This letter which is dated today is written from President Trumps attorney to judge wood who will be overseeing a very high stakes hearing tomorrow in new york about all those ver sensitive materials that were seized by the fbi in the raid of Michael Cohens office, of his hotel room and his home as well as the seizure of his phones and this is something that i dont think has ever been said before, at least not to to my knowledge on the news. The president of the United States is offering to make himself personally available for any review or screening of the evidence that the fbi seized of his lawyer. Its an unusual offer to say the least and with that let me get right to a well assembled panel. Senator richard blumenthal, former senator byron dorgen and Eugene Robinson from the the Washington Post which has broken some of these stories your colleagues have. Ill go Down The Line. Dealers choice on which aspects of this you want to speak to and, senator, your view of what appear to be a lot of developments on the trump side of the ledger in this investigation right now tonight. Well, this the Washington Post report assuming its true is extraordinary because it shows that the president is becoming even more entangled and embroidered in the cohen aspect of this investigation. It has been thought that it was separate, but obviously the president has been deeply concerned and fearful about it, and now apparently hes taking steps to involve himself personally and possibly waiving any claim of Attorney Client privilege that you might have here. You just made an important observation that id like you to expand upon, this matter was referred by bob mueller to new york because it was separate and jurisdictionally distinct from the open russia probe. What youre saying is this letter, you got a lot of stuff
giuliani held. Reading from the Washington Post tonight, they cite three sources to say that julie an any as a new personal lawyer on behalf of the president has met with Special Counsel bob mueller, not his aides. This was as recently as tuesday to reopen, quote, negotiations according to three people. Why would ruddy in your view be opening that investigation . I dont know. I doubt that hell ever be interviewed. Mr. Cohen is the holder of the secrets, selfdescribed, he believes that and says that publicly and the president s actions underscore that the president believes that trump that mr. Cohen is the holder of the secrets here. Well see. This reminds me of one of those the maze in a corn field. Its easy to get in but you cant find your way out. Thats the case for the president. Very hard to find his way out of this because theres so many different features to it. Gene robinson, classic cornfield maze situation. It is, obviously. On other matters than the criminal defense team when in the nda litigation, there were questions about his time and availability, he said hes not available for depositions, hes not going to be personally involved. This obviously a very different stance. Seth waxman a former federal prosecutor weve just added to the conversation. What does this mean to you . I think that clearly these can be conflating these issues. You have the president of the United States whos now going to need to take time to answer questions with his lawyer and decide whether this material is privileged, so as we all may know, the privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney, so if there are emails in there, for example, with mr. Trump sending mr. Cohen to russia, to open a trump tower in moscow, on the face of that, that doesnt seem to be privilege. That sounds like a business transaction, so mr. Trumps going to need to explain to his lawyers how that could be seeking legal advice because if its not, its not privileged. Let me read a little more
just from the letter and go back Around The Horn again. This is brandnew, seth. The firm here theyre speaking on behalf of the president tonight. Our own associates are wellqualified. They hail from the countrys best law schools and work directly with partners on the firm. Awe reference to their ability to go through this material they want before the feds have it with regard to the Attorney Client privilege that the president may have and they say, our client, thats donald trump, will make himself available asneeded to aid in our Privilege Review on his behalf. What does that even mean, seth . Would that be donald trump and Michael Cohen and these other lawyers sitting around in new york looking ougat old emai . These are associates and more Junior Attorneys doing the initial scrub, getting rid of the chafe and all the emails that are noncontroversial and when you get down to the ones that, you know, are damaging or, you know, have some questions as to the privilege, someones going to need to compile what we call in our world key documents,
walk them over to the president and present them to him and walk through how these documents are privileged or not privileged, and if theres evidence of a crime in some of those emails i dont want to put too fine a point on it, but im not sure in this instance the client would be the final word on the legal privilege . He clearly would not. Ultimately that would be up to the Special Master and the judge but his lawyers are going to need to put a claim in front of that master or the judge or its for naught. What was the legal purpose of these emails or the best person i should say is the president . In your view is this weird . It is weird. It is definitely weird. Ive done this with ceos and i will tell you, there is nothing worse than a lawyer having to get the time of a fortune 500 ceo. Their eyes glaze over and theyve got more important things to do. I can only imagine the more important things that the president of the United States needs to do, but obviously hes injecting himself because theres something very important to him in this process. Let me go back Down The Line. This also goes to the case that the feds were making against Michael Cohen which is a little awkward because they are federal prosecutors from the Trump Justice Department. They do that job without fear of favor. Their point which goes to why they dont think theres a lot of privilege here, whether mr. Trump, donald trump, President Trump wants to review this material or not, they say Michael Cohen doesnt do a lot of lawyering . Exactly. From all the reporting ive seen, what Michael Cohen did for donald trump was basically two things. He was a deal maker and he was a fixer. But in terms of, you know, representing him in court, giving him legal advice as opposed to advise on a deal or advice on solving a problem likeStormy Daniels, you know, which i there are aspects of that maybe could be privileged, i dont know. Youre the lawyer. He want, you know, a lawyer all the time he was dealing with donald trump. He was an aide. Ari, because of the role that cohen played in Donald Trumps life for a long, long time, i think everybody understands theres potential jeopardy here and my guess is, is that the trump organization, the lawyers will fight this and battle this on and on as long as they can. Theres potential jeopardy for the president and i think they know it. This kind of action creates a maze, but even more its legal quicksand for the president , because coming back to the point where we began, the Southern District of new york has rated Michael Cohens office for money laundering, potential bank fraud, really serious stuff supposedly not involving the
president. Now the president is injecting himself into the this case because he fears he may be involved in it. Its legal quicksand for him and my legal advice is worth what hes paying for it, but this kind of involvement, although perhaps typical of his handson attitude toward this stuff, really joins him with Michael Cohen in what has been a separate legal action, but it also indicates maybe he has some exposure and it also potentially makes him a witness in any proceeding involving Attorney Client privilege because once hes reviewed these documents and once his lawyers are quoting him, he stands to be called as a witness. Right. The flip side, Gene Robinson if you talk to people who are most sympathic would be the argument that this is a sitting president and people around him should not be pursued on any contextual basis just to get stuff on him. Okay. So you can imagine if you want to imagine a different
president and a different privilege, imagine a doctor, and you say the doctors up for some some maybe real crime but does that mean they can go through the president s medical files willynilly before someone else gets involved . You could make that argument, but you could you also make the argument that federal prosecutors cannot look away if they see potential Criminal Activity by somebody who has been very close to the president , like Michael Cohen, and indeed, the prosecutors in Southern District of new york are not going to look away and Robert Muellers not going to look away. Let me just make the point that the entire referral to new york was based on belief that there probably was a crime committed. Thats the basis of the referral. The warrant is based on a finding that there was a crime. There has to be a crime committed and then that evidence is not only there in cohens office and home and hotel room but that its potentially in danger of destruction or other kinds of obstruction. That an independent judge reached the determination you just mentioned knowing this is a sitting president s lawyer. Its no small thing. I want to bring seth waxman into it now. The only reason that the Washington Post is breaking this story is they feel firm about it, i can tell you bob muellers personal negotiations, the things that are important enough that he sits down and you see the headline breaking right now, Rudy Giuliani opens negotiations with interview with mueller. That headline is really interesting, seth, because its got a lot of talk about Attorney Client privilege, its got a lot of very private material packed into a depiction of Whats Going On and i want to read from a former doj official, matt miller who many of our viewers know. Hes responding to this right now posting on twitter, congratulations to julie an any on doing a good job professionalizing the Trump Legal Team that it took a full
24 hours for your snoerkss to mueller to leak to the press. Speak to that angle of critique. All defense would prefer this stay behind closed doors. If this is already being leaked out to the public, thats not ideal for the defense side. I agree with mr. Miller there, but were heading down the same path it seems we were about a month or two ago, where were heading towards this conflict between mueller and mr. Trump, the president in this under oath testimony and that is fraught with all kinds of perils. I still question whether hes actually going to do that and really his only way out is to plead the fifth. Mr. Rudy giuliani carries a lot of wait and has a lot of credibility and the mayor, but at the end of the day hes not going to be able to prevent the president from silt not guilty that room. The only thing that can do that is the Fifth Amendment. This story is breaking right now if viewers look on the bottom of the screen. Were crediting the Washington Post which broke the julie an
any story, the reporter from the the Washington Post who broke that story has called into the beat, carol, what can you tell us about your sourcing on this, how you got to this point and what its significance is . So i dont want to talk at all about the sourcing for this, but i will say that i enjoy matt millers commentary but i dont appreciate him saying that it was some great failure on the part of the defense that this story got out. It got out because of reporting and i would also just say that the significance from our Vantage Point covering this probe is that now you have finally in the helmsman position a lawyer leading the Trump Defense and reopening these talks where they were a month and a half ago, which is will the president sit down voluntarily for an interview with bob mueller who is now seeking, quite clearly, to know did the president have any
corrupt intentions when he took certain actions as the president and as the President Elect . Did he have any corrupt intention to thwart a criminal probe . I dont think matt millers observation is about the quality of your reporting, but there are different ways things come out and i think oh, no, no. Im being tongue in cheek. I enjoy matt immensely. I think what raises is, when you refer to your sourcing, obviously i dont mean the identification of your sourcing, i read this story as youre very confident in your sourcing that these meetings are taking place, they involve a president ial interview and Rudy Giuliani, according to your reporting, is reflecting a type of road where the client, the president , is still quote unquote, resistant to the idea of this interview but it is back on the table. Tell us about that. So, i think a couple things are going on. One, rudy is getting his sea legs in this case. He just arrived as of last week and so he wants to meet the person whos prosecuting investigating this matter to size up a case and also size up the probe, like what is it exactly that mueller still needs and wants before he completes what weve described as a partial report on his findings about obstruction. The other thing thats going on here is that ever since a raid at the home and office of Michael Cohen, one of the president s closest confidentants and his personal attorney, the president has deeply soured on the idea of sitting down with muellers team. Why is that . Because he felt really caught off guard as did most of the trump Legal Defense team, how could this have happened without them knowing. The muellers team is not leading that investigation. Youd have to be kind of naive
to believe that there isnt going to be a day when mueller wants to interview Michael Cohen about his behavior and interactions with the campaign and particularly in trying to talk to any russians that might have wanted to connect with the campaign as well. I want to ask you and seth the hardest question in the land these days, which is what does bob mueller thinking . But you notice in reading your story and ill go to you first carol and then seth, as you were just referencing, you said the Special Counsel emphasizes the interviews essential to understand trumps intent in making key decisions as they try to wrap up the portion of the probe focused on potential obstruction. Your report reflects the notion of this case moving in two parts and mueller making a play for an interview on the Obstruction Part but anyone thats been around a tough prosecutor knows
that what you say to get someone in the chair isnt always the beginning, middle and end that happens during the interview. Your view and then seth. Well, yes, of course. Youll be calm and quiet and smiling as you ask a witness to come and sit down and chitchat with you, but youve also seen as the president s lawyers have seen everyone whos sat down in that chair has some jeopardy and there have been quite a few who have now either been charged or have pled guilty to lying to investigators and once you sit in that chair and whether youre under oath or not, you could put yourself in increased danger. That is what trumps former lead lawyer warned the president over and over again. John dowd said, mr. President , all respect, you have to consider that youre jeopardy is low now and you will unnaturally and unnecessarily increase it by agreeing to an interview. Seth . Yeah, i can tell you i think bob mueller and his team are licking their chops. This is what prosecutors wait for, the opportunity to cross examine and question the target or at least in this case we know subject of their investigation and in those circumstances which mr. Trump has been in before in the sense of depositions, but nothing is like sitting in a room with a bunch of federal prosecutors and fbi agents not knowing where theyre going, not knowing exactly what documents they have and sitting there for hours and hours answering questions. And the last point id make, while this idea of obstruction may be out there and maybe thats being dangled as an idea to get him in the room, i find it highly questionable that mr. Mueller would stop at that point and not investigate or question him on the underlying crime potential underlying crime which is the conspiracy between the russians and the Trump Campaign to announce the 2016 election or at least the allegations of that. So in my opinion, if mr. Trump walks into that room everything
is on the table and those prosecutors im going to break in because im holding a new document followed by trump lawyer Michael Cohen within the last five minutes and it says base