republican senators like lindsey graham and chuck grassley appearing to give the president permission to get rid of his attorney general but there s another way to look at it which is that they seem to be trying to say any action off until after the midterm elections and the confirmation of judge kavanaugh to the supreme court and the question is are they telling the president he should get rid of jeff sessions or hoping they can slow walk this until things calm down but if you re bob mueller you see november as a day on the calendar that to get your job done before just in case. so susan in his punchback yesterday yegs listjeff session the litany of things he had been leading that were on point with what the president wanted, from enforcing immigration laws, focusing on ms-13, the gang, promoting economic growth, et cetera, et cetera. do the practice not assuage the president at small i know he thinks that he s not going after the president s political opponents but he s executing many of the president s policies. jeff sessions has been a remarkably effective attorney general on substantive issues but not on the issue donald trump cares the most about, the russia investigation. some of the things jeff sessions has done are controversial in imposing the trump agenda but that doesn t matter because president trump is focused first and foremost on this information. we shouldn t lose sight of what a remarkable day yesterday was. president trump attacking the attorney general, the attorney general having a public bedate with the president of the united states insisting he ll shield the justice department from political interference. i don t think we ve seen that happen before. minds. yes the president has the ability to have the people he wants in top positions but 23 it becomes a loyalty test and becomes political support of the president or investigations of the other side, the president will either have a hard time finding a new attorney general or getting the new attorney general confirmed and you can imagine if that played out now how damaging that could be on the elections and the prospects for judicial confirmation. so listen to this. last night i had on an attorney and friend of jeff sessions for the better part of three deb kads a decades and i asked him about the likelihood jeff sessions would walk away. listen. i believe jeff believes in the heart and soul of the department of justice. i know this is probably his dream job because he has an opportunity to impact so many lives and i don t think he would voluntarily step aside. i don t think that is part of the makeup of jeff sessions. susan, do you agree? is this someone who will have to be fired? if jeff sessions was going to resign because donald trump wanted him to that would have happened already. the president has ridiculed and demeaned him. jeff sessions has not been the attorney general many people expected him to be when he was named. he s turned out to be a much more independent figure. thank you both, susan page, margaret, preappreciate you bei here. now to the president s long time friend and the head of the national enquirer david pecker flipping. abby phillip is back with more. the two of these men, you cannot overstate how close they were. there was one point president president said the national enquirer should win the pulitzer prize but david pecker flipped? tlart. it s a big development but it adds to what we already know about the michael cohen case which is that cohen pled guilty to committing crimes during the campaign and he claimed president trump was aware of it and that he was a collaborator in that effort. now we re learning according to the wall street journal and vanity fair that david pecker has gotten immunity in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. cooperation that amounts to his corroboration of michael cohen s story. where now this is huge. david pecker is a close friend of the president s. this relationship in which pecker would help him handle his private affairs and kill bad stories has been a feature of their relationship for some time. now it s ruptured. this is in addition to what we know about this situation according to the associated press that the national enquirer had a physical safe that kept these bad stories and documents related to payments to women who were alleged to have affairs with president trump in a physical safe so there is potentially a trove of evidence that prosecutors may have access to and now the president has one fewer friend in this fight. it could be why we heard president trump talking about flippers. he said it should be outlawed, flipping in a case like this, giving prosecutors in exchange for leniency. we could be seeing why the president is so annoyed and angry about that situation. abby phillip at the white house, thank you. the names is reporting the manhattan district attorney s office may look into possible criminal charges against the trump organization. i know the manhattan d.a. s office hasn t decided yet. what are they looking at? they re considering looking at whether the trump organization accounted for how they reimbursed michael cohen when he paid $130,000 to stormy daniels so it would be an investigation into their books and records. but didn t the pay say jog my memory. remember in the smoke statement fr fromhe said it wasn t the trump organization that paid me back and didn t the president say it was his money? or they asked about karen mcdougal? the president put in a financial disclosure form that he reimbursed michael cohen and what we learned from the charging document this is week that michael cohen pled guilty to is that the money came from the trump organization. came from a trust. it s a little murky and the trump organization isn t explaining why the money came from the trust. and what could be significant is that if these charges are brought this would be on the state level and the president cannot pardon anything on a state level. right. that s the thing. there s no federal pardon. the president could not pardon anyone and the d.a. s office is also investigating paul manafort so even if there are rumblings that is the president considering pardoning paul manafort, the same d.a. s office has an investigation into him. they are lingering in the backdrop that if paul manafort was charged we could see the statement there, too. kara, thank you for the worthing. appreciate it. ahead, what does pecker know? a closer look at the president s long-time friend turned flipper and why one former employee of the national enquirer who worked closely with david pecker said he never thought his boss would have flipped on the president. plus the president better watch about the pardons because with the pardons, that he does that, it looks like it was set up by him. what do voters think about the president s wild week? you ll hear from many of them. and indicted congressman duncan hunter seeming to suggest his wife is to blame for a quarter of a million $s in misused campaign funds. they both pleaded not guilty to those accusations. there are ont to take advantage of great deals like zero percent financing for sixty months on the built ford tough f-150. so hurry and save big on ford, america s best-selling brand. get zero percent financing for sixty months plus twenty-eight hundred bonus cash on a 2018 f-150 xlt equipped with 2.7 liter ecoboost. the first survivor of alzis out there.ase and the alzheimer s association is going to make it happen. but we won t get there without you. join the fight with the alzheimer s association. pah! thano, no, no, nah.k. a bulb of light?!? 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we don t know the things he has covered up for the president. he was courted by trump. trump enjoyed being in tabloids and used them to build his own reputation in new york. we don t know the things he used pecker to bury. we know he has a safe full of things. pecker may have vulnerability in this case and he may want to give evidence that will protect him and that s what caused michael cohen to turn. the safe thing is like wow. if there is a physical safe out there as the associated press is reporting, investigators have to be looking for it right now or have it. it s amazing. in all my years as a federal prosecutor i never had a witness who told me he had a safe full of evidence. ever. and you helped prosecute john gotti. that s right. i ve had plenty of best friends. i ve had sons testify against fathers and fathers testify against sons but none brought a safe of evidence so it is amazing and not surprising a friend would turn but it s amazing. can we talk about where the legal line is? i read interesting analysis that the first emt gives the press wide latitude but there may have a legal line stepped over here by ami in terms of whether what it did was a direct campaign contribution. i think the legal line is if this company or mr. pecker knowingly took steps to make the payment look like it was coming from somebody else or being used for something else, that crosses the line. they can buy the story. what they can t do is make it look like somebody else paid for it or that they aren t burying the story. michael cohen said under oath in court this this arrangement between me and ami was for the principle purpose of influence the election so if authorities believe him and he does have credibility issues that can be problematic. a former staffer for pecker s company ami said this to roman farrow. quote, in theory you would think trump has all the power in this relationship but in fact pecker has the power, he has the power to run these stories, he knows where the bodies are buried. that s the big risk. pecker is not the president but does pecker have the upper hand on the president? we don t know what information he has. enough for the prosecutors to give him immunity. they think what he has is valuable and i think he s already told them. whatever he has accumulated over the years may not be criminal, this could just be scandalous things. prosecutors don t care about scandals, they care about the law. so we don t know what he has. but explain to people what queen for a day is. they would know what they could get before they give him a deal. getting immunity is not easy or done lightly. they would have demand eded a g representation of what his evidence was so they had a good idea of what he had to offer before they took the extraordinary step of offering him immunity. because he can offer it up to them without facing charges and say here s what i got. are you going to make me a deal or not? one thing that s important to note is this kind of intimidation to people over stories, it s nothing new. remember joe scarborough, mika brzezinski, they claimed they got a call from the white house where they were threatened to stop saying negative things about the president. they were told they would have to apologize, they would have to say we re apologizing or the national enquirer would run a story that would embarrass them. let s listen to that moment. it was striking and maybe emblem matt atic. we got a call that the national enquirer is going to run a negative story against you guys and and it was donald is friends the president is friends with the guy that runs the national enquirer and they said if you call the president up and you apologize for your coverage he will pick up the phone and basically spike this story. they didn t do that and the national enquirer ran the story. and you can see why. they were working hand in glove. look at the headlines about hillary during the campaign. that s a good point. they were making staggering unbelievably fictional claim. they said she was six months away from death. lung cancer, alzheimer s disease, having gays s assignations, said jfkted cruz father was part of the jfk assassination. but that in and of itself is not illegal, is it? not necessarily though extortion is on the books. or defamation. right. i would say, though, that this is a good example of a truism in criminal activity. criminal activities are two-edged swords. use to feel the criminal when he s using it to attack someone but if you can get evidence of it as mr. pecker may be providing, it comes back to harm you so that is why i think mr. pecker s cooperation may come back to harm mr. trump and reveal additional crimes. thank you, keep it sunny in chicago, i ll be there later today. i don t want any delays into o hare. i ll take care of. it thanks for joining me. one of the most powerful republicans in congress says his party needs to do more when it comes to bringing minorities, african-americans into the fold. what is his plan and does he think the president is helping or hurting? you might take something for your heart. or joints. but do you take something for your brain. with an ingredient originally discovered in jellyfish, prevagen has been shown in clinical trials to improve short-term memory. prevagen. healthier brain. better life. and i don t add up the years. but what i do count on is boost®. delicious boost® high protein nuritional drink now has 33% more protein, along with 26 essential vitamins and minerals boost® high protein. be up for life. boost® high protein. the first survivor of alzis out there.ase and the alzheimer s association is going to make it happen. but we won t get there without you. join the fight with the alzheimer s association. it s absolute confidence in 30,00or it isn t. arts, it s inspected by mercedes-benz factory-trained technicians, or it isn t. it s backed by an unlimited mileage warranty, or it isn t. for those who never settle, it s either mercedes-benz certified pre-owned, or it isn t. the mercedes-benz certified pre-owned sales event, now through august 31st. only at your authorized mercedes-benz dealer. ahoy! gotcha! ah! nooooo. noooooo. nooooo. quick, the quicker picker upper! bounty picks up messes quicker and is 2x more absorbent than the leading ordinary brand. ahoy! (laughing) bounty, the quicker picker upper. when we switched our auto and home insurance. with liberty, we could afford a real babysitter instead of your brother. hey! oh, that s my robe. is it? when you switch to liberty mutual, you could save $782 on auto and home insurance. and still get great coverage for you and your family. call for a free quote today. you could save $782. liberty mutual insurance. liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. i m a small business, but i have. big dreams. and big plans. so how do i make the efforts of 8 employees. feel like 50? how can i share new plans virtually? how can i download an e-file? virtual tours? zip-file? really big files? in seconds, not minutes. just like that. like everything. the answer is simple. i ll do what i ve always done. dream more, dream faster, and above all. now, i ll dream gig. now more businesses, in more places, can afford to dream gig. comcast, building america s largest gig-speed network. president trump and the first lady are heading to battleground, ohio, today. but don t expect to see a warm welcome from the state s top republican governor john kasich. he will be a no-show at the republican dinner headlined by the president tonight. not a surprise given kasich is one of the president s biggest critics within his own party and this comes on quite a week for the administration. republicans across the country are faced with the choice speak out or stay mum. republican congressman mark walker joins me, he chairs the powerful republican study committee. good morning, thanks for being here. thanks, poppy, glad to be here. how would you assess this week for the republican party? well i think each week you have your ebbs and flows, sometimes things outside of washington, d.c. impact the voters mind but we want to stay consistent with making a better life for the american people. was that aver shadowed by paul manafort and michael cohen and the fighting with the attorney general? if you re looking at the media outlets then being transparent i would say yes. i think we re seeing more and more of their life-style and background and it is troubling. let s talk about the attacks on going at this hour between the president and jeff sessions. do you want to see jeff sessions keep his job? i think jeff has exemplified someone who is timid but if you look at his record he has been consistent. that s between the president and the doj if there s issues there that maybe we re unbeknownst of but i think jeff sessions has done a decent job. i would like to see him more bold on the decisions that he is making for the country. but you don t want to see the president fire him? i don t think it s good necessarily for cabinet members to be fired unless there is concrete evidence to support su such. could the attorney general be more aggressive? absolutely. tonight president trump will attend a big republican dinner ohio, the biggest state dinner there. ohio republican governor john kasich is not going to go. just last week the president blamed john kasich for the republicans possibly losing ohio 12, called kasich very unpopular. i m interested in what you think as a member of congress. who represents the republican party more? governor kasich or president trump? well, if you look at the numbers you would have to say president trump. we do polling as other members of congress do and the people who elected trump are not deterred. you guys did a piece last night there in pennsylvania, maybe northern pennsylvania that talked about with even the cohen and manafort, as disgusting as the decisions these gentlemen have made, it looks like that core base of trump supporters is still intact. but if the president were to pardon manafort, that s the line those voters told jason carroll they would draw is. let me get you on something important to you, race and the republican party. it s very clear you don t think the republican party is doing enough to bring in african-americans. you spoke about it. let s listen. it s easy to preesh to the choir, but we must take our message to new places, new neighborhoods and new communities. eleven to listen whether democrat, muslim, minorities or those who identify with the lgbt community. is your party still as we sit here today even after the 2012 autopsy report, is it doing enough to bring african-americans and minorities in? i believe there s a lot of improvements to be made. i wasn t aware of that report when i left the ministry to run for congress. i did something that was specifically in my heart and i believe individual liberty and opportunity, prosperity should be good for all of our communities. the thing we re most proud of is those relationships but they weren t photo-oped when i ran for congress. those relationships have been long standing. our work in the inner cities of cleveland, new york and baltimore and i became the first elected republican to speak at the north carolina legislative black caucus foundation. i know, everyone else there was democrat. and that speech you just played was not a non-partisan crowd, that was one of the more conservative conferences in washington, d.c. so we try to be consistent with our message. i know your district, one-fifth of your district is african-american but you said this is much larger than my district, i am trying to lead by examp example. does it make your job harder to make this about your country and not the district when the president says things like calling omarosa a dog or lebron james dumb or peddling birtherism claims about president obama for years or pointing to both sides in charlottesville. is he making your job harder, sir? sometimes it can be difficult to explain some of the tweets, there s no question about that. we re trying to look at the results instead of personalities. i have three children, i think you have a couple as well. we want to set good standards, president obama was a good man, had a good marriage, i d love for my children to exemplify that component but you cannot deny his policy added people into the poverty arena. we believe president trump s policies as well as house republicans are pulling people out of that situation. ultimately we have to get away from this government notion that adding more people to a golt program is a good solution. it s not. before we go. you said look sometimes it can be hard to explain his tweets. really? is that it? do you not find the way you stand up for african-americans in your district, do you not find some of the president has said racist? . i find them offensive. to be able to label someone is a racist is sometimes trying to judge where their heart s intent. some of the undertones that i hear is not language that i use because i know how hurtful and painful it is to my friends in these communities. we have to continue to rare the standard but are we measuring this administration about personality or policy? i hope that both matters i get that, character, integrity and class matter but we want to make sure we don t get distracted to miss some things that we believe are helping all of our communities. congressman mark walker, it s an important conversation, we ll keep having it and appreciate you being with me today, hawk. thanks, poppy, my privilege. ahead for us, indicted for misuse of a quarter of a million bucks in campaign funds and what does a sitting republican congressman have to say? my wife handled the finances. hear the stunning interview next. steelers tickets, lavish vacations, tequila shots and a flight for a bunny. folks, you cannot make this stuff up. congressman duncan hunter and his wife pleaded not guilty to charges they used campaign money for all of that. look at this. good morning. how will you plead today? feeling good. they are yelling. those are protesters yelling lock him up as he appeared in the california courtroom yesterday. it appears, though, the republican law maim maker is shifting blame to none other than his wife. sara sidner joins me now. he gave this interview to fox news. what did he say? stunning, we ve all used that word over and over again. . when they went into court, he and his wife went into court at separate times, separate doors and they didn t sit together in court so if that tells you something beyond what he has said about his wife, one of the things he talked about, they had $37,000 in overdraft fees, $11,000 overdrafts according to prosecutors. and when he asked about how does this happen, he started talking about his wife and i wanted to run through things prosecutors say they spent campaign funds on. $14,000 on a family vacation to italy. $6500 to hawaii, $3700 to las vegas. one of the things that struck people and upset them was that in some instances when they were buying clothes and shoes they said look let s write this off as for wounded warriors. remember, representative hunter is a veteran himself, he did three tours after 9/11 in the marines overseas so that strength people as disturbing. let s listen to why the finances were so problematic if you will. when i went to iraq in 2003, i gave her power of attorney and she handled my finances throughout my entire military career and that continued when i got into congress. she was the campaign manager so whatever she did, that will be looked at but i didn t do it. ill sounds like he s throwing his wife under the bus. he is seemingly blaming her for some of their financial issues. he has also blamed taking a page out of donald trump s book he has blamed the deep state, blamed the justice department calling them corrupt saying this is democrats that they just want the seat. and believe me, they do want the seat but they call it hogwash that they had anything to do with this. it was so interesting in your reporting as they ve been talking about reporters in this safe republican district. now it s too late. are they all the voters on the same page or are they divided? they are divided according to people we spoke with. our producer went to talk to people and we heard from someone who is staunchly republican, who voted for representative hunter, who voted for representative hunter s father who had the seat before him and they decided they were changing their mind. they said he hasn t been convicted but these charges are problematic and distracting and he needs to get a job done in washington but there were other voters who said look we are going to vote republican no matter what. guess what? the only name on the ballot because it s too late to change the name, the only name on the ballot under republican will be representative duncan hunter. lastly, there is a democrat vying for this seat. he was out getting attention yesterd yesterday. this is a heavily military area where duncan hunter is so he said i respect that he bent into the military and did his duty but after he went to washington it seems as though he s working for himself. sara sidner, thank you. i know you ll be on this story as it evolves. this morning it took less than 60 seconds for officials to vote down a proposal that would have closed seven of nine polling places in a predominantly black county in rural georgia. critics called this proposal to consolidate the polling places an attempt to suppress the african-american vote. former georgia house minority leader stacy abrams is trying to become the nation s first black female governor. she s running against secretary of state brian kemp. the consultant who recommended the closures was fired ahead of today s decision. and a whirlwind of negative headlines for the president but how is it sitting with his base? ha pardons? i don t agree with them. and seet with its billions of live and active probiotics may help support your digestive health so you can take on your day. start the activia probiotic challenge today. it works or it s free! to lock your dentures. so now you can eat tough food without worry. fixodent and forget it. is technology with the power to change your life. life. to the fullest. in a week of major league developments in trump world, many are wondering what the ramifications of manafort s conviction and cohen s guilty plea might be on the base. you might be surprised where some of the spoupporters draw t line. reporter: luzerne county in northeast pennsylvania is one of those industrial communities that has fallen on tough times. to political observers it s known as a place that supported barack obama twice and flipped to donald trump in 2016. how did it go today? reporter: the aftermath of legal bombshells involving michael cohen and campaign chairman paul manafort here in lieu luzerne, is so enkocourage by the economy, she can overlook infidelity. unless the money came from campaign funds. then i don t think it s good. reporter: that s where you draw that sort of line? yes. but i would still vote for him again. reporter: trump s win in this part of the state is thanks in part to democrats like aileen and richard. this is all from obama s campaign. reporter: who after voting twice for president obama switched their vote to trump. here is what the couple told cnn weeks after trump s inaugurat n inauguration. you have to get the politically correct things out of here and get a businessman and get this man straight out, get the deficit down. reporter: they stand by their decision. our retirement is in the stock market. the stock market has been growing for quite a while now. i m sort of happy with what s happening with the economy. reporter: they say they say t it is a side show and many others agree. the investigations were supposed to be about russia interference in our election. so far, i ve seen nothing concerning that. reporter: as a candidate, trump infapomous joked about th dedication of his supporters. i have the most loyal people. did you see that? i could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot somebody and i wouldn t lose any voters. it s like incredible. reporter: loyalty goes so far. supporters here say it could be tested if trump began issuing pardons. the pardons, i don t agree with them. reporter: this barber shop owner is an independent voter who supported trump. if the pardons started coming down, would that change your mind about voting for him? it s going to be in my decision. that would be in a decision, sure. also mine. the president better watch about the pardons. with the pardons he does that, it looks like it was set up by him with the last couple tweets he had, where he sticks up for who is it that reporter: manafort. he is a great guy. he is wonderful and everything else. he is sending a message if you stick with me, i will pardon you. reporter: in addition to the idea of pardons, another line in the sand for supporters we spoke to would be if the mueller investigation found any evidence of collusion between members of the trump campaign and russians. that investigation far from over. but also a number of trump supporters express frustration over an investigation they say has gone on for far too long. jason carroll, cnn, wilkes-barre, pennsylvania. fascinating reporting. thank you for that. more than 1,500 people in hawaii are sheltering in evacuation centers as this thing, hurricane lane, heads their way. the storm has not made landfall yet. residents already feeling the effects. we will take you there next. right now, residents in hawaii and officials are bracing for the worst. over 1,500 people are sheltering as hurricane lane approaches. right now it s 200 miles off the coast and has been downgraded to a category 3 storm. but it s lashing the island with powerful wind and heavy rain. the national weather service warns lane will bring significant and life-threatening flash flooding and landslides. if we see hurricane lane make la landfall it two be the first one to hit hiawaii in more than 25 years. top of the hour. i m poppy harlow in new york. this morning, the president s friends flip as the commander in chief takes a shot across the bow at his own attorney general, hammering jeff sessions one day after his punching bag punched
look, again, i think that s a ridiculous accusation. the president in this matter has done nothing wrong and there are no charges against him. reporter: today on twitter, the president falsely claimed that, quote, michael cohen pled guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. they are, indeed, a crime, spelled out by federal prosecutors. and on fox news, the president floating another defense. did you know about the payments? later on i knew. later on. but you have to understand, what he did, and they weren t taken out of campaign finance, that s the big thing, that s a much bigger thing. did they come out of the campaign? they didn t come out of the campaign. they came from me. reporter: but lawyers say that still doesn t make it legal if the money was never disclosed. and cohen has released a secretly recorded conversation with the president seeming to discuss another hush money arrangement weeks before the election. when it comes time for the financing, which will be listen. what financing? we ll have to pay no, no. i got no, no, no. reporter: the president now blasting his one-time right-hand man, but publicly, he has nothing but love for his former campaign chairman paul manafort, convicted of defrauding the federal government and now facing life behind bars. he is evaluating all of his options at this point. reporter: the president tweeting, feel very badly for paul manafort and his wonderful family. unlike michael cohen, he refused to break. make up stories in order to get a deal. such respect for a brave man. positive words there for paul manafort tonight. cecilia vega joins us from the white house. and cecilia, president trump refusing to rule out a pardon for manafort. reporter: david, so far, he says he is not thinking about a pardon for paul manafort, but in a matter of weeks, manafort goes back on trial, facing a second set of charges, potentially even more time behind bars. so, the pressure right now is on. does he plead guilty as part of a deal for leniency, david, or does he hold out hope for a presidential pardon? we will soon find out. all right, cecilia vega leading us off tonight. cecilia, thank you. as i mentioned at the top, michael cohen tonight is signaling he s ready to talk to the special counsel, and not just about those payments. michael cohen s attorney is now suggesting cohen is ready to talk about something else. here s abc s chief national affairs correspondent tom llamas tonight. reporter: leaving court, michael cohen was silent. michael, what s your message to the president? michael, what s your message to the president? doing all the talking today, his lawyer, lanny davis, and he was asked if his client is ready to tell all to special counsel robert mueller. yes. 100%. reporter: michael cohen claims that just before the election, president trump himself directed an effort to silence two women who claimed to have had affairs with him. prosecutors say they have a mountain of evidence about the hush money scheme. documents, seized electronic devices and audio recordings made by cohen. also, text messages, phone records, e-mails. all of this on top of witness testimony. cohen s lawyer says his client is ready to talk, and not just about payoffs, but about russian hacking and what president trump might have known. russia, if you re listening, i hope you re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. reporter: cohen s attorney now suggesting his client has information about whether donald trump knew in advance about the russian hacking. when democrats e-mails were later distributed by wikileaks. i can tell you that mr. cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel. knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not mr. trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on. reporter: cohen has pleaded guilty to eight felony charges, but there was no agreement to cooperate with the federal government. he s hoping that sharing information with investigators now will help reduce his prison sentence. would michael cohen accept a presidential pardon? does he want one? he will not and does not want anything from donald trump. after working for him all of those years, he came to the recognition that donald trump is a president unsuitable to have that office. so, let s get to tom llamas with us again tonight. and tom, michael cohen is scheduled to be sentenced on december 12th. it would appear tonight he s very eager to talk with state and federal investigators. and you have news this evening about a new subpoena? reporter: that s right. a new development there, david. this has to do with the donald j. trump foundation. you ll remember, that was the president s charitable organization. in june, they were sued by the new york attorney general, accused of self-dealing and illegally coordinating with the trump campaign. according to the new york times, michael cohen received that subpoena today and called state investigators back, david, asking them when they were ready to talk. david? tom llamas with us again tonight. thank you, tom. next this evening here, new developments in the murder of that college student in iowa. the suspect was in court for the first time today. prosecutors say he kidnapped and killed mollie tibbetts while she was jogging, dumping her body in a corn field. authorities say he was in the u.s. illegally, and that he used a false i.d. to get work. abc s alex perez from iowa again tonight. mr. rivera, did you kill mollie tibbetts? reporter: tonight, the man accused of murdering mollie tibbetts arriving in an iowa courthouse, shackled and escorted by deputies, 24-year-old cristhian rivera facing a judge. mr. rivera, you have been charged with murder in the first degree. reporter: rivera listening to the charges through a translator. his girlfriend and family in the courtroom. authorities say rivera confessed to abducting and killing mollie tibbetts while she was out for a jog, dumping her body in a corn field. investigators say they cracked the case using surveillance footage showing the suspect s car near mollie during her run. frame by frame and in real-time motion and eventually saw mollie on the video, led us to mr. rivera, identifying the vehicle. reporter: according to investigators, rivera, who is from mexico, was in the country illegally. tonight, the owner of the farm where he worked saying rivera lied. what we learned in the last 24 hours is that our employee was not who he said he was. reporter: the farm now says when they hired rivera four years ago, they screened him through an older system instead of homeland security s e-verify. and alex perez back with us tonight. and alex, tonight, cristhian rivera remains behind bars? reporter: that s right, david. the judge ordered he be held on $5 million cash bond. we are also hearing from mollie s family tonight. they issued a statement thanking the public for their love and saying their hearts are broken. david? alex perez with us again tonight. thank you, alex. we re going to move on here this evening and to that monster hurricane now closing in on hawaii. the state of emergency already in effect at this hour. hurricane lane as seen from space, now a massive category 4 storm. winds up to 155 miles per hour. more than 1.5 million families and tourists there now bracing for this storm. and abc s gio benitez is right there in hawaii. reporter: tonight, residents rushing to stores and gas stations, loading up on food, water and gas, as lane, a major category 4 hurricane, barrels towards hawaii. right now, forecast to stay close to the entire state. reporter: hurricane hunters flying inside lane s eye as the storm reached category 5 strength. schools closed. this search and rescue team from san diego flying in to help. this hurricane lane is a dangerous storm. and we got to take it very, very seriously. reporter: many tourists in the middle of vacations here caught offguard. we are not prepared for this. we are going to go to the airport and hopefully get on a flight to maui tomorrow. and gio benitez is live from honolulu. a sunny day there, but don t be fooled by that, because officials are warning people to prepare and they re warning them to pay attention to the hours on this thing, the timing, because time is running out. reporter: that s right, david. the big island will start feeling those tropical storm conditions in just a few hours. we re talking about the possibility of 20-foot waves, devastating flooding and perhaps even some landslides. david? gio benitez with us tonight from hawaii. let s get right to chief meteorologist ginger zee. you ve been tracking this storm all day. where is it right now? reporter: this is a hurricane, david, by the way, that has already made history. it is the closest a category 5 hurricane has ever made it to hawaii. so, that s a big news. but it is also a category 4 that is right near it. you can see, nearly dwarfing those islands at this point. moving west-northwest at 8 miles per hour. it still has max sustained winds of easily 155 miles per hour. now, gusts, these are impacts, right, of 75-plus. rain in the 10 to 20-inch range and waves 10 to 20 feet. the path takes it very close to honolulu. friday into saturday, that s when we ll see the heaviest impacts on the islands farthest west. david? all right, ginger zee with us tonight. and we ll be tracking this through the coming hours. ginger, thank you. we do turn overseas tonight, and to afghanistan, and the new front in america s longest war. our team learning weeks ago of initial u.s. talks with the taliban now. tonight, our senior foreign correspondent ian pannell takes us inside one of the most dangerous prisons in the world, right there in afghanistan, filled with taliban prisoners. and right through those prison bars, telling ian their message for the u.s. reporter: tonight, we get exclusive access inside the most notorious jail in afghanistan. pole charkhi prison is dangerous, overcrowded, home to thousands of death row terrorists. home to america s sworn enemy for the last 17 years, the taliban. you can see the prisoners shackled to one another. we re heading into one of the main prisons in afghanistan today that houses 4,000 convicted terrorists. we re going here to try to talk to the taliban, but the prison guards are worried. they ve told us it s not safe inside. the inmates approach us from the other side of the bars. men who have attacked and killed u.s. and afghan soldiers and civilians. among them, this man, a quiet, english-speaking doctor from afghanistan, also a hard core taliban fighter. what would you like to say to the american people, to the fathers and mothers of soldiers who have been killed, to the american government? american soldiers should leave our country. we have the ability to fight up to 30 years. reporter: you won t stop? no. we will not stop the fight against american soldiers. reporter: other prisoners are eager to talk. this man says he has no problem with other afghans, just the foreigners who invaded, the americans. these exclusive pictures were taken for abc news from inside taliban territory. they now have control or influence over more than half the country, with their own government, police, courts. and this is the man in charge of trying to beat them. commander of all u.s. and foreign troops here, four-star general john nicholson. we fly over land the taliban often attacks. it s where the 9/11 originated from. reporter: we ve been given details of a secret meeting once unthinkable. american diplomats with the state department quietly initiating talks with the taliban. how would you feel about sitting down and talking to the taliban? we want to end this war. we want to end it on terms that protect our nation, our homelands and provide a lower level of violence for the afghans. so, if that were necessary, then absolutely. reporter: but the taliban get a say, too, and back at the prison tonight, they re firm. no peace until the americans leave. ian pannell, abc news, kabul, afghanistan. ian pannell, our thanks to you again tonight. and there is still much more ahead on world news tonight this wednesday. the congressman and his wife indicted. authorities say they spent thousands in your money. 11,000 at costco and a trip to italy. also, the new alligator attack tonight. what we ve now learned. the engine of a passenger plane sparking and then igniting. you can see it in the air. and the inferno in l.a. firefighters suddenly warned they needed to get off the roof. a lot more news ahead. evere pla. i m ready. with tremfya®, you can get clearer. and stay clearer. in fact, most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks stayed clearer through 48 weeks. tremfya® works better than humira® at providing clearer skin, and more patients were symptom free with tremfya®. tremfya® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. before starting tremfya® tell your doctor if you plan to or have recently received a vaccine. ask your doctor about tremfya®. tremfya®. because you deserve to stay clearer. janssen wants to help you explore cost support options. at&t provides edge-to-edge intelligence, covering virtually every part of your healthcare business. so that if she has a heart problem & the staff needs to know, they will & they ll drop everything can you take a look at her vitals? 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linsey, thank you. when we come back here tonight, the newest alligator attack. and more on that emergency landing after the engine of a passenger plane ignites. we ll be right back. if you feel like you spend too much time in the bathroom with recurring constipation and belly pain talk to your doctor and say yesss! to linzess. yesss! linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation or chronic constipation. linzess can help relieve your belly pain, and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements. linzess is not a laxative. it works differently to help you get ahead of your recurring constipation and belly pain. do not give linzess to children less than 6, and it should not be given to children 6 to less than 18. it may harm them. do not take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain, especially with bloody or black stools. the most common side effect is diarrhea, sometimes severe. if it s severe, stop taking linzess and call your doctor right away. other side effects include gas, stomach area pain, and swelling. so say yesss! to help for recurring constipation. yesss! to help for belly pain. talk to your doctor and say yesss! linzess. it s the ford summer sales event and now is the best time to buy. you ready for this, junior? 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(announcer) if you or someone you know wants free help to quit smoking, call 1-800-quit-now. to and practice. kidlots of practice.tion. get them started right with carnation breakfast essentials. it has protein plus vitamins and minerals to help kids be their best. carnation breakfast essentials. before collapsing. and today, at the white house, president trump describing what technical sergeant chapman did even in those final moments. even though he was mortally wounded, john regained consciousness and continued to fight on, and he really fought. reporter: continuing to fire at the enemy while members of his own team could be rescued. his wife valerie was there to receive the medal of honor on behalf of her late husband. blowing a kiss to the sky. and this is what she said in washington about her husband. he was such a genuine, good-hearted person. he lived his life team before self, the whole way. the girls and i meant everything to him. and just an amazing man. we all salute technical sergeant chapman. and we thank you for watching here on a wednesday night. i m david muir. go . major questions tonight, verizon admits to throttling data speed for firefighters in fire zones. hundreds gather in iowa to remember mollie tibbetts. this as the man accused of killing her appears in court for the first time. and new details arise. live doppler 7 tracking hurricane lane and the category four storm bears down on the island. announcer: now live breaking news. that breaking news is a manhunt in san jose late this afternoon. police received a report that a san jose state student was kidnapped and robbed. this is according to the mercury news. the man was taken from a 7-eleven and forced to withdraw money from several different atms after being released the person called called police. we ll bring you more details as they become available. i m dan ashley. and i m kristen zse.
Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. Coverage of national and international news, including breaking stories. allegedly had affairs with, in order to conceal that information from the public in connection with the election. what i think a critical difference is, is the timing of this and how closely related it to the election and concealment of bad information. that differentiates it from the obama case. if i could just go back to the tweets for one second, hallie. please. i prosecuted organized crime cases in the southern district of new york. i supervised that unit. the way that donald trump is talking, and i can t help but think about this, is the way mob bosses talk. when you are loyal, you re a standup guy, and you take the rap in the mob world, you get benefits. if you break and you cooperate, you re a rat, which is another term he used. it is a little jarring to see out in the open, the president of the united states using this language, and saying that someone who was just convicted of serious federal felonies is a good person, a good person, a good guy, standup guy, and that, to so many of us, is very distressing. one hopes that the country will begin to see that, too. as far as manafort and cohen, after tuesday, after yesterday, the risk that both of them, either or both of them, will decide that the time is right to cooperate with the government has to be at the front of the president s mind. paul manafort now looks at a significant amount of time in prison. he faces an additional trial. it is a now or never moment for him, if he intends to cooperate with the government. similarly for cohen, whose lawyer, lanny davis, is involved in this interesting public call to the special counsel s office over their cooperation, seems to have information he would like to provide, as well. this will hit increasingly home to the president as we continue forward. dan goldman and joyce vance, up early and up late for us, thank you. another piece of the story moving forward. the piece going down on the hill. our teams have just talked with multiple senators, including some supporters of donald trump. while some may be waking up today hoping, wishing, praying yesterday never happened, the response publicly has been kind of tepid so far. you have house speaker paul ryan, who did say something, something short, in two sentences, saying he is aware of the guilty plea but needs more info. for mitch mcconnell, his senate counterpart, nothing so far. john cornyn said people who do bad things need to be held accountable. adding that this has nothing to do with russia. kasie hunt, i think, has sneakers on today, chasing people around the hall today. what s going on this morning? reporter: hallie, it is clear this story does have something of a different tenor than some of the other conversations that we ve had. let me tell you, a lot of these members of congress are really sick of all of us running after them in the hallways, asking about the latest trump tweet. this is different, right? reporter: this is all together different, exactly. i spoke just briefly to senator toomey of pennsylvania, who said this is very serious. this is not, you know, something to be taken lightly. he wants to see the judicial process play out. you ve heard echoes of that from other republicans who have been willing to support president trump in other areas. take a listen to what senator orrin hatch said a few minutes ago. these are serious charges, and they can t be ignored. is it high crimes and misdemeanors? i wouldn t go that far just yet. do you think this opens up the president to being indicted while sitting in office? no, i don t, because i don t think he can be indicted while sitting in office. we ll just have to see where this all works out. reporter: if anything, you heard a little bit of resignation in orrin hatch s voice there. this is a drama that, you know, republicans are tired of having play out. i will say, on the flip side, hallie, democrats are obviously talking about how serious this is. they re being very careful to avoid the i word, impeachment. i asked elizabeth warren about that earlier on morning joe. what i think we should be doing in congress is we should be passing laws to make sure that donald trump cannot fire the special prosecutor. that s where the real threat is to trump. it is powerfully important that we protect the special prosecutor. reporter: that, of course, is a big question that republicans could answer. mitch mcconnell could put such legislation on the floor. there are, of course, constitutional debates about exactly how it might work. they can send a signal. so far, they haven t done that. hallie? kasie hunt there on the hill. come back if you get more. thank you. on set with me in the studio, bureau chief for vice news tonight, shanna thompson. national politico reporter, sahill kapur. both friends of the show. reaction to what you have heard over the last six minutes, all this new stuff. reaction for the last 24 hours. i mean, that s another can of worms. anotherish shoo y isise eint impeachment, there is a fear in the democratic party that if you push this too hard, you ll rile up president trump s base in such a way that could affect the midterm election. i think it is interesting, one of our correspondents was in west virginia, as many of your people were, too, and talking to people. one, she talked to people there who hadn t heard anything about what was going on, as everything was falling apart yesterday for president trump. two, when she did explain what was going on, they were like, well, that makes us madder at washington, d.c. and more likely to show up and vote. there is an interesting sort of counter to be careful about how much you push impeachment when you can t do it as democrats in the house after representatives. then you don t want to necessarily get more people, more republicans, coming out to vote, when democrats are super energized right now. to this point, and i want to get your take on this, because this is a newsworthy moment in time, of course. right. this is hugely important. we have been covering it a lot. we know reporters had a conversation with folks familiar with the president s travel schedule for the next six weeks, as he goes ahead of the midterms. he s heading to seven states, at least, right, some of the states, but we know of at least seven. we looked at the front pages of the biggest newspapers in the seven states. five of them did not have cohen or manafort on the front page. yeah. they all mentioned the president is coming to campaign. they re very heavy on, you know, which states are electing senators. the democrats packed the senate majority, running through the rural republican-leaning voter who supported trump, in states like north dakota or tennessee. may have a role to play if the voters don t bite on this. we live in a post-truth world here. the response from republicans in congress don t depend on the facts of the situation. it is how the voters respond. this is a rule of law president. this is happening these are both these things that just happened happened in a court of law. this was not in the political theater realm of things. this happened with law and order. it is different. it is no longer theoretical. there is actual evidence of a crime here that the president is implicated in. it feels like a pivot point going forward. the problem is we ve heard that before. didn t we hear that after the access hollywood tape and different in a moments, that this was the pivot point? it never was. i mean, that s exactly what i was thinking last night when i got home and had any glass of wine i tweeted about after a long day of work. i had the question of, how like does this matter? legally, this matters. for paul manafort, this matters. for michael cohen. for the country, i think it matters. politically, when we re talking about an election, if trump s supporters believe that he is being unfairly targeted, that it is a witch hunt last night, fox news, a lot was about mollie tibbetts. also an important story. incredibly sad. it is also part of the narrative of undocumented immigrants doing bad things in the country. right. then maybe it doesn t matter to trump s supporters. let s leave it here, with the idea that practically every rally i went to around the campaign, people chanted lock her up. five people close to the president s campaign or to him himself have been convicted of breaking the law. we ll have much more to come on all of this coming up. we take a look at the possibility of a presidential pardon. we ll ask legal scholar alan dershowitz whether it ll be a good idea for the president. spoiler, alan, that question is coming your way. omarosa manigault-newman said everyone knew about the hush money paid. who is everyone? omarosa is here live. tremfya® is for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. i m ready. with tremfya®, you can get clearer. and stay clearer. in fact, most patients who saw 90% clearer skin at 28 weeks stayed clearer through 48 weeks. tremfya® works better than humira® at providing clearer skin, and more patients were symptom free with tremfya®. tremfya® may lower your ability to fight infections and may increase your risk of infections. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tuberculosis. tell your doctor if you have an infection or have symptoms such as: fever, sweats, chills, muscle aches or cough. before starting tremfya® tell your doctor if you plan to or have recently received a vaccine. ask your doctor about tremfya®. tremfya®. because you deserve to stay clearer. janssen wants to help you explore cost support options. that was candidate donald trump in the final stages of the 2016 campaign. now, under his administration, the presidency may actually be facing its most troubling most since watergate. you can see the nbc news analysis there. just like dean, under nixon, cohen is promising the goods on president trump, that is, unless the president decides to pardon him, but that is something cohen s attorney tells nbc news he would flat out reject. not only is he not hoping for it, he would not accept a pardon. he considers a pardon from somebody who has acted so corruptly as the president to be something he would never accept. listen, here s the thing, we have no idea if a pardon for michael cohen is or will be under consideration by president trump. to be honest, it seems pretty unlikely, based on what we have heard from the president today. based on what lanny davis is saying, how might the president s legal team be reacting? joining me now is alan dershowitz, harvard professor and the author of the case against impeachment trump. thank you for being back on the show. to be clear, you are not a member of the president s legal team. you re somebody who has spoken freely about your opinions regarding the president s legal strategy. well, not only am i not a member of his legal team, i was very active in opposing the lock her up, hillary, and opposing all the nonsense trump was espousing during the campaign about all of hillary s crimes. my interest is in not expanding the criminal law and weaponizing it against either democrats or republicans. i want to ask you about that. before we get there, let me ask you this, because lanny davis just said michael cohen wouldn t accept a pardon. individuals can do that. it is allowed. if you are a member of the president s legal team, or if you were advising the president, what is your reaction to that? first of all, lanny davis has to go back and check a supreme court decision written many years ago by holmes that says you don t have to accept a pardon. the president has the power to grant a pardon, and nobody has the right to reject the pardon. it is a hypothetical. nobody is giving a pardon to cohen. cohen is the enemy. cohen is being attacked as being non-credible. it is manafort who might get a pardon. the president said he is a good guy and worked for other republicans. he felt sorry for him. that pardon would be much like the pardon given by president george bush i to weinberger and the five people facing charges. it would be a political sin, but probably not an impeachment offense. can i ask about a couple things, alan? things you said since this news broke that i think are worth getting you on. you said last night, quote, all cohen has to do is say the president directed me to do it. that s the kind of embellishment people put on a story when they want to avoid dying in prison. are you suggesting cohen lied under oath? we don t know. seems like that is what you were suggesting. no, no. what judge ellis said is when you put pressure on somebody like cohen, there is an incentive to embellish the story and make it better. he s now facing four years. if he comes up with strong evidence against the president, that will be reduced to two years or three or one year. there is the risk. that s what judge ellis said. a risk of perjury. i have no idea whether cohen is telling the truth interesting t a catch-22. the president is entitled to pay hush money to anyone he wants during a campaign. there are no restrictions on what a candidate can contribute to his own campaign. if, in fact, the president directed cohen to do it as his lawyer and was going to compensate him for it, the president committed no crime. if cohen that seems awfully convoluted though, alan. the law is convoluted. prosecutors have said michael cohen broke the law. michael cohen says, the president told me to do it. you said last night, as well let me you believe every president breaks the law during an election. does that make it okay? no. i said your quote is every candidate violates election laws when they run for president. let me tell you what i said. candidates violate election laws. i told you. you can get back any campaign. does it make it okay? it doesn t. let me be very clear isn t that moving the goalpost. go ahead. you re not letting me make my point. all yours. the president doesn t break the law if, as a candidate, he contributes to his own campaign. if he gave $1 million to two women as hush money, there would be in crime. if he directed his lawyer to do it, and he would compensate the lawyer, he s committed no crime. the only crime is if a third-party, namely, cohen, on his own, contributed to a campaign, that would be a campaign contribution. it is a catch-22 for the prosecution. if they claim that the president authorized him to do it or directed him to do it, it is not a crime for anybody. if cohen did it on his own, then it is a crime for cohen but not the president. this is going to be a very difficult case for the prosecution to make, precisely because the law on election are so convoluted. lanny davis is making the opposite argument. we have to leave it there at the moment. thank you for coming on. come back so we can continue what is always a feisty conversation. appreciate it. sure. what did the president s aides know and when did they know it about everything that s going down? the big questions about the campaign season payments that we just talked about to those women and who was aware of them? omarosa manigault-newman said they were no secret. we ll ask her about that when she joins me. dear great-great-grandfather, you turned a family recipe into a brewing empire before prohibition took it all away. i promised our family i d find your lost recipe. by tracing our history on ancestry, i found the one person who still had it. now, i m brewing our legacy back to life. i m david thieme, and this is my ancestry story. now with 100 million family trees, find your story. get started for free at ancestry.com. now that we have your attention. capri sun has four updated drinks. now with only the good stuff. do you know how to use those? nope. get those kids some capri sun! today, life-changing technology from abbott is helping hunt them down at their source. because the faster we can identify new viruses, the faster we can get to stopping them. the most personal technology, is technology with the power to change your life. life. to the fullest. we are back now with a look at this morning s headlines. the man who confessed to killing university of iowa student mollie tibbetts is going to be in court today. we re talking about an undocumented immigrant, cristhian rivera, facing first degree murder charges, after police spotted his car on security cameras near where tibbetts was last seen jogging. he led police to tibbetts body. he certainly wasn t known to the local police department there with the sheriff s department. so we, through our interviews and conducting a number of different canvas interviews throughout the community, we weren t aware of him until we were able to locate the vehicle. it is not like he was on anybody s radar throughout the investigation. police have still not released any information about a motive, but this is a story we are following closely. we ll bring you updates throughout the day. overnight, have you heard about this, facebook removed 652 pages and groups from russia and iran. they have one goal, to mislead users here in the u.s. and around the world. mark zuckerberg, facebook ceo, is telling customers the company is committed to strengthening operations. new details on the allegations against me too activist asia argento, after a photo of asia and jimimy bennet was posted on tmz. it shows argento and bennet, who who you have been 17 at the time, laying in bed. the photo comes two days after the new york times reported that argento arranged to pay bennet nearly $400,000 in hush money in response to bennet s claims of sexual assault against her. nbc news has not independently verified the report. in a statement to new york magazine, argento said, i am shocked and hurt by having read news that is absolutely false. i have never had any sexual relationship with bennet. the new york times said it is confident in the accuracy of its reportings. nbc news reached out to bennet, but he has yet to respond. back to the world of politics. new video showing michael cohen getting on then-candidate donald trump s campaign plane back in september of 2016. here it is. number one. now, i have to stalk you. going down a little more than a month before cohen wired the hush money payment. $130,000 to stormy daniels lawyer at the time. the person behind the camera in the video, omarosa manigault-newman. she s joining me here on set in washington. omarosa, thank you for being on. morning. let me start with comments you made on this network. i ll give you background on the tape. sure. we always had a really good time on the campaign. you see michael cohen was much more involved in the campaign than the trump legal team would elude to. he s there. he helped to organize the particular event in cleveland at the church that darrell scott leads. the reason the video was important, immediately, they re going to attack him and say he had nothing to do with the campaign. as you can see, a month before the payments were made, cohen was not just on the plane. if you let the video run longer, you ll see trump in the background. they ll chat. you talked about having recordings of other things. are there bombshells? i have. you know when are you letting those come out? wouldn t you like me to let them out this morning? sure would. roll the footage. no. unfortunately, donald trump and his legal team, this bully, unleashed his entire legal team on not only me but my publisher, trying to silence me from talking about things, particularly that happened on the campaign. some of those things, we ll have to wait until the arbitration is done. certainly, i don t have a problem releasing the things and sharing the things. more importantly that is from the campaign. it is exposing the you talked about what you ve seen and heard during your time working with then-candidate trump. you talked about knowing everyone knew the money was going to stormy daniels as hush money. let me talk post campaign, as i said, to avoid violating the arbitration proceedings i m in. after the campaign, when these things came to light, by that point, we were in the white house. they started to ask us, did you know? did you know? certainly, the people in the campaign were aware. did ivanka trump, for example, know? did jared kushner. i m telling you what i knew. do you believe they knew? i don t doubt they knew. they were part of the coverup to keep their president their father from being exposed. how? as the person who would go on and cheat on his wife a month after she had a baby, go on and get involved with a porn star, as well as a playboy play mate, then try to cover it up. what proof do you have of that? do you have evidence that they were involved in some kind of coverup? well, as i stated, the things in the campaign, i can t specifically i m not asking about that. what materials you may or may not have. there are tons of materials i m sure the investigators already have. particularly the e-mails and because you gave it to you? hallie, not being coy. you know i can t talk about the things from the campaign. let me ask you let s not go in circles and have a good interview. you know because of the infiltration from the legal team let me by the way, we have something else here, michael cohen and donald trump, if you don t want to talk about what you knew or did not know about the hush money during the campaign, let me ask this, why bring it up on hardball ? first of all, it wascontext. to say, why bring it up, i think it is unfair. if you re hinting something i answered it directly. when did you find out about the hush money payment? that s during the campaign, so i can t talk about it. did you know before the news broke after the campaign? look at you, so cute. let s talk about that s a little michael cohen, who i have had a relationship with during the entire time i was why should he be credible? he is credible because donald trump trusted him with his most intimate projects. he asked to fix and sort out situations for him. it is difficult for me to watch people try to demonize michael cohen when he was doing what he was told. in unhinged i talk about the a donald trump directing cohen to pay the payment. here, it is coming to fruition. why would michael cohen, given what you re talking about here, you believe michael cohen is credible. i do. why would he take out a personal loan to help donald trump cover up the alleged affairs? he was so loyal to donald trump. to see that tweet this morning from the president saying he was a bad lawyer, that speaks more to donald trump than michael cohen. i d push back on the assertions. michael cohen was effective at carrying out the things that donald trump directed him and asked him to do. i think that that s important to note. donald trump went back to him again and again, not just the women you know, but women you may not even know. donald trump should be careful when it comes to michael toecoh. he knows a great deal about all the behavior donald trump was engaged in. you have been aware that donald trump was directing cohen to make the payments. he was how did you become aware? i ve been a part of the trump world for 15 years. is this through the grapevine or conversations? i want to answer the question, the first one. i m asking. the first question you asked is how would i know? i worked with michael cohen in so many different roles, as you know. donald trump produced a reality show for me. you may not know i also went, at the direction of trump new mexico, to work for ami and david pecker, also involved in the stormy daniels deal. i know a great deal about how trump world works and how donald trump operates. when donald trump asked michael cohen to do something, for instance, in my case, work on a television show or work on getting me a deal with ami, when michael cohen is directed to do that, he does that, and he does it well, in terms of carrying the things out. what you re seeing unfold is america coming to know about the inner workings of trump world. that s what you re seeing with michael cohen. you said this is the beginning of the end of the trump presidency. coming from a former white house official, high-level official, that is a serious statement. yeah. what do you mean by that? do you have proof to back it up? well, the proof is in the indictments, in the guilty findings of manafort s case. more importantly, under oath, michael cohen stated that he was directed by the president of the united states to make these illegal payments. this is the beginning of the end. i will say that we might be in the second quarter. you ll see so many other things unfold. mark yesterday as an important moment in the trump presidency. i m not asking names but have you talked with former colleagues in the white house since this went down the last 24 hours? yes. i talked to many of them, and they re concerned about impeachment. they re worried about the future of the trump presidency and their preservation. we ll leave it there. i want to mention omarosa s book, unhinged, insider s account of the trump white house. thank you for being on the set. thank you for having me. gourmet dinners to a ticket for a pet rabbit. how duncan hunter is accused of using campaign money. the second lawmaker to endorse the president. now, the second republican lawmaker indicted this month. what does it say about the promise to drain the swamp? we re talking about that. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. 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. mom: okay we need to get all your school supplies today. school. grade. done. done. hit the snooze button and get low prices on school supplies all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. their medicare options.e people go to learn about like these for only $2 or less before they re on medicare. come on in. you re turning 65 soon? yep. and you re retiring at 67? that s the plan! well, you ve come to the right place. it s also a great time to learn about an aarp medicare supplement insurance plan, insured by unitedhealthcare insurance company. here s why. medicare part b doesn t pay for everything. only about 80% of your medical costs. this part is up to you. yeah, everyone s a little surprised to learn that one. a medicare supplement plan helps pay for some of what medicare doesn t. that could help cut down on those out-of-your-pocket medical costs. call unitedhealthcare insurance company today to request this free, and very helpful, decision guide. and learn about the only medicare supplement plans endorsed by aarp. selected for meeting their high standards of quality and service. this type of plan lets you say yes to any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. there are no networks or referrals to worry about. do you accept medicare patients? i sure do! see? you re able to stick with him. like to travel? this kind of plan goes with you anywhere you travel in the country. so go ahead, spend winter somewhere warm. if you re turning 65 soon or over 65 and planning to retire, find out more about the plans that live up to their name. thumbs up to that! remember, the time to prepare is before you go on medicare! don t wait. get started today. call unitedhealthcare and ask for your free decision guide. learn more about aarp medicare supplement plan options and rates to fit your needs. oh, and happy birthday. or retirement. in advance. margaret, converted more than $250,000 in campaign funds for personal expenses. including spending tens of thousands of dollars on, look at this, vacations to italy and hawaii, gourmet steaks, tequila shots, in-n-out, who among us, even a plane ticket for a pet rabbit. he is the second congressman to be indicted this month, following chris collins of new york. collins was the first lawmaker to endorse donald trump. also indicted on insider trading charges two weeks ago today. you saw the news break her on this program. kasie hunt is back with us now, doing double duty. joining me from the capitol. can we talk a little more about this not just the allegations against hunter but the idea he has been stripped of his power on the hill. does he have any friends left in the building? reporter: hallie, this was something that had been hanging over him for quite some time. this did not come as a surprise to people on capitol hill. there have been other republicans, darrell isa among them, eyeing his seat, thinking there might be blood in the water, of course, but didn t come soon enough for any republican to take action. he is going to be on the ballot. i don t think there is necessarily any great lengths that his republican colleagues may go to try to protect him in this case. the house is, of course, still out on august recess. to give you a little taste beyond what you put up there, with those dollar amounts, including the $600 pet rabbit plane ticket, this is a little piece of the indictment of duncan hunter. on or about november 23, 2015, in an attempt to justify the use of campaign funds to pay for a family s trip to italy, hunter attempted to set up a day tour on the u.s. naval facility in italy. hunter said he d discuss the date with his wife. then told his chief of staff, quote, tell the navy to go f themselves. no tour occurred. it notes in my note there was no alteration to the f-word in hunter s actual notes. that gives you a taste of how what his attitude was like toward all of this. he finally got caught. as you point out, he was the second congressional supporter of president trump back in the primary. kasie hunt, all excellent points. thank you, my friend. appreciate it. coming up next, preparing for the worst. the crisis plan from democratic leadership if the president does decide to fire robert mueller. we have exclusive reporting on the strategy for the first 24 hours and how lawmakers on both sides would move fast to try to protect the special counsel s work. the reporter behind the scoop is here next. and your oil change comes with a tire rotation as well. ooo that s good! i could put that on an airplane banner. hmm. maybe. nice work. was that.? 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because in her words, the person who nominated him is an unindicted co-conspirator in a criminal case. maizie was probably never going to vote for brett kavanaugh any way. and it also underscores just what democrats are doing to watch the special counsel investigation and the president s next moves there. nbc news exclusive report says there s a wide ranging emergency plan in place if the president fires robert mueller or tries to shut down the russia investigation, quote, it would start within minutes of mueller being fired, a torrent of activity ricochetting through the halls of congress and over tv airways including nearly a thousand protests being prepped from the virgin islands to alaska. one of the bilines on that piece is josh letterman, national political reporter, shawna and sahil or here as well. the number one concern seems to be preserving these documents, the evidence that mueller would have collected. what s the plan? they want the documents protected and the thinking is that by the time the president were to fire mueller or take some other step to undercut the investigation, it would be too late to then be coming up with a plan to how we ll respond. democrats have spent more than a year now trying to put in place a really comprehensive strategy that involves legal steps, legislative maneuvers as well as a major public relations campaign to try to get the message out as quickly as possible and salvage as much as of the investigation as they can. the president has not fired robert mueller. the president clearly doesn t like what robert mueller is doing, but he hasn t pulled the trigger yet. here s what adam schiff noted earlier this week that when the president first threatened to pull john brennan s security clearance, paul ryan said he was just trolling. if he attempts to remove robert mueller, congressional republicans cannot claim they didn t see it coming. that s the million dollar question. how will republicans respond? we know that other steps the president has seemed to threaten in the past such as pulling people s security clearances, house leaders, republican leaders have said that s not going to happen. mcconnell wouldn t let this bill on the floor of the senate to protect mueller because there s no need and then the president ends up crossing these lines any way. this massively elevates the stakes for the elections in november. this is in all likelihood going to be a political question. the nuclear option is impeachment if they believe there were high crimes of misdemeanor. the courts could stop them. voters get to decide. do they want a party that is adversaryial to donald trump or a party that s stood by him? how republicans would actually react if something like this happened. you want to play you all what senator durbin had to say. is there a howard baker? is there a person that would step up and say this is it, i m going to join with the democrats and protest what i consider to be an action inconsistent with the laws and rules of the u.s.? to answer his question, probably not, is that fair or do we know? i m not sure there s enough of them to answer his question. i do think you have seen, especially some republicans like, you know, tennessee, senator bob corker, you ve seen some republicans who know they re not going to be in congress next time around talk about how important it is actually to make sure mueller isn t fired and then they change the subject by saying he hasn t been fired so let s not talk about this. those people are out there. if you talk to republicans behind the scenes, they know that mueller getting fired is i m interrupting you rudely. chuck schumer is on the senate floor now. we want to take a listen. so those two events, kavanaugh s refusal to say that a president must comply with the duly issued subpoena and michael cohen s implication of the president in a federal crime makes the danger of brett kavanaugh s nomination to the supreme court abundantly clear. under the circumstances a game changer. should be. a president identify as an un chuck schumer just had been talking about the president. he s talking about him there. clearly, though, democrats are seizing on this news but they have stayed away so far, josh, from the word impeachment or from pushing the idea of impeachment, what do you make of that? early on last year right after the special counsel was formed, democrats started doing some polling on this, to see how the talk of impeachment would play and they realized early on that it actually wasn t to their benefit to do that, that a lot of people in both parties felt that its premature to do that before mueller has actually laid out the facts and that s why you re seeing folks like nancy pelosi trying to put the ca bash on talking about impeachment ahead of the election. i ll let you have the final word here related to your reporting, where does this go next? i know that s a million dollars question, but what does your reporting tell you? in the last 24 hours or so since yesterday and the news with both manafort and michael cohen that democrats are particularly looking at the possibility of pardons for these people who could be key witnesses in a trial and want to make sure that the president doesn t try to take steps that would make it impossible for them to cooperate. josh, thank you my friend. shawna and sahil, i ll ask you the same question, which is what your sources are saying this morning on whatever story that you re working on? i think you know what it is. shawna, go for it. so we have been working on the story. the president actually announced his rollback of the clean power plant. that was the obama era guidelines to reduce emissions. basically, the plan that the president is putting forth isn t really going to change anything. the clean power plan never went into effect because of legal issues with it and most companies and organizations have actually reduced their emissions because using natural gas is cheaper and cleaner. under the circumstances a really good talking point on the stump yesterday when you re in west virginia and you can say we re bringing coal back and people can cheer, emissions are going down and this doesn t change anything. sahil, your reporting has to do with the news of the day. another friend of the show bob costas spoke with the president s lawyer who told him that he believes that this may mean mueller may be at the end now. we ve heard that from rudy a time or two before. my sources are telling me that even though democrats are planning to ramp up pressure to delay or slo down the kavanaugh confirmation process in light of the fact that the president has been implicated in a crime by his former lawyer. one republican source i spoke to called it a liberal fantasy, the idea of a delay on the kavanaugh confirmation so expect them to move full speed ahead regardless of the news of cohen and manafort. come back soon. today s big picture, we end with as always comes to us from north korea, actually. and check this out, another story that got overshadowed with all of. this look at the smiles on these faces. its a south korean mother wrapping her arms around her north korean son for the first time in 65 years. yep, six decades they had not spoken with or seen each other. they d been separated after the korean war. that mom was one of the dozens of south koreans given a rare chance to cross into north korea and see family members, but it wasn t permanent. it was only a three day reunion. heart-wrenching but you can see the hope and happiness on their faces. this photograph here from the associated press. we love to hear your thoughts as always on facebook, twitter, snapchat and instagram. i will be reporting out more of this on msnbc nbc nightly news with lester holt and stand by, too, our unit is working on a lot of reporting behind the scenes. i ll turn it over to more news with my colleague ali velshi who ns new york. where did the time go? i just filled 30 seconds with me or what? yes. but i enjoyed yesterday. you and i talked at this time yesterday morning and we were still talking at 6:00 yesterday evening. yes, we were. quite a day is maybe the understatement of the century, ali velshi. that is right. i m now at least getting to process it today. i ve been enjoying your show and trying to get through of making sense of everything that happened yesterday afternoon. have a great rest of your morning. you too. good morning, everyone. i m ali velshi. its wednesday, august the 22nd. let s get smarter. where is the collusion? they re still looking for collusion. where is the collusion? i feel badly for paul. i must tell you that paul manafort s a good man. it doesn t involve me but i still feel, you know its a very sad thing that happened. this has nothing to do with russian collusion. this is a witch hunt and its a disgra d disgrace. very clearly there is no dispute that donald trump committed a crime. he directed michael cohen to do something that was criminal, michael cohen knows information
doesn t stop there. cohen s attorney tells msnbc he has information that bob mueller would want to know and is more than happy to start talking to the special counsel. meanwhile, paul manafort who two years ago literally ran donald trump s campaign is now a felon. he is facing serious prison time and like michael cohen sits atop this list of trump associates who are indicted or convicted criminals. that is a lot of witches. good morning, and welcome to morning joe on this wednesday, august 22nd. joe is off. he s tweeting. he ll be filing for the washington post. we ve put together an all-star lineup for this morning s incredible amount of news. a small law firm of legal experts, msnbc legal analyst danny savalas, john thnathan tu and barbara mcquade and two experts or the cohen stories i do not think there s a parallel. we ll see what you come up with. a legal landslide like none other in the history of the presidency. what the conservative drudge report described as trump hell hour. his 2016 campaign chief paul manafort convicted by a jury on eight counts at almost the exact same time that trump s former lawyer michael cohen entered a guilty plea to eight counts and speaking in open court directly implicated the president in a federal crime. this is the worst day of donald trump s presidency. both personally and professionally. trump s legal team responded, there is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government s charges against mr. cohen. it is clear that as the prosecutor noted, mr. cohen s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonest ly over a significant period of time. they are forgetting that trump is on tape talking to cohen about these payments, and we Former GOP representative Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinski interview newsmakers, politicians and pundits about the issues of the day. presidency. it started out. talked in the show about it, he was fiercely loyal. the kind of person he is, and obviously that changed over time, and i believe histories will look kindly on michael cohen. he obviously pled guilty to those counts and wants to focus on counts seven and eight. lanny davis mentioned yesterday, he really is looking forward to talking with mueller. mueller reaches out to him in corroborating stories that michael i believe will be able to tie trump to those meetings and to collusion. so on one sense, very emotional for michael. as you can imagine. also a sense of relief. i think he s looking forward to moving forward go ahead. donny, he broke the law. what is his mindset in terms of, who does this for somebody? over and observer again? to the point where, i mean, look, he s in deep water to keep it clean. he s really in deep. why? he is the as far as the on count seven and eight, the counts related to payments made to women, first of all, he was under oath. second of all, no one forced him to implicate the president. he, when he started going through each count, stood up and said, first of all, can i stand. and second of all, will you allow me, judge to read from a set of prepared notes because i want to make sure that i m focused. imp mr. kating the president in counts seven and eight was a deliberate choice. a choice he wrote out ahead of time and spoke to a courtroom filled with reporters. so that i think tells you more about his mind-set and how he feels about the president than any interview he s done. anything that anyone around him has said to the press that he got up in that courtroom yesterday and threw his boss, who he told me almost exactly a year ago he d take a bullet for under the bus. just a striking turn in a year. i ve watched this whole thing go down. i ve watched the change firsthand and it s yesterday was more striking than i ve ever seen. wow. we want to get to the political ramifications of all of this in just a moment, but first, the legalities. danny savalas, barbara mcquade and go through each of you. jonathan turley, scale of one to ten, how bad is this for the president and what are the possibilities? well, it couldn t be worse, and i have to say, i m not as convinced about this new morality play featuring michael cohen. this idea that he s suddenly liberated in the sense he s going to tell the truth. it doesn t fit with the indictment. look at the first six counts. he s a felon, and he has a reputation in new york of being something of a thug. so he s not that credible of a witness. i mean, if everything that was said yesterday is true, then most of the things he said for the entire year before were lies. and so that means that right. his use as a witness will require corroboration. having said that, he just did implicate the president in a crime. the president is effectively an unindicted co-conspirator, if you believe everything that was in this filing. that makes this campaign finance case a difficult thing usually to prosecute, stronger than the john edwards case. they didn t have a michael cohen who would say, first i knew i was committing a crime. second, i good did it at the be of donald trump and third i m willing to give evidence and details how we carried that out. you know, i tend to agree what he admits to is appalling and this is something, barbara mcquade, he admits to these crimes over the course of years and years, yet michael cohen is in deep. he s in big trouble. can he save himself? through this process? is there something that he can give them to perhaps mitigate what he s facing now at this point? and what are you seeing as the possibilities? potentially, yes. emily reported yesterday they just started talking with michael cohen and prosecutors last week. so the first task is let s get this plea done, and so the conversations i m sure resulted in the culmination of that plea agreement yesterday, but it appears they have not yet had time to probe all of his knowledge of the 17-year relationship he s had with president trump. i imagine part of that reason is it wasn t until this monday that the judge, retired judge serving as the special master, completed her privilege review of all the items taken in the search of michael cohen s office. it s really not until the prosecutors have their arms around all of those documents they re able to confront him and probe his knowledge of all of those things. my guess is, now is the time they ll sit down with him over a series of debriefings and talk about all of those thing lanny davis mentioned including the president s knowledge of the hacking and encouragement of it. if he can deliver that kind of information and it can be corroborated, really devastating for the president. i imagine that s coming in the coming months. he really has until december when sentencesing is scheduled to provide that information and get a reduction in that scientistants range of 3 1/2 to 5 years, could be down to probation. he has an additional statute to provide that continuing information. the start of a cooperation with michael cohen. i have to jump in, mika. it s absolutely possible and i warn people not to assume just because michael cohen entered into a plea agreement without a cooperation agreement apparent from its face. he still may be presently cooperating, planning to cooperate and the critical information, he only recently started talking to prosecutors. prosecutors need weeks maybe even months to debrief a defendant like michael cohen or a cooperating witness before they decide to cooperate him and vet him making sure his story is accurate and truthful. only then will they even consider granting that precious 5k1. from this point forward prosecutors are very, very cautious purchasers of the testimony of michael cohen, and might back out of the deal at any time if they decide he s not truthful and not give him the benefit of his bargain. it s very important to realize that he may be cooperating, and he may cooperate in the future. it s absolutely true that defendants can cooperate even after sentencing under the rules, and it sals important to know that cooperation agreements are often not public. it s often the case that even at sentencing we will address a defendant s cooperation at side bar away from open court and away from the ears of anyone who might hear because it s too d k dangerous to make these kind of things public as a matter of routine. wow. we ll get to how history will look at this in a moment. first, the politics reporters shared inside thinking of those around president trump. the new york times michael schmidt tweeted when cohen raid went down it opened up a big second front in trump s legal wars. trump lawyers always feared it more than mueller, because they had no handle on his legal exposure and they never thought they got straight answers from trump on the extent of what he did with cohen. john roberts tweeted, source close to donald trump tells fox news, remember, the president cannot be indicted, while maggie haberman added trump s folks are worried about impeachment more than before. the thinking, tangible, not theoretical and it didn t come from mueller. does not mean it will happen, but this has moved to a different stage in their minds, and what about the minds of lawmakers on capitol hill? kasie hunt, is there reaction, are people going to finally step up, who we ve been surprised to hear them go so silent given all the different stages of this presidency when republicans could have really come forward and said, you know what? no. this is wrong. mika, i almost hesitate to say this but i did get a text yesterday evening from one member of congress who simply calmed it a dumpster fire. a republican who said that this is kind of in some ways partially what they expected but also beyond what anybody thought could nap a single day or even i think it was the span of an hour. maybe an hour that this news came out. there have always been in these kind of behind-the-scenes, you know, never trump circles that still do exist in washington. this sense that, well, you know, maybe the legal system would solve the republican party s trump problem for them. now we are so far past that. the republican party is inextricably linked to donald trump. they essentially made their bed. the base of the party is with the president. they are not necessarily with these lawmakers and that puts incredible pressure on republican members of congress. i know jon meacham talked about this before as the historian in the room. remember, what shifted the ground in watergate was republican voters who turned against president nixon. that in turn put pressure on the republican members of congress, who ultimately were the ones that swung the process against the president. so republicans in congress still have an incredible amount of power, but it is not clear to me yet they will exercise it in opposition of this president and possible it may take more than what we saw yesterday. that will be fascinating to watch. you know, it s so interesting, elise jordan, because the news last night seemed to swallow up trump s rally. you d want to country to the rally to see what the president was saying in reaction to everything, but everything was so big that they kept cutting away, at least most of the networks i was watching, kept cutting away from him because there was too much important news. yet, though, elise, what you see there are lots of trump supporters shouting, hollering, cheering for him, and the question is, this is his base. will the base be moved? well, mika, the short answer is, no. it s very baked in as of now, and is not going to change that donald trump is indeed a scumbag. voters know that. they do not expect him to be the kind of man who treats his wife with any decency and dignity, and that is known, and isn t going to necessarily move the most hard-core voters. however, i would say that you have a lot of women voters who aren t exactly happy to have ever had to vote for donald trump in the first place. they just were not necessarily fans of hillary clinton and while they might have voted for donald trump, this isn t the kind of behavior that makes them excited to keep supporting his party. and you look at the republican party, big picture, just how they have lost completely any credibility as a moral force for virtue as they continue to lie and deny that what donald trump has done is wrong. so as of now, it might just be political corruption. it might be campaign corruption, but you look at what there is to come and still looming, especially with mike flynn and we still have no idea what mike flynn, what he has to say. what he told mueller s team in order to get such a great deal. there s so many unknowns that this is really just the tip of the iceberg. jon meacham, at this stage in the presidency, what s the historical parallel and if there isn t one, that s fine, but put this in context as to exactly how bad this day was for donald trump and this white house. i think the closest parallel is, does go back to watergate. goes back to the summer of 1973 when things, be the chain of events, they began unfolding that ultimately showed in the summer of 74 that nixon had done something not unlike what president trump is accused of by his own lawyer in the plea deal, which is, nixon was on tape orchestrating a cover-up using federal agencies to block one another to try to keep the heat away from his own white house s political espionage arm. and ultimately what broke the nixon presidency, and this is important, i think, is a combination, really, of three things. one was, his own lawyer turned on him. sound familiar? john w. dean, white house counsel. secondly, the revelation of more evidence than you can possibly one could possibly have imagined, which was alexander butterfield revealing that nixon had in one of the most ka lousily stupid maneuvers in history had taped himself. besides that, mrs. lincoln, how was the play? richard nixon would tape himself. we just don t know in trump world what possible evidence there could be that, whether it s tapes or memos or testimony. we just don t know. and third was the fact that he actually was, in fact, guilty. and there was a bit there was a common sense recognition of this after the supreme court ruled in late july of 1974 that he had to hand over the tapes and he was gone within about two weeks. here s one of the questions that sort of brings the political and the legal together, and we don t know the answer to this. there is the legal process, and an open question about whether a president, a sitting president can be indicted and tried. there s opinion on it, but it s very mixes. the supreme court has never ruled on this. the politics of impeachment is very much about that. from andrew johnson to bill clinton, to nixon, the nature of impeachment is that a high crime and misdemeanor is really whatever majority of the house decides it is at any given moment. it s a phrase of gerald ford s. so impeachment is a different thing than the indictment question. my own bent and jonathan and the other wos know better, is that the question whether you could indict a sitting president seems to me to be a matter that the supreme court may have to rule on before this drama enters its fifth act. all right. we need to get jonathan turley on that and we will right after the break, and we haven t even gotten to paul manafort. everyone stay with us. still ahead on morning joe, is one trump associate admitted his guilt, another was judged for his. paul manafort was convicted by a jury of his peers for bank and tax fraud. we ll run through that case and get to all of the political implications on capitol hill. you are watching morning joe. we ll be right back. so you have, your headphones, chair, new laptop, 24/7 tech support. yep, thanks guys. i think he might need some support. 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. 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eatin good in the neighborhood. 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 wi-fi is fast. i know! i know! i know! i know! when did brian move back in? 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. our rolling coverage continues with an extended conversation on everything that is going on. we ll get to paul manafort in just a moment, but jonathan turley, let s continue with the question that jon meacham posed and that is, can a sitting president be indicted. what s the answer? jon is correct how he described it. i happen to be part of that group of academics that believes that a president, a sitting president, can be indicted. the department of justice has two memos on this point. the first one during the nix s period is actually quite good. the clinton memo is perfectly dreadful. both basically say this is a question that has not been answered and adopt a policy that they would avoid that problem. ultimately they don t have to. the statute of limitations runs as in this case past the first term and you can essentially reserve the right to indict the president while giving the matter to congress. jon is also right about the gerald ford quote. i was the last lead counsel in the last impeachment trial and spent a lot of time dealing with that quote. which i have long criticized as inviting a sort of opportunistic and indulgent standard for impeachment. the standard historically is higher than that, that congress require more. having said that, this is the first time we ve seen a plausible claim for impeachment that could be made, but it can t rest just on michael cohen. michael cohen says the motivation was to affect the election as opposed to simply bury and embarrassing scandal. there s going to have to be much, much more, in my view, to make out a credible impeachment claim. the other problem is this occurred before he became president. that s always an issue for impeachment. now, it is true that president trump as president essentially pulled this into his presidency by denying these facts. so that can be used to essentially bring this in to the realm of impeachment. all right. by the way, at some point we have to get to omarosa. but we ve got other massive developments to cover this morning. didn t even get this in the first block. special counsel robert mueller land add victory as a part of his russia probe after the jury in paul manafort s fraud trial found him guilty on eight of the charges he was facing. manafort, who briefly served as chairman of donald trump s presidential campaign was convicted of five counts of tax fraud, one count of failure to file a report of foreign and financial bank accounts and two counts of bank fraud. the judge declared a mistrial on ten of the other charges manafort faced after the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on them. the charges at the center of this trial were, weren t directly related to russia s interference in the 2016 election. they pre-date his involvement in the trump campaign. when the verdict was read, manafort looked straight ahead offering no reaction. as he was led out of the room he whispered into the ear of one of his defense lawyers and nodded at his wife who was sitting in the front row of the courtroom. speaking after the verdict, manafort s lead attorney said his client is now evaluating his options. mr. manafort is disappointed of not getting acquittals all the way through, or a complete hung jury on all counts. however, he would like to thank judge ellis for granting him a fair trial. thank the jury for their very long and hard-fought deliberations. he is evaluating all of his options at this point. barbara mcquade, you were in the courtroom. manafort faces the possibility of seven to nine years in prison. prosecutors have until next wednesday to decide what they will do about the ten mistrial charges. i ll start there, because i want to hear what happened in the courtroom. what this all means. but also, is it fair to say the mistrials are also bad news for paul manafort? they re just going to keep picking away at him? yeah. i think that this should be viewed at nothing short of a full victory for the special counsel. you know, he s guilty on eight felony counts. so the fact that the jury found, was unable to reach a verdict on the other counts really is, i think, not significant. if i were special counsel i would not continue with another trial. you ve got the washington, d.c. case, and the exposure of the sentencing here is going to be just as high as it would be if convicted of those counts. the judge is permitted to consider what s known as relevant conduct. all that other conduct that came in during the case, even if the jury was unable to reach a guilty verdict on them, long as the judge finds by the lower standard of preponderance of the evidence, that manafort committed that conduct as well, he can sentence him as if convicted. i think it would be unnecessary to go forward with those counts. now, he still faces this trial in september, in washington, d.c. so if i were paul manafort s lawyer, the moment i would say, time to think about cooperating. yeah. i don t know what the other options would be, but let s talk about that d.c. trial he faces next month. danny cevallosa va cevallos where does that take us? originally the mueller team reached out to manafort s team and said will you waive venue and let us charge you completely in d.c.? manafort s team may have simply followed the old rule in the defense bar of just, don t agree to anything the prosecution is asking you to do, or perhaps they want add more favorable venue in the eastern district, because mueller s team couldn t charge him in d.c. for the things that occurred with jurisdiction in the eastern district of virginia, unless manafort s team agreed to it. so they didn t agree to it. that resulted in the case being brought, two cases, brought one in the eastern district of virginia, the other in d.c. and the net result now is that manafort has to go through a trial in one jurisdiction and then has to turn around, the government s i believe their xzibit list is due today and now have to get ready for a second trial, go through almost everything all over again and be exposed, and by the way, i should add, if he is convicted in d.c. and sentenced he is now considered a convict and that is a major difference in sentencing in your criminal history category, which can add years and years to a sentence. jonathan turley, one of the questions i get from people watching this closely and interested in it, couldn t the president just pardon everybody? you write that paul manafort s conviction means only donald trump can keep him out of prison now. can he keep him out of prison? he could. i mean, he can certainly issue a pardon. covering these crimes which are federal crimes. the problem that manafort is facing is, he has gone all-in on this strategy of preserving the chance of a pardon, and you can see why. at his age, even a ten-year sentence could be essentially a life sentence. you re not going to have mueller give him a walkaway deal. he hasn t done that with far less important people who have committed crimes like false statements to investigators. so mueller s unlikely to give him what he wants. the only guy that can give him a walkaway deal is donald trump. i think that he s preserving that. for mueller, the difference between 10 and 20 years may seem immaterial given his age. he s looking down pennsylvania avenue at the one guy who can given him what he needs, which is a walkaway. kasie hunt, would a pardon pass muster on capitol hill? i mean, come on. there s got to be some bar. right? we have asked, as you know, you have asked, that question many, many times. so far we have not found it. i do think that already, obviously, this is breaking along political lines. so democrats are predictably arguing that would, in fact, be the wrong thing to do and there are republicans who are also trying to send megs to president trump, which we know they often do, through the tv cameras. look at some reaction from yesterday. we do have a problem if the president were to pardon manafort. if he was, what? were to pardon manafort. that s above my pay grade. that s the president s choice, but i think i think i d like to see the case run its course and i ll let the courts do their job. i understand the president s on his way to a rally. he better not talk about pardons for michael cohen or paul manafort tonight or anytime in the future. would you be at all concerned that he would try to pardon paul manafort? i can t think of what mr. manafort s done to deserve a pardon. he hasn t even gone to jail yet. you have to actually earn pardon. learned your lesson, admitted to the conduct. the pardon is about rewarding a person for doing something right after being convicted. it s not about helping you as a politician. the latest episode of lindsey graham trying to explain it all to president trump, but, of course, we no trump has already disregarded that having pardoned joe arpaio before he was ever convicted of anything. and he doesn t seem to feel the need to follow the typical rules of pardoning. and he doesn t follow anyone s advice especially lawmakers on capitol hill. you know, he even said on this show during the campaign his best adviser, his top adviser, the person he listens to, donny deutsch, more than anybody in the whole world is himself. and so i wonder what trump is telling himself right now, donny? and i go to you, because i know that you know trump very well. longer than joe and i have known him. we ve known him for about a decade, and a lot of his behavior seems to, which was present during the campaign. present during the time that we knew him before he ran for president, but didn t seem really that applicable to anything that was important, but it has devolved, and the question is, is he taking anybody s advice now? because i would probably think that he s spinning, and will probably do something in the foreign policy realm that s a little risky about right now. i m concerned about a deflection. i think you should be. interesting tell last night. every time trump prize himself when he gets punched, he punches back. yesterday wasn t just a punch. yesterday was a a missile shot at his head, yet at his rally last night, nothing. there was that s an interesting tell. because who he is, is, you want to fight? i m ready to fight back. nothing. he passed. he took kind of the weak road and schumer gave him bait and he didn t take it. bring up an interesting point and i want everything to understand this. there is nothing, no that is beyond donald trump doing or acting out to save donald trump. i actually believe donald trump would start and international senate. i know this is very controversial, to protect himself. i agree. we have never seen him this cornered. and it s just the beginning. these two indictments are just the beginning. what plays out now between december 12th and michael cohen s sentencing? what plays out with flynn? when manafort goes to washington, what plays out? and we have not seen him as a caged everybody always says, well, donald trump bounces back and he s teflon. this is not teflon. he is an unnamed co-conspiracy basically in a felony crime, and we have not seen donald trump in this instance and i am frightened. the other thing i go back to at least jordan s people about the people at that rally and his base. he does have a base. all of a sudden, go one, two, three, six months down the road. these people, these coal miners, these people start to see, whether i like donald trump or not, this cage, this corner he s in is starting to affect when he can or cannot do for me i do think that 37% drips down to 30% and 28%. politically, in sis the beginning of a movement that will affect him. the problem is i ll add to your predictions, donny, and i will predict that he will sit down sooner rather than later, like in a matter of moments, even, with his friends at fox and his most comfortable place and he will do in nutso deflection that possibly could put our country in danger in some way, shape or form that will cause lots of ripple effects on capitol hill, that will try and deflect, and let s remember. most people who read history, who know history, know that this man is very possibly, like we re in the high 90% being used as a useful idiot by putin, and now we re waiting for the next nutso deflection by this president who is just endured a one-two punch. the worst day of his presidency and also probably personally as well. so everybody, strap in. it s going to be quite a day. donny, thank you very much. we also thank the law firm of savalas, turley and mcquade for being on. and 2016, only a handful of republicans endorsed donald trump early on. now at least two have been indicted. that is coming up on morning joe. hey allergy muddlers. book now at lq.com. european vacations. they golfed, they bought makeup. they paid for airline tickets and for friends and relatives and invested in tequila shots and gourmet steaks. the indictment alleges incident after incident in which the hunters spent campaign money on personal outings and meals and then told their campaign treasurer the expenses were legitimate, including $1,900 spent sending a family member to a pittsburgh steelers game. hunter was the second member of congress to endorse donald trump in 2016. the first was congressman chris collins. both collins and hunter are now under indictment. a spokesperson for hunter said yesterday the congressman believes this action is purely politically motivated. hunter, a republican, up for re-election in november. california s secretary of state says there is no process to remove his name from the ballot. and the state does not allow write-in candidates. wow. elise, drain the swamp. again, looking like the most ridiculous statement that the republican party and the trump campaign could ever use, but you just wonder. like, who thinks they can do that with money that is not theirs to use? mika, the most atrocious part of it was that apparently they spent money at a golf shop that they said, well, let s just, you know, charge it to the campaign funds and we can write it off as a veterans expense. right. and it s just so disgusting, how this kind of rot and corruption, you know, it starts at the top with donald trump, but when you have a rank and file member of the house behaving this way, it does help democrats to be able to claim that the republican party is completely infested with corruption. so kasie, i would ask you, how do you think that representative hunter s peers, his republican colleagues, are going to respond to this news? well, this isn t a huge surprise to anybody on capitol hill. there have been, you know, conversations around investigations into duncan hunter for a long time and blood in the water, eve in his own pa. congressman darrell issa stepped down from his own seat, had been sort of eyeing it behind the scenes, perhaps he could run in this district that s more republican than the one he was sitting in before, but obviously this indictment came too late for that. democrats have a desend candidate in this race. it wasn t necessarily their first choice of candidate in a crowded primary, but mark is a former obama aide who has really gotten a lot of attention from the grass roots. he s been endorsed by president obama. he s one of this progressive new faces with a compelling personal story. so, this could potentially put the race on the map as well, which, you know, i think for a lot of republicans might they probably don t want to admit that it would solve their problem but it could. lord. up next, we ll speak live with michael cohen s attorney, lanny davis joins us straight ahead. attorneys for donald trump meanwhile continue to say their client, the president, isn t the one who was in the courtroom yesterday or as our producers imagine it excuse me. excuse me. all right. move on. nothing to see here. please disperse. nothing to see here. please. listerine® total care protects better than brushing alone. with 6 benefits in one, from cavity prevention to strengthening teeth. so instead of protection like this, you get protection like this. listerine® total care. bring out the bold.™ it was always our singular focus. 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. and these are the specialists we re proud to call our own. expert medicine works here. learn more at cancercenter.com appointments available now. laws that might have been broken, it boggles the mind how dirty this is and how disgusting this is. well, there s the campaign finance question, which is about as you said the president s implication in a federal crime to cover up personal behavior that he thought would be harmful. and in the manafort but also with cohen because there s a very pourus border here, you have the question about the ultimate role of russia and the infiltration of a foreign power into american politics. and i think one of the things going forward here is i keep thinking about an old observation of harry truman s. truman said that americans always get the government they deserve. and if you believe that the presidency should be above this kind of behavior, if you believe that character is destiny, if you believe that the life of the republic would be better without this kind of person in that office, then you have to speak up consistently and coherently and make that clear. yep, jon, thank you. and i think it was joyce vance who said yesterday on msnbc, so the truth really is the truth and it is. and donald trump is going to be learning that. the concern i have as we go to break is that we are looking down the barrel of a crazy deflection any moment now from this president because he is always on point when ever he is put in a corner, he deflects like crazy and his deflections are crazy. we have much more ahead on what s being called the darkest day for this presidency since watergate. on one side a long time trump confident pleads guilty. on the other, a former campaign chair found guilty by a jury and is now, quote, evaluating his options. lanny davis says his client is ready to talk to mueller and has quite a story to tell. davis is stepping up the rhetoric saying cohen considers the president to be a corrupt and dangerous person. well, finally he s found the truth. plus, senator elizabeth warren joins the conversation. morning joe is coming right back. this is not a screensaver. this is the destruction of a cancer cell by the body s own immune system, thanks to medicine that didn t exist until now. and today can save your life. 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. mom: okay we need to get all your school supplies today. school. grade. done. done. hit the 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your gastroenterologist about entyvio®. entyvio®. relief and remission within reach. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? try zyrtec®. it s starts working hard at hour one. and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. so i just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys, good man. and it s a disgraceful situation. it s a total witch hunt. i ve been saying it for a long time. an attack on our country in a true sense. it s an attack on what we all stand for. so they didn t break in, again, just have to correct the president in realtime. if donald trump was angry back in april, just imagine what is happening inside the white house today. in just moments, we re going to speak live with danny davis, the lawyer for the president s former fixer michael cohen who just flipped on his long-time boss. welcome back to morning joe. it s wednesday, august 22nd, joe is off. he s tweeting and he s filing for the washington post. you ll hear from him. still, with us we have capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie d.c. on msnbc, kasie hunt. former aide to the george w. bush white elise jordan. nbc news and msnbc contributor emily jane fox and joining the conversation, joyce vance. former assistant united states attorney in the criminal division of the u.s. attorney s office for the southern district of new york, daniel goldman and former fbi special agent and msnbc contributor clint watts joins us as well. also with us, pulitzer prize winning columnist eugene robinson. great to have everybody on board on this huge news day. president trump spoke yesterday about the guilty verdict in the manafort trial. we ll get to that in just a moment. you think that would be the lead story. but first the case that has the president not talking at all, at least not yet. this case implicates him in potential criminal wrong doing. the guilty plea of his former lawyer and fixer, michael cohen. cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts, counts one through five, for tax evasion, count six for making false statements to a bank and seven and eighty connected to campaign finance violations in a scheme to cover up the president s alleged affairs with employ boy model karen mcdougal and porn star stormy daniels. yesterday cohen told the judge that the payments were made, quote, in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office, implicating the president without saying his name. he worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign and to the candidate and the campaign. in addition, mr. cohen sought reimbursement for that money by submitting invoices to the candidate s company which were untrue and false. cohen is currently free on bond. the plea agreement calls for cohen to serve up to five years in prison, sentencing is set for december but so much could happen between now and then. joining us now, michael cohen s personal attorney, former special white house counsel to president bill clinton, lanny davis. lanny, welcome back to morning joe. good morning, mika. nice to be back. good to have you on this morning. thank you. so what s he got? what s sort of what s the level of what michael cohen has that he could offer to mueller investigators? is it enough to change his fate which looks a little bleak right now. well, let s clear up for some reason an ambiguity, the smoke that rudy giuliani and trump and the people around him are blowing about what happened yesterday. very clearly there is no dispute that donald trump committed a crime, no dispute because his own lawyers said to the special counsel in a letter that he directed, that s the word they used, michael cohen to do these payments. he didn t want to do them because he was covering up his involvement in the payoff in the hush money. but the issue isn t in dispute. i ve been asked, well, how do we believe someone has pled guilty to other crimes. my answer is you don t have to. his own lawyers are including rudy giuliani, are the evidence, the witnesses, against trump when he lied on air force one. giuliani contradicted him and said, oh no, he knew about it. then his own lawyers wrote a letter to the special counsel and used the word directed. now that s as good of evidence you can have when your own lawyers are testifying against you. so there s no ambiguity, donald trump violated criminal law. he may not be ability to be indicted. that s an unclear question, but there s no dispute here. he directed michael cohen to do something that was criminal. michael did it and admitted to it. we haven t heard donald trump say i directed him according to my lawyers who wrote the special counsel. so, what does your client have? what evidence beyond what we ve already heard and seen which, by the way, includes an audio tape that involves a conversation about a payment to stormy daniel that the president is involved in, but i want to know what else he has, what you might be able to offer to mueller that compares or surpasses with what he s already said and admitted to that implicates the president? so that s the big question that i can t answer as an attorney who has consulted with my client under attorney/client privilege and wouldn t want to interfere in many mueller s investigative process by answering the question, but i have been willing to say that my observation is that michael cohen knows information that would be of interest to the special counsel, in my opinion, regarding both knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt american democracy by the russians and the failure to report that knowledge to the fbi. emily jane fox, you know michael cohen as well as anybody, probably more. could he have tapes of trump? what do you think michael cohen has the capability of doing to protect himself at this point? what could he provide from your knowledge of not just what he has but his personality, his relationship with the president and at this point his anger level? well, his anger level is sky high and i think that we saw that yesterday in the courtroom when he electively chose to mention the president when he was going through the guilty counts yesterday. he didn t have to bring up the president. that was his own decision, and it was a very pointed decision at that. look, michael cohen has worked side by side with the president and it s important to note he s worked side by side with the president s children as well for the last decade. and so, what he knows about the president and his family i can only begin to speculate. lanny, i do have a question for you. what you say is that he has a tremendous amount to potentially offer robert mueller and the special counsel s team. why make that statement publicly? why not go directly to the special counsel? how does it serve michael cohen to be saying publicly we have a lot of things to offer? well, i haven t quantified it. i certainly think your interpretation is a reasonable one. i made my observation, we do not want to interfere in mr. mueller s investigation. i have said that michael cohen is going to be telling the truth to whoever asks him. and there are some issues that i think would be of interest. but i do want to go back to family. he and his family are suffering. he is asking for help. we ve set up a website. michael cohen truth fund.com to help him tell the truth about donald trump. we need help. and michael is asking for anybody interested in helping him to go to this website that we just set up, michaelcohentruthfund.com and we ask everybody who is interested in michael being able to tell the truth to help him out. just to answer emily s question with a thought, lanny, and i ll toss it to you and then joyce vance can follow up with a question, but did he think trump was going to help him out? is he no. sort of stupefied. no. he does not want why did it take him so long to flip? it was evolutionary. in talking to him again i have to be careful what i share as an attorney, but i can tell you that helsinki was a significant turning point as he worried about the future of our country with the president of the united states aligning with somebody who everybody in his intelligence community who he appointed, including dan coats said that putin interfered and tried to help trump get elected and trump is the only one left denying that. and that shook up mr. cohen. but earlier events shook him up when he first approach eed me, talked about what caused him to change his mind from taking a bullet for donald trump in the statement he made to seriously worrying act his unsuitability as president after he became president. it was an evolutionary process, a painful process. when he and i talked when i decided to help him, it was after several weeks of talking about the evolution that he s gone through. so, joyce, hold on a second. i just want to jump on that helsinki comment. that being a turning point for michael cohen. i ve always noticed that donald trump deflects sometimes with foreign policy news of his own. just to get the headlines to go in a different direction. is michael cohen at this point worried that this president will do something unbelievably idiotic to deflect from these headlines? are you asking me? yeah. the answer is of course. everybody in america who isn t a hard core doesn t care whether he lies, doesn t care whether he aligns with putin, doesn t care at all and we re probably down to below 40%, everybody else in america is worried about a president of the united states who acts recklessly, sometimes acts without the ability that you would want to have a president mentally and denies his own intelligence community s unanimous assessment, including dan coats and mike pompeo and everybody else that putin interfered to help him get elected. that is a simple fact. and it s very scary that we have a president of the united states aligning with putin and i think after helicisinki michael was qe shook up. it happened before then. we spent a lot of time on the telephone talking about what changed his mind about donald trump and it was the unsuitability factor as president. yep. scaring a lot of people who like trump that he is a scary person, sometimes acts mentally scary. he certainly doesn t care about the truth. he has giuliani saying truth is not always truth. and mr. trump lies and doesn t care he lies. knows his supporters, some of them, know that he s lying and they don t care and that s very, very dangerous as michael cohen and many other people see. and in order to get i have to plug it again, in order to get michael to be able to help, we need help on this fund. michaelcohentruthfund.com. we ask everybody to help. michael cohen tell the truth about donald trump. lanny davis, thank you very much. please come back. keep us posted. thank you. joyce vance, i just think there is something worse than a useful idiot and that would be a useful idiot under legal siege, and that is what president donald trump is this morning. it s concerning. i wonder if we ll hear from the president. his twitter feed has been silent up until now, but his defense no matter what happens, mika, has always been that mueller hasn t proven collusion. that s still true this morning. nothing in the cohen indictment talks about collusion between the campaign and russia, but i think we re at the point where we have to ask ourself, aren t there things that are just as bad, perhaps worse, isn t one of them that the certain knowledge that an american president, a sitting president got where he is in part by directing those around him to keep the truths about him from the american people during the election. that s what we ll have to confront with the disclosure yesterday of mr. cohen s crimes. all right, daniel goldman, i would love for you to chime in on all the legal possibilities. i know you were at the manafort trial yesterday, but could you comment on the michael cohen revelations because they seem to be the most serious as it pertains to this white house and this presidency. is it fair to say that? absolutely. no doubt about it. the cohen plea implicates the president in a way that the manafort trial simply did not, at least this trial. but what strikes me, mika, is that in a technical term, the way that us prosecutors would view it and i was in the southern district for ten years, michael cohen did not flip. he is not a cooperating witness. he has not reached a cooperation agreement with the prosecutors to cooperate and to testify against anyone else who may have committed crimes either with him or that he knows about. and that is very unusual given the fact that as lanny davis just says, michael cohen is willing to speak to mueller, he is willing to speak to the southern district. i m a little perplexed. i know my colleagues have their reasons for doing what they do. but it does seem like this criminal information that was filed yesterday was written as an indictment, ready to go to a grand jury, ready to get an arrest warrant and to arrest michael cohen. as emily reported within the past week that converted into a plea agreement. it may be the case that they wanted to charge him first and then see whether he would cooperate, but with someone who is willing to cooperate ordinarily you would allow them to do so preindictment or prearrest. so i m a little confused as to where this goes right now with someone who clearly has relevant information to multiple investigations, wants to cooperate and give that information to the prosecutors, but at least at this point seems unable to do so because of something within the prosecutor s minds or views. it s amazing. elise? clint, that was kind of amazing lanny davis trying to act like it was michael cohen s extraordinary patriotism that suddenly was sparked with great fervor and so now he s coming forward when also something that davis has teased that he that donald trump knew about the hacking and cohen has evidence of that. and so cohen would have been around for all of that. where so i think one little thing that happened yesterday that we kind of got swept up in the storm was senators bur and warner coming out and saying we want to make sure that we still have access essentially to michael cohen. we would like to talk to him again. one of the things that s never been entirely clear is what did michael cohen know and was he one of the pieces that can or cannot confirm the president s knowledge about a lot of these things? did he know about the trump tower meeting? was he aware of it? where are the communications? because most of the interactions that happened in the trump campaign were in person. these are human interaction, not on e-mail, not text messages. so it was interesting that they immediately came out yesterday when the cohen deal happened there was this surprise press conference where senator bur made a statement and he was saying we want to make sure we keep our access to michael cohen. i think this is a significant point in here. so we looked at it just from the mueller investigation, but now i think there are other access points, too where everyone was caught off guard yesterday and they were trying to make sure they still had their stake in the game. eugene robinson, as this whirlwind of news just whipped up into the night last night, i want to know what you re thinking. so the stage is your s. what s your pleasure. gene, go. i was on the air yesterday at 4:00 with nicole wallace as all the stuff came in, so i said later it felt like being on the wrong end of an artillery barrage. it was in coming all the time. with a few hours and not 40 winks but maybe 20 for perspective. the manafort story is a huge story that we would be talking about endlessly if not for the cohen story. and the cohen story is poses a threat to this presidency. last night on our friend and colleague rachel maddow s how is, lanny davis strongly implied that michael cohen has damning information about the president regarding the trump tower meeting and regarding advanced knowledge of russian hacking. which would just be explosive. and he was not really ambiguous about that. he doesn t want to talk about it more right now, but it seems to me he s sending a very clear message to the prosecutors that he would love to sit down and talk, he would love to have a deal. and i wonder if there aren t perhaps other charges that prosecutors might have filed against cohen this time around that he s worried, that they might file. so, i think the prosecutors feel they re in a strong position as he asks to talk and at some point they re going to be willing to listen. i know joyce vance is there. joyce, is that the way you read it? how do you see this unfolding? dan and i both have the same reaction to this. it s so unusual to see an agreement like this concluded that doesn t have a cooperation component to it. and we also have this really, i think, very odd campaign by lanny davis to reach out to special counsel mueller through the press and prosecutors. that s something of a red flag to me that everything here is not as it seems. the washington post has reported sort of cryptically that mueller told law enforcement that he doesn t need cohen to make his cases. i m not sure what to read into that. i think one possible explanation for this information being filed before cooperation agreement is reached could be that they feel a little bit of pressure to comply with this artificial labor day date that rudy giuliani has set up. everyone wants to maintain the appearance of propriety so maybe they get the indictment out of the way and then talk about cooperation. but there could also be as you suggest some problem with cohen, other charges, maybe an inability to be fully truthful with prosecutors that s behind this decision to not let him plead guilty with a cooperation agreement already in hand. i just think that at this point you re looking at even this who is now they re recommending a six month sentence, pop populoapadopoulos being truthful? i think truthful is what you want to be no matter what jurisdiction you re under. daniel goldman, for all the people looking at these blaring headlines, what do we look for to expect next in the legal realm realistically? well, there s a lot going on. michael flynn s sentencing was just adjourned an extra month which indicates that mueller s investigation is still going full bore because and he still needs michael flynn potentially down the road as a cooperating witness. i think we re all going to be paying very close attention to our good colleague emily jane fox who seems to have the most access to michael cohen because ordinarily prosecutors and defense lawyers talk about this stuff. you don t go through the press to reach out to prosecutors. and as much as michael cohen wants to paint a picture of being a true patriot and an honest person just interested in the truth, that would be a real conversion in his life that may or may not have something to do with the fact that his plea agreement calls for four or five-year sentence which i think is probably motivating him a little bit more. so i think that where we really do need to focus is michael cohen right now because i think gene is right. if he does cooperate, if he does testify in the senate and he has this information, he clearly wants to get information that he has about the president out there because what he said yesterday was completely unnecessary for the proceeding that he was in. it was not in the charging document. he did not have to say that in order to plead guilty. ordinarily you would not have a guilty plea that lengthy and that detailed. but he intentionally did that for a reason. and i think there s more where he is and oddly enough, as many people have said, michael cohen may be far more of a serious threat to the presidency than robert mueller. okay. one other sub issue is a big question for fox news today because the president i predict will end up on the cozy, comfy couch or in the arms of sean hannity trying to deflect, trying to use fox as a bull horn to run over all these headlines. and the question for fox news executives and for fox news journalists is are they going to ask the right questions? are they going to ask the real questions? or are they going to aid in his deflection? that is the question and the challenge for fox news because the president will be coming your way and will be using you. and history will be following this story as well. joyce vance, thank you. emily jane fox thank you as well. the new york attorney general is increasingly at the center of legal issues involving donald trump. we ll talk to one of the candidates gunning for that job, law professor straight ahead. plus, the democratic leadership senator elizabeth warren is standing by. where does she see herself in two years. morning joe is coming right back. applebee s to go. order online and get $5 off $25. now that s eatin good in the neighborhood. i couldn t catch my breath. it was the last song of the night. it felt like my heart was skipping beats. they said i had afib. what s afib? i knew that meant i was at a greater risk of stroke. i needed answers. my doctor and i chose xarelto® to help keep me protected from a stroke. once-daily xarelto®, a latest-generation blood thinner significantly lowers the risk of stroke in people with afib not caused by a heart valve problem. warfarin interferes with at least 6 of your body s natural blood-clotting factors. xarelto® is selective, targeting just one critical factor. for afib patients well managed on warfarin, there is limited information on how xarelto® compares in reducing the risk of stroke. don t stop taking xarelto® without talking to your doctor, as this may increase your risk of stroke. while taking, you may bruise more easily, or take longer for bleeding to 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administration, acting new york state a.g. barbara underwood is threatening legal action under trump s proposal to replace the clean power plan. aimed at combatting climate change, meanwhile, in a separate action filed in june, a.g. underwood is suing trump and his three adult children, alleging a pattern of illegal activity relating to the president s personal charity. joining us now, democratic candidate for new york state attorney, she has recently received the endorsement of the new york times. very good to have you on the show this morning. oh, it s wonderful to be on. thank you so much. so the president just put this out there he is not above pardoning anything. that could happen in all of this. yeah, yeah, yeah. what stands out to you in everything that has gone down in the past 24 hours and how does it affect your campaign? well, it s really critical to understand that federal pardons do not apply to state law crimes. and while new york state has some limits on what kind of crimes could be prosecuted after a pardon, those are not absolute. it s important that we send a signal that there are no get out of jail free cards and if donald trump moves forward with a federal pardon, we in the new york working with local d.a.s will be ready to investigate criminal activity that happened in new york of the person who is pardoned. it s an interesting time for your legal specialty to come into play. can you talk about what you have specialized and dedicated your career to and why you think that could be an asset as attorney general. yeah. i m an anti-corruption expert. i have three days after donald trump took office, in fact, i was one of the lawyers who brought a lawsuit in the southern district of new york demanding that trump divest his business interests because they re violating the foreign and domestic i mall ewement clause. i ve been working on this litigation that will require trump to basically choose between the presidency and his businesses and we just had a major victory in june, but that deep expertise in constitutional law, anti-corruption law is really important right now because we are dealing with new legal issues that we haven t faced before. and we got to be ready in new york. new york state may end up being the firewall, against all kinds of things that donald trump could do to make sure donald trump does not apply to him or to his associates. it wouldn t hurt in new york state as well. we have a local crisis as well. that s absolutely right. that the background that i have, i happen to be one of the few people in the country who had already been engaged in investigating the emoluments clause before donald trump became president, but also one of the key things to understand here is new york state plays a special role, all state attorney generals are important, but new york state plays a special role because donald trump s foundation is here, his organization is here and if you look at what happened yesterday, you can see that the lines between the foundation and the organization and the campaign just from news reports are very blurred. barbara underwood brought this really critical, civil action in june. it s a block buster case about the donald trump foundation, but we already know enough to know that we need investigations into the organization as well. this is like you have to follow the money. that s corruption 101, follow the money. zephyr, the only person who has not pled guilty in the mueller probe is paul manafort and many people including me think he is aligning himself for pardon and some of the language the president has used in relation to paul manafort is similar to language he used before pardoning other people. can you explain what kind of state charges you think may be brought against paul manafort if he does receive a pardon from the president? well, it s a very fair question but since i may be in the position of actually bringing such charges i don t want to name particular kinds of charges that might come. but the key thing to understand is that new york state has a broad array of criminal statutes involving financial crimes, false statements, a whole range of crimes that we should investigate and barbara underwood is an incredible attorney general. he ke she keeps her hands close to the vest as she should. but i will tell you that when i am the next attorney general of new york, we re going to put real resources into those investigations because we have to be ready for the real constitutional crisis moment of donald trump doing a self-serving pardon to try to protect himself. i would like to point out a know your value moment. i love it when i hear a woman saying i m going to win because women just don t say that. they always are like, well, i might. maybe i might do my very best. yeah. yeah, i m going to win. exactly. i love that zephyr. clint watts, i want to you comment on this and then you can take a question to zephyr. given the first hour of the show i m a little struck by what lanny said about michael cohen s turning point, that it was helsinki and that he saw sort of a deinvolving in trump s brain that his bad behavior was going to extend instead of pull back and that he could hurt this country. that matches what i feel and know about trump that he deflects when ever he s under siege. and many consider this president to be vladimir putin s useful idiot. and i am concerned he will make a huge effort to deflect, probably using fox news hosts as his sounding board, and try to deflect from these headlines but in the process put our nation at risk. and as an fbi profiler, is this something that you would be concerned about? is this a realistic concern? do i sound crazy? you re not crazy. in fact, i think the president said at different times he sort of offered up it would be a good time for a war. maybe i need a war. maybe i need a trade war. i need a conflict to distract. maybe we ought to take him seriously. he tends to tell you exactly what he s going to do later on. i always wondered sometimes it s hard to tell north korea, that was a critical issue a year ago we started talking on the show that suddenly just fizzled out. we have not seen any progress on nuclear negotiations. now we see a lot of ramp up with iran. is that because we need to deal with iran or because it s a useful distraction for the president to try to build some sort of a conflict. so i m worried about those things. this kind of ties into zephyr, the question about federal versus state. i work a lot with federal and state law enforcement, so you ve got attorney general sessions really pushing on crime, immigration, ms-13, that s what you ll hear him say. you were talking a lot about public corruption and really white collar cases. how do you see yourself, if you re in new york, really working with the federal government in terms of investigations and law enforcement? well, clearly it s going to be important to work with the mueller investigation and work also with local d.a.s. there s different levels of these investigations, but again new york state and the new york attorney general has to be a fire wall against illegal actions against cases where and we ve already seen so many with the trump administration where the federal government is violating the law, pushing past the limits of what the administrative procedure acts and its epa roll backs. and unfortunately what we see with i.c.e. and cbp is this unbelievable willingness to argue essentially immunity for agents. the extraordinary crisis moment where it looks weeks ago a court ordered a plane to get turned around because sessions was on the verge of not following a federal court order. again, it s going to be really important for states to play the role the new york state attorney general in particular as a real firewall against illegal activity at the federal level and unfortunately we cannot trust this administration has been pretty out there claiming immunity, claiming the law doesn t apply to the president, willingness to push the limits of what the federal government should do under its own laws. states will be more and more important in protecting against that. all right, new york state attorney general candidate zephyr teachout, thank you for being on. daniel goldman, thank you as well. senator elizabeth warren is trying to ban members on capitol hill from owning individual stocks. we ll talk about that and much more next on morning joe. hi, kids! i m carl and i m a broker. do you offer $4.95 online equity trades? great question. see, for a full service brokerage like ours, that s tough to do. schwab does it. next question. do you offer a satisfaction guarantee? a what now? a satisfaction guarantee. like schwab does. man: (scoffing) what are you teaching these kids? ask your broker if they offer award-winning full service and low costs, backed by a satisfaction guarantee. if you don t like their answer, ask again at schwab. president trump or unraveling in any way, and are you concerned that he will try and deflect in a way that could hurt our country? so, i think what s been clear from the past 24 hours is that donald trump cares about exactly one person and that one person is named donald trump. and he will do anything he has to do to protect donald trump. and we watched this that s why we re talking about corruption today, right? you make secret payments, you do whatever has to be done. remember that michael cohen also had taken half a million dollars at least to come in and influence donald trump on behalf of some of the biggest corporations in this country. this is all about corruption, influence peddling. this is why we have a problem with donald trump, but as you said, we have a problem in washington. it s time now to make some serious changes. and that s what this bill is all about. we re going to talk about the bill, but are you concerned, as i am, that he is going to do something to deflect probably in the next few hours because this is probably the biggest challenge to his presidency so far. and when we see this man under siege, he deflects. yes. he says, look over there. there s something else exciting going on, threatening whatever it is. this has been his action from the very beginning is always look some place else when ever he got into trouble. but, you know, i think this is a moment when it is important that the american people stay on the core issues here. and that is this is a corrupt administration. the most corrupt administration in living memory. and that we re going to insist on some accountability, not get distracted and pulled off somewhere else, some accountability. we want a government from the top down that works for the american people. so you re looking at the big picture. you ve got the anti-corruption and public integrity act. give me a line on each one. i ll start with the first, padlock, the resolving door and increase public integrity how? stop this business of somebody works on wall street, draws a big salary, gets a big present going out the door to go regulate the very industry that they just worked for and are likely to work for in the future. as long as they re doing that, they re not working for the american people, they re forking for the industry that lines their pockets. end lobbying as we know it. so on this one, when you leave public office, whether it s as a senator or member of the house or a cabinet official or president or a vice president, a life time ban on lobbying. no more of this business if you trade your contacts in washington, sell them to the highest bidder, huh-uh. cashing in. corporate capture of public interest rules. what does that mean? so what this means is when the regulatory agencies are try to make rules on behalf of the public and they get overwhelmed by the giant corporations that come in and spend zillion of bucks. the regulatory agency will have the resources to fight back on behalf of the public. you want to improve judicial integrity and defend access to justice for all americans. you know, on this one, i think that the judges both this includes the supreme court justices, should not be able to take fancy speaking fees, trips to hunting lodges and golf courses and they should not be permitted to own and trade in individual stocks. by the way, federal judges shouldn t be able to do it, senators shouldn t be able to do it, congressmen shouldn t be able to do it, the president and vice president shouldn t be able to do it, heads of agencies shouldn t be able to do it, cabinet officials shouldn t be able to do it. if people want to keep their investments, put them in big index funds. but the people who are actually making policy and deciding things in the public interest should have no conflicts, no trading in individual stocks and let s just remember, no owning businesses on the side. i get it. here is my big question, though, because you also want to strengthen enforcement of anti-corruption ethics and public integrity laws and boost transparency in government. yep. so if this all happens, elizabeth, senator, who would be left in washington besides you, claire mccaskill and ben sass? seriously. seriously, that really is the question, mika? who are we here for? have folks come to washington just to line their own pockets, just to improve their careers going forward? or are they here to work in the public interest? we ve had corruption scandals in american history before. and each time the american people have responded, we have tightened up the laws. it s gotten better and then, you know, corruption has found new ways into this system. now it is time for us to come together and to say, enough of this. no more taking care of yourself, if you want to work in public interest, you really have to work in public interest. yeah. i ll just say this obviously opinion but as the fish rots from the head, the people do need to rise up. casey hunt, go ahead. senator warren, good to see you. i want to pull it back to the news that we ve seen unfold over the past 24 hours rapidly. you as recently as a few weeks ago with our colleague john harwood were asked whether you thought conversations around impeachment were productive at this point. you said, you know what, we got to let mueller finish his investigation. the headline on the front of the new york times now says president implicated in a campaign finance a campaign fine violation by his own lawyer. i m wondering if that revelation has changed your view on whether democrats should be focused on impeachment, is that a conversation that you should be having. what it means to me is that we have to be even more intensely protective of the mueller investigation. and let it come to its own conclusion. i want the special prosecutor to be able to follow his investigation wherever it goes without interference. and i want him to be able to make a full report to the american people. to me, that is what is critical. and right now, what i think we should be doing in congress, is we should be passing laws to make sure that donald trump cannot fire the special prosecutor. that is where the real threat is to trump. and it is powerful important that we protect that special prosecutor. this is gene robinson. also yesterday in a little known story, congressman duncan hunter and his wife were indicted for using $250,000 in campaign money for personal expenses. that follows the indictment of congressman chris collins of new york for insider trading. and they are both republicans. my question is, are democrats going to use this issue and elaborate on it and develop it for the midterms and beyond or not? what do you think? realistically what do you think. to me this is the moment when we need to speak out against corruption. as mika started out, i ve written a big bill and it is sweeping. and notice its not just about campaign finance. campaign finance is something we ve been talking about for years. the influence of money on candidates. this is about even if you fix that problem, which is a terrible problem, which i work on with others, there are still so many other ways that corruption has eaten away at the system here in washington. that is why we need a comprehensive approach to fight that back. i want to see look, i ll be blunt, i want to see everybody do this, i want to see democrats and republicans say you know it is time, we ve had it, let s make these simple rules the law now in washington. and beat back the influence of big money. this really is a world now where too many americans believe that washington works for the wealthy and the well connected. but it is just not working for them. and you know what, they are right. and it is time for us to make change. and if you read about senator l be elizabeth warren, her book, you will find that this message is her life s work. and senator, you are announcing when? i am running for senate, we ve got 76 more days i think. i just finished my 34th town ob hall in massachusetts. i take nothing for granted. it is a great honest or aeat ho to washington to represent the people of the commonwealth before. senator warren, thank you very much for being on this morning. and coming up, democrats have an emergency plan in case the president tries to fire mueller. we ll have more on that. plus new reporting on the president s mood after yesterday s back to back legal blows. morning joe is coming right back. you ve tried moisturizer after moisturizer done. hit the snooze button and get low prices on school supplies all summer long. like these for only $2 or less at office depot officemax. like these for only $2 or less if your moderate to severeor crohn s symptoms are holding you back, and your current treatment hasn t worked well enough it may be time for a change. ask your doctor about entyvio®, the only biologic developed and approved just for uc and crohn s. entyvio® works at the site of inflammation in the gi 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long time. is he still your lawyer? no, he s not my lawyer. but i always liked michael. and he s a good person. do you mind if i talk? you re asking me a question. i just want to know if you re worried that he will cooperate. no, because i did nothing wrong. got it. oh, he flipped. in june president trump said he wasn t worried at all that michael cohen would flip. he should have been. the president s former attorney admitted in federal court yesterday that donald trump personally directed him to buy the silence of two women whose claims of sexual affairs with the presidential candidate threaten to derail his white house ambitions. and it doesn t stop there. cohen s attorney tells msnbc that his client has information that bob mueller would want to know. and is more than happy to start talking to the special counsel. meanwhile paul manafort who two years ago literally ran donald trump s campaign is now a felon. he is facing serious prison time and like michael cohen sits atop this list of trump associates who are indicted or convicted criminals. that is a lot of witches. good morning, and welcome to morning joe on this wednesday, august 22. joe is off. he is tweeting. he will be filing for the washington post. we ve put together an all-star lineup. a small law firm of legal experts, danny cevallos, law professor jonathan turley, and former u.s. attorney barbara mcquaid. and also two experts on the michael cohen story, senior reporter at vanity fair emily jane fox and donny deutsch who both spoke at length with cohen late yesterday. for the political implications, former aide to the george w. bush white house, elyse jordan, is with us. and a nbc capitol hill correspondent and host of kasie d.c., kasie hunt. and also jon meacham says he has brushed up on his nixon for us this morning. but honestly, jon, i do not think there is a parallel. we ll get to that. we ll see what you come up with. its of a legal landslide like none over in the history of the presidency. what the conservative drudge report described as trump hell hour. his 2016 campaign chief paul manafort convicted by a jury on eight counts at almost the exact same time that trump s former lawyer michael cohen entered a guilty plea to eight counts. and speaking in open court directly implicated the president in a federal crime. this is the worst day of donald trump s presidency both personally and professionally. trump s legal team responded there is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government s charges against mr. cohen. it is clear that as the prosecutor noted mr. cohen s actions reflect a pattern of lies an dishonesty over a significant period of time. they of course are for getting that trump is on tape talking to cohen about these payments. and we hear him on tape. before a campaign rally in west virginia, trump said i feel badly for both, but only spoke in detail about manafort. and continued to rail against the investigation to his supporters. it didn t involve me, but i still feel it is a very sad thing that happened. nothing to do with russian collusion. this a witch hunt that is a disgrace. 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 people. and this is the way it ends up. and it was not the original mission, believe me. we continue the witch hunt. fake news and the russian witch hunt, we got a whole big combinati combination. where is the collusion? you know, they are still looking for collusion. where is the collusion? find some collusion. we want to find the collusion. so we re going to have more on the manafort conviction in just a moment, but first the case of the president has not yet addressed, the one that implicates him in potential criminal guilty plea of fixer michael cohen. cohen pleaded guilty to eight count, one through five for tax evasion, count six to making false statements to a bank, and seven and eight connected to campaign finance violations and a scheme to cover up the president s alleged affairs with stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. yesterday cohen told the judge that the payments were made, quote, in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office on, implicating the president without saying his name. on, implicating the president without saying his name. n, implicating the president without saying his name. , implicating the president without saying his name. . worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign and to the candidate and the campaign. and in addition, mr. cohen south south reimbursement for that money by submitting invoices to the candidate s company which were untrue and false. company len hen is currently bond. the agreement is up to five years in prison. as of right now, there is no agreement for him to cooperate against the president, but last night the public face of cohen s legal team lanny davis said his client has information that mueller might be interested in and that he is ready to share. mr. cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel. and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows. not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the american democracy system in 20916 election, which the trump tower meeting was all about. but also knowledge broabout the computer crime of hacking and whether or not mr. trump nookne ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on. mr. cohen is dedicated to telling the truth. now he has no shadow hanging over him. the uncertainty is gone. he has stepped up to the line and he has admitted what he did wrong, but he is now liberated to tell the truth. everything about donald trump that he knows and from this point on, you are going to see a liberated michael cohen speaking truth to power. let s get right to our so-called cohen whisperers, these guys speak to cohen all the time. donny deutsch and emily jane fox. you both spoke with him yesterday. what is his mindset? obviously he has made his decision. yeah, you know, it is easy to sometimes forget that these people are people. we see michael cohen and a trump s attorney. mike was a very emotional day for michael obviously. i spoke to him at length. and the thing he was most emotional about and the most it was about his children. we forget people going through this and how it is affecting his children. he has son that just started college, a daughter that is a year out of college. very, very emotional. this started last wednesday where they reached out to his attorney to start the talk and the talks went through the weekend. michael i believe, and i ve said this from the beginning, that michael cohen will be a pivotal not the pivotal figure that will bring down the trump president is i. it started out, and we talk a lot about it, where michael was fiercely loyal because that is the kind of person he is. and obviously that changed over time. and i believe history will look kindly on michael cohen. michael cohen obviously pled guilty to those counts. he really wants to focus on counts seven and eight. and as lanny davis mentioned yesterday, he really is looking forward to talking with mueller. mueller reaches out to him, in corroborating any stories. and i ve talked about that michael i believe will be able to tie trump to those meetings and to collusion. so on one sense it was very emotional for michael, but also a sense of relief. and i think he is looking forward to moving but donny oig, he broke the law. what is his mindset in terms of who does this for somebody over and over again to the point where i mean, look, he is in deep water to keep it clean. he is really in deep. why? he is the as far as the first six counts, he can talk and debate about eacertain issu but the reality is he did make the plea. and let s think about what he said. he was directed by the president. and when you are a lawyer, there is a difference and i want to focus on seven and eight between committing crimes and being directed by an employer. once again, it doesn t make them right, but you are a lawyer. let us not lose fact that this is the president, the president of the united states directing somebody who works for him to do these things. so there is a huge distinction. it does not mean he did not commit the crimes, but there is a huge distinction. i think history will see that. i ve said it before and i know your viewers will go i m not sure. i ve found michael to be a straightforward person. obviously he says lanny davis says he has stepped up to the plate and taken responsibility. and i think moving forward we ll see michael cohen on the right side of history. as i said from the beginning, michael will always do what was right for his family and the country and he has taken a very big step toward both of those things. emily jane fox, he was treated so badly by trump. you wonder what goes through the mind of somebody like donald trump who would treat someone so badly who obviously has clear evidence against him. tell me about what michael cohen was thinking last night, what he was doing with his family and what mindset is at this point. and it was an emotional day for him. i believe last night he tried to live life as normally as possible. i think he went out to dinner with his wife. i was in the courtroom yesterday and i watched him go through count by count and describe what he did wrong for each count. and he absolutely got emotional as he was describing them. clearly a hard thing to do, to admit to a packed courtroom full of mostly reporters hooer are the eight illegal things that i did and i m going to explain what i did and how i did them. it was very striking to me that counts seven and eight, first of all, he have under oath. and second of all, no one for the forced him to mply indicate the president. when he started going through each count, he stood up and said first of all, can i stand. and second of all, will you low me, jud allow me to read from a set of prepared notes so i make sure i m focused. so inchly kagt tmplicating the s a deliberate choice. he spoke to a courtroom filled with reporters. so that i think tells you more about his mindset and how he feels about the president than any interview he s done, anything that anyone around him has said to the press, that he got up in that courtroom yesterday and threw his boss who he told me almost exactly a year ago he d take a bullet for under the bus, just a striking turn in a year. i ve watched this whole thing go down, i ve watched the change firsthand. and yesterday was more striking than i ve ever seen. so what are the legal, political and historical impacts of what we just saw? we ll break down the story from the courtroom to capitol hill, the pages of the american history books, as well. you re watching morning joe. hey allergy muddlers. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? try zyrtec®. it s starts working hard at hour one. and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. personal fallout from michael cohen s guilty plea yesterday. let s drill down on the legal angles. we have jonathan turley, danny cevallos and barbara mcquaid. we ll go through each of you. jonathan, i ll start with you. a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is this for the president and what are the possibilities. well, it couldn t be worse. and i have to say, i m not as convinced about this new morality play featuring michael cohen. this idea that he has suddenly been liberated in the sense that he will tell the truth. it really doesn t fit with the i i i i in-indictment. he has a reputation in new york of being something as a thug. and so he is not that credible of a witness. if everything that was said yesterday was true, than most of the things he said for the entire year before were lies. and so that means that his use as a witness will require corroboration. but having said that, he just did inch pli indicate tmplicatea crime. the president is an unindicted co-conspiracy tore if you believe everything that was in this filing. that makes this campaign finance case which is a difficult thing usually to prosecute stronger than the john he had waedwards . they didn t have a michael cohen to say i knew i was committing a crime and second i did it at the behest of donald trump and third, i m willing to give evidence and details as to how we carried that out. you know, i tend to agree what he admits to is appalling and this is something, barbara, he admits to these crimes over the course of years and years. yet michael cohen is in deep. he is in big trouble. can he save himself through this process? is there something that he can give them to perhaps mitigate what he is facing now at this point? and what are you seeing as the possibilities? potentially, yes. they just started talking with michael cohen last week. so the first task is let s get this plea done. and so the conversations i m sure resulted in the culmination of that plea agreement yesterday. but it appears that they have not yet had time to probe all of his knowledge of the 17 year relationship he s had with president trump. and i imagine part of that reason is it wasn t until this monday that the judge, retired judge who has been serving as special master, completed her privilege review of all the items that were taken in the search of michael cohen s office. so it is really not until the prosecutors have their arms around all those doemt document they can probe his knowledge. so my guess is that they will sit down and talk about all those things that lanny davis has mentioned, including the president s knowledge of the hacking and encouragement of it. if he can deliver that kind of information and that can be corroborated, that could be really devastating for the president. and so i imagine that will come in the coming months. he really has until december when his sentencing is scheduled to provide all that information and get a reduction in that sentence range of 3 1/2 to 5 years. could be all the way down to probation. he even has a year under thafteo continue to provide information. so i think this is just the start of a cooperation relationship with michael cohen. and i have to jump in here. it is absolutely possible, and i warn people to not to assume that just because michael cohen entered into a plea agreement without a cooperation agreement apparent from its face, he still may be presently cooperating, he may be planning to cooperate. and the critical piece of the information is that he only recently started talking to prosecutors. prosecutors need weeks, maybe even months to debrief a defendant like michael cohen or a cooperating witness before they decide that they are going to cooperate. they have to vet him to make sure that his story is accurate and truthful. only then will they even consider granting that precious 5k1 motion. so from this point forward, the prosecutors are very cautious purchasers of the testimony of michael cohen and they might back out of the deal at anytime if they decide he is not truthful and not give him the benefit of his bargain. so it is very important to realize that he may be cooperating and he may cooperate in the future, it is absolutely true that defendants can cooperate even after sentencing und under the rules. and also important to know that cooperation agreements are often not public. often it is the case that even at sentencing, we will address the issue of a defendant s cooperation at side bar away from open court and away from the ears of anyone who might hear because it is just too dangerous to and ongoing investigation to make these kinds of things public. coming up, congressional republicans will likely say they have nothing to do with michael cohen and paul manafort, but by extension, they actually do. we ll dig into how this could impact the balance of power in washington. straight ahead on morning joe. 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(laughs) make summer go right with ford, america s best-selling brand. and get our best deal of the summer: zero percent financing for sixty months on f-150. get zero percent financing for 60 months- plus $2,800 bonus cash on a 2018 f-150 xlt equipped with 2.7l ecoboost. are you one sneeze away from being voted out of the carpool? try zyrtec®. it s starts working hard at hour one. and works twice as hard when you take it again the next day. stick with zyrtec® and muddle no more®. reporters sma s sure insigho the thinking of those around president trump. michael schmidt tweeted when cohen raid went down, it opened up a big second front in trump s legal wars. trump s lawyers always feared it more than mueller because they had no handle on his legal exposure and they never thought they got straight answers from trump on the extent of what he did with cohen. john roberts tweeted source close to donald trump tells fox news remember the president cannot be indicted. while maggie haberman added trump folks are worried about impeachment more than before. this is something tangible, not theoretical. and it does not mean it will happen, but this has moved to a different stage in their minds. and what about the minds of lawmakers on capitol hill? kasie hunt is there, will people finally step up who we ve been surprised to hear them so silent given all the different stages of this presidency when republicans really could have come forward and said, you know what, no, this is wrong? i almost hesitate to say this, but i did get a text yesterday evening from one member of congress who simply called it a dumpster fire, a republican who said that this is kind of in some ways partially what they expected, but also beyond what anybody thought could happen in a single day or even i think the span of an hour, maybe an hour and a half that this news came out. there have always been in these kind of behind the scenes, you know, never trump circles that still do exist in washington this sense that, well, maybe the legal system would solve the republican party s trump problem for them. thousand we are so far past that, the republican party is inextricably linked to donald trump. they have essentially made their bed. the base of the party is with the president. they are not necessarily with these lawmakers. and that puts, you know, incredible pressure on republican members of congress. and i know jon meacham has talked about this before as the historian in the room, but remember that what shifted the ground in watergate was republican voters who had turned against president nixon and that in turn put pressure on the republican members of congress who ultimately were the ones that swung the process against the president. so republicans in congress still have an incredible amount of power, but it is not clear to me yet that they are going to exercise it in opposition to this president and it is possible it may take even more than what we saw yesterday. that will be fascinating to watch. you know, it is so interesting, elyse jordan, the news last night seemed to swallow up trump s rally. of course you d want to cut to the rally to see what the president was saying, but everything was so big that they kept cutting away at least most of the networks i was watching kept the cutting away from him because there was too much important news. and yet though what you see there are lots of trump supporters shouting, hollering, cheering for him. and the question is, this is his base, will the base be moved? mika, the short answer is no. it is very baked in as of now and is not going to change that donald trump is indeed a scum bag. voters know that. they do not expect him to be the kind of man who treats his wife with any decency and dignity. and that is a known and isn t go going to necessarily move the most hardcore voters. however, i will say that you have a lot of women voters who aren t exactly happy to have ever had to vote to donald trump in the fir firhe first place, t not fans of hillary clinton and while they might have voted for donald trump, this isn t the kind of behavior that makes them excited to keep supporting his party. and you look at the republican party big picture, how they have lost completely any credibility as a moral force or virtue, as they continue to lie and deny that what donald trump has done is wrong. so as of now, it might just be political corruption, it might be campaign corruption. but you look at what there is to come and still looming, especially with mike flynn, and we still have no idea what mike flynn, what he has to say, what he told mueller s team in order to get such a great deal. there are so many unknowns that this is just the tip of the iceberg. jon meacham, at this stage in the presidency, what is the historical parallel and you know what, if there isn t one, that is fine. but put this into context as to exactly how bad this day was for donald trump and this white house. i think the closest parallel does go back to watergate. it goes back to the summer of 1973 when things chain of events began unfolding that ultimately showed in the summer of 74 that nixon had done something not unlike what president trump is accused of by his own lawyer in the plea deal which is nixon was on tape orchestrating a coverup, using federal agencies to block one another to try to keep the heat away from his own white house s political espionage arm. and ultimately what broke the nixon presidency, and this is important i think, is combination really of three things. one was his own lawyer turned on him. sound familiar? john w. dean, the white house counsel. secondly, the revelation of more evidence than you can possibly one could possibly have imagined, which was alexander butterfield revealing that nixon had in one of the most stupid maneuvers in human history had taped himself, which is besides that mrs. lincoln, how was the play. richard nixon would take himself. and we just don t know in trump world what possible evidence there could be, whether it is tapes or memos or testimony, we jur don just don t know. and third is the fact that he actually was in fact guilty. and there was a bit of there was a common sense recognition of this after the supreme court ruled in late july of 1974 that he had to hand over the tapes. and then he was gone within about two weeks. here is one of the questions that sort of brings the political and the legal together and we don t know the answer to this. there is the legal process and an open question about whether a president, a sitting president, can be indicted and tried. there is opinion on it, but it is very mixed. the supreme court has never ruled on this. the politics of impeachment is very much about that, from andrew johnson to bill clinton to nixon. the nature of impeachment is that a high crime of misdemeanor is really whatever a majority of the house decides it is at any given moment, a phrase of gerald ford s. so impeachment is a different thing than the indictment question. my own bet is that the question of whether you can indict a sitting president seems to me to be a matter that the supreme court may have to rule on before this drama enters its fifth act. coming up on morning joe, the michael cohen saga played out in the southern district of new york. the same office where our next guest used to work. we ll talk to former federal prosecutor ellie hoenig. morning joe is coming right back. my mom s pain from moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis was intense. i wondered if she could do the stuff she does for us which is kinda, a lot. and if that pain could mean something worse. joint pain could mean joint damage. enbrel helps relieve joint pain, and helps stop further damage enbrel may lower your ability to fight infections. serious, sometimes fatal events including infections, tuberculosis, lymphoma other cancers, nervous system and blood disorders and allergic reactions have occurred. tell your doctor if you ve been someplace where fungal infections are common. or if you re prone to infections, have cuts or sores, have had hepatitis b, have been treated for heart failure or if you have persistent fever, bruising, bleeding or paleness. don t start enbrel if you have an infection like the flu. since enbrel, my mom s back to being my mom. visit enbrel.com. and use the joint damage simulator to see how joint damage could progress. ask about enbrel. enbrel. fda approved for over 18 years. us. it s what this country is made of. but right now, our bond is fraying. how do we get back to us ? the y fills the gaps. and bridges our divides. donate to your local y today. because where there s a y, there s an us. o brien, and white house correspondent for bloomberg news shannon petty. ellie, i ll start with you. i mean, the michael cohen news i think is the most important of the day yesterday even though there were multiple mastiff breaking news stories at once. but he implicated the president in a crime. how important is this in terms of the risk to the presidency for donald trump? it is hugely important on its own. to have a lawyer go into federal court and under oath admit a crime and directly implicate the president of the united states. but it gets exponentially more important if michael cohen cooperates. and that i think now is the huge question moving forward. will he couldn t. t cooperate. the way this played out is a little unusual. typically we would have an exhaustive series of interviews with a person. we call them proffer sessions. someone like cohen would take weeks to get through. and the last thing the public would know is the day he pleads guilty. this seems to be reversed where sort of the first step is he has gone in and taken this guilty plea and the question now, will he couldn cooperate. seems clear he wants to. i d be interested in at least hear whaeg hing what he had to . if he does cooperate, we re at a whole new level. you ve been all over the michael cohen story. why don t you tell us about what is on his mind, what is he doing. we don t know what is on his mind. he certainly seemed yesterday in court, i was there is a few feet from him, and he seemed he was at some times as he was signing the documents in front of him, he would quietly shake his head and look around. and sort of seemed overwhelmed by the surroundings. and you know, he obviously was presented in addition to these remarkable admissions about the campaign finance violations, he was also presented with obviously some significant tax fraud charges. which can put pressure on anybody. so we can t imagine what is in his mind right now. what are you hearing from the trump legal team in responsibility to yesterdrespon yesterday s developments? i think sometimes their silence speaks louder than any tweet or any, you know, bombastic interview. they have been incredibly disciplined in not saying too much about this. giuliani put out a very brief statement. there were no television appearances. and i think the president s silence also speaks very loudly to the seriousness for which he is taking this. i can given you a little bit of color into what things were like on air force one last night. my colleague jennifer jacobs and i were talking to people close to the president and wer were told that the president was in a very somber mood, but he was calm. they did not hear him say anything negative about cohen and manafort, no talk of pardons. for the most part aides tried to distract him. he did watch the coverage on fox news a bit, wanted to know how it was playing out in the press. but for the most part his staff was trying to reassure him, distracts him, keep him focused on the rally, trying to lift his spirits with the rally. and there is a general sense that this group has been so battle tested by so much news that a lot of aides just saw this as one more crisis to manage. and there could be the situation of the frog in the hot pot of water where, you know, you don t know when it gets to the boiling point. and i think that is the risk that they are at to some extent of not knowing when the real crisis is real or when it is just another crisis of the day. and quick question. the other trial yesterday, the manafort trial which would have been the headline if it wasn t for mr. cohen, it comes out, eight charges. ten that are mistrial. from both teams perspective, how does this play out? i ve heard discussions about man fman man forth has to weigh his options. where to they go from here? yesterday s verdict was a big win for the prosecution. i know it was eight convictions and ten hung, and that can be read as a sort of split. absolutely not. manafort s sentence on the eight convictions is almost exactly the same as what it would be if he was convict beinged across b. now you have the d.c. trial set for next month, but also the ten hung charges. what i would guess will happen, i would dismiss the ten that were hung and say we got enough, we re good on the virginia trial, we ll dismiss the ten that are still out there and we ll get ready for d.c. next month on. now, i think the bigger question is what is manafort going to do. i don t think manafort will accept this sentence. he is 69 years old. he is looking at probably a sentence that will keep him behind bars for most or all of the rest of his life. and i think he is thinking about two possibilities here. one is cooperating, he has to think about that. and two is hoping to that pardon. rebecca, you ve been covering michael cohen. what more could he possibly have to offer mueller? you see something happening with lanny davis where they are setting up this website. you know, it doesn t look completely solid to me when they are setting up a website trying to get support for michael cohen himself. i mean, could he you would think because he is donald trump effex s fixer that he would hav lot of information that would be really useful and obviously the information on these women, some of that is on tape. so we know he has something. and we know that he is in really big trouble. but what else could he have? could there be more women? well, there is a remarkable point that is made in the charging documents yesterday about how early on mr. cohen started speaking with david pecker, the chairman of american media, about how to coordinate to keep bad news about president trump out of the press. so it went back pretty far and the allegations are obviously not the allegations, the charges yesterday were just the tip of the iceberg. yeah. interesting. well, president trump just tweeted, if anyone is looking for a good lawyer, i would strongly suggest that you don t retain the services of michael cohen. gene robinson, i ll toss this one to you. thank you. so the guy that has been by his side to decades, the guy who was his closest partner, his friend that he likes very much, he is now throwing over, under and behind and in front of the bus. so here is the thing. here is the thing. i just some might ask, some might say, when when is someone in team trump going to turn to the president and say, sir, the emperor is naked and your attorney is drunk. like at what point is someone going to tell the president the truth, the emperor has no clothes and even worse, his attorney is a runaway beer truck. well, first of all, i predict that this is the first of probably many tweets about michael cohen because we know how president trump feels about loyalty above all else. and he clearly perceives this as disloyal. look, he has to be tremendously worried about he s already been worried about what was in all the material that was seized in those raids of michael cohen s office and residence and his hotel room. and now with cohen just sort of champing at the bit apparently to make a deal with prosecutors and spill list ghis guts about everything, this has to have the president in a state. and so whatever they did to try to chill him out last night, it won t last. it won t last forever. and shannon, what i know you don t know what is going through michael cohen s mind, but doesn t he have to be weighing family versus, you know, his obligation as a lawyer versus donald trump? i mean how is he trying to think of these things? it seems like that alliance to president trump is long gone. and i mean, i do know from talking to people before all this occurred that michael cohen felt he was left out on an island, that he was abandoned by the president. and i ve even talked to some of the president s allies who have said, boy, that was they looked back and said that was a mistake. looked back and said that was a mistake. how was he able to just let michael cohen go out there and drift. that s the kind of person you want to keep close. there was a sense of the president that michael would never turn on him. and there wasn t risks. i know the president was ash shired, oh, michael doesn t have anything, he doesn t know anything. there s a lot of people reassuring him because after this michael cohen raid. the president was furious. one person told me they d never seen him as angry as he was with the michael cohen raid. there was a lot pressure to get him thinking about this michael cohen situation. i think maybe that resulted in cohen feeling alienated and pushed aside. but i do know his allies look back and sees that as a critical mistake that led cohen to turn, as we can see. rebecca, with that tweet, you see how donald trump was going to proceed with his defense. that he was ill-served by an attorney who should have been able to advise him on campaign finance law. that s my read of the direction it s going to go. he s thinking of himself right now. but what michael cohen s relationship with the trump children, hoom he s been arouwhd and advised for years, too? i don t know the version of what michael cohen and the trump children, but we do know that he s advised on matters. and he has had unique access to that trump family go back decades. will he be loyal to the trump children, the way he s been disloyal to donald trump? well, loyalty is such a tricky thing. i think he s now confronted with some facts and some materials that all prosecutors, you know, the irs, have on him. and, you know, it s a tricky thing. well, it s something that, you know, five years or whatever, in federal prison concentrates the mind and it making loyalty into a totally different thing. all right. el elie, rebecca, and eugene, thank you all. the emperor has no clothes. up next, democrats are hoping that the president steps up as the president tried to fire robert mueller. we ll have more plans on to protect the special counsel when morning joe comes right back. 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A look at the day s top news and headlines. because under the guidelines, the department of justice believes you cannot charge a sitting president with a crime. but the talk around here these days is of impeachment. if democrats were to flip 24 seats in november, which is a possibility, they would then control the house and it is the house that would begin impeachment proceedings. even if the president were impeached, a conviction in the senate is unlikely, that would take a two-thirds vote. nobody could see that many republicans defecting to try to take down the president. dana: also it s never happened in america s history. john, thank you. for more, let s bring in james trusty, former d.o.a. prosecutor. let s start with what the president told ainslie earhart, if he was paying the money himself that could not have been a campaign violation. what do you make of that? well i m not an expert on campaign finance law. there may be? truth to it. there s an added layer, just that any campaign finance violation requires willfulness, which means he really has to specifically be knowledgeable about the law and intending to break it. i think that could still be a pretty solid area of defense for president trump. not that the payments weren t taking place but that he wasn t trying to unilaterally affect the campaign and use campaign finances for it. dana: let me ask you about a cooperation agreement. is it typical in a situation like this, that the public would get to read the cooperation agreement between michael cohen and the prosecutors? most of the time the cooperation component of a plea letter is camouflaged, filed under seal or the agreement is under seal. you can t tell whether it s a cooperator deal. i don t think any of us have seen the plea letter, i d love to see it. you have the unusual circumstance of his lawyer trumpeting he s a cooperator. that s not particularly common territory to have the attorney run around announcing he s ready to cooperate. is it possible, this is a democrats and he s represented them well. what do you make of this idea that michael cohen had decided to go with lanny davis who is a very public figure, likes to get out there, mix it up, he likes to be on television, take his case to the public through the television. has that been beneficial to michael cohen? well, we will have to wait and see. i mean, it way be that lanny is driving the train more than mr. cohen is in terms of some of these decisions. ultimately, it is the client s to make. you know, it s a high profile situation, he has an attorney who relishes that. but you really to have know what his overall exposure was, what he was looking at in terms of potential penalties and going to face under the plea agreement, obviously going to be considerably less. time will tell whether he s being well represented. dana: i think about a press secretary when they brief on a day after big news like this. you know, in the bush administration, i was super cautious when it came to talking about legal matters, trying to push it outside of the white house to get it out of the briefing room. that s not been the practice here. and that might have been a good decision on their behalf. is there anything sarah sanders should avoid talking about today in order to continue to protect the president? well, i don t know. i mean, they ve been so oi vert, at least the president himself has been so constantly full of comments when it comes to manafort and cohen. sometimes inconsistent over time. i don t know they haven t opened up every door already. i expect she ll probably try to deflect some things. but right now, they have put themselves in a position where they very much are alied with manafort and saying he s a sympathetic character even after he was convicted. where they have been all over the map on cohen, but seemingly fear him from the way they ve talked most recently. dana: i know the president this morning said if you need a good lawyer don t hire michael cohen. that relationship is probably done. a little late. dana: thank you. the white house briefing business to get under way. we will take you there when it begins. all of the legal drama surrounding president trump raising the political stakes for republicans ahead of the mid terms. how should they handle the news, karl rove is next with ideas. alright, i brought in new max protein resistance to the use of the expanded media. we will hear arguments on that motion first. mr. richards? may it please the court, mr. prosecutor, i pulled the case law this morning from iowa court of appeals and it s state versus jack hayes, filed october 3, 2012. it s number 2-701/11-0069. there s a little piece in that case that talks about expanded media coverage. this particular court there, granted the expanded coverage. supreme court concluded it s within the discretion of the judge to exclude the expanded media coverage based on circumstancesles of the proceeding, such coverage would materially interfere with the rights of the parties for a fair trial. in based on constitutional rights. essentially, the prejudice here is the decision before hand to lean in favor of one side or the other. which prevents justice. in this particular case, the coverage that s out there is leaning all one way. in fact, the government has weighed in at the highest level of predisposition that this young man, christian, is guilty. in our system of justice, is entitled to that presumption of innocence until some evidence is presented. at this time there s no evidence presented, your honor. so we re urging the court to prevent the cameras from coming in here, which possibly could show some sort of bias or prejudice and get it into this political controversy of portraying christian as something that he isn t. in some ways, i view this as a political payback for what s swirling around in terms of the media. and the media is feeding into it. they have not made efforts, as far as i can see, to give justice or any type of leaning towards this presumption of innocence. therefore we re asking this court to exclude the media from these proceedings. because it could be just one nod of the head, one glance, one slight of hand, that will be partially taken out of context and presented over and over which would be highly prejudicial to the defendant. i urge the court to exclude the media from these proceedings. thank you. mr. brown, would you like to make an argument? yes, judge. we have first of all, the state has no objection to the expanded media request that s been filed. i think they followed proper procedure here. mr. grove, i think, as the regional media koordnator, it s routine in cases that garner high profile, that the media has interest. for the court to follow. and allowing media coverage of cases in court proceedings. we would have no objection to the expanded media request. there s been one request for a video camera, one request for a still camera. very usual under the circumstances, the cases like this. we have no objection to the expanded media request. i would assume i assume whoever addresses this, will readdress that issue. secondly, there s been a motion filed, i just got this, whenever i walked in this afternoon, but a motion for private hearing pursuant to iowa rule of criminal procedure 2.24. i think that s what mr. richards was referencing whenever he was arguing there s a substantial probability that the defendant s rights to a fair trial will be prejudiced by the publicity of this particular proceeding, that closure would prevent. he has not identified anything that would happen today in this particular hearing that would create any type of substantial probability that his fair trial would be impacted. he wants to talk about what are the political discourse that s been surrounding this charge of this case, certainly we have no control over that. but it is what it is. i mean there s a lot of information that s out there about b. this case, about this particular charge. i think all the court is going to do is follow rule 2.2, and the initial appearance advising him of his rights, making sure he has counsel that he s retained or appointed and addressing an issue of the preliminary hearing and whether or not he demands that. i fail to see how any substantial probability of the impact on the defendant s fair trial would be raised in this particular proceeding. so we would ask that the motion for private hearing be denied and expand the media media request be granted. thank you. if i may respond, your honor briefly. procedures weren t followed. i entered my appearance this morning, attempted to shortly after 8:00a.m. the e-file system was down or crashed. i did not see the motion for expanded media coverage until 12:00 today. if that motion was filed yesterday, christian was still self-represented. he was never served a copy of that notice. i was never received a physical copy. although i do acknowledge i did see it at 12:00 today, my first opportunity, the e-file system was back up. rules haven t been complied with and i object on the rule being the prosecutor says the rules were followed, they were not followed. mr. richards, i m aware of the fact we had technical difficulties this morning with the e-foiling system that the iowa judicial system uses. because i was aware of that i made contact with you and mr. brown, notified each of you of the expanded media coverage first thing this morning, explained the difficulties we were having in making the paper copies available to you. and said that as soon as you arrived at the courthouse we would make everything available to you if edms was not available at that time. i believe we followed the procedures that are available to us and we have gone out of our way to make sure that while we were having technical difficulties throughout the state that we were making you aware of things that were being filed. in fact we allowed you to file an early appearance by fax which would not abnormal procedure, because edms was down also. you did take advantage of the fact that the court was working with you and trying to accommodate for the technical difficulties we were having. at this time i ll rule on the motion for a private hearing and also the request for expanded media coverage. with a reminder to everyone that the defendant will not be asked to make any statements related to facts in this case, i make the following finding. the defendant s right to a fair trial is not prejudiced by the publicity as related to the initial appearance. reasonable alternatives have been established, including limiting media coverage to one video camera and con still camera. today s initial appearance will be held in open court and the media will be allowed to stay in the courtroom. mr. richards, you also filed a motion for a gag order, and in discussions that were held off the record prior to today s hearing you indicated that you intended for that gag order to be heard by a district court judge. is that still your intent? i believe that is the proper procedure, your honor. i will file a calendar entry asking the district court to said set that for hearing. we are going to move on to the initial appearance. mr. rivera this is our appearance on the charge of murder in the fix debt agree and on an immigration detainer notice of action filed by the department of homeland security. the purpose of an initial appearance is to make sure you understand the charges against you, to review any requests for an appointment of an attorney, to set further proceedings or court dates in this matter, and to discuss your terms of release from jail. mr. rivera do you have any questions about the things we will be covering today? translator: no. mr. rivera you have been charged with murder in the first degree in violation of iowa code section 707.2 sub 1 sub a, class a felony. mr. rivera have you been given a copy of this paperwork? stlait yes. translator: yes. the department of homeland security filed an immigration detainer notice of action for you. mr. rivera have you received a copy of this paperwork? translator: i believe so. mr. rivera i m going to review rights that every defendant has in the criminal action. these include the following. you have the right to an attorney. every defendant has the right to retain legal counsel and shall be allowed reasonable time and opportunity to consult an attorney. in it vent you are indy general and desire counsel, and if the offense is a serious misdemeanor or greater an attorney can be appointed to represent you. mr. rivera, at this time you are represented by a privately retained attorney, allen richards. do you wish to continue with this private representation or do you wish to file an application for a court appointed attorney? translator: no, with richards. mr. rivera, if at any time today during today s proceedings you wish to talk to your attorney, please let me know and i ll stop today s hearing. translator: okay. next, you have the right to be released from custody. every defendant in custody has the right subject to conditions to be released from custody pending judgment. a defendant may be released from custody on his or her own personal recognizance or conditions as the court determines as will reasonably assure the defendant s i peerns as required and will reasonably assure the public safety. if the court imposes conditions for defendant s release and defendant is unable to meet these conditions, the defendant has the right to request a bond review hearing. if the defendant is indi jnt and unable indy general and unable to retain counsel the court will appoint an attorney to represent you for the purposes of this bond review hearing. next, you have the right against self-incrimination. a defendant is not required to make any statement concerning the offense charged to the court to any law enforcement officer or to any other person. but if the defendant makes any such statements, those statements can be used against the defendant. and finally, the defendant s have a right to trial. every defendant has the right to a trial and to be tried by a jury, if requested. at such trial defendant has the right to assistance of counsel, the right to confront and cross-examine with its against him, the right not to be compelled to incriminate himself, and the right to subpoena the attendance of any with it on your behalf. mr. rivera do you have any questions about the rights i ve just gone through? translator: no. next, we re going to discuss the next steps in your case. the next steps dana: we will continue to cover that trial but now sarah sanders is at the podium. secretary sanders: on behalf of the entire administration i want to extend prirs to the familiar prayers to the family, friends, loved ones of mollie tibbetts. the nation has watched for over 30 days as local, state, federal officials searched for mollie. a rising sophomore at the university of iowa. sadly, the individual believed to be responsible for the murder is an illegal immigrant making this an unfortunate reminder of why we need to strengthen our immigration laws. the bible tells us in psalms that the lord heals the broken hearted and bienldz up their wounds. the tib jets family is on n. the hearts of all americans and we are grieving with them. with that i ll take your questions. thank you, sara. michael cohen pleelded guilty, under oath, to among things paying stormy daniels and sherry mcdougal during the campaign. he said he did it at the direction of the president of the united states. did president trump commit a crime? as the president said, we ve stated many times, he did nothing wrong. there are no charges against him. and we ve commented on this extensively. why not report these payments? secretary sanders: again, i m not going to get into the back and forwards details. i can tell you, at the president stated he did nothing wrong. there are no charges against him in this. just because michael cohen made a plea deal doesn t mean that implication the president on anything. john? are you saying the president has never lied to the american peep? so many people look back at the tape of him on air force one saying he knew nothing about these payments. when in fact we now know he knew everything about this these payments. has he lied? secretary sanders: that s a ridiculous accusation. the president has done nothing wrong in this matter and there are no charges against them. the president said in fox news on an interview this morning this could not have been an illegal campaign contribution because he paid the money. he put more than $60 million of his money into the campaign. how do you draw the line, maybe this didn t flow through the campaign, how do you draw the line between what was a campaign contribution and what might have been a payment to somebody for other purposes? secretary sanders: i m not going to get into the back and forth of the legal part of this. i would refer you to the president s outside counsel on that. as i told cecilia, what can i tell you is what the president has stated a number of times, he did nothing wrong, there are no charges against him, just because michael cohen has made a deal doesn t mean anything with regards to the president. the president tweeted this morning in frustration that michael cohen wrote. perhaps can you shed a little more light on that. the implication is that michael cohen gave up something that the president would rather is that what we should read into this? secretary sanders: the president has expressed his views, i don t have anything further to add. is the president now planning on or intent on pardoning paul manafort? secretary sanders: the manafort case doesn t have anything on do with the president or his campaign, doesn t have anything to do with the white house. i was going to ask about manafort, let me ask a slightly different way. if it has nothing to do with the president he still has the power to pardon mr. manafort. is that something he has been discussing with the team, has he ruled it out? has it come up? secretary sanders: i m not aware of any conversations about that at all. other than fully when he was asked by a news outlet earlier this week and he said that he hadn t been thinking about that at all. okay. in times like, this not this there are many times like this, the white house often tries to figure out whether there needs to be an internal adjustment to deal with some of the political issues they will have now with the hill, with voters, with internally with lawmakers. is the white house making any adjustments in terms of responsibilities of staff of communication to donors, with reporters, how you intend to kind of respond protectively and offensi offensively? secretary sanders: i wouldn t view it that way. at all. would disagree with the premise of your question. the white house is focused on the same things that we were focused on the first day that we got here. and that is growing the economy which is doing extremely well, protecting our borders, strengthening the safety and security of all americans. those are the things that we re focused on. day than would, january 20, and those are the same things that we re focused on right now. jake? thank you, sarah. i d like to congratulate you, this is your 100th briefing and there s no way what you do every day is easy. secretary sanders: thank you. our colleague jonathan swan wrote, and i quote, several republican an operatives told me it could depress republican turnout and ironically serve to make the blue wave bigger. are you familiar with any republican operatives who would concur with this statement? secretary sanders: not that i m aware of. the thing that encourages people is the lack of a message by democrats. they have nothing to run on other than attacking this president. and not only does the president and the record that republicans have had over the last year and a half under his leadership is a great one to run on, we have an incredible story to tell, the economy is booming, record numbers just today. we re going to continue focusing on the things that americans care about and i think that will be certainly what encourages them. and certainly what will help push republicans to do well in november. i m guessing yesterday the president stated that, quote, israel will pay a price for jerusalem, not sure that s an exact quote. should israel be concerned that the price they would have to pay is one they re not willing to or prepared to pay? secretary sanders: we think the president s decision was the right one to move the embassy. something that other presidents have promised and failed to do and this is a president who s been delivering on the promises he made. what price are we talking about, what price does israel have to pay? secretary sanders: i don t have anything further. john? thanks, sarah. the guilty verdict yesterday in the paul manafort trial the president has said kind things about mr. manafort, he called him a good man, a good person, he said he feels badly what happened to him. he tweeted unlike michael cohen he refused to break, make up stories to get a deal. he tweeted such respect for a brave man. is mr. manafort a candidate for presidential pardon? secretary sanders: once again that s not something that has been up for discussion. i don t have anything for you. i asked you about the cavanaugh nomination, some democrats that are saying that the nomination should be put on hold because of the legal developments yesterday. hawaiian senator put out a statement saying this president who is an unindicted a co-conspirator in a criminal matter does not deserve the courtesy of meeting with his nominee. what is your reaction to that, sarah? secretary sanders: this is a desperate and pathetic attempt by democrats to obstruct a very highly qualified nominee. the hearing date has been set for september 4, and judge kavanaugh will be there. sarah, trade talks between the united states and china are resuming. the president expressed low expectations for those talks. i wonder if that has changed and what you would like to see come out of these discussions? secretary sanders: we re, as you said, these conversations are continuing. i don t have any announcements on them. they re downgoing, what we d like to see is better trade deals for the united states. the president wants to see free, fair, and more reciprocal trade between other countries, particularly china, and we ll continue in these conversations. sarah, does the president feel betrayed by michael cohen and is he concerned what he might say to robert muler? secretary sanders: i don t think the president is concerned at all. he knows that he did nothing wrong. and that there was no collusion and we ll continue focusing on the things that americans care about that we can have an impact on. one more question on trade, does the u.s. anticipate a deal between mexico and the united states? secretary sanders: i won t get ahead of any potential announcement. for decades, nafta has harmed american workers and continue the u.s. billions of dollars. we re focused on making sure we deal with address those problems. we will let you know. in his interview today the president said he found out about those payments that make michael cohen made later on, but he s on tape discussing how to make one of the payments with michael cohen before the payment was made. how do you explain that? secretary sanders: once again, i ve commented on this pretty extenlsively. what i can tell you, about this, the president did nothing wrong, there are no charges against him, there is no collusion for anything beyond that i refer to you the president s outside counsel. not a taxpayer funded, for the president, you are. sharn i am aware of that. the president said on the grounds of the white house that seems to contradict an audio that s confirmed it is of the president saying that. secretary sanders: once again, i have addressed this a number of times, because you continue to ask the same questions over and ore i m not going to give you a different answer of the president has done nothing wrong, there are no charges against him, there is no collusion. that s what i can tell you. if you want something further i refer you to the president s outside counsel. does the white house main dane secretary sanders: i called back on the president did not of an affair with stephanie clifford? secretary sanders: we have addressed that. you said there were no discussions about potential pardon for paul manafort. so you aren t ruling it out entirely. i mean if there s no discussions about it, right, the president hasn t said he won t do it, it s possible that there could be a pardon for him in the future. secretary sanders: the only comment that the president has made on this was when he was asked by the news outlet earlier this week and he said no he was not considering that. beyond that, there have been no other discussions. that was before paul manafort was convicted on eight of the 18 counts at the time when the president was asked that. i m asking now, now that he s been convicted secretary sanders: i m answering there have been no discussions at the white house on that matter. on a different point, last time that we were in here, you read off some ex-officials and one current official the president was considering taking away their security clearance. i wanted to follow up on that and ask you who was conducting that review to determine whether or not those security clearances will be pulled. second of all, i wanted to ask you about what the president said, saying he thought essentially james clapper is being nice to him so that he doesn t lose his security clearance. is that a threat that if james clapper isn t nice to him he ll lose his security clearance? secretary sanders: i don t have any announcements on that front. we ll continue to review. who is doing the review? secretary sanders: a number of people involved at the white house. julie? in the tweet about paul manafort the president seemed to be praising him for essentially refusing to cooperate with federal prosecutors in a way to impli case him, the president. is that what he meant to suggest? doesn t that seem to indicate he thinks that loyalty to him personally is more important than abiding by the law or cooperating with the government in an investigation? secretary sanders: not at all. the man a fort case doesn t involve the president or his campaign, nothing on do with the white house of the president is expressed his views. michael cohen s lawyer has suggested publicly there is new evidence they would like to present about foreign knowledge of election hacking. does the president, the white house maintain there ways was no foreign knowledge of any election hacking during the 2016 campaign? secretary sanders: i m not aware of anything, no. sarah, two questions as well for you. given that five convicted felons are linked to the president, or his campaign, and given that the president promised to hire the best people, did he fail to live up to that promise? secretary sanders: the president has employed thousands of people in his lifetime and had incredible successes, both in business and in the public service. he s the president of the united states. i think he s doing quite well, thank you. second question, sarah, i understand that you don t want to give the impression, you said the president did nothing illegal. but i didn t hear a response to the question, did he lie to the american people when he talked about this on air force one? secretary sanders: no the president addressed this a number of times. a couple of questions, president trump says he feels badly for cohen and manafort. one of the men pleaded guilty to crimes, the other found guilty of crimes including tax fraud which robbed the american public of tax dollars they were owed. why does he feel bad for either of these men? secretary sanders: once again, the president has expressed his views on this matter and i have nothing else to add. a followup, does he believe that there is an intrinsic problem with the justice department or does he only believe it s some one who is close to him is a victim of the justice department? secretary sanders: i think we ve certainly seen a lot of concerns come out of some of the activities of people that worked at the department of justice, whether it s peter strzok or lisa page or james comey. we have talked through those a number of times and certainly it s given call for a lot of americans, some of the activities those individuals engaged in. but this close to him, the president seems to his own justice department is not doing its job? secretary sanders: again, certainly the president has expressed his views on this matter. and he s raised concerns about a number of other problems that he s seeing within the department of justice. hunter? i wanted to follow up on the earlier question with the comments on fox news with regards to the payment to daniels and mcdougal. when exactly did he learn about them and also are there any other payments he has now become aware of, or are those the only two women who received money for agreeing not to repeat their stories of alleged affairs with the president? secretary sanders: once again i have addressed all that i m going to say on the cohen issue. those specific questions, with more details, i refer you to the president s outside counsel. but the matters to the outside counsel, can t we bring them in here for the briefing? secretary sanders: they don t work at the white house, i encourage you to reach out to them. john? thank you, sarah. going back to the security clearances, all signs are this is the first time a president personally has been handling the removal of security clearances. it s usually done by superiors. even if the last two espionage case of the cold war, the scarvic case and felix brach of 1990, the secretary of state pulled the security clearances of people accused of espionage. you said the president, others are reviewing it. who are these others reviewing it and does the president take a personal role in the potential removal of security clearance? secretary sanders: certainly the president has the constitutional authority to do so. i know this will come as a shock to you but i am not aware of the details of the specificcations that you outlined. the president has the authority to make that decision and consulting with members of the national security team and members of his legal team at the white house. one of the is he also considering a policy of just simply having all security passes turned in when some one leaves government service? secretary sanders: i m not aware of that as a policy, we would like the ability, if needed, to be able to consult with individuals on national security matters. but they do feel the team here that we should look at the security clearance process as a whole. my understanding is that there are roughly 5 million people that have security clearances here in the united states, and we d like to take a look at the overall process of who has and who maintains the security clearance. debra? yeah, you re right about the president having constitutional authority as far as i understand about security clearances as well as the pardons. i guess the question i have is, even though he has that authority, is anybody in the white house thought about putting together boards that would look at security clearances for former personnel and pardons as well? because the president doesn t seem to be consulting the pardon attorney in the a.g. s office. is he consulting people, has he thought of doing something that would be more transparent, perhaps? secretary sanders: certainly as the review of the security clearances, there is a working group that is looking at the overall security clearance process and who maintains those and whether or not those are needed across the board within government. in terms of the pardon process, the president has the authority to carry out those decisions. he takes input and looks at them on a case-by-case basis. go ahead. you said there are people looking at the security clearance. can you tell daws secretary sanders: a number of members on the national security team, i would have to get back to you. i know the chief of staff is involved in that process. sarah, thank you, earlier this week the president told our colleagues at reuters that he could run it, in reference to the mueller investigation. what does he mean by that? secretary sanders: the president has said many times that he s chosen to remain uninvolved in this process. and that s where we are right now. is that an indication that he s thinking of taking special action against robert mueller, revoking his security clearance? secretary sanders: it s not aware. does the president see himself above the law. secretary sanders: not at all. thank you sarah. legal experts and lawmakers are saying that president that there are grounds for an impeachment kals. is the white house concerned about that, that could have an effect in the election, the mid-term elections? also does the white house take these allegations seriously? secretary sanders: certainly we take allegations seriously. the idea of an impeachment is frankly a sad attempt by democrats, the only message they seem to have going into the mid terms, and i think another great reminder of why americans should support other like-minded candidates like the president that are focused on continuing to grow the economy, continuing to secure our borders, continuing to focus on the safety and security of all americans. i think the biggest contrast you could possibly make is the message of the democrats, which is nothing more than attacking the president and looking at cheap political stunts. while this white house and republicans in the house and senate are focused on doing good things for the american people. thank you, sarah. earlier this week the president had tough words of criticism for jay powell the federal reserve chairman. can you tell us when the last time the president and powell met face-to-face and whether or not the president brought up that criticism with proul directly? secretary sanders: i believe the last time they met was right around the time that powell took his place on the federal reserve board. has he spoken directly to him about raising interest rates? secretary sanders: i m not aware of them discussing that. on venezuela, is the president planning on getting involved there at all? there are millions fleefing the country. what is the u.s. s stance on venezuela? secretary sanders: the united states continues to support venezuela s neighbors and provide emergency aid and shelter to venezuela. also continues to stand with the people of venezuela and we re going to keep all options on the table. we ll keep you posted if we have further announcements. thank you so much, we ll wrap up here so that we can all join the president in the ceremony. dana: karl rove, former white house deputy chief of staff and fox news contributor. we were listening to sarah sanders trying to do her best to answer questions that she could, and referring a lot of the reporters to the president s outside counsel. but also making some news. i want to read to you the wall street journal lead ed tiertorial. the ultimate threat is political. congress decides what an impeachable defense is. if the democrats retake the house in november they will define high crimes and misdemeanors. the cohen and manafort issues affect the president. this is going get a lot of news, you imagine a lot of democrats energize, tom stier wanting to throw billions of dollars towards an impeachment effort. could that have the opposite effect of getting republicans out to vote? it could. could boomerang easily. it could be hours within the guilty conviction and guilty pleas. i got an e-mail from mr. stier need to impeach campaign asking for $16. one for each counted of the eight that were, on which manafort was found guilty and the eight to which cohen plead guilty to. democrats can overplay this. does the country want to be plunged into a needless political battle, boomeranged on the democrats, on the republicans in 1998, could boomerang on the democrats this time around. dana: last night allen dershowitz on this network said that all campaigns violate campaign finance laws. is that your experience? well, not really. but i got to tell you, even more astounded, i sub milted my column for tomorrow on the wall street journal, but i quote somebody in my column, even if cohen and trump did conspire on the payments, the hush money to stormy daniels and the playboy model, that the president is not in jeopardy, he can say sure, i was concerned about exposure in a political campaign but i was also concerned about exposure personally, about the impact on my family and friends, on my personal reputation. by having that nonpolitical unrelated issue, unrelated to the campaign, and the individual was bob bauer, president barack obama s white house counsel. dana: you always have a hook. i want to ask you on the democrats taking a new tactic on brett kavanaugh, they have been stalled, they didn t know what to do, looked like he was cruising in confirmation. i don t know if this will work, listen to corey booker about kavanaugh today. president of the united states should not be able to pick his judge. and we now have a president who is the subject of the criminal investigation, a president who is credibly and directly implicated in criminal activity. we should not be right now confirming any supreme court juts advertise. dana: what do you make of that? well, i know he was mayor of newark, but did he feel that way about justice breyer and justice ginsburg? this is bologna with a capital b. and corey booker should be embarrassed. remember the process is the house has to pass an impeachment measure that, hasn t been done. and then two-thirds of the senate including the substantial number of republicans have to agree with that house action and do it. then and only then does the supreme court become involved. please, senator booker has shown in the last couple of months he is so intent on running in 2020 that he s making himself a very unserious person in the meantime. dana: do you think in the zeal to run for 2020, the democratic hopefuls, mostly in the sep at, hurting democrats chance to have a better outcome in the mid-term election in 2018? dana: absolutely. i hate to say it but i think nancy pelosi and chuck schumer are right when it comes to describing what the democrat strategy ought to be, downplay the conversation about impeachment and actually try and arrive at an agenda. they failed to arrive at an agenda, and that s one of the reasons why all of the talk of the resistance and opposition trump is dominating the message. that plays in brooklyn and queens, plays in san francisco. about the not going to necessarily play in these swing district, where they need republican and independent republican leaning independent interests to vote for democratic candidates for the u.s. house. dana: look forward to the column tomorrow, karl rove. matt is joining me, chairman of the american conservative union. juan williams, senior political analyst and co-host on the five. let me play for you some sound, because i m interested in how presidents usually try to make the mid terms about something else, right, they want to make it about the congress. not this president. he s willing to say okay, i get it, the election is going to be about me so bring it on. this is what he said in terms of defining the election do. we have that sound? president trump: a blue wave in november means open borders, which means massive crime. a red wave means safety, and strength, that s what it is. dana: defining your opponent early and defining the parameters with simple language like that, matt, how do you think that stacks up against the democrats somewhat incoherent message? right. their message is stop trump, #resistance. donald trump is stepping into the idea that he s a bit of a unique politician, to say the least. and with him in the white house he is going to overhang on the mid-term elections. just embrace it, enjoy it, go out on the road, campaign everywhere you can, do these big rallies. and try to explain to people what the democratic message is. right now, the message, dana, is stop trump at all costs and i guess make i.c.e. illegal. i m having trouble figuring out the message. dana: juan, the president is going to travel to seven states in just six weeks, he said he s going an an energetic campaigner, willing to campaign six to seven days a week. but the democrats are zeroing in on a theme. and it is one that nancy pelosi has been putting forward, that there is corruption at the heart of the trump administration and the trump campaign, the trump inner circle. how do you think that message will play? it depends, again, is this a nationalized election. it s different than a presidential election. there s no electoral college at play here. you re talking about individual congressional districts. i think there are different messages across the board. when you talk about something that the democrats are saying nationally, i think it has much more to do interestingly with things like healthcare, which ranks highs in the poles, dana, has much to do with the in the polls, the economy, which may be to the president s benefit. then you come to the idea of being a check on president trump. i think that s part of the message, specifically in terms of the corruption that surrounds president trump, all of the people, all of the tweeting, all of the negativity. there are people, i would point to the suburban white woman, who are having a negative response to that kind of negative behavior. that s not the message. you have to look individually no each district to see the message. dana: matt, i typically grow with that, just that every local news story is nationalized. right. dana: can you say something at a town hall in iowa and it s going to be big news. then you have some one like clare mccaskill in missouri say are you for abolishingis oh, are you for obstruction, are you for impeachment. and if you aren t, you might not be able to turn out your left wing base. you re right. i spent time as chairman of the acu going around the country, seems like when you get, punch out of new york city, punch out of washington, d.c., or california, you talk to regular americans, they re very happy with the trump agenda. dana: i don t know if you can hear the music, when they bring the cain out for me. i have to run. sorry. dana: thank you, we ll be right back. 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