Shock waves through the president s already shell shocked west wing. The New York Times reports, quote, the agreement adds another unusual aspect to a case never seen before in the alans of president ial Campaign Finance history. It means that a company that operates as a News Organization is cooperating with federal authorities on an investigation that involves its work with the campaign. Todays development was likely put in motion by tuesdays guilty pleas from Michael Cohen, the president s former fixer who existed at the intersection of hush money and tabloid brush fires. The times explains the role of david peckers Media Company in what could turnout to be an investigation into something that looks a lot more like a conspiracy. Quote, the Court Documents filed tuesday in connection with mr. Cohens guilty plea provided a far more detailed account than previously known about the payments made to suppress womens stories about mr. Trump that could have threatened his election prospects. For his part, trump got on the
ends, what you just said. Chuck, i want to ask you to drill down on these violations, these crimes that cohen pleaded guilty to, the fact that he testified in court on tuesday during that guilty plea that they were payments directed by donald trump, and now this news today that the head of the national enquirer, the owner of it, has accepted immunity to agree to help with the prosecution. Tell me what that means. What have they discovered and what are they still looking for . Let me take the last part first, nicolle, because i think theres a really important unanswered question about david pecker and the immunity that he received. So, did he receive it a while ago, a few weeks ago, a month ago in order to help prosecutors make the case against Michael Cohen . Or did he receive it recently, even as recently as when cohen pled to help make a case against others in corroboration of
cohen . And so not knowing the answer to that, its entirely possible that it was the former that they used mr. Pecker to sure up the case against mr. Cohen. To thanks point, and i agree with you, frank put it chillingly but also accurately. Prosecutors rely all the time on the information we receive from cooperateers. I dont call them flippers. I think thats a ridiculous word. I find it curious that the president knows so many. People who work in Law Enforcement tend to know folks who cooperate, but for the president to say hes been surrounded by that for 30 or 40 years, i think underscores franks point that it sounds a bit like a mob family. But this is in many cases the Building Blocks of criminal cases brought by the fbi and Justice Department. So this is a sad day when the president is basically saying that cooperation with federal prosecutors in pursuit of the
The latest Political Developments of the day and interviews with top newsmakers are featured. Brought up the news. Trump and pecker have been friends for years. According to the trump friend, pecker regularly flew on trumps plane to florida. Pecker should become ceo of time magazine. Hed make it exciting and win awards. Just how isolated is this president and what are the public facing signs of that, jill . This is arguably the most isolated that this president has been. He is somebody who really puts a premium on loyalty. He expects it from the people who are around him. And again and again hes had people who are close to him now turning on him. Take Michael Cohen as the prime example. This is a guy who said he would take a bullet for trump. He would do anything to protect his family, operated on his own trying to crush stories trying to up had the president. He made this dramatic admission in court, accusing the president of ordering him to make these Hush Money Payments to influence the election. You have everyone from him to pecker and now a longtime friend of the president who kind much played this key strategic role apparently including during
the campaign, to even omarosa who is somebody who had known the president for more than a decade and starred in his reality show. The president talked about how he made her a star. People around the president , whether it is for their own legal survival or whether its just omarosas case, apparently to make a buck, are willing to sell out this president. And thats made him furious. You know, you can see just from watching this white house, from even watching cable television, how few people have come out to defend him. Theres been frustration among people who are close to the president who are close to the white house, that theres been very little kword nagcoordinati. Theres been little effort to get them on the same page when it comes to talking points to help guide them through what the president would like them to say. And you just see from Sarah Sanders statements on the podium yesterday, very little, coordinated defense to help the president. Frank figliuzzi, one of the reasons i understand to be the cause for that is that there is no defense. The president didnt tell his
own lawyers what the facts were in the cohen case. They didnt understand his legal exposure in the cohen raid and in all the days since they havent been brought up to speed. So why would anybody defend this president . And do you find it surprising you know a little bit about this relationship between mr. Pecker and the president. Why would immunity be given to someone like mr. Pecker . What does he know about donald trump . Well, you dont just handout immunity, as chuck knows. Its something thats done when two things are present. One is you believe someone may be exposed criminally, and number two, you believe someone has value in adopting. And so what cooperation could there be here . This relationship with the president dates back easily approximately 20 years, and so pecker has ridden on trumps private jets. They hang out with the same women. He also, by the way, goes way
machine. There is fox news often promoted the stories when they appeared in the national enquirer. A Classic Planting of stories and campaign benefits from said stories. Can you talk about that operation and how its being investigated now as a Campaign Finance violation . Look, we talked on this show a few months ago, nicolle, about how Stormy Daniels and a. M. I. Media could be greater exposure for president than the mueller and russia angle. And this is why. It is an important cog in the president s business and personal machinery of business. How he does business and gets around the world. He has affairs. He has payoffs and cover ups. He wants to call in a political hit on somebody, he plants a story in a tabloid. This is how he did business story in the campaign for years and years he did business this way. We now look at the enquirer as if you want to see who is up and who is down in the trump world, you can read it. Now the prosecutors have that
entire empire by the short hairs. They can see it and have a cooperating witness who will tell them all they want to know about it. We are going deep inside trump world here, and deep inside his vulnerabilities just entirely apart from russia. This is how he did things for years and years, and now the cover is off. Chuck rosenberg, it seems like two things are happening in the same moment. That what this week has exposed is Donald Trumps extreme anxiety and paranoia over the Special Counsel and investigation as well as Donald Trumps really sort of rotted under belly of his personal and professional life before he became president. The president has not coincidentally really upped the ante on his attacks on the mueller probe. Where do you see the intersection of these two investigations, and do you think it gives bob mueller a little breathing room, that all the action in this week seems to be in the Southern District of new york . It probably does give him a
little bit of breathing room, small pea politically speaking. Legal and factually, the mueller Team Investigators and prosecutors keep chugging along as they should. Theyre probably paying less attention to these political dynamics than we are. Whats interesting to me is that the president does seem cornered and he is lashing out, including at his Attorney General who for the first time seems to be pushing back, which i think is an encouraging sign. Again, i would caution people, though, to be a little bit careful with the analysis of the immunity given to mr. Pecker. It could have been just for the limited purpose of corroborating the case against Michael Cohen. Of course, i mean, there are probably other folks he knows about including others in the trump orbit, you know, donald trump, jr. , jared kushner, roger stone, and he might be helpful there. But at least immediately, his
knowledge and his information may have been used only to sure up the case against cohen. I guess the reason we draw the president into it, chuck, is that in the most dramatic moments when he red counts 7 and 8, implicated the president as the person who directed those payments, i dont mean to overstate the president s involvement, but the president is on tape as well talking to Michael Cohen about what they would do if pecker got hit by a bus. They needed a plan because if he got hit by a bus, they had to bring all of that work inhouse, was the nature of the conversation, partial conversation we heard on tape. So, youre not saying that the president isnt exposed here. Youre just saying that the Immunity Deal with mr. Pecker may have been narrowly focused on what cohen was charged with this week . Thats right, nicolle. I dont think youre overstating it. I mean clearly there is a possibility, very real possibility that mr. Pecker is being used both to help sure up the case against mr. Cohen resolved by his guilty plea and
ongoing kalss against the president , youre absolutely right. Also the mueller team can use anything mr. Pecker says if they decide one day only to write a report to the Deputy Attorney general that could be used in an impeachment proceeding so there could be lots and lots of stuff that comes from mr. Pecker thats valuable to prosecutors down the road. I just dont i would just like to know the timing of the immunity that he received so i could help assess who it was really for the limited purpose of mr. Cohen or something broader than that. Could be both. And, jill, at the heart of this news is the fact that cohen and pecker both dealt with the things that most embarrass the president. Hes known to be a little frugal, but he threw money at people who could make the most embarrassing episodes of his life go away and it may have been to help his campaign. It certainly seems to be the sense this week. May have been to keep him out of trouble with melania. That is a known unknown. I want to read you a tweet from the New York Times reporter plag i haberman who reported
things including things to do with, for instance, the Trump Tower Meeting with that russian lawyer. But i also want to say that sources in the white house are also pushing back on that narrative. Something you would expect. But here theyre saying that you have got a white house that at this point is so numb, that is so used to the incoming every single day, that they have dealt with now for a year and a half, that there is not the kind of, you know, alarm that they used to feel early on in the administration when that Flynn Michael flynn news was breaking and things like that. Theyre just sort of used to now how this president operates. Theyre just kind of wait and see how hes going to react and figure out how to contain the damage. Its also a white house where the person they work for tells his supporters not to believe what they see or they hear. So its hard to accept any push back at all. Im sure your reporting is spot on, jill. But its hard to believe anything they say. I want to bring you in, nick, on news that broke 12 minutes before we came on air. Trump sought advice on Pardoning Manafort but they counseled against it. This is according to his lawyer rudy giuliani. Ill read you the first couple lines here. President trump sought his lawyers advice on the possibility of Pardoning Manafort. The subject of the pardon came up while manafort was on trial on multiple charges of bank fraud and tax evasion and the president was expressing his anger at how federal prosecutors had beat up and mistreated the former Trump Campaign manager. Theres no understanding that federal prosecutors work for him. They work with the Department Of Justice. He appointed the Attorney General. Chuck correctly points out that we had a rare and welcome push back from Jeff Sessions to the on the attacks against the department. What is going on that the president is so eager, so reflection reflexively desperate to let criminals be pardoned from their crimes . He doesnt see the department separate from himself. He sees the government and his powers as the president as tools to punish his enniz, reward his supporters, make things happen, make problems go away. He seems very willing to use the
pardon power for his own personal political benefit. The fact that he was willing to consider it before there was even a verdict in the case shows a certain contempt for the process of justice that he is supposed to oversee as the nations chief Law Enforcement officer or commander in chief, i should say. Its astonishing but not surprising. The white house was saying at a press conference, Sarah Huckabee sanders, i had no knowledge of these discussions. Well turns out there were discussions. There were discussions. Sarah Huckabee Sanders with no knowledge of much. Jill colvin, thank you for spending time with us. When we come back, the open warfare between the president and the Justice Department escalates. Is a highlevel firing next . Also is donald trump the branding guru gets rebranded as an unintentional coconspir store . A member of the House Intelligence Committee joins us to discuss whether the president s fixer will make a return trip to his committee. And republicans go there. The i word getting thrown around more and more. Stay with us. 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. Its a revolution in sleep. The new sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now, from 899, during sleep numbers biggest sale of the year. It senses your movement, and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. It even helps with this. So you wake up ready to put your pedal to the metal. And now, all beds are on sale. Save 50 on the new sleep number 360 limited Edition Smart bed. Plus, 24month financing and free home delivery. Ends saturday. Sleep number. Proven, quality sleep. Justice department, i always put justice now with quotes, its a very, very sad day. I put an Attorney General that never took control of the Justice Department, Jeff Sessions. Never took control of the Justice Department. Even my enemies say that Jeff Sessions should have told you that he was going to recuse himself and then you wouldnt have put him in. He took the job and then he said, im going to recuse myself. I said, what kind of a man is this . And by the way, he was on the campaign. You know the only reason i gave him the job because i felt loyalty. He was an original supporter. He was on the campaign. He knows there was no collusion. What kind of man is this . Someone who follows the law as you should find more for your west wing staff. This time Jeff Sessions isnt taking trumps attacks lying down. He hit back just this afternoon in a rare rebuke of trumps comments. Quote, i took control of the Department Of Justice the day i was sworn in. While i am Attorney General, the actions of the Department Of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political
considerations. I demand the highest stand ards, and where they are not met, i take action. Joining nick and me at the table, mara gay, the New York Times editorial board. Chuck and frank are still with us. I want to come back to you, chuck, you started the conversation in the last block. Jeff sessions taking, as you said, a rare hard line against the president. Has the president crossed some line for sessions, do you thin . Oh, dear god, nicolle, the president has crossed only lines so often. For you and me. Sessions doesnt often rebuke the president he serves. Right. Hallelujah. So, what the men and women of the Department Of Justice look for is leadership. And whether or not they personally like mr. Sessions, they respect the office of Attorney General. This is a person who has to stand up for the rank and file. And today he did. Im not a huge fan. I think you know