At the white house. Matt . Thank you, and amazing work out of aspen. Thank you. What we know is that Michael Cohen who had a propensity for secretly taping conversations with his adversaries, also taped a conversation with donald trump about whether or not to make a payment to this former playboy model who claimed an affair. And this payment is super important because ultimately she sold her story about her affair with donald trump to the National Inquirer and they never ran the story, it was whats known as a kill and capture operation. The entire organization of the National Inquirer are long time allies of President Trump. By keeping this story out of public view, it made sure that thencandidate trump didnt have to answer questions about an affair in the final weeks and months of the campaign. Its a super important moment. And this tape is now essentially evidence in an investigation into whether Michael Cohen helping arrange those payments actually amounted to an Illegal Campaign contribution. This tape was seized when the fbi raided cohens offices in april. Its another crazy twist in this case. And to paraphrase jim comey, lordy, there are tapes. Well,kristen welker, we know Michael Cohen has not been charged with anything right now, so this is all very preliminary information. But it is going to be a battle over these tapes, whether they represent either lawyer client privilege or something that actually could be introduced, and whether it could be evidence if there were a charge of a Campaign Finance violation. Reporter and andrea, remember that the president had tried to make the case, his legal team, that whatever was seized in Michael Cohens offices and residences, should be protected by Attorney Client privilege. Thats the argument that they had been making. Look, this is an issue and a story line that has gotten under the president s skin, that has roiled the white house for many months now. There is grave concern about what Michael Cohen knows and whether or not hes going to share it with investigators. Remember, theres this bigger issue of whether hes going to flip and actually start cooperating with investigators. You have the president tweeting, saying that he doesnt think that that is going to happen. That is sort of the last time that the president weighed in on whether or not Michael Cohen would flip. So theres no doubt that this is going to be yet another complicating issue for this white house, which is enmeshed in a number of different controversies right now, chief among them of course that big Foreign Policy issue, the helsinki summit with rushs president Vladimir Putin coming under a lot of scrutiny. President trump battled but defiant, and inviting putin for a second summit at the white house in the fall. Weve reached out to two Senior Administration officials to get reaction to this huge story by the New York Times, no reaction yet, andrea, but as soon as we get that well bring it to you immediately. Matt, i know youve talked to the lawyers, youve talked to rudy giuliani, who is of course the president s lawyer. What about Michael Cohens lawyer, lanny davis . The statement we got from lanny davis was, we have nothing to say on this matter. So the story actually puts cohen and his team in a little bit of a box here, right, because if they want to ultimately cooperate with investigators, as they certainly signaled a willingness to do, kind of the fewer pieces of information that come out publicly, the better. Ditto for President Trumps people. But this is a thorny moment in the cohen trump relationship. At one point, remember, Michael Cohen said i would take a bullet for the president. And this has become a very rocky relationship since the fbi investigation burst into public light in april. You know, what we also learned was that at one point, cohens lawyers and trumps lawyers actually sort of, you know, talked informally about, how does this end for cohen . Is the president going to pardon cohen, is that where this goes . The president s lawyers were very kind of cool to the issue, they were noncommittal. They didnt say, yeah, yeah, were definitely going to pardon you, sit tight, but they also didnt say no, and thats left cohen kind of twisting in the wind. Thats why i think you saw he gave that interview to abc, he said i put my family and my country first. Everybody read that as a clear signal to the president and the Justice Department that given the right situation, he would absolutely be willing to talk. Danny cevallos joins us, nbc legal analyst, by phone. Whats important to know about this . Every state has rules about when you can record conversations on the phone. Youre either a oneparty state or a twoparty state. In addition, we lawyers are governed by rules of ethics. In new york, the ethics rules on this are rather hazy. What the rules come down to and when the ethics opinions say is that a lawyer can record a conversation surreptitiously with a client or someone else but they shouldnt make a general practice of doing so. Its interesting that Michael Cohen, if he was ever aware of that ethics guidance, would record maybe once in a while, or whether he did it as a pattern or practice. But either way, when you record, you do so at your own peril, because you never know if your state is a oneparty or twoparty state, and additionally, as a lawyer, whether or not the rules of ethics prohibit recording a phone call. From an evidence standpoint, this is highly interesting, because this is surely part of the evidence that Michael Cohen would have wanted to argue was Attorney Client privilege. Now, thats very ironic, if its a surreptitious recording. From an evidence standpoint it also tends to show its more likely that mr. Trump did know rather than didnt know. And matt apuzzo, in your reporting, is it clear to you whether the client, if he is a client in this case rather than a business associate, whether the client, donald trump, knew he was being recorded . We dont have any indication that he knew, andrea. In fact our understanding of how this went down was, after the materials were seized by the fbi, the judge gave Michael Cohens lawyers the ability to go through and pull out records they said were covered by Attorney Client privilege, and then flag them, and if there was a dispute, the judge would work it out. As part of that review, they found this recording, and then they are the ones who flagged it for the trump team. So they learned about it through that. So we dont have any categorization that trump knew in the moment, thats not reporting we have either way. But given what we know about the provenance of this, we dont have any indication that he knew. Kristen welker, how is the white house handle all these issues . Youve been following it every day. This is a new breaking story. But how defensive do they get, do they shut down, when every element of the Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and these other rather embarrassing stories break, or in this case, the other news out of the white house has been so fraught with problems, maybe its a good distraction. Reporter well, i think you make a really important point, andrea, which is that i think there are few issues that put this white house on such defense as the issues around payments to Karen Mcdougal and Stormy Daniels. These are issues they dont want to talk about for all of the obvious reasons. One of the things that gets under the president s skin, frankly, more than any of the other issues that he deals with. I think that when it comes to controversy, hes no stranger to that. He doesnt back down from that. But when it comes to these very questionable payments that allegedly went to these playboy models, i think the president really gets his back up. So how they will respond moving forward is a big question mark. Take a look at how theyve responded, andrea, over this past week to the controversy thats been swirling around this white house, the fallout after the president s meeting with Vladimir Putin. There have been a series of backtracks, walking back the walkbacks, clearing up various stories. Recently the white house indicating the president was considering the possibility of allowing the russians to question u. S. Citizens in exchange for u. S. Investigators questioning those 12 indicted russians. Sarah sanders yesterday saying the president disagrees with that proposal. But andrea, on monday, the president came out and said it was an incredible offer. So the messaging has really been all over the place this week. How will they respond to this latest controversy . Well have to wait and see. I can tell you that President Trump, leaving later today, hes going to be heading to new jersey, and undoubtedly reporters will be shouting questions at him trying to get his reaction to all of this. And just pointing out, theres a tweet from Michael Avenatti, heres what i said less than two months ago, i demanded the release of what i called the trump tapes then, and im demanding the release of them again, basta. So Michael Avenatti weighing in. This is not of course his case, this is another case involving patricia mcdougal, one of the other instances that is so fraught with some embarrassment. Danny cevallos, as you look at all of this, and the Michael Cohen tapes and the way those raids went down, do you think that he was signaling in his offcamera interview with abc that he was angling for some kind of a pardon, and of course a pardon could only cover a federal crime, potential federal crime, or sending a warning to the white house that he was about to cooperate with the prosecutors in the Southern District of new york . What do you think his game is . For people in situations like Michael Cohen or other individuals like paul manafort, the question of will i or will i not receive a pardon has been a real gamble for any of these folks, because on one level, if President Trump he ever plansn ever plans on pardoning them, these people may cooperate with the federal government and then the cat is out of the bag. On the other hand, if President Trump did pardon these people, politically it would be very damaging for him. Someone like Michael Cohen has no idea and cannot count on the president pardoning him. I have to imagine all the time, while hes not been talking to the president , he has been in communication with the government, at least maybe through his lawyers, and they have a way of making it very clear that things will go very badly for him if he doesnt cooperate. And im sure theyve whispered in his ear that mr. Trump is probably not going to help you out, were the only people who can help you out. And hes been under tremendous pressure, i can imagine, as a result, because hes had to spend a lot of money on attorneys fees, he probably feels if he was going to get a pardon, it should have come by now. I would imagine someone like Michael Cohen starting to feel a little bit of resentment, because hes not getting the pardon. Thats usually when folks decide to cooperate, maybe not initially, but months down the road, when theyve spent all their money on lawyers and their homes have been raided and they dont have access to their laptops or phones anymore, they finally decide enough is enough. Katy tur joins us now in new york. Katy, you know Michael Cohen. Whats his thinking, as best you know . Reporter i talked to somebody who knows Michael Cohen this morning and asked these questions, how does Michael Cohen feel about donald trump, where does he stand with his willingness to cooperate if need be. The blunt reality is that Michael Cohen is very willing to testify against donald trump if it comes to that. He does not feel any loyalty anymore to the president. This is a man, andrea, who had once told me im sorry, repeatedly has told me in the past that he would take a bullet for donald trump. That is not the case any longer. He feels that the president has run him over with a bus, that the loyalty that he feels towards trump was not returned. And now he is very willing to tell what he knows. And he realized, according to the person i spoke with, that what the president s team is going to try to do and is already trying to do, people like rudy giuliani, is discredit Michael Cohen in the press, because they are worried about what Michael Cohen might say to investigators. Listen, it has been five weeks on monday since the fbi raided Michael Cohens home, his office, his Security Deposit box. 36 fbi agents raided all those places. Hes been handing over documentation, hes been cooperating with his lawyer in this process for five weeks. If an indictment is coming, he realizes its probably coming very soon if it at all. Hes obviously a lot of hope on his side that theres nothing theyre going to come up with, but a recording like this could be very significant. It makes you wonder what other recordings are there. Michael cohen is known to have recorded a lot of his conversations in that office. If this is one that he has on donald trump, what other ones does he have on donald trump . What else do the fbi agents and fbi investigators and now the Southern District of new york have in their possession that could be of use, not only in prosecuting cohecohen, but for Robert Mueller in the case that hes building against russian meddling . And katy, mimi rocah is joining us now who was a prosecutor in that Southern District. Where do you think these back channel negotiations or informal conversations are at this stage, mimi . Hi, andrea. So well, theyre back channel for a reason, so its hard to speculating, you know, what theyre doing in terms of the cooperation process. But as many of us have said over the last couple of weeks, as katy just said, its clear Michael Cohen now wants to cooperate. And the ball, im sure, is in his court. I mean, the government is going to im sure has already said to him and his lawyer that the door is open for you to come in and talk. And he can do that before hes charged. I think hes said something in his interview that he wanted to wait until he saw the charges against him, thats his right to do that, but he can also Start Talking to them now. The process of cooperation doesnt happen overnight. Its a process, its exactly that. And it takes some time. You know, i dont think the fact of this recording coming out now, however it got out, it going to change that process, as weve been saying. Thats really something that happens in a confidential way, between the wouldbe cooperator and the government. But it obviously, you know, highlights that Michael Cohen probably does have, as weve all been speculating, this shows us he does have information that would be of interest to the government. That would be the biggest hurdle for cooperators, people want to cooperate all the time but they dont have information thats useful. Now we know based on this, as weve all speculated, but now we know, he does have information that will be useful to the government. Im sure this is just the tip of the iceberg. Mimi rocah, thanks so much. Matt apuzzo, danny cevallos, kristen welker, thank you so much for breaking in on all of this breaking news. Well be right back with more from the Aspen Security Forum on our groundbreaking interview with dan coats and the fallout from that. Stay tuned. Know what . No, what . I just switched to geico. And got more. More . Got a company i can trust. Thats a heck of a lot more. Over 75 years of great savings and service. You cant argue with more. Why would ya . Geico expect great savings and a whole lot more. Ive been making blades here at gillette for 20 years. Theres a lot of innovation that goes into making americas 1 shave. 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Meanwhile here in aspen, new reaction to the headlines from the dan coats interview. The director of National I