Mystery that still hangs over the remarkable events of last week. Its easy to get overwhelmed by all the different threads here. Paul manaforts now a convicted felon with two trials to go. And these leaks that he might plea. Michael cohens a convicted felon, as a lawyer for trump, he knowingly helped trump break the law to influence an election. Roger stone has darkly predicted both his own indictment and that of donald trump jr. Now this week. Its a lot. But tonight, exactly one week out from that cohen plea deal we still dont know why cohen pled guilty this particular way. We dont know if hell ever cooperate with the feds in new york, or bob mueller. And when you think about it thats remarkable. Unlike, say, stone who just resists cooperation, or manafort who faced down a whole trial before any conversations about a plea, Michael Cohen had been openly auditioning for cooperation. He was leaking that he had a story to tell. His new lawyer lanny davis was telling everyone who would listen, including my colleague Rachel Maddow, that cohen knew things of interest to bob mueller, and still knows them, a trumpian way to communicate with mueller, basically yelling on tv come interview us. And yet there are zero reports up to tonight that muellers team has interviewed cohen. And cohens own legal team hasnt suggested it happened either. And cohen has now pled guilty without this Cooperation Agreement in public of any kind. In fact, it was in that remarkable appearance tuesday that we learned the details. Of course, there were no cameras in court. But those words, they certainly jumped off the page of the transcripts. Judge, now, mr. Cohen, your attorney has informed me that you wish to enter a plea of guilty. Do you wish to enter a plea of guilty . The defendant, Michael Cohen, yes, sir. The judge, have you had a full opportunity to discuss the case with your attorney and discuss the consequences of entering a plea of guilty, the defendant, yes, your honor. On or about december 2016 in coordination and at the direction of a candidate for federal office i and the ceo of a Media Company at the request of the candidate worked together to keep an individual with information that would be harmful to the candidate and to the campaign from publicly disclosing this information. I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in manhattan for the principle purpose of influencing the election. So we know all that. Which leaves a big question hanging out there. Is that it . Does cohen beg for leniency and move on . Does mueller know something that we dont and has concluded that cohens just not an important enough figure in this russia probe . Well, tonight there are new clues. And the news is no, based on reporting from her sister channel cnbc. While mueller did hand off the investigation of cohen himself, muellers team has continued to investigate how cohen fits into the larger picture, asking witnesses about cohens involvement in the Trump Campaign itself, well after the april raid on cohens property, which of course is when things shifted to new york, stretching into may they were asking witnesses if cohen did his own personal business while he worked for trump, and why such a loyal lawyer for donald trump, never got a job in the trump white house. Now, that last question, in this new reports important because it could be ominous for the trump white house. It goes to who knew what about cohens legal problems. Did people at the white house know about these new crimes that cohen has confessed to. Were they part of them . Did they want to keep him out of the white house for that very reason . Because it was always curious that trump did not find any Government Role for cohen. Consider these high profile departures from the trump administration, their hiring policy is pretty loose and has a lot of people coming and going. Cohen wasnt one of them. He, himself, was clearly publicly sad about not getting asked to do anything. Again, with this new reporting tonight were learning mueller is asking about this, not because he cares how the white house is staffed, but because the curious avoidance may be of investigative interest. To find out why the fixer and trump executive didnt get hired, well, the president would be a key witness to interview about that. And trumps allies are saying theyre girding for a grand jury subpoena from bob mueller to do exactly that. The tactic of the trump team, i have no inside information on this, but the tactic of the trump team is to make the mueller team an offer they cant accept so that in the end there will be no sitdown, and the trump team can say, look, we made them an offer, its their fault, they didnt accept it, i suspect that mueller is on to this tactic and is now looking forward to filing some kind of a legal action excellicompelling president to appear in front of a grand jury. Im joined by nick akerman, brent newborn, and christina belltran. Thanks to all of you, bert, your view of this unusual style of cohen pleading and what it portends . Well, i dont think its particularly unusual. Two teams of prosecutors, the new york prosecutor that worked out this particular plea deal, but then theres mueller hovering thinking maybe hes going to be able to get more information from cohen that will take him closer to the president. So it doesnt surprise me that theyre operating on parallel tracks and that i suspect that mueller is going to try very, very hard to use cohen to get as close to the president. So you think thats what hes tracking. Take a listen to sam nunberg who talked about the mueller question. Hes been inside that room. I was in there for around like five to six hours. And there could have a lot of it had to do specifically with michael. And the fact that they then they put out michaels case to the Southern District meant to me that they didnt really believe that michael had anything of value. Nick, your view . My view is that Michael Cohen is cooperating with mueller and hes cooperating with the Southern District. The plea that he entered into, that plea agreement was exactly the same plea agreement that i did with a client about a summer ago where there was also contemporaneous Cooperation Agreement that was put under seal at the same time in the judges chambers. I think the same thing is going on here. Theres no way that cohen would take a sixyear exposure that the entire allocution in the plea agreement would be tailored the way it was unless it was being orchestrated by the mueller team. On top of all that, you also had this odd situation in the last day where lanny davis came out and said i really cant tell you whether or not mueller that my client knows anything about the russian investigation. I can tell you exactly what happened there. He went over his bounds. He started talking too much about what it was his client does know about the trump tower meeting and other aspects of the russian investigation. And the mueller team came down on him like a ton of bricks and told him that if he continued to do that or his client continued to do that that there would be no Cooperation Agreement. That is basically been the way that the mueller team has worked. You havent heard flynn say a word about anything with respect to the russian investigation. You havent heard rick gates say anything about the russian investigation. We know that there was another matter that was brought before the judge in Northern Virginia that was done under seal. We know that certain materials, rick gates statements had to be turned over to the defense at that time. They have an idea and manafort has a good idea about what your theory here is the reason why the way it looks in public doesnt make sense is because the way it looks in public is not the full story, that Michael Cohen didnt just plead out of the blue with no other idea that he could get leniency and that lanny davis sounds wishywashy, not because hes a potential idiot, but because he is responding to pressures that are greater than his previous media strategy. Absolutely. He was basically told by the prosecutors you cannot be making statements about what your clients going to say. I mean, the reason that lanny davis has been trying to humanize his client and put him out there in the media is because theyre trying to raise money for his defense fund. Thats the reason theyre doing it. Its the only logical reason you can think of as to why theyre doing that. Which goes to the curious case of Michael Cohen, theres been the saying that many people that work for donald trump are ruined by it. But theres also something that happens where when donald trump ruins someone it drastically shifts their public perception, almost overnight. We had reporting that Michael Cohen was being congratulated and highfived after pleading guilty to crimes, which is weird. James comey was widely reviled by the partisan Democratic Hillary Clinton supporters for the unusual choices he made, but then became something of a public hero and truth teller. Lets listen to Michael Cohen here explaining the role he was going to play that was not really in the white house, but was still for the president before all this happened. Im going to be the personal attorney to mr. Trump. Im not going to be in government, but im going to remain technically in the same role for mr. Trump for President Trump. That clip made you sound like someone who didnt get the ring spinning it as something that muellers investigating. Why was that decision made . He doesnt look that happy about it. These are fascinating. I think one thing i keep thinking about is when melania told donald trump you should pick pence because hes clean. Cohen is not clean. So cohen didnt get into get into the white house because of real theres a real sense of intimacy between donald trump, they know each other. The betrayal between them is deep. I think one of the things i think of now is the passion of the converted, you have cohen, theyre not just this isnt comey, somebody whos sort of doing his job, we might disagree with it, but we know he did what he thought was right, the relationship with cohen and trump is a relationship built on intimacy and passion and the rage and desire to get back at trump and the desire for trump to get back at cohen, these are now really intense relationships that are going to impact how and when and how he speaks to mueller and its going to have a real impact on the entire political dynamic here because these are long standing relationships in intimacy, the man who said im going to take a bullet for donald trump now wants to take the gun. Thats going to play out. One tremendously important thing happened. They went in with a search warrant, and got all of cohens files. That changed thats got to change the way cohen thinks and trump thinks. I think there was a period when the president thought he could make cohen his private lawyer, and that would mean an attorneyclient relationship and he was dropping a cone of silence over cohen. And then when the prosecutor broke that door down and got all of his files, that entire strategy went up in flames. And at this point, i think, cohen has probably turned on the president and turned on him in selfdefense because muellers got all of that information. So in that comparison then, nick, how do you explain that unlike flynn and others, there is no Public Statement of cooperation . Is it just that, as bert is referring to, theres so much evidence to go through and that cohen is, in many ways, has more credibility problems than even mike flynn, which is saying something, and so the prosecutors effectively wanted to get in and before the 60day window and Everything Else coming down the pike, youve got to plead to this without considering they would not have pleaded to a sixyear felony. The idea that he is not supportable, i mean, the fact that there is a search warrant, the fact there are these documents and there are these tapes make him actually a more credible witness. Thats where the corroboration is going to come from. Just like you saw the prosecutors with respect to rick gates corroborating everything he said with documents in manaforts own handwriting, youre going to see the same thing with cohen. Even on this whole issue of the payoffs to the two women, youve got trump on tape. He tape recorded trump. I mean, that supports what he says. So in some ways cohen is going to be no different than any other any of the other accomplice witnesses. I think what they did by hiding the Cooperation Agreement is really detract away from what cohen really knows and what hes doing. And i think that mueller wants to keep the attention on the Southern District right now, not make it look as though hes necessarily the star witness for the mueller team, which i believe he is, and hes you think hes a star witness . I think hes one of them. Because he knows something about russia. Hes one of the three stars along with flynn and rick gates. And manafort is and manafort is on deck to manafort is to suddenly become the new canary. It depends on your analysis whether his lawyer wants to make him a the key thats hanging out there is cohen. Cohen is the link to the president. And i think that mueller is pushing that as hard as hes going to go, maybe through a secret Cooperation Agreement, maybe through just putting continued pressure on him. But it just doesnt surprise me. Yeah, and long standing relationships that are based on a certainly level of sort of selfinterested mistrust as well. When you think about the politics of celebrity combined with this and the fact that cohen has been described as an evidence horder. When youre dealing with donald trump that makes sense. So omarosas point about having receipts, cohen has ten years of receipts so the amount of information he has combined with the emotional dynamics at play here are going to make this fascinating to watch. When you watch that it also raises the question of what were they all thinking of during the campaign well, gosh, this is getting serious, if we do win is it going to be the worst thing that ever happened to us personally. Ive got to take in a break, thanks to nick akerman and the rest of my panel. A bizarre story in new york city where manaforts banker who was considered a potential witness was just robbed of his briefcase and ipad in the middle of the night. My exclusive interview with a former prosecutor who deposed donald trump. 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He was one of the key figures not called by bob muellers office to testify at the trial of Paul Manafort. The breakin came on the same nec news broke that manafort had begun negotiations on a plea deal. Authorities have not said whether theyre investigating any potential link between this burglary of Paul Manaforts bankers home and the current legal pressure on manafort who is now a convict ed felon. Its possible that its a random unsolved burglary. The Garment District near penn station, which has had 27 different burglaries since the start of 2017 according to city records. Thats a place where there are some burglaries to choose from. But how about where manaforts banker actually lives . Its an expensive neighborhood by central park lined with fancy doorman buildings. A random home burglary is as common there, maybe instead of 27, there are 20 or ten or five. Nope. We checked city records today and found that since january 2017 that block has zero burglaries, not one. And we confirmed those records with nypd assistant commissioner who says yes there have been no residential burglaries on that block at all since january 2017. Authorities are not saying more with the suspects or motives, no reporting that says this is linked to Paul Manafort directly. It could be an unusual event at