Fully with the special counsels office, and the other big Breaking News this hour is that President Trump is announcing that he is not in fact going be meeting with Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the g20 sideline and that is hours after the kremlin announcing that the meeting would in fact be happen i ing, and again, we will continue to closely follow the Breaking News stories. Andrea mitchell is picking up the News Coverage right now. And right now now on Andrea Mitchell reports Breaking News on all fronts. Michael cohen pleading guilty to lying to congress when he denied to try to do a trump tower deal in russia in the campaign. And more Breaking News from Air Force One just now. En route to ar jgentina, the president canceling the Saturday Summit with Vladimir Putin because of the new aggression against ukraine. And first, the president s Reak Sh Reaction today slamming Michael Cohen before leaving the white house. He was given a fairly long jail sentence, and he is a weak
person. And being weak unlike the other people that you watch, and he is a weak person and what he is trying to do is to get a reduced sentence. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence committee reacting to cohen admitting that he lied to them. This is one more example of the president s closest allies lying a about their ties to russia and russians. I am i have not seen the specific indictment, but this is why people should not lie when they are in front of a congressional investigation. Im and continuing the latest coverage of the legal blow to the president s Russian Investigation. Michael cohen is now cooperating with the special Counsel Robert Mueller and naming the president in court today after pleading guilty to a single count of lying to congress in the fall of 2017,ed a h mitting that he provided false statements to theSenate Intelligence committee about the president s negotiations to build a trump tower in moscow, and cohen saying that his testimony that talks about that project had ended before the Iowa Caucuses were not true. And that talks about possible travel to russia on the project including with one of Vladimir Putins closest aides continued until june of 2016. Todays guilty plea is the first by cohen brought with by Robert Mueller, and the previous investigations of bank fraud and Campaign Violations are going to be closely working with the mueller probe. We want to bring you the highlights of the president s comments immediately after the guilty plea as the president was leaving for argentina. He put out a statement talking about a project which is essentially more of less of an option that we were looking at in moscow, and everybody knew about it, and we were writing about it in newspapers and well known project, and it is during
the early part of 16 and i guess before that. And it lasted a short period of time, and i did not do the project, and i decided not to do the project. He was convicted of various things unrelated to us. He was give anne fairly long jail sentence, and he is a weak person, and by being weak, unlike other people that you watch, he sis a weak person, an what he is trying to do is to get a reduced sentence and he is lying about a project that everybody knew about it. We were open about it, and we were thinking about it, and in a form of an option or whatever you call it, and decided ultimately not to do it. It would have been nothing wrong if i did do it. I run for president , and that does not mean that i am not allowed to do business, because i was doing a lot of things when i was running. After i won, obviously, i dont do business. From january 20th, and what he is trying to do is to end, and it is very simple, he has
himself a big prison sentence, and he is trying to get a reduced sentence by making up a sto story. And now, heres the thing, even if he was right, it does not matter, because i was allowed to do whatever i wanted to do during the campaign. Joining me now is nbc justice correspondent Pete Williams and nbc investigations reporter tom whitaker, and nbc intelligence and National Security reporter Ken Delainian and nbc national sprt pete alex s kocorrespond williams, and Kristen Welker at the white house, and we will get to the summit and the other news, but first to the legal issues with Michael Cohen. And pete, extraordinarily consequential day with this plea from Michael Cohen. Yes, and a couple of points before we go into the specifics
of it. One, the president is right that he could do whatever he wanted to do as a Business Matter when he was a candidate and private citizen, and the situation is whether the public statements conform to what he was doing, and secondly he is right that Michael Cohen will get a reduced sentence, because in court, they say that the maximum penalty of lying to the congress is five years, the government would recommend and not object to zero the six months. So, specifically, what happened here is that Michael Cohen admitted in court that he lied about three things that he told Congress Last year about the plans to build a trump tower project in moscow, and projectb that never went anywhere. He said that he lied that the work ended by saying that the work ended in january 2016 well before the Iowa Caucuses knowing that it went into midjune. He lied when he said that he never worked on travel to russia
to help get the project going when he in fact agreed to go there and whether or not mr. Trump should come after he became the nominee at the republican conviction and he lied when he said that he could not recall any contact with the russian officials about the project when he in fact talked to the russian officials about getting help for the land and the financing. Now, after he appeared in cohen, you heard the president s statements about it, but todays guilty plea clearly demonstrates that Michael Cohen continues to cooperate with Robert Muellers prosecutors and what it shows is that muellers prosecutors have now documented a Business Connection between the Trump Organization, and russian top officials including the potential meetings of Vladimir Putin, and now the question is were the same conduits used in any way to facilitate russian meddling in the election. That is a good question, and nothing in todays guilty plea or the Court Documents saying anything about the second point, but it is simply talking about the potential connections. And the final thing that i will say is that Michael Cohen said
today that he lied to congress both in an august 2017 letter to the congress and then in his testimony in october, quote, to minimize links between the moscow project and individual one which we know is donald trump. And to pick up on that, Chuck Rosenberg, why is this important . Why is what they have put in this criminal information which we have right here so important, the details that they have put in here. It is fascinating and important, but pete is right. Keep in mind that prosecutors dont need to charge cohen with every single crime that he completed, because he plead g l guilty to eight in the Southern District court and now a ninth, and why not every single crime . Because all of the the conduct comes in at sentencing, and why are they doing this and laying out in detail in this criminal information the conductor mis n
misconduct . It is because they want him under oath on this topic for subsequent reasons. Maybe another trial or defendants like it when they have plead guilty to the operative facts that they are testifying about and that is what is going on here. And be very, very specific about this. They had other indictments again against him and he has plead guilty and a cooperating witness, and what is significant about this is that it is the first time that he is pleading guilty and they have him pleading giuilty to Trump Organization moscow dealings, and dealings that is right. And dealings specify ied the information and other things written in here and it is sparsely written and they put in that he has testified false ly about not having anyp c any conversations about the trump family and they are setting up aFuture Indictment about someone else, and this is a small universe of people, and trump Family Members who could have been negotiating on the part of the trump tower. Yes, i think that you are right. He would have shared this with the prosecutors and he did not need to plead guilty to this and it would not have affected to the ultimate sentence so what they are doing is to get him under oath on the record to admit his culpability to a certain set of facts of trump Family Members, and what they will be charged with, we dont know, and as Pete Williams points out, it does not say here, and this is sparsely wr written but more stuff is coming, and this Criminal Investigation and this guilty plea signal that fact. I want to go the kristen with welker for a moment at the white house, because what the president said literally as pete pointed out is accurate. There is nothing illegal about the president having these talks
even though he misled the American People, and the voteers in that period, but he was very interesting in what he said. And his reaction to not meet with Vladimir Putin, and they are finally pushing back on ukraine, but they had this information two or three days ago to the Washington Post that he would have a briefing tonight before yesterday at 6 00 that night about what happened on ukraine. You could argue ma the meeting with Vladimir Putin after the optics of Everything Else is bad enough, but after this guilty plea focused on the aides which is peskoff in this information is another reason not to have the summit. Andrea, you are right,
because there was so much pressure on the president to have a very different summit than the one he had in helsinki when he seem ed to the take putins word over his community he got back to the u. S. He corrected that. He said that based on the fact that the ships and the sailors have not been returned to ukraine from rush sharsia, it i for all parties to cancel my meeting with russias president Vladimir Putin, but andrea, to your point, you cannot ess cape the broader backdrop, and the fact that there are development s in the Russian Investigation and almost every day of this week, and we are seeing this president increasingly seem embattled and lash out at the special counsel, and lash out at Michael Cohen and he called him weak in na q a with the reports on the south lawn before he departed. This is what he tweeted about the special counsel this morning, andrea, calling it an illegal joseph mccarthystyle witch hunt, and he said, did you
ever see an investigation in search of a crime. His own attorney Rudy Giuliani put out a statement of these cohen developments saying that there is a Similar Development before the president left for helsinki, and what you are witnessing, andrea, is the president and the legal team escalating the attacks against mueller as if they are bracing for more shoes to the drop here, and you have the issue of Paul Manafort here, and the plea deal with the special counsel collapse amid the charges that he is lying to investigators and denies that the president again telling me on the south lawn when i asked him that a pardon for manafort is not off of the table, andrea. He said that the pardon is not off of the table and he said about Michael Cohen that he is weak and a liar. Weak unlike other people. That was a clear signal of manafort. And now, tom winter is back in
at the nbc head kwaquarters at rock. Talk about Michael Cohen in the courtroom and what you witnessed today, because you have been following this so closely. Well, andrea, we had a 30minutes heads up from the court saying a proceeding of interest which is a note that is sent to people who are reporting on the court, and we got Usa Versus John Doe and i got a message i need to get there, and we noticed that people from the special counsels office and pr prosecutors and the people of the Southern District of new york were in attendance and at that point we realized that it is something muellerrelated and several minutes before 9 00 a. M. , Michael Cohen came in and wearing the navy suit and a white shirt, and andrea, it is different from the prior cohen proceedings that we have seen. The first with one that we saw when there was a battle over the Search Warrant, it was kind of
a, kind of a rock star atmosphere, and the Stormy Daniels was there, and excuse me, and there was an inordinate amount of cameras, and of course in the springtime. His second time that we saw him in court, it was the guilty plea that we entered in august that you talked about earlier in the show, and for that proceed iinge seemed to be overwhelmed with the enormity of the proceedings against him and the fact that he was going to be be a convicted felon from that moment there on, and today, much more confident and subdued, and he just clearly stated what he wanted to do, and interestingly, he wanted to stand up for his allocution where he laid out exactly what it is, and what it was that he lied about, but the judge asked him to sit down, because the acoustics were poor and it would be better to sit at the microphone. At that point, one of the prosecutors turn around to smile at michael to say they are at a point where are there is familiarity between the two
legal teams. He was steadfast and straight forward and very clear in the information that he was going to be providing today, and i think that at this point, it is interesting to see where this goes, and not only with the Robert Muellers investigation, but to see if it is going anywhere in new york. We know from the Court Filings, andrea, seven proffertype arrangements or the offerings made at various points over the past several month, and so as we have been reporting here sh, th is not a one and done thing where cohen met with the mueller team or the prosecutors here on new york on one single occasion, and this is ongoing for several months, and to chucks and petes point that it indicates a portion of the information that he is providing to them. And now, Ken Delainian, to add to this, tom, Ken Delainian, you taken a deep dive into the
moscow deal, and this is something disputed in the d dossier, and denials that he had been involved in the talks, but the moscow deal, it wasnt just something that never happened, because it actually is something that we now know is negotiated and when the president said that he never had investments, that is a careful statement, and he said it in january 11th, 2017, and the fact is that he does the licensing deal, and until it becomes a deal, the banks are putting up the money, and it is highly leveraged and he is paid as a Licensee Millions of dollars from the deals. So talk about what literally was being negotiated with people as high up as dmitri peskov, the righthanded person to Vladimir Putin. You explained it well, and what the president said contrary to today, this was not known at the time and it was hidden from the American Public the fact that the negotiations were ongoing and the fact that while he was campaigning for president , and bizarrely h sh l
showering praise on Vladimir Putins government, he was secretly talking to them. And so we know that Michael Cohen was dealing with a guy who is a convicted felon with ties to russian Organized Crime, and emails emerged where sader said that our boy can become the president of the usa, and i can engineer, and i will get all of putins team to buy in on this and we know that the russian government respond odd to those, and they were in negotiations and going on much longer than cohen and others s