Ke teamwork, attention to detail, and Customer Service are critical to business success. Like the ones we teach here, every day. In washington today, the spotlight is squarely on the president s legal troubles. The president trying to explain away troubling statements from his new lawyer Rudy Giuliani. When did the president know about that Hush Money Payment to Stormy Daniels . This was a very bad week for the trump team. Hes exposed President Trump to possible prosecution for two crimes. As far as im concerned, its a nothing burger. Giuliani tries to clean up a potential mess he made for his clients. The president doesnt age knowledge meeting Stormy Daniels, correct . Gee, im not involved in the daniels thing so i dont know. In terms of what you mean by met her. So the president does deny
any sexual relationship with Stormy Daniels . He has. As i said, im not involved in that. Right now im at the point where im learning. I want to make sure, george, did that interview just happen . When did the president find out Michael Cohen made this payment . That i dont know. President trump apparently misled the American People on Air Force One in april when he denied knowing anything about this payment Stormy Daniels. First of all, that is on an airplane in the middle of an important trip. When the president said no on Air Force One, he was talking about he didnt know when the payment occurred. Its a train wreck. It is possible a porn star could take down a president if the president is not cautious. Welcome to kasie d. C. Im kasie hunt. We are live from Washington Every Sunday Night from 7 00 to 9 00 p. M. Eastern. Tonight we began with the kasie dvr for a change. And the mad cap cycle of rudy junian is own making. The the New York Times is reporting President Trump knew about that 130,000 Hush Money Payment to Adult Film ActressStormy Daniels months before denying any knowledge of it to reporters aboard Air Force One in early april. That is according to two people familiar with the arrangement. We should point out that the president s outside Legal Counsel would not comment on the times story. Meanwhile giuliani confirmed on wednesday the president reimbursed his attorney Michael Cohen for that payment. That was a comment that stunned many of the president s own advisors and led to more than one clarification. That wasnt confusing or anything. And when you separate it all out, it doesnt really become any clearer. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, im giving you a fact now that you dont know. Its not campaign money. Imagine if that came out on october 15th, 2016. Sure. In the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton. Cohen made it go away. He did his job. Even if it was for campaign purposes, to save his family, to save embarrassment, its not a campaign donation. As far as i know, an outstanding agreement, Michael Cohen makes payments like this, he gets paid for them sometimes, whether its business or personal. Oh, boy. I want to welcome in my panel, pulitzer winning bureau chief philip rucker. Political reporter for the New York Times ken vogel. Michael schmidt. Julia ainsley. Joining the conversation from birmingham, alabama, former u. S. Attorney joyce vance. Thank you all for being here this evening to try and sort through exactly what the heck happened over the course of the last week. Phil rucker, can you start with an overview of where we are at
the white house right now . What does the president think of the job giuliani is doing, is there solid footing or is there distance between them . This has been going on five or six days now. The president did say friday he thought Rudy Giuliani needed to get his facts straight. Felt confident he would. My colleague bob costa talked to Rudy Giuliani this afternoon after the interviews this morning. He spent the day with the president at the golf course in virginia, the president feels good about it and theyre in a comfortable place. It is totally separate from the white house. The white house senior staff have no idea what rude si doing. Theyre not booking his interviews. Theyre not strategizing over his talking basis points. This is very much a Rogue Operation the president s personal attorney is doing. Ken vogel, the switch that i seem to sense, we had the president on friday saying Rudy Giuliani needs to get his facts
straight. Mid week he seemed certain Michael Cohen had been reimbursed for this. By sunday hes on abc saying well, sometimes this happens, sometimes kind of. Is that an example of him getting his facts straight or confusing the issue . Not at all. Hes doing a really bad job. You talk to all the republican finance campaign attorneys, even those sympathetic to trump. There is a lot of ambiguity. A lot of questions. The one thing everyone agrees Rudy Giuliani has no idea what Campaign Finance implications there might be here. The fact he admitted trump reimbursed the payment is significant because it speaks to truthfulness. The degree to which his subsequent explanations about what the purpose was or when trump knew, the significance of those may be a bit overstated. It really Doesnt Matter WhatRudy Giuliani is saying. It matters what the intent was of these payments when they were made and who knew about them at the time that they were made. Rudy giuliani says he doesnt know about that. Hes just speaking out of turn to some extent. There could be additional light shed on this because there were documents seized from Michael Cohens hotel and office by the fbi that could answer these questions. But as of right now just a bunch of speculation who knew what when. Joyce vance, could i get to you weigh in here . Is this potentially overstated . What are the real rubber meets the road legal implications of Julie Kind Of Changing his story . The president cant be held accountable for giulianis statement in court, so its not like these statements become evidence thats used against the president at some point. But the problem is the constantly shifting stories and the president s response to them which could at the end of the day help mueller, other prosecutors or congress refine a case against him. Michael schmidt, could i get you to weigh in on that . If youre bob mueller, what are you taking away from the events of the last week . In all the things that came
up, the one thing we didnt talk about is the new explanation he provided for why comey was fired. Oh, gosh, youre right. In the midst of the fox interview, he says, by the way, the reason that comey was fired is because he wouldnt say that trump was not under investigation. That under cuts everything that the white house has said about that. But what it does do is it echos what comey says in the memos. Comey laying out. And while i now the Stormy Daniels thing is more salacious, that may actually cut more to the question of obstruction. And its would you say that its a little bit close tore what trump told lester holt where he said the russia investigation, julia, was involved, this russia thing. Right. So, to michaels point, is Rudy Giuliani coming closer to that than because they obviously reversed and said, no, no, it has nothing do with that. Giuliani tried to say under
the president s powers he can fire whoever he wants. That wasnt under question. What was under question is intent. He really laid bare those intentions. The interview with lester holt trump said this russia thing had to go away, but it left a lot of ambiguity what exactly it was he had a problem with. It seems like james comey laid out t had to do with trump and russia. It wasnt that he was trying to protect how all of these other people who could be indicted who worked on his campaign. It was really him. He wanted to know that he would be saved by his owen fbi director. Obviously that was something comey couldnt promise him. When the president wants giuliani to get his facts straight, i think it would be over that. It would also be over these payments to women. Now we see him coming out today creating more damage saying there could be other payments, which i think is just more bread crumbs for all of us to go follow. Right. We havent even touched on that, the additional potential payments to other women. I mean, i feel like that opens an entire can of worms that how on earth does the president
still absolutely. So Rudy Giuliani said there could be other payments to women. He also seemed to discount this 130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels as, oh, its not that much money. This is the kind of thing that happens all the time. If it had been millions, maybe it would be a big deal. To a lot of americans, its a pretty extraordinary circumstance to payoff this Adult Film Actress. So, giuliani is just talking about a different world that people cant relate to. I think we have the sound we were talking about Rudy Giuliani talking about additional payments. Lets take a look. Did Michael Cohen make payments to other women for the president . I have no knowledge of that, but i would think if it was necessary, yes. There were other things involved that had nothing to do with Stormy Daniels. Im just going to skip over the part where we have to think about why it would be necessary to payoff additional women. But michael schmidt, what does this mean in the context of this investigation . Do we we dont seem to know that there were necessarily any other payments, but that does
seem like more for mueller to dig into. Well, one of the issues that the Trump Legal Team has had and cohens legal team is understanding what was actually in the documents that were taken from cohens office. And i think that at least in the week or so after the raid in new york, the lawyers didnt feel like they were getting a fair idea from the clients about what actually is in these things. They were acknowledging that they were more concerned about the new york investigation than they were muellers investigation because they had no idea what was actually in there. And simply the idea of the years and years of donald trump, you know, deals and such with his personal lawyer, nothing good could come out of it. Now they have a better idea of it because the government has given them copies of it to examine. But obviously we dont know yet. Right. Lets talk for a second, too, ken, your colleagues at the New York Times had a fascinating story, profile almost of Michael Cohen and his potential criminal
ties, ties to the russian mob, his Taxi Business that, you know, scaled onto into questionable loans for various real estate deals. I mean, this guy, i think there was somebody quoted in the story who came from a mainstream bank, i believe it was pnc who basically said, this is the kind of guy we wouldnt want to touch. And that yet this is the person who is defending donald trump. Yeah, and it provides a real window into trumps world of real estate and business. This is a guy who, yes, hes involved in all these sort of disparate ventures, but the one thing that you cannot do is extricate them from trump. He has been in trumps world. And one of the closest people to donald trump on The Business Side personally on the legal size, for decades, and that is something that poses Serious Problems for trump, both in terms of questions about his loyalty ongoing and whether he might provide he might flip and provide information, and
also what they mayeda find about trumps business as they, the prosecutors and the fbi try to sort through cohens businesses. Something i think gets left out of the comments about payments to women. 130,000 is nothing to trump. For someone running for office is serious on its own. The fact other women came up that giuliani knows about, that says something about the relationship between giuliani and trump. Giuliani and trump, they had paid these women off and never brought it up to trumps attention, that shows this is a recurring pattern. I mean, that shouldnt be the thing that his lawyer should be putting out there, talking about giuliani, saying this was a common thing. And he might not know about it. So, i think that while the money might seem like not that big of a deal, you would want to know about those allegations, even if theyre baseless, especially if youre in politics and youre putting yourself out there in the public sphere. Yeah, and, joyce vance, rudy
giuliani brought this up in the beginning because he wanted to argue this wasnt a violation of Campaign Finance law, regardless of how it was handled that wasnt the problem. Did he get that right in your view . He got it wrong and he got it wrong in multiple ways. It was a lot like watching a pingpong match where he was hitting the ball back and forth. And wildly hit ing it off the table and it would careen around the walls. The latest incarnation we heard was on fox with judge jeannine where he said it wasnt a donation because he was just trying to spare the family from disgrace. But even if it was a donation, it doesnt matter because he paid it back. And thats just not the law. This is made so close in time to the campaign, there is now a lot of evidence that the payment was made in an effort to influence the outcome of the election. And theres a lot of Additional Information to come out here. But the bottom line legally is that if it was willful and
knowingly made, this payment, in an effort to influence the election, it could well be into criminal territory as opposed to just an administrative Campaign Finance violation. Ken vogel, do you agree with that . Weve had conversations before on this show where youve sadie essentially if this has to do with the fec forget it, its not going anywhere. If there is a willful and knowing violation that would be in the fecs purview. That would be a federal Law Enforcement matter to be handled by the d. O. J. And could carry criminal sanctions. I am skeptical where i find the case has been made, i think exaggerated to the degree where its slam dunk. Was it within proximity of the election and just because Rudy Giuliani says can you imagine if this came out in the last debate, that proves this payment was made to influence the election. There are pretty strict standards to show thats something legal standards that are required to be proven
to show something was made that a payment was made to influence a federal or any election. And i dont think that rudy saying that meets that standard. Potentially, again, with the documents that were seized from Michael Cohens office we might see something that gets close tore that standard. As of now im unconvinced. Phil rucker yes, joyce, go ahead. If i could interject on that, i would agree its far from a slam dunk. These sort of cases never are. One thing we know is the Southern District of new york had probable cause to pursue this allegation of a Campaign Finance violation when they got the search warrant. So that tells us there was something there that let the judge proceed forward with this. Far from a slam dunk, but definitely worth following up on. Phil, i was going to ask you, right now more broadly as concerns michael cone, the case, how theyre making these decisions. Are they operating under the assumption that cohe enhen is cooperating with prosecutors . They are operating under the fear he could cooperate with prosecutors. I dont think theyve concluded he is cooperating. They are concerned that could end up happening ultimately and there is danger for the president in that circumstance. Remember, the people the other lawyers trying to help advise the president on the russia matter, the advisors in the white house helping him manage the political fallout, dont know the full extent of what was seized in those raids on cohens office and hotel room and place of living. And they dont know what kind of documents are there. They dont know what other women might have been paid off. They dont know what other Financial Arrangements there may be records for that the federal investigators now have. There is a lot of unknown and they are operating under a fear things could be very bad. Very bad very quickly. It is Sunday School tonight on kasie d. C. We will have the parable of the house chaplain later on this hour. Plus how the midterms could impact Robert Mueller. And did Gina Haas Pel consider
withdrawal her bid for cia director as recently as this friday . Jeremy bash just spoke with gina haspel herself. Kasie d. C. Back after this. More . Theyve been saving folks money for over 75 years. A company you can trust.