isn't over. it wasn't just murder. he left behind family, a disaster. if i'm the only thing to remind him of, then that's what i'm there for. >> that's all for your this edition of "dateline." i'm craig melvin. thank you for watching. good morning. i'm dara brown at msnbc headquarters. breaking news on the day. the two women claiming extramarital affairs. michael cohen, why prosecutors say he should get a substantial prison term. plus, paul manafort accused by the feds of multiple discernible lies. breaking today, fallout from three big court filings as president trump prepares to head to philadelphia in just a few hours for the army/navy football game.

two filings in the mueller probe and stemming from that, one investigation by the new york prosecutors. prosecutors say trump's former lawyer cohen, quote, acted in coordination with trump in paum for two women who claimed that i had affairs with trump. in his response, he states he's totally clear. the court filings tell us nothing of value. but cohen's statements reveal he had contact with him after he was indicted. cohen did not take them up on that offer. in the third critical filing. trump's former campaign chairman jer paul manafort lied and with an associate linked to russian intelligence services. another white house statement

from sanders says the manafort democratic congress mmacongress cohen had this assessment. >> what we've known for two years is that donald trump is a criminal enterprise, the trump family is a criminal enterprise, and i think you're gong to find republicans say their skin is going to come around. there was a cancer on the presidency. >> meanwhile former fbi director james comey has testified to congress behind closed doors, house republicans grilling him fraud on the hillary clinton email investigation. >> two things are clear to me. one, we could have done this in open setting, and, two, when you read the transcript, you'll see we're talking about hillary clinton's emails, for heaven's

sake. i'm not sure we need to do this at all. joining me is ken delaney. great to have you hear this morning. >> good to be here. what are your takeaways? >> well, there's huge news here. this is certainly the motive pivotal disclosure in the robert muell mueller/civil investigation. first, prosecutors putting their imprimatur behind it. now, it's not accurate to call president trump an unindicted co-conspirator because he would have to know he violated campaign finance law, ben when you look at the [ screaming ] where michael cohen covered up expenses which were fraudulent, it certainly suggests president

trump may have had knowledge. he said he didn't know anything about them, which is clearly not true. the second is the revelations that michael cohen has provided sig canal information to the robert mueller investigation about contact with russia, contacts with the trump campaign, the organization, and the presidency up to and including this year. there's some things we don't know, but he said it was core to the central premise of his investigation. >> ken, which memo causes the most damage to the president and just to be clear, do they implicate the president in any crime? >> well, many people are saying the payments to disguise affairs that trump had with two women is very damaging and may implicate president trump, but prosecutors don't directly accuse him of a crime to be clear. and, of course, the sitting

president of the united states can't be indicted. but it's so incriminating it has members of congress talking about impeach millionaire and has other experts wondering whether he could be put under indictment and that indictment sealed until he leaves office. the bottom line here is contributions to campaigns have to be disclosed, and this one was hidden. these payments were made to hide the scandal. the public didn't find out about it. that's illegal there. >> ken, did we learn anything about the russian collusion from these cohen documents? >> we learned there were more contacts with michael cohen than previously understood, and we also learned, income, donald trump did not tell the traukt whelp he said he was aware of no contacts, no outreach between his inner circle and russia because these documents say he conferred with michal cohen about reaching out to the

russian government during late 2015 about the trump tower moscow deal and other theks. president trump did not tell the truth. >> certainly a lot of information to take in. joining me now, julia manchester and kevin sayer . >> what is the biggest and most important with regard to the filing? >> he says there does seem to be contact between two confidantes. the question amounts to whether that's a legal term, collusion. the president says it is not. when i saw the headline cross

that michael cohen is not going to receive leniency, this is a guy that was the president's closest personal confidante, a fixer back when he was a candidate, private citizen. he totally flipped, reversed course, said he would koomt with bob mueller, and he said, i don't know. that may not be good enough. he's going to be sentenced on december 12th and he's going to go behind bars. >> potentially sent away for years. >> yeah. >>a julia, your perspective? >> yes. it was mike an cohen's contact with russia in 2015 and that political synergy that was mentioned and the fact that the president talked about this before. it's interesting. it comes at an interesting time in politics. you know, democrats are about to take over the house. we've hearned from them they

plan on investigating the president and filibustering the narrative. that's going to be completely flipped in a couple of weeks. yesterday's new, the filings are going to put that into motion on the democrats' side, and we're going to see a very intense push from the democrats to see more of an investigation onto this into the house. it does raise the question of impeachment. we've seen that democrats, especially democratic leadership in the house, have been a little bit cautious about this, but i would like to see how yesterday's filings changed that. >> kevin, i want to ask that. how do you interpret the president's tweet because it appears he's ignoring some pretty big details in the filings, correct? >> to your point, this is a president who has said consistently there was no collusion.

julia hit on something crucial here. you read the court documents, look at them, and the key word "synergy." does synergy amount to collusion? that's important. the president says, no, it does not. legal experts would point otherwise. you know, i think really what you're starting to see are democrats really starting to come to grips with the reality of this political moment just weeks before they're going to be taking control of the house ho of representatives. and likely speaker pelosi has a tough decision to make. you look at the court proceedings. you tap into the polls of the progressive base, and people want consequences. that's going to be a decision

that these democrats are going to have to grapple with. then you have to go to more central areas of the country where people voted for obama and flipped and voted for president trump. that's a decision you're going to have to make really in the next couple of monls. >> i want to hear about that because you heard representative steven cohen said it could shift. how much does this gift license to democrats in the house on impeachment? >> as kevin said, they do have a decision to make. likely speaker pelosi would be a bit cautious on this because of the potential political ramifications. we see a lot of house seats in the center of the country that many people like to refer to as trump country where they flipped from obama to trump. that could be an issue.

in terms of senate republicans, we'll have to see. senate republicans even behind closed doors, there's quite a bit of questions. they quite support the president on most matters, and i would say that politically they would like to continue supporting him because in terms of elections, it's expedient for them. >> julia manchester, kevin cirilli, thanks for joining us today. >> thank you. if president trump were citizen trump, would he be charged? introducing fidelity stock and bond index funds

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by the president to break finance laws. he admits that, quote, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual 1, individual 1 being president trump. joining me now is a criminal attorney. what stood out to you from these cohen documents? >> if the president was not the president, he would be under indictment. these documents indicated he not only participated but conspired and directed cohen to commit two felonies. because he's the president, he's subject to immunity. the majority agree. our constitution gives him that immunity. our commander in chief cannot be under a criminal indictment.

but these cohen documents that were released on friday tell us a lot more than that. they tell us not only that michael cohen participated in this crime at the direction of the president, but they have corroborating evidence. it's not just michael cohen's statements. also that paul manafort was definitely not cooperating and definitely continuing to collude with the president and with the campaign, and so this seems like it's an ongoing investigation and crime which in my opinion could extend the statute of limitations. >> ashleigh, cohen pled guilty, but the president in a tweet yesterday said the documents clear him. is that what these documents show is someone who directs another person to commit a crime potentially guilt of that same crime? >> yes. it's so surprising -- well, i

guess it's not surprising. it was shocking he would tweet that. this shows evidence of a crime. it does the complete opposite. it not only says he directed these two felonies to be committed. it says they have corroborating evidence of it. it's not just his story. they actually have some corroboration that he directed these crimes to happen. so it actually tells us the exact opposite of what the president is tweeting. >> here's joaquin castro last night. let's listen. >> to realize essentially that the only thing keeps donald trump from being indicted is he occupies the presidency and is in the white house. if not, it's likely he would be

indicted as well. >> is that your assessment? >> that's accurate. the only thing keeping him from a grand jury federal indictment is his presidency and the constitution provides him a certain level of immunity. if the president was to be indicted for his ramifications is his impeachment. he could be impeached and once impeached, he could be under criminal indictment. it's a conflict of sorts because he could pardon himself. it doesn't make sense when he holds the ultimate power to pardon himself. once he's not in office, that doesn't protect him anymore, so he could be subject to a criminal indictment once he's impeached or his term expires.

>> and this was weighed in on. take a listen. >> i don't see any crimes. collusion itself is not a crime. what i'm afraid is going to happen is this special counsel whose job is ohm to find crimes, not sins will blur the line between crimes and sins. >> ashleigh, quickly, what is your reaction to that, to everything he just said? >> i think he could be charged with conspiracy. conspiracy is broad-reaching and all you need is one act from the president to actually get him into this conspiracy. i think there are still ongoing ggs, and they're going to continue to uncover more. >> uncover, unravel, a lot more ahead of us. ashleigh merchant, thanks for

your time. >> thank you. what's the bigger takeaway? russians offering pli cal synergies. nbc's pete williams will join us. ♪ the greatest wish of all... is one that brings us together. the lincoln wish list event is here. sign and drive off in a new lincoln with $0 down, $0 due at signing, and a complimentary first month's payment. only at your lincoln dealer. discover.o.omplimentary first month's payment. i like your card, but i'm absolutely not paying an annual fee. discover has no annual fees. really? yeah. we just don't believe in them. oh nice. you would not believe how long i've been rehearsing that. no annual fee on any card. only from discover.

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simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. president trump's former lawyer michael cohen is facing prison time after prosecutors said he should get what they call a cohen was helpful. as for paul manafort, he connells to lie to investigators. with me now chief justice correspondent pete williams. good morning to you, pete. it he's implicated in a felony for hush money paid to two women who had sex with the president. >> this is what cohen has pleaded guilty to, to violating campaign finance laws by paying these women.

these were, in essence, contributions to the campaign and exceeded how much an individual could give to a campaign. this is basically the same point cohen made when he pleaded guilty in august. the same information was in the information called the guilty plea document. this just formalizes it in the sentencing memorandum. the question is did president trump understand this would violate the campaign finance laws? did he understand what was happening here. it certainly takes it beyond what the president said before, that he didn't know about the payments. what cohen is saying he was well aware of it and did it because the president told him to. this is contained in the court documents filed by the prosecutors in new york, not robert mueller's prosecutors. it does raise a question, if this were somebody else, would that person have been indicted

as well or charged with violating campaign finance laws. of course, we don't know the answer to that question. the policy is presidents cannot be charged with a crime, so it becomes an academic question. >> is there a way to assess the idea that he reached out for political synergy or he directed cohen to make payments to the two women? >> the directing is sennly a potential problem. on the ore hand, reaching out to the campaign as early as 2015, offering political synergy and synergy involving the russian government, it certainly adds to the picture that the intelligence community has been saying for some time, that the us ares were actively involved in trying to influence the campaign. what we don't know is who this russian was, if this was somebody freelancing or acting

at the russian government trying to influence the campaign. i think it says more about what the russians were trying to do than the president was involved in. it didn't go anywhere, cohen didn't follow up on it, and we don't know if the president was told about it. >> pete, behalf we let you go, do you have a better understanding of where the mueller investigation stands? >> i don't think so. we get a fuller picture, but i dome think there's anything h e here. every time there's a kour filing, we get a little piece of the puzzle, but in terms of the robert mueller investigation, no. the harder one is can we tell how far along it is, the answer is no. we don't get much out of them. >> pete williams, thank you so much for your time. >> you bet. >> that will do it for me.

dara brown. at the top of the hour is "up" with david gura. but first it's "your business" with j.j. ramberg. (burke) parking splat. and we covered it. talk to farmers. we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪

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...well almost anything. leave no room behind with xfi pods. simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. good morning. coming up on msnbc's "your business," his father fired him 20 years ago, but now he has his own show. "kcriminal minds" star runsa whiskey business. that's all coming up next on "your business."