i've got a lot more to -- i'm going to talk about michael cohen. this is a thing that i find perplexing. i think that if you're not president of the united states, if it's a family member, or whatever, if there's something embarrassing and it has nothing to do with the case, then it shouldn't be released. but when people run for office they say embarrassing things about each other all the time. isn't that was oppo research is all about? i don't understand why it's such a big deal in this matter and when you run for president of the united states you're exposed. your entire life. to everything. why is it different in this case, especially for something that is so important to the american people. what is a double standard going on here? any one of you -- can any one of you answer that question for me? >> i would just say that i don't think we do need to know a lot of the information that we get about candidates. for example, the information that people think is relevant in terms of their personal lives. i actually don't think it's our business. i th

that includes michael cohen's case. is michael cohen aware of helping with any of the other 12 redacted investigations? >> yes, he's helping -- i can't say 12 and i can't say redacted, because he's the one person who can see what's redacted and isn't redacted based upon mr. mueller. >> can you give us specifics, though? >> i can't give you specifics but he has shared information with the southern district of new york. he's spent a lot of time with the tax authorities of new york and a lot of time with the senate and house intelligence committee. the one person who's been fully cooperative who you would think having john dean on, he never went to prison, he was kept available. you would think that congress and the prosecutors would want michael cohen around given all that he knows to help create this obstruction case that i think is there and should be brought -- >> one more question. are we going to hear from michael cohen before he reports to prison on may 6th? >> so at some point he has a family and personal affairs t

i mean, the reality is michael cohen's trying -- there's some shenanigans from cohen, it's pretty transparent. >> garrett, listen, can we just talk about all the investigative threads that have come out because of michael cohen? you have the hush money payments, campaign finance violations where the president inflated his assets, his tax returns. and it's congress, it's new york, there are a lot of loose ends here. and just remember, in the questioning, remember when alexandria ocasio-cortez asked him those questions and set in motion people going after that information and michael cohen turning it over. what do you think of that, garrett? >> this is one of the most newsy things in that cohen letter tonight is he says that he has been approached since his congressional testimony by at least six different investigative entities, both criminal prosecutors, federal and new york state officials as well as congressional committees. and that that's -- that's a sign of the ongoing legal problems that the president faces, that, you know, we've sort of treated the mueller report and the end of the mue

michael cohen out with a new pitch to congress. he says he has more dirt on trump and he'll give to it democrats but he wants their help keeping him out of prison. cohen's lawyers say he just got access to his files back after the fed seized them last year and he's just started going through 14 million files including e-mails, voicemail messages and recordings. and guess what. he needs more time. with 30 days left before he surrenders to prison, time is no longer a luxury that escapable of. the lawyers submitting a memo summarizing, including his claim trump encouraged him to lie to congress by using code language. cohen's team hoping the democrats will tell new york prosecutors how helpful he has been. so they've either cut his jail time or postponed the date he has to report to jail so he can keep helping investigators. donald trump said he's not worried about anything that michael cohen has. >> no, they've already got it. old news. he lied numerous times during his last testimony. they've had that for many months. >> with me are

cohen, in that do they feel as if they owe michael cohen something? if you look across the headlines from "the new york times," house democrats demanding six years of trump's tax returns from the irs, daily beast, elijah cummings seeking ten years of trump's taxes. politico, businesses, much of this was spurned as we talked about in my last segment by cohen's testimony with regards to trump's taxes. >> well, i worked for the department much justice for 30 years. 11 of those years i did 30 tax trials. and the thing about tax returns is you can't call them snitches. you can't call them rats, and you can't give them a pardon. so when those tax returns are analyzed and perused and michael cohen did provide the committees some red flags and loud gongs as to what possibly on the returns is false -- and i want to go back to july of 1974. the watergate committee of the house judiciary, they voted on impeachment articles involving president nixon's alleged cheating on his taxes. they didn't approve them, but cheating on your taxes is a big deal. just ask al ca

>> well, we're dealing with michael cohen here. the bag man for the president. so, you know, he's very whiney. he's not ready to go into prison, and the crimes were personal crimes, not even crimes involving the president. some of them were, obviously. >> it was the tax evasion and then the home equity line of credit, you know, he said he didn't know his was being recorded. michael cohen should assume he's on being recorded, and when he goes into prison, all the phone calls are recorded. he said the prosecutors were starting to go after his wife. that was part of the reason for pleading guilty. one more clip. >> yeah, yeah. >> you take it, but i had a mission that i needed to, um, fulfill, and i needed to get the truth out there. and -- and very hard when, you know, you spend ten years taking care of somebody and their family -- look, i always knew, you know, who he was and what he was, and so on. but it didn't really matter, because it's -- he's a small microcosm of new york real estate. it's very different when you start looking into seeing what's happening no

the same case against michael cohen is the united states of america versus michael cohen. the phrase poetic justice has never had more meaning than it would have if, after the voters of the united states of america reject president trump's re-election, the first thing that happens to him as a private citizen is that he is criminally charged in a case entitled the united states of america versus donald j. trump. but this is the one thing that we can be virtually certain won't happen if donald trump becomes a private citizen again on the afternoon of january 20, 2021. and the reason it won't happen is on the morning of the january 20th or late at night on january 19th, donald trump will become the first president of the united states to pardon himself. the president's pardon power is absolute. donald trump was thrilled when he discovered that. there is nothing in the constitution that says the president cannot pardon himself, so along with pardoning trump associates or family members who he feels like pardoning, before he leaves office, donald trump would very specifically p

what we've been waiting to hear is, when will michael cohen speak what will michael cohen speak about and what format and all the rest. so what have we learned? ellison barber, what about it? >> yes, for now we're waiting on figuring out when michael cohen might speak. a source close to the president's former fixer is pretty much laughing an what we're hearing from the white house, pushing back specifically on the white house's claims that the mueller report vindicates president trump or exonerating him. the source close to michael cohen told me this. since the repeated claim there was no pro trump intervention. he said that mueller states that trump was not exonerated from the charge of obstruction, completely contradicting trump's claim that he was. that is a strange definition of exonerated. so far no direct responses from michael cohen but people around him are taking a different view of this report. as we heard from laura ingle, lanny davis, michael cohen's former attorney suggested on twitter that there's more to come. shepard? >> shepard: ellison barber again from the white hou

i believe michael cohen has a story to tell about what he told mr. mueller that leads to strong inferences of knowledge about the trump tower meeting, which, by definition, collusion. >> does mr. cohen look at all this as i mentioned him and mr. stone being the last team e people charged, does he feel like with all the other information that's come out about other individuals that in a sense he's holding the short stick here? >> yes. and let me give you three quick answers. one, it's very rare that somebody volunteers to testify before congress laying out documentary evidence of crimes by the president of the united states. the writing of the $35,000 check signed by donald trump is evidence of a crime of conspiracy to violate, the very crime that the federal prosecutors said was directed by president trump. second, the book that was just published about that testimony lays out the documentation behind mr. cohen's testimony of crimes by the president of the united states before and after his presidency and, finally, his son, along with mr. weiselberg

tom arnold told michael cohen he is a hero and is not alone. shannon: what is the deal with tom arnold being involved with all this? >> tom arnold is a major critic of donald trump, once said he was working with michael cohen to take down the president that walked that back when cohen denied it but the actor comedian has been on a years long search for honored footage of mister trump on the apprentice and elsewhere that might be damaging to the president. tom arnold had a limited series called the hunt for the trump tapes, the show ended, no tapes were ever found but arnold is not done, quote, i am not quitting until i get all the tapes or trump re-signed, whichever happens first, tom arnold thanks mark burnett, hiding secret tapes. he tweeted that arnold tried to ambush her husband. >> i did not know there was a tv show looking for the tapes. thank you. and international fight over who will take out the trash tops tonight's where in the world. canada erroneously sent them to municipal trash labeled as recyclable plastic to manila more than 5 y

we knew that michael cohen and donald trump were involved in these payments. we've seen the checks from donald trump -- >> we've seen the receipts, yes. >> -- to michael cohen and there was a suggestion that allen weisselberg the chief financial officer might have been involved because in that taped recording that michael cohen made he might have been involved. prosecutors have interviewed hope hicks very close to mr. trump about these as well as speaking to keith schiller the former security chief. investigators learned of calls between mr. schiller and david pecker who is the chief executive of the parent company of "national enquirer." so -- i mean, in other words, it's much closer and maybe these two were somehow implicated. >> the key points are that schiller and hicks are incredibly close to donald trump both adds candidate and president in terms of shear day to day proximity. so the fact that they've been making calls to american media, this is donald trump's infamous david pecker problem, and the catch and kill that they have been alleged to conduct wi

michael cohen with him more than a decade, keith schiller i believe even longer than that. sabrina, there is the law and then there is the politics of this. what is the political appetite for pursuing these charges further? federal prosecutors here have to make their own decisions based on the law, this he appear to be pursuing this case, but politically what is the appetite for pursuing these and how much do democrats risk this sense that, you know, always investigating the president? >> well, i think that democrats have made clear that these hush money payments and what exactly the president knew about them and when he knew it is an area of focus and that they fully do intend to investigate those matters, especially after michael cohen not only directly implicated the president in a violation of campaign finance law, but entered what he said was evidence for the public record that trump personally signed off on at least one of those reimbursement checks, as did his son donald trump jr. and allen weisselberg. they have said that they intend to, in fact, call allen weisselb

cohen, the character in this plot, michael cohen, to get to the bigger fish? don't you normally use him as a cooperating witness to get the bigger if i wish? why didn't that happen in this situation? >> because cohen himself made a terrible miscalculation. he sort of agreed to cooperate with the southern district of new york's investigation, but he didn't fully cooperate. the southern district like a lot of u.s. attorneys offices has a rule that if you are going to cooperate, you have to agree to talk about anything they want to talk about. you have to spill your guts about everything, and cohen wouldn't do that. he said i will cooperate about some things and not others. >> what did he he want to talk about? >> it's not entirely clear and frankly michael wasn't entirely clear to me about that, but in any event he didn't and so when it came for sentencing the southern district did not give him the sort of glowing recommendation that cooperators generally do. interestingly, mueller's office did say that cohen cooperated successfully and if you read the mueller r

in the call michael cohen is disavowing the crimes he pleaded guilty to. he pleaded guilty to two hush money payments on behalf of the president and pleaded guilty to five tax fraud counts, one count of lying to a bank and another count of lying to congress. as you will hear in this sound byte, michael cohen is now saying he didn't commit any of those crimes. let's listen. >> i lost my business. i lost everything, my insurance, my bank accounts all for what? all for what? because trump had an affair with a porn star? that is really what this is about. there is no tax evasion. i have 18% loan to value on my home. >> that's right. >> it's a lie. >> michael cohen here goes on during the conversation which seemed to last for quite some time where he talks about the president and saying that this was really just the acts of the president and he is critical of him here. let's listen. >> you take it, but i had a mission that i needed to fulfill. and i needed to get the truth out there. and very hard when you know you spent ten years taking care of somebody and th

investigators reportedly have a recording of a phone conversation between michael cohen, president's former lawyer and a lawyer who respected macdougall as well as stormy daniels. cohen pleaded guilty to charges that included campaign violations and testified before congress about payments he says he made on the president's behalf to both women, nicole hahn is one of the reporters behind the story. you can walk us through what investigators learned from the interviews? >> sure. we don't know the full scope of what the southern district asked them but we know at the very least they were interested in both hope hicks and keith shiler's communications with david pecker, who is the ceo of "the national enquirer's" publisher. >> and a close friend of the president. >> exactly. >> a long relationship. >> what this tells us is that the investigation went much deep near trump's inner circle than we realized. hope hicks and keith schiller worked with him for a long time so it shows us the lengths prosecutors went to build this case. >> is it clear whether any of the information provided in th

and 51% disapproved of the republicans in the michael cohen hearing. that means not even all trump supporters were pleased with the performance of republicans in the michael cohen hearing which is a pretty good template for what impeachment hearings would look like. donald trump is not the only republican with something to fear in impeachment hearings. house republicans have plenty to fear in those hearings because the redacted mueller report doesn't give them nel ammunition to use with the most important witnesses against the president like former trump white house counsel don mcgahn. they can't call don mcgahn a convict convicted like they could call michael cohen. the mueller report describes don mcgahn as a particularly credible witness because he took notes of his conversations with the president and other people. so will the republicans on the house judiciary committee condemn note taking in the oval office, something every responsibility staff member has always done in the oval office, something that i did in the clinton oval office? when i was

attorney for the southern district of new york help michael cohen in those two objectives? >> one but not the other. i think that there is realistic possibility that the sentence could be delayed. lots of people sentenced to prison manage to put off their sentences f sentenc sentences for several months. a reduction in the sentence is a different story and that is something that would absolutely have to come from the southern dwrikts of new yo district of new york and not from congress. so that is the audience that he needs tos to persuade on reduc. >> all right. we'll see what happens. and there is other breaking news we're following this time on the boeing 737 max disasters. the company's ceo now admitting that an automated flight system known as mcas played a role in the crashes. the chief says that it is the aerospace's giant responsibility to eliminate it. and they say 346 were killed and our senior correspondent drew griffin is just outside seattle where max outliners are being built. what else are you learning? >> reporter: the admission came after the ethiopian prel

there was a text sent to michael cohen. later, they spoke to the businessman who said he was told the tapes were fake but that he did not communicate that. that little moment in the history of all of this, where they were clearly people in russia who were trying to softep michael cohen when an sentiment summation. and perhaps lure him in. we know from that line, today, and from the original barr letter, that they found no collusion and no participation on the part of americans. but that there were concerted efforts on the part of russians to try and poke holes and find people who would be receptive to this kind of information and blew them into some kind of relationship. i think that's a pretty interesting indication that that's what was happening there with regard to michael cohen. >> bill: i would contribute this, martha -- looking at the questions and answers submitted on the behalf of the president, and rudy giuliani and jay sekulow are part of this, too -- he was not aware of can medications with tom jr., paul manafort

this is michael cohen, michael cohen in february when he was testifying before the house oversight committee and said this. >> can you give us any insight into what the real reason is that the president has refused to release his tax returns? >> statements that he had said to me is that what he didn't want was to have an entire group of think tanks that are tax experts run through his tax return and start ripping it to pieces and then he'll end up in an audit and he'll ultimately have taxable consequences, penalties and so on. >> so that's an interesting point. that basically said he didn't want to release his tax returns because he might end up in an audit. so could you presume from that statement that he wasn't under audit? >> i presume that he's not under out did. audit. >> a direct contradiction to what we heard from the president. >> if anyone would know if the president was, in fact, under audit it would be michael cohen who was his personal fixer and in that same testimony, michael cohen implicated the president in both insurance fraud and tax fraud. now, those are allegations but he

they basically called him an unindicted co-conspirator in not so many words in the michael cohen plea document. i think that's the reason they're concerned and i think they believe this is going to go through the end of donald trump's presidency. >> individual number one. >> and that investigation is on-going. >> certainly is. everybody stick around. house democrats, deadline arriving for president trump to turn over his tax returns, a deadline he vowed to ignore. let's go to white house correspondent abby philip. the president said flatly he won't give democrats what they want and launched sharp new attacks against the mueller investigation. >> reporter: that's right, wolf. president trump is preparing for multiple major fights on various fronts, first pushing back on democrats' demands to see six years of personal and business tax returns and launching new attacks against robert mueller and his investigators, even after weeks ago he said he wanted the public to see the full mueller report. >> this was an attempted coup, attempted take down of a president, and we beat them. we beat t

we've also seen michael cohen's family publicly threatened over social media. so he had grounds for that fear. >> sure. and i think that is actually one of the most interesting parts of the mueller report for me as someone who was looking closely at the cohen portion of it. what mueller laid out is the obstruction of justice was happening in plain sight. as you read earlier the president was sending these messages to friends to stay strong but publicly he was calling cohen a rat and saying members of his family should be investigated and looked into it. and so those pieces of the mueller report were particularly interesting to me because mueller gave credence to cohen's fear and said we understand why this can look like potential witness tampering or potential obstruction of justice. it was just happening in plain sight. >> is it fair to say, and this calls i guess for a judgment on his state of mind, that michael cohen as he prepares 12 days from now to enter the federal prison system, expected to be viewed as a more heroic figure than he is viewed as today? >

tom arnold told michael cohen, he's a hero and that he's not alone. shannon? >> shannon: what is the deal with tom arnold being involved in all this? >> welcome a tom arnold, as you may or may not know, as a major critic of president trump and once said he was working with michael cohen to take down the president come with every kind of walk that back when cohen denied it. but the actor-comedian has been on a year's worth long search for on aired footage of mr. trump on the apprentice and elsewhere that might be damaging to the president. term arnold even have a limited series on vice land called "the hunt for the trump tapes." they show ended, no tapes were found, but he's not done. "i am not quitting until i get all the tapes or trump resigns, whatever happens first." tom arnold thinks that the creator of "the apprentice" is hiding secret tapes. his wife tweeted that arnold tried to ambush her husband. getting a little ugly. >> shannon: i did not know there was a tv show looking for the tapes. i guess we don't know everything that is happening. you do. thank

to michael m. cohen, the president's long-time personal lawyer. outgoing message to him says, quote, stopped flow of some tapes from russia, but not sure if there is anything else. just so you know. cohen then responds, tapes of what? the sender responds, not sure of the content, but person in moscow was bragging had tapes from russia trip. next message. we'll try to dial you tomorrow, but wanted to be aware. next message, i'm sure it's not a big deal, but there are lots of stupid people. bloomberg then reports that the next two checks in the chain are michael cohen saying you have no idea and the initial sender replying back to him, i do, trust me. so you know what that's about, right? i did not see this coming. specifically, in the most immediate sense, what this is about is a very provocative little tiny piece of mueller's redacted report. a little piece of mueller's report which raises eyebrows for everybody who looks at it, but nobody really knows what to do with it. it's from the part of the mueller report where mueller is describing trump's

it turns out michael cohen did a lot more than take notes. we've heard at least one recording of michael cohen's conversations with donald trump. >> that's right. it's astonishing what donald trump's perceptions of lawyers is. he's obviously shape by one of the most corrupt lawyers of the 20th century. his lawyer roy cohn who was ultimately disbarred. that's his hero. in essence that's who he's trying to make attorney general barr into. barr seems to be willing to play the role of donald trump's roy cohn. but fortunately for us, don mcgahn was not and ultimately michael cohen was not willing to play that role to the end of the theater of donald trump. >> lisa graves, adam thank you both for joining us tonight. when we come back, the mueller report's revelationing about sarah sanders having to admit to them finally she had to admit to someone that she lied. o admit to someone that she lied. does this map show the peninsula trail? you won't find that on a map. i'll take you there. take this left. if you listen real hard you can hear the whales.

the other thing to keep in mind, is that the michael cohen case is significant not because michael cohen, his former lawyer, pled guilty to a campaign finance violation, but the southern district — my old office — seems to have endorsed his allegation that he committed that campaign finance violation in co—ordination with and at the direction of individual 0ne, who is the president of the united states, so they clearly feel there is a criminal exposure there. i guess it comes back though to faith in the system, the degree of politicization of the system. we are now speaking in the context of a new attorney general, the government's chief sort of law enforcement agent, if you like, william barr, hand—picked by the president, who handled the roll—out of the mueller investigation or the mueller report, in a particular way, which democrats regarded as completely unfair and unacceptable. so william barr is in the post. as you pointed out, in the southern district of new york, he's got his own man, jeffrey berman, who is now the attorney — the job you used to have. in this context

my reporting indicated that michael cohen was a really important contact for the enquirer. if they had a story about donald trump they would call in. he would give them stories about donald trump. there were cases when the presidential campaign really got going that the enquirer was sharing almost all of the coverage that it was doing on donald trump or his opponents with michael cohen prior to publication. >> you could track these covers. and seeing how the enquirer really became kind of like a promotional arm for the trump campaign. >> at the time, ami publically denied that politics influenced editorial decisions during the campaign. but tactics like catch and kill indicated otherwise. almost a year before it helped kill karen mcdougal story, ami squelched another story. that thet threatened to embarrass him. in another interview, a former trump tower doorman said ami paid him $30,000 to sign over the rights to a store he heard about donald trump. concerning a salation rumor about his relationship with a former housekeeper. >> i noticed donald trump come to the building.

the michael cohen hush payments all had to do with criminal activity. that's not congress' duty. they are not the fbi. they are not the department of justice. unless they can connect, for example your michael cohen hush money payment to some legislative purpose and not just some general power of oversight which congress doesn't have, then the trumps may prevail. >> they may stop this thing. they may stop deutsche bank and capital one from releasing the financial records. >> it's possible. congress in defense really all they have to do is come up with an artifacculate legislative purpose for these subpoenas. if hedo that then a court might buy their story. >> you're such a defense attorney, danny cevallos, i got to say. so, you is innocent. >> always? >> most of the time. >> okay. danny cevallos, thank you. >>> the trump administration is proposing new restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the southern border. in a memo sent to acting homeland security secretary lean and bill barr president trump directed additional steps to overhaul the asylum system. that includes a proposa

on behalf of a weary nation i hope it's not caseens on michael cohen or michael avenatti some of these are paths we've been down too much recently. but it's interesting to know in terms of how cases are farmed out what's within the scope of the investigation? the scope starts off limited on paper to the russia probe. but rod rosenstein was in a position during the supervision to expand it upon request. so we don't know whether the tenticles went preponderate cohen thing was fascinating that this they farm it out to the southern district. saying they have a cooperator. a failed cooper. but president concept they could overlap calls into pretty serious question what the scope limitations were and were they observed. it's curious over time to see if any of these cases public publicized and we can see what the handoff was and the decision making was. >> harry, if you're trump and being a little quiet tonight. >> yes. >> certainly for him. >> yes. >> these other cases, i mean, is it wide open? i mean what i'm getting at is when people say okay, don jr., is it possible that don jr.'s name is

. >>> the president's former fixer michael cohen ask house democrats to help him stay out of prison. >> the white house is pushing back as democrats demand to see president trump's tax returns. we'll show you what the president has to say about that next. back in a moment. in a momentol. tell your doctor if you have a history of scarring or are taking medicines that decrease the body's immune response or that can prolong bleeding. common side effects include injection-site redness, swelling, pain, tenderness, firmness, lumps/ bumps, bruising, discoloration, or itching. as with all fillers, there is a rare risk of unintentional injection into a blood vessel, which can cause vision abnormalities, blindness, stroke, temporary scabs or scarring. juvÉderm it. ♪ lets go! i'm missing out on our family outings everything was too loose. but depend® fit-flex feels tailored to me. with a range of sizes for all body types. depend® fit-flex underwear is guaranteed to be your best fit. but in my mind i'm still 35. that's why i take osteo bi-flex, to keep me moving the way i was made to. it no

sure enough, michael cohen's name was on it. it was the michael cohen. >> what did it feel like to see that? >> it was elation. it was relief. because this is before we published the first story, right. these are sort of parallel. so we're still looking for that something, that tangible something. we're confident in our sourcing, but to have the paper is just like another layer of comfort and relief. i hope i'm adequately describing with my wavering voice and facial expressions. but anyway, there was a problem with the resolution consultants because it was created in late september and dissolved in october, mid-october, before the payment had been made. so it turns out, you know, we didn't know why, but we suspected maybe michael cohen had messed up the paperwork somehow. we looked at all of the corporations created on the day that resolution consultants was dissolved. that's how we found essential consultants. and essential consultants, we pulled the formation documents again, and there of course was michael cohen's name. then

and i said to michael cohen, someone is bragging about the tapes, it is probably not a big deal. i'm sure there are so many stupid people in the world, and with a lot of great people in the world we still have some stupid people and he agreed and we never followed up. that is what i told the prosecutor. it was a candid conversation. david: thank you very much for dropping by. live from new york, this is bloomberg. ♪ david: facebook is our stock of the hour, trading at its highest level since july of last year after the company reported strong revenue growth and user engagement. emma chandra is here to tell us about it. emma: the stock added $4.5 billion to zuckerberg's personal fortune, not a bad day's work, winning unanimous praise from analysts. take a look at the bloomberg. i've a chart which shows you how those price targets have moved up. those are the blue lines. only two bears remain for facebook, applauding the revenue and what it suggests about user engagement and how advertisers are helping them short off those privacy concerns we would be talking about over the last

you cover the trump family, you cover michael cohen, you were there for his testimony. this investigation has touched every single person in trump world, really like nothing else. and let me read you some excerpts from the story and get your thoughts. the report was prepared, this is the barr summary, or the mueller report was prepared so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately, or very quickly, the official said, it was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary and the work would have spoken for itself. mueller's team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words and not in the attorney general's summary of their work as turned out to be the case. this seems like a classic trumpian story of the president getting way out ahead of the facts. >> it's not just the president. we saw -- i think i told you last week on your show i have reporting that jared kushner was taking a victory lap like no one

we know in addition michael cohen there was another witness to a conversation where stone called up and gave him information or apparently stone and frump then shared nonpublic information about wikileaks. the evidence on stone's collusion and i never use that term, but i will here. as barr kind of pointed to in his press conference and was made clear here, it's not illegal to try and optimize wikileaks release of stolen e-mails. right? that gets you beyond the whole conspiracy and coordination. that's beyond the question. plus, it's not with russia. barr did back flips to say no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. it's roger stone. if you look at trump's answers to mueller, the most ob sti nent and nonrecall of those answers has to do with roger stone and wikileaks. do you know that roger stone was going after wikileaks? i don't recall. there are witnesses. >> it's a pretty salient event obviously and we should say the president's answers are tons of i don't recall, tons of i don't remember. i can't recall when he ends up giving the written answers. i want to read one section. the h

that was michael cohen. there is more to come out there and hopefully michael cohen can contribute to that story after sater testifies, but i think there is a way for him to do that and prove the sentence should be reduced even if he goes to jail. >> joy, the president in his walk by he does with the press, he deigns to answer questions on the south lawn. he said it's old news. that's one of the biggest tropes in politics. been there, done that. forget about it. or this one. on my shoulder. but the fact is we know trump and often the path to his truth is the opposite of what he says. >> yeah. >> if cohen has been working with the guy, tom hagin, all these years, he knows all the skunky stuff, he's done. he knows it all. every time he heard the word russia, he's got it. even if prison, he has nothing else to do except dig for dirt to get him out sooner. i'd be afraid of him. >> donald trump should be. he was the person closest to him and knew most. given the fact that we have seen so many people caught up in

one of those is most significantly is the michael cohen investigation that is being conducted by the southern district of new york. other than that, there is one investigation out of d.c. that we know of and then the rest is really a mystery. we really don't know what these other investigations are. >> explain to our viewers on the obstruction front, how much more clear is it to you now why bob mueller did not come to a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charge when we know he looked at ten different sort of series of events? >> it's hard to say, right? because even -- there's a lot of gray area there, and depending on -- different lawyers will have different ideas about whether or not they could have pursued obstruction of charges here. it's still very puzzling why the mueller team decided, you know what, we're just going to let the attorney general make this decision in the end. it does sometimes work that way at the department of justice. but certainly when you go through every instance of potential obstruction, and the way mueller laid it out and the evidence that they gath

also the conduct involving michael cohen. one piece on michael cohen i need to dive in more. but they explain that michael cohen was someone who was mistold about the moscow tapes. in fact, he has been lied to about the contents of them. so lots to dig into. you're asking the right questions. they lay out a legal analysis. they get into whether or not the president had to have corrupt intent and know what he was doing. in the end, it does appear to come down to that. this does not exonerate the president on the issue of obstruction. another thing i'll point out is the volume there. this is obstruction, much thicker than what we have here on collusion. it's a thinner thing. the amount of information we have on obstruction is far larger. >> i'm stunned by this language here about the inconclusiveness. this would show the limits and how hindered they were by not having a interview by the president. they were not able to reach a conclusion as to whether donald trump knew about mike flynn's conversations with the ambassad ambassador. this is a pull from mueller's report. some sugg

cohen flipped, rudy giuliani was saying michael cohen is a decent guy, he's electric. you can believe everything he says. now all of a sudden that he's talking about everything that trump did, you can't believe this guy. he's corroborated, as well by tapes that he's done with trump, by documents that they took in the search warrant. so all of this is really going nowhere as far as i can see. >> let me get your take on the report quickly, nick. former federal prosecutor for watergate there. you said to me during the break as you read on, it just gets better and more intriguing. why is it then it steams have landed on deaf ears for so many people in this political atmosphere. >>> it is 400 and some odd pails. it took me two days to read through the whole thing. >> you didn't see your wife. >> i'm a nerd on this stuff anyway. i got into but most people will not get into it. if you really start reading between the lines, for example, page 176, if you look at footnote 1278, there's all this discussion about no conspiracy. yes, they couldn't find a conspiracy but they actual

cohen and these were disguised as legal fees to michael cohen so there's an issue if they were fraudulently conveyed. there seems to be a lot of criminal liability here and the question is what charges, if any, will we see going forward? >> thank you, ken. now we have to turn to another split screen in trump's presidency. pay attention to this. the president is departing the white house at any moment now for san antonio, texas. he's looking to turn the page on the dhs story by signing two new executive orders and infrastructure in the epa in an attempt to speed up oil and gas projects. meanwhile in less than one hour attorney general bill barr is heading back to capitol hil for the second time to testify this week. today if will be in front of members of the senate appropriations committee grilling him. this comes, of course, after barr testified for 2 1/2 hours before members of the house appropriations committee. in his testimony he said the mueller report would be released in a week but redactions. get yourself ready, it will be major redapgs. adding congress will not get an unredacted v

michael cohen was a real treat. congress calls them back and then they say he would be good for obstruction? it is stunning that people are even interested in what that guy has to say . >> when it comes to the issue of collusion there were attempts it just never happened but no ability to do it. they were on the same path trying to accomplish the same goal and the trump campaign team did not rise to that level although he was happy about if you read the report i do agree with the report i will not push it but it is not in the best interest of the american people. jeanine: donald trump is a man who doesn't need to go through someone to get something done. if he wanted sessions fired he would have fired him or recused him or what was the other one? donald trump has conversations. >> but in that case it is he said versus he says we don't even know what happened in that conversation. but now democrats are jumping around trying to hang on every single word that was said there should be no obstruction because there was no