Granted immunity by federal prosecutors investigating the president s former fixer Michael Cohen. The incredible report about the things locked away in a safe, secret, apparently not secret anymore. He would take care of his friends. He would look out for you and his ability to squash those stories. Department of shame. President trump trolling his own attorney general for the second day. After Jeff Sessions punches back. I think there will come a time sooner rather than later where it will be time to have a new face in the department of justice. We begin today with new legal troubles for the president. The map hadden d. A. Reportedly eyeing charges against the Trump Organization. Even as another close con fidan appears to turn on the president. Now working with investigators. Weve got a great team. First, what could these new charges mean for the president . How did the publisher of the National Enquirer get tied up in mr. Trumps legal woes . Well, overnight, the New York Times reports the Manhattan District Attorneys Office is now considering criminal charges against the Trump Organization and two Senior Company officials in connection with Michael Cohens hush money payment to stormy daniels. What they want to know is how exactly the Trump Organization reimbursed Michael Cohen for that payment. Now, the important thing to keep in mind about state charges, the president has no power to pardon people or corporations who are convicted of state crime. So when it comes to this case, his hands would be tied. That report came just hours after the news of david pecker agreeing to spill what he knows. Listen to this conversation between the president and Michael Cohen. I need to open up a company for the transfer of all that info regarding our friend david. You know where hes going to be . Correct. So im all over that. So the david referred to, david pecker, chairman of American Media. Peckers tabloid, the National Enquirer, is definitely one of trumps strongest allies. Just check out these big cover stories leading up to the campaign. Heavily antihillary. But it wasnt just during the election. For years, pecker has reportedly bought damaging stories about mr. Trump but never published them. Its a practice known as catch and kill. This effort ramped up before the 2016 election and according to the associated press, pecker even kept a safe in his office filled with documents related to these damaging stories. On thursday, pecker was granted immunity in the case against Michael Cohen, leading him to share what he knows about hush money payments that cohen made leading up to the election. For a person who loves to rail against fake news, the president had no problem praising the tabloid on the campaign trail. This was a magazine that, frankly, in many respects, should be very respected. They got o. J. , they got edwards, they got this. I mean, if that was the New York Times, they would have gotten Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting. Ive always said, why didnt the National Enquirer get the Pulitzer Prize for edwards and o. J. Simpson and all of these things. All right. Let me bring in my panel to weigh in. Tom winter, nbc investigative reporter. Jessica teachout, also running for attorney general in new york. Jeff kasovitz, with the law firm gregory. The d. A. Is considering charges against the Trump Organization looking at that possibility. What are they looking at . The first thing theyll look at and the thing they have looked at is they look at what Michael Cohen pled to. Essentially in count seven you have it laid out im sorry, count eight, you have it laid out exactly how the Trump Organization paid Michael Cohen the how they classified those payments. You have executive one, executive two and the Trump Organization discussing how to account for those payments. At that point, that provides an easy entree, at least take a look at this and say is there something here, where somebody did not do the right thing in their book keeping . Were these payments not correctly marked . So thats something they can look at. If somebody didnt do the right thing obviously, if there are illegalities, thats the job of the d. A. In the larger context, what could this mean . Could it go beyond those two officials . I think its always possible once you start an investigation, you never know exactly weve seen that with the Mueller Investigation, right . Exactly, exhibit a, as they say in the courts. If anybody is charged with the offenses, its either a misdemeanor or if it was for purposes of concealment, its a lowlevel felony. So were not talking here about serious jail time. The second thing is this is a preliminary stage. Theyve been talking to him for a year and a half. Theyre not going to move until theyre really to move. They dont want to get in front of Robert Mueller on this. They dont want to mess up a federal investigation. You know, weve been hearing for a year that this office is looking into the Trump Organization. This office is looking into paul manafort, et cetera. I think we havent seen a lot of movement on that front. Its not because investigators arent doing their job. Its not because they dont want to do their job. Theyre just at a point where theyve had to sit on the brakes so to speak until they get to the point where they say the federal end is done, now we can approach from the state side. Jeff, from purely legal but then Public Interest standpoint, how do you see this fitting into the big picture . Sure. From a legal standpoint, potential crimes here, fraud, tax evasion and potentially conspiracy, felony crimes. Thats important because if you look at that in the context of also the attorney general, the new York State Attorney general is investigating the Trump Organization, these are crimes that are not pardonable. If his family is involved or other individuals, two executives are involved, trump cannot pardon them. They are working in context, presumably with mueller and will not step on his investigation. But this is an outgrowth. The fact theyre following up on the tax counts as well with Michael Cohen is a factor also. And, in fact, in virginia, they can file open tax counts on manafort. He talks about pardoning manafort but there could be state counts as well. Yes, the breadth of this is really extraordinary. I want to bring in jeff horowitz, a reporter for the associated press, and you broke this incredible story about david pecker keeping documents in a safe. What do we know about what exactly was in there . We know this was sort of where all the catch and kill documents were kept not just on donald trump necessarily . Yes, exactly. So not just on donald trump. Definitely there were things related to trump. And, you know, the Karen Mcdougal situation. There were other things as well. Its not clear we know what all of those things are. The a. P. Reported one to a former door man at a trump property who was paid i believe 35,000. We dont know what else there is in there. In addition to that, it was other celebrities as well. Part of the National Enquirers longstanding business practice, under david pecker. The publication would basically pay for dirt that it did not intend to use and then left the people to pay for the why would you pay for something . Why do you catch and kill . What do you get on the other side . Is it potentially information that you could use in lets say nevfarious ways, that you could use against someone to get them to do what you want them to do . What youre describing sounds like blackmail and thats a very big word that im not prepared to touch. Which i avoided and yet but what i can say is that when the National Enquirer was able to go to a public figure and say, hey, we bought we bought sort of the worst skeleton in your closet. We have witnesses and proof and people signed a contract. Now, by the way, would you like to help us out in some fashion . Which they did with people like bill cosby. That was a compelling ask, if that makes sense. David pecker, we now know, is granted immunity. Thats different from making a deal. Just making a deal, right . Why is this significant . Well, theres a lot we dont know. I mean, we know there is exposure on peckers part. We know the prosecutors think they have something to offer. But we actually dont know all the details here. I mean, this is this whole week has been a big story about the growing web of serious corruption scandals. Criminality with people close to trump. It also highlights the real importance of states. The d. A. Our eyes have been so focused on mueller. But having this fire wall in the states fire wall in the sense that is not something that can be pardoned by the president , is that what youre referring to . Thats right. There are double jeopardy rules in new york that limit to some degree the kind of state charges that can be brought but theyre not absolute. They dont apply to tax crimes. We know Barbara Underwood in recent days was seeking the attorney general in new york was seeking a referral from the department of taxation and finance. Thats a big deal. The new York State Attorney general has the authority to look into persistent illegality, in the Trump Organization, which is based in new york. I think youll see in the coming days the growing rule of states, states attorneys general, really resisting against this rampant illegality coming from the Trump Organization. Tom, you and i talked about this at least a couple of weeks. Which is that with everything going on, theres still surprises. You start to hear vault and your mind goes back to a lot of different places. But lay out the relationship between the president and david pecker and, in particular, leading up to the 2016 election. Right. What we know from the just from the Court Documents that were filed this week in the Michael Cohen case, we know American Media was involved in working with Michael Cohen. According to what Michael Cohen said, at the direction of the president in order to pay Karen Mcdougal 150,000. Essentially what they would say is they would ask for her life story specific to certain topics. That would be one of them. And so they would offer her 150,000 for that story. And catch and kill. In other words, youve got that story, you cant talk about it with anybody else. You can have your 150, but thats it. We know from count seven that Michael Cohen pled glt uilty to that American Media was involved in that. It is now a federal case. Jeff, this is probably less about the legality of it than just the fascinating job of it. You investigated the story about the safe itself. Was it kind of an open secret . Was there just like a lot of rumors running around that just existed . Did everybody who work there know there were these catch and kill stories . I presume you think about people putting jewelry in safes or other valuable things in safes. In 2018, wouldnt there be that information somewhere else, whatever it is they were killing . Wouldnt it be on the original reporters computer hard drive or just im trying to wrap my head around the whole safe idea in 2018. So, yes, there were these partial versions of these things elsewhere. Thats how we found out about the trump doorman. Thats how joe at the journal first came up with the Karen Mcdougal story. There are other pieces of this elsewhere. Things we dont know exactly how much stuff is there. The safe was known to i would say not everyone but it was a known thing within a lot of the staff. This was like an old School Combination locktype vault. Dating back i dont know how many apparently a pretty old thing. Where those documents went of course we dont know. We dont know if they had been functionally turned over to the government. We dont know if theyve been destroyed. We dont know if theyve been moved somewhere else for safe keeping. Just that theyre no long wear they used to be. Fascinating stuff. Thanks to both of you, to zefer and to tom winter. The president trolling Jeff Sessions on twitter just this morning as the escalating public feud between the two explodes out into a dramatic smackdown. Except, that is, when they actually meet facetoface. Are the days, though, for the attorney general numbered . Ple f. My life is here. [telephone ring] ahoyhoy. Alexander graham bell here. No, no, my number is one, you must want two two, i say like my father before. 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This morning, yet another escalation in the increasingly nasty and public battle between the president of the United States and his own attorney general. So lets lay it out for you in order. The president with the latest in a series of relentless attacks. I put in an attorney general that never took control of the justice department, Jeff Sessions. Never took control of the justice department. And its sort of an incredible thing. So then in a very quick rebuttal, sessions defending himself, writing, i took control of 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. So this morning President Trump was not about to let sessions have the last word. Tweeting, jeff, this is great, what everyone wants. So look into all of the corruption on the other side, including deleted emails, comey lies and leaks. Mueller conflicts. Mccabe, strzok, page. He said, come on, jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting. Nbc News White House correspondent Kristen Welker is following the story for us. The two were actually together in a room yesterday. Everybody was waiting to see if fireworks exploded. The reports we got, no punches were thrown. Thats right, chris. This is just remarkable. I was talking to some sources who say the feud between them really didnt come up yesterday during that meeting. It was a meeting focused on criminal Justice Reform and everyone stayed on topic. But ive been really pressing folks here about whether or not the president is seriously considering firing Jeff Sessions. And the indications are that hes not planning to do that. At least not right now. And that may be the key. And as we tried to read between the tea leaves, the answers may be on capitol hill. Because if you think about what lawmakers are saying, chris, its pretty remarkable. You have Top Republican senators who were once staunchly behind Jeff Sessions who once firmly said, look, theres just not enough tile in tme in the calenr to look at someone else. Theyre now changing their tune. Indicating we might be able to get something done. Lindsey graham saying this. Think this president , like every other president , deserves the chance to have an attorney general they have confidence in. You have other senators like ben sasse who say dont you dare fire the attorney general. He usually follows his own tune to those types of things, chris, but bottom line, lawmakers on capitol hill signaling they may be willing to consider a new attorney general. But not until after the critical midterm elections. I dont think were going to see any type of activity until then. President trump heads to ohio. Hes attending a state dinner a little later on today. Well have the chance if the weather holds to try to ask him some questions. The shift on capitol hill is fascinating. Kristen, thank you. I want to bring in my panel. Matt welch. Zefer teachout is still here, constitutional law professor at fordham, running for new york a. G. Chris wilson is a republican pollster. I want to play a little more of what Lindsey Graham had to say. Basically well, maybe it is almost time for the attorney general to go. Clear lly attorney general sessions doesnt have the confidence of the