Chris Hayes discusses the days top news. Cohen as the guy who made problems go away. And they just barely pulled it off. Trump winning the electoral college. Remarkably, they are not the first felons among the president s circle. The man charged has surrounded himself with criminals. Deputy Campaign Chairman. Campaign Foreign Policy aide, National Security advisor inside the white house. And that may not be the end of it. New york republican Chris Collins was just indicted for Insider Trading and today, in a story we dont have time for tonight, the Second Congress to
and then stuff that directly implicates the president. That is right. The first five counts, that is tax evasion. Just to be clear, i want to hang a lantern on that. He pleaded today to stealing 4 million from the u. S. Government. What would the taxes have been on that 4 million. Yeah. That is what he did. And then you have another count where he says, and he has pled guilty to, where he lied about his liabilities to a bank in order to get a home equity. You came to me for a loan and i am a bank and i am not going to tell tom about that town home i have, all of these liabilities. So pled guilty to that. And count 7 and eight, in count 7 that is specifically to the payment made to karen mcdougal. And the payment made to stormy
daniels. The president directly involved. A lot of statements made about how the cases that have been brought so far are tied to mueller specifically or come out of muellers investigation. This is one of those cases that dont have anything to do with the president. Yeah, and we should note the timing here is, this is going on in late october of 2016. Exactly. Two weeks before the election. The payments that he made, the question was the position taken by people around this defending the president , defending Michael Cohen, well, this is nothing to do with the campaign. Today he saturdays this is all about the campaign. Exactly. Done to influence the campaign. So this is something that is specific to the campaign. Involves american media, the national enquirer. So you have got a lot of different players that have been talked about in president reports before. We have been hearing about this for six months or longer. And everything that everybody says wasnt true, you played the clip of the president saying i didnt know about that payment and today you have the personal attorney saying the president was personally involved. It is a he said he said. And you have other Corroborating Evidence that can back it up. Corroborating evidence that was coordinated with individual one that was named. Quotations of things that people said and described. Including text messages. So yeah, there is a lot there. You are a veteran reporter on Crime And Punishment here and you know a lot of investigators,
and you are very well sourced. If individual one was joe blow, a guy from new york, not the president of the United States. Individual one would be worried right now that they were in the cross hairs of this indictment and federal investigation. I think so. I have to do more digging around. If you direct somebody to make these payments, you might have criminal liability. So something we are going to have to watch in the coming days and weeks. The other thing is were there other people involved in this in the campaign. Tom winter. Thank you very much. I am joined by Retired Federal Court judge nancy gertner. And harry litman. Lets take a step back. Am i wrong that we have a direct allegation. Right. So not just credible, but sworn and corroborated and as you have said, not just criminal activity, not of just some financial misdeed, but trying to influence the election. What exactly would the framers or anyone be talking about when they talk about high crimes and misdemeanors, monkeying with, it is similar with the collusion charges. Trying to influence the election. It is more than credible, it is sworn, it is corroborated and you have to go back to nixon or before to have, as you say, such a seismic event in the history of the president as far as crime and justice go. Nancy, what did you make of today . Well, this was pretty
elaborate. There are a couple of things about it. It is not usual for someone to walk into court and not ever been confronted with the charges and plead guilty all at the same time. The government avoids an indictment and they bring what is called an information and he pleads guilty to the information. The Plea Agreement Notes what the federal guidelines would be which is upwards around five years. Notably, there is no Cooperation Agreement here. No indication that he is going to cooperate. As harry knows, it is clear that he will. No question about it. Not part of this agreement, but we will see another agreement making it clear that he is going to cooperate in exchange for some deal here. Okay. I want to stop there, this has been a big question all day. The news breaks that he is pleading. And there is battling reports. He is going to cooperate, he is
not going to cooperate. And he comes out and there is no Cooperation Agreement. You are saying the nature, the strangeness of the process where things are truncated you dont think there is something possible. What was the incentive for the government to come forward now given the nature of the evidence that according to the Court Proceedings they had against Michael Cohen. Why did they agree for an information and for him to plead guilty. If not that there is an ongoing conversation about the nature of his cooperation, it would be astonishing if that werent so. And why would Michael Cohen go into court and fall on his sword for a five year sentence unless there is a Cooperation Agreement. I see, that made no sense to me today. You walk in, there is 65 years,
if you tally it up in the books, i am asking myself what is Michael Cohen doing. Do you agree with nancy, harry . And five years real time. Here is my take. Thats been the Question Mark all day long and all i can do is speculate. But i think they were having discussions that the sdny became dissatisfied last week. They said forget it, we are going to change you. At that point, the former criminal chief of the Sdny Respected and has a lot of credibility quickly said, okay, okay, well play. And they wanted to try to stitch it up quickly perhaps because he had said so and possibly, possibly, this is a wild card to avoid any inference of bringing a charge after september 1st, the supposed magic day. But they do that but with the understanding and good faith
that you couldnt reach with an attorney that he Couldnt Trust that he is going to be talking to mueller and giving it all up and that will affect his sentence going forward. And there may be a separate agreement or an understanding of people who know each other well enough who trust. Without some understanding of what the Cooperation Facts will be. That is illuminating. Thank you both for that. It makes more sense of what we saw today. Thank you both. I want to bring in democratic member. Joaquin castro. For years Michael Cohen was Donald Trumps fixer, and today he became americas fixer by letting us know in court that we have an unindicted sitting in the white house. I believe they should open an investigation tomorrow morning. Into the possibility of criminal action taken by the president as sworn today by Michael Cohen . It would be absolutely that. The allegations made, Sworn Testimony made by Michael Cohen in court. There was some reporting today that people inside the white house were telling reporters that well, you cant indict a president. What is your response to that . Well, i think the law is unclear about that. I dont think that there is a definitive answer to that. But putting that aside, the congress has an obligation to act. Now, i realize that for good reason, millions of americans have basically lost faith in the republican majority taking any
kind of action against this president. We have to do everything we can to press them to take action. There is a question here now, seems to be a profound one, that if individual one is indicted here, they would be exposed to individual threat. Insulates you from any kind of recriminations from those actions. Do you become immune from prosecution simply because you won the election . You committed a crime that helped you win the election and now become president and now you have won immunity as well as the election. The issue of prosecution is not necessarily off the table. I dont know that with Something Like this, a crime like this, that you should be able to
cheat, win the election because you cheat and therefore have immunity. Have you been in conversation, you know, today there is so many stories that come out of the trump white house. Today is a remarkably significant day. Are you talking with other members of your caucus about what happened today and is there that sense . I have had some conversations and i think you felt this momentum growing throughout the day that started with the question of whether there would be a verdict in the manafort trial and then moving on to Michael Cohen. In a sense, the president has lucked out that you have one chamber of congress, the house of representative that is out of session until september 4th. That allows paul ryan give an answer in part, saying i need more information before i do anything and basically, by the
way, my folks arent here anywhere. The senate is in session so they should react immediately. Congressman thank you very much. Here today is chief executive reporter jonathan deanst, and paul s. Ryan. Which proves to be a key part of this story. I want to start with what the assistant u. S. Attorney said today about the nature of these charges and get your reaction about what happened here. Take a listen. Mr. Cohen pled guilty to two Campaign Finance charges. One for causing an Unlawful Campaign contribution. Both for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election. In addition, what he did was he worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the campaign. Why are they crimes . First of all, they are saying that he is a lawyer and he knew better. He absolutely knew what he was doing. That is part one. Two, his involvement with the Trump Campaign coordinating, coordinated with other members of the campaign, and the question is who are they . Who else are they in touch with . One or two members . That is also in part of the still to come questions. Thats a great question, aside from individual one being
the president , other people who knew about this. Communicated about the payments made to silence these women and it goes to the question of conspiracy. Paul, you work for an organization that is devoted to Campaign Finance and sort of Campaign Finance regulation. And you filed campaign, why did you file the campaign when the news broke. It was obvious that there were serious Campaign Finance laws here. Back in january we filed the complaint relating to allegations. In february, another complaint regarding the complaint to karen mcdougal. And in march, to add Michael Cohen when Additional Information came out about those violations. It was clear to us that illegal contributions had been made and important to note that president
trump had been implicated in not only receiving those, but also additional violations of federal Campaign Finance law. His failure and his committees failure to disclose. It is illegal to lie to the federal government. Those statutes as applying to Campaign Finance reports. President trump and his campaign are potentially in violation of even more statutes that Michael Cohen pled guilty to today. You are saying when you file fse reports, it can be interpreted as lying to the federal government. The Department Of Justice regularly includes when it prosecutes people when violating campaign disclose. Where do you see the tentacles of this case going next . I think it goes down to d. C. And mr. Muellers report. What led up to today is he was not prepared to take a plea. And then the federal government said we are moving forward. We are going to charge him this week. And some of these counts carried 30 years plus. And then you start to add that up and you are talking decades of potential prison time and that brought him and his lawyers to the table this weekend saying okay, we want to take a plea. He want to take a deal. And again, it Doesnt Spell Out Cooperation here. If you read Between The Lines there seems to be already cooperation and admissions and you might expect to see future cooperations moving forward. You are endorsing what the previous guest had said about there is no formal cooperation
agreement but what happens today makes no sense. There is either an understanding or a sealed agreement that we dont know about. That is a possibility. We dont know that. I would probably go with what your previous guest said, there is an understanding among the attorneys who know each other. They have something that is called a five k letter. Lets of prison time is going to depend on cooperation. Faces three to six years under this plea. If he cooperates. Hey, look, look how helpful this guy is. You get zero jail time, one year instead of three to five years. That is a possibility. The question is how much jail time is what mr. Cohen is willing to serve. Take a listen. I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david so that im going to do that right away. When it comes time for the financing listen. What financing . We will have to pay no, no. Is that significant in terms of the legal exposure to the president of the United States in this case . Yeah. I think it definitely tells us, it is evidence that the president knew about these payments early on in the process despite his denial of the fact. And his knowledge is what puts him on the hook for potential violations of law. Now it is up to the Department Of Justice to hold cohen accountability. Thanks to you both. To examine todays guilty verdict, i am joined by Senior Fellow at witkins. And elizabeth de la vega. Lets talk first, i have not gotten to it today, but before we get to it, the significance of the mueller investigation. Well, which federal court . The answer in both cases is that we dont know. Because we dont know, a, how much Paul Manafort or Michael Cohen really knows about the matters that are core to the mueller investigation. We kind of suspect that they may know something important. And we dont know, we kind of know in cohens case that he is
going to end up cooperating, but we dont know what Paul Manafort who has made peculiar strategic judgments about how to proceed in his own case will interpret eight counts of conviction today from a jury and whether that will perhaps light a fire under his chair to, you know, to talk in a serious way to the prosecutors for the first time. So i dont think we dont know and it is reasonable to hypothesize that it could provide a significant incentive and a motive for mr. Manafort to take a deep breath and come to a different judgment. Elizabeth, what do you think . I think regarding manafort, he is a pretty hard core international, and many reasons to not cooperate. He has got problems with ukraine, and problems with people with whom he has been dealing for so many years. I think Paul Manafort is in just about the worst situation of any criminal defendant i have encountered. I cant predict one way or another what he would do. With regard to Michael Cohen, i dont think we need to go as far as speculating. It is almost a certainty that he is going to cooperate and he knows a great deal about trumps activities in every sphere for decades now. And im not just saying that based on Public Knowledge regarding the cooperation, im not just speculating about that. I am saying based on the Plea Agreement itself. It is an elegantly drawn plea
agreement that charges was a fraction of the criminal charges that could have been brought against cohen and just enough to tie him to donald trump but not so much that it reveals more than The Mueller Team or the Southern District could want to reveal at this time and specifically says he wont be charged for anything based on the facts in that Plea Agreement but it says also that it Means Nothing about possible additional charges. So his incentive isnt in the form of a Cooperation Clause within that agreement itself, but rather to avoid future charges. Ben, it struck me today when we ta