data collected will help more accurately predict extreme weather and climate change. more joins me from leipzig he's a mere all just at the library institute for research good morning to you. can we have our weather forecast to be more accurate from now on when it says it's going
to rain well yes i can give the d.j.'s yes because wind is one of the fundamental part of me just as a model need proof and they don't have it their profiles are given for ten percent of the glow person needed for the whole globe will work and i almost as i love the laser will provide solace. picture since it always a go and that makes it into predictions cannot be business and you also nation so if you're also nations a prediction will be much better and you look ok the predictions can only be as good as the observations but how can this satellite measure wind on our planet when the satellites out in space. yeah so if you have some of the minutes i can explain but i have to make sure my short version so this. yes so this is in line does this laser dispersion firing positives and say gold was a on the way to the us this kind of makes some light from arrows or skull
procreates ice just inspectors a satellite and from that get a good picture of the back scatter answer tricky thing this jets is able to see even to movement of the passes so not only is it content even movement and then it's easy to translate this information in wind speed and direction that's a simple trick ok that sounds that sounds good but will this technology help us tackle climate change and extreme weather the type we've been seeing in the summer i guess savior for this question because it's not only major one in climatology it's really since this laser is this is everything it is tacit cease fire small from california all those who are also world sees clouds everything and we get much much better picture on all of the interaction between pollution resorts crowds presentation and we will do that all over the lot in the pool our regions in the top leagues and simulators so it i'm sure that will be a big big big step forward for the next three years with our science albert on xmen
thanks so much for breaking down what eolus will be doing for us from leipzig joining us this morning saying you're. let's give you a modern now some of the top stories we're following for you australia's prime minister malcolm turnbull this claims of power and this calls for his from his own party for him to resign turnbull says so quit if his labor party no longer supports him and his second leadership vote that's on friday no australian prime minister has served a full three year term in over a decade. and the u.s. and china have slapped a new round of tariffs on each other both targeting sixteen billion dollars of goods u.s. and chinese officials are holding talks in washington to diffuse this escalating trade dispute. this is deja vu news live from berlin thanks so much for being with us.
sleep on. this week on conflicts the limits of school to expose you not secondly follow. minister to gary has been among the politicians searching for a common you approach on the question of law migration as a compromise has been found is a fair deal for everybody conflicts. in sixty minutes. lehman brothers ten years on a story of ambition greed and megalomania. we are so clever the medium control the rich but it's one. of investment bankers on top of her or so with her stock. everybody was wrong the wanted to ignore the reality of
right now the judge is reading the charges after mr. cohen told the court, i am truly sorry and i promises to do better. he apologize nod country. and the defense team is asking for full consideration of mercy and telling the judge that the client came forward to offer evidence against the most p powerful man in the country not knowing the result. the prosecutors are responding forcefully and saying that powerful and privileged individuals cannot violate laws without impunity, and back with me, this tremendous panel, danny cevallos, ken delainian, and elliott and jill winebank. and jill, what do you make of what we have heard so far in this robust apology that we have heard from michael cohen saying that he was acting out of blind loyalty to donald trump. >> of course, the phrase blind loyalty to donald trump reminds
me of the book by john dean "blind ambition" and there is some similarity between the two of them where they were basically blinded by the power of the president. but you can only explain so much through blind loyalty. you can explain what he did to pay off two women to get donald trump elected and also why he went to ukraine, and we still don't know if he did, but explain some of it, but you can't explain the tax fraud, and you can't explain some of the sta state-related crimes, and you not explain what he is charged with in the southern district of new york. >> danny, i want to go the you now. and let's just reset where we are, and what we are expecting in terms of this sentencing today. mi michael cohen asking for leniency, and his defense team
is asking for mercy. do you expect that the judge is going to grant that, and what are the options today, danny? >> michael cohen's team has asked for a straight probation s sentence and no incarceration. meanwhile, the special counsel's office has filed a memorandum saying that he assisted us and helped out, and he did not rise to the level of what we call substantial assistance and the district of new york on the other hand filed what you could call a more scathing memorandum and saying that michael cohen did not provide a substantial assistance and did not cooperate as that term is use and so he is not going to be getting a substantial assistance motion. and so it is not the guideline range of 51 to 63 month, and instead, even the government is on board with a sentence in the 42-month area. michael cohen's attorneys have asked for no incarceration at all. as a defense attorney, i
sympathize with them. often a client comes to the attorney and says, i am paying you all of this money and you better fight to get me zero time in jail, and the attorneys have to make that shoot the moon type argument that long shot argument for no jail time when the more realistic argument is probably something in the range of 20 to 40 months, at a least statistically. and so that is probably what we can expect in the reasonable range given the national downward trend of sentences for similarly situated defendants. >> elliott, let me bring you in now, and reflect if you would on with what we have heard so far from inside of that courtroom. and again, this is from wnbc's jonathan dienst and these are not exact quotes, but i want to read a few more for the viewers to give them a sense of the tone of the comment s ths that he ma daimt he said that i blame myself for the conduct that has
brought me here. blind loyalty to that man. then he names donald trump, a blind loyalty to donald trump. he says, that is what led him to choose darkness over light. and love of my wife, son and daughter. he says is the key focus right now urgs and he is talking about the undeserved pain and shame on his family, and again, these are p powerful words, and as we have been discussing the judge is going to likely determine that there does need to be some level of a jail sentence, and what are you anticipating, and do you think that we have learned anything new factually today, elliott? >> doesn't sound like it. we would have heard about it, and respond to the blind loyalty part, because to this, it is silly. because he saying that it is blind loyalty that led him to do it, but it is his connections to donald trump that enriched him and holding out to other people that he had proximity to the president of the united states or the president of the united states that got him richer --
>> sorry to interrupt you and quickly, we are hearing that he was sentenced. michael cohen, the president 's former attorney and personal fixer was sentenced to 36 months of prison time. danny cevallos, let me have you respond to this breaking news. again, he is is responded to 36 month, and we don't have -- but elliott, 36 months. >> so the probation department recommended 42 months, and that is a substantial sentence, because he going to jail for three year, and the judge clearly considered and this is the point that i was making in spite of his loyalty to trump having led him to do these bad acts, he benefited tremendously from his proximity to the president, and from his proximity to power and all across, and you know, between the president of the united states frankly, mr. cohen and a number of these individuals connected to this, and that is all about ambition and greed and lying to enrich one's self and lying to get one's self ahead is
going to bite you and a get you locked up for a long time. so let's not understate the fact that he is going to jail for a bunch of time, and 36 months does not sound like a lot of time in people's heads, but thinking about this, this is the president's fixer, and the most inner circle person of the inner circle and he is going for a substantial prison time. and yes, they did consider the arguments of the government, and maybe sh, you know, knocked off few months on the basis of his beautiful heart felt tale, but attend of t at at the end of the day, he broke the law and he is going to pay for it. >> and danny cevallos, we have is the answer, the judge sentencing michael cohen, the president's former personal fixer to 36 month, and what do you make of that as a substantial sentence as elliott was just pointing out to us. >> 36 months is the national median for similarly situated
defendants like cohen, and so it is probably that the judge is aware of the national median for similarly situated defendants. the average is below the sentencing guideline range of 51 to 63 months and even below the 42 months recommended by the united states probation department. and then when the government filed the sentencing memorandum, it basically left the door open for a slightly lower sentence than 42, so 36 is right in the expected range, and not a big surprise, but still, as elliott says, a significant amount of timer for someone like cohen with no criminal history to be spending behind bars. >> and tom winter is standing by for us. tom, with what do y tom, what do you make of this breaking news of michael cohen
sentenced to 36 months? >> yes. >> and, tom is apparently having trouble hearing us, so we will go back to danny cevallos, and danny, very quickly, we have a few seconds and then we are going to be getting to tom. what is the mood out there at the courthouse? >> there is definitely a buzz and you can tell that something is about to happen, because people have started to take notice, and so whether or not some of the parties, the government attorneys or someone may be exiting the courthouse. >> he was seen breaking down several times speaking to judge pauley speaking about the family. he said that today is the first day of his are freedom, afreedo been incarcerated since the
fir first day of mr. trump and respected him for the real estate and business accumen, but it is a decision that he regrets. the judge said that as much as he appreciated the cooperation that somewhere along the way he lost the moral compass, and he has been sentenced to 36 months in prison and in addition two months in prison to the lies in congress. and so the 36 months have to do with the false statements to the bank, and also tied to campaign donation and for lying to congress he got two additional months, but they are concurrently, and that means that he will be serving them at the same time, and so it is three years for michael cohen, and in addition to that, he has some bills to pay, and you have a $500 forfeiture and that is $1.93 million in back taxes as well as three years of
supervised, and so it is a heavile toheavy toll on michael cohen, and the judge felt that the crimes that he plead guilty to, he needed to set a sentence that sufficiently deterred those crimes. and that is where we stand outside of court here. waiting for michael cohen to be departing shortly and we will wait to hear whether he is remanded to jail, but it is not, and he will be likely to be give anne date in the future to report the prison. >> thank you, tom, for reporting outside of the courthouse, and we will have to wait and see if he says anything once he does leave court. and danny cevallos, thank you for your tremendous reporting beforehand. i want to hand off to my colleague andrea mitchell who is joining me here in washington. and andrea, significant news within the russia investigation, but within this broader investigation of michael cohen
with implications for the president, and former personal attorney sentenced to 36 months behind bars. >> and it is going to be harder given what the judge said in court, and hard forewhite house and the judge to say it is a minor civil thing, because this is not some minor civil thing, and these are femalonies and ta evasion, and campaign finance violation, and the judge incorporating that from the new york sentencing, and the presentencing documents, and that is going to have soming weight. thank you so much, kristen welker, for the breaking news, and joining us now is msnbc legal analyst and attorney for the suffolk district of new york, mimi rocah and ken delainian as well. and so what do you think about what the sentence is and what the judge said? >> yes, cohen got a sentence that many of us predicted because of what he was facing and the fact that he would and should get some credit for the
cooperation that he did provide, ale though he did not get as much credit as he perhaps would have wished for, because he did not full-on cooperate with the southern district of new york, but i think that the interesting thing to come out of the sentencing is what the judge said. granted, i was not in the courtroom and i have not heard all of them but what i have been following on twitter and interesting to hear more deill tas, the judge found that michael cohen's crime was quote sophisticated. in other words, that is a term of art in the sentencing guidelines and there a sophisticated enhance mement th can be applied and the government proposed it should apply here sh, and the judge fo that it did. i believe that refers to in part not just the fact that it was a campaign finance crime, but the fact that the way in which it was with done. they set up shell company, and
tried to reimburse the company through michael cohen and call it a retainer with michael cohen, and so there is a lot of deception, and judge pauley used that word in describing his crimes as well, deception. so what this does is to put a big fat x through donald trump's assertions that these are minor process crimes, and, you know, civil, and should only be held responsible civilly, and this is a complete corruption of our federal election system, and it was done in the biggest campaign finance donation probably in our history in the sense of how meaningful it was, because it really changed the whole, and there is a very good argument that changed the whole tone of where this election was going when trump silenced these women from coming out with these stories stories. >> and outside of the court, danny cevallos, and dan goldman both. dan, you were inside, and your
take away from what the judge said following up on what mimi rocah just said. >> yes, mimi is absolutely right. i think that judge pauley made a point of not only emphasizing the campaign finance and false statements to congress which do rel relate to the president, but was also particularly moved by michael cohen's commission of the crime for his own personal b benefit. referencing the fact that he had committed the tax fraud and the bank fraud. michael cohen spoke for a while in court and longer than most defendants do. and he emphasized the fact that he committed many of these crimes from what he called blind loyalty to the president. in the end, the judge, judge pauley recognized that only two of the groups of crimes really did relate to the president, and he sentenced him quite harshly in large part he found that cohen's criminal activity
expanded beyond what cohen recognized. so it was interesting and relatively lengthy hearing, andrea, where michael cohen's attorney guy petrullo asked for leniency and unusual case in light of the national attention and that michael cohen chose not to cooperate merely so he could get on with his life, and that he had received threats to both him and his family, and that this, he had made extensive efforts to cooperate with the special counsel's office, and he cast some aspersions on the south district's memo which he called quite strident and he castigated the southern district in some respects quite poignantly even though he had worked there twice before including the chief of the criminal division, and so he was quite upset about that, but the southern district sort of rebutted that by saying, look,
this is how cooperation works here, and we treated him like we treat every other defendant, and he chose not to coop ratet for whatever reason, but he should not get the benefit of cooperation. and the other thread that goes through this as well is michael cohen made the point that he really wanted to get on with his life, and that is why he kept this sentencing date. but what i think that underscored part of judge pauley's sentence of three years is that he could only give him credit for whatever cooperation he has provided thus far, and that does not include any information that led to any charges, and it does not include any testimony from michael cohen, and so in the grand scheme of cooperation in these case, it is actually not that much cooperation. so he did give him some credit, but it did not get down to probation. >> and before i ask danny cevallos to weigh in here, and you are in the -- you were not in the courtroom, but this fine of $55,000 if you can it is
straight, and $50,000, i think that it is for lying to congress. and now, this was the mueller piece of it. and what about his cooperation with mueller, because they had a different presentencing memo, and did he get credit for that? >> he ended upt getting 36 months down from the bottom guidelines of 51 months and this is because of the cooperation of the special counsel's office, and yet in guideline range of up to six months he got two months. so he is not going to be having more prison time, because it will be concurrent time. but the judge made a point of stressing how awful it is that michael cohen lied to congress. he pointed out that he needed what is specific deterrence, and not just to deter other people from doing this in the future which is general deterrence, but that michael cohen needed his own deterrence to not do it
again, and as to the fine, he levied a fine of $50,000 on each case and is a total of $100,000, and he emphasized that the guideline range for lying to congress does not adequately represent the harm of doing so. judge pauley was trying to send a message to other people that if you lie to congress, there is going to be consequences. >> danny cevallos, as a former defense lawyer, you have followed these kinds of cases. the other piece of this is that in his admissions before, he indicated they had circulated his lies before to the people in the white house. we don't even know whom, and how close this got to the president or others around him. and so with what about that? >> michael cohen -- i think that the question is how close this got to the president, and is that right? >> exactly. exactly. >> yeah. so we saw in the filings that
this is a case where michael cohen admitted to conduct that had far reaching implications for contact not only with russia but with the white house. that is the false statements charges that he pleaded guilty to and which raised a lot of questions of why have michael cohen if you are the special counsel's office, and why have him come in to plead giuilty toa crime, a single count of false statements to congress, and it is raising the question of what is the special counsel laying the foundation for, and what is the net result of this guilty plea and this sentence, because as dan correctly pointed out, the net effect on his ultimate sentence is virtually nothing. because he is sentenced concurrently, and it is raising the question in the coming weeks of what exactly is going to happen, and why did the special counsel's office lay the foundation, lay down the brick work for what it is going to do in the future with that guilty plea for lying to congress.
>> and it seems that ken delainian, that both mueller and this judge today, they are make it very clear in everything that we have seen so far that lying to the the fbi and the flynn case and lying to congress and lying to the the pros ecutors i a cardinal sin as far as they are concerned and not just a thing. >> yes, and lying is a theme of the whole russian investigation and lying about russia and to investigators and, andrea, danny made a crucial point, because what did we see when he address addressed the judge, and it is a total break with donald trump. and that is what we knew was the case, but this is profound, my weakness was a blind loyalty to donald trump, and a blind loyalty that led me to choose darkness over light, and we heard from prosecutor genie rhea that they had co-operation that
led to this. and why have him plead guilty to a count of lying to congress, and why do that if not exploring who with else lied to congress. and potentially, did donald trump know and was that story coordinated? but at the same time michael cohen made a pitch to the judge that he should get leniency, because he cooperated against the most powerful man in the world, but that didn't fly, because he did not cooperate with the southern district, and as they pointed out, he held himself h out to be a consultant when donald trump was like a president, and sought to earn millions of dollars from companies who wanted access to donald trump. so he sought to profit from trump and other than just doing the bidding. >> and it was $4 million is the count of the basis there of the income tax evasion. >> yes. >> and so he was profiting on the connection, until it was clear they had him dead to rites from all of the other evidence,
and he started to make the plea. dan goldman, is that a fair assumption? >> yes, that is right. and judge pauley made a point to emphasize that. and michael cohen did not address his own fraud charges tax evasion, an bad bank fraud statements, but he called it a personal incarceration while he was working for trump, and he said that today is his date of freedom from his own personal and mental incarceration. but to another point, with the message that judge pauley was saying, judge pauley made a point of saying that michael cohen committed the campaign finance fraud in coordination with and at the direction of individual one which is not relevant to michael cohen's sentencing other than he was are recognized that he was direct ed to do it. but it seemed to be a slight dig at president trump for, an
implication that judge pauley believes that president trump, individual one, did direct michael cohen to commit that campaign finance fraud. so we are unpacking a lot of what happen ed in the courthous, andrea, and it was over an hour-long hearing, but it certa certainly, president trump's presence, although he was not there was very much felt. >> and to ken delainian, again, the whole effort by the president to distance himself from everybody around him, manafort, flynn, cohen, and these people were closely connected to him both politically and legally. how sustainable is that effort going forward from what you can tell from the tea leaves of where the special prosecutor is going? >> well, is it is not sustainable in the sense that they all appear to be except for in the case of manafort providing the special counsel with damaging evidence on donald trump.
we have not seen the evidence in public that donald trump or anyone around him conspired with the russians to interer fear with the 2016 election campaign, but in the filings, they lied about it. they lied about the connections with the russians and lied about a trump tower project in moscow on going with the campaign and hidden from is voters and the idea that michael cohen is sentenced to three years in prison, a bind the way, no paro parole. you can be released early for good time, but he is going to do most of that time, and that is underscoring the point that president is talking about a civil matter and no campaign violation, but it utterly refutes that. because it is a serious crime in which the president is implicate and this is on the finance side, and we with don't know what michael cohen has told the special counsel about finance connections, but we know it is a lot. >> and so you can see the family is coming out, and the security guards around there at the federal courthouse. his family, his children, and he is obviously talk g aing about
important they are to him, and this is quite a fall from grace for someone who was so close to candidate donald trump and worked for year s fs for the tr organization, and mimi rocah, as we are watching the doorway here, and any moment, michael cohen is going to be coming out, and we don't know whether he is going to spook or his lawyer will speak for him. obvious ly, nypd is there and this is an extraordinary personal fall for someone who had worked for so long with donald trump. we will see if he is coming close to the microphones. obviously, we are there to wait for any response from michael cohen, but it looks as though, he is being led into the cars that are waiting. no comment so far from michael
cohen today, and we will have to wait and see whether is going to leave a comment, but no. we will have to wait to see whether he has mig anything to say through the attorneys bsh thu is a moment of high draw marks and danny, you and dan goldman are right there, and describe what you have just seen. danny cevallos. >> i don't know who that is for? for me? >> just wondering because you are there near the door, and we oknow that he just came out, and i did not see him get into the car myself, but i think that he has probably left the scene. we saw the security there, and we don't expect to hear now from him or his attorneys at the courthouse at least, correct?
>> that is right. he just walked out and his family went first and they got into the car and he left first and his attorneys followed him and crossed the street where we are standing and saying that they won't make a comment right now. so, there is going to be no comment. i am quite confident that both his attorneys who i worked with in the southern district of new york, and also michael cohen, himself, and the family are quite disappointed with this sentence. it was a somber tone and somber expression they all had as they walked out of the courthouse where michael cohen faces 36 monthses in prison and the surrender date of march 6th, and he can voluntarily surrender to the facility on march 6th unless it is pushed back which is possible if the special counsel's office needs him. >> is he now out on any kind of bail or personal recognizance or what are the legal ramifications of his being able to go home?
>> it is the same conditions, andrea, the same conditions, that he has been out on bail to this point. it will apply to him until he surrenders to prison. >> and mimi rocah, where will he serve in relation to this crime and what has the prosecutor said? >> well, he is going to go to a federal prison, and it is usually they do it sort of the bureau of prisons will have the final word on where he actually serveses the sentence, and they often do it based on the geography to be close to family, but andrea, i wanted to make a point about we were all hoping and interesting to hear michael cohen or his lawyer to say anything, but i am not surprised that they didn't in part, because as dan goldman said, i guess, they are disappointed, but frankly, they should not be surprised at the sentence, because he is being treated exactly like every odefendant in
the southern district of new york, and he did not have a full cooperation agreement and certain areas that we would not go into, and so he does not get the full benefit of cooperation and nor should he, but he has the opportunity to cooperate, and there is a mechanism for that post sentence, and it is smart of them to walk out and not say anything, and now sh, maybe, michael cohen needs to sit down and have another conversation with the lawyer. maybe he thought that he could have it both ways, one foot in the door with the special counsel and still get the full benefit of cooperation with the judge, and that is not the way it works here. and maybe now sh, he is going te coming to terms with that. he may decide to cooperate fu fully, but nothing has been said that he is truthful. it is not a matter of someone who has lied, but it is a matter of someone who did not want to talk about certain areas, and as a defendant who wants to
cooperate in the southern district, you don't get to draw the lines and so it is wise that he didn't say anything, and maybe michael cohen needs to go back to think about what and where he is and the reality is. >> i don't know how relevant this is, because it is not clear if lanny davis has been involved and he is out of the picture after misstating a number of things in the case, but he is at least issuing a statement saying that he finds it unfortunate that the southern district new york prosecutors did not do what the mueller team do in giving michael significant credit for cooperation on the core issue, and to me, he says, their judgment showed a lack of appropriate proportionality and i don't know what you think about that, mimi, but you don't think it is terribly relevant, i would guess. >> well, it is not particularly relevant and a lanny davis may not understand how cooperation wo works in the southern district
of new york, and it is all or nothing. and it is not that, well sh, hes truthful on x and won't talk about y and we will give you credit. that is not how it works and guy petrullo knows that better than anybody, because he was chief, and he imposed that rule, and it has been that way for decades, and it is frighten iing to the defendants who come in, and we know about certain thing, but we have to know everything that you did, and it is going to feel like facing more time, but over the decades of experience in the southern district in new york, the people who have come clean, and truly wiped the slate clean and sold the southern district everything, those are the people who have done much better in terms of the sentencing and end up doing little to no jail time. it is not a promise, but that is the way it is working historically. and so, you know, lanny davis, you know, he is trying the make excuse, and he is trying to poke holes in it, but again i go back to the idea that michael cohen is not being treated any differently than any other defendant and nor should he be,
so he has toette anotherer cooperate like other coprators or going to jail. >> and nbc news investigations reporter tom winter was inside of the courthouse, and he broke down several times while addressing the judge and tell us what it was like. >> well, andrea, this was a interesting because he came into the court shortly before 10:20 and we were not scheduled to start until 11:00 5, and we did start early which is unusual. a and he came in wearing a black coat, and pinstriped shirt and blue tie, and he was as we all assume that he would try to keep it light before the proceedings, but the enormity and he broke down three separate times it appeared while he was speaking and centering around the family. the family was there today and as my colleague hannah rapley pointed out, after the sentencing and once it was known that he was going to jail for three years, a number of the family members broke down d
crying, and his daughter who was sitting behind him after he was addressed sobbed after learning a that he would go to jail for three years. and his attorneys had argued that he should be sentenced to time serve and the time that it took for him to be booked and the charges that he plead guilty to, but judge pauley today saying that these were serious crime, and that they were crimes that the deserved a sentence of three years as you were reporting. it is interesting that michael cohen said that he had been in a quote mental and personal incarceration since the day he met president trump, and the today would be his first day of freedom. he acknowledge had the president has called him weak in the tweets and he said that he was weak, and it is that weakness that led him to cover up for some of the president's deeds as he put it. and so today, he is acknowledging the enormity of
what he has plead guilty to, and the judge sentencing him to crimes that were serious crimes and crimes against the public. one other thing, andrea, michael cohen apologize nod the people of the united states, and apologized for his lack of candor in the investigations and in his lies for which he plead guilty to, of course. so kind of an extraordinary day, and pretty incredible fall of, fall from grace, and this is somebody who is obviously one tof the president's most prominent surrogates, and somebody who spoke very highly of him, and he noted that his loyalty to the president today as he has in other proceedings before today, and so i think that for somebody here in the scope of less than a year going from somebody who might be under investigation to somebody who has plead guilty to in total the ti niity nine char provided cooperation to the special counsel's office, and so three years of imprisonment is a
significant moment here in manhattan. >> and peter alexander in washington, any mood or tweeting or what anybody is saying is about michael cohen? >> good question, and i will speak right now, because i can see the marine guard is still outside of the west wing which means that the president has moved from the residence to the west wing. he arrived here at about noon, and so about 35 minutes a ago and even before we knew that the sentence that michael cohen would face. and the president obviously, he has been fierce in the criticism of cohen, and describing him on twitter as very weak, and something that cohen addressed in the courtroom today and saying that the president was right in calling him weak, but not for the reason that the president was implying and cohen saying that i was weak because time and time again, i felt that it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds. we did hear from president trump preemptively addressing this sentencing, this entire topic yesterday in a conversation with my colleagues from reuters where the president has slammed cohen
for cooperating with the prosecutors and the lawyer is telling lies to bid for a lighter term, and he said that his attorney, his former attorney, michael cohen, he should have known about the finance campaign law, and specifically, michael cohen is a lawyer and i would assume that he would know what he is doing, and he added number one about the hush money payments and it is not a campaign contribution and if it were, it is obl civnl civil, and if it is civil, then it is okay on what we did. that is part of the conversation with reuters, but to pull back the curtain, and to remind you where we got here, andrea, the president initially denied knowing anything about the payments before later acknowledging them. and then within the last several days, he has now tried to argue in effect that this is a simple and private transaction and it was not anything that would have violated the campaign finance laws, andrea. >> and in fact, it is not civil. it is a felony. and also, in fact, the tax
evasion piece of it, which does not involve the president in any way that we know, that is a very sophisticated tax evasion count. so which the judge was saying in court today. thank you, peter alexander. >> and if i may. >> please? >> and excuse for one second because i have spoke and i am joining in the conversation, but i hung up the phone with lanny davis who is an adviser with michael cohen in the last few minutes. >> and we read his statement. >> perfect, fine. >> and what mimi rocah said about the statement that he does not understand what the southern district works -- >> and sorry to interrupt, but to say what is most important is that he has cast michael cohen's as this generation's john dean, the former white house counsel who testified before congress about richard nixon saying at the same time that michael cohen is is going to be before a congressional committee on national television and he going to be telling the truth about donald trump. >> and the problem is that he did testify before congress and according to the mueller team he
lied about those conversations. >> he lied. >> and so john dean didn't lie. i am just saying. peter, standby a second, because pete williams is going to weigh in from the news bureau. and pete, you have been watching ul of this >>. yes, a couple of things march 6th is the date that he must report to federal prison, and it is up to the federal bureau of prisons and part of the justice department to decide which prison that would be, but defense lawyers typically ask the judge to recommend a facility, and the one they are recommending is a federal correctional institute prison otisville, new york, which has a medium and minimum security so-called prison camp is what it is called in the federal system, and the latter, the prison camp they are asking the judge to give his recommendation, but again, it is up to the bureau of prisons the decide where he is going to go on march 6th, and so
he is going to remain out on bond until then, and by then, we will know where it is going to p b. and a couple of things, andrea, and first of all, in terms of the discussion about this campaign finance thing, it is well, i think that it is well to remind ourselves what this is all about. and so this is hush money payments to these two women who claim they had an affair with president trump, with donald trump, and there is nothing illegal about that. and paying hush money is not illegal. and what he pleaded guilty to though is was violating campaign finance laws in two ways. what the government says and what he has admitted is that these were payments intended to keep these stories out of the campaign, therefore, the government says, these were campaign contributions. and they were illegal in two ways. one of them was a payment from cohen himself, and because it violated the amount that you can give to a candidate, and it was over the limit, that was
illegal, and so that is the first count that he pleaded guilty to, and the second one, the other payment was from the publisher publishers of the the "national enquirer" american media and a federal law that says that corporations cannot directly give money to candidate's campaigns and they can buy ads and u support, but they can't give money no the campaign and this is the second violation, and oso those are the two chargs that he plead guilty to in addition ono the basically evading the taxes on more than $4 million in income over four years between 2012-2016, and falsely claiming, giving a false picture of his finances in order to get a loan. so those are the charges that he pleaded guilty to, and it is those offenses that formed the core of this three-year sente e
sentence. the other thing that he pleaded guilty to is about lying to congress about when the work stopped on trying to get trump tower in moscow, and he said it stopped in january and now he says it kept going until july, and that is the special counsel charge, and on that the mueller team said, we think that he has been cooperative and they had a different view of the nature of the offense and the level of his cooperation so that, the ma majority of the guts of this will be served. >> and two months on the mueller probe, and chuck is with us now. and chuck, it is very clear that there is a disconnect between what the southern district's view is of his cooperation is and the mueller team. i am intrigued by the mueller team's view of him. could he continue to be useful to them? is there anything that he can do to ameliorate his situation by p providing more information or has he given them everything that he has got?
what is the take? >> well, actually, yes. there sis a rule of federal procedure that permits someone who has been already sentenced and previous ly cooperate odd t provide more cooperation. now it is rare, andrea, and very rare for anybody to get cooperation on both sides of the sentencing, but it can happen. and so if there is stuff that he has not told them or if they have more questions, conceivably, yes, and most likely, he is going to be serving 85% of the 36 months. and you can get some time off for the good time, and is some credit, but the sentence is probably going to be what you saw today. >> and chuck, do you think that mue mueller already knows what exactly whom he talked to in the white house when he was circulated the false testimony before he testified to congress and how high up it went, and how much inside of the white house, and the inner circle around donald trump if not donald trump, himself, do you think that mueller is aware of? >> i presume that mueller knows
just about everything. i have said that he is a an olympic swimmer and we are dog paddling, and he knows that obviously not only the false testimony was circulateed on what saw it, and how would he know that? almost inevitably an electronic record of that and who resieve -- received the e-mails and who opened them, and that is my presumption that bob mueller knows. >> and dan goldman, you had some thoughts about the different defense counsels, and by the way, lanny davis has pointed out at the bottom of the statement said that he is no longer now that michael cohen has been sentenced, no longer acting as an attorney, but communications advi adviser, and pete alexander said that he is a john dean kind of character, and think they is wishful thinking if you want to try to create that atmosphere, but john dean actually he did not have a lot of support from all of the fellow conspirators inside of the with white house in the nixon team.
dann danny? >> that is right. and just to piggyback on lanny davis' comments. i agree with what mimi said earlier with you that i don't believe that lanny davis fully understands the cooperation process, but guy petrullo absolutely does. he made a comment in court today and he made several comments critical of the southern district process and at one point he said facetiously about the cooperation process that the southern district uses that it has been given to us by the minor gods and woe to those who fail to follow the scriptures and so he was quite harsh in what he said, and he later said that he thought that it was notable that a sibling office of the department of justice, and meaning the special counsel's office and he called it curious that they were vouching for his cooperation, and he said that it is fundamentally unfair to put forth hypothetical situations
where michael cohen was not being forth coming without specifying what he wasn't forth coming about. and so it is not just lanny davis who is taking issue with the southern district, but it is also guy petrullo who worked there on two stints and worked in an executive capacity and quite upset about the strident tone of the southern district m memo and upset with how they characterized his willingness to coo coooperate and here we are now with the three-year sentence. >> and phil rucker, the washington bureau chief, and white house bur rerow chief for the "washington post" and someone who knows michael cohen and has covered donald trump so we well. what are you -- what do you take from this and what the president said to the reuters last night, and distancing himself, and trying to distance himself from what happened to cohen and all of the criticism that the president has leveled against cohen in comparison to say manafort and some of the others? >> well, andrea, this is a pretty extraordinary moment in
the saga that we have been covering because of all of the characters who have pleaded guilty and who face jail time and ensnared in some way or another in all of the investigations, and michael cohen is the one with the longest and the most intimate relationship with donald trump, and he has been the personal attorney and fixer for years and he is part of the political nucleus pre-candidate trump before he decided to run for offic office, and he was involved in the campaign and all over cable television through the 2016 general election as a surrogate and advocate for president trump, and he thought that he would be following donald trump into the white house with the big job in the white house. and of course, he did not get that job, but this is a man who knows the president intimately, and knows the workings and the dealings and he is now becoming convicted. and he going to be facing jail time for what he did for donald trump. it is donald trump who ordered him to make those hush money payments that were illegal, according to the testimony of michael cohen and according to the findings of the government of trump's own justice
department. >> phil, how does the white house handle this? they don't, they have a white house counsel who has just come on board and he doesn't have a team team, and no chief of staff, and you have a lame duck in john kelly, but no one else has been chosen and he has been turned down by nick ayers who is the front-runner forer that job. is this white house prepared for what is about to hit them and what is hitting them today? >> i would say they are not prepared, but they are, i think waiting to get some cues from the president. if this follows the pattern that we have seen through these other crises over the past few months, they will wait for president trump to set the direction and the tone and decide how the engage and how the respond, and i assume some tweets from are the president, and maybe some public statements later this afternoon. and you know, the political operative operatives in the white house, and sarah sanders and those types have tried to refrain from weigh i weighing in on some of the legal developments, and preferring to let the president's outside attorneys rudy giuliani and ray
sekulow weigh in on that, but the president has been engaged and following this and i assume that we will hear from him soon. >> and joining us is william cohen, a former attorney for president clinton and one of 44 lawyers who said that the senate needs to show some leadership. secretary cohen, thank you for being with us, an amazing moment, and i want to ask you about this and also in the context of you as a house member, a house republican, a freshman on the judiciary committee, and where you were a key vote for the impeach mement richard nixon. how much pressure is this going to be putting on the democrats in the incoming house of representatives to do something more than just start investigati investigating? >> well, i think that they have to wait until the mueller report comes out, and then 3wi8d on that if necessary, but i wanted to make a comment, that this listening to what is taking place this past hour.
it is sort of deja vu all over again. you are recall that john dean to be sure about the blind loyalty, but you remember the testimony given by jeb mcgruder to the judge, and he said, your honor, i lost my moral compass, and now i have to look into the eyes of my wife and see their pain and the confusion of my children and the contempt of my fellow countrymen and america will survive per jeb mcgruder and so we are back to people losing their moral compass. this is a word of warning for those serving the current administration, president trump. you must be loyal not to the man, but to the country and to the truth. i recall very vividly when gerald ford came before the house judiciary committee for the 25th amendment, and i asked him a question that he had made the speech five years earlier,
and he said without truth in government, there can be no confidence in government. without confidence in government, the nation is in great peril, and those words are just as important today as they were of us felt so strongly. we are seeing something very different than has ever happened in the past before. there's been partisanship, to be sure. but there's also been a respect to the institution that we have an obligation to be loyal to the truth. loyal to the people. and never to break that loyalty. and exchange for favors from a president or from any private or corporate citizen as such. so i think there's a genuine feeling on the part of those who have departed public service that we're descending into something that's approaching not a democracy but an autocracy. secretary albright as written on
this, what a fascist government looks like, the road to tyranny by timothy schneider and others. we are seeing the attack upon the media as a key element of dictators like to first pursue. attack upon our justice system, attack upon our intelligence community and so this is the breakdown of respect for the rule of law. and for the truth. and that is something that is fundamental to what's going on now with mr. mueller's investigation in terms of all of those surrounding the president, a word of warning, make sure you're loyal to the country and to the office of the president, not to the person who's occupying it. there's a big difference between the two. and i hope those who are serving in public office today, serving the president remember there's a penalty to pay and a very heavy one if you lie, if you simply are blindly loyal, without regard to the consequences and you will face the same kind of
consequence that mr. cohen did today and general flynn has, as well, although not to the severity since he is not going to jail in all probability. >> secretary cohen, your warning is so compelling and the sound of alarm. i wanted to just play something that lindsay graham just said on capitol hill. >> any time a former lawyer of yours goes to jail is probably not a good day but i have yet to see evidence of collusion and that's the -- what started the mueller investigation to begin with. >> so the president's men on the hill are still defending him. he said to reuters last night, it's hard to impeach somebody who hasn't done anything wrong and who created the greatest economy in the history of our country. i think people would revolt if that happened. >> number one, i think he's
sending a signal to the base to be prepared to take to the streets if there is any effort to remove him for violating the constitution. remember this. the president has an obligation to defend and to protect the constitution. now, while the president is raising the question about funding that wall, based on false premises, false allegations, i want to know why he hasn't raised the same kind of concern for the attack made by president putin who fired digital bullets at the heart of our democracy. i want the know why there's not as much concern for a wall against those attacks, against those invasions, those intrusions that carry poison bullets or poison darts to the heart of our system. that's the concern that i have. and i would say that i'm suspecting that mr. mueller has much more information about all of the allegations surrounding the relationship between those in the trump administration including the president in terms
of what do they have on him? why has it been no disclosure of tax returns over 20 years? how much russian money is in the trump real estate business? how much money if any was washed in terms of going through these real estate deals? i think that is where the mueller investigation is looking. i know that the germans are looking at deutsche banc. i suspect that the house intelligence committee is going to start investigating deutsche banc and perhaps those in cyprus to say that's where the real criminality would be involved where you would fail to criticize the president of russia, who has engaged in heinous activities including murdering people, and yet, not a word of criticism. there's something more that we're not seeing. in shakespeare's "richard iii" the king said my kingdom for a horse.
will we have my country for a hotel? i don't think the president would do that but i think it's much more than a hotel involved. i think there's much more to be looked at an scrutinized in terms of what dealings have the trump family had with the russians over the years that would put the president in the position of not criticizing the russians, really taking a knee before president putin while criticizing colin kaepernick for taking a nieknee to protest. whether those on the hill see it now, i'm confident that they will see it later. >> are you still a republican? >> i am but i'm kind of a george herbert walker bush republican. a howard baker republican. a chuck hagel republican. al simpson republican. those are the republicans that i associate with. >> william cohen, thank you so much for being with us.
>> a pleasure. >> speaking of george w. bush, republicans, jordan, a former aide in the bush white house and an analyst, this is a critical moment. those 44 senators are saying something. william cohen said something just now. this is an alarm bell for the country. >> i want to echo what the secretary said. those are the republicans that i see as the tradition of the republican party that i hope that it will fall back into after this horrible era. it is absolutely breath taking to consider that as recently as june of this year michael cohen was a deputy finance chair of the republican national committee. and his fellow chair steve winn, eliot brody are not chairs of the committee but what a quick fall from grace for someone so close to donald trump and donald trump can try to denigrate
michael cohen as weak, as someone who betrayed him but at the end of the day it is very telling that these are the kind of individuals whom donald trump associates himself with. >> and, chuck rosenberg is still here with me. this is not the end of the road. i mean, this -- from every indication, from all of the hints, the clues that mueller has been dropping along the way in these sentencing reports, we have got a long way to go. >> i think that's right. in fact, if you just look at the thing you can't read, all of the redacted portions of the memos filed -- >> michael flynn memos. >> that's right. there's more out there. anything that's sensitive can't be public and won't include sensitive information and you are right. there's more stuff out there. may i just add one reflection? i was a prosecutor. i loved being a prosecutor and loved trials and conviction.
in hollywood, only in hollywood, do you see evil defendants. in real life you see michael cohens, people reckless and greedy and amoral. but i don't think most prosecutors celebrate the day that someone goes to jail. does he deserve it? absolutely. no question about it. make no mistake about it. but it's never a happy day. >> ken, we have more to come. just this week alone maria butina, a russian agent, unregistered agent, not a spy, coming up this week. we have yet to hear from manafort and flynn. >> that's right. butina will be sentenced tomorrow if all goes as scheduled but i want to go back to the anger and eloquence of secretary cohen and the echos of watergate. he mentioned john dean. john dean was afraid he wouldn't be believed until the white house taping system emerged and everything he said is confirmed. michael cohen has tapes.
we don't know to what extent they portray the president. he was speaking intimately with the president of payoffs to women. we haven't heard the last of michael cohen. he is going off to prison but the statement by lanny davis that he -- michael cohen will be an important witness in the congressional investigations to unravel what happened with russian election interference, i think is really significant, because cohen was an intimate of donald trump for years. if there was a russia conspiracy it stands to reason that cohen would know about it. he would also know if there wasn't a russian conspiracy, he would know why so many trump people affiliated with trump lied about their contacts with russians. what were the conversations around that whole saga? cohen was there. cohen was a witness to history and while he lied to congress, he doesn't seem to have lied to ru robert mueller. i think we haven't seen the last of michael cohen, andrea. >> my thanks to you, ken. to danny, dan, to mimi, chuck
this is real life. this is stranger than fiction. i'm going to hand it off to my friend chris jansing. >> wow! it's a deluge of news. i am chris jansing. we have more on that bombshell news in the mueller investigation. right now in manhattan federal court, president trump's former personal attorney and self proclaimed fixer, michael cohen, entering a new plea deal with special counsel robert mueller. he is pleading guilty to lying to congress in closed door testimony about his contacts with the russians during the presidential campaign. remember, this is a man who was once -- who once said he would take a bullet for donald trump. and now he's given more than 70 hours of testimony to the mueller team. it would be tough to overstate the significance of cohen's cooperation because for more
than a decade, there was, perhaps, no man closer to donald trump and his businesses outside the family. this breaking news after another dizzying day of developments in the robert mueller investigation and as president trump just moments from now is going to be on his way to crucial meetings with world leaders at the g20 in argentina and is sure to put more scrutiny on one of those meetings in particular with russian president vladimir putin. joining me now, nbc news intelligence and national security reporter ken delaney. let's do a reset here. this was a surprise. none of us expected this, knew michael cohen was going to be in court. what did we learn? >> we had a little inkling that it was going to happen, chris, but it's a dramatic development. michael cohen already having pled guilty but had not agreed to cooperate, now is pleading guilty to lying to congress brought by the special counsel
and agreeing to cooperate with the special counsel. specifically, what he's pleading to lying about is this development to build a trump tower in moscow, which was hidden from the voters while donald trump was running for president. while the campaign was going on, michael cohen and a man named felix sader, a convicted fel n, were trying to build this tower and enlisting the help of the moscow government. and they said something flippant like trump can become president and putin will help us. trump said during the campaign he had no business investments or financial ties with russians. that appears to be false as it relates to this project. now michael cohen has pled guilty to lying to congress about the scope and nature of his involvement with this project. chris? >> joining us now by phone, tom winter. he was in the courtroom. what was it like in there? what did you see and hear? >> reporters who regularly cover
this courthouse in new york, southern district reporters we got a heads up at approximately 8:30 this morning that there would be a significant proceeding in usa versus john dou doe. we didn't even know it was going to be michael cohen. when we got in the courtroom we recognized a number of people from the special counsel's team, prosecutors. approximately 8:50, 9:00 a.m., mi michael cohen strolled into the courtroom and very clearly and very calmly stepped up and said that he made these false statements and pled to the single count of making false statements. he directly, right from the beginning, named the president who is identified as individual one when we get the paperwork. and that he pled guilty to lying to congress. the scene this summer, michael cohen was, admittedly, nervous. he talked about wanting to have a stiff drink at that point.
today, he was very calm, very clear, wanted to actually stand up and speak into the microphone. instead the judge said well, you know, given the acoustics, it would be better if you sit and explain what you did. he sat down and calmly tick ed off all the various things that he did that led to today's developments, his misstatements, why he did it. he said he did it to be consistent with the messaging and out of his loyalty to donald j. trump and he said that -- it was just a very calm kind of orderly proceeding for something that was frankly such a surprise. we really had no heads up notice of this at all and it was a surprise to really all of us ooh that cover court down here. >> this is fascinating. the idea that he is there, that he is calm. this is someone who, i think it's worth repeating, was donald trump's right-hand person. >> and he said that, chris.
>> he was his personal lawyer. i know he doesn't like the term but he was his fixer. and he made these false statements, correct me if i'm wrong, at a time when he was still on team trump. >> that's exactly right. he said prior to the 2016 election, i had been an attorney and a consultant for donald j. trump. so he was very specific as far as his responsibilities. he said once the president was elected, that at that point, those responsibilities changed. obviously, with the president being elected. but basically it was -- i think it was just, you know -- he was very clear, this is a guy i used to work for. this is the guy i used to be loyal to. and now that has changed and this is why i lied and this is what i did. >> it was just on monday, obviously, tom, that we learned that the agreement with paul manafort had fallen through and this was considered to be quite a blow to the mueller
investigation. give us some context now about what michael cohen will know, what he might bring to the mueller investigation and how you put it in this larger picture of what just happened with paul manafort. >> i think, you know, in our discussions, chris, you know, we've been very clear about what -- he said he made false statements. another interesting thing, exactly to the point, the question you just asked, is that michael cohen will get, as part of this, a letter from the southern district saying that he is cooperating in the ongoing prosecutorial efforts and now you have the president's personal attorney, the guy that knows the president's business organization inside and out cooperating with federal prosecutors in new york. he's cooperating with the special counsel's office, we believe -- although we haven't seen the cooperation part of this agreement yet, but it sure appears that that's the way that it's headed. and so now you've got somebody who is essentially the president's right-hand man or
one of his right-hand men who is now working for special counsel robert mueller, essentially. i think this is a very significant development. >> unbelievable stuff. i know you have other things you want to look at. get back to us when you have some new reporting, tom. unbleefbable stuff. we really appreciate it. >> we've got a whole team covering this major breaking news with us. joining me now former federal prosecutor, cynthia kirshner, also on set, investigative reporter anna schecter. i'm going to start with you, glenn. just put this into context for us. here is someone who was the president's, arguably, most loyal, certainly one of his most loyal defenders. as we have pointed out, had so much inside access for more than a decade. now he has been talking to robert mueller. what can you tell us? help us to understand what this could mean to the mueller investigation. >> yeah, chris. this is huge. there are a few takeaways that
sort of jump out to me immediately. one is that -- >> i wanted to ask winter -- sorry. >> sorry. somebody's mike was up. can you start that again? >> yeah. i think one of the important takeaways is that apparently cohen went in to testify before the committee while he was still in the mode of taking bullets for trump. he lied about donald trump's ongoing continued business relationships with russia. let's put that in context. if we think back to when the president stood up and said to the camera at a rally, russia, if you're listening, find the 30,000 missing e-mails. do we have to now conclude, he was talking directly to a business partner, somebody he aspired to do high-dollar value business with. that puts that statement, i think, in a whole different light. and the other takeaway, chris, is that when i saw reported
today that michael cohen spent 70 hours testifying about what he knows about the president, i've got it tell you, i've tried entire cases from start to finish in less than 70 hours. i can't imagine the amount of incriminating information he provided to the mueller investigation and to the grand jury. so as dramatic as this is, it might still be only the tip of the iceberg. >> yes. obviously not just the amount of information that he has provided but you also look psychologically at what the impact is on this case. robert mueller, very close shop. he's plodding ahead, as we believed from the beginning he would do. no leaks out of this investigation. you can't ignore the timing, after a couple of days after the paul manafort deal implodes you have michael cohen. >> right to trump's gut. that's what it is.
this is a huge development. one thing i really want to ask tom winter is did he allocute in court that the president directed him to lie? i think that's something we need to know as soon as we see the information and it comes out. and i would highlight what glenn just said about the amount of information. if he's pleading guilty to one count, that means there's a whole bunch of other counts out there that as part of his cooperation agreement he wasn't required to plead to. one count is the top of the iceberg. i would agree there is a whole lot below. the other thing that is interesting is that in the steele dossier, they said he was the back channel to putin and the entire russian government. and it's one more thing that's coming out from the steele dossier that's turning out to be true. >> so you have an obvious thing. this is not new to these kinds of cases, but glenn if you have somebody who has just gone into court and said i lied to congress, why should we believe anything else he says about
donald trump? because that's exactly what trump and his lawyers are going to say, that he is now a convicted liar. >> that's a great question, chris. and that's exactly what the president's defense team is going to jump on. here is how you refute that. think back to those search warrants that were executed on michael cohen's house, business and hotel room. think about the reporting that more than a million documents and other items of evidence were seized. you know what the prosecutors have been doing day in and day out with michael cohen? they've been going through every document, everything that they've gotten courtesy of a forensic search of his computers and they have been having him explain them all. why? because all of that is corroborating evidence to show that cohen was telling them the truth. i predict we'll hear the president's defense team say oh, michael cohen is lying. i will bet you that mueller has so much corroboration for what michael cohen just stood up in court and swore was true and
accurate that there is no way he's going to be shown to be a liar, even if he was a liar in the past. you know, bad guys lie and then prosecutors flip them, and they pressure them to tell the truth. and i think that's what we just saw happen. >> well, we're going to get into this. this has been one of the points that the president has been making just over the last 24 hours, including in tweets. he is saying that they are forcing people, mueller's team is forcing people to lie so that they'll flip, they'll flip because they want to get out of the trouble that they're in. i want to go back to cohen on capitol hill. this is back last year, 2017. what he just went into courtroom and said i lied when i testified before congressional investigators. this was his lawyer on capitol hill then. take a listen. >> mr. cohen appeared voluntarily for an interview in the senate select committee today.
that statement was factual. it was accurate. it was respectful and we stand behind that statement. >> they stood behind that statement until today in that manhattan courtroom. let's go to nbc news justice correspondent pete williams. what are you learning this morning? >> the significance of this is two-fold. first of all, let's be clear. this indictment was brought by robert mueller's prosecutor. so it's a sign that -- it means two thing. >> i'm going to interrupt you for a second, mark warner on capitol hill right now. >> remarkable that you had the president's personal lawyer still dealing on a trump tower project through the whole campaign and it appears even into 2017. >> this is based on a lie to your committee. can you kind of walk us through what he told you then versus what we think we know now? >> i'm not going to comment upon the commentary that this individual made before our committee. we've kept that confidential.
but, obviously, mr. cohen was one of the witnesses that we've always wanted to have come back. and that need goes up. >> reporter: did you refer his testimony to the special counsel? >> again, it's already in the public domain that referrals have been made from our committee to the special prosecutor but we're not going to talk about any individuals. >> reporter: did you still think -- does this make michael cohen a less reliable witness for bob mueller, the fact that he lied to your committee? >> well, there seems to be a trend here amongst so many of the president's closest allies, that they don't tell the truth. although, you also have a white house that seems on a daily basis not to have its facts straight. >> reporter: does this end your investigation at all? >> we still have a number of witnesses to see and we have a number of witnesses that are some of the key names, key individuals that we -- the
chairman and i are working through on how we get them to come back, because just as our investigation has to finish and we are the american public, as much of the truth as we've been able to discover, it also is just one more reinforcing indication why the mueller investigation has to be allowed to continue unimpeded and i just don't believe that the current acting attorney general, mr. whitaker has the temperament and also the bias to oversee that investigation. one of the things we don't know, for example, is we've not been able to hear back from the justice department whether whitaker has ever received an ethics review of whether he should recuse himself from that investigation. >> information learned from michael cohen, does that factor into the people that you will call? will you call some people again? >> again, i'm not going to get into the witnesses, of who we've called, who we continue to
intend to call. but as we continue to see this roll out of close trump allies plead guilty, almost always due to their trying to hide their ties with russia and russians, and the russians' attempt to infiltrate the trump campaign, i think there's more story to be told. >> reporter: if mueller knows or was able to prove that cohen lied to your committee, what does that tell you about how much more he knows or where that investigation is right now? >> again, i think it seems like it was ages ago. but it was only in august when mr. cohen decided to work with the special prosecutor. my understanding is some level of working together. and i think we've all felt that michael cohen has a lot of information that i hope he shares with the special prosecutor and one of the reasons why we think he needs to
come back and share it more with the senate intelligence committee. >> reporter: he made these false statements to be consistent with individual one's messaging, individual one presumably being the president. what does this tell you about the president? >> i've not read -- i just got the headlines from rachel about what he said, but let's face it, you've got all these close associates of the president, one after another, pleading guilty, often pleading guilty about their ties to russia and russians. and what are they covering up for? and we also have a white house that still seems just obsessed about this investigation. if anything the president has said is true, that there's no there there, why are all his closest associates being found guilty about lying about their ties of russia? >> reporter: in the context of paul manafort yesterday, the president is still talking about
leaving pardons on the table. he hasn't ruled a pardon out for manafort, hasn't been asked yet about cohen. what's your feeling that pardons are being discussed at the white house? >> that would be a complete abuse of power. it's never been used to protect a president and his family and, again, we've seen from this white house again and again disregard for rule of law. when we see that disregard for rule of law and if you were to go out and try to pardon some of these individuals that might potentially implicate him or his family again, congress would have to act. >> knowing what you -- >> thank you. >> senator did you all -- >> mark warner, vice chair of the senate intel community and garrett haake asking a lot of questions. we might have a chance to talk to him in a little bit. obviously a lot of interest in the fact that he has pled guilty, michael cohen has, to
lying to congress. i want to go back to pete williams. let's go back to the beginning of what you were saying, pete, because we interrupted you. >> sure. significant thing number one, it shows he is continuing to cooperate. i just got the letter, the plea deal from cohen to the government here. it's many pages long. i'm just trying to see if it says what he's -- it looks to me like it's the usual kind of thing that is -- sets forth all his rights but doesn't really tell us what he has agreed to plead to. it just says he is pleading to a charge of making a false statement to congress. it doesn't tell us what it is, the nature of what it is. but we know now from his appearance in congress that what he has basically said here is that when he testified to congress a year ago, the senate intelligence committee, he said that this project in moscow to
build a big trump development there, trump tower, which would include a hotel, office space, condominium, that kind of thing, which fell through -- he told congress that the work on it stopped before the presidential campaign got under way in earnest. and it was over by the time of the iowa caucuses. that's the statement that he now says is incorrect, that the work went on afterwards. the fact that he has made this statement suggests that mueller's team is aware of what the facts were and that they were able to confront cohen about it. the first thing is that it tells us how much he's cooperating with mueller's investigators and secondly, it's a sign that he's going to continue to cooperate in order to get -- now they've got additional leverage over him because he's already pled guilty to earlier charges in august. now they've got these additional charges. it's more leverage for him. if he wants to get a lesser sentence he will have to continue to cooperate. it basically points in two directions. it points backwards, telling us
he has been cooperating, points forwards in telling us that they've got leverage to secure his additional cooperation. what we don't know is whether his statement and what he has told the investigators for mueller about the business deal has anything to do with russian election meddling. you may remember that the president said he had nothing to do with russia. he said that during the campaign. does this put that statement in a different light given the fact that michael cohen, the president's very close fixer and personal lawyer at the time, was still engaged with russians and trying to get this real estate deal going, a deal that ultimately fizzled out? what does this have to do with russian election medd lichlt ng? we just don't know but it's a plus for the mueller team for getting additional information and cooperation. >> garrett haake is on capitol
hill. we just saw largely your interview with senator warner. obviously, we're still in a situation, even in january, where republicans control those senate committees. give us a sense of what impact you think these revelations -- and not just today, michael cohen -- but this ongoing over the last 24, 48 hours series of developments might mean, if anything, to what folks are thinking and do iing on capitol hill, including -- and i thought that was a critical question about what this means for mr. whitaker. >> reporter: yeah. i think that's right. i think this guilty plea today helps to give all these investigations on capitol hill, regardless of who is running them, a little more teeth. if you think you can lie to congress and get away with it, you're going to lie to congress. if you do lie to congress and you very well might get caught and face criminal penalty, that is a strong -- little bit of backbone for these investigative committees. you heard mark warner say this
is something where he didn't confirm specifically referring michael cohen's testimony to special counsel but did talk about the fact that they have referred some of the testimony that's come to the committee. they are working together. and the senate -- we should separate this out a little bit. the investigation into russian interference has been run in a much more bipartisan way, varsity investigation compared to what some have considered the junior varsity on the house side that has devolved almost entirely. but it's remained a bipartisan one. you'll continue to see the senate investigation go forward with a little more teeth and as to whitaker, this is a recurring theme on capitol hill. there's not a lot of confidence in the acting attorney general, including from republicans. i heard a lot of republicans say we need to get a permanent nominee into this job because they just don't feel like whitaker is the guy, that he's too wrapped up into the politics
of this issue and they want to see a permanent person in that seat. it is a lot of moving parts happening simultaneously. for these congressional committees that are doing their investigations, this is a good day. it confirms their relevancy and their ability to get answers and hold people to those answers even when, as is the case with michael cohen, this was a staff interview. no senators present, behind closed doors, not something where he was brought out on national television or brought out in public in a way that the world can sort of globally fact check in real time. so all of this work being done behind the scenes getting a big boost from this this morning, chris. >> all right. i'm just getting told in my ear that the president, who is obviously walking across the south lawn -- we knew this was going to happen because he's going to joint base andrews and heading to the g20. i'm sorry, you said we have hallie? oh, and so we have hallie
jackson. >> hi. >> who is actually -- normally you see in this hour. we're waiting to hear what the president says on the south lawn. obviously, you arrived ahead of him. >> yes. >> but give us some context to this. what we have been hearing from the president, he has been tweeting about this. he tweeted late last night. he tweeted this morning. and he charged that this is mccarthyism, what is going on with the mueller investigation. viciously telling witnesses to lie about the facts. >> reporter: it is extraordinary, chris. and the president has not had a reaction yet on twitter or in person. although we'll see him, as you mentioned, in a matter of minutes to the news breaking in the last 55 minutes or so. here is the deal. the president not only has been lashing out at the mueller investigation repeatedly. repeatedly again and again during both the campaign and
aft after, in his interview with lester holt, for example, as recently as this fall talking with reporters, insisted he had nothing to do with russia, no business dealings, no properties, no financial interest. that was the central point of his during the campaign when he came under fire for it during republican opponents in the primary and then hillary clinton in the general election and even now when reporters have been asking about him over the past two years. this cohen deal is significant and potentially points the finger at president trump. couple of things to note here, chr chris. we talk about the context piece of it. the president will be walking across the south lawn. he will be probably, if i had to bet, talking with reporters. we don't know that for sure. but, boy, if there's ever a moment the president would want to get his talking points out there, it would be now. then he hops on a roughly ten-hour flight to argentina. based on past precedent, the president is watching cable and reading clips and today everything is going to be about this. so, the president in the past has worked to essentially
minimize cohen's relationship to him, brushing off, as he did, paul manafort, somebody who was a side aide, who didn't have that much influence or importance in his life. that will be a difficult point for the president continue to make, given what cohen is now telling not just the special counsel but saying publicly in court. couple of other pieces here. remember what happens in roughly 48 hours from now when the president is at the g20. he will be meeting with vladimir putin. it all comes back to russia and president putin. putin has ties in russia with people interacting in the business world, real estate development world which undoubtedly would have crossed paths with cohen. i think the timing of this -- pete williams earlier on our air made this point. nothing wrong going to do business with somebody. that's not an illegal act. what donald trump did during the campaign was insist that was not happening. what donald trump did as president, chris, was also
insist that that never happened. so it becomes an issue now of michael cohen pitting his word against the president's. we have a lengthy list of questions to ask the president on this topic, chris, not even to mention the developments with paul manafort, former campaign chair who, until an hour ago, had been driving the headlines on this. there's always an opportunity for the president on air force one to go back to the press cabin and talk to reporters. we don't know if he will do that. he may. we'll find out soon and traditionally there's a press conference at times like these. it may be another opportunity for reporters to put these questions to donald trump. chris? >> we'll be getting back to hallie. as you were talking i was looking at my e-mails and one of our producers says again, indeed, the president has stopped and is taking questions from reporters on the south lawn. we do not have the ability -- >> i see that, chris. >> nobody has the ability to go live from there. as soon as we're able to do a turn, which is they take this,
they literally run it back in to the press room and then they feed it out live. as soon as we get that, we will have it for you. but meantime i want to go to ken delanian. ken, you have new reporting, i know, in real time, and i was just handed this court filing from the southern district. pete was trying to sort of skim through it and see what was in there. what have you been able to find out? >> in this court filing, chris, we learned new information about the trump tower moscow project and the interactions between michael cohen and the russian government and information that goes to the lies he allegedly told to the senate about this. our viewers may recall that it's been reported, and michael cohen acknowledged that he sent an e-mail asking for help with this trump tower moscow project to the press secretary and it was reported he sent it to the general e-mail mailbox and the kremlin said we never received it. if we did receive it, we didn't
respond. these court documents say that's false. in fact, michael cohen got a call from the president's office, from putin's office, his representatives saying sure, we would like to engage you on this trump tower moscow project. let's talk about it, and they had a conversation. when cohen was asked about this under oath before the senate he lied and said that never happened. the other thing he lied about was the timing, saying he ended all involvement in this project in january 2016. the court documents show that they were still working on it as of june 2016, chris. >> wow! that's a lot to take in. in terms of the overall picture, fair to say that what we are just learning here -- we certainly aren't learning everything that robert mueller knows by a far piece, but these are important developments. and they give us a good clue about where he is going with this. >> they are. now, they don't speak to anything to do with russian interference in the 2016 election, right? remember there's an allegation in the dossier that michael
cohen was involved in that. he has denied that and continues to deny that. but they suggest he lied about a very important matter involving an effort that was not disclosed to the voters to build a trump tower project in ms. cow and then he engaged the russian government about it and that they were willing to help donald trump run for president. that's huge, chris. >> i want to go back to hans nichols. we don't have that tape yet but you have information about what the president has to say as he heads to marine one. >> that's right, chris. reporters are tweeting about what the president is saying. he is changing his story on russia, at least as it relates to any business dealings he has. when i'm running for president, that doesn't mean i'm not allowed to do business. that is a direct contradiction from what he said during the campaign, where he said he seems to be suggesting that he had no business dealings with russia. after this cohen testimony and plea, the president's changing, apparently, his story. he is also calling michael
cohen, this is a weak person and not a very smart person. and he's suggesting that he's just trying to make a more advantageous deal with prosecutors. chris, we have the president. he's engaging. when we get more we'll come back to you. this is a president that clearly will diminish his former aide, someone who has with him through so many trials and tribulations and shifting his story, at least as it relates to his business dealings with russia. when you look at that cohen plea, he's saying it went on through june 2016. that doesn't get you to the crucial wikileaks time period we've been talking about in the october timeframe as it relates to manafort, corsi and, of course, roger stone. this suggests there may have been more contact and back and forth between the trump campaign and his business dealings and officials in russia. chris? >> i want to go to glenn kirshner. thank you for that. hans, get back to us and we will interrupt if you get to more of
what the president had to say. it's not unusual for this president to suddenly start talking badly about somebody he had good things to say about, once they turn on him. that's not a surprise. i want to know what you make of his statement just now on the south lawn that the fact that he's running for president doesn't mean i'm not allowed to do business. >> chris, that is an important and very damaging statement to the president. and here is why. i look at this through the lens of a former federal career prosecutor. the president told the american people all along, i was doing no business with russia. >> repeatedly, he said that. repeatedly. >> and now -- and now, when michael cohen calls him out and says that's a lie, the president -- we were just talking about this a minute ago, chris. the president doesn't say michael cohen is lying about that. the president said hey, i can do business while i'm a candidate. what does that tell us, chris?
the president knows that michael cohen just told the truth about what the president was up to. so the president had to shift ge gears, again expose himself as having lied to the american people previously when he said he did no business with russia and today he says, hey, i can do business as a candidate if i want. that's a huge admission by the president. >> i've asked you this question before, danny cevallos is with us, but i always wonder at times like this, his lawyers are sitting somewhere. they're hearing this. they're watching this. if this guy is your client and he has just said what the president has said, what goes through your mind? >> it's hard enough with a regular client to keep them off social media and not to say things in public. but when your every word as the president is on record and you're someone like the president, who has no real memory for the consistency of what he said, this is a nightmare for defense attorneys. and it's going to be a real
challenge for them to have to parse out these words as glenn brilliantly pointed out right now. him saying i'm allowed to do business, there's nothing wrong with me doing business. later on i'm sure he'll backpedal and frame that as i'm not saying that michael cohen was telling the truth. i'm saying i have a lot of business dealings. this is why he has been able to survive prior depositions in other cases, because he uses this noncommittal language. he didn't necessarily i now say that i had business in russia and michael cohen is telling the truth. instead he says something noncommittal like, hey, i'm a business guy. i'm allowed to do business. i'm the only person in america that i can in the violate this clause. so going forward, i suspect he will be able to backpedal, in his mind, to a point where this isn't exactly inconsistent.
even though as glenn points out it's about as close as you can get to inconsistent in a statement. >> you do wonder ana how now jerome corsi and how trump has a mutual defense agreement that we know his lawyers and the trump lawyers have been talking might fit into all of this. and you're the one who has been following this every single day and talked to corsi as well. >> those lawyers are sharing all this information. manafort's lawyers and trump's lawyers are sharing information. trump's lawyers want to know everything they possibly can about all these different people and what's going on in all of their cases to help them down the road. especially since they have a client who has lied so many times and it seems he always gets away with it. but maybe this michael cohen sort of revealing that the russia businesses going against what trump said repeatedly -- maybe at some point they will be held to account. jerome corsi, seems to me, he's
angling for a pardon even though he says he's not. >> we need to get back to the whole question of a pardon but i want to go back to hans nichols. apparently this was not a very brief session with the president. he had quite a few things to say? >> he talked about a potential government shutdown and he's threatening a shutdown if he doesn't get funding for his border wall. i can hear the rotors of air force one right now. looks like the president is up in the air. we should have that tape shortly. the president also threatening a government shutdown. all this before he heads down to argentina, where he has a jam packed schedule some 48 hours on the ground meeting with, among others, president vladimir putin. chris? >> the fact that we're hearing those rotors means it might be a fairly short time before we get this tape. immediately once they get it back to the press room and they're able to roll that, we will bring the president's comments to you. if i can, i'm going to go back to cynthia.
the whole idea of a pardon was brought up and buried in all of this is what might have otherwise been our lead today, and that is the president saying to the new york post, you know what? for paul manafort, i'm not going to rule out a pardon because we all were trying to figure out -- you're facing what is essentially a life sentence. you have a deal as a cooperating witness. why would you lie to robert mueller? >> right. well, there's a couple of reasons that we now know. first of all, just before we jump to that, i just want to say in reading this document, it's clear that cohen has briefed members of the trump family. so that may turn out to be one of the ripples of this information that we're getting on cohen today. what have the trump family members said to fbi agents and investigators? and will it affect those cases and how that ripple goes out? getting back to manafort he's
obviously a grifter who lies about everything and it's clear from the report he was lying about his financial deal. >> let me stop you there. there was new reporting in the wall street swrurnl todjournal >> right. >> we didn't know what he potentially lied about to cause robert mueller say this is null and void. it's about personal businesses in the ukraine, including the money he got and contacts with the former associate in the ukraine among other things so people understand what that new reporting is because there's so much of it. >> right. there's so much. you can't even go have a donut and there's breaking news. i do think that the lawyers who are participating in this double cross of mueller may have some serious liability and hope that their malpractice insurance is paid because they're about to have to get lawyers. he obviously was playing for the plea. he was willing to lie about
other stuff because that's all he does, but he's clearly playing for a plea with the president -- i mean pardon with the president. looks like the president may be dangling it, which would be obstruction of justice. add that to the list as a co-conspiratorer, obstruction of justice, campaign finance violations, criminal conspiracy to affeeffect the free and fair elections of the united states. just one more count. >> hallie, i hope you had a chance to follow what hans nichols' reporting is and you're probably getting it in your e-mails. >> yes. >> about what the president had to say. the background, based on what you know and the way the president operates. he finds out maybe half an hour, 40 minutes before he walks out to head to marine one this new development with -- i'm sorry?
oh, let's go to adam schiff on capitol hill. >> truthful in real time as they were pursuing this deal. what does it mean now about how much we can rely on what the president is saying about any continuing russian financial interests? this, i think, only underscores the importance of bringing back mr. cohen before our committee but also looking into this issue of whether the russians possess financial leverage over the president of the united states. very significant, obviously, in terms of the russian investigation and clearly indicates that the special counsel is getting meaningful cooperation from mr. cohen. >> what would you do to determine whether there was any financial leverage that the russians have over the president? >> we need to look into, among other things, credible allegations that the russians may have been laundering money
through the trump organization. that has been a constant concern of ours but an issue that the republicans were unwilling to look into. that is something that we expect to pursue. but i think michael cohen's guilty plea also underscores the importance of something else. that is we believe other witnesses were untruthful before our committee. we want to share those transcripts with mr. mueller. in this case, the special counsel only had the advantage of written testimony that the witness made public. we think that the special counsel ought to have the benefit of the transcripts not only of the mueller testimony but roger stone, who may have similarly attempted to mislead the committee. we would like to see those steps taken now. they shouldn't have to wait until january. our gop colleagues have voted to and committed to releasing these transcripts. we got to accelerate it particularly as it pertains to
some of the witnesses where we have profound concerns about truthfulness. >> that doesn't happen in december, though, will you do that in january? >> absolutely. >> money laundering essentially be the top priority as chairman of this committee? >> you know, there are a number of priorities and obviously we'll have to look at what work we were able to do and what we weren't. but money laundering issue is a significant one. there are investigative sources we were not able to fully exhaust and wikileaks we see more publicly about indicate that his testimony was far from truthful before our committee. >> the president, moments ago on the south lawn. >> the house, as i understand it, and the senate, the stateme statement -- [ no audio ]
he knew about it, was written about it in newspapers. it was a well-known project during the early part of '16 and i guess even before that. it lasted a short period of time. i didn't do the project. i decided not to do the project. so, i didn't do it. so, we're not talking about doing a project. we're talking about not doing a project. michael cohen, what he's doing, he was convicted, i guess -- you have to put it into legal terms, but he was convicted with a fairly long-term sentence on things totally unrelated to the trump organization, having to do with mortgages and having to do with cheating the irs, perhaps. a lot of different things. i don't know exactly. but 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 is a weak person and he's trying to get a reduced sentence.
so he's lying about a project that everybody knew about. we were very open with it. we were thinking about building a building. we had an option -- i don't know what you call t i decided ultimately not to do it. there would have been nothing wrong if i did do it. if i did do it, there would have been nothing wrong. that was my business. so he's lying very simply to get a reduced sentence. okay? [ no audio ] during the period -- [ no audio ] but when i run for president, that doesn't mean that i'm not allowed to do business. after i won, obviously, i don't do business from january 20th, but more importantly, which is the following year -- but i ran a business. in fact, i often joke about the fact that i was the only person
that campaigned and simultaneously ran a business but that was a project that we didn't do. i didn't do. that was a project that wasn't done for a lot of reasons. number one is that i was really -- not that i had to do it but i was focused on running for president. i wanted that to be my primary focus, not running or building a building. [ inaudible question ] >> this was a deal that didn't happen. that was no deal. if you look, this was an option. i guess -- i don't know if i want to be very specific. but to my way of thinking, it was an option that i decided not to do. so we didn't. so if you look, we really didn't have -- excuse me. excuse me. excuse me. this was an option in a form but here it is very simple, we had a
position to possibly do a deal, to build a building of some kind in moscow. i decided not to do it. the primary reason -- there could have been other reasons, but the primary reason, it was very simple. i was focused on running for president. there would be nothing wrong if i did do it. i was running my business while i was campaigning. there was a good chance that i wouldn't have won, in which case i would have gotten back into the business. and why should i lose lots of opportunities? so here is the story. go back and look at the paper that michael cohen wrote before he testified in the house and/or senate. it talked about his position. what he's trying to do, because he's a weak person and not a very smart person. what he's trying to do is end -- and it's very simple. he has got himself a big prison sentence. he's trying to get a much lesser prison sentence by making up a
story. now here is the thing. even if he was right, it doesn't matter because i was allowed to do whatever i wanted during the campaign. i was running my business, a lot of different things during the campaign. so very simply, michael cohen is lying and he's trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me. now let me get a step further. i think you should go back to -- i think it was january. it was just reported very well by katherine harris, a terrific reporter on fox, she talks about a letter he signed. i don't even remember it. it specifically talks about this deal. this deal was a very public deal. everybody knows about this deal. i wasn't trying to hide anything. okay. [ inaudible question ] >> i cannot understand you. >> are you supporting troops in
hamas in pakistan, when you see putin, what will you talk about the troops? >> we have a lot of things to talk about. >> on the deal with china, what do you have to say to president xi? >> we're very close on something with china. i don't know that i want to do it. what we have now is billions and billions of dollars coming into the united states in the form of tariffs or taxes. i really don't know. but i will tell you that i think china wants to make a deal. i'm open to making a deal but frankly i like the deal we have right now. >> mr. president, are you going to with mr. putin and what -- >> i will probably meet with mr. putin. we thought about terminating that meeting but i think it's a good time to have the meeting. i'm getting a full report on plane with what happened with respect to that and that will
determine whether i will be meeting. [ inaudible question ] >> a full report on tuesday, is that report -- >> we have a couple of reports. we're getting a finalized report. are you talking about on the russian situation with the ship? >> yes. >> and the ukraine?ukraine? we're getting a finalized report. i'm going to have it on the plane sometime today. >> why are you meeting with the crown prince? >> it just wasn't set up. >> denial of killing khashoggi or having knowledge -- >> it only wasn't set up. i would have met with him, but we didn't set that one up. i'm meeting with president xi, which is a very important meeting having to do with trade, and as you know, i may do about three or four meetings. we just didn't have time. >> mr. president. [ inaudible ] >> i'm going to bring it up, yes. >> i don't hear you. you see that? you have a helicopter. the question was asked yesterday about pardons with respect to
paul manafort who it's very sad what's happened to paul the way he's being treated. i've never seen anybody treat sod poed so poorly, but the question was asked to me by the new york post and i said no i have not offered any pardons and i think they asked would you. i said i'm not taking anything off the table. that was done as a question from the" new york post." >> if cohen is such a bum, why did you hire him, have him on your payroll for 12 years, and have him do so much of your dirty work? >> because a long time ago he did me a favor. a long time ago he did me a favor. no, not at all. not at all i'm not worried at all about him. you just take a look at his written document. go back, take a look at what he
wrote in i think january he has a written statement, and that's the fact. france, we don't want european union to be like -- what do you want to tell them? >> i don't know. you know, you can't with the helicopt helicopter. >> a possible sit-down if we don't get the wall money. we're in negotiations. we don't get border security, possible shutdown. >> and so that's the president speaking extensively about this breaking news that michael cohen has pled guilty to lying to congress, but he has spent dozens of hours and is going to continue to cooperate with the
robert mueller investigation. the president now, that was on tape, the president now is boarding air force one. he's on his way to buenos aires argentina where the g20 is taking place. that's where we find hallie jackson, and just to summarize, and i know you heard it, the president calling michael cohen weak, not very smart. he says he's a liar, but even if he is telling the truth, there's nothing wrong with what he did. he said i was focused on running for president. there would be nothing wrong if i did do it. the mueller investigative team may see things differently. your take on what you just heard from the president? >> reporter: well, wow, nine minutes as the president is getting now -- excuse me, i'm getting some mixed -- the president in those nine minutes laid the groundwork for what we will be discussing for the rest of the day, as he is on air force one getting ready to head to air force one to head here to buenos aires. the president is essentially
saying cohen is a liar, but even if he's not it doesn't matter because i didn't do anything wrong. as we've talked about, chris, it is not illegal of course for the president to be looking at doing business elsewhere, but here's the thing. during the president's campaign when donald trump was running for president as i know you remember, and as i remember from being there, the president repeatedly insisted a couple of things, number one that he had no financial interests in russia. he said this, in fact, in july of 2016 so right around the time of the republican national convention when he was at a press conference with reporters and was asked specifically about it. why does july 2016 matter? remember, these court documents now show that in june of 2016 cohen was as late as then engaging in conversations about this project for the trump organization. number two, the president also repeatedly said that he would disassociate himself with his business. he said it there in the white house south lawn interaction that you just heard, that he wanted to focus instead on running for president.
what is clear from the court documents that cohen has put his name to is that cohen was actively engaging in not just continuing to work on the president's properties and build his brand out but was doing so potentially in conjunction with the campaign and as my colleague peter alexander has pulled from these court documents, with the president's family apparently. these documents show that cohen reached out to several members of donald trump's family to talk with them about this possibility, and in fact, at one point over the course of the early summer days there was working or taking steps to work with the campaign to see if there was some way to have donald trump visit russia. cohen himself potentially to visit russia as well. we know that donald trump didn't visit russia, michael cohen didn't visit russia according to these documents either so those trips never came to fruition. this does cast light on this really critical time, this summer period. the republican establishment has coalesced around donald trump
now. that was not the case when what we are talking about was going down. remember, there was that never trump movement that had risen its head. it's why paul manafort was brought on to the campaign to try to wrangle delegates because the trump campaign was so concerned there would be a revolt against donald trump. this is that three-month time period april, may, june, july of the summer of the campaign, so it was a crucial time, and now we're learning more about what really went down. now, the president is saying, hey, michael cohen's a big liar. interesting that last question, then why'd you hire him and have him on board for so long? >> that was a great question. >> it was a good -- and i think it was phrased like why'd you hire him, if he's such a bum, why'd you bring him on, and the president said he did me a favor a long time ago. the president may want to work to minimize cohen's role, but he is somebody who was representing himself as a key ally and partner when it came to the trump organization to these officials including, by the way, demeet ree pes cough who we believe is here at the g20 with
vladimir putin. >> and we're going to have new emphasis as if there wasn't enough emphasis already of this meeting between the president and vladimir putin, but i also want to go to ari melber who joins us from washington, d.c. she flagged hallie just did, this critical part of what we've seen in these documents. it's from the cohen court document noting that trump family members were briefed by cohen about the moscow project. i just want to read it and have you put it into legal context for us. the moscow project was discus d multiple times within the company and did not end in january 2016. instead as late as approximately june 2016 cohen and individual 2 discussed efforts to obtain russian governmental approval. cohen discussed the status and progress of the moscow project with individual 1, president trump on more than the three occasions cohen claimed to the committee, and he briefed family
members of individual 1 within the company about the project. your take on what we're learning out of court today and what we just heard from the president? >> this filing is a significant advancement of the russian collusion portion of this investigation. this filing as you and our analysts and report ers have writing and court documents under the penalty of perjury and alleging as you state that donald trump's family members were in the loop, knowledgeable about this high level outreach, which closes the circle of business links that is to say donald trump trying to profit off outreach to the russian government along with the trump organization, along with the campaign. there's also a reference, chris, to mr. cohen basically holding out the prospect of advancing this well after, quote, the individual 1 donald trump becomes the nominee after the convention. so you see another break there in the story line, not only
significant that he is admitting to lying to congress about this, but the information revealing that well beyond some early business brainstorming, the idea was you would be the republican nominee. then you're in a one on one race to be president of the united states, and you're still trying to use these high level contacts in russia to enrich yourself in the company. all of that very significant because while donald trump just said today on the white house lawn moments ago as you played, there's nothing wrong with that. if there's nothing wrong with that, why did donald trump mislead the public about it at the time? why did michael cohen mislead investigative bodies about it to the tune of a felony. all of those are important questions. and of course this comes on a week where we're learning that paul manafort was busted allegedly for lying, that roger stone's story has disintegrated with lies to congress as well. the last point i'll make is this also shows how mueller has worked expertly on a parallel track with congress. he's now using the misstatements
time. you fight until we can continue to achieve what is right and just for everyone of all backgrounds, all religions and all genders, and ways of life. that's what the great people like nelson mandela stood for. we can't just choose to be good. we must aspire to try and be great. that does it for me. thanks for watching. i'll see you back here tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. eastern. up next, "the beat" with my friend ari melber. bob mueller revealing michael cohen's crimes, as well as new details on his ties to russia with federal prosecutors in new york dropping the hammer and calling for substantial prison time. let's get right to it, two major court filings out tonight, one from bob mueller who says that michael cohen has been helpful in his russia investigation and, from these prosecutors up in new
york who say cohen still deserves years in jail for a criminal mindset that allowed him to basically commit a host of crimes. all of this is a week before a judge will sentence cohen for all the above. let's look at the latest in the mueller which i was just discussing with our own chuck todd, because bob mueller said he's not taking any position on how much time michael cohen should serve, but he does note that cohen first came into his office, to bob mueller's investigators and lied to him, and lied specifically about money that we know cohen, trump and felix sater were trying to make in russia. mueller said in the new filing that cohen has now taken steps to mitigate those lies and other crimes. he gave crucial information about the trump campaign in russia, this was after he started lying he started telling the truth, mueller said, and he told the truth about russian attempts to reach the trump campaign dating back to 2015,
also russia-related matters core to his investigation. he knew about these things because of, quote, his contact with company executives, a reference to unnamed people in the trump organization, could be employees, could be family members. while mueller said cohen was helpful, the federal prosecutors in new york not impressed at all. it was a they sharashing. they say michael cohen only gave up at the end when he had few other choices. they hammer him. they note he was not actually a cooperating witness, he didn't do what he could have done. and he committed four distinct federal crimes. they say in their version of the case he was motivated by personal greed, he used his own power and influence for personal deception. and it was deception that permeated his entire professional life. they note where the law comes in, the federal guide line would
call for someone to serve about 63 months in prison. while they say he should get a little bit of credit for what he did in cooperating, he shouldn't get much. they call for four years what they call a substantial term of imprisonment. all that and bob mueller filing another big document, this is for paul manafort, the former campaign chair and the, quote, crimes and lies that mueller said justified his plea deal. that document i can tell you has been filed under seal so at this hour we don't know what's inside it. what we do know it's already a big day for bob mueller. i want to get to it with maya wiley, a civil prosecutor in the same southern district of new york. john flannery, a former federal prosecutor, and nancy gerdner, a
former federal judge. maya, what do you think is most important in what mueller is choosing to say and why your former colleagues in the southern district are coming down so hard on michael cohen? >> i think you just said it, ari. what's really relevant here is you have a -- one you have a document that makes very clear that there have been significant contact between those in trump's sphere 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 of 2016, who understood his job as connections to the russians. and in april and may communicating up the chain with the trump campaign about meeting with russia. but we also find out that trump
moscow tower deal was happening at the same time and back in november 2015, the russians were also directly reaching out to the trump world. so we already knew that there was lots of contact with russia, even before this document. what we're seeing is that there's a lot more that we did not know about. that we also know that there's going to be a continued investigation into it. that's quite clear, both from the michael flynn filing as well as from the fact there was a lot redacted in that and the fact that the manafort filing has been redacted. in terms of the southern district it's all quite clear. what they're saying, quite frankly, is look, this guy didn't 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, he was not really -- he didn't formulate a cooperation agreement. he didn't 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're still conducting. >> nancy, i'm thrilled we have the benefit of your expertise tonight 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's a liar, he thinks he's, quote, above the law and should get about four years. what does the judge do? >> the judge will have two alternatives. on the one hand, this is going to be driven by -- this is a train driven by the prosecution. because it's the mueller part that is the big question mark. right, if it were just the sdny part, then, you know,
essentially cohen would get time and the question is how much. the mueller part is what's driving it. the fallacy of all that we're talking about is that even if cohen were sentenced tomorrow to, you know, four years, three years, or whatever variation that is, he'll continue to cooperate with the government. the government has the ability to file, as you know, what's called a rule 35 motion after the fact seeking a reduction in the sentence. so while this didn't happen in a very orderly fashion with him being a cooperating witness, the rule 35 will continue to hang over him and will lead to an adjustment. >> do you think a judge would give him years? >> you know, i mean, i've been speculating all day. i think a judge will give him years in the face of the -- in the face of the sdny recommendation. i don't think a judge would give him four years. he's before a very tough judge, actually. judge pauly is not someone who's been lenient on white collar
offenses and if you looked only at the four corners of the sdny stuff you would say because of the amount of money involved this guy would get some years, but i say that's speculating because what will happen is the court can impose a sentence and basically stay is sentence, he continues to cooperate with mueller and there can be a subsequent adjustment. >> sure. but this is real stuff. this is not george papadopoulos time. this is the contemplation of real time, real felonies -- >> absolutely. >> we're going to cover this in a couple ways throughout our show tonight, john. but it is not normal, an everyday event to have federal prosecutors go into court and say, we proved this campaign crime -- >> right. >> -- this person admitted to it, and it was done at the direction of the sitting president of the united states. your view of that piece of this tonight? >> that's significant. i mean, there's almost nothing comparable since watergate with
this. and to have a lawyer coming forward, also follows that parall parallel. the thing that's interesting here, is you have a good guy, bad guy presentation by the special counsel versus the southern district. and the southern district gave tough language, like sometimes happens in a labor decision, but then the result of five years, looking at his exposure and what he did, and it could be much more substantial than that. and i agree they could come back and revisit it. they don't want to reward somebody who cab ined off what he was prepared to do there. on the other hand we have the statement by the special counsel basically praising the cooperation despite his lies, despite who he is. how do we justify that as a justice system? they group together. this is the lawyer -- >> sounds like you don't know. i thought you had an answer, john, then you said -- >> birds of a feather.
>> -- how do we? >> i think of birds of a feather. not eagles perhaps, but birds of a feather. that's my answer in this case. if you look at his history of lawyers, mr. trump, we go from roy cohn, to mr. cohen and we don't have as good a lawyer as roy to do as good of the evil things he did in the past -- >> i would revise your remarks. i think what you have is someone as clearly criminal and deceptive as roy cohn. >> yes. >> but less effective in getting away with it. >> yes. >> fascinating narrative here that goes beyond what we knew two hours ago, i'm reading from the documents. i hope people bear with me it's interesting. bob mueller's investigators explain the first time they spoke to him was august 7th at, quote, cohen's request. and he did provide relevant
information to other parts of the probe. then because they knew what they were doing when they asked him questions in the moscow project, quote, he later provided false answers in an effort to not contradict his congressional testimony, which we know was perjury. what does that tell you about the way they gathered and squeezed michael cohen and why are they revealing it now? >> i think they're revealing it so we know what we're dealing with, and they have the advantage to press him to tell the truth by taking his tape recordings and all of his letters and e-mails and the other witnesses they had to talk about him and to confirm what he had to say. also in there they say that we have, by other means, confirmed what he's tilling us, and they were helped and he made some corrections even as he was talking to them about matters, which gave him credibility as a cooperating witness ain the special counsel investigation. i think that's substantial.
i think the real question here, is what's going to happen when we move from whitaker to barr, we have a similar problem. barr is the same person who when they had the iran. contra investigation he said to pardon people -- >> you're talking about news on any other night we would have mentioned but we haven't yet, for those coming home from work on a friday, president trump announcing a new pick for an attorney general, william barr, who served as an watergaattorne general in a republican administration, and who is considered a main stream voice. you might say matt whitaker is as low a bar as can you get when it comes to credentials. he's certainly no matt whitaker. but what interests donald trump about this nominee is that he went along with a group of political pardons in the bush
administration. we're going to get to that later in the show. but maya i want you to weigh in on the same question as john, why are we learning about the way cohen was brought in to the special counsel probe tonight in your view? >> we're getting a strong, public signal that there is corroborating evidence. that's the way i read it. i read, we don't 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. is he walked in assuming he knew what the prosecutors knew. and that's the thing you never want to do. he walked in, he was surprised, he wasn't 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. that's the kind of complexity of the story. here's a guy who's a career liar cheat, he was willing to do it again, but like any solid prosecutorial team, they had solid information, they knew they had facts he didn't enjoy they had, that also means they can prove it without him. even if his credibility is somewhat impugned, they have additional evidence. >> when you put it like that and we just got all of this so we're just making sense of it. so you're saying it's an 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're all chewing on it. what you're saying is this footnote shows no, here's the time line of we had the bad stuff, that's how we knew he was lying. now he's an extra witness but not a primary one on moscow
trump tower. >> cooperate with us and you're going to be in a better position than if you don't because we're going to get you. >> i want everyone to stay with me, john. stay with me everyone. there's a whole different filing from paul manafort tonight. nbc's ken delaney has been leading the filing on that. >> here's what we learned, it is significantly redacted. we did learn that the special counsel is saying paul manafort lied about his interactions with a man named konstantin kilimnik, that's important because the special counsel said kilimnik had ongoing ties to russian intelligence. there's a reference to a meeting between kilimnik and an individual whose name is blacked out in the filing. paul manafort lied about that.
the special counsel also alleged that paul manafort lied about another separate department of justice investigation that manafort offered information about. and lastly the special counsel counsel said manafort lied when he said he wasn't in contact with anyone from the trump administration. turns out he was until may of this year. and because of all of that, the special counsel has cancelled manafort's plea agreement and he's now facing up to 15 years in prison. >> when you look at that line, does that relate in your view or is it possible to say, to obstruction or potentially collusion related things since capitol hill ne kilimnik is one of the, potentially, russian-linked handlers? to ken. >> i'm sorry i thought you were talking to someone else. >> i'm sorry, i'm the anchor i'm supposed to use names, that's on me. to ken dilanian.
>> i think kilimnik has always been a mystery figure in terms of collusion. we don't know exactly his role. it goes to the question of paul manafort's role in any contact with russians during the campaign. because of the redactions we just don't see the full picture here ari. >> copy. i appreciate your precision on that. bringing back nancy, our resident judge, i want to go to sum up more of what mueller has said basically through the cohen filing because he's getting into the trump tower deal more than we have before. he said the moscow project was, quote, a lucrative business opportunity required the assistance of the russian government and the company could have been received hundreds of millions of dollars from russian sources. nancy, do you view this as an indication that finances may be at the heart of bob mueller's probe of what a collusion conspiracy looks like? money and not just where it
started, which we knew publically was about e-mail hacking? >> i think that's how they followed manafort. in the litigation over whether or not the special prosecutor had a right to go after manafort, one of the things they said was what they were doing was following the money. following the money that the ukraine sources to manafort. and i think following the money is what they are doing throughout. getting back to the sentencing issue, i am reminded that john dean, for example, when he testified before congress, i believe he did some time for his role in nixon's obstruction of justice. so the notion that cohen would get some time, i think that this is right, would make some sense. that was the other question. but the other thing, with respect to the russian issue, we have to step back. there's almost like it was -- we thought this case was about flynn, michael flynn lying about his contacts with the russians. which when, if you recall, sally
yates said that was an issue -- concern about the russians might be willing to extort from donald trump, or it was a way of influencing them because people were lying about russian contacts. 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 contacts are, the more significant and the more substantial the financial dealings were, the more the russians had on him. and therefore, that raises a whole host of other questions about russian sanctions, et cetera. so it's a -- we've now opened the door much broader to russian influence, not just by lying but by the financial transactions. >> john, you almost get the feeling that they're good at
this and people with more ethics or more government experience may have better resistance, and this crew clearly didn't. >> i think that's true. and, you know, nothing can overcome the greed motive. until the recent disclosures, i didn't appreciate how much the trump hoped to profit from lifting the sanctions, as well as the russians, as well as putin. but because of his investment in this moscow project and because that he was being blocked by the same sanctions that were compromising the auto cats in russi russia, he had that. not just the white house he wanted to achieve but the sanctions lifted benefitted putin and himself. that's really significant. it's interesting to read the manafort document that's been produced. i only had a second to look at it, i apologize for looking down. basically where they say he lied, that tells us what they have that's true and can be proven.
and so that's interesting. they also say on a couple of occasions that he said something, and then when he was confronted with the fact he changed it. we can't ignore he is at the same time sending information back to the trump team as to what he's being questioned about in this investigation. so you have him lying, and you have obstruction and cooperation with the west wing's team representing trump. that's significant. >> that's such a significant point you raise because there's been a lot of this that's boiled down to black and white where people wrongfully think, well, do you go after a sitting present for obstruction or not if that's the only thing and where does that go? but, in fact, as you eludegh bo into the record and into court, the two keep people, the campaign chair and the long-time personal lawyer, both actively came in and lied to him. one of them got blown up over
it, paul manafort, the other tried to dial it back, michael cohen. then the question becomes, who knew about it at the white house, who knew about that? did other lawyers know about that? fraud is going to come into play if you had lawyers or others at the white house committing new criminal conspiracies. that's implicated in here. to say nothing of the campaign finance crime. i want to thank nancy very much. i may come back to each of you in our rolling coverage. i want to bring in neil. a striking deal that federal prosecutors in the southern district do bring up dump in these filings tonight. 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'm thrilled that as part of our special coverage neil joins us
and he argues as a legal matter prosecutors have concluded that donald trump is on the hook for that felony. our viewers may recognize you. of course you served in many high profile legal positions at the justice department, including as acting solicitor general. so i know when you speak of what constitutes a at the lfelony yo do it lightly. >> to me the big news tonight is not about michael cohen, it's not about paul manafort. it's about one person, donald trump and the filing you just started to highlight 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's the way that works. first of all, this is not a document by mueller. this is filed by trump's own justice department, by the southern district prosecutors in new york. there's three pieces to the
claim, the first piece is page 11 of the filing that says michael cohen made these campaign finance payments at the direction of trump. we're talking about payments made to two women for their silence for having alleged affairs with trump and they were going to go public. what happened was cohen paid those folks and did so at a time you're only supposed to give $2,700 for a campaign and that's for an important reason. congress said we don't want rich people buying elections. we want transparency in our election process. at page 11 the southern district prosecutors say that was done at the direction of trump. the next key, page 12, at page 12 the prosecutors say, quote, the agreement's principle purpose was to suppress this woman's story so as to prevent the story from influencing the election. so they're taking away the trump defense, which was there in the edwards case, i was doing it to protect my private life or something like that, these payments. they're saying, no, this was
done with the purpose of influencing the election, that's what the campaign finance laws are all about. lastly, page 23, a long description by the prosecutors of just how serious this violation of the campaign finance laws are, how it strikes a blow to our democracy, there's soaring lang uage in there. put all three of those together the southern district prosecutors are alleging the president committed a felony. they're not indicted him. but that's the document they filed. that's a document i have not seen in my lifetime. >> you say you haven't seen that in your lifetime. what you're speaking to is that language of direction. you're saying legally makes donald trump in the eyes of these prosecutors culpable for the criminal campaign finance violation that cohen has admitted to? >> correct. >> is that the end of it or anyone watching is going to think, okay, counselor, that
sounds like a big deal, you said you've never seen anything like that in your life, do they do more with that? this is separate from the mueller probe, do they do more with that? the idea that trump -- >> if this were any other person, prosecutors would be entitled to bring a case, they have reasonable grounds to bring this they said, they have some corroborating evidence besides michael cohen's statements, to suggest this happen, and they could under those circumstances indict an ordinary person. the justice department has said, in two opinions, you may not be able to indict and try a sitting president. maybe indictment, bringing the charges is different. so there's one question about what can mueller do? what can the southern district do in terms of can they indict the president? then there's that separate realm of what happens in terms of impeachment, the standard is
high crimes and misdemeanors in our constitution -- >> right. and before we even get there, i want to pause on that piece of your analysis because some of it gets into, as you say, uncharted territory. are you basically telling us tonight 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's because he won the election which this new files argues was part of what michael cohen thought would help him, that there was a reward then? a bonus? >> exactly. those three statements that i isolated from the prosecutors' memo established a felony. and we have a principle in america that no person is above the law. right now, the thing protecting the president from indictment appears not that he's a law-abiding person. there's a lot here to suggest that there is a crime that has been committed and the only get out of jail free card he seems
to be holding right now is the one that says i'm a president, you can't indict me, go home. >> you're saying that it's a huge deal, it jumped out to me earlier in the filing, i pointed it out and i'm happy to have you here. i want to make sure we explore the other side of this in fairness. this is an explosive thing on a friday night, we're talking about a filing that talks about the president being an unindicted coconspirator of not just a felony in concept but a felony michael cohen has literally confessed to, which makes it worse for the president. on the flip side, aside from the constitutional arguments on indicting, isn't there a defense to the president that someone was overzealous and did it the wrong way? he didn't direct quote/unquote, the criminal intent, meaning hide it, mislead the fec to that kind of stuff that it's not a
crime. any defense for him there? >> sure. the president is going to try to say something like i didn't intend it for campaign finance violations, i intended it to protect my family and personal life, this and that. what i'm saying is what the allegations are in the filing at page 12 when they say the principle purpose of the agreement was for campaign finance violations, if it's true, it knocks out that defense. now again it has to be proven up in a court, just like any indictment has to be proven in a court. but what we're look at today is something that seriously implicates the president directly in federal felonies. >> i would ask you how the president might understand this, but i'll go ahead and share and spoiler alert. it's not much but he's posting tonight. totally clears the president. thank you. kne neil? >> i'm not sure he's read the filing.
i think if you read just those three pages of the filing, add them up, it's a pretty 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, i'm not hearing neil. the audience is getting more of you than i am, neil. say something else or give some analysis while we fix my audio. >> great. look -- >> now i hear you. >> so i think what the president is, like many people, willfully reading things that he's seeing and saying, oh, you know, this isn't a big deal, i'm totally cleared. but the words are the words. and the words are really darn damning right now and if i'm the president tonight i'm beside myself and frightened. i know the president has a capacity for self-delusion, but this one is a hard one. those words are black and white on the paper.
>> while i have you, the other big news is william barr appointed to be the new attorney general taking over from whitaker. you are in a position to know him and a lot of the people around him and know how doj works. what is your view of that appointment? >> first of all it's a relief. we have a fake attorney general right now someone who i don't believe is empowered to do the job. so anyone that the president nominates and gets through senate confirmation is a step up from what we have right now. number two, barr is an enormously divisioned qualified person who served as a great attorney general two decades ago. the question to me is not what did he do a long time ago as attorney general, but what are his views now? he's taken some views that i think some have found troubling, about the uranium investigation, calling for the president's targets to be investigated and the like. we have to see if whether or not
he's changed. donald trump himself used to be a democrat. so people change in two decades. so i think it's his current record now that we've got to evaluate. and, you know, i think on the special counsel stuff i can tell you back in 1999, when we were drafting the regulations. i think he saw eye-to-eye with the way we saw it. which was the independence council act, the old statue after watergate was too strong a medicine and had dangerous constitutional ramifications. and the special counsel ramifications struck the right balance because they allowed an independent prosecutor. and he went to the hill and celebrated the idea of an independent prosecutor. so if his old views are still his view today, that's a heartening step, it's not like what matthew whitaker has said about the special counsel. so my judgment is kind of reserved at this point because i want to see what he said today,
but certainly his old views were good. >> that's interesting coming from you, particularly at a time where there is a rush, i think with some reason, to criticize a lot of what this president does no matter what. you're clearly looking into the depth of this individual. his record on these issues, and, of course, he's going to go through a confirmation process. which as we all know we learn new things. i want you to stay with our rolling coverage as well. but i want to show the audience russia parts of this. there are key parts of the filing that go not only into how the trump tower project in moscow was being developed and being sold, but also why it was such import to donald trump and his company. robert mueller writing, it was a lucrative business opportunity that sought and likely required the assistance of the russian government saying cohen was approached to set up a meeting between individual one and vladimir putin.
according to the filing cohen was told this meeting would have a phenomenal impact not only in political but business dimensions as well. and there was no bigger warranty in any project, and the consent of, yes, that would be putin. here's cohen in september 2015 talking about a trump/putin meeting. >> there's a better than likely chance trump may even meet with putin when he comes here for the united nations. people want to meet donald trump. >> yes, they do. bringing in former u.s. ambassador to russia, michael mcfall, who we asked to call in so we can have the benefit of his knowledge. ambassador mcfaul, this is a legal document but it's also in many ways a peek into the national security and counterintelligence premises of the special counsel probe, something we don't often see. in your view do they check out
and what's your reaction to what we're learning? >> i think we're learning that michael cohen wanted to get rich after the elections. and he had been focussed on that. he had been being guidance from various people about how to do that, that's why he had the theory he needed to secure the meeting with putin. if you're trying to do a big business deal in russia, it's always good to have president putin as your partner. i think it's really important to remember they didn't think they were going to win this election when all these contacts and conversations were happening. and michael cohen probably never thought he was going to go to the white house. he was always looking to cash in on his personal relationship with the president to do this big deal in russia. >> it's such a great point. i wonder if you would build on that ambassador, because you've served in government you have a sense how normal government officials and diplomats run and michael cohen is anything but. this was a man who, according to
the evidence we had, didn't think donald trump was likely to win the campaign, although he took all sorts of acts on trump's behalf and didn't think he was going to end in jail either based on the reckless conduct and both of those things are on the table, donald trump having won and prosecutors recommending four years. how does that contrast to say the way it's supposed to be done when people who might be in your position are advising presidents and campaigns get into this world of becoming targets or becoming of interest to foreign officials? >> well, you know i worked on barack obama's 2008 campaign. let's just be clear, you said normal, right? to the best of my knowledge, nobody was trying to do business deals with foreign governments during that campaign. that's just crazy. it's absurd, nobody would ever do that. number two, let's be clear also, we need to learn more, but it sounds like the candidate himself was also involved in
this. and is -- that would be very consistent with other kinds of negotiations and conversations he's had that he would be involved. and number three, i just kind of want to keep reminding people, ari, you talked about it before, the same interlock or thes that they had, in talking about doing what they're calling in these documents, the moscow project are the same people arranging the meeting in june 2016 to help trump win -- allegedly, let's keep adding that adverb -- providing something on secretary clinton to help him win. it's the same group of russians we're dealing with. >> ken dilanian, your view? >> the reason that special counsel robert mueller has said they're satisfied with michael cohen's cooperation, whereas the
southern district is not satisfied is because cohen cooperated extensively about the russia collusion, i don't think we should lose sight of that. in fact, my colleague just flagged one part that said he cooperated about contacts within and around the trump white house in 2017 and this year. that's the first mention of really the mueller investigation reaching into the modern trump white house as opposed to the campaign. it also -- this document makes clear that donald trump lied. i don't use that term lightly. when he said at his first news conference as president that he had no contacts with russian during the campaign, no dealings with russia. we had a hint of it. but this document says in december of 2015, trump conferred with michael cohen about reaching out to the russian government and it seems to be related to the trump tower project because it seems to be the same individual who offered the campaign political synergy and synergy on a government
evangelical. obviously we don't know from this document what was said, but it looks like michael cohen was a target of recruitment here by the russians who were trying to infiltrate the trump campaign. the last thing that's important is cohen talked about the circumstances why he lied to congress. how and who he told and the circumstances of how he gave false testimony to congress. the implication is it wasn't just michael cohen's decision to tell the lies to congress. i think there's more to come on that, ari. >> that's right. that's where the filings both have clues about the notion that other people may have been involved in these things, other people involved in obstruction, conspiracies. neil i'm curious about what you think of this odd use of the word synergy, those in regular life think of that as a meaningless world, thrown around in corporation meetings. i'm not aware of it as a huge
legal signifier. it's like bob mueller went out of his way in that filing to refer to an alliance a synergy between trump and russian officials without using the word collusion, do you read it that way? >> i think that's fair. i think there's something important going on here, and i guess i'd say it's three things i would look to. number one be the trump tower meeting in june of 2016, which there have been so many shifting stories about and today it was reported that at least former mayor rudy giuliani is saying that they believe -- that mueller believes that manafort lied about trump's knowledge, and that trump actually had knowledge of that meeting before it took place. you know, the chronology there was june 3rd, trump's son was contacted by the russians and 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 don't know exactly what he told mueller in his statement last week but that's one thing to think about. the second thing to think about, this report that evidently there was going to be a $50 million penthouse for putin that was going to be paid for my trump which would be a violation of the foreign corrupt practices act. and number three, why is everyone lying about this? there's so many different lies. lies from cohen, from manafort, lies from people all over. and then they say it's no big deal. it's just russian business and so on. this is people who were -- you know, these campaign officials and trump's personal lawyer dealing with the russians and then lying about it. not just ordinary russians but the russian government, the kremlin itself. that's a very, very -- the american public should have known that before the election, and this was hidden from them. >> right. and that again goes to some of the connective tissue here which is the southern district
prosecutors say there were things hidden from the american public by michael cohen's acts. certainly some of the incriminating information about donald trump's lifestyle was out there. then in the manafort filing which we are just die jegting, some of it i'll hold up because it'll remind viewers what we've been doing all week, some of the hottest stuff is redacted. what's not redacted for your analysis, i know you're doing it live with us, is the idea there's an obstruction conspiracy mueller's term, between kplilimnik and manafort. manafort provided different information about a different investigation. so mueller is saying here's a trump witness going to maybe help us with something else and then mueller changed his story with that and finally -- what's
the legal significance of this, do you think -- that manafort saying he didn't have any type of communication with anyone in the trump administration and he never asked anyone to try to communicate a message with anyone in the trump administration on any matter. that, of course, is contradicted by rudy giuliani and others publically boasting about their communications and then this, i'm reading from the new filing, a text exchange from may 26, 2018 of this year, manafort authorized a person to speak with an administration official on manafort's behalf. how do you view that, neil? why is it in the filing? why is it unredacted? >> i think i don't want to speculate on that yet. i want to think about it more and study the filing. i don't want to punt on that one. so maybe ken and others have views. >> this is what we do around here. no, i'm kidding. i appreciate your precision. ken and john flannery, if he's in the chair, i'll put the
question out, bob mueller, to put it in plane english is saying, john? paul manafort lied to us and he wasn't touched with trump people. go ahead. >> 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're talking about, what are they? they're consciousness of guilt, we did something we covered it up, covered it up till the cooperate, we lie and then run away. the fox is going to ground. and mueller is as close as he could be to ramming speed. i just -- i don't know that we're going to have a seasonal present but he looks ready to me. and i think a lot of people are going to be very unhappy. and the question is, is it going to be a family plan? do we start with the trump family and the moneys they have? are we going to look at the old gang? are we going to have manafort again with his former partner
roger stone? the possibilities all seem reasonable and the question is will they all be together? i thought this would be the third act in a three-part act, here's the equipment we put in place, this is how we dispense it, and three these are the americans who betrayed their country and compromise us in foreign policy so they could fulfill their greedy inclinations. that's what i think this is about. a lot of it goes to what ambassador mcfaul and others mentioned. manafort claiming he had no contact with anybody anything about, that's a claim to make. you can have a friend in government and talk about baseball or policy if that's your passion and it won't go anywhere near what your lawyers are telling you not to talk about. so he makes this denial and mueller busts him, you were doing it in writing -- the
arrogance -- a text message in may to the administration. i'm sure there are going to be nervous people in the white house tonight. manafort also said he'd been in communication with a, quote, senior administration official through february of 2018, and review of documents demonstrates additional contacts with, quote, administration officials. who are they? did they ever lie? john? >> this is the trojan horse approach. everything else, he was in a corner. he's facing a big prosecution in d.c. and so he makes a false agreement and a plea figuring at the end of this trail, if he does it right, he'll get a pardon from a questionable source, mr. one, mr. trump. 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 an attack on the investigation. pure obstruction. now i don't -- i can't remember seeing a trojan horse strategy
like this, certainly at a presidential level, certainly in such a visible place. but the reason we're able to get at these guys is because they're not that good at it. they're terrible liars. they talk publically all the time. they have strategies kids in the streets wouldn't have. and because of it, the republican may be saved. some republican senator may find the backbone -- >> you only have to get through the first few episodes of season one of "the wire" to know not to send the text messages. >> stay with me, john. we're not taking any breaks we're in breaking coverage here. when you look at the filing from the southern district of new york. it hammers michael cohen not only for laws but doing the opposite of what you may have heard about on tv that he was quote cooperating. but prosecutors basically say he wasn't cooperating enough thus
they represent he should get substantial prison time. they detail that, the willful tax evasion, statements to banks, illegal campaign contributions, and false statements to congress. the prosecutors also rebuke cohen for what they call a criminal mindset. at his own option he is above the laws of the united states. we've 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 than you might have expected from the federal prosecutors there and they also go out of their way to say it wasn't full cooperation. maya? >> i think it's an understandable rebuke, quite frankly. because as i said earlier, number one, this is an attorney. this is someone who took an oath when he passed his bar exam that said he was going to uphold the laws and that he was going to hold the highest level of ethics
as someone who was charged with the law. now, that -- what he also did was walked in, as we've said and, you know, he didn't walk in and cooperate. he pled guilty and then started to try to cut a deal for himself that would help him out. there was some indication in some news reports that suggested that he was, in fact, holding out for a pardon and then kind of felt like he was getting thrown under the bus. so maybe it was in his best interest to paint a different picture of himself. so i think what you're hearing from prosecutors is look, we don't like people who violate the law, particularly when they do it over a course of years, and then come in and try to play us. i guess the dmx argument on sentencing didn't fly so well with them. they actually make a reference essentially to that argument that somehow he hasn't done anything as bad as some others. and then finally, finally i think they're making quite clear, while he has cooperated,
it really does seem like he's done it in a way that was really about his best interests. let me say one other thing about why it was in his best interests, because the district attorney of manhattan, as the s attorney general, are also investigating what we're calling campaign finance law violations. they're looking at estate tax felonies and possibly misdemeanor crime in falsifying business records at the city level. so, what that is really saying is you're not going to get a pardon if they find reasons to indict you in this at the level of the city or at the level of the state. >> sure. and look, maya, we discussed the dmx defense earlier on the broadcast. it says where my dog's at. no. it doesn't say that, but what it does say is, neil, that other celebrity types and prominent
types have been delinquent on their taxes and avoided jail time. maybe michael cohen should get that light a sentence, that slap on the wrist. and as maya alludes to, that was wholly rejected in this filing today, starting with the fact that they lay out that this was not a choice of full cooperation, he was dragged to it by his decreasingly optimistic outlook of what he could get away with. >> i totally agree with maya, who is a great southern district prosecutor and has done this before, but i think i'd add one more thing to what she said and what you're asking about, which is prosecutors went out of their way to say this campaign finance visi violation is really severe. they didn't have to use all the language about the threat to democracy and things like that. so, it's pretty powerful language. and to me, it suggests that they are really stealing themselves
and laying down a foundation to say these campaign finance violations of which there were two people involved -- two to tango -- michael cohen and donald trump are very, very serious. and so, i think there's a second piece, a second move on the chess board that's going on when you look at that filing today. and again, it's not a filing by mueller. it's a filing by federal prosecutors in the southern district of new york that's extraordinarily significant. >> and i want to bring in jennifer reuben and also go to a broader point, jennifer. jennifer is a "washington post" columnist, a conservative and a critic of trump. i don't want to be too poetic, but i wonder if we can begin by noting, jennifer, that this is a president that's 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. so i wonder if having gone through all the details, it's
fitting to turn to you and look at what is working. career prosecutors doing their job, career prosecutors identifying individual one for directing this, because that's what the facts show. apparently, they're not afraid of what that means or that donald trump will get in there. they don't 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 rare and unusual step of having a meeting with a person who is the prosecutor for his jurisdiction, trying to cultivate him when that didn't work out firing him. preet bharara has gone on to detail all that. gosh, it looks pretty different now that we know that was the office that was going to go forward and give a four-year recommended jail sentence to trump's then lawyer cohen and recommend 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 it's cohen, whether it's manafort. obviously, the special prosecutor has a wealth of information. the southern district has a wealth of information -- documentary, other witnesses, e-mails, texts. and so, facts do matter. we've gotten used to saying facts don't matter because trump makes stuff up it. that doesn't work in court. the facts are presented to a court, the judge will rule on sentencing. this is the real show, so facts do matter. second 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 hasn't 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. that's not bad. that's reassuring. that's 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 that 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 can't put the genie back in the bottle. you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube once that's out there. so, in some ways, they've created some protection for themselves. and i think the final thing we should keep in mind is these people who have been enabling trump, whether it's rudy giuliani, whether it's people in the white house who think it's fine to lie for this guy, it's 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 actions which constitute obstruction of justice. the fraud exception will be making it possible for lawyers to hide behind the attorney/client privilege. >> right. >> 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. >> 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 one, donald trump, yes or no? john? >> absolutely, yes. >> nancy? >> absolutely, yes. >> maya? >> oh, yeah. >> neal? >> 100%. >> jennifer? >> oh, yes. >> ken delainan? >> 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, you've 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 cohen, confessed, and alleged with manafort. and obstruction of people tied to the united states. individual one, donald trump, identified for the first time for directing a campaign-related felony. a big day, indeed. thank you for watching our coverage. that does it for me. you can check out "the beat" 6:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc.