Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. So im going to be a little contrary here, chris, say i see where the president is coming from when he says this is a bit old news, my colleague, bob costa and i wrote in november when don mcgahn went before bob muellers interview team, sat down with verdicts two days straight so people have known for a long time that don mcgahn was cooperating with the investigation, that everyone who was in the white house was encouraged to voluntarily be engaged in these interviews. Now what we do know now is that after the week stories, by the times don mcgahns attorney has alerted and assured trumps own legal team that don mcgahn provided no information that was incriminating to the president , did not incriminate him. In fact, don mcgahns lawyer was putting tear mind to ease, sent them information saying my guy does not incriminate your guy. Are you serving the office of the presidency and you are serving the american public. Youve got to balance those two interestsle. Now, Unmost Under Most president , its you have to be challenging, theyre dealing with the president who serves neither necessarily the public or the office of the presidency. Hes trying to steve the interests of donald j. Trump personally and seems to be expecting his staff to do that as well. What i make of the mcgahn interview, mcgahn is recognizing the last time his staff send him personally was Richard Nixon and john dean served four months in prison. Mcgahn is what is the course for me that avoids that as the staff as well. Am i right in reporting the incriminal nations from it. It seems someone is trying to lay some blame on dowd and cobb. Did that. One was they believed very strongly in a 1990 case a ruling, which a clinton era case, which basically said you cant force the president to sit down for an interview, if you have all information you need from other sources. Voilla, all the staffers, all those records. Well, now its looking pretty smart to have done what they did in the sense that, trump doesnt want to sit down or at least trumps lawyers at this moment dont want him to sit down for an interview, are petrified he will perjure himself by mistake or intentionally the strategy which was heavily criticized has this one nice wrinkle to it. This one nice layer. Now, that doesnt change the fact that don mcgahn hated this strategy from day one. He thought it was dangerous for exactly the reason i has pointed out this rule has two special duties. You are representing the office of the president and are you representing the president. If you are sitting in all these private meetings and some investigator gets to quiz you about everything the president said to you, thats, you know, potentially explosive. He didnt want that to happen. Quickly, let me ask you this, the word rat, it really is striking to hear the president of the United States use the word rat and john dean, the whistleblower of watergate. Think about the spirited effect it has on prosecutors around the country desperately trying to enforce the laws to protect us as American Citizens from people doing harm, looking to get witnesses to work with them to prevent people literally from being murdered. Heres the president backing up the arguments of mob bosses getting people out to testify. Heres why i think the president is going out with the all out sort of attacking not just don member gahn. Hes weak and nervous. He has thought from the beginning everybody around him was there to protect him. He wanted loyalty fro james
comey, he couldnt believe Jeff Sessions would recuse himself. Now he is lashing out to try to prevent the one person that can bring him down which is this generations john dean. Thank you. For more on don mcgahns rules. And what he may so told. I am joined by a former u. S. Attorney and sherry you know mcgahn. You moved in political structuries he was a fixture. I dont know him. My personal contact with him or my lawyers was when he was trying to get many tow sign an nda too shut me up and silence me about a soup you are pac, i remember going back during the primary. But look, i think that hes between a rock and a hard place. He wants to come off like the good guy. He probably did incriminate the president maybe without knowing he did. So he has been with trump, he was the count sell for the
campaign. So its not just white house chief count sell. He goes way, way back, chris. He knows from the beginning. He could be there 30 hours, theyre trying to check raw data. Thats what the february fib does. They check raw data, he could be providing information that could, in fact, Incriminate Trump but mcgan might not even know it. Look. Hes a good lawyer. Hes not a genius or a wizard. Its not a realistic expectation to sit there 30 hours and give a lot of raw data. At some point he will be giving them something they need for this case or something else. Again he goes back on the company where they were very, very sloppy, nobody thought theyd win the primary. So they didnt care. Harry, my amateur is like 30 hours sounds like a lot. What do you make of that . 30 hours is a lot. And he would have focused on the fact. Remember, mcgahn says, calls trump king kong, because of his volcanic outbursts. Mcgahn is the guy who trump says, go to sessions and tell him to recuse before he knows. Mcgahn is the guy who argues against the comey firing. And i just dont see how they can blindly say He Couldnt Have Given Him anything. Its not the good point that carol makes they dont know what mueller already knows, but the whom core point of evidence that remains here for mueller is trumps state of mind. Right. And mcgahn is shoulder to shoulder with trump daily. He sees him screaming. He sees these tirades. He sees him talk about comey, talk about sessions. It seems implausible the info he provide, just the factual enno could be ill num lateing what was if trumps mind when he did
these key personnel actions. Sherry, mcgahn strikes me as something that occupancy an interesting diagram. She a kinds of movement gop lawyer. He was close to mcdidntal a w bush appointee, squirreling Brett Kavanaugh around as they prepare for the hearings. Cavanaugh a Movement Conservative lawyer in the senate judiciary. Hes in the trump orbit. He strikes me as a kind of hes represented a much broader set of people sort of squeezed between those two things. I dont know if they can be squeezed anymore. I guess what you are talking about is establishment republicans. So many came on board late. They wanted to keep their lobbying gig, keep things as they were going some they pretended trump was like any other republican president. Mcgahn was in there early. His uncle worked with him regard to the casino. So there was some Family Connection in trump world beyond
mcgahn being a junior republican Establishment Movement guy. Maybe he has a foot in both camps. I think he might be trying to have it both ways right now. Thats how he strikes me. Early on, chris, i think he knew he better make a phone call to mueller real quickly and get on the right side of this, but again, hes still trying to have it both ways, that itself what i finds fascinate to go see him straddle the two worlds. There is this lean in the New York Times that mcgahn and his lawyer who started to grow suspicious, because theyre being encouraged to cooperate. So they thought that maybe they were going to be, mcgahn was going to be set up as a fall guy that was part of what prompted him to agree to so much of the interviews. What do you think of that . First, think of that in the context of the question you just asked me. If hes thinking he will be made the fall guy. He must think there is possible Criminal Acttist that has occurred that he needs to give his version of. Again, its hard to say that it would have been completely exculpatory. But then, you know, second, just this whole kind of dance between representing the office of the president and donald j. Trump. By the way, i think this representation by the president that he just let him go forward is wrong. He probably won wouldnt have had a choice under Executive Privilege or Attorney Client privilege. But i think the basic point, you know, he has been in washington. He has seen history. Right. Im not going to be the rat. Remember john deans statement when he told the press, you know, if theyre fitting me for this outfit. They got the wrong guy. Unlike some of these other people, mcgahn has a future a stand income town will go to lunches and be in future Federalist Society meetings, has done the heroic work with the supreme court. He doesnt want to go down with the ship. Ultimately, they ask is any guy worth going to prison for . He is saying no, Trump Isnt Worth it. Coming up, the former fixer Michael Cohen could face charges, over 20 million in bank and tax fraud. That story in two minutes. York, u. S. Attorneys Office Investigating cohen and Andrea Bernstein cohost of trump, inc. Cohen gets raided. There is all this discussion about what is he being raided for . So then the times has a story saying its possible bank fraud and it has to do possibly with a Taxi Medallion Business . Right. This is something Michael Cohen has been dock for quite some time because in new york, these Taxi Medallions Pre Irish were very valuable. Gave you the right to pick up fares in new york city. That i could be worth more than a million dollars. Michael conheld a lot of them. You could kind of people and hoard and you make money off them . Exactly, like Real Staechlt can you trade and borrow money off of. Thats what he was doing. And his fornl former partner, two former part first have been convicted. One recently in, no Jane Friedland known as the taxi king for allegedly or actually not allegedly, is sending 60 million offshore as a part of a
plea deal he made, he agreed to cooperate potentially against Michael Cohen. So there is the whole Gene Friedland source of information and these million documents that they seized, which they said from the getgo. These were about Michael Cohens interest, the Special Master on friday finished her review. She found some 7,000 out of more than a million documents privilege. But that the an awful lot of documents the Southern District still has to sift through and use in a case potentially against Michael Cohen. We should be clear in terms of the Southern District. In fact, theyre the ones pursuing this nothing with the tax me medallion has anything to do with donald trump. Its a great way to flip one guy against another guy. We have done nit mob cases. You never know, you pull on that thread. You could start with a relatively obscure taxicab lawyer like Gene Friedland, roll it into michaelco zbln think about the Social Network if you were on the map, you start with the taxi king of new york, who the Taxi Medallion Business as you noted its a legitimate business. It tends to attract a fair amount of shadiness its fair to say. Your checker move to the president of the United States. The two checker moves from the short of shady offices in gene queens and brooklyn, the outer boroughs, he was dealing with people losing their licenses being indicted to being with the president of the United States. I think its worth keeping in mind like with Paul Manafort he was allegedly committing these crimes while working for donald trump. I think thats what makes him so interesting. He was a most intimate adviser, setting up deals aall over the soviet union. Thats what he is doing. So he is not some sort of random person. He is somebody right in there in the trump organization, while he may have been doing things. We havent heard yet, whether the Southern District is going to charge him. We should say, of course, cohen says, clear my family and country, not President Trump, its his first loyalty. What do you think about the time line as floated in the times article which is possibly before labor day. This is a Moment Of Truth for Michael Cohen. He has to get serious and quick. One he is in the process of cooperating. There is some evidence of that, he lawyer went from being out there to all of a sudden very silent. I noted that as well. If i was a prosecutor and lanny davis came in i would say knock it off, silence, there is the other indicators the loyalty, he could be cooperating. If hes fought cooperating, what
todays story tells him you need to get real and quick. You may just get charged. If you had him skating through as a witness, forget it. Its america, presumption of innocence. A million document given the Business Record of the people he has left in his wake. I would be a little stressed out if i were him. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Coming up, President Trump pitching himself as the Law And Order president while telling the world he thinks his former Campaign Chair is getting a raw deal on 18 criminal charges. Thats next. We must maintain Law And Order at the highest level or we will cease to have a country. I am the Law And Order candidate. [ cheers ] donald trump, of course, loves to assert he stands for Law And Order. He was at it again today delivering a speech to celebrate federal immigration officials and making this astonishing claim. We have a little opposition called the democrats. I guess they just dont mind crime. I think we will have much more of a red wave than you will see as a phony blue wave. Blue wave means crime. It means open borders. Not good. So thats a message, blue wave means crime, trump means Law And Order. Its a curious argument from the man who just yesterday was sounding much more like a mob boss, calling john dean a rat because he cooperated with Law Enforcement in the investigation with Richard Nixon and with a jury actively delivering the fate of Paul Manafort, who is
accused of serious crimes, trump on friday used the bully pulpit to suggest his Campaign Chair should be set free regardless of the evidence. I think the Whole Manafort Trial is very sad when you look at whats going on. I think its a sad day for our country. He worked for me for a very short period of time. You know what, he happens to be a very good person and i think its very sad what theyve done to Paul Manafort. And now to brake down Donald Trumps view, msnbc credibilitior. And let me start with you, in the span of two day, you got a president saying, to the jury, basically, which is fought sequestered, you should probably lay off my Campaign Manager who is a good guy, calling john dean a rat. Like i dont know people that refer to people as a rat. I honestly have not heard it used as a part of a schtick,
ironically calling someone a rat. Then i am a Law And Order president. What do people like yourself think of that who work in the fbi. Certain laws and certain orders, not all of them. Public corruption, white collar, these sorts of things are not where he tends to focus. A Misdemeanor Entry into the country, we take your child away. A blue wave by the way, someone might tell him its synonymous with loads of cops showing up at your door. Thats another blue wave. He apparently has not heard that one. Maybe hell see it at some point or somebody on his team. I think the. Is the in terms of Law And Order, he has bragged about deregulation, hes taken thing ace way and enforced certain things he likes. He made assertion about crime, crime has been going down dramatically for the past two decades, anything involving next crime, homicides, there is no real proof to that pudding. What he tends to do is buddy himself up to military and Law Enforcement, especially at the lower ranks or local level. This is very classic of other schemes where you see people trying to actually skirt the law. Right. I think when we watch this, its interesting to watch, you will always discred id people at the federal level hes actually in charge of. Then he preys on people at the local level, which i finds kind of odd, if hes in charge of the fib february, hes in charge of the department of justice, he can fix it. He is the president. Also, Hoo Tess Person charged when acting the laws. Today he tells reuters, ive stayed away from mueller. This sounds so mobster. I stayed away, ki go in there if i. To. I can run it if i wanted to. Can he . Is that true . Its not true in the sense that constitutional norms that have governed our country