Brian Williams examines the day s top political stories and current political-campaign news. new york. day 579 of the trump administration turns out was the day the president was placed in real legal jeopardy. here is the story from tomorrow s front page of the new york times. cohen pleads guilty implicated president. the president s former personal lawyer turned himself into the fbi today and stood in federal court and pleaded guilty to eight charges including two related to rush money payments to women which he admitted were at the direction of his boss, donald trump, for the purpose of influencing the 2016 election. cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and lying to a financial institution, as well as two campaign finance violations. again, both involving trump s quest for the white house. the payoffs described match the cases of karen mac dougall and stormy daniels. this case is being brought by the feds. attorney for the eastern district of virginia. also happens to be a senior official at the fbi. and daniel goldman, former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. the jurisdiction at the center of much of today s news. welcome to you all. nicole, i would like to begin with you. mr. goldman s former boss, the former u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york, said on twitter today just a plain statement of fact. michael cohen in a courtroom in the southern district of new york under oath, declared that the president directed him to commit a federal crime. a lot of this, all of this happened while you were on the air this afternoon. have you had time to inhale just what it is we witnessed today? you know, i thought about today. we were on the air together on the day of trump s bizarre inaugural address, my old boss had colored the language to describe. i was thinking about the line about carnage and i was thinking anything for their family, that they betrayed him. the idea of loyalty and carnage sort of collided after i got off the air today and sort of looked at the wreckage in the lives of these people that went into business with the president committing crimes, perhaps at his behest. you see ongoing pile ups in the lives of everyone associated with this president. emily jane fox, you have spoken to michael cohen in the hours since his appearance in federal court. tell us about the conversation. this was an emotional day for michael cohen. mostly because of what his family witnessed and i think that was difficulty. i wasn t in the courtroom today listened to him go count by count and not only admit he was guilty to those, but really describing detail why he was guilty of those crimes. so watched him get emotional and describing that and then this evening when i spoke with him emotional talking about the toll this took on his family, something he stressed to me over if they were going to perhaps say you wouldn t want to see your wife go in the federal slammer. did she have any cupability. i ll correct you he has a daughter and a son. forgive me. that s it. the rest i think you re spot on. i think that s a very important point. this is very close-knit marriage. they are people who are very involved in their businesses. the new york times reported over the weekend she s someone who cosigned loan documents and from all i know in my year of close reporting on michael cohen, he would do anything to save his family from any trouble, any pain, any hardship. if his wife were, in fact, in any kind of trouble, that would be a reason for him to take action to stand up and do something. artfully answered and thanks. michael, all the smart reporters in the business, everything we ve seen come and go. every one we ve seen come and go. the folks who knew the name of the game kept saying cohen is the one. cohen is the one that could do the most damage here. cohen is the one to concentrate on. you were among them. is this kind of what you were talking about? go back to the spring, the raid happens and the president s lawyers say, okay, it s a new front in our legal wars. we know the extent of the mueller investigation, at least they thought they did. we understand the questions of collusion around the president. we understand obstruction. we have no idea what went on between the president and michael cohen. we don t think we re getting truthful answers from the president about it. we do not understand the extent of his criminal exposure, and that is incredibly scary. up until today, i still do not think they appreciated just the gravity that this was going to have on the president. and i m not sure what they can do at this point. i don t know how they get themselves out of this situation. and that s just one part of the fight. we still haven t seen what mueller is going to do. that s exactly right. daniel, please help us lay people out. describe the agreement agreed to today. what is in it? what s not? does this constitute the quick and easy phrase of flipping. did michael cohen flip today? if not, how shy of that is he? well, the big surprise here is that he did not flip. this is not a cooperation agreement. this is a standard plea agreement where michael cohen went into court, as we all saw and witnessed, and admitted to committing eight crimes. he did not agree to cooperate with the government in any meaningful way including testifying down the road. and the government did not agree to write a letter to reduce his sentence, which is the benefit that he would have gotten. this is very surprising to me as a former assistant in that office because all indication is that michael cohen is not only willing but desperate to cooperate. so i, frankly, do not understand exactly what is going on because it does seem based on his allocution in court today where he volunteered, by the way, when he pointed at the president, that was unnecessary. that was something he did not need to say in order to fulfill his obligation to al cute to the judge. it s not in the information. it s something he added himself to essentially make the president an unindicted coconspirator. he clearly wants to cooperate but this is not a cooperation agreement. i center to say, he has lanny davis appearing on this network and cnn tonight capabilitying there s indicating there s stories to tell. including but not limited to advanced knowledge of russian hacking. it s almost if they re begging to have a meeting with presidenters. as a former prosecute we are i m sure chuck will say the same, we will offer the meeting any day of the week. it s surprising given the foreshadowing that lady davis is making. given what he said in court today. that s enough to pique the prosecutor s interest. it piques our interest. the only other explanation the prosecutor don t feel they ve told him the truth. i adopt think there s been enough time they could have been meeting over the past couple of weeks and for the prosecutors to believe he s not truthful. so the final conclusion, the only thing that makes any sense to me is that this is a marker. this is a place holder before labor day, before we get into election season. so they don t disrupt anything and can t be accused of disrupting anything related to the election. have him plead guilty to what we know he s under investigation for, and then they ll sort of begin the cooperation process, which requires many, many meetings between cohen and the prosecutor s and investigators. chuck, it comes down to you. in the moment as it was happening today, i heard several good legal minds. open the door and toss out the phrase unindicted coconspirator it had me flashing back to 1974 and 75. is it a term of art in the law? can it be applied to one donald trump after a day like today? it is a term of art and the law, brian. i think it can be applied to the president of the united states as of today. we ve thrown it around before but today we had someone stand up in court under oath, by the way, it wasn t just any someone. it was the president s personal lawyer who said i was directed to do this by donald trump. it s a remarkable thing. daniel is right. cohen did not need to go there. he did. one other point i would like to amplify. like daniel, i m a bit confused why there s no cooperation language in this agreement, but nothing in the agreement precludes him from accommodating down the road. and so it may well be a marker. the cooperation may follow. it certainly seems like mr. cohen and his team are foreshadowing that. and if he s truthful and helpful, i m certain the government will be interested. nicole, here is the big question. the rest was all wind up. what did today do to the trajectory of this presidency that you and i talk about for a living. where are we headed now? it s shattered. the narrative that the investigation of this president is a witch hunt. i mean, the witches all had, you know, keys to the kingdom and these were all people that were doing donald trump s bidding. so the idea that he can spear the investigation that will follow to the southern district of new york which had nothing to do with what the target that donald trump attacked on a daily basis, i think it s a bridge too far. i think this might be the day. if we look back and they re whipping the votes in the senate to see if the impeachment vote in the house, if they have enough votes to convict him. they ll look back on this day as one of the days that began to erode that lock they have on the republican base. republicans have been pathetic. they ve been pathetic during the campaign and during the presidency. but you can t sustain too many days where the president s former fixer lawyer stands up in court and said i committed crimes at the request of the president. and look the other way. they did it after that access hollywood tape. they ve done it after every sort of these are serious crimes being charged of the people that were closest to this president. michael schmidt, i don t know that anyone at the new york times has assigned the side bar. i suppose it s plausible that today was the day on two fronts when the good guys, meaning men and women woman. in northern virginia, a jury of paul manafort s peers acquitted themselves well and put in a lot of effort in that case. and in new york, we got to work watch the career publicer is vanlts of the southern district of new york. one of them actually called cohen out as a fellow lawyer. as someone who had disregarded his training and tradition. but to a lot of people watching, it felt like a recentering today. part of this story we don t know the answer to. and that is why did rod rosenstein have the cohen investigation moved to the southern district? because what it did was it took the issue of a witch hunt sort of away from mueller on that day. he gave it to these career prosecutors here. they walk into court today. they get this plea and they walk out. it s not bob mueller. it s not the 17 angry democrats. it s a bench of well-educated assistant united states attorneys that have done this. that protects the integrity certainly from a political perspective. the president cannot as easily stand up tomorrow and say look at what bob mueller has done. this is not bob mueller. that s a great point. our guests have agreed to stick around while we fit in a quick break. when we come back, how today fits and what it tells us about that point. the larger mueller investigation. and, later, bad news for another senior member of the trump team. it has to do with a house guest of his and another republican member of the house indicted. the news watch never stops, as they say on a new york radio station, we re here to cover it all the 11th hour just getting started on a tuesday night. this wi-fi is fast. brian s back? he doesn t get my room. he s only going to be here for like a week. like a month, tops. oh boy. wi-fi fast enough for the whole family is simple, easy, awesome. in many cultures, young men would stay with their families until their 40 s. as we have reported, president trump s long time personal attorney michael cohen turned himself over to the fbi today and pleaded guilty to a number of felony charges, including breaking campaign finance laws. the man who once said he would take a bullet for donald trump admitted he arranged payments for two women at the direction of the candidate, referring to trump with the purpose of affecting the election. right now it s not totally clear what this news means for mueller s overall russia investigation, but harvard law professor wrote on twitter about something we ve been discussing. quote, no way cohen would have entered guilty pleas to eight felony counts in new york city today without either a sealed cooperation agreement or a con right now it s not totally clear what this news means for mueller s overall russia investigation, but harvard law professor wrote on twitter about something we ve been discussing. quote, no way cohen would have entered guilty pleas to eight felony counts in new york city today without either a sealed cooperation agreement or a con confidential understanding with mueller, which the plea agreement in the southern district of new york expressly left open. so he still has key information on trump to share. no mention of michael cohen or paul manafort tonight at the president s rally in west virginia. he briefly brought up the whole russia thing. fake news and the russian witch hunt. we got a whole big where is the collusion? you know, they re still looking for collusion. where is the collusion? find some collusion! we want to find the collusion. the panel remains with us. chuck, talk about robert mueller. talk about what quarter we may be in of this investigation. i guess the motto there continues to be steady as you go. steady as you go. every time you ask me a bob mueller question, brian, i say something like steady as you go. we re not in the first quarter anymore. i know that. i don t think we re in the fourth quarter either. there s two other quarters. but my sense is that there s a lot more work to be done. by the way, i don t think i agree with the professor. but plea agreements in the federal system have to be the entire agreement. there can be no side agreements. let me make that clear in court and writing. and so i still believe that mr. cohen may cooperate, at some point, and i m sure mueller would want it. of course, he would, if it s truthful and helpful. but i don t believe there are side agreements here. somebody who would know more about that practice in the southern district of new york than me would be dan goldman. but i suspect that mr. tribe may be wrong about that point. and, dan, when you hear the president on the no collusion front, we ve just emerged from a 24-hour period with a lot of discussion about the e-mail setting up the meeting at trump tower because of the intense russian government interest in seeing donald trump elected. is that ball game for you right there? it s not ball game, but it is a strong indication that there was an appetite, a willingness, an intent to engage with russia in order to allow the russians to interfere with our election, which is a crime. it gets us part of the way but it doesn t get us all the way. so, you know, collusion, of course, is colloquial. i don t think that itself would be grounds for a conspiracy charge, which is how bob mueller would charge it, but it gets it part of the way. when you start to add up the different data points, the july 27th date, when trump asks russia to find hillary clinton s e-mails. then an indictment from bob mueller that said on that date, they went phishing for e-mails. it starts to make a little bit more sense. now you have lanny davis who goes on-air tonight on rachel maddow s show and said that michael cohen might have information that donald trump knew about the hacking before it was released. we re starting to get closer and closer and closer, and remember bob mueller speaks in indictments. he speaks in thorough, detailed, complicated, and sophisticate the indictments. he doesn t speak in the media all this talk about no collusion can be just literally knocked out of the air with one major indictment. nicole, that s a great point. the one person in all this mess we haven t heard a peep from and never will until it s time is bob mueller. do you think shares this view of labor day being the start of a forced national rest period where he must put all pencils down? i was warned by someone who worked closely alongside bob mueller for close to a decade not to accept any sort of analysis of what bob mueller is going to do. this person said bob mueller wouldn t tell his dying mother if he was going to indict or not indict. if he was going to charge or not charge. if he was going to follow doj policy on this or that. it is a known unknown what bob mueller is thinking and what he s going to do. that said, i think that you look at the mueller investigation and you look at the helsenke moment. people said an obstruction, he s sloppy, messy and your entire body of reporting. he peppers people with questions. you know, we know don mccann spent 30 hours talking to him. they ve been worried about obstruction. they call mueller a prosecutorial assassin. but after helsenke they concerned about the conspiracy charge that he may be vulnerable there, too. today they re looking at the news and the people closest to the president said he could be in a lot of trouble. i think we re talking about the republicans at the beginning. that is what will begin to sort of, i think, begin to dismantle this. it s mind blowing to people from the outside or people that worked in republican politics before. there was never a question whether bush or cheney obstructed justice. donald trump is the target of these investigation the. he s been held up by the ridiculous fear grip that republicans feel from him. but i think will look back today may be the day that people start to wonder if he isn t in more trouble than we understand. mike schmidt, our friend chuck will tell you that mueller prefers meetings standing up in his office because it keeps your energy up and it s more efficient. ironically asks coworkers and associates every day what they have done for their country at work. sometimes prior to 6:00 a.m. it has always been difficult to imagine a room with mueller and trump in it. have the chances of that rumored mythical sit down, let s say dimmed, a little bit further today? well, i can t imagine they got any better. but i m not sure they were in that good of a place to start. i ve been reporting on this interview for almost eight months now and the president s lawyers have continually said they re just a few weeks away from making a decision. and i fell for that along the way at different points. we re still here. now coming into september. rudy said that they can t do an interview in september or october too close to the election. comey territory, as he calms calls it. referring back to the 2016 election. so the opening for that, i can t imagine is there. by the way, i m told rudy is in scotland on vacation. that may say something or nothing at all. we have been lead to believe that this dance has been going on between cohen and the southern district of new york. here is what i have to share. here is what we may have for you. here is how we can reduce your sentence. i kind of see you in the chevrolet, that kind of thing going back and forth. then we kind of learned today that this was a very fast dance of 24 to 48 hours. this just came together. what can you confirm or deny based on your reporting? so my reporting i reported this in vanity fair this evening is yes there have been overtures to the prosecution from cohen s lawyers over the last several weeks saying, hey, we re here. we can talk if you want to talk. but a real attempt in earnest with the two of them to sit down didn t come until last week. they came, called, and said you have a limited amount of time to tell us what you want to tell us. so the end of last week, through the weekend and the beginning of this week was impressionable for cohen s side. cohen went into the week fully expecting to be arrested. he spent the weekend assuming that he would be arrested early this week. so that is where talks were over the weekend. now, people who are close cohen clammed up over the last couple of days and went silent. that, to me, was an indication that things were getting serious. that discussions were going to a new place. but this is a very quick process, which leads me to believe there may be more to the process. it was important to avoid the shot of being walked in handcuffs. so thus the surrender to the fbi. correct. this was something he did not want his children to see. he didn t want his kids to see him doing a perp walk. the fact he was able to surrender on his own terms today was important to him. something he had been thinking about, talking about, telling friends about since last week. since prosecutors began talking with his attorney. on this note, our thanks. i can t thank you enough for joining us and starting off our conversation. coming up for us this evening, manafort s attorney says they re evaluating all options. then comes their next trial. we ll break down what that could mean for donald trump when the 11th hour continues. is josh gearstein. because we extorted him with payments wired to an overseas bank, we ve got daniel goldman to agree after a long day to spend even more time with us. thank you so much. josh, you ve covered every day of this. was this the definition of ending with a whimper and not a bang? it did seem to be. i mean, i think everybody was eager to get the trial over with after four days of deliberations and into its fourth week. i got the sense from both sides they were a bit weary of the situation. we did get an indication from notes from the jury one note in particular today that they were struggling. initially people thought it was one count. they were struggling with. it turned out what the jury was trying to say they wanted to know what the process was if they couldn t come to a vikt. it turned out that on ten of the 18 counts against manafort, they were deadlocked. we don t know by a what margin. we just don t know that at this point. but it did kind of go out with a whimper. i must say if you re the defendant to hear yourself pronounced guilty on eight felony counts in federal courtroom, it s not a good day for you. and i saw paul manafort swallow pretty hard when the first guilty verdict on the first tax charge came in. after that he pretty much just froze. yeah. a moment none of us want to experience firsthand. daniel, now, as an exfed, center us up as the way they see this in washington. if you re mueller s office, is a win a win? yes. very simply yes. and particularly a win in a convictions on all three trenches of charges. and you put it up there. the five tax charges. subsequently, michael cohen s eight counts. the first five were tax charges, as well. in paul manafort s case he was convicted of five tax charges and there s one failure to report the foreign bank accounts and two bank fraud charges. that s helpful to the prosecution because they ll argue at sentencing he should be sentenced on all of the conduct in the indictment even on the charges that were deadlocked by the jury. and so and the judge can find that by a preponderance of the evidence. as a prosecutor, you look for a conviction. you obviously want to sweep. i m sure they would have preferred all 18 counts. to get convictions even when you have some of the counts home is still absolutely a victory, i would say. it s not a resounding or overwhelming victory, but it s a strong victory and right now you saw kevin downing and his face, which was a very different look than he s had for the last week and a half or so. and i m sure the prosecution s side they are relieved and happy. josh, when the judge s peers go over the transcripts within even if we never hear a word about it in the future, do you think it will be found by rational people he hurt the prosecution? i think so. i think there were a few different incidents he seemed to undercut their case. he took a shot in court, it seemed like, at the prosecutor s star witness in the case, rick gates. there was another time he suggested one of the counts that manafort was not convicted on today that there was a hung jury because it was an attempted bank fraud. it wasn t very significant and maybe the prosecution shouldn t be pursuing it. again, would be unusual comments for a judge to make outside the presence of a jury. i think inside with the presence of a jury in the courtroom, very unusual. and probably over the line. that said, mistakes that hurt the prosecution, as we ve discussed before, brian, there s no recourse for those. there is no appeal and i don t think these are so extraordinary that judge ellis is going to face any kind of actual incrimination for. thanks to both of these gentlemen who have been up early covering this trial every day for us. our thanks to you. coming up, the new york times editorial board puts it this way. for a witch hunt, mr. mueller s investigation bagged a remarkable number of witches. from the very beginning . it was always our singular focus, a distinct determination. to do whatever it takes, use every possible resource. to fight cancer. and never lose sight of the patients we re fighting for. our cancer treatment specialists share the same vision. experts from all over the world, working closely together to deliver truly personalized cancer care. specialists focused on treating cancer. using advanced technologies. and more precise treatments than before. working as hard as we can- doing all that we can- for everyone who walks through our doors. this is cancer treatment centers of america. and these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. treating cancer isn t one thing we do. it s the only thing we do. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. a response to all today s dramatic developments. bill kristol asks the question on social media. if flynn is guilty and manafort is guilty and cohen is guilty, maybe trump is guilty? we are pleased to have with us tonight two of our favorites. eugene robinson and bill kristol. gentlemen, thank you. have we not arranged for you to come on, we would be scrambling to ask you to come on. bad day for donald trump. i think, at the end of it, a bad day for our country, too. i guess, you know, i mean, you don t like to see the president s a situation where the campaign chairman and personal lawyer have plead guilty or been found guilty of felony crimes. it s pretty astounding. how do you think it has changed the trajectory of what we re looking at? what do you think we re looking at? i think it s a reminder that robert mueller knows a lot. think about the implications of the matter for trial coming up. what manafort, if he chooses to cooperate, could talk about. and cohen, especially. he may not be cooperating yet but if he chooses to cooperate, the amount he would know about not just the particular crimes, which he plead guilty and seems to be i implicated president trump in but as lanny davis, the other things that cohen could talk about. day-to-day stuff. i think it will get to russia. any pro trump talking voice tonight they ve been well, where is russia? it s not collusion in russia. let s see how long it lasts. eugene, you have a colleague that can turn a phrase. his name is dan balls and i quote no day during president trump s 19 months in office could prove as dangerous or data habilitating as tuesday. this was a day when truth overran tweets when facts overwhelm bald assertions. presidential tweets, however provocative, eventually disappear into the ether. tuesday s convictions could send two people close with president trump to prison for several years. one brought the investigation to the door of the white house. i concur. i was here during the 4:00 hour with nicolle today. present at the creation. he woo felt like we were on the wrong end of an artillery barrage of news with a few hours to think about it, two things come to mind aside from the fact that can is a master at framing the big picture. number one, rudy giuliani was wrong on sunday at least as far as the u.s. justice system is concerned. truth is truth. yeah. and that s what our justice system is designed to find. russians were coming to trump tower. that s kind of comforting. that s a good thing for america i think that that still functions. the other thing is, so you ve got cohen, manafort, you had flynn, gates. these characters around donald trump, you get the portrait, this sort of pointistic portrait of seediness and crooked dealings and underhanded shenanigans an unbecoming the leader of a great country. this is not a surprise about donald trump. but it just becomes much more vivid i think and today was a particularly vivid day with cohen saying, the president now president of the united states directed me to commit a felony. to pick up on that point, we went today from unbecoming sleazy very problematic conduct that a lot of us deplored to two guilty pleas with two or three or more close associates of the president now cooperating with the justice department which incidentally both on the special counsel side and the southern district of new york decide which had been coordinated which means the whole justice department is now pursuing this investigation in a very serious way. i think rosenstein may turn out to be a very interesting character that he s been we know mueller s a black box. rosen tine s decision to give the cohen investigation to the southern district of new york so it could go on its own track, the dog to which there may have been an attempt to coordinating the timing. i was struck that cohen wasn t really approached about a deal till maybe ten days ago and then about a plea and then they put pressure on him. i wonder how much rosenstein wanted to try to maximize the impact by thinking these two together as much as he could with the manafort trial copping to an end and turning out to have a guilty verdict. you do have a kind of it s a serious investigation. i very much agree. this is the justice department being curious about discovering the break. just to continue our conversation on the other side, both gentlemen will stay with us. his wife have appearance tomorrow morning for misuse of campaign funds. he was the second member of congress 0 support donald trump, the first was chris collins of upstate new york. he of indictment fame. what s going on here? collins who kuck insider trading from the white house picnic from the white house lawn. yes. i don t know what s going on. what s going on is what we see. i do think in either a republican primary. 2020 against donald trump or maybe a republican open field if trump s no longer president, the market for a serious reformer who says you know what, i understand why some people went for trump. they wanted change but he unfortunately made it worse. we really need to fundamentally reform the ways of washington in serious ways not in demagoguic ways. there will be a big market for that. people are trying to be that market now. elizabeth warren is now the with a new pitch along those lines and democrats are going to pick that up. at your paper, another writer we should talk about, robert costa. he can turn a phrase, as well. he s got a story tonight that larry kudlow has invited i guess on more than one occasion a white nationalist to a birthday party at his home. who among us hasn t had a white nationalist to a dinner party at our house. just kidding. what are we to take of where are all these white nationalists coming from? where do they come from and why are they on everybody s social calendar now. i don t understand it. how do you it more than once. but in this case, he was a respectable national review conservative, who has gradually slid off the deep end. i guess he knew larry kudlow from years ago, lived near each other in connecticut and it s a social thing. it s indicative of something that happened to parts of the conservative movement. there were people of it and a little bit maybe on the fringe of it. and who really ended up in a pretty unattractive place. the left has its version, as well. and both parties have dealt with it, and it s the folks who deal with it forthrightly and call it for what it is, and i guess we should learn about a lesson who we invite over to the house. yeah. especially the white nationalists. cross them off when you see them. lonnie let s go over the list one more time. gentlemen, i can t thank you enough. it s been one of those days in our country and in this ongoing story in the short history of this broadcast. eugene and bill, thank you. thanks. thank you. with that, that is our broadcast as we say for the aforementioned busy tuesday night. our thanks to all of you for being with us. and good night from nbc news headquarters here in new york.
Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with in-depth reporting and investigations. perhaps even before watergate that a federal criminal guilty plea has taken place. and the guilty person has said i committed this crime with and for the president of the united states. if this were any other person, given the evidence that was presented in court today, it seems to me a virtual certainty that donald trump would have been indicted and charged, too. remember, who benefitted from this campaign fnls violation? it wasn t michael cohen. the beneficiary was, according to michael cohen, the person who directed and then helped cover up this illegal campaign contribution. this brings this criminal case to the door of the oval office like nothing we have seen before in this investigation. but jeff, obviously, you know, sitting president, according to precedent, not law, can t be indicted. had the president leaves office, is this something charges could be pursued against him for? well, it could. i think. i don t think the statute of limitations will have run. you know, that could be a long way off. there are a lot of things that may change in the interim, but the justice department policy, and as you point out, it s a policy, not a law. it s not part of the constitution. says no criminal charges against a president while he is president. this issue may arise when the president leaves office, but all of that, i think, is down the road. preet, do you agree if donald trump were not the president, if he lost the election, given what michael cohen is claiming and swore under oath today that he himself did under the direction of donald trump, that donald trump would be indicted or would be an inundited co-conspirator? the would be a likelihood of that, but i think it s an enormously significant thing. i think it s correct to say we haven t seen something like this, the likes of this, like the president likes to say, the likes of this we have never seen. because we don t know how corroborated michael cohen is on the particular allegation that he made in court. that this was done at the direction and in coordination with his boss, the president. when you say we don t know how corroborated? we don t go if there are tapes or e-mails. i tend to credit michael cohen on this allegation, fwhut president s lawyers are right that this allegation of this being done at the direction of the president is not in the documentation. the charges. it s not in the criminal information. it s not in the plea agreement. it s not even necessarily a requirement to form the factual basis for michael cohen taking the plea. you go into court, and you have to give a factual basis for why you re guilty. so one could argue, i don t think this is right, and i m sure giuliani and others have been arguing this. that it was a gratuitous slap by someone who has been left behind and now has an ax to grind with the president, to throw this in in open court under oath. it still is the case, he said it. would prosecutors have accepted this agreement if they didn t believe michael cohen? i think if prosecutors thought he was lying about that aspect of why he did what he did, i think they would have a problem accepting his plea agreement. they would have to say something in court. so i think it s enormously significant. it s not clear to me, though, not knowing what other evidence there is to back up michael cohen, who is, by the way, a criminal and a liar and now a convicted one, you need something else to back that up. you pointed out that this president go ahead, jeff. if i could just add, preet is exactly right that this allegation by cohen is not in the charging documents. but just if we step back and ask ourselves, okay, michael cohen has pled guilty to an unlawful campaign contribution in terms of paying these two women. why would he pay that without talking to donald trump? it is never made any sense that michael cohen did this on his own. well, first of all where did he get the money. second of all, who benefitted? that argument has never made sense. it s been made by all the surrogates who came forward after stormy daniels spoke. david schwartz was on the program, an attorney for michael cohen in another matter, and other friends of michael cohen, all of whom said the president didn t know anything about this. he did this out of the goodness of his heart because that s the kind of guy he is. he took out a home equity loan, didn t seek repayment. none of that is true. either they were lied to or they were on television lying as well. i m not saying it s not a good case against the president based on the fact michael cohen is willing to say it under oath. common sense, as jeff points out, the benefit of this is for the president. doesn t make sense for a lawyer in good standing to have done these actions without the permission and the direction of the president. you could make a case. i m just saying i don t know how much direct hard evidence there is to corroborate. not regarding stormy daniels. there s audiotape regarding the karen mcdougal situation in which donald trump and michael cohen, i don t know if conspiring is the right word, but they seem to be talking about and discussing the details of buying the rights to her story from ami. why they would be not like trump magazine actually exists that they were buying the rights so they could publish it. they were wanting to hold on to the rights so if the head of ami got hit by a truck in the immortal words of then candidate donald trump, they would be safe. you said he could still get immunity from mueller or immunity from congress if democrats win and decide to pursue impeachment charges. in both scenarios, he would be compelled to testify, right? right. and it s not it doesn t even require an impeachment investigation. remember, congress has very broad jurisdiction to investigate whatever they want. they could be investigating campaign fninance violations. congress has the power to give immunity to people that they want, who are citing their fifth amendment rights. congress generally refrains from doing so if it s going to interfere with a criminal investigation. but here, that criminal investigation is over. there s no risk of a case against michael cohen because he s already pleaded guilty. so if jerry nadler, woo was the democrat who would be chairman of the judiciary committee, says we want to investigate this, and if his colleagues vote to give cohen immunity, he has to testify before congress. and if he doesn t, he goes to jail for contempt. same principle applies if robert mueller wants to give him immunity, if robert mueller says i want to hear what cohp has to say, i m not worried about jeopardizing the southern district s investigation because it s over, he can give him immunity and force cohen to testify before mueller s grand jury. so i expect we will hear from michael cohen one way or another in one or more forms before too long. preet, do you agree with that? i do. overall, given the events of today, the likelihood of impeachment certainly went up. because of michael cohen. more people, i saw people who were on the right, they re maybe never trumpers who were saying themselves this is a bridge too far. you have something that didn t come directly out of the mueller investigation. out of my former office which i m very proud of today. from a person who is associated with the president, who has some credibility problems but also you have reasons to believe him. about something that s tangible and real, in which the person who is alleging the thing is not just charged but pled guilty to it. so there is added credibility. when someone says i did this crime, this is not a witch hunt against me. and not only did i do the crime, i did it with this other person, at the direction of this other person, all of common sense and common sense reasoning tells you makes total sense. like that s the normal way it would occur. that someone says, i can t be hurt in the election. and all the evidence is that this was related to the election. and then a guy pleads gaement to it and says this was my co-conspirator, and it makes sense it would be because that s the person who benefitted, that s a much more tangible, concrete thing, for people who care about these things to pursue. you then charge according to these documents with false consulting fees, essentially, to his corporation to then various ways, cheating on each other, and you have as you said the lies. you know, there s a back and forth story, whether you re talking about the meeting in trump tower related to the russia investigation or you re talking about the payments to the two women, donald trump s story keeps changing about it. at any trial that would occur in the house or somewhere else or in the senate or somewhere else, you explain to the people who are the deciders of fact, if there was nothing to hide here and you weren t involved, why do you keep lying about it? this is as swampy as it gets. thanks very much. jeff is going to stay with us because i want to explore more of the political angles preet was talking about. joining us is jen psaki, and former senator rick santorum. senator santorum, is there any scenario where this isn t a big problem for the president, whether it s political or, you know, well political, let s say? no, you focused, i think rightfully so, on the cohen plea bargain. i don t think the manafort guilty plea guilty conviction is problematic for the president. but michael cohen s admission or pleading guilty to, quote, cooperating with the president in violating campaign finance laws, that s a serious problem for the president. period. jen, of all the things that have gone on over the last year and a half, in your opinion, is this the biggest shoe to drop so far? look, i think if there was a movie script about what happened today and cohen s statements in court and the manafort conviction, you wouldn t believe it. this is like one of those movie montages where several things happen at once and you re like it s getting to the end of the movie because it s a montage. you re thinking this isn t realistic. there s no way this could happen in real life. this just happened in an hour this afternoon. i do think it should be a game changer politically. it won t be right now because republicans are scared of trump s base. and unsettling them. democrats are probably not scared but they don t want to energize trump s base, and we re two months from an election. this is definitely a game changer in terms of the politics of this and being accused of committing a federal crime to win an election, which is what michael cohen accused the president of, is a serious difference from what we have seen, where we were just even a couple days ago. i want to pick this up after the break. want to get a quick break in. also tonight, the other big case today, the conviction of paul manafort, the other guy the president suggests he never knew, also known as the man who ran his campaign. that and more ahead on the program. before discovering nexium 24hr to treat her frequent heartburn, lucy could only imagine enjoying a slice of pizza. now it s as easy as pie. nexium 24hr stops acid before it starts for all-day, all-night protection. can you imagine 24 hours without heartburn? fuels that go further so drivers pump less. improving efficiency is what we do best. energy lives here. you shouldn t be rushed into booking a hotel. with expedia s add-on advantage, booking a flight unlocks discounts on select hotels until the day you leave for your trip. add-on advantage. only when you book with expedia. what s a difference a day makes. yesterday on fox, rudy giuliani was saying this. if he gets indicted for something that has nothing to do with the president, i feel sorry for michael, although i don t know how sorry i feel for him because he was tape recording the world and deceiving him, including his client. this is today, and today, michael cohen s client, now his ex-client is a possible alleged co-conspirator. jeff, just before the break, jen was saying this could eventually be a breaking point for the president s supporters in congress. do you agree with that? you know, we have been spending two years now saying this is it. this is the straw that breaks the camel s back, whether it s saying that donald trump and we re having a connection problem with jeff. senator santorum, do you i ll take a shot at that. do you see any appetite certainly on the republican side for addressing this? well, i mean, look, there are three big stories today. two that we re talking about, manafort and cohen guilty pleas and convictions. but the third story is this horrific story out of iowa of this young girl being killed by an illegal immigrant. and to most americans, and certainly to the trump base, the issue of donald trump standing up and actually trying to do something about these types of situations is much more personal to them than a potential campaign violation of a smarmy attorney with a sort of not particularly attractive whole situation that with a porn star. those things have already sort of been discounted in the eyes of the american public. these other things that are much more real to people, i think, are going to be more persuasive. you don t think, just the moral character i know if we re talking about the trump base, they re obviously various forms of supporters of the president, but a man who has repeatedly lied, lied to the american people, whose surrogates have repeatedly lied about this or been lied to by him, and has surrounded himself with people who are now convicted crooks and also self-professed crooks. and some of whom are now at least one, his former lawyer, who is now pointing the finger at his former client, saying he was a crook, too. i know the base may not care, but just fair-minded people, don t you think you re selling them short to say they don t care about that? i m not saying they don t care. i say i think they care more about other things. number one, to say he surrounded himself with convicted criminals, i mean, they were not convicted criminals when he surrounded himself with them. i think that s a little too much. they had been. because they had already broken the law. but they weren t convicted. so the idea they were criminals. the idea that he knew they were criminals. unconvicted criminals. you re making the assumption he would have known they were doing criminal activity, which of course, he did not. unless he was engaged in criminal activity and that s why he had so many around him, like his attorney. that s what his attorney has accused him of. preet bharara did a good job of explaining this is his side of the story. it s obviously president trump has a different story. the big problem with president trump s story is it s not been a consistent story. and that s problematic for him. but we re still, you know, look, this is a serious problem. this is a game changer in many regards. but looking at who this is coming from and the circumstances around it, i just think it doesn t weigh as heavily as some other charge might. but you know, jeff toobin, isn t it hard to, on the one hand argue, well, this is coming from skuzy people, when donald trump particularly chose these skuzy people to be around him. i mean, if you re bathing in filth and then some of that filth gets on you, it s a little hard to say, well, i can t believe these people are dirty when in fact i m the one who has employed these people and the very reason i probably employed them is because they re willing to do just about anything for me. at least in michael cohen s case. that s part of it. or what does it say about your judgment that you picked a national security adviser, convicted felon now. what about your campaign chairman? convicted felon now. what about your personal attorney? convicted felon. now, it is true, as rick points out, they weren t convicted felons when he hired them. but what does it say about your judgment that these are the people you choose to surround yourself with? i don t think it says anything good. well, first off, number one, general flynn was is not a smarmy character. general flynn served this country terrifically as a military officer. but he did lie to a federal investigator. you know, he made a mistake, and he committed a crime, and he took the hit for it. but to suggest that that s a bad guy to surround yourself with, i think is overstating the case. paul manafort has been employed by republicans all over the map. for a long, long time before donald trump. but agreed. with flynn, he did amazing stuff in afghanistan and in his military career, but if you re leading chants of lock her up, and then you re the one who actually gets locked up, you re a hypocrite. look, general flynn i mean, yeah? i don t know if you re a hypocrite. what would you call it? look, he made a mistake. i mean, i think a victim of karma? no, look. a hypocrite is someone who is out there deliberately doing something that he himself actually agrees with. i don t think general flynn would tell you he was representing turkey without acknowledging it and writing op-eds about it, and pretending not to say it. he s a hypocrite. yeah, all i would say is i think it s a little more complex than that. having said all that i saw the video. having said all that, you have to look at the president and the people he hired at the time he hired them were not other than michael cohen, who i will concede to you is one of those, you know, smarmy characters. manafort has been a smarmy character for, it seems like, if not decades, at least years. given what he has now been convicted of. in fact, the president will tell you he was a smarmy character long before i ever got involved with him. he wasn t smarmy and illegal when i was actually involved with him. so if anything, all his indiscorrections, according to the president, happened long before. well, and one of the smarmiest things or smarmiest things he s done or was involved in was trying to get a trump tower in moscow. we haven t talked at all about because there s so much more interesting news today, about michael cohen being the front guy for trump s business in russia. you know, this is something i m sure we re going to delve more into. we ll learn more about in the coming weeks, and manafort, yes, his conviction wasn t related to trump, but he was still the guy negotiating the democratic platform that made it friendlier to russia. this still will go back to that. there are a lot more lies that michael cohen told that are going to unravel over the coming weeks and months, i would suspect. senator santorum, appreciate it, jen psaki, jeff toobin as well. as we touched on a bit while michael cohen was entering guilty pleas, the jury in the paul manafort trial came back with its verdict. we ll walk you through what happened in that case. this is not a bed. it s a revolution in sleep. the new sleep number 360 smart bed is on sale now, from $899, during sleep number s biggest sale of the year . it senses your movement, and automatically adjusts to keep you both comfortable. it even helps with this. so you wake up ready to put your pedal to the metal. and now, all beds are on sale. save 50% on the new sleep number 360 limited edition smart bed. plus, 24-month financing and free home delivery. ends saturday. sleep number. proven, quality sleep. no, what?? i just switched to geico and got more. more? got a company i can trust. that s a heck of a lot more. over 75 years of great savings and service. you can t argue with more. why would ya? geico. expect great savings and a whole lot more. this has nothing to do with what they started out, looking for russians involved in our campaign. there were none. i feel very badly for paul manafort. again, he worked for bob dole, he worked for ronald reagan. he worked for many, many people. and this is the way it ends up. it was not the original mission, believe me. it was something very much different. so i have nothing to do with russian collusion. we continue the witch hunt. thank you. that witch hunt, as the president calls it, today led a jury in northern virginia convicting manafort of eight felony counts, deadlocking on ten others. jessica schneider is in the courthouse in alexandria, verge wrirj. explain what manafort was convicted of today. yeah, anderson, paul manafort convicted of eight of those 18 counts. the jury deadlocked on ten counts. prosecutors still have to decide whether or not to go to a retrial with those. but the eight counts here are significant. they include five counts of tax fraud, two counts of hiding foreign bank accounts, as well as two other counts of bank fraud. in fact, those two counts of bank fraud carry up to 30 years in prison each. and all in all, paul manafort faces up to 80 years in prison. when he went before the judge, and the judge informed him of this guilty verdict, paul manafort, he was very stoic. he showed no emotion. he didn t smile. the one thing he did do, anderson, when he left the courtroom, he turned and gave a wink to his wife, cathy, who has been there throughout all of these proceedings. paul manafort s defense team in the meantime says that paul manafort is disappointed by this verdict, and they say he s looking at his next options implying perhaps the defense team will appeal. the lightning happening behind you is freaking me out so i m going to go through this quickly. the jurors asked to remain anonymous. does that mean we re likely not to hear from them? it s likely we probably won t. so as the jury was leaving, they were asking the judge, do not release our names. do not release our identities. the judge encouraged them not to talk to the media. he said they weren t completely barred from talking to the media, but really, he advised against it. and you know, the judges talked about his concerns about safety for these jurors. the judge saying just a few days ago that he s received threats as a result of this trial. so now he wants to keep those jurors safe. and he ll do it by not releasing their names. anderson. jessica, our thanks to you and your team for braving the weather. we re joined again by jeff toobin, and also anne milgram. even though he was convicted of 8 of the 18 charges is there any way to view this verdict except as a victory for mueller and his team? it absolutely is. i mean, this is a tremendous victory for mueller s team. if i could just make one point about sentencing, you know, jessica is exactly right about if you added up all of the counts he was convicted of, it could be 80 years. that s not really the way federal sentencing works. there are guidelines that group criminal behavior together. and my tentative look at the guidelines suggest he s really looking at about ten years rather than 30. ten years to a 70-year-old man, to anybody, is a heck of a lot of time. would that be ten years with good behavior down to like could it be down to two or three? no, no. in federal court, in federal prison, you have to do 85% of your sentence. if you get ten years, you re looking at eight and a half years, which is a long time for anybody. but for a 70-year-old man, it s a very big deal that he s looking at. it s not 30 years. and the president today in his reaction, you know, the white house used to say about paul manafort, they were trying to distance themselves from him, saying look, he was with us for a couple weeks. a couple months. underplaying his role. now the president seems to be pointing out, oh, he used to work for reagan and bob dole, too. i m one in a long line of republicans he worked for. he s saying it has nothing to do with russia. it does ignore the fact that manafort at the convention, they did change the platform to be more russia friendly. i mean, completely. and it s important to remember that this has been a huge part of mueller s investigation, the manafort case. so the president is now distancing himself from it. he s always minimized his relationship with manafort. now he s making it seem like manafort was a part of a lot of other administrations. he s just one in a long line of people. what s really important about this is mueller already has a number of criminal convictions, but this is the first trial conviction. and it is a big deal that it s not, you know, it s not just robert mueller bringing charges against someone. it s a jury of manafort s peers saying he s guilty of eight felonies, and manafort is now a convicted felon. jeff, the fact, though if i could just if i could add one more thing. he s looking at two more prospects. mueller has to decide whether he wants to retry him on the ten counts in which the jury hung. and there s an entirely separate trial with different crimes that is supposed to start in september in washington, d.c. so manafort s ordeal is not over, and the question of whether he pleads guilty now is even more pressing, i think, because why he would want to go through this again is a mystery to me. the president did say he s a good person, a good man. he feels sad for him. the president could pardon him. and then would then, would that pardon also cover the future trial coming up in d.c.? the president could say right now, i pardon him on everything he s been charged with. and that pardon would be this case, it would be the ten outstanding charges that jeff correctly mentions the government has to decide whether or not they ll retry, and the d.c. case. the president has that power. he has ptd exercised that power yet, and these cases have knin pending for some time. it looks to me, feels to me that, and this may be completely the opposite of the way the president would think, but it feels to me that the more the cases get tried and the more that it gets public, that manafort essentially didn t pay taxes, and benefitted in this extravagant way financially, and remember, the september case is going to be all about the political side as well. so it is the heat is going to continue to turn up. i think personally i think it gets harder and harder for the president to pardon him. jeff, do you agree with that, that it gets harder? again, this is a president who often, that may be the conventional wisdom, and a sensible way of looking at it. it doesn t mean it s the way the president views it. you know, conventionally, you know, no president would even consider pardoning someone who was so close to him. and remember how seedy the behavior was here. i mean, basically, what this case was about was lying about how much money you re making to save taxes when you re making a lot of money, but then when you re short on money, lying to banks to get loans illegally. i mean, it is not admirable behavior. why anyone would consider a pardon for this, you know, would be inconceivable in normal circumstances. but this president operates by his own rules. he has pardoned people outside the normal justice department pardon process, which is his right but somebody most presidents don t do. so i think it s unlikely that a pardon would happen, but by no means do i think it s out of the question because i don t know how donald trump thinks about these issues. it s interesting, the president held this rally and at one point, the audience is chanting drain the swamp. this is the swamp. you re talking about lies. michael cohen was also lied to a bank. he lied about income in terms of cheating american taxpayers on tax money. lied to a bank about debt that he held in order to get a loan. we re awash with all of these stories of people who put their personal financial interests over the interests of the american public, over government. over being good citizens of our country. there is no question that it is it s almost hard to imagine how much of a swamp we have seen today. these are the people that the president either held closely in his orbit before he became president or chose while he was running. yeah, you said it before. i think we do judge people by the company they keep, and the president chose these people as company. yeah, anne milgram, appreciate it. jeff toobin as well. today s guilty vukts and guilty pleas by two men who worked with president trump is something that has rarily happened to a sitting president. we ll talk about all the president s men with a man who worked in a president s white house. also, a california congressman who was one of the first to endorse donald trump for president has been indicted for misusing campaign funds along with his wife. but let s be honest, nobody likes dealing with insurance. which is why esurance hired me, dennis quaid, as their spokesperson because apparently, i m highly likable. see, they know it s confusing. i literally have no idea what i m getting, dennis quaid. that s why they re making it simple, man in cafe. and more affordable. thank you, dennis quaid. you re welcome. that s a prop apple. i d tell you more, but i only have 30 seconds. so here s a dramatic shot of their tagline so you ll remember it. esurance. it s surprisingly painless. watergate, former nixon white house counsel, john dean, and david gergen, at time a staffer in the nixon white house. john, in the span of an afternoon, you have two people in the president s inner circle who have become felon. one who has implicated the president himself in a felony. does this sound familiar at all? it certainly does. to take issue with what jeff said in the first block of your show, it isn t unprecedented. i happened to plead guilty when nixon was still in office, after i got word that they were about to remove archibald cox, the special prosecutor. they asked me if i would consider pleading. i said i will. and much to the chagrin of my lawyer, who thought i had oliver north s case, where they can t both immunize you and prosecute you, i told him i didn t want to beat the rap, and where was going to indeed do it. i thought that nixon could not get away with removing a special prosecutor. so i was ready to go and did. and david, of course, was in the white house at that time. john, how significant do you think it is, what michael cohen had to say today? i think it was interesting that he said it during his allocution, which was under oath, where he said to the judge that he was doing it at the direction of the head of the campaign, referring to trump. making that clear point in court. when you do plead, you have to explain to the court what you ve done and why you have done it. and they want to make sure you re of sound mind and thinking clearly at the moment. and so i have been through that drill. and it s not the sort of time you give a false statement to a judge. so i think that was probably as awesome and serious of circumstances he could have made that presentation. david, how do you see what happened today in terms of michael cohen? it brought back memories of another day in history. back in the watergate investigations. when john dean went to nixon and said, there s a cancer on your presidency. john will remember that, it was a famous moment in our politics. and i think what today revealed is there s a cancer on this presidency. it s not to say it s the same as water gatd. i think he can still manage to get out of this. if other things turn out all right, but if this metastasizes and we find other misdeeds among his associated, i think then he s in deep trouble. especially regarding michael cohen, who theoretically knows where all of the other possible if there are other misdeeds, might be in a position to know where at least some of those misdeeds are. right, and you have this story is coming really close to the president now. we re talking about his top lawyer for many years, talking about his campaign manager for a while, flynn, his national security adviser. all of them, this is when you really, the moments that count because the people they re closing in on do know. they were there. they will have knowledge. and we ll see we ll have to see where it goes. i think it s a breakthrough for mueller. had he lost this case today, this investigation would probably be closed down pretty quickly. john, there s no one, though, it seems, correct me if you think i m wrong, around the president who s able to say what you said to nixon, that there s a cancer on your presidency. that appears correct. but what s interesting from nixon s perspective when i testified in front of the senate, he later wrote in his memoir that he wasn t as concerned about my watergate testimony, which he thought he could survive, indeed i didn t know but a fraction of what i later found in the tapes. but what bothered him and what troubled him and he thought had been stimulated by the democrats, which was not correct, was the atmosphere i put it in to explain how a waterigate could happen. he thought he found that was something he couldn t recover from. things like the enemies list, the fact that there had been an attempt to firebomb the brookings institute. there had been a break-in at daniel else brg s psychiatrist s office. all the things i listed that resulted in me not being very surprised by watergate happening. senator santorum was saying there are other things he thinks the american people care about more. something nixon said in 1973, he said people got to know whether or not their president is a crook. michael cohen today accused donald trump of being a crook. he said, i m a crook. he pleaded guilty. and he said, by the way, i was doing it at the direction of this other guy who is now the president and he s a crook too. absolutely. this raises fundamental questions now. if cohen is indeed a felon or, you know, he s pled guilty of a felony, why isn t donald trump then guilty of a felony? if donald trump was willing to commit a felony to help his campaign with regard to stormy daniels, why are we to think that, no, no, no, he couldn t have possibly accepted help from the russians? i think if there are competing narratives of truth as rudy giuliani tells us, then isn t it time for donald trump to go before mueller and testify? i mean aren t the voters entitled aren t the people of this country entitled before the midterm elections, before the elections of 2020 to know what really happened, to straighten out these competing narratives? i think that requires him to i think this puts increased pressure on him to go to mueller. i don t want to use this old saying but there s an old saying to the effect you scratch a lie, you find a thief. the president, if he was willing to lie repeatedly about the payoff to stormy daniels and karen mcdougal, which according to michael cohen and we now know he if michael cohen is actually a felon and did what he just pled guilty to, the president was lying about all that stuff time and time again. there s no telling what else he was lying about. if he s willing to lie about that, which is relatively i mean, you know, if that had come out in the waning days of the election, who knows if it really would have mattered to people to senator santorum s point. well, apparently there s not only the two instances that michael cohen testified that he was involved in payoff, but he knows of other situations. so this may be even broader than just karen mcdougal and stormy daniels, which would, i think, raise a significant campaign issue if that s what they were trying to make go away and they successfully did make it go away for all practical purposes. so, you know, yes, i think your point is well taken, and i think his record of truthfulness in general is being tallied by the washington post is pretty striking for this president. richard nixon did tell some lies, but they were always on big issues and never on day to day small issues. and, david, it s one thing for the washington post to be tallying it, but a lot of people discount that. to have your former attorney say, you know what? i m a crook. i m pleading guilty. by the way, the guy i ve been working for is one as well. this is a whole different league. we ve moved into a whole different stage in this still fantastic story. i don t understand how we ever got here. yeah. i wish it was fantastical. yeah, fantastical is a better way to put it. thank you. it s been a rough day for the president s men. late today we learned that the second of candidate trump s original two congressional supporters has now been indicted. congressman duncan hunter of california. he and his wife are charged with wire fraud, falsifying records, campaign finance violations and conspiracy. they allegedly misused a quarter million dollars in campaign money. a spokesperson says he believes the indictment against him and his wife is, quote, purely politically motivated. congressman hunter was an early trump supporter, the second sitting member of congress to support trump. the first, chris collins, who was indicted earlier this month. just ahead, the extensive relationship between michael cohen and donald trump, a relationship so close that michael cohen once said he d take a bullet for mr. trump. n. yes. start them off right, with the school supplies they need at low prices all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. you shouldn t be rushed into booking a hotel. with expedia s add-on advantage, booking a flight unlocks discounts on select hotels until the day you leave for your trip. add-on advantage. only when you book with expedia. add-on advantage. 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(vo) one family. different unlimited plans. starting at $40 per line on the network you deserve. randi kaye tonight has an examination tonight of what was once a close relationship. reporter: michael cohen s loyalty to donald trump seemingly unmatched, once telling vanity fair magazine he d take a bullet for his boss. they say i m mr. trump s pit bull, that i m his right-hand man. reporter: right-hand man until the relationship went south. for more than a decade, cohen was the top attorney at the trump organization. trump s go-to when things got ugly. his fixer when things needed cleaning up. i would use my legal skills within which to protect mr. trump to the best of my ability. reporter: case in point, cohen threatening an npr reporter in 2015. i m warning you, tread very [ bleep ] lightly because what i m going to do is going to [ bleep ] disgusting. do you understand me? reporter: but today cohen is persona non grata. ever since his office was raided by the fbi, the white house has been down playing his role, putting some distance between cohen and the president. the president has many attorneys. this isn t his only one. reporter: but the facts tell a different story, of a cozy relationship. michael cohen had dinner with president trump back on march 25th at mar-a-lago. the night before stormy daniels interview with anderson cooper on 60 minutes. cohen had paid the porn star $130,000. trump s lawyer, rudy giuliani, says trump later reimbursed cohen. on april 13th, president trump called michael cohen to, quote, check in before cohen appeared in court regarding his office raid. before trump became president, there was nearly constant contact between the two men. believe me, michael cohen got calls at 3:00 in the morning. michael and i would be at dinner. the boss would be calling him. sure. all the time. reporter: those days are long gone, replaced by a bitter feud, magnified after cohen released a secret audio recording in which he and trump spoke about a payment related to a playboy model s story about her alleged affair with trump. when it comes time for the financing, which will be what financing? we ll have to pay won t pay with cash? no, no, no. reporter: to donald trump, it was the ultimate betrayal, the president tweeting, what kind of a lawyer would tape a client? so sad. the relationship soured even more after a revelation that cohen was prepared to tell robert mueller that then-candidate trump knew in advance about the june 2016 meeting in trump tower where russians were expected to offer dirt on hillary clinton. trump denied it all on twitter, saying, sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam. jam or no jam, michael cohen s deal with the government certainly won t help heal this relationship. randi kaye, cnn, new york. we ll see what happens next. before we go, a quick reminder, don t miss full circle
particular story about kavanaugh, to continue to develop through the weekend. republicans definitely want to steam ahead with voting on him as soon as next wednesday or thursday. it s hard to see how that happens while this story is still developing, but watch this space. that does it for us tonight. we will see you again on monday. now it s time for the last word with lawrence oh dodge. good evening, lawrence. you know how this show starts at 10:00 or i should say is supposed to start at 10:00? mm-hmm. and every once in a while it starts 15 seconds later, 30 seconds later. my fault, sorry. and it s a pretty organized and ritdialistic thing, and that s the way it s supposed to work. but we can change that. we can change that on the fly if we have to and if something happens and if there was some kind of giant breaking news event, we would deal with that whole concept differently, and the senate judiciary committee can do exactly the same thing. ask that is what they did with anita hill when the confirmation hearing was over. clarence thomas hearing was over, and it was reopened because of this dramatic new information. hmm. and orrin hatch is pretending tonight that there s some kind of schedule, there s some kind of thing that prevents them from reopening any of this on the senate judiciary committee, and that is simply not true. there s no time limit. they could take the rest of the year if they wanted to. but you re going to hear a lot of that about, you know, it s over and time s up. and time is never up on the confirmation process. and, you know, with professor anita hill personally weighing in on this today, saying that she has personally experienced what happens when these things get weaponized against the accuser and there ought to be a way for people to approach the senate when they have personal information that is relevant to an important nominee. that still has not been fixed since her time there. it s an incredibly important point you re making, one precedent that was set by her allegations against clarence thomas, which, again, she never expected to become public either. she never expected to have her name associated with those allegations, but she made them. it reopened the confirmation process, and it played out the way it did. that is the closest thing we ve got to a precedent here. i don t know what republicans are going to try to do, but i think they re going to be a little bit towed along on this story by the fact that the story is going to continue to develop over the next few days. it may be all up to susan collins what they do next. what might she demand from her own party or lisa murkowski? but, rachel, we re going to begin tonight with the paul manafort agreement, and it s the agreement part of what paul manafort will deliver for his plea that has to have everybody named trump, especially if the first name is donald, whether it s senior or junior, very worried tonight. it s breathtaking. honestly, i mean, lawrence, i am i m in los angeles tonight on a friday night, which is weird. i m in california because i have the day off today because i m supposed to be spending the weekend with my family out here. i know that. i am not taking the night changed, but the president s life may very well have changed too. and the mueller investigation might be turning a profit now with something over $20 million in seized assets from paul manafort. this just might give them some extra lunch money. with that trump tower apartment being one of the things that manafort had to forfeit, i do sort of imagine them moving like a little part of the justice department into that apartment, you know? just like put some h.r. folks in there or some little thing, you know, some little aspect of the justice department just to remind everybody that actually that paul manafort apartment is now owned by the u.s. taxpayers. they ll think of something. rachel, get out of there. go hang with the family. i will do. love to the family. thanks for coming in tonight. appreciate it. well, paul manafort s guilty plea today might be the single worst development in donald trump s life, and it might be the single worst development in donald trump jr. s life because paul manafort was in the room with donald trump jr. in trump tower during the presidential campaign meeting that donald trump jr. arranged with a group of russians who promised dirt on hillary clinton. paul manafort has promised to tell special prosecutor robert mueller every single thing that happened in that room, every word that paul manafort can remember was said in that room and what paul manafort remembers might lead to the first federal criminal prosecution of the son of a president of the united states. paul manafort could be the key witness in a case that would be entitled the united states of america versus donald trump jr., and president trump could once again be identified as an unindicted co-conspirator in such a case if paul manafort and others can testify credibly that presidential candidate donald trump knew about that meeting and was a participant in a conspiracy to obtain dirt on hillary clinton from russians. and so the big news of the day for anyone named donald trump is that robert mueller has a new witness, a big new witness. and that is even bigger news than that witness saying in court today, i plead guilty. paul manafort spent this week telling the special prosecutor s team everything he knows about every crime he has committed or every crime he knows about. some of paul manafort s crimes were described in court today by andrew weissmann of the special counsel s office, but prosecutor weissman was careful to point out that nothing that he publicly described in court today includes anything that paul manafort has told the special prosecutor in his first week of cooperation with the special prosecutor. so there is a lot, lot more to come from paul manafort. and we know that the special prosecutor reached this plea bargain agreement with paul manafort today because paul manafort has already provided and will continue to provide valuable information to the special prosecutor. the moment that officially changed donald trump and donald trump jr. s lives came after andrew weissmann outlined the crimes that paul manafort confessed to this week conspiracy, obstruction of justice, conspiracy against the united states. judge amy berman jackson said to paul manafort, so are you prepared to tell me now whether you wish to plead guilty or whether you wish to go to trial? and paul manafort said, i am and the judge said, what is your decision? and paul manafort said, i plead guilty. and with that, every member of the trump campaign team who has been charged which robert mueller has now pleaded guilty. every single one of them. robert mueller and his team are undefeated against the trump team. and everyone in the trump team who was ever in a room with paul manafort or on the phone with paul manafort or sent an e-mail to paul manafort or received an e-mail from paul manafort has to try to fall asleep tonight wondering who s next. who will paul manafort hand over to robert mueller? leading off our discussion now, jill wine-banks, former assistant watergate special prosecutor and an msnbc legal contributor. also former federal prosecutor glen kirschner. jill, as rachel mentioned at the top, there were a couple of ways for this to go today. there wasn t a lot of suspense left in whether he was going to plead guilty. but he could have just walked in from and pleaded guilty. he could have just done that and sat back and hoped and waited for his pardon. but he didn t. he went all the way over the line and is now on team mueller. and you know what that says to me? that says how untrustworthy donald trump is that his campaign adviser, his campaign chief couldn t rely on him for a pardon and had to take the chance of going with full disclosure to the prosecutor and cooperating. that s what it says to me. and it s a big break because he s someone who was in at least several key meetings, including of course the june meeting in trump tower, which has been very much a focus of the investigation and could be part of the conspiracy to work with russia on the campaign to affect the outcome of the election. and so it s a very important time for mueller. and as you pointed out, it is 100% win for mueller and zero for team trump. glen kirschner, your perspective on what we saw in court today? so, lawrence, i think, yeah, it s a hugely consequential turn of events for both the mueller investigation and for the president and his administration. when i got a hold of a copy of the plea agreement in the manafort case earlier today, i was looking for one phrase, and i found it on page 2, paragraph 3. let me just read the legalese and talk about what it actually means. it says that no other charges will be brought against the defendant, paul manafort, for his heretofore disclosed participation in criminal activity. in layman s terms, what that means is the following. when we meet with a defendant who is an aspiring cooperating witness, we interview them over and over and over again, and we frankly try to wring dry every drop of information that the cooperator has about the criminal conduct of others. but equally important, the criminal conduct of mr. manafort himself because the last thing we want as i was a career prosecutor. the last thing a prosecutor wants is for there to be any surprises about the crimes a cooperator committed before we make the decision to bring them onboard as a cooperating witness. and there s a benefit to the cooperator when he sits down with the prosecutors and provides all that information about his own criminal conduct. we put a term like this in his plea agreement, and it says, as long as you ve told us about other crimes you ve committed, you get a pass. you basically get immunity because we rolled it into today s plea agreement. so what that means is he could have sat down and provided all sorts of information about him, mr. manafort personally, colluding with russians to undermine the election, coordinating that with the president, with don junior, with jared kushner, with others. i m not saying he did that. we have to wait and see. but if he provided that information, that is probably what prompted robert mueller, after the many meetings that they had, which we learned about in today s hearing. robert mueller to say, you know what, mr. manafort? you ve brought enough value to the process as a cooperator that we are going to give you a plea agreement even after you ve been convicted in one of your criminal cases. lawrence, that leads me to conclude paul manafort must have blockbuster information. he s provided it to the special counsel, and now we have to wait for the next very large shoe to drop. yeah, and jill, to that point, in general terms certainly in all of these kinds of agreements that i ve ever seen and witnessed in court, the person the thing of value that they tend to be giving over is someone bigger than themselves. it s someone above them in the chain of command of whatever enterprise they re in. it is of value still to hand over material on people who are kind of below you in that target list by prosecutors. but to glenn s point, given how good a deal, as you could describe it, how good a deal this is for paul manafort at this stage given how clearly guilty he is, you certainly get the feeling that something large has been handed over to robert mueller this week. i think we can assume that that is true, that it would either be jared kushner or donald trump jr. or the president himself. there is, of course i want to caution. there is the possibility that it was just, i m willing to take responsibility. i m willing to plead guilty to my own crimes. i don t want to pay for a defense. i don t want to make the government pay for the prosecution, and i m just giving up. he s forfeiting almost all of his assets, his real estate, his bank accounts. so he may just feel like, well, that s what i m doing, and there may be nothing more. but given the language that was used in court in terms of the plea agreement itself, i agree with glenn that it is very likely that he has told them quite a great deal. and glenn is right. you wouldn t take a plea agreement unless you had had a proffer of all the evidence that the witness has before you would agree to it. so i think we can look forward to many weeks and months of disclosures and new indictments that may be the result of this and to the investigations that will follow up on the details that he provided to them in the proffer leading up to the plea agreement. let s listen to some of the spin that rudy giuliani offered on fox news tonight, and then we will analyze what he had to say after we listen to this. the plea is to crimes that have to do with manafort s past. no involvement with president trump. no involvement with the campaign. no involvement with russia. and by the way, there s also no evidence of obstruction. there have been four guilty pleas now, and they re completely irrelevant. glenn, your reaction to that. you know, lawrence, i ve heard this over and over again from either the president himself or sarah huckabee sanders or mr. giuliani. they keep complaining and protesting with each guilty plea that s obtained, with each conviction that s obtained. they complain that that conviction, that guilty plea doesn t prove russian collusion. and, you know, i can envision the three of them sitting in a movie theater. and every time they watch another trailer, a preview of coming attractions, they sit there and they complain that, this is not the movie. this is not the movie. we all know this is not the movie. we all know these cases that have been brought thus far by mr. mueller are not the russian collusion cases. but guess what? the movie s coming. and the movie will be when mr. mueller makes that decision whether to issue a report that ultimately will be released to congress about his findings or drop a great big conspiracy indictment on everybody who may have participated in a conspiracy with russia to undermine our presidential elections and obstructed by perhaps covering it up. that will be the movie. all of these other things are just the previews of things to come. and let s consider rudy giuliani s most insane comment of the night to the fox news audience, and i don t know how much of this they actually take as real. but rudy giuliani says he s hanging his head in shame because the justice department has found crimes and decided to prosecute those crimes. let s listen to this. my head hangs in shame for the department that i gave 16 years of my life to, the department of justice. i was the third ranking official in the department of justice, when i could proudly say it was the department of justice. and the only thing that can be done now is as relentless of an investigation of these people as they did to president trump. jill, your reaction to all of that. my reaction is that we have seen a march to the truth. we have seen cases build upon cases, and each person who has pled guilty has been from the trump team and has said, i committed crimes. one of them said in court under oath that he committed a crime at the direction of the president himself. you can t get any better than that. and the fact that all of these people have pled guilty shows how carefully mueller has proceeded and how he has developed the evidence. all you have to do is read the information that manafort pled guilty to today. it is a detailed layout of all of the things that he did, all the conversations he had, all the illegal transfers of money he had. mueller has facts, and just like paula duncan concluded in the first manafort trial, although she is a loyal trump support and although she said the investigation is a hoax and a witch hunt, she said, but the evidence against manafort was real. those were facts, and i voted to convict him on 18 counts. and i m hoping that the american people will start to see the facts once mueller either issues an indictment that names higher ups or issues a report that names them and spells out in detail what they have done wrong. that s when people will start to see the truth and will turn their opinion and vote in the way that they should against the trump team, who has committed these crimes. and rudy giuliani and the trump team always seem to forget that michael flynn actually pleaded guilty to committing crimes in the white house, while in the trump administration. jill wine-banks, glen kirschner, thank you both for starting off our discussion tonight. when we come back, paul manafort is the latest trump team member to plead guilty. but the first one who was in that trump tower meeting the first one to plead guilty who was in the trump tower meeting. what happens now to donald trump jr., jared kushner, and everyone else who was in that meeting? 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we have someone now from inside the meeting who we also know was taking notes, who is now cooperating with robert mueller. well, there s a difference between what we will understand and what bob mueller will understand. bob mueller, you know, in theory will understand everything, what led up to the meeting, what happened in the meeting, and what paul manafort knows of any follow-up. remember, they had this meeting on june 9th, and then about a month or so later, the wikileaks released the dnc hacked e-mails and manafort went on tv and said the russians have nothing to do with any of this. this is just all a hoax. he started that line of defense when he had been in a meeting that had been set up because the campaign had been told the kremlin had a plot, had a scheme to help the trump campaign. so he ll tell bob mueller supposedly everything he knows on that front. the question is does it lead to a prosecution or to public information for us to find out at some point in time? craig unger, what do you expect the special prosecutor s office to find out as a result of this plea? i think there are a couple of clues in the documents mueller filed today that have if you pulled them, the threads start to unravel, and they start to expose trump s and manafort s ties to the russian mafia. let me just mention a couple of them. one is if you look at the documents, you see that manafort laundered money through a company called the lus cal company. that company was tied to a guy named ivan thurson who is partners with the brains by the russian mafia, and operatives have been around trump for more than 35 years. trump started laundering money through the russian mafia as early as 1984. the fei chases operatives all over brooklyn, found out they actually lived in trump tower. and there have been russia mafia operations based in trump tower for many of these years. there s also a day who is not mentioned by name but by his position, and if you ll excuse my ukrainian his real name is sirhay lavachkan, and he was chief of staff toi yanukovych. if you look at what they ll really doing, it gets to the root of what i think this whole scandal is really about. it s that russia is a kleptocracy with putin at the very top. they are stealing russia s natural resources and profiting enormously from the ukraine energy trade. and they brought in manafort to back them up politically in ukraine, and that s where the money comes from. david corn, this kind of craig s answer to that pretty simple question is really extraordinary, and it shows you the kind of depth that s possible. that s the tip of the iceberg of what craig knows. robert mueller must be sitting on an even bigger iceberg at this point. well, you know, i hate the iceberg cliche but i ve used it for the mueller probe because time and time again, we ve learned when he makes public filings, that he s looking at things or has discovered things that we didn t even know existed. and to me, a big question here in this investigation is whether mueller is digging deep into some of these financial issues. trump s finances are very opaque, not just with any interactions with russia, but just in general. big loans from deutsche bank. we don t fully understand the origin or why they exist. that s the type of thing that mueller has a team assembled who specialize in white collar crime, money laundering. they could really dig into and that manafort might have some insight into. but we re still waiting to see you know, we don t have a lot of public signs yet, whether that is one big part of the probe or not. but if it is, you know, this could go on for a long time and go much deeper than just russia collusion. and, craig, what is your view of what kind of exposure donald trump personally has on the russian money laundering you described? is it possible he didn t know who was buying these apartments and what money they were using to buy these apartments? well, it s absolutely possible or, rather, it s very difficult to prove what he does know. i certainly can t get inside his mind. but there is i m not a lawyer, but there is a legal concept known as willful ignorance or willful blindness. and when you look at the scale of the money laundering, buzzfeed reported that there were 1,300 condos, trump-branded condos, that were sold under conditions that appear to be money laundering. and i think a good prosecutor could make the case that that s not random or co-ince dental, that this was a pattern and it was deliberate and done with knowledge. david corn, craig unger, thank you both for joining our discussion tonight. and coming up, the new yorker is reporting more details about the woman who claims that supreme court nominee brett kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school. the new york times has more details on it. but republicans seem to think there is nothing to talk about here. that s coming up. (burke) fender-biter. no card? no problem. life, lived serena s way. chase, make more of what s yours. birth name hannahfreak hannah s a freak about fresh baked every four hours bread the kind of freak that makes the world a better place to eat freaky fresh. freaky fast. jimmy john s. now try your favorite on our new nine-grain wheat sub. wheat yeah. freak yeah. accusation that democrats did not see fit to raise for over a month. the claims are wholly unverifiable and come at the tail end of a process that was already marred by ugly innuendo, dishonesty, and the nastiest form of our politics. the american people deserve much better from the senate as an institution. and that is essentially the same defense that orrin hatch offered for clarence thomas, who faced accusations from anita hill after after his confirmation hearing was over. but because there are no time limits on how long the confirmation process can take, the senate judiciary committee then reopened the clarence thomas hearings and heard from anita hill, after which clarence thomas was then confirmed by the senate, 52-48. before anita hill testified, clarence thomas was probably on his way to getting at least 80 votes in favor of his confirmation in the senate. the senate judiciary committee has the same option now as it did for clarence thomas. the committee can slow down the process and reopen the confirmation hearing if judge kavanaugh s accuser changes her mind and is willing to reveal herself publicly and testify about what she said in a confidential letter to a member of congress about what brett kavanaugh did to her when they were both in high school. the new york times and the new yorker revealed more of the details about that letter today, writing in the new yorker, ronan farrow and jane mayer report, in the letter, the woman alleged that during an encounter at a party, kavanaugh held her down and that he attempted to force himself on her. she claimed in the letter that kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. she was able to free herself. in recent months, the woman had told friends that kavanaugh s nomination had revived the pain of the memory and that she was grappling with whether to go public with her story. she contacted her congresswoman, anna eshoo, a democrat, sending a letter describing her allegation. california congresswoman anna eshoo then passed that letter along to california s senior senator, dianne feinstein, the senior democrat on the senate judiciary committee. the new yorker reports the woman considered speaking publicly about her experience with brett kavanaugh but, quote, after the interactions with eshoo s and feinstein s offices, the woman decided not to speak about the matter publicly. republican senator susan collins had a pre-scheduled hour-long telephone discussion with brett kavanaugh today, but senator collins made no comment, no public comment about that discussion or about the new accusation against judge kavanaugh. so what will the judiciary committee do next? after this break, we will be joined by jill wine-banks and lisa graves, who is the former chief counsel for nominations on the democratic staff of the senate judiciary committee. -computer, order pizza. -of course, daniel. -fridge, weather. -clear skies and 75. -trash can, turn on the tv. -my pleasure. -ice dispenser, find me a dog sitter. -okay. -and make ice. -pizza delivered. -what s happened to my son? -i think that s just what people are like now. i mean, with progressive, you can quote your insurance on just about any device. even on social media. he ll be fine. -[ laughs ] -will he? -i don t know. -will he? then you might have a dcondition called dry mouth.? biotène is clinically proven to soothe and moisturize a dry mouth. plus, it freshens breath. biotène. immediate and long lasting dry mouth symptom relief. come hok., babe. nasty nighttime heartburn? try new alka-seltzer pm gummies. the only fast, powerful heartburn relief plus melatonin so you can fall asleep quickly. oh, what a relief it is! who would have guessed? an energy company helping cars emit less. making cars lighter, it s a good place to start, advanced oils for those hard-working parts. fuels that go further so drivers pump less. improving efficiency is what we do best. energy lives here. lisa graves, former chief counsel for nominations for the democratic side of the senate judiciary committee. she was a department assistant attorney general in the department of justice. and jill wine-banks is back with us. lisa, no one knows more about this process than you do. what happens next in the senate judiciary committee? well, there s nothing stopping senator grassley from reopening the hearings, from having additional hearings or providing more time. as you point out, there s no rule that requires this process to go so fast. and in fact, i know that with all these claims that this is an 11th hour allegation, the fact is that brett kavanaugh was nominated only on july 10th. it was less than 60 days before his hearings began, and they ve been quite rushed given the many controversies in his background. and so the senate could have a closed session with the senate judiciary committee to consider this further. there could be time for this victim to come forward or other victims to come forward. and there should be actually more time for the entire nation to learn more about brett kavanaugh. certainly we know that numerous documents that the senate democrats have requested have not been provided, and the documents thus far show that he s been untruthful even though he testified under oath about several matters to the senate over the course of 2004-2006 and now. and so i think there s more than enough reason to slow down and in fact stop this process from moving forward. jill, it is so extraordinary. lisa points out that you can find things in brett kavanaugh s testimony that are simply not true. and some people are calling them lies. i m not sure what else you call them. but when you have a nominee whose credibility has already been very successfully challenged as a truth-teller in that hearing, and today he issues a statement denying these accusations, he s issuing that statement after a confirmation hearing has significantly weakened his credibility. yes. i agree with everything lisa said, and abowith what you said. and i appreciate you saying that there is no rule that forces this to go forward. we need to have a full investigation. we need to hold off a vote in the senate until there is time for a full exploration of this. if he is innocent, we need to see that. if he s guilty, we need to see that. and the fact about the memos that were stolen from the democrats that he says, oh, i didn t know, that doesn t ring true to me. so there are a lot of issues besides this one that have been sort of shuffled under the rug and that need to be explored. i would urge this woman i know how hard it must be to come forward, but i really hope you will. i m pleading with you to come forward and speak out on this because there is so much at stake. the times are different now. the me too movement has made you able to be heard and believed in a way that anita hill didn t have a chance for. so please come forward and let us hear the whole story of this. i also think it raises the issue of the time that he clerked he, kavanaugh clerk the for kozinski, who left the bench because of sexual misconduct in his chambers. and we need to know more about what kavanaugh knew. i know he s denied that he knew anything. but the knowledge was everywhere. people knew about it. how could he not have known, and if he did know, why did he do nothing? i think there are a lot of questions that need answering before the senate votes on this. and, lisa, there is criticism developing on both the democratic side and on the republican side about how senator feinstein has handled her end of it. given what we know about it, what is your view of how senator feinstein has handled this? well, i have to say that this is almost the definition of being between a rock and a hard place. you have a victim who has come forward who has asked for her information not to be shared. and of course it s necessary to honor her request for confidentiality. and yet you have this very significant allegation that bears on the ability of this man the appropriateness of this man to be appointed to the united states supreme court. and we know through history with anita hill that we have someone who is on the supreme court in which there were credible allegations of his sexual misconduct, of sexual harassment, and i think anita hill has certainly been vindicated over the course of time. and yet we re still we still have justice thomas on the court. and so these are very serious matters, which is exactly why, as jill said, there s no need to rush forward. we need to get to the bottom of this. and the other matters, quite frankly, it was a digital watergate what happened in the senate with the senate s own files being taken and stolen and then given in many instances to brett kavanaugh. and i do believe that he lied about what he knew and when he knew it, and i believe it s quite clear to me based on that episode and many more in terms of his answers in 2004 and 2006 that he lied under oath. and that s one of the most serious things that can be alleged about a judge because the most important thing for a judge in this country and any country is that they be honest about the facts and the law. and we have a man here who i think has demonstrated over and over again that he s not honest about the facts and the law. and the fact is, is that you can t just be someone who can cite cases off the top of your head. that doesn t make you a good judge. what makes you a good judge is you re fair and honest not just about the law but about the facts and i don t think brett kavanaugh has been honest about the facts. and i think it s important to believe a woman who comes forward under these circumstances even if her identity is confidential. if you still had your old job at the judiciary committee, i am sure at some point in the last few weeks, it would have fallen to you to have a conversation somehow with this woman. what would you tell her? i would tell her what jill told her, which is that it s so important to come forward if you can possibly come forward. certainly she would be attacked. senator grassley was also there at the time, and he also attacked anita hill just like orrin hatch. but there are so many more women who have come forward, who would stand behind her, who would defend her against the scurrilous attacks of republicans, who have already been lining up with attacks on her. her character is her own possession, and i know that she would be surrounded by millions of other men who would stand by her. lisa graves and jill wine-banks, thank you very much for joining us in this important discussion tonight. appreciate it. thank you so much. when we come back, another bad news week for president trump ending as other weeks have, with a guilty plea. but this week also ending with a challenge to his supreme court nominee, the kind of challenge we have not seen since clarence thomas confirmation. but our tempur-pedic helps us make it all work. it gives us the best night sleep ever. i recommend my tempur-pedic to everybody. the most highly recommended bed in america just got better. introducing the all-new, reinvented tempur-pedic. designed with the most pressure relieving material we ve ever created. it adapts and responds to your body s unique needs throughout the night. for your deepest, most rejuvenating sleep. there s no better time to experience tempur-pedic. find your exclusive retailer today at tempurpedic.com when you barely clip ae to exptpassing car.r-pedic. minor accident - no big deal, right? wrong. your insurance company is gonna raise your rate after the other car got a scratch so small you coulda fixed it with a pen. maybe you should take that pen and use it to sign up with a different insurance company. for drivers with accident forgiveness liberty mutual won t raise their rates because of their first accident. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty perspective, the polling is about as bad as it gets. 538 is generic congressional ballot. democrats, 48.9%. republicans. 39.8%. that s the best number the democrats have had since trump has been in office, they say. yes, it is. we ve been having terrible weeks as republicans. part of it is due to the president and part of it is due to us not standing up to himful i m seeing a great deal of enthusiasm among voters. in colorado, new voter registrations are up 333% up over how they were how is that going? more people are registering as democrats and more people who are likely democratic voters such as younger voters and women are registering outpacing men. it s a problem. in the republican party they ve lost. you re seeing it in ohio, pennsylvania. these are states that require this. i think people are not really realizing that in addition to the suburban white women voting against republicans and have already in special elections in 2017, younger voters, especially millenials will turn out. seems like the bret kavanagh score is going to still be with us next week and after that. next week is at the moment is the scheduled vote in the judiciary committee that there s still time after that before the vote on the senate floor, so we don t know what damage is going to be done to bret kavanagh or to the republicans in the next week with that story. look at it this way. if you re not part of the basi basie-est base, it s either chaos, unhin jds tweets, or you know, you ve got the bret kavanagh story which may or may not explode on the basis of these allegations that in and of itself only appeals to his evangelical base. you were in the middle. a lot of voters voted for trump with like i m going to roll the dice a little bit. i don t like hillary, he s kind of wild, let me see what he does, those people are not rushing to embrace the republican party. it doesn t even exists exist anymore. no consistent philosophy except tax cuts for the rich. evan, you are saddled with this but this election is going to be a referendum. the republicans, one is jerry plannedered districts and voter suppression tactics. other than that, the win is going against the gop. the only known political strategy, if we can call it that, for a party when there are problematic investigations going against them on their side, is to simply stay absolutely silent about the investigations and talk about other things. donald trump can t stay silent about this investigation of him, his administration, his cam parngs and so the republicans out there who are trying to campaign and trying to avoid that subject get hit with it every day by donald trump. they do, but they haven t seen the tweets is the excuse. there you go. republicans are trying talk about immigration as well as fire up the base saying we need you to turn out. i think other things i think the public has tuned out the investigation. it s very intricate. they re are looking at the economy but they re knots feeling the economy. there s a disconnect between how great the economy is and how people are doing. when you ask the question in polling are you better or worse off than a year ago. in the high teens they say they re better off if they re not a republican and member of the party s base. we don t have much to hang our hats on other than neil gorsuch. i need the woman to come forward. we saw it happen with roy moore. we were able to july his accuser s credibility. until i see that and diane fine stipe shares this with everyone, i m skeptical but i want to know more. david, as evan points out, there just isn t a version of anything that s working for the democrats, including this rushed confirmation process tsh. you mean republicans. noerlt republicans including this rushed confirmation process. midterm elections are an amalgamation optical a series of local elections with local personalities of the candidates and local issues have a big role to may, dominant role to play but they occur within overarching narratives that either, you know, go with the wind or go against the wind. the republicans have no narrative other that what s up with trump? and that doesn t work for them. evan and david, thank you for joining us tonight. tonight s last word is next. uby making it easy to verifye you hyour car and driver.ome, uber is moving in a new direction. forward. but let s be honest, nobody likes dealing with insurance. which is why esurance hired me, dennis quaid, as their spokesperson because apparently, i m highly likable. see, they know it s confusing. i literally have no idea what i m getting, dennis quaid. that s why they re making it simple, man in cafe. and more affordable. thank you, dennis quaid. you re welcome. that s a prop apple. i d tell you more, but i only have 30 seconds. so here s a dramatic shot of their tagline so you ll remember it. esurance. it s surprisingly painless.
with all of that. anderson, one thing we should also note, and it s something you just mentioned a short while ago, that is that one of the reasons why christine blasey ford s legal team is canceling some of these interviews that they had set up is that they wanted to show some good faith to the other side and according to this source that was a welcome sign. it signaled to them that there s sort of a commitment there to get this done. and according to this source, in the words of this source, we want to work this out. anderson, one other interesting prospect in all of this that i think really needs to be underlined and highlighted, and that is that the conversations are continuing inside the senate judiciary committee to have a female attorney, a prosecutor or litigant of some kind to represent the all-male gop side of the senate judiciary committee. i was talking with a source earlier this evening who said essentially they don t want to have the image out there to the american people of a group of aging men on the senate gop side quizzing and questioning and the therapist who dr. ford went to? shouldn t she be talked to? it s interesting that dr. ford has gone so far as to take a polygraph. i wonder if judge kavanaugh is willing to take a polygraph. she s done a lot, it seems to me, to reinforce her credibility. credibility that was not at issue when she took these steps. it seems to me that the fbi ought to be investigating that and telling the committee what they found. cnn, we re reporting that republicans are looking to bring in a female outside counsel to question ford if the hearing happens. beyond just the optics of it, could it also be more effective in terms of getting closer to the truth and do you think that person should also ask questions for the democrats or do you think democratic senators should ask questions? no, i think what s sauce for the goose also go for democrats as well, if you ll forgive me. and i think having an outside counsel, given how sensitive this is. remember what we re talking about, anderson. we re talking about an allegation. and her side has used these words of attempted rape. we don t need anybody making points back home, whether on the democratic side or the republican side if what we re trying to do is to find out what happened. because we re talking about a lifetime appointment. we won t be able to do anything about it afterwards. we ve got to do it now. it doesn t seem like there s anyone on the republican side, though, on the committee talking about bringing in any other potential witnesses other than these two. well, anderson, you ve got to do one of two things. you ve got to have the fbi investigate these witnesses. for example, mark judge. somebody s got to talk to him. or you ve got to have a real hearing where these people come before the public. those are really the only two alternatives. somebody s got to investigate those witnesses who are relevant to this hearing. you can have the fbi do it. they can then work with the committee. or you can bring those witnesses before the committee. now, if there s any other alternative, as a member of congress i don t know what it is. as someone who advocated for anita hill,ings, if ford does end up testifying, what advice would you give her going into it? i think she has been able i think dr. ford has been able to tell her story to professionals, that is to say, to a therapist. she apparently spoke to her own congresswoman and told her story there. she is herself apparently a very intelligent professional. so i would just say to her tell it straight. tell it the way you ve been telling it to all those who say they believe you. congressman norton, appreciate your time. thank you. i want to broaden the conversation. back with us tonight is former federal judge nancy gertner. now a lecturer at harvard university s law school. there is cnn political analyst gloria borger and david gergen. judge gertner, when you hear these new details about negotiations between the committee and professor ford s lawyer, how much do you read into that? it s still up to chairman grassley whether he ll push back the monday hearing. well, i mean, i think that it s good that she s saying she s going to come to the hearing. she left herself open when she said without x or y, without the fbi investigation she s going to she s not going to come. but i want to underscore what the congresswoman said, which is that a hearing without other witnesses and a hearing without investigation sounds like an appeasement to the me too movement. in other words, it sounds very much like hey, we ll hear from you, now let s vote. in other words, there s no there will be searching entry of her but it becomes he said/she said more than it already is. while there may be other witness that s you re not going to. so it then relies on a high status male being accused by a lower status female. and that really, forgive me, is an empty ritual at this point. having other witnesses is one thing. having an investigation is another thing. this is really thank you very much for appearing, now let s vote. gloria, the notion that republicans on the committee might retain a female outside counsel to question ford and, again, unclear whether that would be in public or in private, how much political strategy would be behind that move? well, look, it s all political. they re not dumb. they understand that you have all of these white men who would be questioning this woman, that there is no female to ask questions, and that it would the optics of it would look terrible. and you know, from the other point of view if i were professor ford, i might rather be questioned by the committee, to be honest, in many ways because perhaps she would be able to handle the political questions just with her story whereas a practiced attorney might be better at it than the members of the committee. so you know, it s kind of interesting. they have to on this phone call today, and i ve been talking to a couple of sources about it, it was a good call but there are lots of issues that need to be resolved. i mean, if there is an attorney on one side, will there be an attorney on another side for the democrats an, for example, who would go first? how long would they be given? you know, there s still a lot that needs to be resolved. and there s no way and everybody knows it that they could have done it by monday. david, it certainly seems like there is no appetite, on the part of republicans, to have an fbi investigation at this point. none. zero. i think what we do know, anderson, is they have entered negotiations and both sides seem to want to get to yes. so i think chances are much higher tonight that she s actually going to come and testify. even if it s later in the week. and i assume chairman grassley as part of that would do it later in the week. but there s no indication of any give of witnesses coming in. very importantly, no give on the idea of having a real investigation before you get there. it s just hard to know how you can put two people and conclude what s the truth if you have no real information about what other parties say. you need to hear from a variety of people under oath. so i think it does come down to he said/she said, which means they re going to vote and he s going to win. i do think also on the outside counsel, it s important to distinguish. this is somebody they re bringing in who s going to be on their side who is trying to impugn and to discredit. this would not be a neutral this is not a neutral arbiter. so the democrats may be well advised to do that but on the other hand, they ve got people who are pretty experienced and they ve got women of their own who can ask questions. i m not sure they need to duplicate that. also what s really striking is the disproportionate amount of power coming into this. here kavanaugh goes into the white house every day and he has hours and hours of prepared testimony. he s got a whole the republicans on the hill. they control a lot of this. in some ways it s going to be a david versus goliath or christine versus goliath. that will be tough for her but she may be a more sympathetic character as a result. judge, one the things that remains unclear tonight is what if any investigation it doesn t seem like there will be any investigation into the allegations. that s significant. i want to step back and say there are three choices here. one is to have an investigation. and no one in any court ever gets on the stand without a private investigation, depositions, discovery. nobody except on judge judy does that. that would be one option which they ve now rejected. the other would be to have other witnesses so it is not just he said/she said. and that s rejected. now you re talking about sort of the classic troubling scene where yes, you re having her testify, having him testify, but as david gergen indicated this is unequal at the start. and there s no outside context. i can t emphasize enough how unusual it is to simply have people, you know, confront their accuser with no other evidence other than essentially their own words. maybe there is no such evidence out there. but it seems to me we have to look at that before we proceed with this. i also have to admit that this stuff about talking about the optics. we should be talking about getting to the truth. right. i totally agree with you. but you ve also got to presume that the staffs of the committees are doing their own internal investigations. the outside groups are doing investigations. they re digging as hard as they can to find whatever they can. and i would presume that if the democrats do their own questioning there will be they will have their own information that they will then ask judge kavanaugh about. so what i think we would see coming out of this hearing would be sort of information that people have culled while we ve been waiting for this to get started without really an official fbi investigation, which is what they should have had in the first place. i think there s a real chance that each side will introduce ideas or conspiracies about the other side that are unresolved but that push the public in one direction or another. and we do know that the white house forces are very clever at this. and that s why i think she s i mean, it s extraordinarily brave of her to come in and do this because she s paid this personal price already. but the odds of winning this kind of argument, unless she can appeal to people s sense of she really is a victim here, she really is being ganged up on. we re going to take a break, continue the conversation. also we ll talk about the details of when, where, how we ll hear from judge kavanaugh and his accuser which are very much in flux. the latest on what we know. also tonight breaking news on the mueller investigation. new word tonight about the time the mueller team is spending with the president s former attorney michael cohen and what they re talking about. so you don t die waiting. upmc does more living-donor liver transplants than any other center in the nation. find out more and get out of line today. be right back. with moderate to severe crohn s disease, i was there, just not always where i needed to be. is she alright? i hope so. so i talked to my doctor about humira. i learned humira is for people who still have symptoms of crohn s disease after trying other medications. and the majority of people on humira saw significant symptom relief and many achieved remission in as little as 4 weeks. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal infections and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened; as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. before treatment, get tested for tb. tell your doctor if you ve been to areas where certain fungal infections are common, and if you ve had tb, hepatitis b, are prone to infections, or have flu-like symptoms or sores. don t start humira if you have an infection. be there for you, and them. ask your gastroenterologist about humira. with humira, remission is possible. manu raju also has some new information and i do as well. that professor ford really doesn t want to be questioned by outside counsel. we were talking about that earlier. and she would like senators to question her instead. she doesn t want it to turn into some kind of trial where she s being questioned by an attorney like that. and that she does not want to testify in the same room as judge kavanaugh. she doesn t want to be in the same room with him at the same time. and that and manu is also reporting that she wants the committee to subpoena mark judge and these other alleged witnesses. and so those are just some new details we re both learning this evening. judge, what do you make of that? well, i mean, i think that the candidly, with all due respect to the senators, they re not as good questioners as a lawyer would be even though the senators that are lawyers are not as good questioners as someone who is a litigator would be. i mean, that s an interesting choice. you wind up with less probing and more awkward questioning that way. do you think there s a reason what do you think her reasoning would be on that? you can make the argument that a, she doesn t want an accusatory prosecutor type on the republican side asking her questions. the other side of it is some might argue she wants the visual of, you know, male senators of a certain age asking awkward questions. right. i mean, if it s the latter, then it s a political decision. if it s the former, i can understand it as a an issue of comfort more than anything else. the other thing is what we re heading for is a hyperpartisan hearing without a judge. i hate to sort of tout that but there s no one there to say hey, that s an inappropriate question or that s going too far except the partisans on both sides. let me just add this, anderson. from a source i just heard from. one of the reasons i believe she doesn t want to be questioned by outside counsel is that she believes senators should be accountable for the questions that they re going to ask and that the burden should be on them to ask the questions they want to ask and not an outside counsel who is a professional at doing this and let them be accountable to the american public. she is going to be accountable to the american public for what she says. they should be accountable, as well. i just don t know how this is going to be seen as anything other than a trial. both are going to be have to make persuasive arguments. i just don t agree with her on that point. it does seem to me there might be a compromise and that is each side can select three senators or four senators to represent anybody everybody. the stories are not that long. it s not going to take that long to question these people. i think a more relevant question is what is the order? i would think it s probably advisable to go second if you can. but then if the first person is questioned and the other person goes, then do they get rebuttals? how do they keep each other out of the room at the same time? do they take recesses? i think those are going to be important questions as well. go ahead. as are the questions about subpoenaing other witnesses. again, you make this this is already a he said/she said. but you make it a stark he said/she said when all you have are the two antagonists and not other witnesses in other circumstances. we re also learning that according to cnn that she wants no time limit on her opening statement. gloria, is that what you re hearing? yeah. actually, that s manu s reporting. they have to choreograph these things, as you know, down to the minute or else, you know, everything can go awry. and clearly, in telling her story it would seem to me, reading between the lines on manu s reporting here, is that she wants to be able to tell her story as she recollects it and tell everything about it and tell how it has affected your her life. and so you know, usually in congressional hearings there are time limits about testimony. and i think this is one of the things she and her advisers have said. if she s going to do this and she s going to appear before congress and the world, she wants to be able to tell it all. david, we re learning also, the washington post is reporting that thursday is a potential date. that seems to be a fair compromise. it s good for senator grassley for moving in that direction. but having said that, it s going to be thursday, you know, there are several days now between now and thursday when they could be doing background investigations. and they could be collecting evidence under oath. that s still the relevant question. but if it was to be an fbi investigation that would be something that would have to come from the white house. yes. and it would have to come right away. but it gives you ample time. if it took three days to do the anita hill background investigation, why can t they do this essentially in three days? judge, do you think there is if they do say thursday, then pressure builds to try to have some sort of background investigation? i think so. it also is the fairest approach. that s what i was saying before, is there are three alternatives here, which is fbi, witnesses, or just one on one. and they ve chosen the least fair approach to either side. gloria, so thursday the potential date. no time limit we re hearing. the professor would like no time limit on her opening statement. i assume if that was the case judge kavanaugh would have no time limit on his opening statement. david raises the point, though, about rebuttals, would they be able to respond and who goes first. there are still many questions to be worked out. these are things that need to be worked out. and i think david raises a great point, which is while you re working out all the logistics why not actually have the investigators talk to witnesses. you know, this happened a long time ago. more than 30 years ago. it s not like you have to go through 5 million text messages between kids. this is a more limited kind of investigation. so while they work out one thing, why can t they do two things at the same time? it would seem to me that they re able to do that if the president would say yeah, maybe we ought to do it. rather than letting that go by the boards. she has made it very clear that this is what she would prefer. but if she doesn t get that, it seems to me she wants to be able to tell her story in full. gloria borger, judge nancy gertner, david gergen, thank you very much. coming up next tonight s other big breaking story. reports that michael cohen and robert mueller s prosecutors have been talking a lot about a lot. late details. the possible legal impact and more. when we continue. -computer, order pizza. -of course, daniel. -fridge, 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times white house correspondent maggie haberman. maggie, what more do you know about the scope of what the mueller team had been talking about with cohen? my understanding, anderson, is a pretty wide range i think has covered areas related to the campaign. has covered areas related to president trump s business. remember, michael cohen was not on the campaign. he spent extremely little time there. he was not welcomed by most of trump s campaign advisers. but he certainly has a window into a bunch of the trump campaign excuse me, the trump business activities. among them a trump tower moscow project that he himself had tried to get off the ground at one point that was scuttled at the beginning of 2016. but you know, typically speaking in these kinds of meetings that witnesses have had with the special counsel s office there have not been limits certainly on the kinds of things that they re being asked about, and michael cohen i think can provide a variety of information. the question is going to be whether cohen finds it excuse me, mueller finds it valuable. whether mueller believes it either provides new information or whether it backs up other information that he s already received. it s yet another brick in what seems to be this case that mueller is building toward a likely report to congress. i can t imagine that this comes as much of a shock to the president. i don t think so. michael cohen s adviser lanny cohen excuse me, lanny davis. this is quite a night for me in terms of names. lanny davis had been on tv making very clear that cohen had information that he was willing to give mueller, that he had stories to tell. they were all but picking up an auction paddle saying talk to me both before and after the plea. i don t think this surprises anyone. and i think there s a question if cohen provides valuable information for any of these investigations could he see a reduced sentence? i think that is certainly something his advisers are looking toward. no, i think the president feels under siege by a lot of these things. but i don t expect any of this is a surprise to him at this point. you ve written about the relationship between michael cohen sometimes tortured relationship between michael cohen and citizen donald trump. president trump as roger stone, another trump long-time adviser had put it to me for a story i did several months ago. president trump went out of his way to treat michael cohen like, quote unquote, garbage. now, trump is not exactly easy on anyone, as we all know from our reporting. but he could be particularly tough with cohen. trump s allies and current advisers would say that s because cohen had made some errors and made some mistakes that the president was unhappy with, then candidate trump and before that businessman trump was unhappy with. but he was very tough on him. unfortunately, trump has this sort of one-way loyalty that he exhibits with his aides. he expects it and he often doesn t give it in return. i think you are going to see potentially some of that playing out in cooperation with investigators. maggie haberman, appreciate it. thanks very much. let s get some information from cnn senior legal analyst preet bharara. before being fired by donald trump he served as u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york where michael cohen took his guilty plea. with cohen cooperating with mueller what doors does this open for mueller? we don t know what if anything cohen has on donald trump. we don t. but we have some basis to think there s a bunch, in at least three categories. we have what he said at his plea agreement. his plea proceeding where he said basically i committed a campaign finance violation at the direction of the president, trump. we also know that he might have some information or at least we can suspect he might have some information that may not carry the day on whether or not donald trump obstructed justice. if he was close to his lawyer and we see from some recorded conversations he had a lot of discussions with his lawyer about things he might not have talked about with other people. there s that bucket. and then there s what s been reported that michael cohen may know a lot about donald trump s endeavors, business and otherwise, in russia. we don t know, but we know he s talking a lot and he has some reason to try to provide as much information as possible because it helps him. it is particularly remarkable, especially on the heels of paul manafort cooperating, also obviously michael flynn, gates, all papadopoulos, all these people who had been around the president. the sheer number of people who mueller has turned is pretty extraordinary. i think he s basically gotten everybody. i ve said recently that based on the mueller track record i don t think mueller goes after someone unless he knows he has the goods. if you read the documents in these cases, they re really strong. not just giving little bits of information about why someone is guilty of a crime. they re what we call speaking charges, speaking indictments. even the ones against the folks for example at the gru, the folks in russia who were charged with various crimes, who were never going to get in the country, never going to be able to slap cuffs on. the detail in these charging documents is such that i think mueller appreciates even more than the average prosecutor the importance of the public having confidence that he s bringing cases that are well grounded in fact. according to this report also they have discussed whether or not anyone around the president had broached the idea of a pardon. and if a pardon was broached, what s the significance is that a possible obstruction? look, you have to be careful about what conclusions you draw from the questions that prosecutors ask. and i know everyone wants to jump to the conclusion. but i ll tell you, when we were in conference rooms with cooperating witnesses and the people who work for me were doing the same thing you go through a checklist and you ask about the thing that you think is most likely true. right? but then you go concentric circles around the core of what you re looking at with that person. i m not saying this is that. but you ask a lot of questions of people that may be a little bit out of left field just to make sure that you ve covered your bases. and so it is possible that they re close to bringing some kind of case that involves obstruction and that s at the heart of what they re looking at and what they re asking michael cohen about. but it s also possible that it s at the periphery and they re just covering their bases because i think it would be irresponsible i think any witness that comes across their desk they have to ask questions about obstruction. you have to do that for exhaustive purposes. cohen s participation in this has been voluntary. what s in it for him that s sort of odd. given that he s sort of playing around in three jurisdictions. you don t have that that often. it happens from time to time, you share a cooperating witness. meaning you think normally he would try to get something out of it before cooperating? yeah. you usually have a deal with the office with whom you re trying to cooperate. and usually you work all that out. if there are multiple offices they ll have a basis for an investigation, in a organized crime office or corporate fraud or anything else, it gets worked out in advance so everyone knows what the promises are, what they can expect, everyone knows what the prosecutor s going to argue for even if the prosecutor can t guarantee a lenient sentence because that s up to a judge. the fact cohen has had these interviews, does it make it any less likely or more likely that the president might sit down with mueller? it seems the more mueller knows the less it would be likely the president would sit down. my sense, we re talking about likelihood in the sort of 1% to 2% range. i think the likelihood of the president sitting down is fairly close to zero. i don t know that that particular factor would play in it at all. thank you. other emerging details around the possible testimony v professor christine blasey ford and reaction to the story from a group of republican women in florida. you might be surprised what they have to say. you ll hear from them next. this is a story about mail and packages. and it s also a story about people. people who rely on us every day to deliver their dreams they re handing us more than mail they re handing us their business and while we make more e-commerce deliveries to homes than anyone else in the country, we never forget. that your business is our business the united states postal service. priority: you with féria extreme platinum haircolor by l oréal. lighten up! lightens hair up to seven levels. féria is ammonia free with conditioning oil. never dull, never flat. live in color. live in féria extreme platinum by l oréal paris. everyone that speaks about him. this guy s an altar boy, a scout. because one woman made an allegation, sorry, i don t buy it. but in the grand scheme of things, my goodness, there was no intercourse. there was maybe a touch. can we really? 36 years later? she s still stuck on that? had it happened. i mean, we re talking about a 15-year-old girl, which i respect. you know, i m a woman. i respect. but we re talking about a 17-year-old boy in high school with testosterone running high. tell me what boy hasn t done this in high school. please, i would like to know. why would she come forward if this wasn t true? because it has basically destroyed her family. she s had to move, she s gone undercover. she s gotten death threats. so if she s lying, why come forward? she s also destroying his life, his wife s lives, his children s lives. his law career. i mean, why didn t she come out sooner if she s telling the truth? why didn t she come out when he was going into the bush white house? why didn t she come out he s been a federal judge for over a decade. why not have a thorough investigation instead of just the two of them he said/she said? it doesn t matter. it does not matter what everyone else has to say. this is what happened, though, with clarence thomas and anita hill. the fbi investigated. it took three days. done. why not now? this is not the same. this is a high school kid. there s no anita hill story. does something that allegedly happened some 30-plus years ago matter today? you can t judge the character of a man based on what he did at 17. and i would hate to think that 30, 40 years later somebody s going to destroy your life because someone at some party you it s not right. but maybe you touched somebody the way you re not supposed to and who brought the alcohol for these kids? as women, though, do you have some sympathy for her for what she s going through? no, i have no sympathy. and perhaps at that moment she liked him and maybe he didn t pay attention to her afterwards and he went out with another girl and she got bitter or whatever the situation is. they re kids. if it is true, would it be okwu if he became a justice on the supreme court? as long as that s an isolated incident, yes. he was 17. he was not even an adult. and we all make mistakes at 17. i believe in a second chance. i d be more than okay with him being supreme court judge. if the person made a mistake and they move on and they have been a good human being, you know, who are we to judge? joining me now for perspective, cnn political analyst and usa today columnist kirsten powers. also carrie severino, chief counsel and policy director of the judicial crisis network which supports the kavanaugh nomination. i m wondering what you make, what you heard from that group of women who believe judge kavanaugh. well, i just want to say this idea that any 17-year-old has done this is just completely incorrect. i went to high school. i actually went to a private jesuit high school. it wasn t all boys the way this was. it was coed. this was not the way the boys i went to high school with behaved. it s not normal behavior. we have to be very careful about saying that, specially to teenagers today. we don t want them to think that this is normal behavior for teenage boys. i do agree that you don t want to hold a person to everything they ve done as a teenager and that people absolutely can do bad things when they re teenagers and turn into great members of society. i don t question that at all. but if this happened, i do think that it s not the supreme court is such a rarefied position, to be a supreme court justice in this society, and you are being a judge on the highest court in the land and you are held to a different standard than other people are. i think you can both say that yes, someone can make a mistake when they re 17 years old and it doesn t have to haunt them for the rest of their life and also say, but you know, they proba y shouldn t be on the supreme court. carrie, what do you make of the woman who said tell me what boy hasn t done this in high school? did that concern you? that is a little concerning. i fear, though, it s all too common. i ve had friends who had similar experiences happen to them. but i still don t think if there was attempted rape going on here, that obviously is something that should be taken very seriously and not discounted simply because it s old. that said, i think all the evidence is pointing to the fact that brett kavanaugh did was not involved here. the experience she describes is horrible. but i think we ve seen more and more people coming saying you know, the people that have been identified there so far. we had another one, p.j. smith, who said i was identified as being at that party and i can tell you i was never at a party like that with brett kavanaugh, this is not like what i knew him to be. so that of course you couple that with all of the dozens of women who say they knew him at the time. it doesn t add up with him. his repeated adamant and very confident denials saying this was not me. i think it s the evidence points to the fact that it actually wasn t. kirsten, one of the arguments that some of the women randi talked to made is that why now? why didn t she come forward with this earlier? brett kavanaugh has been, you know, in the public eye. he s gone through confirmation hearings and had background investigations in the past. yeah. it s distressing to me to hear people saying that after what we ve gone through with me too because i feel like this issue has been covered so thoroughly, that this is very standard for through sexual trauma and sexual harassment for that matter. that they feel ashamed, they feel like something s something is wrong with them, maybe they caused it. they fear they ll be ostracized if they come out. there s a lot of fear involved. and there s a lot of good reasons not to bring it up. we have to remember especially during this era. it was not an environment where a woman or girl could feel she could bring this up and be heard and taken seriously. i wonder what you make of the reporting tonight. we re hearing professor ford does not want an outside counsel by the republicans, a female outside person questionings her or even a staff counsel that she wants the questions to come from senators. do you see that as reasonable or political? i m not sure what the logic is. there are several of those. we just had reports of all the different demands she s making. if you watched those hearings previously. having the senators do it, means you don t have a continuous line of questioning. you ve got people overlapping. it s very hard to follow. frankly, the senators aren t very good questioners, some people suggested it s going to be harder questioning from a lawyer. i m not sure that s clear. we saw some very aggressive questioning at the kavanaugh hearing recently. i liked the idea. i heard a few days ago, let s have her lawyers question kavanaugh and kavanaugh s lawyers question her. i do know chairman grassly has tried to be as accommodating as possible with all of her requests. i m sure they will make every effort to be as accommodating as they can. we have to go. kirsten powers, thank you. one quick note now about a cnn special you don t want to miss especially now. take a look. one year ago, hurricane maria devastated puerto rico. the president claims the recovery efforts were a huge success. i think we did a fantastic job in puerto rico. cnn has the real story. what do you want people to know? please come here more. a decorated combat veteran living in a tent. the truth is that people died because the trump administration did not pay attention. cnn special report, a storm of controversy, what really happened in puerto rico. tomorrow night at 10:00. not cool. freezing away fat cells with coolsculpting? now that s cool! coolsculpting safely freezes and removes fat cells with little or no downtime. and no surgery. results and patient experience may 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ms-13 has been around for a long time. it started in the 80s and has been on the east coast since then. what s different now is over the last couple years, there s been this wave of unaccompanied minors who showed up on our border and they re vulnerable kids. most of them have experienced severe trauma because their home countries have been decimated and are devastated by street gangs like ms-13. they come here, some of them haven t been with their family members for years and years, they don t fit in, and they re just looking for a place to belong. and they re placed in communities, whether it s virginia, long island parts of boston, and they re not able to deal with the population. it s kids attacking kids, and the trump administration would like us to believe that ms-13 is this transatlantic criminal enterprise, but the reality is that while there are many members of ms-13, it s very disorganized. they don t actually make a lot of money. you can t even compare them to sophisticated drug trafficking organizations. and they prey on young, vulnerable kids. and the violence we ve seen. the violence is horrific. what are some of the other things you re going to be focusing on this season. we ll be looking at the scourge of methamphetamines that have been overtaking many states including oklahoma. we have an episode of gender fluidity. i m excited about this one. we re in the midst of this gender revolution that s being led by kids. these kids are very open about the fact that they don t feel entirely male or female. they re sort of like this third gender. and they speak about it very insightfully. and their family members, the ones we ve profiled at least, have been so accepting. so it s a really fascinating and exciting kind of episode and movement that s happening. look forward to the whole season. lisa ling, don t miss the season
start wholesale firing people in the white house and in his administration. she is predicting that right after the election there is about to be a purge. sleep tight, everyone. that does it for us tonight. we ll see you again tomorrow. now it s time for the last word with lawrence o donnell. good evening, lawrence. good evening, rachel. you know, you do a fact-based show. you are a presenter of fact, a finder of fact. and i rarely get to hear your opinion in your show. and so i listened. i was hanging on every word. and i heard you say to hillary clinton, early in your hour, that you believe that the kavanagh nomination is, quote, hurtling toward the sun. you want to expand on that? you are my little eagle eyed friend, lawrence o donnell. yes, i did say that. that is my take on it. and i am a terrible predictor and nobody should bank on anything that i predict ever, in politics or in anything. but given the way christine blasey ford is approaching this, given the corroboration that has already appeared in the press in terms of the notes from therapy from years ago, her husband on the record and his recollections, now in the san jose mercury news, multiple corroboration from other people again, that all preceded kavanagh ever being nominated to the supreme court, given the fact her lawyers tonight are demanding an independent investigation by the fbi so that everybody can be interviewed, so that there can be an independent assessment of what s going on, you don t do that and your allegation doesn t look like that if it is something that you have invented and might be found out for if people look too hard at what you re alleging. so given, i think, the strength of the assertions that she s making again, they re unproven assertions at this point, she is conducting herself in such a way that indicates to me that there is meat on these bones and, therefore, i think kavanagh is going to have a hard time. and i don t want to bet tonight, but if i have to bet tonight, i think you re absolutely right. and the other two big things that happened today is the president established a standard of proof in this case saying no one should have any doubt. so brett kavanagh is now under a responsibility given to him by the president today to remove all doubt, all doubt, no one can have the slightest doubt about brett kavanagh in order to vote for him, and then dr. ford is handling this strongly tonight, and i don t think i m not sure she s aware of this, but from a senate strategic standpoint, absolutely masterfully. this demand she is making that the fbi do an investigation first is a masterful strategic stroke. it looks to me like dr. ford is actually more in control of what happens next than chairman chuck grassley, and i don t know if chuck grassley knows that yet. and chuck grassley is on the record in writing over the last two days saying he wants to move forward on this. his word, in a precedented matter. there is one precedent, from when he was on the judiciary committee before in 1991, and, yes, people thought that the fbi investigation of anita hill s allegations was cursory. but the fbi investigated her allegations and did do witness interviews in that proceeded the hearing. all professor ford is asking for is for that precedent to be followed. and the idea that they will reject her on that and say, nope, we re going to go ahead without anybody looking into this. we re going to ram this through because we can, i mean, they can try, but it s belied by everything they ve done before on issues like this. and i just i see him hurtling toward the sun. yeah, it s as if i m hearing dr. ford and her brilliant lawyer say to the judiciary committee, republicans on the judiciary committee, you might have learned nothing in the last 26 years, but we have. yeah. and they are in control. thank you, rachel. thanks, lawrence. well, we begin with breaking news tonight about the reopening of brett kavanagh s confirmation hearing for united states supreme court in the senate judiciary committee. in the 27 years since anita hill was victimized by the republicans on the committee when she came forward with sexual harassment charges against republican supreme court nominee clarence thomas, the republicans on that committee have obviously learned absolutely nothing. but professor christine blasey ford has learned a great deal about how not to be victimized by those same republicans on that side committee. and so tonight dr. ford is making demands on that committee that had been demanding her testimony in what would be a rushed hearing next monday. attorneys for professor christine blasey ford have told chuck grassley, the senate judiciary committee, a written response to his request for her to testify about the accusations against supreme court nominee brett kavanagh. an fbi investigation of the incident should be the first step in addressing her allegations, a full investigation by law enforcement officials will ensure that the crucial facts and witnesses in this matter are assessed in a nonpartisan manner and that the committee is fully informed before conducting any hearing or making any decisions. lisa banks, one of dr. ford s attorneys, was asked tonight if this means that dr. ford will refuse to testify in the hearing that is now scheduled for monday. she will talk with the committee. she s not prepared to talk with them at a hearing on monday. this just came out 48 hours ago. so point blank, if there is not an investigation between now and then, she would not appear on monday in a public hearing? no investigation any legitimate investigation is going to happen between now and monday. this is going to take some time. and what needs to happen is there shouldn t be a rush to a hearing here. there is no reason to do that. dr. ford s lawyers letter to chairman grassley in the 36 hours hours since her name became public she has received support from the public and community across the country. at the same time, however, her worst fears have materialized. she has been the target of vicious harassment and even death threats as a result of these kind of threats, her family was forced to relocate out of their home. her e-mail has been hacked. and she has been impersonated online. while dr. ford s life was being turned upside down, you and your staff scheduled a public hearing for her to testify at the same table as judge kavanagh in front of two dozen u.s. senators on national television to relive this traumatic and harrowing incident. the hearing was scheduled for six short days from today and would include interrogation by senators who appear to have made up their minds that she is mistaken and mixed up. while no sexual assault survivor should be subjected to such an ordeal, dr. ford wants to cooperate with the committee and with law enforcement officials as the judiciary committee has recognized and done before. an fbi investigation of the incident should be the first step in addressing her allegations. and leading off our discussion now, bob schiff, former chief counsel to senator russ fine gold, who served on the senate judiciary committee, and lisa is back, codirector of document and she is the former chief counsel for nominations for the ranking member of the senate judiciary committee on the democratic side. she was the deputy assistant attorney general in the department of justice. and, lisa, i want to start with you. there s been a furious amount of material flying around now in the last hour about what s going on here and what is what there is precedent for, what there isn t. senator orrin hatch who has been a member of the committee for longer than any of us can remember and was there humiliating himself during the anita hill hearing, has issued a tweet tonight about an fbi investigation that dr. ford is demanding, saying, the fbi does not do investigations like this. the responsibility falls to us. and, lisa, that is just an outright lie by a member of the committee. this is exactly what the fbi is supposed to investigate about nominees who come before any committee of the senate. that s exactly right. i was astonished by both that tweet and the release from the justice department suggesting that the fbi doesn t want to do it and doesn t have any jurisdiction over it. in fact, the fbi certainly does as part of the traditional background investigation of a nominee to the judiciary or other significant post. it is certainly within the purview of the fbi to examine this. had this come up as part of its ordinary work, had someone relayed this, this allegation to them as they were conducting the investigation a month ago, they certainly would have looked into it. there s nothing, literally nothing in the law, nothing in the precedent that would prevent them from examining this thoroughly and methodically, carefully if they re kbg examin it. this is another arbitrary roadblock being put up by the republicans on the committee and by their cohorts in the white house and over at the justice department apparently. this is certainly a matter that s worthy of an independent investigation. the type of investigation that those members on that senate judiciary committee are not trained and capable of conducting. you know, i have to say i ve been so impressed by how dr. ford and tonight her lawyers have been handling this from a senate strategic standpoint that i actually had run a check to see. are these lawyers former senate staffers? because as we all are here, i m looking at a level of sophistication in their strategy that is just flawless and there is no republican on that committee except for possibly jeff flake who understands that they absolutely cannot go forward with this nomination without hearing from dr. ford, and now dr. ford is dictating to them what her terms are going to be. let s listen to what lindsey graham said earlier tonight when he was playing tough against dr. ford before dr. ford s letter arrived at the committee with her demand for an fbi investigation. let s listen to what lindsey graham said earlier this evening. if she does not want to come monday, publicly or privately, we re going to move on and vote wednesday. bob schiff, i for one think that lindsey graham has met his match, that lindsey graham is not going to beat dr. ford at this game. i think that s right. you know, this is a very strategic thing they ve done, but it s also the right thing that they re asking to do. right, exactly. that is a very important point, bob. i don t mean to reduce this to a strategic issue. as senate insiders, i m hugely impressed at that level. your point is the important one. it is the right thing to do. right from the start when these allegations finally became public, my thought back to the anita hill hearing was that exactly the wrong way to determine whether the allegations that dr. ford has made are true and whether brett kavanagh is telling the truth when he categorically denies them is to have a hearing with 19 senators going back and forth in 10-minute rounds questioning these two witnesses. an investigation which allows for all people with relevant information to be questioned and for the facts to be assembled in a way that senators can then understand what is known and what is not known and perhaps have a public hearing, if necessary. but a circus is not what we need for allegations of this seriousness and this importance to the future of the country. lindsey graham s bullying we just saw about we re doing this on monday, take it or leave it, has been undermined not only by dr. ford s strength, which i believe will definitely prevail here, but president trump today said they have the time. they have plenty of time. and so let s listen to what president trump said today which is very different from what we just heard lindsey graham say. mr. president is a delay acceptable, sir, on the hearings for judge kavanagh? there is some discussion he may not be coming in on monday. i think it s a great question frankly. we are looking to get this done as quickly as possible, so we have time available. we will delay the process until it s finished out. i guess we have invited everybody i know i can tell you this, that judge kavanagh is anxious to do it. i don t know about the other party, but judge kavanagh is very anxious to do it and a delay is certainly acceptable. we want to get to the bottom of everything. we want everybody to be able to speak up and to speak out. lisa, every democrat on that committee is going to be quoting president trump saying, a delay is certainly acceptable. we have time available. we will delay the process until it s finished out. that s right. and i think that that statement by senator graham and also the way that senator grassley set this hearing so quickly is really contempt with us of not only dr. ford, but of the seriousness of this matter. it s certainly it s certainly relevant to whether someone should be entrusted with a lifetime position on the court to examine this. and i think that dr. ford has come forward with a very serious and credible statement of what happened or with corroboration about how she described the story and who victimized her. brett kavanagh. and so i think that this idea they have to rush is completely arbitrary. it s completely made up. and in this instance, dr. ford has everything to lose by telling the truth. she has been subject to death threats. brett kavanagh has everything to gain by lying. and, in fact, we ve already shown in the evidence that came out of the hearing just two weeks ago showed that he s more than willing to lie and mislead the senate in order to try to advance his career. so i think rushing forward when he s been ensconced at the white house, preparing for next week while she s been fleeing her home is manifestly unfair. this needs to be fully investigated and it shouldn t be given a short shrift and the way senator grassley approached this matter from the beginning. we have senator feinstein issuing a statement, i agree 100% that the rushed process to hold a hearing on money has been unfair and is reminiscent of the treatment of anita hill. senator feinstein advocating the fbi investigation. and, bob, there is a much to fear actually for brett kavanagh and his friend mark judge who is another witness who would be in an fbi investigation. that is, of course, that lying to the fbi is a federal crime in and of itself. yes, absolutely. and the fbi can ask a series of questions, can really and bring to bear information that they have accumulated from other witnesses in asking those questions. and get the full story from these people in a way that senators asking questions before a national television audience and some of them grandstanding or trying to put forward a point of view can t do. you know, lisa is absolutely right about the truthfulness being the important thing here. this was the senator that i worked for, senator russ finegold published a piece that said when he was evaluating nominees, truthfulness was a nonnegotiable quality. brett kavanagh s truthfulness has been called into question by the hearing so far and now we have an issue where he has categorically denied allegations and again, it s a question of whether he is telling the truth. that s something that i think the senate has a duty to determine. all senators who are going to vote on this nomination need to know the facts of this particular situation and need to be able to reach a conclusion on it because they are going to have to live with their votes. and rushing this to judgment, having the hearing on monday with an empty chair for dr. ford and then going to a vote in the senate judiciary committee and a vote on the senate floor, would be just a terrible thing for the institution of the senate and for the supreme court ultimately if he s confirmed and further information comes out. i have just received a written statement from chuck grassley, the chairman of the committee, and my speed reading of it, i do not see chuck grassley saying that this hearing will take place on monday. i m going to rely on the control room to read this closer than i have been able to. but i want to read to you, lisa, this passage that chuck grassley has in here about the fbi s role in senate confirmation. chuck grassley in his written statement says, the fbi has indicated to the committee and in public statements that it considers the matter closed. the fbi does not make credibility determinations. the fbi provides information on a confidential basis in order for decision makers to determine an individual s suitability. the senate has the information it needs to follow-up with witnesses and gather and assess the relevant evidence. lisa, your reaction to that? well, i think it s possible senator grassley hasn t read that many fbi investigations themselves. i ve read dozens of them. they begin with fx-86 including question 20, allows them to look into crim nat history, criminal background of anything that s happened since they were 16 or over. it also includes a detailed examination if someone does bring forward an allegation that someone isn t worthy of a public of public trust to examine those facts, to find out what the matter is. and you know that from just recent news history when rob porter, another hatch staffer, former hatch staffer, was facing a denial of his background investigation, security clearance because of allegations that he had hit his spouse. that s certainly not a matter that involves a crime that the fbi would ordinarily investigate, but it s the type of matter the fbi does investigate as part of determining what the record reflects about someone s suitability for public trust in public office. this is essential the type of matter the fbi could gather information about, gather it independently and neutrally and provide that information, the full set of information about this matter to the senate and that s what should happen. and, lisa, i just want to back you up on this. as a staff director of two committees, environment of public works and finance, i saw these fbi reports. i saw what they do. i saw what kind of evaluations they make and what kind of help they try to give specifically to the chairman. they do not leave things to guesswork. they do not just present aimen yu of collected data a a menu collected data. we have to squeeze in a break. bop schiff and lisa graves, thank you for starting us off on this important coverage tonight. we have much more on this coming up. president trump sounded terrified today about this because he was sticking very, very closely to his talking points about wanting to hear both sides in the brett kavanagh confirmation hearing instead of his usual method of attacking any woman who makes accusations of sexual assault. and donald trump is terrified because brett kavanagh might not make it to the supreme court and, therefore, might not be there to protect donald trump from a robert mueller subpoena. and next, the other witness, the other teenage boy who dr. ford says was in the room with brett kavanagh is saying tonight that he will refuse to testify to the senate judiciary committee. -computer, order pizza. -of course, daniel. -fridge, weather. -clear skies and 75. -trash can, turn on the tv. -my pleasure. -ice dispenser, find me a dog sitter. -okay. -and make ice. -pizza delivered. -what s happened to my son? -i think that s just what people are like now. i mean, with progressive, you can quote your insurance on just about any device. even on social media. he ll be fine. -[ laughs ] -will he? -i don t know. unmotivated? feeling like you can t keep up? maybe you re tired of the same old workout. then you need aaptiv. aaptiv offers incredibly motivating music-driven workouts led by the world s best trainers. you ll find classes for everything. from running, to strength training, to yoga. aaptiv - real trainers, real music, real workouts. try aaptiv free for 30 days. visit aaptiv.com to start your free trial. we are getting more breaking news reports tonight from senators reactions to dr. christine blasey ford s demand of a full fbi investigation of her accusation of sexual assault against brett kavanagh before she testifies to the judiciary committee. we have a truly disappointing, to put it mildly, almost shocking response from senator bob corker. we will get to that in a minute. and remember that a full investigation means questioning all of the witnesses. it always does in every investigation. this time it would include brett kavanagh s friend mark judge, who according to dr. ford s account, was the other stumbling drunk, that was her word, stumbling drunk teenage boy in the room at the time of the sexual assault that she describes. today mark judge s attorney sent a letter to the senate judiciary committee chuck grassley saying he has nothing to tell the committee and will not cooperate. his letter said the only reason i am involved is because dr. christine blasey ford remembers me as the other person in the room of the alleged assault. in fact, i have no memory of the alleged incident. brett kavanagh and i were friends in high school, but i do not recall the party described in dr. ford s letter. more to the point, i never saw brett act in the manner dr. ford describes. i have no more information to offer the committee and i do not wish to speak publicly regarding the incidents described in dr. fords s letter. now, in mark judge s own writing, hays described himself as a black out alcoholic in high school. mark judge has described those years in a book titled, wasted, tales of a general exdrunk. one is friend is called bart o kavanagh who is described as having puked in someone s car. he includes this quote on his page. certain women should be struck regularly like gongs. now, mark judge put that quote in a high school year book in 1982, 1982. not 1962 before the women s liberation movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, obliterated statements like that in most high school year books in america, especially in catholic schools. and here, apparently, is one of the reasons why the catholic boys at brett kavanagh s catholic high school, which was infused with alcohol according to mark judge, were allowed to encourage violent assault on women in print, in their catholic high school year book under the supervision of the faculty of that school. we had a good saying that we ve held firm to to this day as the dean was reminding me before, before the talk, which is what happens at georgetown prep stays at georgetown prep. that s been a good thing for all of us, i think. not any more, brett kavanagh, not any more. joining us now is barbara mcquade, form u.s. attorney for the eastern district of michigan and profess ever of law at the university of michigan. also an nbc news and msnbc legal contributor. mika also joining us, and lisa graves who is formerly from the senate judiciary committee is still with us. and, mika, i want to get your congressional committee experience on what you re seeing unfold here tonight. i actually find it really interesting that the republicans are rushing ahead with this hearing and with this vote. it s almost as if they are afraid the kind of culture that brett kavanagh comes out of may result in another woman coming forward with another experience of a similar drunken evening of inappropriate sexual approaches to her. and i think that they are trying to get him confirmed before you can discover any more such incidents. the statement by chuck grassley tonight, chairman of the committee, is a weak statement in terms of what happens next. he simply includes the line, so there is no reason for any further delay. he does not say, there will be no further delay. he does not say the hearing will take place on monday. he makes no such promise in that statement tonight. but senator bob corker who is not on that committee and who is retiring from the senate jumped out at 10:13 p.m. tonight with this tweet. after learning of the allegation, chairman chuck grassley took immediate action to ensure both dr. ford and judge kavanagh have the opportunity to be heard in public or private. republicans extended a hand in good faith. if we don t hear from both sides on monday, let s vote. now, barbara mcquade, that is something stronger than what chuck grassley is saying, and bob corker might not have known how soft chuck grassley was going to come out here tonight because chuck grassley clearly does not know what to do next as of this minute tonight. yeah, you know, from a matter of process, the whole nation is watching. a generation of children are watching. and it s important that we get this right as a matter of process. this is a lifetime appointment. and i understand why they want to get it done before the mid terms. . we have a couple of months before that. delaying this a week or two while we do a thorough investigation is really in everybody s interest, best interest, including brett kavanagh. if he is rushed through at this point without a thorough investigation of this allegation, then his position on the supreme court will forever be tainted. and so i think for his interest, for the legitimacy of the court and to show america that we take allegations of sexual assault seriously, there should be a full investigation. the suggestion that the fbi investigate isn t that they would evaluate or render opinions, but they would go out and interview all the pertinent people, look at the therapist s notes, gather that information, provide it to the members of the senate judiciary committee who could then have informed questions when they go forward and ask these witnesses questions under oath. so i think we owe it to america and the court as an institution to have a full hearing and a full airing of all of these issues and a full investigation without rushing it. we can do it in a matter of just a few weeks. lisa graves, jeff flake seems to be the key tonight. he is the one republican member of the committee who said on sunday that we really need to hear from dr. ford after she went public. we really need to hear from dr. ford before we vote. if he sticks to that simple principle that he announced, now that dr. ford has said here s the way i would like to testify, then she s going to testify because jeff flake is in a position to stop the republicans from voting without hearing from her. that s right. and i think she s made a very reasonable request. what s been unreasonable has been this race, the idea that the chairman just dictates without consulting with her what happens next and how quickly. and again, at a time where brett kavanagh has his security detail, he s hanging out the white house preparing, she s fleeing from her home in the wake of just being outed in essence, as the person who she says was that brett kavanagh attempted to rape. and so i think it s just unfair to rush this way. and really there is no reason to rush, zero reason to rush. and i would say even the mid terms aren t reason to rush, certainly not for that party, for the republican party that was more than willing to wait more than 400 days to leave that seat open before when merrick garland was pending before the senate. and wasn t even given a single hearing on his nomination. and, lisa, just a quick point about witnesses in your committee, the judiciary committee, i m not sure what the rules are on subpoenas. they are different on each committee in the senate. with mark judge, the other witness in this case, refusing to cooperate with the committee, can the committee subpoena his testimony? the committee certainly could. and one of the interesting things that happened at the business meeting last week was that chairman grassley suggested that in general he wouldn t be in favor of any subpoenas of any kind fofrt for the documents that democrats were seeking. yet chairman grassley himself has been part of issuing a number of subpoenas when he was both in the minority and in the majority throughout his senate career. so he knows exactly how to get a subpoena issued by the senate judiciary committee. mieke, it feels like one of the threads of the panic that is running through the white house in their endless meeting with brett kavanagh over the last two days and the panic that exists in the tweets from republican senators like bob corker and lindsey graham saying, let s get this thing over with, is they fear what could happen to brett kavanagh and to his friend mark judge if they have to be interviewed by fbi agents because lying to fbi agents is in and of itself a crime. i think that s right. there is certainly legal jeopardy there because judge kavanagh has already made a number of statements to the senate about this. he hasn t spoken under oath. if he were to testify under oath, lying to the senate, lying to congress is also a crime. he has to be careful exactly what he says in testimony in either place. but i do think there is a challenge here. and i think that they have a challenge in trying to remember exactly what happened in this instance, in the way that mark judge describes their high school years. it is possible that this is not the only question of legal culpability that they may have. now, people are going to try and dismiss it as youthful high jinx. when we re talking about the supreme court, we re talking about people who are held at a higher standard. barbara mcquade, i want to talk about the credibility level of the testimony we will be hearing from brett kavanagh and possibly from his friend mark judge. now, they are middle aged men now and brett kavanagh has had a long legal career in his adulthood. but the memories they will be testifying to were memories recorded in the brains of drunk teenage boys. so you will be hearing basically the recollection and the voice of a drunk teenage boy telling you what he did when he was drunk at a party that he didn t tell his parents about. when is the last time anyone believed a drunk teenage boy s version of anything? well, i suppose that you raise a good point, but that depends whether the incident did or didn t happen. i think the key credibility question comes down to the accuser, dr. ford. and you know, one of the things that prosecutors who handle cases involving sexual assault come to know over time is that accusers are often delayed in making their accusations, and that is because victims are traumatized. they are concerned about being blamed themselves for their assault. they are concerned about being shamed and victimized again. and the concern about not being believed. so it is a very common occurrence for victims of sexual assault to delay in reporting. so i think to the extent that becomes an issue at this hearing. that should be debunked as it does not mean that the person is not credible. there is a logical explanation for a delay that occurs in reporting a crime of sexual assault. mieke, quickly before i go, i m not saying i know which of these stories is true, but since president trump today established the standard of proof here, that there can be no doubt, there can be no doubt that brett kavanagh is telling the truth, that s the standard of proof that the president said we should be using. that means we can have no doubt that brett kavanagh is telling the truth when he s talking about his drunk teenage high school years. how can anyone have no doubt about that? i think it s actually very difficult. and when he talk about memories from that long ago. mark judge himself actually wrote very compellingly and fairly recently about an incident where he was actually beaten by a coach in high school. and he writes about it quite vividly. it s because even when you re young, you have very strong and vivid memories of things that are traumatic. so they may not remember this if it s not the sort of thing whether or not it happened, it may not be the sort of thing they remember if it was unremarkable for them. but for dr. ford, clearly this was very traumatic and something that she has remembered and may remember much more clearly than the people who were otherwise involved in it. we re going to have to take a break in here. thank you all for bringing your unique perspectives to this. when we come back, president trump is really terrified of robert mueller and so that means he is listening to his handlers very carefully about what he says about brett kavanagh because he is afraid of losing brett kavanagh s vote on the supreme court that would save him from a robert mueller subpoena. hungry eyes one look at you and i can t disguise i ve got hungry eyes applebee s new 3-course meal starting at $11.99. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. this is john, and i m with pactel cellular in los angeles. well, welcome to the demo. 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the line. they re taking their cues. i was at the capital today. they re taking their cues from leader mcconnell and chairman grassley. they believe they can plow forward. but you can be sure they re monitoring public opinion. they know the public may be averse to this kind of fast move. bob, there were early reports that one of the candidates who mitch mcconnell told the white house would be the most difficult to get through the senate was brett kavanagh. there were early reports before brett kavanagh was named indicating that senator mcconnell didn t want the difficulty of getting brett kavanagh through the senate. that s spot on, lawrence. i can confirm that. you know in the senate time is of the essence. mcconnell was look ing at the calendar and the senator said we ve got to get this done quickly. he told the white house, based on my reporting, that kavanagh had too many documents in his history going back to his time in the bush white house. mcconnell s people tell me he couldn t predict this kind of allegation would come up, but he was looking for someone like from kentucky mcconnell fafrtd favorite to move it through the senate. this is just months before the midterm elections. the republicans in the senate, mitch mcconnell was in the senate at the time of the anita hill hearings, hatch was. they didn t spend a minute of thinking about what happens in the next version of an anita hill hearing in the senate judiciary committee and they suddenly have to try to figure it out on the fly. that s exactly right. as one republican senator told me today that they thought kavanagh and they still believe he is in their view, squeaky clean, there wouldn t be an issue like this. now there is talk of 1992, like 2018, could this be just like after the anita hill hearing with justice thomas in 91. could this be another year of the woman if republicans move aggressively in the eyes of voters. and they didn t think this was going to be an issue. but like everything in politics, you have to be able to adjust. they ve given her the opportunity to speak. she has this demand for an fbi investigation. they think they can still hold the vote. what mcconnell votes and what grassley wants aren t everything right now. what malters also is what does senator collins want, senator murkowski, they re the swing vote. when they woke up yesterday they believed they could hold the vote. things are faster than they can keep up. thank you for your reporting tonight. appreciate it. when we come back, more on donald trump s reaction today and the way he has handled himself in the controversy that has erupted over his supreme court nominee. it is unlike anything else we have ever seen donald trump do in a situation like this. your society was dearled by a woman, who governed thousands. commanded armies. yielded to no one. when i found you in my dna, i learned where my strength comes from. my name is courtney mckinney, and this is my ancestrydna story. now with 2 times 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this. it appears that donald trump is now truly, truly terrified. donald trump must feel the supreme court nomination of brett kavanagh slipping away and he sounds desperately worried that he could say something that makes it even more difficult for brett kavanagh to continue to cling to the wreckage of his nomination. and so today when president trump was offered the opportunity to say what everyone expected him to say in a situation like this, he refused to say it. he was asked if the accusation of sexual assault against brett kavanagh is all politics? the question was, is this all politics? and this is what donald trump said. is this all politics? i don t want to say that. maybe i ll say that in a couple of days, but not now. i don t want to say that, for once, donald trump is in the tight grip of his handlers who have obviously told him that this time he is not allowed to attack a woman who is accusing someone of sexual assault. here s what donald trump said about accusations like this from women in bob woodward s new book, fear. donald trump said, you ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. but donald trump is not doing that this time. donald trump is finally doing what his handlers are telling him to do, and that has to be because donald trump is terrified. esther identified of losing the supreme court nominee who jumped out of the pack of candidates because brett kavanagh was the only one whose writing indicated he no longer believes the president of the united states can be subpoenaed to give testimony. something brett kavanagh did believe when he was working in the special prosecutor s office that was investigating president bill clinton. donald trump was defensive about brett kavanagh today, but not very strongly. he was just saying things like he s an outstanding man, and donald trump complained about senator dianne feinstein not making these accusations public earlier, even though senator feinstein was working under a pledge to maintain the privacy of professor christine blasey ford. but after the president s kind of mandatory and half-hearted criticisms of senator feinstein and the democrat, donald trump said something today that he has never, ever said before. when he was accused of sexual assault. we feel that we want to go through a process, we want to hear both sides. we don t know that donald trump wants to hear both sides. in fact, we know for sure that he does not want to hear both sides, but imagine what it took, imagine what it took for the staff to force donald trump to say, we want to hear both sides. donald trump has to terrified of robert mueller, which means he is terrified that he might be losing brett kavanaugh s vote on the supreme court that could save him from having to face robert mueller after receiving a subpoena. and so we are seeing a donald trump we ve never seen before. no angry tweets about brett kavanaugh s accuser, professor christine blasey ford. no attacks on the woman. the man who has never, ever, ever wanted to hear both sides of anything suddenly says he wants to hear both sides. and that is because losing the kavanaugh confirmation fight is so terrifying to donald trump that he is actually following his advisers advice, but the problem for donald trump and brett kavanaugh tonight is that the thing donald trump was forced to say today is the very thing that every reasonable person left in this country is thinking tonight, we want to hear both sides. and the brett kavanaugh side we already know is pretty simple. nothing to see here, nothing happened, this never happened. that s what he s going to say. and we ve already seen brett kavanaugh sit at that table in the judiciary cheommittee. we know what that s going to sound like. when we want to hear what both sides actually means tonight, we want to hear the woman who holds the future of the supreme court in her hands, we want to hear the woman who donald trump now fears more than any woman in the world. we want to 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out to watch his kid hit one out of the. go dani, go! opportunity is everywhere. all you have to do to find it is get out. here. start with 100% cleancheese? ingredients. like vermont white cheddar. then. add bacon, bbq chicken, or baja blend. catering and delivery now available. panera. food as it should be. have to go through this. and he was talking about himself. thinking of what he had to go through with the ing a stacces hollywo hollywood tapes and these women that are still assailing him for sexual misconduct and what it s done to him and what it could do to him in the future. he was all together more thoughtful, or as you say, more controlled, than he usually is. i think for the discipline that s been imposed on him and how high the stakes are, but also because it could be him. exactly. yeah. and the washington post is already delivering from the leakiest white house in history the inside the white house activity that s been going on since the panic has struck yesterday. the washington post reporting the white house officials engaged in a two hour practice session known as a murder board. in the eisenhower executive office building with kavanaugh where he answered questions on his past, his partying, his dating, and the accuser s account. participants included don mcgahn, the white house counsel, the deputy chief of staff, bill shine, press secretary sarah huckabee sanders, and raj shah who is leading communications. and it s so striking that bill shine is in that room. he was at fox news trying to save bill o reilly s job from sexual harassment charges. and he couldn t do that. that s right. and what you have here is clearly a group of people who are focusing on the pub leg relations aspect of the hearing. this is a president used to paying off women so you don t hear the side of the story and running the risk you ll have to deal can her side of the story when he s had to tell his side of the story to congress and can t lie about that or faces legal jeopardy. the reason why the republicans wa want skkavanaugh on the court, he s a loyal republicans. changes his view on presidential power depending whether or not the republicans are in h the white house are not. he s taken a view about stolen documents based on the stealing of senate judiciary comments trying to dismiss them. imagine how he would rule on questions relating to the hillary clinton e-mails. they want him on the court because he s going to be their guy. he was a loyal guy in the who u.s. in the bush administration. and margaret carlson, the group that s in that room with brett kavanaugh, there s not one person in that room who s capable of anticipating a single question that a senator like kamala harris will ask senator harris being possibly the best prosecutor the senate has ever seen. right. she and amy klobuchar have a lot of experience doing this. lawrence, i picture if only brett kavanaugh is there the shortest hearing ever because like donald trump has said, deny, deny, deny. brett kavanaugh simply denying that the party ever happened and he knows her or that anything,