Trail. The New York Times obtained copies of six additional checks written to Michael Cohen from President Trump. Many of them signed by the president himself, and not before taking office, either. They were written in the white house while he was president. Now, we knew about five of them, but now we have more. 11 in all from the president or his trust account. This one obtained by the times we saw for the first time today dated october 18th, 2017, and he was busy that day embroiled in controversy over an allegedly insensitive condolence call it a Fallen Soldiers widow. You may remember that day. There were other checks and other notable days according to the times, including this one for 70,000 to Michael Cohen on valentines day of 2017 which also happens to be the day the president asked james comey to go easy on Michael Flynn according to comey. As the times Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt put it, im quoting, the president hosted a foreign leader in the oval office then wrote a check. He haggled over legislation then wrote a check. He traveled abroad then wrote a check. 420,000 in all according to Court Documents in the cohen case, including 130,000 for the payoff to Stormy Daniels. No comment now from the white house on this, not to us or the times. The paper also got no comment from jay secokulow. As for the president , himself, youll recall he initially denied he knew anything about the payment to Stormy Daniels. Mr. President , did you know about the 130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels . No. No. Why did Michael Cohen make it if there were youd have to ask Michael Cohen. Michaels my attorney. And youll have to ask Michael Cohen. Do you know where he got the money to make that payment . I dont know. No. Well, that wasnt true. Eventually, the president s other tv lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, admitted that the daniels hush money had, in fact, been funneled to cohen through a law firm and repaid by the president. So the takeaway tonight, the president of the United States was not telling the truth while saying he didnt know about the payments to a porn star. We now know he was working as the president of the United States from the oval office while actually making payments to the porn star. As weve said before, this is not normal. Joining us now with new information on the cohen story, cnn chief political analyst gloria borger. So, gloria, what have you been learning about the drafting of Michael Cohens original testimony to congress . Well, we have sourcing that says, first of all, Michael Cohen wrote his original testimony himself. It was then edited by his attorney, and then it was shared with other attorneys who were part of this joint Defense Agreement at the time. And they weighed in, as attorneys will, when you circulate testimony, making tweaks here and there, but the key moment, which was that the trump tower moscow ended in january 2016, which we now know was a lie, remained in remained in his testimony until he perjured himself through congress. And the lawyers had no indication, our sources say, that any of the information contained in his testimony was false, so, you have to ask the question, was Michael Cohen lying to hiss attorneys and did he did he consort with the president to do that . How plausible is it that the president and Michael Cohen were on one page about trump tower moscow and their lawyers were on another page . Well, you know, the signs seem to be pointing in that direction. I think that from what our reporting is, you know, the lawyers say its hard to imagine any of them would knowingly, you know, be part of some coverup here, and that michael had written his testimony, and each of these lawyers were protecting their own particular clients as part of this joint Defense Agreement. So we now know that Michael Cohen had multiple conversations with the president of the United States. Were not quite sure when they were. And, you know, you have to sort of ask the question, did he keep these conversations with the president from his attorney . And the answer is probably yes. Gloria borger, gloria, stay with us. Sure. Were going to come back to you shortly. First, congressman jim himes joins us, member of the House Intelligence Committee. He was in todays Michael Cohen hearing. Congressman himes, lanny davis says cohen, himself, authored the false line about the trump tower moscow timeline. Is that your understanding as well, that it was cohen and not, in fact, the president s attorneys . Well, anderson, i cant get into the specifics of what has been discussed in now the two days in which Michael Cohen has testified before my committee, but remember, that statement that is in question here, the statement that was used by the special counsel to ultimately get Michael Cohen to plead guilty to lying to my committee was a deep and rich statement with all sorts of dates and people and mentions and, of course, at the time, as you know, Michael Cohen was part of a joint Defense Agreement. Right. And so, its not crazy to infer that a lot of people would have looked at that statement. But obviously, Michael Cohen, when he gave that statement to the congress, he knew that that date was incorrect. So any of the president s attorneys who reviewed cohens statement, do you or does your Committee Plan on calling them to testify . Well or at least at this point. As the chairman said today, it was a very productive day. And i know this is frustrating, but we want to keep the of course. I know, theres a lot you cant say. Subject as private as we can, partly because, by the way, as a result of todays testimony, the committee may very well call in additional people, and if we call in additional people, we dont necessarily want them knowing exactly what it was that Michael Cohen said. So, when the chairman said it was a productive day, i think its i think what he meant, and i think what is fair to say is that we learned new things. Michael cohen said today that he brought new documents. The chairman confirmed that. We saw new documents that pertained to to when Michael Cohen told the committee the trump Tower Building had stopped being the project had stopped. So we did see a lot of new information. As a result of that new information, we may very well call additional witnesses. What did do you have a sense of what the timetable of the investigation for the committee is . I mean, the plan, you know, to wrap this up in a matter of months or weeks or longer . Well, remember, we started when we regained the majority, when the democrats regained the majority, we restarted the investigation which thenchairman nunes had ended prematurely. We know its prematurely, of course, the special counsel subsequent to the closing of our investigation charged any number of people. Its clear we were lied to. What i will tell you, anderson, we started with, lets find out more about the lies that were told to my committee. Thats, of course, what weve done with Michael Cohen. And without betraying the details of what we learned today and last week, there is an awful lot more for us to do associated with the lies that Michael Cohen told the congress. And you might fairly infer that those that has to do with the possibility that somebody along the way was looking to assist or did assist in Michael Cohens crime of lying to congress. So when we spoke with you last week, we just learned that the House Intelligence Committee was going to request allen weisselberg, the Trump Organization cfo, whos been there a very long time, to testify. Can you say what the status of that is right now . Has contact been made . Have you gotten any response from him . I dont know that. What i do know, we said this last week, it continues to be our intention to bring in felix sater, of course, being the individual who worked in the Trump Organization office, had a relationship with Michael Cohen and obviously with donald trump. I believe it is still the intention to have him in next week. I dont now if its an open hearing. That was the original idea. But that remains the next step for this investigation in the house. And on the subject of pardons, number one, did you talk about them with Michael Cohen . Number two, if you did, can you say if the issue of a pardon was first raised by cohens attorneys or the president s attorneys . Yeah, anderson, i dont want to get into that. I know the press has been reporting a lot about that today. Of course, Michael Cohen hinted in previous testimony there might have been some issues there. Let me just leave it by saying that the question of whether there were pardons offered to Michael Cohen is a question that has been out there for a long time. And it is still very much out there. And i just wanted to ask you about what we started this broadcast with, the New York Times obtaining six checks written from President Trump to Michael Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels. Doing it while in office. In the oval office, i assume. Do you think there is any legal or constitutional exposure there . Well, of course, there is. I mean, those checks are interesting, because those check s and the fact that donald trump made a payment to reimburse Michael Cohen for paying off a porn star in order to avoid a story, you know, i know Rudy Giuliani is really interested in the question of whether that was personal or political. I think anybody looking at that would say trying to stop a story that you had an affair with a porn star is something that would certainly be material to americans decisions on how they vote for president. You know, not only is that a big deal in and of itself, but simply doing it is a violation of the law and doing it from the white house, remember, bill clinton was impeached in the mid 90s for lying about an affair, but bill clinton didnt, you know, write hush money checks while he was in the white house. So, yes, of course, were in a tough spot here because there is now very clear evidence that the president may have committed a serious crime while president of the United States. And just lastly, ive been thinking about something you said last week on the program after cohen testified in front of your committee. You said the republicans on your committee didnt do the sort of castigating of cohen we saw republicans in the House Oversight committee doing which was an open hearing. I wondered, did that did that apply today . Did the treatment of cohen apply to devin nunes as well . Yeah, again, without getting into the details of the hearing, of course. The what happened these last two days with Michael Cohen behind closed doors could not have been more different than what you saw in front of the Oversight Committee with cameras running, republicans bringing posters out. None of that happened. In fact, it was, you know, fairly boring procedurally and as much as question after question after question got asked. The republicans did participate. Again, i dont want to get into the details of what was said and done, but the republicans i think are mainly, i think they understand theyre in a little bit of a box because, you know, as they did before the American People, saying Michael Cohen, you have no credibility, youre a bad guy, youre a criminal, and stuff, well, sentence number two behind that is, this is a guy who worked for the president for ten years and oh, by the way, was finance chairman of the republican party. So thats a pretty uncomfortable position for the republicans to be in. Yeah. Congressman himes, good to have you on. Thank you very much. Thanks, anderson. Gloria borger is back. I want to bring in cnn chief legal analyst jeffrey toobin. Jeff, you heard glorias reporting earlier. Do you buy the possibility that cohen hoodwinked all of these lawyers or do you think they were plausibly in the dark and this is cohen, alone, doing what he claims the president wanted him to do . I buy the idea that the lawyers were hoodwinked. I mean, lawyers only know what theyre told. Lawyers have no firsthand knowledge of of the matters where theyre doing the representation. And people lie to their lawyers all the time. The real responsibility here are the people who talk to the lawyers. That is, Michael Cohen himself, who was acknowledged lying about the timing of the trump Tower Initiative in moscow. And trump himself. I mean, theyre the ones who had a lot to gain from lying about this. And we know that the president lied to the public about his his relationship with the trump tower moscow project and how long it went on and how serious it was. So if he lied to the public, i would assume that he lied to the lawyers as well. Why wouldnt he . Gloria, i mean, something as sensitive as this trump tower moscow project and potentially, you know, financially beneficial, what incentive would the president have to stay away from whatever his lawyers were doing with Michael Cohens testimony . Well, you know, he would have the incentive, if he were another president , to kind of stay away because it was sensitive, but if the president knew that the trump tower moscow, in fact, the discussions went on through june, which i presume he did, i think the question is, did he, as Michael Cohen himself, has said, you know, did he sort of wink and nod to michael and say, you know, you know what you got to do, and then the testimony reflected that. I mean, we know the way donald trump operates. Weve heard it from Michael Cohen in his congressional testimony. And that that is what Michael Cohen says occurs. I think that the committee now has the job to kind of put all these pieces together and figure out whether, in fact, the president was involved, and, you know, thats the question we dont know the answer to at this point, succinctly. I mean, we know what michael says. No. Jeff, were you going to Say Something . What makes this complicated legally is theres this sort of paradox of silence. Right. I understood what trump wanted me to do, but thats how we communicated. He didnt have to tell me to lie. I knew to lie. That may be true, and thats certainly the way certain crime organizations work. And testimony about that kind of relationship has been very successful in mafia prosecutions. But whether people will believe that thats how the person who is now the president of the United States interacted with his staff, thats a question i dont know the answer to, but it is certainly raised by the evidence here. Although, its interesting, jeff, it you listen to that tape that Michael Cohen made of his client, donald trump, when they were talking about david pecker, setting up a fund, the language they were both using was very kind of elliptical. I mean, Michael Cohen, you know, im paraphrasing, he was like, you know that friend of ours, david, you know, were going to set up a thing. You know, it wasnt very lawyerly direct language. Absolutely. And it is, you know, at least generally corroborative of how cohen describes their relationship. That they both knew what the ultimate goals were, and he didnt have to be told, you know, do step a, do step b, do step c, all of which may have been illegal, but, you know, it is hard to convince people. You can maybe convince a jury in brooklyn or manhattan, but if youre going to try to convince republican members of congress that thats how the president operates and you didnt have to be told explicitly to break the law, thats a lot different, and at the moment, anyway, it certainly doesnt look like republican politicians are embracing cohens version of the facts. Well, jeff far from it. Jeff and gloria, thanks for taking part in this thing of ours. Appreciate it. Just ahead, breaking news. The president issues an ultimatum. Well tell you what hes threatening to do if some people dont stop being mean to his favorite cable network. Later, the cabinet secretary responsible for separating children from their families at the border cant even tell you, the American People, how many kids right now are in custody. Were keeping them honest. Steven could only imaginem