If you recall. Adam schiff teased this last week. We do expect him to make a statement after the hearing wraps up, which we think is any minute now. And we were told the hearing had been wrapping up. We also expect to hear from the chairman, adam schiff, as well. We dont know how long well hear from him, but well hear something from him. Cohens testimony comes as a source tells nbc news that cohen turned over new documents showing how his false 2017 testimony to congress about trump tower moscow was edited. And if these documents back up the claims cohen implied last week, that the president s lawyers made those edits, it could potentially implicate them in cohens false statements. One of the president s lawyers is denying that they altered a key part of his testimony. Were going to have a lot more on this developing story in a moment, along with some new jawdropping poll numbers in the wake of the cohen testimony. But for now, as we await mr. Cohen to the microphones, were going to begin with this pile of evidence that is piling up against the president. Maybe its too much. The latest, there are now eight checks in the Public Domain showing how the president reimbursed Michael Cohen while president , for those illegal hush money payments during the campaign. Eight. And thats just a drop in the bucket when it comes to the alleged wrongdoing directly involving the president. What youre seeing right now on screen is a bullet point list of the alleged crimes and misdemeanors that democrats are likely reviewing as they begin to lay the groundwork for what could be possible impeachment proceedings. As you can see, theres a lot. Were talking about allegations of obstruction, multiple allegations of those, allegations of conspiracy, multiple allegations of those. Allegations of Campaign Finance felonies. Those we know aware of. Each check is multiple, by the way. Corruption, violations of the emoluments clause, and straightup abuses of power. But the challenge facing the democrats is they have to fashion this into a cohesive narrative, can you keep track of it all . The president and his allies probably hoping that you cant. Joining me now for this part of the conversation, greg boud, and with me is kimberly atkins, senior washington correspondent for wbur, matthew, and howard fineman, an nbc news analyst. Greg, let me start with you. And people saw the scroll, but i want to put up this big graphic of everything and were not just putting up little ones that are out there. Its everything that is of some substance. Were going to keep it up for a while. We did break it up into different parts here. Weve got obstruction of justice, Campaign Finance, straightup corruption, the conspiracy allegations, and the issues of abuse of power. So, greg, as a prosecutor, what would you do with a situation like this . Youve got threads, some of which are pretty, pretty detailed. Some of which are pretty loose. How would you pursue Something Like this . Well, the bottom line, chuck, is as a prosecutor, you want corroboration. You want witnesses, you want documentary evidence, and if you can put enough of that together, you can make a case. Whats interesting here is, is whether or not the special counsel, bob mueller, is going to report to the attorney general that he found evidence of criminal conduct on the part of the president , but because of the prevailing doj opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted, didnt feel like he could ask a grand jury to return an indictment. I think thats the key to all of this. What did bob mueller find . And if it wasnt the president were talking about, would he have sought an indictment . Let me ask you this, greg. On the issue of obstruction of justice, and we put we have about ten bullet points under here, specifically. And im curious, are these would you call this one charge or essentially ten different charges . Firing comey, because of the russia probe. Suggesting to comey to drop the flynn probe, ordering the white House Counsel to try to fire mueller. Calling for the attorney general to fire mueller. Dangling pardons for russian witnesses. Revoking clearances of potential witnesses. Threatening to publish tapes of a mueller witness. Are those is that one charge or are those separate charges . Well, of course, i would have to see the specific evidence, but it sounds a lot to me like it could be a case made up of separate counts of obstruction, if, in fact, there was enough evidence to prove obstruction on each of those counts. Howard fineman, heres what i challenged somebody today. I said, give me the elevator pitch for why you should impeach the president. If you believe theres all of these, you have this list, can you give the elevator pitch . Can you do it in 15 seconds . The donald trump and his organization amounted to a criminal conspiracy that either was forced into or willingly, if not eagerly cooperated with whomever they could, including russians and criminal actors, to gain power. In a way that and to continue in power, in a way that violates the spirit and fact of the law, and therefore he does not have the character to be president of the united states. Its not easy, is it . I thought i had it better than that, but i fumbled around a little bit. Legal training at work there. But is the president s best defense the fact theres so much . The president s best defense at this point is that the public, according to the polling, is not interested in theyre kind of numb to it. Theyre not keeping up. So the challenge for democrats is they engage in all of these investigations, they collect all of this evidence, they fire their subpoena cannon at the white house. But the second they cross that line, where impeachment hearings begin, if they dont have serious evidence of a high crime or misdemeanor, its going to be viewed as a political stunt and trump will get the advantage. How do you define that, though, right . Like, every one person sits here and says, boy, what he did with fox is an impeachable offense, ordering the Justice Department to try to get involved in this cnn merger, for instance. But that may not rise to the bar that matthews talking about that gets you the 15 or 10 republicans that you need. Right. I mean, we dont have a standard for what high crimes and misdemeanors are. And this is a political process. Which is different than the legal process, which is what mueller is doing. But at the same time, you have the house, and were talking about the house bringing articles in this. Forget about the senate momentarily. You have the house, which in the past brought articles of impeachment against a president for perjury. It was a crime. If there is if Robert Muellers report says that donald trump committed crimes, particularly if he committed crimes while in office, i think it will be very difficult for democrats to be able to distinguish why that would not be reason to bring an article of impeachment, knowing that that will lower the bar. If another president committed a crime, if he was impeached, this lowers the bar. What does that mean to the future . Im not saying that its an easy task to make or an easy line to draw, but thats one of the unintended consequences of that. I happen to think from the beginning that Robert Mueller has had a holistic theory about this, from talking to people who know about how hes proceeding. Whats that . That hes looked from the beginning, especially by hiring all the people who studied Money Laundering and are expert mis i that kind of thing, that hes looked for the underlying motivation, either positive or negative, meaning something to gain or blackmail to avoid, in what donald trump was willing to do by way of cooperation, in the 2016 campaign. And what he may have stumbled on in the process is ongoing criminal activity in the white house. But the original view was, is this a criminal enterprise that either was subject to blackmail or was all too willing to cooperate with people he shouldnt have been cooperating with . Thats been muellers theory. How much of that mueller has been able to prove or whether he will say any of it or whether william barr will talk about any of it are different questions. Greg, do you think you can fairly say, if you were in muellers shoes and you know, look, youre never bringing the president into a court of law unless hes a former president , at best, right . Maybe youd get a sealed indictment and wait until hes out of office. More than likely you know, this is your gathering evidence so that the political people can make the legal decision. How does that color the investigation . Does that impact how you go about certain how you pursue certain threads . Well, yes and no. I mean, what typically takes place with respect to an ordinary criminal investigation is, of course, the prosecutor needs to be able to prove to a grand jury probable cause that a crime was committed in order to get an indictment from that grand jury. But the reality for doj prosecutors is that typically, a case wont be taken to a grand jury and a request for an indictment wont be made unless the prosecutor is confident that he or she really has enough evidence to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. Here, though, because it appears that bob mueller does not believe he can indict the president , he may have an interest in just getting before the house of representatives, all of the evidence he found that may be irrelevant to impeachment, even though it wouldnt necessarily be enough or sufficient to get an indictment. And i think thats the key here, chuck, if i might. The key points are twofold in my opinion. One is, the house really has to demand, and i think, will demand that everything the special counsel has learned, all the evidence that he has gathered should be turned over to the house for the houses consideration and secondly, ive said this from the beginning, i think the House Majority would be well advised to not, to not seek impeachment, to not commit impeachment proceedings, or at least, follow through with an Impeachment Vote unless its truly bipartisan. Matthew, let me ask this. If bob mueller testifies before the house and says, if he werent president , i would have indicted him for obstruction of justice, does that change what should how powerful could that be . Thats another arrow in the democrats quiver and it might spur them to accelerate the impeachment process. But the democrats short of that, though, do you think it probably theyd need something that concrete from mueller before theyd go, or do you think no, i think youre right. The assumption of this segment is correct that the democrats want to impeach this president. Theres no doubt they want to do it, but they dont want to theyre trying to find some way to impeach him. Their constrained by what they find and theyre also constrained by the calendar. Because were already engaged in a president ial election. If youd begin the impeachment process in the middle of a president ial election, i think there are going to be Many American voters including many independents who are going to say, let us vote. Let us have a say here. We didnt put the democrats in the house to impeach. We didnt put them we put them as a check and put them to protect our preexisting conditions. Thats why the house was elected. Let us vote. And so there, too, if they go down this impeachment path, prior to election day 2020, they face political jeopardy. Yeah, and i think by focusing on the word and the process of impeachment, were really kind of missing the point here, because what has to be served here is Public Knowledge and history. For a variety of reasons, donald trump got elected in 2016 without the American People knowing anywhere near the full story about donald trump and how he got to where he was and who he really was. Did they i go back and forth and how he really operates. On the details i agree with you. But the greater grand scheme of thing, you dont think the voters kind of knew . Yeah, we kind of know hes not on the level. Okay, they might have said, a little game, but we dont really know. But its in the interest of the American People and the rule of law and our understanding of our own history that thats the way i think these hearings, however scattered and overdone they may be, if they put together the full story of how donald trump operates, really operates, thats a useful exercise and it will be up to the American People in 2020 to decide if they want to allow that to continue. So then it becomes, is that actually the proper way its like, look, kocongress isnt gog to go into this. Here you go, american public. Its almost like their version of the mueller report. Mueller, hey, its on you. Now congress is like, no, no, no, no, congress, its on you. You decide what to do with him. Thats the role of congress. Thats the difference between these committees and Robert Mueller is that they are fact finding and presenting this information to the public. They also have that option to, if they find a crime, to make article of impeachment, but thats why the senate is there, because thats where it would theres no way that they would approve it. It would go down. And so, ultimately, thats a lot thats what this is about. The Robert Mueller probe something entirely different. And we dont know. At the end of the day, we dont know if a president can be indicted or not, legally, yes, thats the dojs position. Thats another legal battle that might be fought. The pigge estbiggest threat president is in the Southern District of new york. What is, that though. Its not mueller, its not congress, its the Southern District. What is it when you say the biggest threat, is it the threat to him politically or personally . Its a legal threat, the threat of indictment. Yes, thats what i greg, do you agree with matthew there, that if you look at the legal the biggest legal problems facing the trump family and organization and the president longterm are in the Southern District. I agree that potentially that is a bigger problem in terms of criminal exposure, but we have to remember, because ive heard this misunderstood on other shows recently. The Southern District of new york prosecutors are part of the department of justice, and they are bound by the same doj position with respect to whether a president can be indicted. And so, its not as though main justice can tell bob mueller, you cant seek an indictment of the president , but the Southern District of new york prosecutors can do that on their own. Thats not real the reality. Greg, let me ask you this question about this issue, if the Southern District says theyre worried that he wins a second term, some statute of limitations will expire, and they go to barr and say, we need a sealed indictment, and we wont unseal it until after hes out of office, be it january 20th, 2021, or january 20th, 2025, is that how that would work . Yeah, i think that well, that would were definitely in Uncharted Waters when you raise that issue. Thats potentially possible. That request could be made. That would be an interesting dilemma for the attorney general. Thats one way to do it. I would like to think, though, getting back to the earlier point, i would like think and i recognize that i could, of course, be wrong that if bob mueller tells the house of representatives that but for the president s status as a sitting president and but for the prevailing doj opinion from the loc memos, he would have sought an indictment from a grand jury, and hes confident he would have received one, i would like to think that that will cause a bipartisan movement on the part of the house to impeach. Right. Well, we wont know that moment until we live that moment. Greg, hang on a minute. Let me go to capitol hill. Were expecting Michael Cohen. Hes been band closed doors with the house Intelligence Committee. We know hes going to come to cameras any minute. While we dont know yet what hes been telling members of congress today, we do know that he showed them something. We have nowconfirmed reports that cohen provided the Intelligence Committee with a document that shows edits that were made to the false statement he delivered in congress to 2017 about the discussions involving a proposed trump tower in moscow. And a source familiar with the document says it will bolster cohens public testimony from last week when cohen alleged that President Trumps legal team altered his statements before congress. Nbc news has not reviewed the document itself. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to congress for those statements, but even so, a new poll shows 50 believe cohen more than the president , compared to just 35 who believe President Trump more than cohen. Let that sink in a minute. A majority of americans believe a confessed liar more than they believe the sitting president of the united states. Joining me now outside the cohen hearing room is our own capitol hill correspondent, kasie hunt. So, kasie, this has been the question all day, obviously, they spent a lot of time on this issue. It sounds like, frankly, this committee asked them to bring more documentation, because theyre showing up with it. What else have you been gleaning . Reporter this issue of the trump tower moscow, chuck, and how long it went on has really been at the heart of this second day of testimony. While many of the members that you talked to are very reluctant to, you know, certainly admit that theyre talking about classified hearings or anything like that, its the topic that comes up over and over and over again. And of course, part of that is because its the topic about which cohen lied. And answering that question, why did cohen lie, and now, based on this new information, why did the president specifically want cohen to lie about this to the point that he would risk, you know, he and his team would risk altering the testimony in a way that could result in what weve seen play out, is really at the heart of this question. You know, did the president put his business interests and therefore talk about the, you know, leader of a foreign adversary