His attacks on his own attorney general. He never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions. Never took control of the Justice Department. With new support from certain republican senators. After the election, i think there will be some serious discussions about a new attorney general. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. Today donald trump sounding more like some sort of mafia copo than the president of the United States went on television and railed against the rats. Suspect whos flip to cooperate with law enforcement. He said is the whole practice should perhaps itself be illegal and tonight, we are reminded again just why it is the president feels so strongly about this matter. Breaking news from the Associated Press that xbz of the National Enquirer the supermarket tabloid kept in their offices a safe vault filled with documents on hush money payments it made for and damaging stories it killed about one donald trump. The man who reportedly kept that safe was just granted immunity for cooperating with law enforcement. A source telling nbc news that david pecker, ceo of the Parent Company america media, inc. Was granted immunity for providing ins in the probe of cohen. According to other outlets, the editorinchief for the enquirer dylan howard got a similar deal. They report the two the men fearful the documents might be used against ami removed them from the safe in the weeks before the president s inauguration. Its unclear whether the documents have been destroyed or moved to a location known to fewer people. According to prosecutors, picker and howard both played a role in the Campaign Finance violations to which cohen pleaded guilty this week. Crimes that he, of course, says that the president of the United States directed him to carry out. It was picker and howard who paid off Karen Mcdougal to cover up her allegation of affair with then candidate trump and tipped off cohen when Stormy Daniels was preparing to going public with her allegation just before the election. Allegedly, ami first made an arrangement with the president long before that. According to the charging documents all the way back in august 2015, at the being of the Trump Campaign in coordination with cohen and one or more members of the campaign, picker identified as chairman one, offered to help deal with negative stories about individual relationships with women by among other things assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and publication avoided. Individual 1 is, of course, donald j. Trump. It was almost a full year before the deal we know about with Karen Mcdougal. And on the secret audiotape they refer to picker directly calling him our friend david. I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david you know, so that im going to do that right away. Give it to me. Ive spoken to Alan Weisselberg how to set the whole thing up with funding. Yes. And its all the stuff because you never know where hes going to be. Maybe he gets hit by a truck. Im all over that. That may not be the only audio evidence of the president s role notice scheme. According to the new york times, dylan howard was known to have a recording device in his office. Michael cohen has directly implicated the president in one of the two separate investigations currently under way into separate criminal conspiracies to help get him elected. Cohen joins a growing number of the president s associate who have flipped, rick gates, george papadopoulos, michael flynn, National Security adviser on the campaign trail and inside the white house. Its no wonder the president doesnt think highly of, quote unquote, flippers. This whole thing about flipping they call it, i know all about flipping. For 30, 40 years ive been watching flippers. Everything is wonderful and then they get ten years in jail and flip on whoever the next highest one is or as high as you can go. It almost ought to be outlawed. Its not fair. If somebodys going to spend five years like Michael Cohen or 10 or 15 years in jail because of a taxicab industry because he defrauded some bank, if you can Say Something bad about donald trump and you go down to two or three years, which is the deal he made, in all fairness to him, if most people are going to do that. Ive seen it many times. Ive had many friends involved in this stuff. Its called flipping and almost ought to be illegal. Investigative reporter tom winter joins me now. I want to start with something the president said. Hes not correct. We dont know what they would have recommended beforehand in terms of sentence and what heal recommend now. Theres no tangible reduction in prison time becaused on his plea. Exactly right. Ultimately it could have been 65 years that the judge can sentence him consecutively to all the charges. But chris, that wouldnt happen here. Were not talking about violent charges or somebody who has a history of criminal behavior that hes been charged with. We dont know what it would have been that ultimately Michael Cohen have been sentenced if this went to trial. You were one of the reporters today that got this story that picker has immunity for cooperation. What do we know about that. Whats the context . We have to remember what was going on up to the moment cohen and his attorney wanted to cooperate. This was an investigation that was heading toward indictment. And if Michael Cohen didnt cooperate, they would have to go to trial. So when youre preparing a case and youre getting ready to go to trial, you want to line up witnesses. We saw it in the manafort trial where there were a number of people that had use immunity testimony that may be different than here. Its somebody who can say, i can give you 100 of the story of what happened but 1 might lead to me getting into trouble. I want immunity from that. When you look at this particular instance, if david pecker was able to provide them or fill in the gaps of things they didnt know or explain some of the evidence they seized from Michael Cohen, that would be a situation here where he it wouldnt be flipping because hes not been charged with anything. It just would have been his testimony would be useful to them. Do we know what if picker spent time with investigators in the Southern District of new york talking to them . Presumably he spent time talking with them. What we dont know is whether or not that was in front of a grand jury. It may not in applicable. We dont know how often. Right now some of the details as far as his interaction with federal investigators and prosecutors were missing out on a big part of the story. Part of that is because hes pled guilty. Were not going to hear or see this in court filings. What about Michael Cohen . Very strange. Everyone still is trying to piece together what happened. He comes into federal court, pleads guilty, he doesnt have a sort of existing Cooperation Agreement. Right . Right. We dont know what if hes not talking to mueller, one of his lawyers is out talking to everyone. What do you know about Michael Cohen . A couple things that i think that we can safely say at this point based on conversations ive had. As it relates to Michael Cohen getting charged with further crimes within the Southern District of new york, a specific federal jurisdiction here in new york, i think thats done. Now, if Michael Cohen goes out tonight and commits a federal crime, thats a separate story entirely. I think as far as other districts, say that special counsel mueller wants to bring charges against him in the washington, d. C. District or Eastern District of virginia as we saw with paul manafort, thats something definitely on the table. Theres nothing in the plea agreement that precludes future charges in other jurisdictions. The other thing is, there is no Cooperation Agreement here and people are saying, why would prosecutors do that. Why would people do that . Because the next person in line he could testify against would be the president. And than office right now, the ruling. Not indict him. Theyve got this case they built. If individual one was someone else, thats the next that would happen would be indictment of person 1 because that person managed to win the election, he will not be indicted. Exactly. It could be donald trump, you, me, just because theyre in the office if you hold the title of president , youre not getting indicted. That would have been where his cooperation they would have likely secured that cooperation because they wanted to tie it to his plea agreement sfleept legal analyst joyce vance, former federal prosecutor and glen kirchner. Joyce, let me start with you with the president s feelings about flipping. Its remarkable to hear the president of the United States speak that way. As a former u. S. Attorney, what did you think . The president talks about flipping and he says it would be so easy to get someone to Say Something bad about trump. But thats not what the process involves. The process involves people who have committed crimes who come in and talk to prosecutors and make a decisioning that admittedly in exchange for leniency in their own case theyre going to tell the truth. And prosecutors dont take the word of these criminals at face value. They corroborate it every step of the way bass they know ultimately, they may have to put that person in front of a jury and convince a jury theyre telling it the truth. So far from accepting anyone who comes in at face value who say anything bad about someone else in this case trump, anything that any of these witnesses have to say will be fully tested. It will be taken with a grain of salt at the start. Theyre look all along the way to see if that person is being truthful before anything is made of it for purposes of an indictment or any other usage. Glen, what do you make of what tom winter just said. Sdny built this case thinking they might have to take it to trial and gave immunity to picker and maybe other people. Now its all sitting there because one person pleaded guilty and the other person that would be charged is the president of the United States. Well, first of all, chris, i actually believe that there is a narrow pathway to indicting a sitting president even though the olc, office of Legal Council memo has announced the department of justice will not do that, you know, the individual who actually participated in drafting that memo kneel cattal, the acting solicitor general himself opined that an exception could be applied for to the Deputy Attorney general if bob mueller saw fit to apply for that exception. Then the Deputy Attorney general would have to make a decision. To answer your question, you know, mr. Picker being granted immunity is another very bad sign for the president because immunity is being granted for one of three reasons. Either david pecker having a privilege against selfincrimination can perhaps provide incriminating information about the president or he can provide corroborating information about the story michael corner has provided or my moneys on number three which is both. So again, i think this is another sort of difficult development for the president. We should say that picker ran ami as essentially a sort of adjunct almost to the Trump Campaign. These are some of their covers Politico Magazine put together in 2016 about hillary clinton. You can see what theyre you know are, where their perspective was. They were very, very strongly in the trump camp. Do you see, joyce, what do you see next in this sdny part of the story . The sdny part of the story still has a lot of room left to grow because one of the most interesting aspects of this story now that it involves david pecker is this vault full of information he had. Hard to believe he had a vault full of information that didnt come into play in other areas. And so well see whether this story branches out. Its interesting to remember that the original john edwards stories were tabloid stories. And that grew of course, into that prosecution. There could be a lot more here. Interesting to speculate. We dont know yet. Glen, do you think we will inevitably see any of this information, will it see the light of day given what tom just said about essentially a kind of pause on the basic building of that case around Michael Cohen . You know, it may see the light of day. I know weve all observed that Michael Cohen entered into a nonCooperation Agreement. But you know, chris, its not at all unusual that just as prosecutors will return a series of indictments and the second one is called a superseding indictment, we also not infrequently enter into superseding plea agreements. So Michael Cohens first plea agreement as weve seen is a nonCooperation Agreement but i suspect that you may see another plea agreement with Michael Cohen that broadens his sort of crimes or offenses and that may well be a Cooperation Agreement. All right. Joyce vance and glen, thanks to you both. Lets turn to congressman denny heck, a member of the House Intelligence Committee. Ill start with you on this. Are you confident that Michael Cohen told you the truth when he was before your committee . No, not at all. He was not in his candid phase when he came before us i dont think. I think he is now. It would be instructive and fascinating have him back. I would like to think we would be able to at some point. The president said many things in an interview. He talked about impeachment, the first time ive heard him speculate about that eventuality. Take a listen. If the democrats take back power, do you believe they will try to impeach you . Well, you know, i guess its thing like high crimes. I dont know how you can impeach somebody has done a great job. If i ever got impeached, i think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor. Because without this thinking, you would see you would see numbers that you wouldnt believe in reverse. What do you think of that . Well, im going to take offense on Vice President pences behalf, chris. He would ascend to the presidency and i have more confidence in him evidently than his own president does. Thats well played, congressman. Thank you. There are way more republicans talking about impeachment than there are democrats. Reason is they lack a policy agenda. They want to have there conversation out there because ive yet to hear their plan for lowering Prescription Drug prices or protecting people who have preexisting conditions or increasing our investment in infrastructure or getting americans a real wage increase which nonsalaried employees are not getting. So they would rather talk about impeachment. Most of us believe that we ought to allow director mueller to conclude his work before that even becomes a serious conversation but ill tell you this, chris, i think the walls are closing in on president trump. As of tuesday, august 21st, we can officially mark it as the most corrupt administration in modern history. I think thats a matter of fact. I dont think thats a subjective evaluation or interpretation of the number of criminal indictments and convictions at the felony level. I actually think the president ought to start having a conversation with his god and his family and himself about resigning. Do you think there are other people who think that way . In this country other people think he ought to be having that conversation . There are tens of million whos think that way. Is there anyone on capitol hill who is not a democrat who thinks that privately . So, a year ago april, i sat said on this network i believe there were people going to go to jail and there were a lot of people that looked askance at me and i first made this statement on this network in april of this year that he ought to start having ha conversation. The truth is, if compare where we were then with where we are now, were doing nothing but heading in that direction. So as of today, probably not. As of two, three, four, six months from now, yeah, there will be a lot of people having that conversation. You sit on the House Intelligence Committee chaired by devin nunes. What are you going to getting up to to Counter Program whats happening in the news once youre back in session after labor day . I dont understand the question, chris. You mean as it relates to the continuing Russian Investigation . What i mean is that devin nunes has very sort of expertly guided a kind of counter investigation via your committee often. As a means of essentially Counter Programming the news coming out of the russia investigation. I wonder what you think about, what is going to be on the slate for new that committee when youre back in september . Well, we have continued our investigation where we have been able to. You can find an open sources that we have interviewed several people, notably George Papadopouloss