>> yeah. >> great to have you with us. of course we'll be reading axios in in just a little while. to all of our viewers out there, you too can sign up for the newsletter at axios.com. >> that does it for us on this tuesday morning. morning joe starts right now. sean, i do want to say that i really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with cohen when you talked about him on this show. you could have said just that you had asked him for advice or whatever. but i think it would have been much, much better had you disclosed that relationship. you were in a difficult situation. >> if you understand the nature of it professor, i'll deal with this later in the show. >> i understand. >> it was minimal. >> i understand but you should have said that. you have the right not to have your identity revealed. >> i have a right to privacy. professor, it was such a minor relationship in terms of it had to do with real estate and

nothing political. >> other kids in springfield are sobs. >> that kind of lapping wage has no place on or off tv and that's my two cents. >> i don't know all those sobs. >> what the. >> yeah. good morning, everyone, it's tuesday, april 17th. welcome to morning joe. with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news and msnbc. how was the circus yesterday. >> oh, boy. sometimes it's a metaphor and sometimes it's literal. yesterday it was literal. >> we were talk, tom wolf volunteer wo have been embarrassed to lay it out. you had the president, the president's lawyers, you had cymbal woods, you had the porn star. >> stormy. >> you had the press conference on the steps, and then hannity. >> hannity. >> if tom wolf had passed this by his wife when he was writing

bonfire -- too much. >> he >> let's not do that. >> it was a great old fashioned new york city legal political tabloid maihem scene. and just to inject sean hannity what was going to be circus environment, stick sean hannity in that, all over the place. >> this was right here, daily news. >> ka boom. >> okay. there's that. he says it was just little, and he didn't need to mention it. steve radnor's here, msnbc legal analyst danny sa vol lis joins us as well and jonathan materially. >> he says he didn't have to mention that -- mention it despite the fact he had gone on earlier this week savaging the

ra raid on mike cal cohen's offices. >> i don't know how you get around that it's completely staggering dishonest with his viewers, with -- i mean, look, how you can cover the story and not say you're a part of it. >> willie, what do you think? >> i would fire someone who did that on my network. go ahead. >> of course there's no question it should have been disclosed. with that said i find thune surprising completely. i think there's an assumption that sean hannity is working and in glove with the president of the united states. he has dinner at the white house, dinner at mar-a-lago. he said outloud i want him to be president of the united states during the campaign. it's not like a journalist who's covering the story has not disclosed that he's for sean hannity. he should have said it, you of course. but i'm saying no one can be surprised that sean hannity is perhaps in bed with donald trump. >> right. let's say it was a massive, massive law office and he used a separate attorney. but how many clients does

michael cohen have? >> three. >> three, oh. and two of them are men who were looking at payoffs to women and the third shan knitty. >> the only thing -- only thing. >> do you not disclose this? >> the difference between knowing that sean hannity was a huge trump fan and has been an apologist for him and been a pit paul fall for him nonstop and is proud of that, that's far different than him being part of a story, john, that nobody knows he's part. >> we're going a little light on mr. hannity here. documents that were seized in the raid last week are documents that almost inevitably involve correspondence between mr. cohen and his client mr. hannity. so last week when he was complaining about this being a politically motivated witch hunt and how inappropriate and ridiculous it was, do not disclose that you were actually a participant, you were involved in this.

you're explainicomplaining abou document that affects you because audio recordings of him and michael cohen were the things that were raid. it's not commented on it that way it's just an outrageous violation of journalistic -- >> we don't know the exact timing when he had his consultations with mr. cohen. but why if you were immersed in all these presidential shenanigans and all this stuff would you go to the lawyer? there are a million lawyers in new york. why would you go to the one that's the president's lawyer. >> if you talk to trump every day and he says i have a good lawyer zblour i kn-- >> i don't know. >> it is such a small deal, oh, it's a small deal. >> right. >> in fact, he actually said i never even gave him a dime. so there really wasn't even attorney/client privilege so i guess -- >> why not mention it? >> there's nothing to -- there's

nothing to be protected. so he now seems to be like he would be stopped from going back to the court saying you have to protect our communications because he said there's no attorney/client privilege there, i never gave him a dime. with that said, if it wasn't a big deal, then you should have told your viewers. hey, it's not a big deal, i've talked to him for legal advice myself. b but this raid is still wrong. >> never giving him a dime means nothing in trump world because there's tons of favors being done and fixes being done, and that's what we've learned about michael cohen. >> michael cohen is not a real estate lawyer and there are plenty of real estate lawyers in new york. and just to be clear, i'm not going light on sean hannity, he should have disclosed that of course. but is anyone on the panel surprised by this news anyway? >> i'm a little surprised. >> i'm not surprised that shawn hannity is close to people that donald trump's close to.

>> did not disclose. >> i think it is the case that attorney/client privilege can add to a relationship where a lawyer where no money changes hands. if you're going to decide you're going to represent me. >> it is. sean hannity said i never gave you money, he wasn't even my lawyer, i just talked to him then suddenly you're -- you're actually on that line. >> so, again, to my second point then. this is not the -- the context for this was cohen's attorneys were saying they fought for days to not have this name disclosed. they claimed that michael cohen this three big clients. so the notion that -- sean hannity is saying i asked him for a couple pieces of legal advice at a backyard barbecue. >> tell us. >> if that's not a big deal, why are they fighting in court over -- >> in front of a federal judge against a southern district's prosecutors. >> someone's lying.

in fact sean hannity had very little contact with him and he's blowing it up, or hannity is lying about the extent of relationship. but they made a big deal out of this. if it wasn't a big deal they shouldn't have made it a big deal. >> how did it play out in court? >> it played out between kpan tended colloquy between judge wood and cohen's attorneys saying we're trying to figure out whether attorney/client privilege pertains to these documents and how to figure that out. but she was saying you need disclose who this client's name is and they went on saying we shouldn't have to do that, we don't want to do it can we give it to you in a sealed document and envelope? the reason it was so dramatic in court was because it came tend of 20 minutes of argumentative back and forth in which it seems that cohen's attorneys were ready to lay themselves down on the railroad tracks to stop the

disclosure of this name. >> why? >> and they did maintain at one point that they were not just representing michael cohen's interest but they were doing it on behalf of the client. hannity said yesterday dint want him do this. but somebody's lying because they made a big deal about trying to keep this secret and they were basically order and forced in court to disclose the name. >> why were they so desperate to keep his name out of the public. leer by the way is how the sean hannity disclosure played out live on fox news. >> inned it's proceedings that are under way right now, steven ryan, one of cohen's attorneys was asked by the judge to specifically name the other name because they said it would not fall under attorney/client privilege to withhold that name. and he stoold stod up and name sean hannity. >> of course for us the elephant in the room for the moment is that sean hannity is said to be a third client of michael cohen.

there's a statement at the hollywood reporter from hahn knit that i says we've been friends for a long time, he did some legal work for me. hannity's producers are looking to contact him, we'll report on it when we know the rest of it. a lot of people here know his number so we'll get on that in just a second. >> wow, the reporter wanted to move on quickly. >> she dp did not want to. >> my god, how awkward. the only reason why his identity was revealed was because of trump's and cohen's request to review the material seized in last week's raid. as for that, yesterday the judge denied the president's motion to temporarily block prosecutors from reviewing the material, however, she did not rule out the possibility of using a taint team or special master to determine which of the seized evidence is protected by attorney/client privilege. judge cymbal wood said, quote, i have faith in the southern district attorney's office. their integrity is

unimpeachable. a think a taint team is a viable option. she asked all of the lawyers to reconvene for the best course of action after they have finished seegs documents from cohen. sitting right behind conin court is porn star stormy daniels who is suing to be released from the noun u nondisclosure agreement he arranged. she walked into court surrounded by photographers literally tripping over each other. what a circus in the courted it. in terms of stormy. >> you were in the middle of that. tell us about it. >> i mean, it was a scene and, you know, it's funny. watching this case play out from a distance over the course of the stormy daniels case that is, you have to see it through the way it's mediated from the eyes of the press. she's become less than the global sensation put walk around with michael who's going to be on the show later today, he's

become a famous super lawyer in the vein of some of the people who were in the o.j. simpson case and the spres obsessioned with her. and when she came ought to do her statement, basically the scrum of 400 reporters and camera men or whatever it was, they were there to see her, they were not there to even see michael cohen or the lawyers, they wanted to hear stormy daniels speak and she's got to be one of the most famous women in the world right now. >> she is. >> jonathan, it may seem strange to express any concerns. let me be, as always, the difficult one here. to be concerned about constitutional norms and the rule of law and whether it was applied fairly to a man who spends an hour every night doing whatever he can to, i think, undermine constitutional norms and the rule of law in his

defense of donald trump and his slandering of robert mueller. but, i just can't help -- i can't help but be concerned by the fact that this robert mueller investigation which started with collusion just like bill clinton's investigation started with a failed land deal has now spiraled out of control and all we're talking about are playboy bunnies and porn stars and relationships with other women, something that all of america knew before donald trump was elected and possible payoffs, which is not illegal in and of itself. and we're seeing, at least arkansas as a lawyeas a lawyer, not a good lawyer but a lawyer all the same, we see a seizing of attorney's files and for some reason sean hannity's name being revealed when it

seems to me a judge could have very easily take ten in chambers and said here are your three clients and then figured out how to sort it out there. i understand that sean hannity has acted in such a loathsome manner that there are few people that have any sympathy for him whatsoever. that said, that's why we are given constitutional protection, that even the most loathsome among us are protected from a sort of mob mentality here. what -- could the court have not done this differently? >> well, i've always been very critical of this rule. what cymbal woods was on good ground when she said that she could require that the name be disclose dollars. there's a case called vengali in the second circuit that says the name of the client itself is not protected by attorney/client privilege. that's the thing i've always

objected to because i believe people should be able to have confidentiality including sean hannity when they contact an attorney. there's theresan exception under this dhas says if the disclosure of the attorney's name would be tantamount to the disclosure of a communication it is protected. and judge wood was really sort of probing that and coned you load i don't -- that really the disclosure of the third name does not appear to be raising some confidential communication. >> right. >> that's what i think is very unfortunate, because many people want to talk to attorneys and the fact that he spoke to an attorney does put them at risk or embarrasses them. if you allow this rule to be applied as it has, not just by judge wood but other judges, people are reluctant to talk to attorneys if this could come out. >> and by the way you've guchb an example before. you go to a certain attorney and that attorney -- let's say that someone who's a financial

adviser go to a bankruptcy attorney for whatever reasons, he o she should be able to do that. >> or a divorce attorney. >> yeah. >> some attorneys only do divorce and so if you spoke to them, that's probably the subject matter. >> okay, let's move on to the other question i have. just overall, what's it is a about this investigation? and, again, nobody knows what robert mueller is doing right now because he runs a very, very tight ship. but just as far as the pr-wise, it seems we're a long, long way from the russian ambassador whispering sweet nogs to jarrod kushner in the transition or jared kushner going to banks or donald trump trying to get him to help russians win him wisconsin. we started talking about collusion and then rightly he's

investigating obstruction of justice. how did this spin so wildly out of control that over the past month all we've been talking about are porn stars and playboy bunnies? >> unfortunately, this is much of the doing of the trump legal team specifically michael cohen. he made the every possible wrong move. he allowed this case to metastasize. he could have avoided this. there is no good news coming out of new york for the president. the only good news sat least the judge said someone was unimpeachable but unfortunately that was the prosecutors. >> the district of new york prosecutors, exactly. >> so that doesn't work out as well as you had hoped. >> so what you're saying is that donald trump, which we've accused him of one self-inflicted wound after another politically, you're saying the same thing has happened legally that, in fact they're find themselves in this position, not because of robert mueller, not because of the southern district of new york, but because of one self-inflicted wound after another by donald trump's legal

team? >> yeah. and specifically michael cohen. it's really ironic that much of this hearing was the question of attorney/client privilege because we've all still been debating what michael cohen is. many of us still do not know whether he was acting as an attorney for trump in things like the stormy daniels case. so this could not be a more telling moment for michael cohen. now, putting that aside, you don't have to be a good lawyer to be a lawyer. and so, you know, he has grounds to say i am the attorney for obviously president trump and also for sean hannity put also don't have to accept money in order to trigger an attorney/client conversation. so all of that he's on good ground. but he obviously has now lost the ability to retain some of this information. you know, the use of these filter teams or taint teams have long been controversial and you're right, joe, this should be a concern for people.

this is a serious matter when attorney/client material is handed to the department of justice and they make the determination of what's privileged. and in answer to your first question, i think it would have been much better to be able to have done what cohen's lawyers asked for, that is to give the third name to the court under seal. i don't understand why courts don't do that more often. the court could have looked at that and said i'm going to give these names to the filter team or the magistrate, let's separate out all the material that deal with these three names, set it aside. >> right. >> and then take that first group and you can go ahead and proceed with that and then we'll fight over the second group. it seemed gratuitous that sean hannity's name was thrown out there. >> i was going to say, it seems gratuitous and, again, it made a lot of headlines, you got a lot of people talking, but it's something that the judge could have said, come on, let's take it in chambers, we'll see who the third client is and if there's a public need to know, that's fine. but if we're gijust embarrassin

third client we're not going to do it. >> the reason they were in court is because of the president of the united states tried to say this raid has happened, the search warrants were granted, all this stuff was taken, now they have to figure out what's covered by the prif lanl and what -- privilege and what's not. the position was not that the prosecutors or the justice department of the southern district should be able to make that determination or not even a special magistrate. the proposition was that they should be the ones to decide if the if they had not pressed for that, it's likely that sean hannity's name would never have come out because if they hadn't made this motion and tried to get that outcome, you wouldn't have been having this hearing, the special -- the normal prosecutors or special master would have looked at this and said, yeah, sean hannity is covered by attorney/client privilege his name would never come out. so part of the reason we're in

court yesterday say ridiculous position by the president's lawyers and michael cohen's lawyers. that they should be the ones that determine what's privilege and not is absurd. >> so the substance of this hearing yesterday, what happens from here? because it's a significant hearing. the trump team wanted access to what they believe would be attorney/client privileged material that was seized during the michael cohen raid yesterday. they didn't get that but the government didn't get yet precisely what it wanted. do you think ends with a taint team? does it end with a special master and if so what's the significance of either? >> it ends with either a taint team which is government review process, or it ends with a special master. the request by trump's team while a valiant one was really never going to happen. the notion that a search warrant would seize documents and those same documents would be handed back to the client or to cohen to review for privilege is just

not likely to happen. after all, if they trusted michael cohen to go through and look at documents to see what's privileged, they would have just saved subpoena. they served a search warrant because they were concerned that documents would go bye-bye. so in this situation, the judge's decision yesterday was essentially to decide this issue another day. the parties are going to reconvene, she's going to make sure the government gives copies of all the documents seized so the parties can argue it out later on as to what is privilege and what is not. it's a fair result for the time being, but ultimately the judge has to make a decision. >> all right. >> thank you both. >> yeah, thank you so much. and as jonathan pointed out yesterday, mika, the defining line as i thought from the entire hearing was when the judge said that the -- that the

southern district of new york prosecutors integrity was unimpeachable which basically says what they're going to do, what they're going to do and they're going to get my support because they've worked before me and from everything i've heard their integrity is unimpeachable. i'm curious, i've expressed my concerns about sean hannity's name being dragged out into the public the way that it was, regard ls of what sean hannity has done over the past ten years. but i do wonder, though, this still leaves a very big problem for sean hannity and fox news. while sean is putting up pictures of robert mueller. >> exactly. >> a vietnam war hero, purple heart winner and several -- awarded several medals and devoted his entire life to public service and he puts bob mueller's name and face up and starts attaching lines and talks

about the mueller crime family which is such a great insult to everything that is right in this country, it really is. and then you actually ironically at the same time he's trashing mueller and trashing the raid that he was subject to, but he didn't tell his viewers put actually could put sean hannity up top or donald trump and start drawing lines to michael cohen and sean hannity and this rnc guy and others. i mean, how does fox news not -- >> well that's the question this morning with fox. >> not address this when he was central to this story? >> it seems like he is, at least today for sure. i mean, it's a story with a lot of different tent tack cals. but i have to say for knows who were at charge in fox, have you to be asking yourself maybe they know more and more will come out. but given what you described, the hours and hours of television that he has done, very vit cal of the raid on mike

cal cohen's office and very positive for trumpet was named as -- for trump. he was named as a third client of michael cohen. >> it's not like a johnson day. >> no, there's not 100 clients. i think it's a question of why that came out in public first and then private later. did he tell his s bos i'm a third client of michael cohen but i'm going on the air tonight? because if he did not and he protd dotd coverage that he's been doing for months honestly and what he -- you know, it appears he intends to continue doing, he's lying to his viewers. bold face lying to his viewers to not disclose that he's a third client of michael cohen. but yet to do these incredible hit jobs on the raid on michael cohen's office of which his stuff is being raided and taken away. this is crazy.

this is crazy town in the news business. if you do not take him into the office and figure out how to go forward with this host on fox news, then i don't -- i don't know what you're doing over there. i don't know what has happened over there. >> and the problem -- the problem's exacerbated because there's been a lot of friction between sean and a couple of other late night hosts and the rest of fox news. you hear it all the time. and, you know, shep smith and a lot of others that are -- do the hard news over at fox news. there's some great people that do hard news over at fox news. >> absolutely. >> and i'm not going to start listing the names because i wouldn't get to all of them. but they've been saying for some time they're embarrassed by what he's doing. so i wonder if this adds even more friction. >> well, you saw it written on shep's face yesterday when he had to cover that story. >> he tries to be fair. >> i agree with everything you said. in a normal world, of course this would be a massive problem

and it be should be. but remember who sean hannity is to his viewers. he is the great defender of donald j. trump and has been from the beginning. >> so fox has to decide who they are. >> but to sean hannity's millions of viewers and listensers, he's the great defender of donald trump. if he was helping them out and represented by the same lawyer, they'll throw up their hands. but fox has a responsibility to look at this. >> fox news has a business problem here. he's the top rated host in cable, i believe, and there's i huge economic interest in this just as they used to have that problem with bill o'reilly now they have it with sean hannity. but it's clear that he seems to be saying this was not a big enough deal that i had to tell anyone. >> really? >> that's what he said in his statement last night. he seems to be representing that did he not tell bosses. he said i didn't think was important enough to disclose to anyone. >> all right. >> he said there was a few casual questions about a real estate deal. >> but to mika's pointed, according to what he said yesterday it doesn't seem that

he told his bosses. >> here's the quote before we go. my discussions with michael cohen never rose to any level that i needed to tell anyone that i was asking him questions. >> well, they seem to feel to need to mention it in court when asked what the third client was. >> as john heilman said, if it wasn't such a big deal, why did the president's lawyers fight so hard for so long to keep sean hannity's name out of spotlight. >> why was he a client? >> if there wasn't an attorney/client privilege there. >> still ahead on morning joe we'll talk to stormy daniels's attorney here onset. last time he stopped by he revealed that bomb stel shell story. but first nikki haley had a big announcement on sunday announcing new sanctions on russia. president trump doesn't like either of that, the announcement or the sanctions themselves. go nikki. you're watching morning joe. we'll be right back.

>> of course for us sean hannity said to be a third client of michael cohen. there's a reporter from hannity that says we've been friends for a long time, he did some legal work for me. hannity's producers are work fog contact him since it's part of the story we'll report on it when we know the rest of it. a lot of us here know his number so we'll get on that in just a second. but my student loans are going nowhere. it'll take me 20 years to pay them off, but i finally found a way to pay them off sooner, and save money by refinancing with sofi. sofi has helped over 200,000 people get ahead of their debt, contact him since it's part of see how much you can save in just two minutes at sofi.com/sooner bp's natural gas teams use smart app technology to share data from any well instantly. so they can analyze trends contact him since it's part of

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let's turn now to the saga over sanctiontion russia and the mixed messages from the trump administration. two days ago u.n. ambassador nikki haley who has been leading the government's charge against russia said new sanctions would be unveiled yesterday. >> so you will see that russian sanctions will be coming down. secretary mnuchin will be announce those on monday if he hasn't already. and they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to assad and chemical weapons use.

>> that's pretty clear. >> i can just say that nikki haley has been a clear voice, she has carried through america's traditional -- traditional foreign policy views post war. and it's great to have her at the united nations. there are a lot of people that were skeptical from inside the administration. >> dragged her name through the gutter. >> some people who dragged her name through the gutter, but, man, she's a clear, strong voice that we need at the united nations and i'm glad she's there. >> that was great that she said what she said. >> and she doesn't fly off the handle that aren't considered and evaluate and consult with the administration. >> of course not. >> well, yesterday came and went but the president pu the kibosh on the plan by nikki haley. search people familiar with the matter tell "the washington post" shortly is after the comments he told his national security team he was upset and uncomfortable executing new sanctions on russia. and an administration official tells "the new york times" trump

was annoyed that ambassador hail li a nounsed it first. a rush foreign minister told the white house that they told russia's embassy that no new sanctions eminent. yesterday sara sanders said that the administration is, quote, evaluating additional sanctions and a decision will be made in the near future. sanders also said yesterday that president trump still wants to sit down for a meeting with vladimir putin. >> wow. >> it's just a problem because this is what the admiral was talking about yesterday, you're supposed to leave everyone guessing but not your cabinet, not your ambassador to -- you're supposed to actually be working together. >> well, nikki haley is of course the voice of the united states at the united nations and she obviously was talking to the treasury secretary and they were moving forward with the responsible foreign policy plan. and then the president just undercuts it. >> well, yes. and obviously the not speaking with one voice say problem. but what seems to be the larger problem is we're back to this question.

after a year and a half of donald trump never saying anything about vladimir putin all of a sudden last week in the wake of the chemical attacks in syria suddenly trump made his first criticism vladimir putin and for three days escalating rhetoric on twitter he suddenly reverses course and decides to get tough and now we had the air strikes last weekend and all the sudden we're back to donald trump being very -- >> very nervous, skittish, soft as you were about to say. >> on putin, once again. >> a flaccid approach to not hard line towards putin. >> right. >> willie. >> joining us now the investigative reporter for the washington post, msnbc contributor and now pulitzer prize winner. "the washington post" won to put u pulitzer prizes yesterday for the 2016 election and the coverage of the 2017 race in alabama. carol was part of the reporting team that won for the papers

russian interference stories. carol, congratulations. >> thank you. thank you, willie. thank you all team. it was a team effort at the washington post, a lot of great colleagues. >> come on, carol. >> come on. >> just come on. >> take it. >> carol, i can ask you, you can get a chain and like put the pulitzer around your neck or something? >> i'm wearing it now. >> i mean, meacham does it all the time. >> my brother wears the polar star. >> it's a big tiffany rock. i don't know if i'd be able to carry it around all day. >> it's like the stanley cup you pass it around the staff. your reporting continues you didn't have much time to celebrate because you were orking on your latest story about trump dedeclining add sanctions against russia. how did this go down exactly? as we said nikki haley the u.n. ambassador does not go out on her own and make statements about u.s. policy. at what point did president trump hear them and become annoyed by them? >> this has been the most

bizarre little story, to me, because, you're right, willie, nikki haley does not -- she does her homework and she confers with the president directly. she's not somebody who's going to say something on national television that she doesn't believe to be the case. and what we understood was that essentially behind the scenes the president was more than annoyed, really quite angry, almost confused that his team had prepared him for a set of -- a menu of sanctions as he had asked for in march and that was on the menu and that is what was coming down the pike and then he said, i'm not so hot on this idea. why is it that we are continually bashing this country? there's a deeper story behind this, but it looks to me like such a strange episode because there's been such a series of changing stories. first, the white house was telling us behind the scenes that nikki had made a mistake and that they had to mop it up.

later literally within an hour it was that she was going to be issuing a correction. no such correction was issued. later it was that the president was annoyed and disappointed that this was announced and he wasn't in charge of it. later there was yet another version. so i have a feeling we'll have another story about this, so stay tuned. >> how does that happen? people listening are going to say how is that possible that something this significant, something with this big of international ramifications is unknown to the president to the point where he hears about them on tv or wherever he hears about them and he gets angry with nikki haley. how was this not passed along to him or was it and he's telling a different story? >> well, think there are two possible and likely options. one, he was resurprised that this was on the menu and felt liking there had been a series of sanctions already that were quite hefty, bombing for example, the raids. and then there are the other

option is that he became increasingly uncomfortable with being hard on putin and hard on russia. keep in mind that when nikki made these remarks, forgive me, nikki haley made these remarks, there was some counterpunching from russia. and in moscow putin spokesperson talked about coming back at the u.s. with some countersanctions. and the language involved a punch in the gut to the u.s. was coming. and somewhere along the line after a contact between the white house and the russian ambassador saying never mind, never mind, we're not going to have the second or third element of sanctions, the russians also changed their tune and became more conciliatory and said they wanted to postpone discussing countersanctions against the u.s. >> thank you very much and congratulations once again. >> congrats, carol. >> is it too early to say hailey

2020? the time is now. that would be such a great -- such i great primary. >> there's a lot of stuff that's going to happen between now and then. >> she'd win, by the way. nikki haley, i think she would beat donald trump in. >> a republican primary? >> you'd be shocked. >> i'd like to do a whole segment on that. i'd like to hear your reasoning for that. i'm not saying you're wrong i'm curious what you're thinking. >> i actually think if she plan in 2020, and this is not me making trouble, it's really not if she ran in 2020 she would have a good chance of being the first woman president of the united states. >> wow. >> and on the cover of "time ". >> what an extraordinary story. >> to knock off a sitting president of her own party. >> that would also be an immigrant. >> of course, yes. >> immigrant family coming to this country and actually proving, proving donald trump wrong on all counts. >> and a woman. >> and a woman. >> and a woman. >> standing up for american values, standing up for reagan

foreign policy values, for the republican base, conservative two-term governor from the south, from south carolina, they get an early primary there. suddenly nikki haley has to win iowa or new hampshire and she's won two of the big three. >> you could be her raging cajun. >> no, it absolutely makes too much sense. >> it's kind of a great image to imagine. . all ro . what did radnor's charts say? thae that that's ahead on morning joe. wha? that's ahead on morning joe. wha? that's ahead on morning joe.

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the new nbc wall street journal poll gives democrats a seven point advantage over republicans who -- and who want to see in control of congress after this year's midterm elections. on the rishs democrats have double-digit leads on dealing with sexual harassment, healthcare and gun violence. and smaller edges on immigration and russia. republicans are in the lead on the economy by seven points on reducing the deficit and protecting u.s. trade.

>> you do have to reducing the deficit. that is -- that is -- put that up. because i know nobody would believe that. but actually republicans have the lead on reducing the deficit when they have the most shameful record over the past year on deficits of any party. >> they have the most shameful record over the last 20 years. >> you'd think this tax cut would be fresh in people's mind and the reports that we'll have a trillion dollar deficit soon. >> it's increasing spending to the highest level ever, it's the biggest spending -- they passed the largest spending bill in the history of the republic without even reading it. crazy. so, you know, americans obviously mika, they docontinueo feel the tax bill say bad idea. >> majority feel it will have a negative impact by increasing the deaf fit and helping only the wealthy and the

corporations. joining us now host of msnbc plaques nation and reverend al sharpton. >> we'll get to steve sharps in a second, but everybody was predict there would be record buy backs, that these corporations would get hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and of course donald trump was out saying, hey, this corporation is giving $1,000 to certain number of employees. but the overwhelming amount of money went to these massive stock buybacks, it's record stock buybacks just like critics were predicting. >> no, we never saw the money going to the employees that he promised, not in mass anyway. >> right. >> and we haven't seen the trickle down jobs either. i think that it is the -- to the political advantage of the democrats the question is will they mess it up? >> yes, yes they will. >> and many of them -- >> yes. >> that have watched this down through the years as democrats have said, if anybody can mess it up, it's the democrats.

>> from barack obama's yes we can to yes they will. i mean, the fact steve radnor, that the democrats are behind on the economy, the democrats are behind on taxes, the democrats are behind on the deficit, the democrats are behind, i mean, on any of these issues shows just how inept the party's message is right now. i'm not saying they're not going to win big in the fall, they probably are because the intensity among their base is higher than ever before. it really does mirror what happened in 2010 for the republicans. but still, they're not looking great in a lot of numbers. but until that tax bill unbelievably unpopular. >> unbelievably unpopular and they'll bible to run against that tox bill. i don't disagree with you about the lack of a positive message at the moment. but if you look at another important factor that's on their side which is the president's approval rating you can get an idea of what could happen in this election. so what this chart shows is

basically all those little red dots are the last 50 years, roughly, of midterm elections plotted against the president's approval rating at the time. so if you take someone who had a 50% approval rating and you draw a line -- >> oh, my goodness. >> overhead shot. >> that's an awesoming ae ing a. >> behind the scenes of chart -- >> you guys! do you want to come over here and do this? >> i'm terrible on those things. >> go ahead, steve. i'm listening. >> no. are you done? >> we're done! yes wilso yes, i'm sorry! we're having fun. >> if you have a president like a 50% approval rating, they would expect to lose 30 seats. donald trump is down here at 40%, so you can see him in the minus 60 to minus 70 seat category. if you look at some of the other

examples. this red dot right here, make this a little clearer. this red dot right here is 2010, when we all remember what happened, the rise of the tea party. barack obama was only at 45% there, he wasn't even at 40 and lost over 60 seats. look at 1944, where the economy was reasonably good, but the president had gone, you know, had raised taxes, actually, and had had some -- the health care plan and all this other stuff, he was at 45% and he lost over 50 seats. so the historic record, correlation is about 70%, much higher than on unemployment. the second thing, there are two other factors to keep in mind. one is the way that the -- the way that the electorate in effect has tilted republican. so what this chart does is goes back to 1980 and basically says, what is the embedded margin of advantage relative to a presidential race on the senate side and on the house side. as you can see, over those 35 years, it's grown from roughly

zero to roughly 5 or 6, as much as 6%. and it's done it for different reasons on the house side than on the senate side. on the house side, it's basically enginegerrymandering. on the house side, two senators per state, small states have an advantage. more and more democrats from places like california, who still only have two senators, so you get an advantage in favor of the republicans. >> let's continue that last block. we talked about nikki haley citizen a possible republican presidential candidate in 2020. your lineup of speakers, reverend niall, at the national action this week features a who's who of potential contenders. >> we start the convention tomorrow in new jersey with governor murphy and governor cuomo. we have senator kamala harris, senator bernie sanders, senator elizabeth warren, senator cory booker, many of whom have been

mentioned as possible candidates along with other leading congressional and senate officials. it is going to be the black vote that's going to be critical in a lot of these primaries. because no one has really captured -- >> let me ask you that. if bernie sanders had a problem gaining any traction in the black community, what does he need to do? what does elizabeth warren need to do, who i also seems to be more from the bernie sanders wing of the democratic party and may be a bit more detached from the black community than say, a joe biden. >> i think that people have never really talked about the fact that many progressives are progressive on many issues, other than race. they have dealt aggressively on a lot of issues, but they don't deal with the racial divide. i think they've got to address that, because you can't just be a progressive and then you, yourself, live in ivory tower

and not deal with the issues on the ground of unemployment, of racial disparities. and i think that they've got to address that. to be out there right on the issues, but not on the ground in our communities, we don't know you. and i think that that's what they've got to connect at national action networks convention and ongoing. thai they've got to have the balance. just because you say the right things does not mean i feel like you represent my interests. >> right. what about joe biden? you interviewed joe, didn't you? zw >> i had a very good conversation with him. i think he's really seriously considering it, but he's really concerned about his family. i think he's torn. i think he would be a formidable candidate if he came in, but if not, we're going to see this weekend national action network, who's got the right stuff. >> it was funny to listen to the way he talked to rev about it. if you asked me right now, i wouldn't do it. of course, there are all these polls saying i would win, but -- >> he says, don't ask me right

now, but actually, by the end of the year, i don't know. i can take a slow conversion -- >> i know a lot of people who want him to run. reverend al sharpton, thank you so much. >> thank you. up next, the man who literally wrote the book on fox news. ga gabe sherman reacts to the news that sean hannity has also enlisted the help of donald trump's fixer, michael cohen. he's the third client for cohen, one to have three. plus, the lawyer for stormy daniels, michael avenue natti j us right here onset. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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and this is a fox news alert. president trump's longtime personal attorney, michael cohen -- is my attorney -- and i defended him -- right here on this program. can anybody say conflict of interest? a huge conflict of interest. fox news has largely ignored --

to put it another way -- sean hannity -- should be fired. like yesterday. >> wow. wow, he just kind of said it all. >> that -- >> that helps. >> incriminating. >> wow! >> do you believe he just came out and said that. >> he's being transparent, which is what a host is supposed to do. you know, if you are covering a story and you have a direct connection to the story, your responsibility to your viewers -- >> boy, this is awkward. >> -- is to tell your viewers from the get-go what that conflict of interest might be. and to be honest. if anybody on this set used michael cohen as an attorney and was his client and then was covering hours and hours and hours on-air and ravaging the trade on trump's office and -- i would disclose. >> welcome back to "morning joe." he's really the ring leader of the circus, john heilemann. >> that would be dishonest. >> also joining the

conversation. >> sleazy. >> associate editor of "the washington post," eugene robinson. gene is not wearing his pulitzer today, but he should. we're trying to get meacham to get a chain and wear it around his neck zplp i think that would be great on meacham. >> it would be awesome on meacham. >> in fact, i'll speak for the pulitzer board. we'll design a special thing just for meacham -- >> a great big gold sort of -- >> it so looks like flavor flav. >> if you could do that so when he's wearing his polo golf shirt, wearing into the bell mead country club to have mint juleps in nashville, i think that would make him a very -- >> former assistant united states attorney -- >> everybody in -- >> -- in the criminal division -- >> i'm thinking we'll have him kind of looking like flavor flav with the big clock -- >> my suggestion! >> pink and green. >> i'll try this again. 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 is

here. special correspondent for "vanity fair" and contributor to msnbc, gabe sherman. >> he is a trouble maker. >> yes, he is. >> do my best. >> wrote the book on fox. and former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama, msnbc contributor joyce vance is with us as well. >> so, i've got so many questions to ask and so little time. >> why don't i sort of lay it out for everyone. we tend to back into thing here is. >> can we show the shep clip again. >> shep, he tries very hard to keep it right down the middle. >> do it. >> let's -- >> this new legal twist, mika. >> the raid of donald trump's personal attorney, michael cohen. he's best known for arranging hush money payments to women who allege affairs with powerful men like trump and former rnc official, elliott brody, who stepped down after it was revealed that cohen negotiated a settlement between him and a playboy model that got pregnant by him. and now we've learned that cohen

also represented a third client and they used the word "client." trump defender and fox news host, sean hannity. we're told he used cohen's services last year and/or this year, though he never disclosed that to his audience, ever, once while defending cohen on the air. here is fox news, the fox news host himself playing down his relationship with the lawyer. >> michael cohen never represented me in any legal matter. i never retained his services. i never received an invoice. i never paid michael cohen for legal fees. i did have occasional brief conversations with michael cohen. he's a great attorney. about legal questions i had or i was looking for input and perspective. my discussions with michael cohen never rose to any level that i needed to tell anyone that i was asking him questions. and to be absolutely clear, they never involved any matter, any -- sorry to disappoint so

many -- matter between me or a third party, a third group at all. and our -- my questions, almost exclusively focused on real estate. i said many times on my radio show, i hate the stock market, i prefer real estate. michael knows real estate. >> so -- >> but he's not a real estate attorney, is he? i'm confused. >> mika? >> yeah. it seemed so limited. the only time he ever asked so many questions, hey, when sal went in front of the fisa court to try to get a warrant against the russians, it sounds like those were the sort of questions he asked -- >> if that's the case, his name shouldn't have been revealed and she shouldn't he shouldn't be considered a client. he never asked for his services and never billed by him. then he's not a client. >> let's not talk in shorthand. john heilemann, make the point you made last hour that if there was nothing to see here and that he wasn't an attorney, there wasn't an attorney/client relationship, then explain how

hard the president's team and cohen's team fought to keep this from the public. >> i mean, this was the central drama of the 2 1/2-hour long court hearing yesterday, in front of kimball wood, which is, there were a variety of things that were discussed, but the moment in the court was over this question. and the -- michael cohen's attorney and the president's attorneys, basically, starting last week, and into this week, were maintaining they did not want to disclose the name of this client. and that they were going to fight the disclosure of this client's name. and that they kept making various arguments about why the name shouldn't be exposed. and that they only had three clients and they weren't going to say -- >> what kind of client? >> what? >> why is he a client? >> i don't think anybody knows the answer to that. we know what sean hannity says. but eventually, it came to the point where kimball wood had to order them in court and say, no, you must tell us who this client's name is. and if their relationship was so incidental and so casual, why were the president and michael

cohen's lawyers fighting to keep it secret? if it were merely a backyard barbecue discussion over real estate -- >> i don't think it was. >> -- why would you care and fight so hard to try to keep it secret? >> well, and why would the president's attorneys and cohen's attorneys actually call him a client? >> because a client is a person or an organization using the services of a lawyer or other professional person or company. that's a client. >> and i'll just -- one last thing, their argument was, when they started this argument, they said they were arguing not just on behalf of michael cohen, but they were arguie ining on behal this mystery client. now sean hannity says, i didn't want them to do that, yet that is what they said. >> the only theory, gabe and i were talking about this in the green room, that may make some sense here, given hannity's relationship with the president and his background is when the judge ordered cohen to give this list on monday, yesterday, clearly it was relevant to the proceeding. and it would be helpful for

michael cohen to have more clients, because the government was arguing, you don't have -- he barely practices law, he has few clients. so you can imagine a scenario where there was a conversation with hannity. and let's say hannity's representation is accurate. that that was all they discussed. and hannity says, look, if my name doesn't come out, you can use me. and if that will help you and that will help your argument -- >> it doesn't help -- >> you can use me -- >> what you're saying is, it can accrue to michael cohen's benefit in front of the judge that hainnity was a client -- >> right, because if he's not a client and all he has is trump and the government has searched cohen's e-mails and says, there are no e-mail communications, then it supports the government's argue that this guy is not really a lawyer, only a fixer for drronald trump. and this attorney/client thing

for trump is overblown. >> inside fox news, this broke for the rest of us. everyone was shocked. and sources inside were speculating, talking about the things that they've heard hannity hired cohen to do. one of which was to help advise him during this left-wing boycott last year, when people during the seth rich conspiracy. the other thing is hannity was accused, it appears falsely, of sexual harassment. that's another thing he may have hired cohen to advise him on. and hannity pushed back and said that's all bunk. like, i talked to this guy very incidentally, as you said, for a real estate transaction, and i texted him back, and i said, what, for your house in naples? >> why is he a client? >> it doesn't make sense that you would reach out to michael cohen for real estate advice, on its face pinpoint may . it may be true, this is what hannity said, but i think there's smoke here. >> so joyce, why is it anybody's business? why is it the press's business that sean hannity is a client of michael cohen.

why did the judge listen to lawyers for news organizations and think the public had a right to know this when really, what does it add to the case? >> it became the public's business, i think because of a miscalculation that cohen's lawyers made, if you read this original letter brief that they submitted to the court near the end, they begin to talk about three clients. two who they name, one who they indicate is so prominent that they're not going to release the name of that client. and this, of course, piqued the interest of a number of news organization organizations. so the way this played out yesterday at the hearing, an independent lawyer representing a number of news organizations, who stands up during the proceedings when the judge indicates she's not going to release the name, and that it will remain secret, and then indicates that the news organizations have an interest in knowing the name, because they represent, in essence, the public. so this is how we get to the

point where the judge then considers law that says that the name of a client itself is not covered by the attorney/client privilege. and under the applicable law, she then releases the name. it's a little bit of a tortured path, but it's triggered really by the remarkable filing that cohen makes, asking for relief from a search warrant that no one's entitled to. >> so joyce concludes, willie, the same thing that jonathan concludes, which is that this happened to sean hannity because of misclalculations on the president's lawyer's part. so you have a lawyer who's more of a fixer and a tv host who's really more of a media fixer than a journalist. so you've got a network of fixers here. >> yeah, and sean hannity's defense last night was, i have an expectation, a reasonable expectation of privacy, that i have a right to privacy. do you buy that, dan? do you think his name should have been made public? and the answer to the question

of, why do they want to hide it, is maybe what happened today and what happened last night, is that it blows up when his name is in the headlines. >> once they assert that there is a secret third client, they've put this issue at play. the judge then said, well, i need to know who this third client is, and then once the judge says i need to know it and they try to do it in secret, that's where the media interest comes into play. so they really put this in play by this filing that joyce rem referenced. but what's getting lost in all of this, they basically won this motion. the hannity stuff completely overblew everything else, but the judge ordered the government to turn over the materials that were seized, which is a shock to all of us. and it got lost in all of the coverage of hannity. to some extent, while they may have made a miscalculation to hannity, they did a pretty good job of getting what they wanted in this hearing, ultimately. >> at least getting a third party.

they didn't get the material directly. >> well, they did. the government was ordered to provide the material to michael cohen and then -- and they got to keep a copy of it, of course. but michael cohen gets to review it. and both partiy ies review it t see what's privileged or what's not. but that is not how these search warrants ordinarily work. usually, the target of the search warrant wouldn't see this until if and when they're charged. so we're all focused on hannity, and it's pretty startling, the revelation, particularly given his position, i get that. but to the extent that the lawyers made a miscalculation on hannity, they made a pretty persuasive argument to the judge on the merit -- >> that said, the judge made it clear that if there was a disagreement, the tie went to the runner, and the runner in this case was the southern district of new york, whose integrity, she said, was unimpeachable, right? >> i think the tie will go to her. at the end of the day, the way this is getting ne tin ting teey

these things naturally go, there's going to be disagreement and it's going to have to go before the judge. >> reading her language and her body, she seems to be steering the towards the notion of actually appointing a special master to eventually adjudicate, that both sides will be make proposals about what should be covered and the special master will eventually decide. that seems to be where she's headed. but i want to ask gene robinson, i want to pull back a little bit in a slightly wider context. sunday night we had james comey with george stephanopoulos saying the things he said about the president. and yesterday we had michael cohen and the spectacle in new york, and finally james comey's book is finally coming out. he's beginning his real full-scale media blitz. so the president's embattlements seem front and center. give me a sense where you think not where the most legal peril is. there's two tracks, legal peril,

political peril, public relations peril. go. >> i think the thing the president will be fuming and raging about and potentially tweeting about the most will be michael cohen. because michael cohen, you know, what was michael cohen's job for a decade with donald trump? it was, he brought deals into the door and he made problems go away. and nobody, i think, nobody but he and trump know all of the stuff that he did. i think people in the trump organization and people in the white house would have to be worried about what sort of skeletons are hidden in the dark corners of that closet. and the fact that this is all likely to come out. and i think president trump will be worried about that more -- because everything is personal with him, i think he'll be more worried about that than anything else. and then, of course, there is also, i think, at the sort of next level down, his personal

pique at james comey for, you know, not being loyal and for causing all of this trouble and all of that. so i think that will be driving him crazy, too. i think it will be a bad sort of week inside the white house and inside his head. >> gabe, of course, sean hannity has been the great protector of donald trump from day one, continues to be. he had a show last week as it relates to michael cohen, who now we know was his attorney in some manner. he had a show where people were attacking the raid on michael cohen's offices, where you had newt gingrich saying they were gestapo tactics, that they were like stalin. they were calling for the firing for rod rosenstein. there was some question as to whether donald trump had called and perhaps helped to orchestrate that practice and at least drove viewers to it because he knew what was coming. does fox have a problem or is there just an expectation and understanding, and in fact,

applause from sean hannity's audience that he's helping this president. >> people like shep smith, chris wallace are aghast at what's going on, because it damages any credibility that they had worked hard to accrue, given the fact that they are working inside of basically state television. the audience doesn't care. obviously, hannity's ratings have held very strong. and fundamentally, this is a question for management. and i was told rupert murdoch made his first appearance back at the office yesterday, coincidentally, after a back injury. so he is going to be back in the mix, making decisions on this. i think they will see how the story plays out in the days ahead. but just to back up to one point about hannity saying he never paid michael cohen, which raises the other question. was the president's lawyer giving sean hannity free legal advice? which is also, on its face, a conflict that you're getting something, a benefit, because you're promoting donald trump on television. >> so if he was a client, which unless they were wrong in court

yesterday when they were revealing the name of the third client, and sean hannity never paid him, then he was receiving dwi gifts from the very person he's covering and protecting. that is a conflict of interest. that's completely inappropriate. and anybody running a news organization would not want that kind of thing happening on their watch. and then you name some of the journalists at fox. i can't imagine they will turn the other way and just look away at this. >> what does chris wallace think of this? what does shep smith think of this? what does brit hume think of this? what does bretbe baier think of this? >> this has been the essential, existential question for these guys, working inside of a network that roger ailes built to advance political interests. and yes, they employ some journalists and try to do the best that they can within this very difficult situation. but hannity, in the age of trump, has demonstrated that he is untouchable. you know, he has the biggest

audience, he has a direct relationship with the president. it seems very hard to me, if he -- if fox disciplines sean hannity, what if donald trump tweets out, everyone, don't watch fox news, they just punished my friend, sean hannity? that is a ratings problem for the network. so, in my sense, this scandal will be a test of who has more power, fox news or donald trump? >> joyce vance, do you see any legal issues here? we're sort of looking at this as it pertains to journalism and news networks, but what about the overall case? >> so i think it is in the first instance a journalism sort of an issue, an ethical issue for lawyers who deal with first amendment and press and internal network news, in terms of the cohen case. it's an interesting issue that you raise, whether or not there was some sort of an exchange of free legal advice for other work. i think that's awfully

speculative based on what we know here, but certainly something to keep an eye on as this case moves forward. >> joyce, i want to follow up and ask you sort of a question that i posed to jonathan turley. what dupg aboo you think about this case is? it started -- i can't help but think as someone who went through the impeachment of bill clint clinton, watching throughout the 1990s a failed land deal turn into the impeachment over the president's extraordinary bad personal judgment. and we -- we were a long way from where we began in white water. and most people look at kenneth starr's investigation and are critical of how that happened. here, we're talking about collusion with russia and asking a lot of questions that i think need to be asked. and i do have confidence in robert mueller and we don't know what cards he's holding, because he is robert mueller and he's

extraordinarily disciplined. that said, the last two weeks has been a circus of porn stars, fixers, playboy bunnies, payoffs, attorneys' records being seized. >> potential to blackmail. >> sean hannity's name being outed. it just -- we seem far afield, do we not from -- and i understand the southern district of new york is pursuing this themselves, but i think for most americans, they're looking at this and they're wondering, wait a minute, are we repeating the mistakes of the 1990s? is robert mueller going to end up being the ken starr of 2018? the question answers itself, but you can certainly understand why some people might be concerned about how collusion has morphed into bonfire the vanities. >> i think, joe, that there's a stark difference between what's going on under this special

counsel and what went on when ken starr was the independent counsel, because you're absolutely accurate that during star's tenure, we morphed the from that original set of allegations and ended up somehow with a blue dress. what's going on here is very different. the entire stormy daniels drama is a separate lawsuit, raised by miss daniels and her lawyer. and it has nothing really to do with the mueller case. it's incidental. it could have occurred whether or not mueller was the counsel. the most interesting thing here is that the case that the southern district of new york is now pursuing against cohen. we know it arose somehow because of the mueller investigation, and mueller took very different tactic from the sort of approach that ken starr took. he went back to the deputy attorney general, they talked about the case, and it was sent to the southern district of new york. and i think that the right analogy here is this. if a prosecutor is investigating a bank robbery and they somehow

discover a murder, they don't say, oh, well, i'm just looking at a bank robbery, so we'll push this murder off to the side. they send is murder on to the right prosecutors. and that's exactly what mueller's done here. >> john? >> let's just say one thing. last week we had a report from mcclatchy which said that michael cohen, that the search that bob mueller has evidence that michael cohen did, in fact, take this now alleged, infamous, alleged trip to prague, that's alleged in the steele dossier, which is where some of the streams cross here. >> but has anybody confirmed that other than mcclatchy? >> no one has confirmed it as of now. >> are you comfortable repeating that on the air? >> that mcclatchy reported it, they're a reputable news organization. i'm not saying it's true. >> but isn't it interesting that something that is that serious. that's my fear as well. that everybody is getting out of -- i saw this time and time again in the '90s with bill

clinton. he's going to be off office by the end of the week -- >> i'm not saying this. >> i know, i understand. but again, prague. was he there, was he not there? we have one source telling one reporter he was there. >> well, with maymaybe. >> we may have multiple sources telling that reporter that. but my only poison about this is just to say, the question joyce raises is, somehow this michael cohen criminal investigation, a serious thing, where to get these warrants obtained took a very high standard to get -- to allow these things to happen. >> i will say, an extraordinary standard there. i do need to say that. for you to go into an office is one thing. for you to go into a lawyer's office is another thing. for you to go into another person's home, you have to have more than just probable cause. you have to have a strong indication of crimes being committed. go ahead. >> so then the question becomes, what was it that bob mueller was looking at around michael cohen that could have led to these --

to the referral. and one of the things that clearly bob mueller would be looking at in the context of a collusion investigation is this assertion in the steele dossier that michael cohen was at the center of that. he's the president's fixer. was he in eastern europe or not? again, the mcclatchy report says that mueller has evidence of that. i'm not saying that's true. but i'm saying that this is where you can see the connection between these two things. and it's possible that in making that investigation that was well within mueller's purview, that he stumbled upon other criminal activity skbrand just made the referral to the southern district. >> joyce advance, michael sherman, thank you all. eugene robinson, you as well. we'll be reading your column in today's "washington post." still ahead on "morning joe," the attorney representing stormy daniels in all of this, michael avenatti is standing by. he joins us in a few minutes. plus, republican senator thom tillis wants legislation to protect the special counsel and has a blunt message to fellow republicans who are criticizing him for it.

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a republican senator is speaking out against republican criticism of his bill to safe gard the office of special counsel robert mueller. spare me is the message from thom tillis, who is co-sponsoring bipartisan legislation with senators lindsey graham, cory booker, and chr chris kunis. if we were dealing with hillary clinton, spare me your righteous indignation. >> dear lord! >> joipg me nning me now. >> haven't you been looking for a couple of righteous republican senators. >> how about someone who knows the difference between right and wrong? >> thom tillis, because we

attack republicans so much, let's do an honor roll, really quickly. thom tillis, lindsey graham spoken out on this. senator langford, has that guy -- he's from one of the most conservative states in america and he has been a straight shooter and a man of integrity all along. of course, ben sasse, american hero. john mccain, from the very beginning. >> lindsay has been surprise imp ingly fair. >> and senator tillis has been on this issue for months. >> joining us -- >> the recall of law and history will hold him in good standing for a long time to come. >> joining us now, a member of the intelligence committee, democratic congressman jim himes of connecticut. eugene robinson is back with us as well and he has the first question. gene? >> well, congressman hemes, just

following up, can congress protect bob mueller and how can it do that? and what are the prospects? >> good question. i'm not sure anybody the ants. whether there are a couple more thom tillises out there. a guy who joins a very small club of non-retiring republicans who are willing to stand up and say, hey, this is the right thing. this is about the rule of law. so we don't know. i mean, i -- on my side of the capitol, in the house, you've got an awful lot of republican legislators facing republican primaries, where even in places like the northeast, there is a small group of republican primary voters who are interested not in what the truth is here, but in supporting their guy. by the way, partly because of the good work of sean hannity, and others who have sort of set this up, not as, you know, let's let this investigation finish, so that we can discover the truth, but, our guy is under attack. so anyway, where i work in the house of representatives, you have an awful lot of representatives, republicans,

who are facing primaries would face very, very difficult political wins at home. i'm not excusing that, i'm explaining why there's not a lot of backbone being shown in the house of representatives today. >> congressman, it's willie geist, good to see you. the president on friday launched coalition strikes with the uk and france in syria. you have said that he should have come to congress first to get authorization. you're certainly not alone in that assessment, up on capitol hill. would you have voted yes if the president had come to congress and said, i'm going to launch in response to the chemical attack by syria, i'm going to launch missiles led by the united states. how would you have voted? >> you know, willie, it's a good question and it harkens me back to when obama was going to come to the kopg acongress and ask te question. here's what my thought process would have been. first of all, thank you, mr. president, for breaking with the tradition of too many republican and democratic presidents, who have launched military strikes without the approval of

congress. that is illegal and unconstitutional and we need to stop doing it. i guess i would have asked a couple of questions, but i'll tell you right up-front, the use of chemical weapons, particularly the persistent use of chemical weapons in the face of an attempt to take those weapons away is so egregious. and look, i get that the conventional weapons in syria have done an awful lot more damage than chemical weapons, but i would have leaned favorably. i would have asked the president, what's the overall hostage, what do we do next day? is this another strike like we saw a year ago, except twice the number of missiles. i would have had some tough questions, i do believe that when somebody so out-steps the bounds of reasonable behavior like assad did, there needs to be a very strong message sent. so i would have been favorably inclined to consider a request by the president for authorization. >> so, congressman, what should be the standard for american intervention overseas. military intervention overseas. as you said, half a million, half a million syrians over the last seven years have been killed by this regime.

most of them with conventional weapons. what's the difference to you with chemical weapons? why get in there and not previously when some of those other deaths could have been prevented? >> it's a great question. look, some pundit pointed out that our policy with respect to -- with respect to syria seems to be that we get really angry when assad murders people with chemical weapons, not conventional weapons. but, look, there's two obvious standards. number one, if we're going to commit money and treasure of the united states, two tests at least need to be met. number one, it needs to be the right thing to do. in an ethical sense. and number two, it obviously needs to be in the interest of the united states to do so. and it is in my mind clearly in the interest of the united states, which whether you like it or not, and we see this time and again, we are the world's policeman. i'm not sure that makes me happy, but that is the reality. if the u.s. is the only country who can step in and exact a price from murderers whosoever overstep the bounds of things like the geneva connection --

the geneva convention -- sorry, i need to do cup of coffee -- you know, that puts us in a position where it may be us, hopefully working with our allies or nobody. >> hey, gene, really quickly, what choice do we have? we allowed assad to cross the red line before. vladimir putin has moved in. iran has moved in. isis exploded. what choice do we have but to have a presence there? >> well, it's unclear, joe. you know, there has never been a good option in syria. there wasn't at the beginning, there wasn't in the middle. there isn't now. but it gets worse, that's the problem. you know, the bad choices were less bad at the beginning, i think, than they are now. so now, yes, we have a presence in syria. that sort of commits to us trying to figure out what the end game is in syria and you figure that out. i have no idea how syria

survives, as a -- as one entity or maybe it splits up. who has power in various regions. it's just a mess. and now we're in. i mean, we've got -- i don't see how we kind of step away entirely and just kind of roll the dice and see what happens in syria. so there's never been a good choice. >> congressman jim himes, thank you very much for being -- >> can i ask a quick question? >> a really quick one. because we have avenatti standing by. >> how are you going to get re-elected as long as it's only 30 and 40 and raining in your district every single day in april? in fact, i'm looking at the extended forecast and we have 30s and 40s through the end of april. and raining. what are you going to do about that, congressman? >> you know what i'm going to do? i'm going to pester the next governor, governor scarborough, to do something about the weather in connecticut.

>> if nominated, i will not run. and i won't be nominated. so we're all good. but you need to take care of this. >> enough, you too! >> jack scarborough as governor. jack loves connecticut. coming up, michael avenatti broke news here on "morning joe" that stormy daniels was physically threatened not to reveal her alleged affair with donald trump. today he is set to reveal the sketch of the person who allegedly did it. michael avenatti joins us next. >> i hope it's not heilemann. >> on "morning joe."

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all right. joining us now is michael avenatti, the lawyer representing stormy daniels. what a day in court yesterday. >> what a day. so, help us out with the sean hannity deal. why would sean hannity's name be dragged into all of this? why would cohen's -- because wave heard now twice from two legal experts, one who you work with, jonathan turley, that sean hannity's name wasn't dragged into the public because of something that the southern district of new york did, but it was one mistake after another from trump's own lawyers. why was his name dragged into this? >> the irony, joe, is that they

effectively threw him under the bus by way of their conduct and what they did. they teed hannity up really on a silver platter, and here we are. >> who's they? >> well, michael cohen's attorneys and the trump attorneys, to a lesser degree. they really teed him up and here he awakes now this morning and he's got this scandal to deal with. >> but he says it's privileged, that there's, you know, it's nothing, he wasn't a client. he never paid a bill. why would his name be in there in the first place, as a client? >> mika, you've got to understand the context in which this came up. last friday the judge asked for the names of the clients for which they were seeking to protect documents based on the attorney/client privilege. documents, okay? that's a critical, critical issue. because what this means to me is that the reason why sean hannity's name was disclosed yesterday is because there are documents relating to whatever legal advice michael cohen gave sean hannity. and they're seeking to protect those documents under the

attorney/client privilege. >> so they're actually -- they may be -- hannity may be telling the truth. maybe he never was a client, but you have actually trump and cohen trying to protect those documents from discovery by claiming an attorney/client privilege that may or may not exist. >> joe, i think that's absolutely right. but let me say this. i don't understand how you square sean hannity's comments relating to him not being a client with the representations that were made to judge wood, a federal judge, that he was a client. i don't understand how you square those. >> i think that's how your viewers -- >> again, it sounds like if they're trying to protect documents, it sounds like they misrepresented -- they could have misrepresented their position to the judge so they could protect documents, right? >> correct. i mean, sean hannity may have never been a client. and they may be seeking to call him a client, because they don't want these documents to get out there in the eithther that show

whatever they show. and we don't know what they show. but you cannot square the representations that were made to judge wood with the representations we're hearing now from sean hannity. they don't square. >> either the president's lawyers are lying or sean hannity is lying? >> or michael cohen's lawyers -- >> correct. >> what a mess. >> well, the president's lawyer. >> they're unsquarable. one side has to be lying. >> i agree. 100%. >> you said last night at the end of all of this, as we started to look forward, you said last night, you made two predictions. one prediction is, michael cohen will get indicted in the next 90 days. and the other is that michael cohen is going to roll on the president. please explain the reasoning behind both of those predictions. >> well, i think this investigation has taken on an enormous amount of momentum. i think the amount of information that was obtained is significant. from what i've heard, from what i've seen, there's no question that michael cohen is going to be charged. it's only a question of when and i think it's going to happen within the next 90 days. based on my experience in white collar criminal investigations and prosecutions, the likelihood

of him not rolling over is very, very slim. i can't imagine he's going to go to trial or potentially face 10, 15, 20, 25 years in a federal penitentiary for anybody, let alone a guy, donald trump, who left him behind when he went to washington, d.c. i mean, don't forget that michael cohen was supposedly his right-hand fixer, et cetera, and when donald trump was finally elected, he blew michael cohen off. >> michael cohen wanted to work on the campaign. he was stiff armed. he wanted to go to washington, d.c., he was stiff armed, because trump didn't think he was good enough to be in washington. >> correct. so how many times are you stiff armed before you say, as they say in italian, basta, enough. do you think michael cohen's wife is going to advise him to take a 20-year bullet for the president. >> his daughter. >> what about his children? >> i doubt it. >> donny deutsch knows michael cohen and we know other people who know michael cohen. he loves his kids. he loves his family.

and he loves his kids more than he loves donald trump. i understand the loyalty and all that other stuff -- >> that only goes so far. >> that only goes so far when your own children are saying, dad, what's going on? >> it's either trump or not watch your kids grow up? what are you going to pick when that question is put to you. >> on the hannity question, as far as you know, does michael cohen cover real estate law? >> you know, with each passing day we find out that michael cohen covers all kinds of things that he probably shouldn't be covering. i don't think he covers any law well. >> well, i ask only because sean hannity said, yeah, we had a casual conversation about real estate and i may have given him ten bucks. >> you were on the show with us about a month ago. i asked him if you think you had any doubt in your mind that the president of the united states directed the payment stormy daniels through michael cohen, $130,000. you said you have no doubt in your mind. do you still feel that way? >> absolutely, now more than ever. i think the last four weeks have shown that our predictions and what we've stated was true, is

true, in fact, and i think that we've been vindicated along the way. and i think our record of predicting what was going to happen in this situation is damned near perfect. >> so you did the big "60 minutes" interview, have been on tv a bunch, why haven't we seen a hint of evidence that the president directed it? >> this is a piece of litigation, and we're being strategic and methodical, like any other case. we're not going to show up on national television and lay out all of our evidence, et cetera. joe, i know you've had some criticisms along the way of the way we've handled this from time to time. this is a very special case. it's a very unique case. if i try a case in south carolina, i'm not going to necessarily try that same case in the same way if i'm trying it in los angeles. it all depends on the facts and the circumstances and this case calls upon a very special skill set. and we're utilizing that skill set. let me say one other thing, as it relates to how much media attention and publicity that we've received. and that we've participated in. you know, up until about six weeks ago, the american people

had only heard from one side. the president and michael cohen. mostly from michael cohen. and what we did five or six weeks ago, joe, is that weapon sent a mental and the message was this. my turn. it's my turn. enough of the nonsense and the lies to the american people about what happened in connection with this payment. and we're going to continue to control the narrative and the microphone until somebody rips it from our hands. >> michael, i said during the republican primary to the republican candidates, and i have said to democrats now, that the only way beat donald trump is you say in his face, you smo smother him, keep on him, keep hitting him. i was critical, i have been critical from time to time, but as john and i were discussing last night, it seems that you have outplayed donald trump at his own game time and time again. so, i mean, there is the legal

side of it, but when you're going after donald trump, obviously, there's also public relations is very important. and i will say, on this score, has anybody, have we seen anybody since donald trump who has become a public figure, 2 1/2 years ago, a political figure get in donald trump's more than michael? >> no, we have not. but -- >> and in donald trump's head. so that is a effective, especially when you get the attorney's misplaying their hand. so, you know -- >> i appreciate -- no, i appreciate that. let me say one thing, though. we're not going to get come place sent. we're in the middle of the first quarter. there's a lot of football left to play here. >> i never would expect you to get complacent. >> i believe in equal treatment towards women, and i too, was critical of you, and you only mentioned, so i'll say, i was critical of the cd thing -- >> the dvd zp. >> the dvd. are you putting anything out in

the course of this case, including that, that does not ultimately have the goods in it? >> snow, that would be foolish. and if you think i'm bluffing, you should >> so there's something on that dvd. >> i do not bluff, yes. >> because you led people to believe that we would see that on 60 minutes. >> i'm going to push back because i did not do that. i did not lead people to believe they would see that on 60 minutes. we fired a warning shot, mika, to michael cohen and the president by sending that dvd out to basically say, if you make a public announcement or if you come out after 60 minutes and you call into question the veracity and the honesty of my client there's going to be consequences and you know what? the warning shot worked. >> and again, we were critical of that, but i will say in terms of pr, it worked. because donald trump has remained silent and his lawyers have made one mistake after another and again it's the reason why sean hannity's name

was dragged into the public yesterday because of the mistalks they made. >> so you revealed on this show that stormy daniels allegedly was physically threatened. and today you will have more on that, a sketch of this person? >> that's correct. >> are we getting closer to knowing who this is? >> i certainly hope so. my client sat down with a world renowned forensic artist. we're going to release that sketch later this morning along with the details of the assailant. we're hopeful -- we're about on the 4 yard line. we're hopeful the public will help tighten up that identification for us. >> are there any witnesses to that threat? >> no, not that we know of. >> any security footage from the parking lot or anything like that? >> is this a potential name that you have in mind. >> we have some names in mind

but we're not going to release them. >> but someone involved with trump in the past? >> i'm t no going to answer that. >> there has been a media storm over your client. what does she want? i'll ask that question again. we've gone through all of this. look at the press scrum. break it down for people, again, who were just asking what's this all about. what does she want? >> at this point she wants the truth and 100% of the truth. she wants the american people to have all the facts relating to the payment, what the president knew, when he knew it, the details of michael cohen's conduct, the threats, the intimidation and look, to the extent there's a counterset of facts that the president or michael cohen wants to put forward, let them come forward and let's lay it out on the table. the american people are smart. they'll sort it out.

>> you were looking at other payoffs, have any of those panned out? >> we've vetted eight of them. a couple of them seem to be very, very solid. we haven't made a determination whether we're going to represent these other women. there's some positives with that and we also have negatives. we have our hands full relating to representing ms. daniels. >> are these payoffs around the same time that was made to stormy daniels? >> i don't want to get into the details of that question. >> you said you have evidence that the president directed these payments. is it directly from the president and is it explicit or is it from another party representing the president? >> i think it's from a surrogate. that's the best way for me to do it. i don't want to exclude there may be direct evidence. we're in the early stages. we still have our motion pending relating to taking the deposition of michael cohen and the president and i think

they're going to make what happened yesterday, the courtroom with sean hannity look like a warmup lap. >> what's the possibility of getting the president in front of you to depose him? >> i think it's pretty good and each day it gets better. every time we set a trap they step right in the center of it. >> why is that? why is it that the president -- this president does not -- i mean, we talked about it off camera as wurp walking on just briefly. this president doesn't get the best and the brightest representing him on legal matters. >> that's what he promised the american people was he would surround himself with the best and the brighter. in administrations past the president of the united states could immediately get an awe agreement to represent him and put 20 people on the case. and i'm talking about chess players, people that i'm used to

going up against in other cases. people say to me what are you you most surprised about in this case? i'm surprised about the level of competition on the other side this time. i expected something far greater. >> i think a lot of people who voted for him did. >> thanks michael. we'll bring in chief legal correspondent and new reporting that michael cohen is frustrated that members of the president's inner circle are not coming to his defense. >> get used to that. the sound you hear -- >> that's the funniest thing i ever heard. >> the beeping thing you heard is the bus backing up. >> vanity fair joins us with that and president trump undermines another cabinet member. this time nikki haley who announced new sanctions against russia on sunday. we're joined with new reporting. "morning joe" is coming right back.

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i do want to say that really think that you should have disclosed your relationship with cohen when you talked about him on this show. you could have said just that you had asked him for advice or whatever, but think it would have been much, much better had you disclosed that relationship. if you were to understand the nature of it, i'll deal with it later if h the show, it was minimal. >> you should have asaid that. >> i have a right to privacy, i do. it was such a minor -- professor, it was such a minor relationship in terms of it had to do with real estate and nothing political. >> all the kids in springfield, they're sobs. >> this has no place on or off tv and that's my two cents.

what the? >> yeah, good morning, everyone. it's tuesday, april 17th. welcome to "morning joe." with us we have national affairs analyst for nbc news, john heilman. >> tom would have been embarrassed to lay it out. you had the president, the president's lawyers, you had kemba woods, you had the porn star. >> stormy. >> the press conference on the steps. and then hannity. i mean. >> like newman on seinfeld. that's what he is. >> she would have -- too much. >> laugh of the matter of the room. >> it was a great old fashioned new york city legal political tabloid mayhem scene and just to

inject sean hannity into what was already going to be a circus environment, stick hannity in the middle of that, all over the place. >> former treasury official and economic analyst. >> and this was right here. daily news. >> okay. there's that. there's that. he says it was just little and he didn't need to mention it. steve rattner is here. danny joins us as well and law professor from george washington university, jonathan tur lee. >> so what do you think? he says he didn't have to mention it despite the fact that he had gone on last week, i guess earlier this week savaging the raid on michael cohen's offices. >> i don't know how you get around that. it's completely staggeringly dishonest with his viewers, with -- i mean, look, how can you cover the story and not say you're a part of it?

>> willie, what do you think? >> i would fire someone bho dwh that on my net work. >> i find this unsurprising completely. i think there's an assumption that sean hannity is working hand and glove with the president of the united states. he said out loud i want him to be president of the united states during the campaign. it's not like a journalist who's covering the story has not disclosed it he should have said it. but all i'm saying is no one should be surprised that hannity is perhaps in bed with donald trump. >> and let's say it was a massive -- massive law office and he used a separate attorney, but how many clients does michael cohen have? shall we get a long -- >> three. oh. and two of them are men who were looking at payoffs to women and the third was hannity. and he didn't disclose this? >> the different between knowing

that sean hannity was a huge trump fan and has been a pit bull for him not stop and he's proud of that, that is far different than him being part of a story, john, that nobody knows he's part of. >> yeah, we're going a little light on mr. hannity here. the documents that were seized in the raid last week are documents that almost inevitably involve correspondence between mr. cohen and his client mr. hannity. when he was complaining this is a politically motivated witch hunt, to not disclose that you are actually a participant, that you're involved in this, that you're complaining about an action that directly affects you because his documents, his e-mail perhaps audio recordings of him and michael cohen were the thing that were raided. to not disclose that while you're commenting on it at television is an outrageous

violation of journalism ethics. >> we don't know exact time when he had his consultations with mr. cohen, but why the you're immersed in all this stuff would you go to the lawyer, a million lawyers in new york. why would you go to the one who is the president's lawyer? >> he talked to trump every day and he says i have a good lawyer for you. >> that's like why would i get -- >> that's not what he says to himself. i hear ya. >> and if it is such a small deal as he was saying, oh it's a small deal, he actually said i never even gave him a dime. so there wasn't any attorney client privilege. >> why not mention it? >> there's nothing to be protected so he now seems to be like he's be stopped from going back to the court saying you have to protect our communications. if it wasn't a big deal, as allen said, then you should have

told your viewers, hey, it's not a big deal. i've talked to him for legal advice myself but this raid is still wrong. that would have been very easy to say. >> never giving him a dime means nothing in trump world because there's tons of favors and fixes being done. that means nothing. >> to say it was for real estate, michael cohen is not a real estate lawyer and there are plenty of real estate lawyers in new york. if there were about real estate who you'd go to and pay a lot of money to. i'm not going light on hannity. he should have disclosed that as of course but is anyone on the panel actually surprised by this news? >> i'm a little surprised. i'm not surprised that hannity is close to people that donald trump is close to. >> to not disclose. >> two of the things here, to be technical i think the attorney client privilege obtained where no money was exchanged. if you were to decide to represent me -- >> i'm saying hannity said i never gave him money. really wasn't even my lawyer.

i just talked to him. then suddenly you're -- you're actually on that line. >> so to my second point then, this is not -- the context for this was, cohen's attorneys were saying they fought for days to not have this name disclosed. they claim that michael cohen had really only three big clients. so the notion that -- i mean hannity is saying hey, i asked him for a couple of pieces of legal advice at a backyard bbq, but if that's the true, if that's not a big deal why are they fighting in front of a federal judge for days. so someone's lying. either michael cohen is lying and in fact hannity had very little relationship with him and he was blowing the relationship out of proportion that is cohen and trying to protect the confidentiality or hannity is lying about the extent of the relationship. they made a big deal about this. >> how did this play out in court exactly?

>> it played out with over the course of the extended discussion teen judge wood and michael cohen's tasaying we're trying to figure out if attorney client privilege pertains to these documents. but she was saying you need to disclose who this client's name is and they went on for a relatively extended period of time saying we shouldn't have to do that, we don't want to do that. can we give it to you in a sealed document, in a sealed envelope, this is the thing they fought over. the reason why it was so dramatic in court because it came at the end of 20 minutes of argumentative back and forth in which it seems cohen's attorneys were ready to lay themselves down on the railroad tracks to stop the disclosure of this name and they -- >> why? >> and they did maintain at one point that they were not just representing michael cohen's interests but they were doing this on behalf of the client. hannity again says i didn't want him to stop this but someone is lying about that because they made a very big deal about

trying to keep this secret. and then they were forced, basically ordered and forced in court to disclose the name. >> which is why they were so desperate to keep his name out of the public. >> steven ryan, one of cohen's attorneys was asked by the judge to specifically name the other name because they said it would not fall under attorney client privilege to with hold that name. and he stood up and named him as sean hannity. so moving on -- >> of course for us the elephant in the room at the moment is that sean hannity is said to have been a third client of michael cohen. there's a statement at the hollywood reporter supposedly from hannity says we've been friends a long time, he did some legal work for me. hannity's producers are working to contact him. we'll report on it when we know the rest of it. we'll get on that in just a second. >> so the reporter wanted to move on quickly. the only -- >> he did not want to.

that's interesting. >> how awkward. >> still ahead on "morning joe," more on this wild story including how exactly hannity's name was revealed in court yesterday. he's got his friend and apparent company michael cohen to thank for that. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. as a control enthusiast, i'm all-business when i travel... even when i travel... for leisure. so i go national, where i can choose any available upgrade in the aisle - without starting any conversations- -or paying any upcharges. what can i say? control suits me. go national. go like a pro. but prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered... in jellyfish. in clinical trials, prevagen has been shown

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the only reason hannity's identify was revealed because of trump and cohen's request to review the documents seized in the raid. however, she did not rule out the possibility of using a so called tank team or special master to determine which of the seized evidence is protected by attorney client privilege. judge kemba woods said quote, i have faith in the southern district attorney's office. their integrity is

unimpeachable. i think a tank team is a viable option. she asked all the lawyer to reconvene to determine the best course of action after the government has finished producing materials seized from cohen. sitting right behind michael cohen in court, the porn star stormy daniels who is suing to be released from the nondisclosure agreement that he arranged. she walked into court amid a media circus surrounded by photographers, literally tripping over each other. a circus in the court today. in terms of stormy, i got to tell you. >> and you were in the middle of that. tell us about a it. >> i mean, it was just -- it was a scene and you know, it -- it's funny, watching this case play out from a little bit of a distance, the stormy daniels case you've got to see how it's mediated through the eyes of the press. she's become the global sensation. you walk around the michael

after net avenatti, he's become -- i mean, the press is obsessed with her. when she came out to do her statement there was basically the scrum of 400 reporters and cameramen or whatever it was, they were there to see her. they were not there to see -- even michael cohen or the lawyers, they wanted to hear stormy daniels speak and she's -- i mean, she's got to be now among the most famous women in the world. >> jonathan tur lley, i understd that sean hannity has acted in such a loathsome manner that there are few people that are any sympathy for him i think rightly whatsoever. that said, that's why we are given constitutional protection that even the loathsome among us are protected from a sort of mob mentality here. what -- could the court have not done this differently? >> well, i've always been very

critical of this rule. woods was on good fround when she said that she could require that the name be disclosed. there's a case called venngally that says the name of your client is not itself protected by attorney client privilege. that's the thing i've always objected to because frankly i believe people should be able to have confidentiality including sean hannity when they contact an attorney. there is an exception under the case and these other cases that says if the disclosure of the attorney's name would be tant amount to a confidential communication it is protected and judge wood was really sort of probing that and concluded i don't -- that really the disclosure of the third name does not appear to be raising some confidential communication. that's what i think is very unfortunate because many people want to talk to attorneys, and the fact that they spoke to an

attorney does put them at risk or embarrasses them. if you allow this rule to be applied as it has, not just by judge wood but other judges, people are reluctant to talk to attorneys. >> and by the way, you've given an example before. you go to a certain attorney and let's say it's a financial advisor, has to go to a bankruptcy attorney for whatever reasons. he or she should be able to do that. >> or a divorce attorney. some attorneys only do divorce and so if you spoke to them you probably -- that's probably the subject matter. >> okay. well, let's move on to the other question i have. just overall, what's it say about this investigation and again, nobody knows what robert mueller is doing right now because he runs a very, very tight ship. how did this spin so wildly out of control that over the past month all we've been talking about are porn stars and playboy bunnies? >> well, unfortunately, this is

much of the doing of the trump legal team specifically, michael cohen. he made every possible wrong move. he allowed this case to metastasize. they could have avoided this. there is no good news coming out of new york for the president. >> coming up on "morning joe," the white house story on russian sanctions changed over and over and over again. and it's all because the president wasn't quite ready to punish the kremlin after all. the washington post has new reporting on that next on "morning joe." ♪ i thought i was managing my moderate to severe crohn's disease. then i realized something was missing... me. my symptoms were keeping me from being there. so, i talked to my doctor and learned humira is for people

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joining us now the investigative reporter for the washington post and now pulitzer prize winner. carol lenic, the washington post won two pulitzer prizes yesterday for the investigation of the russia interference in the 2016 election and the 2007 senate race in alabama. carol was part of the reporting team that won for the paper's russian interference stories. carol, congratulations. >> thank you. thank you, willie, all team. it was a team effort at the washington post. a lot of great -- >> oh, come on o carol. just come on. >> can i just ask you, is there a -- can you get a chain and

like put the pulitzer around your neck or something? >> yeah, wear it. >> i mean, meacham does it all the time. >> it's a big -- it's a big tiffany rock. i don't know if i'd be really able to carry it around all day. >> you get it for the day. you pass it around the staff. but your reporting continues. you didn't have much time to celebrate because you were working on your latest story about trump declining to add sanctions against russia. how did this go down exactly? as we said nikki haley does not go out on her own and make statements about u.s. policy. at what point did president trump hear them and become quote annoyed by them? >> this has been the most bizarre little story to me because you're right, nikki haley does not -- she's a person who does her homework and she confers with the president directly. she's not somebody who's going to say something on national television that she doesn't believe to be the case and what

we understood was that essentially behind the scenes the president was more than annoyed. really quite angry, almost confused that his team had prepared him for a set of -- a mean you of sanctions as he had asked for in march and this was on the menu and this was what was coming down the pike and then he said i'm not so -- i'm not so hot on that idea, why is it that we are continually bashing this country. there's a deeper story behind this, but it looks to me like such a strange episode because there's been sump a series of changing stories. first, the white house was telling us behind the scenes that nikki had made a mistake and that they had to mop it up. later, literally within an hour, it was that she was going to be issuing a correction. no such correction was issued. later it was that the president was annoyed and disappointed that this was announced and he wasn't in charge of it. later there was yet another

version, so i have a feeling we'll have another story about this. so stay tuned. >> how does that happen? i think people listening are going to say how is that even possible that something this significant, something with this big of international ramifications is unknown to the president, to the point where he hears about them on tv or wherever he hears about them and he gets angry with nikki haley. how was this not passed along to him or was it and he's telling a different story. >> i think there are two possible and likely options. one he was resurprised that this was on the menu and felt like there had been a series of sanctions already that were quite hefty. bombing, for example, the raids and then there are the other option is he became increasingly uncomfortable with being hard on putin and hard on russia. keep in mind that when nikki made these remarks, forgive me, nikki haley made these remarks, there was some counterpunching

from russia and in moscow, putin's spokes person talked about coming back at the u.s. with some countersanctions. and the language involved a punch in the gut to the u.s. was coming. and somewhere along the line after a contact between the white house and the russian ambassador saying never mind, never mind, we're not going to have this second or third element of sanctions, the russians also changed their tune and became more conciliatory and said they really wanted to postpone discussing countersanctions against the u.s. >> and coming up on "morning joe," manhattan's federal courthouse has seen many wild scenes over the years and yesterday was no exception. vanity fair was there for the michael cohen saga and she joins us next. all next on "morning joe."

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the reason why sean hannity's name was disclosed yesterday is because there are documents relating to whatever legal advice michael cohen gave sean hannity and they're seeking to protect those documents under the attorney client privilege. >> they may be seeking to call him a client because they don't want these documents to get out there in the ether that show whatever they show. >> either the president's lawyers are lying or sean hannity is lying. >> or michael cohen is lying. >> the attorney representing stormy daniels michael avenatti speaking with us last hour. joining us now, chief legal correspondent and host of the beat, and senior reporter at vanity fair and msnbc contributor, emily jane fox who was at the courthouse for the michael cohen hearing both yesterday and on friday. what a scene that must have been. >> and emily, move the story

forward. what can you tell us? >> so people i spoke with over the weekend before yesterday at the courthouse said that michael's moods have been vacillating between a very trumpian business as usual, i want to be my own offense here, and understanding the gravity of the situation. one person -- or two people actually told me that one of the things that michael was considering over the weekend was should i represent myself because i'm the best person to defend myself and in court yesterday, i could see him, you know, scribbling notes and passing them to his lawyer and at one point once the judge had ordered that the temporary restraining order, she would not grant the restraining order his lawyer put his hand on his arm as if he could tell that michael wanted to get up and say something in court. he's definitely under constraint which is something he's not used to and i don't think he likes it. >> we're talking about loyalty, trump loyalty to trump's family but also what can you tell us about his own family and the

loyalty he feels towards his own family? >> i think he feels loyalty to his own family like many people do. he has two children who are old enough to definitely understand what is going on. he has a wife, he has parents, siblings, and so this is definitely been incredibly difficult on them. >> can you explain the contrast between michael cohen who i think anybody -- most of us have squared off against from time to time, the tough sort of street punk michael cohen that you see on tv and then the michael cohen that we hear from people that like michael cohen and say you know, get him off tv. he's a really fies gunice guy. >> he's very pleasant to be around and in this way he is sort of like donald trump where you have an image he puts forward in the public and privately he's charming and pleasant to be around.

or at least he was and michael cohen is very much the same way. i think you don't get to be sort of a schmoozer and a man around town if people don't like you. >> so one of the big revelations yesterday or the big one was sean hannity as michael cohen's third client. go. what are some of the issues with that -- that that raises? >> if there's nothing wrong with this, why were you both hiding it. if you're not really a lawyer as the feds allege, then what were you doing for sean hannity? if you have evidence of a crimes in multiple locations according to the feds and an independent judge found probable cause to search them do those crimes involve sean hannity. >> and if hannity is claiming no attorney client privilege why is he seeking privilege? >> you can't be halfway privileged and what you have -- >> that's what the kids say. >> that is a very famous saying as you know in the millennial

community right now. what you have here is something that is very problematic for both people involved. they went to great lengths to protect it and a lot of this again, michael cohen may want to be his own lawyer, but there's questions about the legal strategy. they, michael cohen and the president of the united states int interseeding picked this fight and that forced the feds to say some of the things that have been so damning including this key accusation that he's not really a lawyer. and joe, this raises a big question that you and others have been circling with the premises of some of your questions. if you're not really a lawyer and you're not really litigating for these people, what do you do for them? >> yeah. there are these payments that were made. there's paperwork that proves them. he was doing some sort of service. >> you also have the trump tower moscow stuff that we know about so it's not just the payments. there are business things that

michael cohen was involved about that this investigation has brought into the public. >> and this also goes to the time line. in other words, you can think of the bob mueller probe as i know what you did last summer and it's him bearing down on this key period of time in 2016 and anything that arises out of that. but now you have this much longer legitimate timeline of jurisdiction in the southern district of new york where they're digging into what michael cohen has been doing for donald trump potentially as far back as 2006. if that makes donald trump more nervous than 2016, why? >> and this is the thing to come back to your point about before when we were talking about how this fit within the four corners of what mueller was supposed to be investigating. for the course of this entire time michael cohen has been involved in the trump organizations. there's a period of their global expansion. the effort to try to put the trump name on buildings all over the world including moscow.

michael cohen was intimately involved in that letter of intent that we learned was signed in october of 2015 when trump was running for president. he was still trying to make trump tower moscow happen. michael cohen was in the middle of those deals. that put them in contact with shady fanciers, organized crime if a variety of places and that opens up a giant pandora's box because that is what michael cohen was doing. he was doing bisdev in some of the shadiest parts of the world and some of the shadiest businesses of the world. >> saying it was a circus at the courthouse yesterday. stormy daniels is there, you know, michael cohen is representing the president of the united states there. when you comb through what actually happened in the

courtroom though, the judge's ruling on who gets to see what and when, what was the significance of that. >> the judge is moving towards letting the feds go through all this stuff. but the notion that michael cohen or donald trump is going to prescreen all this before the feds is pretty much out the window and that's a big loss. it was fascinating to see donald trump's lawyer under pressure and his new lawyers fighting with the justice department lawyers that he oversees. i mean, this was extraordinary. seth meyers made the joke that this looks a little bit like the season finale of a long running show where they get a characters into one place and some of that attests to stormy daniels and michael avenue netty's strategy because they were again, this is a criminal proceeding. they are in a civil case, but they marched in there and involved themselves in it as well. >> fitit's like crash.

the finale of crash. they're all in the same place. >> you've known michael cohen. were you surprised when there was a big audible gasp when sean hannity's name was revealed as the third client? >> no, because there was this pause before the name was released and mr. cohen's lawyer said i can give it to you in a sealed letter and it felt like they were going to toss to commercial break or something. it was like a real reality tv show moment and when he said it the room felt like it was going to explode. it was just like how can this be happening? one guy next to me put his hands over his eyes so yes, i think everybody was in that room was surprised. >> one of the points that avehe made yesterday, there's a chance

to your point very early in the show, he might have opened up the name and said well, that's interesting. i'll take that under advisement and go back to chambers. at every step they make the tactical error and there was no reason for them to read the name out live in court. >> probably should have -- >> they bubbled right into it. why not try the sealed on paper option? >> all morning i've been trying to get legal experts to say that it's possible that the court -- the prosecutors, the entire process, that they overreached, that they should have protected sean hannity's name and throughout the entire morning, even with jonathan turley who has been -- he's been more skeptical on all of this than anybody else whether it's collusion or obstruction, they have all said the same thing. everybody said the same thing, that it was michael cohen and donald trump's attorneys, their missteps, their overplaying of their hand that actually at the

end exposed saeean hannity. >> the thing that surprised him the most is how weak the group of lawyers has been. then to just blurt it out in the courtroom, that's the irony of it. if they had the option of sliding that envelope to the judge and not leading to conversations all over tv about why the man representing the president represented sean hannity. >> it's like the washington general playing the harlem globe trotters. >> all right. thank you. we'll see you at 6:00 eastern on msnbc. phone bills aren't cheap but nothing like this. a watchdog says they violated a phone booth for scott pruitt. that story is still to come on

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he says you should go to jail. >> that is not normal. that is not okay. first of all, he's just making stuff up but most importantly the president of the united states is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen as he's done for a whole lot of people who criticize him, that is not acceptable in this country. we wake up in the morning and see the president of the united states is accusing people of

crimes without evidence and pronouncing them guilty and saying they should be in jail. that should wake all of us up with a start but there's been so much of it that we're a little bit numb and that's dangerous. >> that's true. former fbi director james comey responding this morning to the president's tweets over the weekend. >> has anybody been surprised, he's gotten hammered, comey, from even anti trump conservatives who are kind of like less sanctimony. >> i think comey who wants to put himself out against the president and he has not been embraced at all. i think he's probably not finding -- the book will sell a million copies but i think culturally he's not finding the reception he thought he might in the places he might find it.

>> time now for business for the bell with cnbc's sarah eisen is back with us. >> i need a picture of the baby. >> next time i'll have one for you guys. you can check my instagram too. >> i'll do that. despite growing trade concerns, china's economy surpassed expectations with nearly 7% growth in its first quarter. >> yes, this is an enviable growth rate for any economy in the world but it speaks to the fact that the economy is chugging along nicely right now with the big threats of big tensions disrupting the apple cart. china saw strong consumption. it also say double digit export growth to the united states, but kmuss say that growth rate shouldn't last because china is going to curb some

infrastructure projects to try to get rid of rising debt and then there are those factory issues as trade tensions rise. and there is some evidence that china laid out a plan to phase out some of its tough rules for foreign auto makers to have to share factories and profits with chinese companies. it's something that the trump administration had been complaining about. china is going to phase out that rule by 2022, so maybe an olive branch to president trump. also wanted to mention tesla because tesla turns out now is going to be delaying its model 3 production for a few days to work out some of the kirngs in the factories. this is important because the model 3 is seen as critical for tesla's business. this is the first mass produced car that's la is making starting at 35,000. all sorts of production delays. elon musk has said it's production hell, but it's ironic because he just took the cbs morning show inside that model

expressing optimism and now another delay. this is sort of comes with the territory with tesla. big expectations and then complications when it comes to getting the production off the ground. >> i checked your instagram and samuel is really cute! >> oh, my gosh! >> he's so smiley now. four months is a fun age. >> that's the best and it only gets better. thank you so much. great to see you. >> up next, a swamp gets thicker and once again it's because of epa chief scott pruitt. what he did this time, next on "morning joe." anna and mark are heading into retirement... and a little nervous. but not so much about what market volatility may do to their retirement savings. that's because they have a shield annuity from brighthouse financial, which allows them to take advantage of growth opportunities in up markets, while maintaining a level of protection in down markets.

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>> well, then shouldn't we -- >> do you want me to leave the room? >> that won't be necessary, hodgkin's. we can talk under the cone of silence. >> the cone of silence. >> i am deeply concerned about the conference room. >> you know what, i'm sorry, alex, i gotta ask, who had the maxwell smart reference in there? >> now i know why they were laughing in the newsroom. >> it was a team effort. we brought it back. we used it a couple months ago. jason said bring it back. >> get smart. that's some good stuff. >> the cone of silence may be the best thing in all of the get smart gags. >> that's what our producers imagine epa's scott pruitt sounds like. remaining questions about that booth. according to the general accountability office yesterday, he told members of the senate that the $43,000 price tag for

the setup violated spending laws requiring notice to congress. the chairman is demanding epa give a full public accounting of this expenditure and explain why the agency thinks it was complying with the law. the epa has defended the booth has necessary for pruitt's work. but it would not say whether the system actually certified to handle sensitive or classified information or if it was more like the cone of silence. prior epa administrators did not have similar setups and pruitt already had access to secure communications equipment elsewhere at the epa's headquarters. >> you know, mika, this guy -- >> this guy -- >> talk about an napoleonic complex, the grandiosity -- >> he's grandiose. >> we've gone through it before. this guy drive als through washington. he orders people to put sirens on.

they say it's not protocol. he fires them. he's got this huge security team. he's got this -- this secure booth. he's acting like he's the director of the cia. >> it's incredible. >> how long will donald trump put up with this sort of graft and this grandiosity? >> i think it might be the least of his problems. joining us now, president of planned parenthood federation of america and planned parenthood action fund cecile richard. her new book is "make trouble, standing up ex, speaking out." the timing of your book could not be more perfect. >> thanks, great to be here. >> what lessons can women get from reading your book about doing exactly that? because i feel like there is such a hunger for this message. >> absolutely. i just got off two weeks of book tour where women are coming out everywhere. i think women are the most powerful political force in the country right now. not only taking action but also

running for office in record numbers. so this is a handbook on not only my own memoir, you know, having this firsthand look at what it means to run for office. >> incredible story, your mom. what do they ask you? >> i think mainly what women want to know is how can i make a difference. so i think that's really the theme of this. it can be something big or small. i think this is the time for women to do more than they ever thought possible. we're seeing women turn out in record numbers as voters. i was back in texas. 58% of the primary voters were women. >> they want to step up? >> they really do. they're going to make the difference this november. >> yes. willie. >> given you were such a prominent activist and given your family history which you mentioned with your mother being the great ann richards, a lot of people are wondering if you're stepping away from planned parenthood to get into elected politics yourself. is that something on your mind?

>> never say never, willie. i think that may be something down the road. i don't know. i know right now i'm completely focused on this november. as we know, the enthusiasm of voters is critical to making a difference. i think what we're seeing is a huge democratic advantage in enthusiasm for getting out to vote. >> for the horizon, that's something you could see for yourself? >> there's tons of women out there, i want to do everything i can to get them elected. >> let's talk about them a little more. it's an incredibly striking figure. 500 women running for congress if my math is right, there's only 435 seats. >> that's right. >> so that's more than one woman per seat. do an analysis of what's motivating these women what sets them apart from previous women who ran for office? >> yes. >> what is it about this moment that's causing this wave? >> we've seen this administration, this congress, really take aim at women in so many way, including access to affordable health care and planned parenthood. women are motivated by that.

what i'm seeing now is when my mom ran for office, it was everyone had to wait their turn and i think women are saying look, i'm going to start before i'm ready and not wait for someone to ask me. i was just actually -- i don't think it's just women running for congress. women from wisconsin driving over who are now running for the statehouse, state senate. it's kind of women all across the board. >> what can somebody who's pro-life learn from this book? >> i think how to -- >> because obviously, there are a lot of pro-life women out there running as well. and what message in here is universal? >> i think universal message is that women can't wait until it's their turn. i really do think that's true. we now see women in the united states senate, 23 women, record numbers. but still we're debating over basic health care issues for women. a lot of this book, too, is really, joe, about the fact that you can be pro-life and you can also understand that isn't something necessarily that government should be deciding

for every woman in america. that's overwhelmingly where people are. even in this time with donald trump taking aim at women's rights and women's health, the strongest support for planned parenthood, even fox's -- fox news own poll two weeks ago. >> so you can poll americans and it's -- it's closer if you talk about limiting abortions after 20 weeks. there's always been a seesaw back and forth. as you're leaving planned parenthood, why is it there are some people who are even pro-life that will tell pollsteres if you just look at the numbers that they don't want funding for planned parenthood cut? >> it's very rare -- oh, i'm sorry, i didn't hear your point. no, it's because i think they understand that planned parenthood does more to prevent unintended pregnancy than any other organization in this country. the progress we've made, we're actually at a record low for teenage pregnancy in the u.s. and 30-year low for unintended pregnancy. that's something pretty much

everyone can agree on. >> question authority, it's not the work, it's who you work with. don't wait for instructions. these are great, great pieces of advice for women. say yes to opportunities. the new book is "make trouble, standing up, speaking out and finding the courage to lead." thank you so much, congratulations. >> thank you so much. >> and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> thanks, mika, thanks, joe. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle with a lot to cover today, starting with a courtroom bombshell. sean hannity, that's right, revealed, as michael cohen's mystery client. the fox news host certainly downplaying the connection. >> i never paid michael cohen for legal fees. i did have occasional brief conversations with michael cohen. >> not so fast. the president puts the brakes on new russian sanctions, despite a clear promise from advisers, including nikki haley.