Profiting off his ties to people in power. And companies that hired him like at t and novartis pony up for access, something that his boss railed against his candidate. I know the game. I understand it. So many people have come up, lobbyists. I said i dont want money from lobbyi lobbyists. The system we have is broken. A guy like bush, all these people are controlled by peemt who give them the money. It is time to drain the swamp in washington, d. C. Thats the best Case Scenario of what cohen has been up to. Here is the thing. There are numerous reasons to believe that scenario may not be the truth. For starters, lets start with this. Prior to taking money from corporate clients, cohens llc of central consultants was being used to pay hush money to the president s mistress and unexplainably to a former
government. Specifically focus on u. S. Tax reform, major Trump Campaign issue and the time warner merger. This had been announced by at t in october just before the election, and donald trump had come out on the Campaign Trail and said that he was opposed to it. That was a major problem for at t. Lo and behold, its right there in the document we obtained that the time warner merger was something that Michael Cohen was supposed to focus on in this deal. David, youve been tracking the Columbus Nova part of this. Yes. What did you learn about them and their protestations that they dont have much to do with Victor Vexelberg at all . Trying to distance themselves from Victor Vexelberg and that payment to Michael Cohen. Myself and one of my colleagues at mother jones did a deep dive into s. E. C. Filings. Boy, these things are hard to figure out. We did see that Victor Vexelberg was intimately involved with many aspects of Columbus Nova. Hes not only the cousin of the man who runs Columbus Nova, they each have Shell Companies in these opaque deals that work together. Even if the Columbus Nova statement is true, that vexelberg does not own the company, it is a very much a part of his gigantic trancenational business empire. Thats key here. The question is, what are they paying cohen for, and how can he be getting anything from a Company Connected to an oligarch . Particularly at that point in time. Ros a. Lyn, if im not mistaken, youre reporting that Columbus Nova,
intrater and vekselberg were seen together, is that right . Yes. Never before attended an inauguration came to washington for Donald Trumps inauguration and we understand there was a moment when cohen, intrater and vekselberg were together in a group at the inauguration. David youve been reporting on washington, money in politics in washington for decades. You and i have worked together. Yes. You know how washington works well. So i want to ask you what you make of an argument that maybe this was a little crasser than what usually happens but this is just how the game works. Its a lot crasser. Weve seen trump people form companies, Consulting Companies and try to cash in and really just be as swampy as you can get. Michael cohen is now the biggest Swamp Monster we have. And the question also is whether he was delivering any real
services for the money he got. There are questions where hes bribing them, there may be questions raised about fraud and one company is saying we paid him for a year and didnt have him do anything. This is the type of thing that if you had a congress that was doing its job would start Oversight Hearings immediately t may not be criminal but it certainly is wrong. Novartis has gotten out ahead of this to say we sign this had contract. He had nothing to offer. So we just stuck in the contract and never used him. What does at t say about what work product the man produced for 600,000 . They say he provided insights into the trump administration. I should note that the ceo of novartis sent an email to its employees, apologizing for this contract, saying it was poorly handled by the company. Weve not seen anything like that from at t. Am i right they havent produced anything more specific
than that statement, that he was providing insights . Thats right. When we came to them with the documents we have received that kind of laid out specifically exactly what he was hired to help with, they declined to comment about that. Thats also true with Columbus Nova. We dont have a clear idea what he was hired to do for them. It seems like a Pretty Simple question that everyone should be able to answer. Working at a large corporation, people arent signing off on 1. 2 million, 600,000 Contracts Willy Nil Nilly and not getting anything in return willy nilly. There are contracts somewhere about what this guy did or did not do. Thank you for joining me. Thank you. For the legal jeopardy that Michael Cohen faces, im joined by former federal prosecutor and a former white House Counsel and Executive Director of the n
nonprofit group. His testimony before the grand jury, this is what he had to say about muellers team focusing on Michael Cohen. During the voluntary interview, as they go through all these issues and then your history they wanted to know my history, my interactions with michael. Obviously trump tower moscow, which i had nothing to do with. I never met felix sauder. Anything about Michael Cohen and payments . And payments to whom . Anybody. Sure. Like i told you, they asked about what his role was going to be. They asked if i had any knowledge about payments, which i didnt. Got it. Certainly, its an area of interest for them. Whats the significance there, barbara . It does sound like Robert Muellers team was aware of this information long before the public was, which is probably not surprising, in asking about areas. A lot of times when youre trying to corroborate information that you have, you
might ask a witness about his awareness of things. They may end up knowing nothing about it and may be able to tell you a lot about it. Its not unusual to learn information from one witness or set of documents and ask other witnesses to answer those questions. It seems, based on the reporting, that Robert Muellers team has interviewed these corporations, stopped Victor Vekselberg at the airport, interviewed him there. They have Subpoena Power to get their arms around all of these documents, to see these payments. And so no doubt theyre trying to make sense of them by asking witnesses like sam nunberg, questi questions. Are you buying they knew what they were getting into here. Michael cohen doesnt have any expertise on health policy. What he offers is access to the president. This is whats so dangerous about whats happening here. Weve seen things like
runofthemill corruption in washington before. A great piece in the transition called vena corruption, lining their own pocket business selling access. Something that looks a little more like systemic corruption where the president is publicly saying he will potentially intervene in regulatory matters that doj is undertaking or other agencies are undertaking, sending signals he might change the regulatory landscape for Companies Like amazon, that he doesnt like, cost them a fortune. When youre a ceo and see that the president can knock 55 billion off amazons capital in a single tweet, your thought is i have to pay someone to keep them off my back. Great point. When that happens you have a situation that looks more like how Vladimir Putin runs russia, autocratic capture. You need to pay the autocrat in order to stay safe and when that happens, democracy itself is in
danger. Barbara, what did you want to say . I wanted to chime in on whether these payments are genuine. Look at the bree breadth of the expertise he was paid for. It seems amazing they would have the expertise to be able to consult with all of these companies and so there is at least some suspicion, i think, likely among the prosecutors, that this is pretextual and instead it was access and influence that he had to sell and not expertise. Extend that metaphor a second. In other place this is is a common model. I said this with the tariff decision. Its when you say blank a tariff and oneoff deals to get lifted so companies can say i can come to you and give you this, give you this. That works in a place like aegypt. Barriers to start a new business but if you pay off the right people. In those places the money flows
ultimately to the autocrat. And to the Industry Titans. Being a successful Business Person and being a supporter of the regime become one in the same. And the danger is that when Elections Come around, the powerful Industry Titans keep the regime in power because they know where their bread is buttered and are getting an advantage over others and want to keep that advantage. We should note here, doj is still attempting to block the at t merger, right . I want to be very clear of that. Its a progressive position. Lot of antitrust people on the left think its the right thing to do. They havent been flipped by the 600,000 in Michael Cohens pocket. This is the problem. You can have a good public debate on whether it is a good antitrust. Whats the motivation . Is it some corrupt motivation coming from the president . Barbara, what did you mean by pretext tural . . That the payments are not for his expertise perhaps but for access and influence. In municipal governments weve had it here many years ago in the City Of Detroit with the former mayor. Had you to pay to play. If you wanted to do business with the city, you had to pay consultants and experts and others, contractors a fee that was ultimately shared with the mayor for him to make decisions in awarding contracts. That was on a microlevel, something perhaps were seeing at a larger level. Ultimately shared with the mayor. Keep that in mind when you think about what is emerging here. Great to have you both. Next, Vice PresidentPence Channeling his inner richard nixon, telling Robert Mueller time to to wrap it up. But what a powerful life lesson. And dont worry i have everything handled. I already spoke to our allstate agent, and i know that we have Accident Forgiveness. Which is so smart on your guys part. Like fact that theyll just. Forgive you. Four weeks without the car. Okay, yup. Good night. With Accident Forgiveness your rates wont go up just because of an accident. Switching to allstate is worth it. All the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent. I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of watergate is enough. During the 1974 State Of The Union address, more than a year into the watergate investigation, president nixon said enough is enough. Eight months later, nixon became the only u. S. President to resign from office. Today marks exactly oneyear appointment of Robert Mueller as special prosecutor. As we found out from andrea mitchell, Vice President pence shares the same internal clock as nixon. Its been about a year since this investigation began, our administration has provided over a million documents, fully
cooperated in it. In the interest of the country i think its time to wrap it up. The Vice PresidentSntd The Only One interested in ending muellers probe prematurely. Wait till you hear what devin nunes is up to today. Editor in chief at the law fair blog and Betsy Woodruff political reporter with the daily beast. Let me start with you, dan. He subpoenaed the Department Of Justice for information on a person that the Department Said if it was revealed would essentially reveal sources and methods and nunes said no, no, no, i was never interested in any individual. And then the Washington Post got its hands on the document. Its very clear nunes was looking for an individual. Today he went over and met with the doj. Whats going on here . Well, i mean, i guess the latest is that it does seem that maybe he is backing down. Although, its always premature to say that about devin nunes. Look, this is an extremely upsetting situation. Every time you think that there is youve reached the low with the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, you know, he finds a way to knock at you from below that. And, you know, going after information about an intelligence source is a violation of the most sacred trust that the Intelligence Oversight System has with the intelligence agencies. You know, if the government cannot protect this material, there is simply no reason why anyone would cooperate with the cia, why anyone who would volunteer to help the fbi when doing so might endanger their life or safety. These are agencies that, you know, have to protect sources
and part of the function of the House Intelligence Committee is to do oversight in a fashion thats consistent with that. And so what devin nunes is doing here is really similar to what those of us who were, you know, upset about, for example, edward snowden, were concerned that he was doing, right . Only this is somebody who has sworn an oath to the constitution of the United States, to participate in oversight in a fashion that protects that material. Betsy, its interesting to me that in this dispute, escalating dispute between devin nunes and appears to have, as ben says, climb down, he got devin nunes back on this. I think thats surprising to a lot of people. Take a listen to what he has to say. This request is wholly appropriate, completely within the scope of the investigation thats been ongoing for a while with respect to fisa. I actually think that this is
something that probably should have been answered a while ago. I have spoken with chairman gowdy, nunes, the Deputy Attorney general on this i expect that we will be able to have an accommodation to honor this request. Surprised by that . You know, its interesting because it indicates there was a lot of Political Support on the right behind devin nunes who, himself, seems to be close to the white house and the fact that hes pushing forward with this, with the help of paul ryan, is telling. If paul ryan has to choose between standing with the chairman of the Intelligence Committee and standing with the Justice Department, he is going to stand with the former. What nunes is looking at is the question of the wiretap of carter page. Its been well established as very much within the legal bounds. Theres been all sorts of Hand Wringing and hair pulling over on capitol hill about this. This is what the Entire Releasethememo Kerfuffle was
about that your show covered. What we know about the government indicates was wrong doing, have not found good evidence there was wrongdoing with the carter page wiretap. We should all be skeptical about these things. Its good to answer questions but nunes is like no, it look like this one was okay. At the same time hes using this as an excuse to go after officials at the Justice Department and take on President Trumps biggest political enemies and thats something thats quite significant. Ben, some think its an escalating ladder of asks until he gets a hard no that gives a cause to go after rosenstein. What do you think of that . Thats clearly part of Whats Going On here, that theres a you know, an effort to push and push and push until the justice
department cannot say yes, cannot accommodate and then use that as a pretext or as a spark for a confrontation. You know, the problem with that is that, you know, there is a Justice Department to run. Right. And there is you know, this isnt the way these interactions are supposed to work. And it does, on a daytoday basis, it sends a message to those people who would cooperate with Law Enforcement that the Justice Department cannot and will not protect you. And, you know, it also sends a message to the men and women of the Justice Department that the Justice Department cannot protect you either. A