he never made the agreement. i think he knew he was looking at jail time. it was how much he could shave off. and i think that's what we're beginning to get some idea at. >> i would throw this question to chuck, is one of the central key differences here between these two, between the flynn and cohen case, is that flynn cooperated immediately, early, right out of the gate -- >> and often. >> -- and that cohen was late? one of the big differences here is between early cooperation and late cooperation? >> flynn was immediate, it was fullsome, it was timely and it was therefore substantial. cohen was later and less. look, to the earlier point about tension, there's always tension. doj is a big family, but in the end it's a family and they're going to reach one point of view, it's articulated in this document. >> i'm going to thank joyce, chuck, ken, the reverend.

chuck is going to pick up our coverage right now. hi, chuck. >> how are you doing, one down, two to go. >> enjoy. >> what are you talking about here? this is what i've been doing while you guys have been talking. >> have a good show. >> i'm chuck todd in washington. we are going through these various memos we got the first two in, one more coming up, buckle up. we're expecting all three of the crucial court filings to be public in this hour. we have the one that nicole and company have been chewing over for a few minutes. it appears we just got another one, this from bob mueller's team and the federal prosecutors, that focuses on michael cohen and paul manafort, it will be interesting to see if the special counsel's office has a different view of michael cohen in sentencing than the southern district of new york. you've gotten a preview there. the southern district of new york doesn't want to give too much credit to mr. cohen and his cooperation. let's get right to our

investigations reporter, tom winter. i've done my best to digest memo one and it sounds like the southern district is saying these are serious crimes, michael cohen only cooperated after he realized he was in deep trouble, he should get some credit, but not a lot of credit. what else are you learning? >> as far as anybody expecting here we're going to learn more about what michael cohen may have said to prosecutors in the southern district of new york and his attorneys had said, chuck, there was a separate ongoing federal inquiry in new york, which he was being helpful to, federal prosecutors making it clear he hasn't been helpful at all. they're not going to offer a 5k, which is what would be put in a file, if i signed a formal cooperation agreement and was kind of handing everything over, providing new information, leads, going deep into my criminal history, that's a part of it, i might expect a 5k where

the government said this guy has gone above and beyond where he needed to do, and your honor we're asking you to take down any sorlt of imprisonment or sentence we want to see imposed here. they're saying the exact opposite. he did not want go into his criminal history. he did not want to go beyond the things he was charged with. he didn't want to go beyond the payments that were made to stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. two individuals who have alleged affairs with the president. he didn't want to go into any criminal activity that went beyond that. in addition the federal prosecutors of new york are saying he did not want to go beyond any of his prior criminal history, which is interesting, which might lead us to believe that there are other things that federal investigators in new york might be interested in. they did say in there, one meeting with him. he had one meeting with federal prosecutors in new york according to their filing, they

found him to be generally truthful and credible, so they didn't dump on him as a witness potentially long term. they said, look, as far as the totality of the cooperation we think he k0u6 brought it wasn't all there, chp leads us to the next filing, which is the one that hit as you were starting to speak on the air which is from the the special counsel's office. i'm going to look there and see if he provided more information to robert mueller's team that could have been helpful. >> in fact, we're going to find out that in a minute. let me go to mimi rocah, a former assistant u.s. attorney of the sof earn district of new york, and danny so val lis, and frank, so mimi, is this -- how much -- how much input would bob

mueller have had in the memo that was written by the southern district of new york? because this felt like a rebuttal to michael cohen's filing, period. did it have -- would it have incorporated bob mueller's recomme recommendation or not yet? >> chuck since you started by referring to it as a sovereign district, i think that's appropriate. while we as a country may be more interested in how cohen's cooperation fits into this broader national inquiry that's going on about the president, et cetera, you know they're in front of a judge and judge pauly, who i've been in front of many times is not a judge to not take very, very seriously. and so they have to deal with the circumstances and the facts of the case that they are litigating. and right now they have a defendant, you know, who -- michael cohen who did not sign a cooperation agreement with them.

and i think they're being as straightforward and transparent as they can be with the judge. i haven't looked at this in enough detail yet but based on tom's summary of it, they're saying, look, he didn't cooperate with us. we wanted him to give us more information and he would not do that. however, he cooperated with the special counsel, was truthful there. now the reason for that dichotomy, why he's cooperative in one and not the other, we don't know yet. there may be more to the story. but they're laying it out for the judge, which is the best you can do as the prosecutor, the government, to say here's the facts. one case he didn't cooperate, one case he did and he was truthful. my guess is, i'm totally guessing that robert mueller's office was allowed to read over this submission, not to have a -- you know, yay or nay in the final say of it, but to make sure there's nothing in it that

reveals anything they wouldn't want revealed. but this is the southern district's case and they're laying out the facts as best they can for the judge. >> danny, you're not just playing a defense attorney here, you are a defense attorney. let me read you this one paragraph specifically from the memo here. while cohen's provision of information to the special counsel merits credit, his description of his actions as arising solely from some personal resolve as opposed to arising from criminal charges, acknowledges that he first reached out to the special counsel at a time when he knew he was under threat of imminent indictment by this office. so that thany statement that th

selfless case is unstated. i know attorneys put in a few days ago asking for leniency, you heard that. what do you expect the judge to do about the belief of what cooperation looked like? >> what a study of contrast between michael flynn, michael cohen and maybe at the other end of the extreme, paul manafort. and michael cohen is the example of a defendant who has cooperated some but not quite enough to warrant a 5k1 motion or substantial assistance that can reduce his sentencing significantly. last week his attorneys did a good job creating an atmosphere where it made michael cohen as the picture of cooperation, he rushed in to cooperate and should get the same benefits that michael flynn got. but the government today was quick to counter that and make absolutely clear that while he helped some, he didn't help and rise to the level of that precious 5k1 motion that federal

defendants seek when they cooperate. that can have a huge affect on the final sentence. and that means that the government here is being reasonable in the sense they're asking for a guidelines to below guidelines sentence, but that's not as good as life could have been for michael cohen had he fully and completely cooperated. >> frank, you've probably dealt with this before. where you've got somebody who's extraordinarily cooperative for you on one instance, another law enforcement district says, yeah, but you know this guy's done nothing for me and my investigation. walk us through those little agency to agency fights or district to district fights if you've ever gotten into them. >> certainly have. and the southern district of new york has played in many of those conflicts, intentions. and in an ideal world, chuck, you want cooperation and coordination amongst all the

agencies and all the various pros prosecution entities. you're saying let's rank order the degree of cooperation and let's try to prioritize who has a more important thing going on here. that's difficult to do when you have the special counsel and the sovereign district of new york, if they even sit at the table. it should surprise no one that cohen and everyone surrounding this president is in it for themselves, is trying to make the best deal, have it both ways, try to protect their personal interests while squealing or snitching on someone else. that's not a surprise to anyone based on what we know about cohen and the trump associates. what is slightly surprising is the apparent lack of coordination and one sheet of music. but i'm waiting to hear more

from what the special counsel is going to say in his filings. >> that's fair. mimi i'm curious when i look at this part on page 16 of the filing. cohen further declined to meet with the office on other areas of investigative interest. is this basically saying to michael cohen's attorneys, if you will sit down and sign this agreement and basically lay it all out on the table, maybe we can talk again? >> right. first of all i want to clarify something. i don't know that we should start reading this as a break between the sdny and the special counsel's office. this may be more coordinated than we think in the sense that he does not have a cooperation agreement with the southern district because he didn't -- well, we don't know why exactly. >> so i guess is this pressure? >> right. >> then maybe -- >> so to your point, though, that opportunity is not -- that door is not closed yet. >> okay. yes. >> so once he is sentenced and my guess is he will get prison

time, how much we don't know. but, you know, i think it will be quote substantial. again, judge pauly is not a judge known for light sentences. but, you know, he is going to get some credit here and he should get some credit. but even once you're sentenced, there are procedural mechanisms written into the federal rules of criminal procedure that allow a defendant to cooperate post sentence and get further credit to reduce his sentence. and that could go a really long way here, so absolutely the door is still open. michael cohen is respected by guy pa tril low who knows this inside and out we'll see what happens. >> let me pause the legal analysis here for a minute. tom winter, you just poured through mueller's first memo, i think we're expecting two from him. what did we learn? >> chuck, just to pig by back off of mimi's point, i think

it's important to know this is not necessarily a break here. there's not necessarily a fight twi between the southern district and the special counsel's office. the special counsel is providing more detail here as far as how michael cohen may have been helpful to him. i'm going to read this section here. the defendant, who's michael cohen, also provided information about attempts by other russian nationals to reach the campaign. for example, in or around november 2015, cohen received the contact information for and spoke with a russian national who claimed to be a quote trusted person in the russian federation who could offer the campaign government synergy. this person proposed a meeting between individual one and the president of russia. we know individual one is referring to the president of the united states, donald trump. the person told cohen such a meeting could have a phenomenal impact not only in political but

in a business dimension as well. referring to the moscow project. because there is no bigger warranty in any project than the content of, in parentheses, the president of russia. that's interesting because it appears cohen was approached in november of 2015, which was quite early on in the campaign, you would know this better than i, quite early on in the campaign, that there was somebody in the russian government, somebody well known, well trusted in russia that suggested a political synergy as well as a businey business siny. cohen provided useful

information in his contacts. fourth cohen described the circumstances of preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries while continuing to accept responsibility for the false statements contained within it. the conclusion said that the defendant's crime was serious, remember this is only referring to his lie to congress. the defendant's crime was serious in terms of the underlying conduct and its affect on multiple government investigations, the sentence imposed should reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has consequences, especially where defendant lied about critical facts. however the special counsel's office notes the defendant, who's michael cohen, of course, has made substantial and significant efforts to remediate his contact and assist the special counsel. so the special counsel asks that you give due consideration to michael cohen's efforts set

forth above, and it would be appropriate to allow the defendant to serve any sentence imposed in this case concurrently with the sentence imposed in his other case. what they're talking about, chuck, if he's going to serve a period, i'm going to propose a hypothetical or example, say he gets sentenced to four years in prison for the new york, say he's given two months for lying to congress, that he serves those two months at the same time. in other words he's not going to do four years in the new york case and another two months than what, in layman's terms is what it means. it's clear that cohen did provide some information about efforts or contacts made by people associated with russia and we need more details about that, but we're not getting any more from this document. i will note there are no redactions that i have found in the seven page filing by the special counsel's office. >> in either document.

i want to go big picture here before i go to the legal back and forths here. information that we've gotten in both of these filings. the first filing, which is the southern district of new york, for what it's worth, this is basically the heart of this investigation is the stormy daniels, karen mcdougal payments the women that allegedly had affairs with the president when he was a private citizen and the attempts to buy them off, cover them up. in the filing it says he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual 1, which we know is the president, as a result of cohen's actions, neither woman spoke to the press prior to the election. that's not an insignificant finding here, tom, is it not? >> yeah, it is. it's more explicitly saying what was in the criminal information, and what michael cohen allocuted

in court in august of this year. saying i did all these payments at the direction of the president. he stated that back then but i think it got a little bit lost because it wasn't quite explicit in the criminal information in the court paperwork that he pled guilty to at the time. today i know that exact paragraph that you're referencing. it draws the line. cohen is saying here, hey, those payments to the two women, the ones i'm in trouble for now, that i pled guilty to, that i may go to jail now, the president told me to do that. i think it's important here chuck to say, for folks who may be watching us, saying isn't the president on the hook for some criminal legal exposure there? basically the way it's been referred to me, chuck, if the president was in any other position in government, talking here about the mayor of a city, talking about a governor, we would be talking about somebody who would be testifying against that person in court, they would likely be charged by directing this payment.

but again we have a situation here where it's justice department policy where they don't charge a sitting president. that's probably the only reason why here we're not looking at us talking about an indictment or pending indictment involving donald trump. that's really the only reason why as it's been explained to me. >> frank, i want to bring you in here a minute, because there's another part, tom winter stick with me. we got a lot of detail in the bob mueller memo about the moscow project. and then, and it goes through specifically and tom walked us through. and then it notes three other areas where cohen was cooperative. and it feels like the yada yada episode of "seinfeld". they're leaving out a whole bunch of stuff here. it says, second, cohen provided the special prosecutor with useful information concerning certain discreet russia related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his contact with the trump organization. he provided information with

contact with people at the white house. cohen described circumstances of circulating his response to the congressional inquiries. bottom line it's like he told us a lot of information but we're not going to tell you what he told us. >> this is redaction without the black magic marker. this is deliberate vagueness. we should look at this as significant. for two reasons. one is it was worthy of mention. mueller wanted those things in there specifically without black magic marker covering it. and then read to the bottom on the last page where it says i'm okay if this guy serves any time concurrent with southern district of new york time. i would view this as fairly significant cooperation. there's two other things tom red i'm focussed on. one is mueller's comment to preparation and circulation of his statements before testifying to congress. that's a big deal. that circulation part, who did

he give his prepared comments to? what timing was it? was it the white house? was it trump dictating what he should say or not say to congress? that's a big deal. second thing, he cooperated regarding a russian making overtures in 2015. that's almost worthless information unless it's part of the bigger russian puzzle that mueller needs and we'll hear about it later or it wouldn't even have been in there. >> mimi rocah, the fourth point in the memo, what frank just talked about, this idea, the circulation. isn't that a neon sign screaming obstruction of justice? >> yeah, absolutely. i mean, it sounds like what we're talking about is someone, whether it be one or two or more individuals coordinating with cohen about the false statements he was going to make. and, you know, that would be obstruction, it could be -- there are all sorts of statutes

you could charge it under. it would be a kricrime. chuck, can i add a point? we're jumping back and forth. >> i'm trying to keep organized but it's coming in fast and furious. >> the point i was going to make was about the campaign finance charges and the now more as tom said, more explicit implication of trump. in the crime that cohen pled guilty to we sort of knew it, cohen said it, it was in the information, now it's explicit. the point i want to make is that if the government is saying it in its sentencing papers and the way they said it is, if i remember correctly, is now that cohen has acknowledged. right. so this is something the government can prove. that trump was part of this campaign finance scheme. that he helped direct it. that's huge. i mean, again he's the president, so he's probably not

getting charged. but this is not just cohen's say-so. so trump can call him a liar, but this is about evidence that the u.s. attorney's office in the southern district of new york appears to have. that to me is extremely significant. we are not talking about one person former lawyer who he's going to call a liar. >> this would be calling the united states government a liar is what you're saying? >> yes, which trump surprisingly does as well. but we are talking about -- it's -- we're talking about evidence. and that's something we have to keep coming back to. the things that the southern district, mueller, that they are talking about is not just statements based on belief and spin. they're based on evidence and facts. and we still don't know all the evidence that either the southern district or mueller has, and neither does trump or giuliani, every time they say they have nothing on the president, they can't say that because they don't know what

they have and every day it looks like the evidence is stronger and stronger. >> danny, if you were representing michael cohen, would you go back and say, throw yourself on the mercy on the southern district and give them everything? if you want to stay out of jail or minimize your sentence, your only shot is you better come clean with more stuff to the southern district because they're clearly not happy? >> the biggest revelation of today is the notion that the government is still possibly interested in working with michael cohen. last week when michael cohen's attorneys filed his sentencing memorand memorandum, they left the impression that michael cohen had done all the cooperating he needed to. that was rebutted today by the government. and the thing you might expect is that the government would be offended at the notion that michael cohen would assume he was allowed to the kind of substantial reduction that a 5k1

brings and yet they're still leaving that door to him. if i was representing michael cohen, i think a lot of defense attorneys would say, if you're going to cooperate, don't cooperate 50%. you have to cooperate 100%. the challenge for defense attorneys is they are told about 80%, maybe 70%, maybe 50% by their clients but only the client and maybe the government knows 100%. and i think it would be time to say, there's no point in cooperating halfway. cooperate all the way. in the middle no good. >> tom winter i know you wanted to jump back in here. you have more for me. >> i know at the top of the show you referenced we're going to get three filings today, we got two of them. the judge ordered that the sentencing memos in the cohen case, as well as the federal prosecutor's of new york both of those were due by 5:00, we have them, we've been talking about them. the third was going to be a

filing about the alleged quote crimes and lies that paul manafort committed while he was in the process of cooperation after he pled guilty in september. we have a notice that the judge has ordered the special counsel's office leave to file, they want to file something under seal. so we're going to get a certain portion of what manafort did, at least a reference to it, out in the open once it's filed, it hasn't been filed yet. but we now know for sure that a scant portion of this would be redacted as far as what paul manafort would be up to. we know that a significant portion of attachment to this filing regarding paul manafort is going to be, in fact, filed under seal, that means we won't be able to see it, only a federal judge, mueller's office and paul manafort's counsel will be able to see that filing and obviously paul manafort himself. so we now know at least some of the details as far as what paul manafort's been up to that's led to a break in that plea

agreement we're not going to see those publically today. i wanted to update you on that. and going back to something i read before, federal prosecutors never waste a word, i have learned in my career. they say that the defendant also provided information about attempts, plural, by other russian nationals to reach the campaign and they provided that example that i read to you, chuck. i think it's important to note that. it appears there may have been more than one attempt by russian nationals to reach out to the trump campaign. and they detailed that one back in 2015. that means if michael cohen told anybody about that attempt in 2015 by the time we get to july 2016, and that infamous trump press conference where he says, russia if you're listening -- it means that the point there had already been eight or nine months that they have known that russia wanted to engage with them. i think this changes the time

line to my memory, perhaps significantly here, chuck. >> i agree. look, before i turn to the political fallout on this, i want to get from the three legal experts, do any of these -- these two memos at all, mimi, let me start with you, do they give you a sense where mueller is in his investigation? is she still in the investigatory stage? do you get any sense? could you read the tea leaves at all in here to know we're getting close to the end or stop trying to figure it out? mimi? >> i haven't actually read the memo. but based on the summary we're hearing, i think yes, mueller is still in the investigation stage, in the sense that he's still putting the pieces together. but has so much evidence i think in a way that frankly i'm not sure i even really understood until recently, in the form of hard evidence. and that's why i think he can -- you know, he can really tell when people are lying.

and, you know, he knows the truth. and i think the truth is going to come out. and that's what, you know, set off this tweet storm this morning from trump. i think he's sensing that, too. i think the big picture point i would make, this is bringing home to me this idea that the business and the political interests here are so intertwined, and we've been talking about this since cohen pled guilty and we heard about the trump tower, moscow deal going on at the same time as the campaign, i really think that the link between those interests -- trump's business interests and what happened with russia is starting to become clearer and we're going to see that come more into focus and that's central to what mueller is doing. >> frank's what's your sense of how much mueller knows? how far along he is? to get to that last redaction in plain sight, redacting without

redacting, does that tell you this guy has so much more here or he has still a long way to go? i don't get the sense the special counsel needs more information from michael cohen. the southern district of new york would like more time with him. but it sounds like the special counsel doesn't need more time with michael cohen. >> i agree. i agree with mimi that we're not yet at the end. i don't think it's going to be long, though. here's why. the references today by mueller -- first of all let's talk about the circulation and preparation. that's obstruction. anybody -- if anybody is questioning whether or not mueller is going to go there, whether he's going to buy into this argument that i can't touch you for obstruction or i'm not -- he's going there. that's clear. secondly on the russia front, these vague references to discreet information about russian activity, et cetera. this means that cohen is corroborating what mueller already has. that's my read of this. i think he's got it. i think cohen served the purpose

of saying yes, it happened on my end, too. i think that's where we're going with this. >> danny, your final thought on that as well? how much do you feel like you understood the mueller probe today more so than yesterday. >> i think no one understands the mueller probe more so today than yesterday or the day before that. two pieces of evidence suggest to me that mueller isn't quite done yet, one is the flynn sentencing memo and all the redactions. and today you have the unredacted, redactions which suggests there's still investigation that needs to be protected. for that reason while mueller may be sort of wrapping it up in the grand scheme of things there remains a significant amount of investigation to be done. >> i'm going to let you guys take a breath, read some of these memos. i know you want to read them yourself rather than having tom and i read them to you. i get that. digest it a little bit. if more comes we'll be back to

you. let me bring in the political side of this discussion, carol lee, cornell belcher. and danielle pletka. welcome all. let's talk about the new things we learned today, carol. and the reason i say this is there's new pieces of actual information. number one, the government stated for a fact that the president directed michael cohen to pay off these women. okay. there's always been, there's no more ambiguity there. that is a fact. the two big parts of the mueller investigation, i can pull them both. we have them. i'm going to put up these quotes from the mueller -- this is the mueller sentencing memo. cohen provided the special counsel with useful information with certain russian matters by virtue of his regular contact with company executives in the campaign, company is always trump organization in this case.

cohen described the circumstances of preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries while continuing to set responsibility for those false statements contained. we know the obstruction of justice charge is being pursued and pursued it looks like rather aggressively. and there's a lot more russia contact. >> it also makes that don junior trump tower meeting and statements to create some sort of false narrative there to seem a little small ball because this is actually very serious. we don't know who, but they circulated this to who was involved in that, but clearly, there's a history of willingness to do things like that among people in trump's orbit. the other thing, chuck, that stood out to me, this was the first mention that i can recall where mueller points to 2017/2018, trump's time inside the white house. you know, we don't know exactly why, but that's pretty

significant. if you look at that, and add on the 2015 russia contacts, the time frame of this has just really kind of expanded from what we were initially kind of operating in, in terms of when we thought things may have started and when the investigation was running up to. this says 2017 through 2018. >> danny, there's no sugar coating this on behalf of the president. >> no. >> the government is basically alleging that he's obstructed justice. >> i was asking myself as i was listening to this and reading fast these pages what the trumps would say in response to this, what the president's defenders would say. i think what they're going to say is mueller went into this looking for collusion in the election and how trump stole the election. what does this have to do with that? sure he paid off through his lawyer some sort of bimbo, that's the only -- >> that's the only spin they got.

they don't want any -- the russia stuff looks so -- they're afraid of something. >> we understand we all thought there would be a new donald trump that would come into the white house and behave differently. in fact, was there not a new donald trump there was the same donald trump pursuing the same business interest with the same tactics and the same scummy group of people around him, all of whom remain there. >> two things strike me and one hits home. i'm not a lawyer, i work in politics, campaign. and campaign finance laws are not suggestions -- >> not supposed to be. >> the government thinks the president has done something, if he was not the president, if i had done them, they would prosecute me and put me in jail. i want that to sink in for the american people right now. >> every single person, a governor, a mayor, a senator, anyone at this point. >> and it challenges our ideal

that no man is above the law in this country, so we have a conflict in our democracy right now. the other part about this i think will strike more anxiety with the american public is do we have a manchurian president. clearly the russians were trying to buy him. if you look at the way this president has behaved towards russia, not like a democrat and not like a republican ever has behaved towards russia, the american people have to be more anxious about what, in fact, they've done. >> let me bring in ari melber here. host of the beat. i don't mean to take away your lead and time, instead of playing host, i want you to play analyst for me. maybe mueller isn't proving collusion, but there was certainly an attempt -- he has found out all of these attempts

by the russians to find leverage inside trump world. >> absolutely. i'm happy to be with you chuck. there is a lot of news here in these filings. in listening to you and your panelists i think the manchurian hangs over this, what we're seeing mueller do and the way he deployed the prosecutors in new york, new york is bad cop when it comes to michael cohen's sentencing, four years, heavy, heavy, big -- >> big fine. half a million dollar fine, i believe. yeah. >> and then the mueller filing we see with regard to michael cohen is good cop because it doesn't ask for any prison time and says as a legal matter to the extent he gets any it would be served at the same time or cancelled out with what he gets in new york. so that is a nice reaction from mueller to cohen for what he gave. i think what mueller is telling us tonight what we didn't know even an hour ago, is that michael cohen did provide very

material information about russian money and how russian sources, as referred to in this filing, is a part of bob mueller's investigation. for people who thought six months ago the thing would hinge on whether or not there was election hacking that would involve the trump organization, bob mueller is clearly willing to put everyone on notice this might be business or financial leverage which he is asserting under penalty of perjury is core to his investigation. >> how concerned should donald trump jr. be, ari? >> i would put it like this, nothing in today's filings from new york or the special counsel give us any better answer to that question. there's a reference to people keeping in touch with trump organization executives, whoever those people are should be worried, but i can't say that -- on my reading it tells us whether those are other executives or family executives.

>> that is the hard part here. we know that al len wiseleberg, a vice president of the trump organization was providing some limited cooperation there. this is from the mueller filing, the defendant also provided information about attempts by other russian nationals to reach the campaign, november 2015, cohen received the contact information for a person who could offer the campaign sin erji. but it wasn't felix sater. >> no, it wasn't. >> and it may not have been the lawyer. they don't mention the lawyer -- we know about the lawyer in the trump tower meeting. you have the george papadopoulos, i feel as if -- i wish we had this on a graphic to show the different times we know of attempted russian contact with trump world. >> this is pretty explicit. this is saying political s

synergy. >> bob mueller used it, collusion what is political syn synergy -- >> let's be fair, they were offering political synergy. >> the russians haven't gotten what they hoped to pay for -- >> this has blown up in their face. >> this has blown up in everyone's face. >> nato is weaker, the european union doesn't trust as much. that's a win. >> that's not what they were looking for in this, i think they thought they were going to get a much more friendly president, and policy wise they haven't. that's not to take away from the problems we're seeing here. this is fallout from the fact that trump has refused to surround himself with professionals around the beginning. of course the russians try. they try with everybody. so do the chinese and iranians and everyone else. they were able to get in because

these kind of people maintained their relationship with the president, manafort, cohen, all of them. that's why. >> you're letting him off the hook. >> no, i don't mean to. i really don't. >> okay. >> i think that is the president's style. he values that community more than he values around him a group of professionals with integrity who would have warned him don't do that. >> if i value criminals and crooks around me -- >> a bad guy. i would call you a bad guy. that's why i'm sitting next to you i know you don't. >> if you look at cohen's public narrative and so much of what we talk about in terms of the mueller investigation is what rudy giuliani is saying, the president's lawyers are saying, all the people who can speak publically versus robert mueller not saying anything. and what we learned today is there's this whole narrative around cohen that he was so cooperative and he would turn the page and turning over a new leaf and was fully cooperating and telling him everything he needed to know and then we

learned that wasn't necessarily the case. it kind of underscores the fact that what a lot of these folks say publically may not be at all what's going on. >> ari can we sort of cut through some of the way we're describing this? if robert mueller is outlining in this memo especially attempted obstruction of justice, which is what the one aspect of circulating, prepared congressional testimony is not implying, it is accusing. robert mueller is essentially then saying, here, congress, here's an impeachable offense, you decide. >> well, i think that's where this gets pretty heavy. at whose direction? why was michael cohen coming in and doing it this way? there's a tantalizing footnote on page three of this footnote one that you may have referred to briefly that goes into how cohen got to mueller's team anyway, saying at cohen's request he proactively sought to come in and voluntarily provide

information. and when the moscow project came up, the classic situation where something that cohen didn't know they knew as much about was put on him, then he lied in that first meeting. this is a fanarrative from muelr that's not contested at this hour by michael cohen who's now largely cooperated that basically says he came in to lie about that, and to push a narrative on other stuff. then he realized how much hot water he was in and began cooperating, according to mueller, truthfully in these later meetings. so the core question, who knew about that, who orchestrated it, who in the white house, government lawyers, donald trump himself? there are a lot of people that could be on the hook for obstruction in and around the white house, and yes, a question congress may address if they think there was obstruction from the top. >> ari, you have 16 minutes to prepare a show. get out of here. >> yes, sir.

>> this is really less now a legal discussion, and it's now in the hands of the politicians. it's hard to like -- how do they not address this? >> can i go back on something? >> yes. >> i have, for a while now, i've been on your show, i've said, this is not going to be -- this is not going to be end up something that house democrats take up. this is not going to be that. >> okay. how? >> exactly. >> how do you avoid this? >> listening to this and understanding right now, i don't think -- i think the decision is made for them. i think for better or worse, this is something that nancy pelosi is going to have to deal with. i know commercials said they want to do impeachment, they don't want to do impeachment. >> i agree with that. >> they're not going to have a choice. >> danny, how would history -- if we just sort of look the other way -- if this congress looks the other way at crimes alleged to have been committed by the sitting president of the united states and they don't

attempt to hold him accountable, if politics decides or the voters say we don't want, that's one thing. if they don't lay it out for the public aren't they abdicating their responsibility? >> of course they are. not that that hasn't been a long standing habit with congress. but that's a question for me. how is trump's base going to react to this? fo ttment in new york, the 40-page lengthy one reveals that cohen is a crook. this is an absolute list of petty criminal tax evasion, failure -- >> i don't know if he did anything on the up and up most of his life. that's what it feels like, he didn't do much on the up and up. >> this man you say you lie down with dogs and get up with fleas i can't tell who the dog is in the relationship, but that which we're not focussing on is a disgrace. this man a is -- he's a criminal. i just don't know how the base sees this and do they dismiss it as just a vendetta against the

president? >> i understand that. but i go back to these elected officials, and the constitution and all of the rhetoric that some on the right have used against the clintons over my adult lifetime, the importance of rule of law, the importance of the constitution, at a minimum they have to at least attempt to do their job in the legislative branch. >> i feel like we could go back and there are different benchmarks on the trail to getting to this point that we've said that and it just doesn't happen. and this feels different. but how much different, it just -- you know, i think the president has laid the ground work for his base and a lot of his base is the republicans need members of his base and he's laid the ground work for them to not believe any of this. nothing new to see here, cohen is saying something again -- >> can i get one thing in?

9 million more voters this time around for democrats than republicans. there's a reason for that. they have to put a check on donald trump. >> i think you're right. i think the political pressure now on house democrats. you can't sit here and look at this. tom winter, i know you're the man who knows how to actually read prosecutorial tea leaves here. you have a couple more comments. >> yes. as we ping our way through the filing. i want to bring up three points. one they reference a number of times, we knew these existed but perhaps not to the extent, the secret recordings made between cohen and reporters and other individuals that really appear to sink his ship here. basically they're saying these recordings were helpful in understanding cohen's intent and the behavior that he was up to. they make it clear and reference it numerous times through this document when they say cohen may -- basically his behavior and the way he acted in taking

credit and his involvement in his pride of being involved in the payments that were made to karen mcdougal and stormy daniels and how he wanted to make those payments to save the president from embarrassment, so we see that in the court filings, too. you mentioned allen weissleberg, we know he was given immunity to testify in this case. what i've been told is that his involvement in his -- in any testimony or assistance he may have provided in the investigation was minimal and that it is no longer ongoing. that is of several weeks ago. so my understanding is he may not be the current player or the guy prosecutors may have wanted or hoped for. and the third thing going through this, i'm not sure if we knew this before, pardon me if we did, it hadn't come up, apparently cohen was put on notice in 2012 of an fec

violation and campaign donation in 2012. we know this guy had gotten a heads up about the rules he needed to play by. >> he knew already, yeah. >> so those are three interesting things and themes that i'm interested about. >> i'm curious, i know you've done a lot of reporting on this, too, david pecker, the owner of the nation"national enquirer" a, that media company, what does it tell you about how cooperative he's been to the southern district of new york? he was the launderer of the paf money to stormy daniels and karen mcdougal? it seems he's been singing like a bird? >> i'm not sure if we see any points that reference him -- >> is that because he's not referenced? >> yeah. i think your intuition is dead on the money. my understanding is that david pecker was quite cooperative,

we've reported that in the past that david pecker was helpful to the investigation, another person granted immunity earlier on, and that -- to parse our way through the terms when you're granted you can come in and the statements you give to prosecutors or federal agents can't be used against you so it's like a momentary confession, if you will, they continue come back and use those again in a grand jury proceeding or perhaps in a criminal case. both weiselberg and pecker were given those immunity agreements and basically i'm told that pecker was very helpful in this investigation as far as providing prosecutors with some of the information they needed to proceed to put together a case involving michael cohen, a case which he later pled guilty to. the "journal" has reported, and i don't have this myself, that if michael cohen didn't plead guilty, they had an 80-plus page indictment ready against him in august so that should tell you

the amount of exhaustive investigation frank figliuzzi alluded to that prosecutors have here. >> i'm so glad i still have my lawyers with me. i wasn't 100% sure i had my lawyer team with me. mimi rocah, let me ask you this -- do you see with all the information in here, would mueller come up with a sealed indictment of the president if he thought he had enough to indict him but had enough to wait until he was a private citizen? >> it's a great question, chuck, but a lot of legal experts have been debating what would happen if there was an indictment put under seal and is that a possibility legally. it's complicated. i don't have an easy answer for you. you can't put things under seal for no reason. there's a lot of law underneath this topic.

i can't say it wouldn't be permissible but i can't answer that question there. >> we just got the manafort filing. i'll put in the and get back with you. >> we got tom leonard's mic on so we have breaking news, the manafort filing is in. >> that was meant for a much smaller audience. >> well, it's coming in a minute, good news for myself and ari melberg at 6:00. frank, i want to ask you your read on most of the manafort filings will be redacted. you being a counterintelligence guy, what does that tell you? >> many viewers will be disappointed by the lack of specificity and now we're hearing manafort will be redacted and/or under seal, parts of it. understand this -- this is good stuff. there's a reason for this. number one, it means mueller has reached a level of sensitivity and a level of target that

requires this kind of redaction and even filing something under seal. that could mean there's classified intelligence involved. it could even mean theoretically that someone with the last name of trump or kushner is in this thing. and mueller doesn't want to fall into the comey trap and unnecessarily taint a public leader when he doesn't need to do that. so we see reference to person number one, right? we see redaction. why is that happening? be patient. it's there. the other thing is it's a strategy by mueller to ensure his continued existence. if it was all about filing a report with whitaker or william barr, the next attorney general, we don't know where that report goes, it could go in a shredder but mueller is filing in a court and the fact that it's redacted or under seal my frustrate us but it's with a judge. it's not redacted to the judge, it's in the court system, it's locked in forever and that's a

protection strategy for mueller. >> danny cevallos, how would you be -- if you had to defend the president's actions that michael cohen and the government are alleging that he got -- individual one told him to make these payoffs, how would you try to keep the president from getting indicted if he were a private citizen? >> he put me in a difficult position. you go back to this summer when you could ask the question does the government really care about campaign finance laws. they have a real history. john edwards was not convicted even though he was charged with similar crimes. one answer to that question came in the summer, in august. the government does care. cohen could up in court and essentially said under oath that i did this crime. i'm being charged with this crime and i did it with the president. if that is true, we know the

government does care about this as a crime so if i were defending the president it's time to back-pedal away from cohen, start creating an atmosphere where cohen went rogue, did this on his own, he did not do this at my direction ever. >> which is my guess what he's going to attempt to do there. a "meet the press" interview from 2015, and we're trying to get it cut, but it's made its way into one of this. let me walk you through it. in september of '15 -- and this is in one of the footnotes during one of his sessions with the special counsel -- michael cohen admitted that -- he claimed he made up this idea that then candidate donald trump and vladimir putin would meet. in september of 2015, new york city during the general assembly week, well, when this went out there i asked candidate donald trump on mete the press about this idea of him -- i said your outside counsel intimated you

may have a meeting with the russian president. do you plan on trying to do that. then-candidate trump said the following, know this, michael cohen discussed with donald trump this idea of meeting with putin already and this is how donald trump answered the question on the record to me. well, i had heard that he -- referring to putin -- wanted to meet with me and certainly i am open to it. i would love to do that if he wants to do that. indicating that these outreaches by the russians to trump and maybe they knew they were working him, danny, and maybe they knew this -- the book on his was flattery will get you a long way, whatever it is. but at what point is this no longer circumstantial in your mind? or maybe it's not in your mind? >> i don't think any of cus say this is circumstantial. i think we have seen a pattern of behavior on the part of donald trump and the people around him that i don't see reflected in policy but i see

absolutely reflected in a clear willingness on the part of his campaign and everyone around him to reach out to the russians, whether it's to hurt hillary clinton or it is to help him. the real question that is out there is what did they do, what did he agree to do and that is always going to be the smoking gun here. did he agree to anything? >> and what are the economic ties? it goes back to why still have we not seen tax returns? >> and by the way this mixing of his business and politics, it's as clear as when the mississippi hits the gulf of mexico. it's unclear. there's clearly no wall, no even attempted wall. >> and that -- that's very clear then and not just with russia, potentially with other countries, too. that is why the president's time in office and the fact that that is under scrutiny takes on a new significance because he just doesn't operate where those things are separate ever. and it's how he thinks, it's how

he sees the world. and so you can see as it unfolded in the campaign and there's huge questions about since he's come into office and decisions he's made. so i think we see with every memo that we get we don't learn that much but we kind of do. it's that there's a path and we're getting towards the end. we'll get mueller's report and then apparently a rebuttal from the president. i'm curious, what do you think is going through bill barr's head right now [ laughter ] >> i wondered exactly that. >> i mean, do you want to go into this mess now. >> i cannot imagine having agreed to work for this president -- >> you're surprised he agreed. >> i'm shocked. this person's reputation was secure. >> pristine. and democrats today are not trashing him in their statements. they're like we're looking forward to hearing from him. so they're not automatically

playing politics. >> even james comey praised him. >> what is going through bill barr's head? i can't imagine. >> i think oy vey. [ laughter ] if bill barr says those words, i'm sure that's what it is. >> every to think the confirmation hearings now, i mean, it's going to essentially not be anything be bill barr but it's going to be talking about the president's conduct and ability to understand -- i mean, they're going to have to make him set promises and make promises in this hearing that i think will make barr uncomfortable. >> absolutely. it's going to make -- the country should be uncomfortable and, by the way, this is going to dominate congress and the press for the next several months and americans who want to move on to other things and their pocketbooks and health care reform, forget about it. >> bill clinton got bailed out by a roaring economy. doesn't help today and maybe

coincidental but doesn't help today that the trade war is not playing well, there's concern about a potential recession. >> stock market. >> stock market. that's when the -- people go wait a minute, i'm washing my hands of this guy. >> but when does donald trump ask him enough? when does that happen? >> well, i have to say enough. i already stole a little bit of ari for a few minutes. tom, mimi, frank, daniel, cornell, carol, the brady bunch. it does feel that way. thank you all, we'll be back with more "mpt daily." you know what sunday will be about. "meet the press" on nbc. ari melber picks up the coverage. ari, good luck. >> chuck, i want to hold you over if you have a second. >> go for it, i'll take it. >> there's been talk about political synergy from this new mueller filing. we have new synergy and we'll pick whereupon you're leaving off. that's my comment. my question is take a step