good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. federal prosecutors in new york have accused the president of criminal violation of the federal campaign laws. they say trump directed -- that's the word -- michael cohen to cover up a campaign contribution in the form of payments with two women with whom he had sexual relations. this comes from the southern district of new york, not robert mueller, not the so-called 17 democrats the president says are working against him, not the deep state, not from a witch hunt. it's from one of the two sentencing memos filed in the case of trump's former lawyer, michael cohen, today, which are shedding new light on the president's potential legal exposure. as trump's longtime fixer, cohen pleaded guilty in august to campaign finance violations and making hush payments to two women on trump's behalf. and now, tonight's sentencing memo makes clear that "with respect to both payments," cohen acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual

one. that's the president. we're also getting new insight into what cohen has told the special counsel in the ongoing probe of potential collusion with russia. according to the filing from mueller's office, cohen not only provided information about the moscow real estate project trump tower over there that trump pursued during the election, but also provided information about attempts by other russian nationals to reach the trump campaign. according to the memo, quote, cohen spoke with a russian national who claimed to be a trusted person in the russian federation who could offer the campaign -- here's a phrase -- political synergy, in other words, working together, trump and russia against hillary. prosecutors say cohen provided useful information concerning certain discrete russia-related matters, according to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with company executives. that's trump company executives. that's how cohen got the information he's been using to try to save himself. and cohen also provided relevant

and useful information concerning his contacts with persons connected to the white house itself after january of 2017. however, despite cohen's assistance, prosecutors in the southern district of new york still recommended a substantial term of imprisonment for michael cohen, given the nature of his crimes. also tonight, prosecutors detailed how trump's former campaign chair, paul manafort, lied to them repeatedly while he was supposedly cooperating with them. what a news night. i'm joined by ken delanian, julie ainsley, a security and justice reporter for nbc news, barbara mcquade, former u.s. attorney out of michigan. mimi roca, former u.s. assistant district in the southern district of new york. i want to start with ken and focus on one thing first. i want to focus on the criminal violation of the campaign laws, this effort to cover up what is really a campaign contribution of $130,000, $150,000, adding it up to cover up these affairs

with these two women. the president directed that activity, according to this memorandum today. ken. >> yes, chris. and in fact, michael cohen already stood up in court and said that when he pleaded guilty to these charges in the southern district of new york. but what's different today is that the u.s. attorney's office, a representative of the united states of america, is endorsing that view in black and white in a court filing, that cohen acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual one, donald trump, who had become the president of the united states. now, the reason i've been told it's not accurate to call him an unindicted co-conspirator, butt there is still an issue of criminal intent. the way the campaign finance law is written, prosecutors have to prove for a violation that you had an intent to violate the law. normally you hear ignorance of the law is no excuse. in this case, ignorance of the law can be an excuse. if donald trump was told by a lawyer, hey, this payment is okay, it's not a violation of the campaign finance law, that

would be clearly a defense. but the facts outlined here suggest a scheme, suggest people who knew what they were doing was wrong, particularly cohen. and clearly, if a president of the united states was able to be indicted, this is a case prosecutors would pursue to the last document, to the last witness, chris. >> and just to make your point again, the prosecutors in this case in the southern district of new york, the federal prosecutors basically nominated and confirmed by this republican senate. these people say that michael cohen had criminal intent. they said he knew the law, that he had worked in politics. >> absolutely. >> he knew this was a cover-up. julia, your thoughts on that, that cohen, directed by individual one, the president, is accused of knowing what he was doing. is it possible or plausible to assume that the guy who told him what he was doing didn't know it was a criminal act, the president? >> yeah, chris, before i came out here, i saw that individual one was the number one trend on twitter, at least in this region, and it's because individual one is named in both of these sentencing memos we've

seen tonight from the southern district and from the special counsel. in the mueller memo, individual one is the owner of the company, the real estate company that cohen worked for. that would be trump organization. that would be donald trump. and he is the one who, i'm reading here, would have conferred with cohen about reaching out to the russian government. then when you talk about the payments to the women, the individual one goes on to become the president of the united states. pretty clear that's donald trump. and that he also worked with him, talked to him about the payments to those women. so, in a lot of ways, it cannot be underscored that these memos really aren't about cohen. i mean, they are about cohen, but they really point to the president in a way we hadn't seen before and point to this administration, not just the campaign, but what's going on inside the white house. >> let me go to barb on this, because i think the language was very strong. i was really impressed by the spirit of the prosecutors' language. they talk about how people go door to door in politics, they lick envelopes, they do all of

the work of politics in an open, transparent way because that's what the law and our democracy is all about, is transparent politics. and this skulduggery, this middle of the night going to that magazine, getting them to catch and kill, getting them to kill the story about these affairs, all this done purposefully and deliberately and intricately to cover it up, to make it nontransparent. they really threw the book at this. they took this campaign violation as dead criminal activity. >> one of the things that a prosecutor is required to do in a sentencing memorandum is describe to the judge the nature and seriousness of the offense. and here they describe this as a very serious offense. the whole purpose of campaign finance laws is to provide transparency and who's paying for things and how they're being run. and in fact, they used the word cloud, that michael cohen and individual one went out of their way and took deliberate steps to cloud that transparency by making these payments to hide the truth from the public so that they could cast aine formed vote. when we have a democracy, it's based on the ability of voters

to cast an informed vote. and when you're hiding the truth from the american people, then democracy breaks down. that's a serious crime. >> well, on tonight's multiple court filings, they appear to indicate that president trump himself could be facing new legal exposure, including implications in a federal crime. the president, or individual one, as he's called here, responded tonight with a show of confidence. he tweeted "this is outlandish. totally clears the president. thank you!" well, that's just crazy talk. let me go to mimi on this. you know what's interesting how character and morality all come to play here, that you know, sometimes progressives play this game and sometimes conservatives play this game and trump-ites, whatever you call him. they say personal behavior doesn't matter. it's about politics and ideology conforms to the candidate and it doesn't matter who the person is. here we are talking about a guy and his affairs and the way that his character shows him having the affairs and his character showing him covering up the affairs and how he uses his lawyer to do it and how he uses his money to do it, and now it's

all about protecting his chance to hold public office. it all integrates together. that's what i find faci -- and the prosecutors talk like that. they hit the guy morally. that's the way i read the document. it wasn't a cold, secular document. it's saying this is what brings the toxicity into american politics, these affairs being paid off, women being paid off, power being used to snuff out the truth and not enlightened democracy, but to deny the truth to democracy and the voters. your thoughts. >> absolutely, chris. and look, this is a typical southern district. and frankly, any u.s. attorney office type of document where you talk about the purpose of the laws and the spirit of the laws, and that's important, as barb said, to explain to the judge in terms of sentencing. and judge polly is a judge who takes those laws very seriously. i think it's important to point out that there was a phrase used in the southern district memo

about the evidence against cohen being, quote, overwhelming, and that he didn't cooperate out of sort of the goodness of his heart or spirit, but because he was really caught red-handed. so, for trump to say that this clears him, we don't know that all of the evidence that is, quote, overwhelming against cohen, but i'm willing to go out on a limb here now and say that given what the southern district has put in black and white, in writing, about the president's actions, i'm willing to bet that there is good evidence that trump had the requisite intent to commit this crime as well. >> and i'll go out on a limb and say this is the biggest act of self-delusion since baghdad bob, who said they were winning the war. i want to bring in ari melber, who's been brilliance on this tonight, msnbc's chief correspondent as well as host of "the beat." ari, i love the way you put it up and i want to go back to a deeper question. when trump got away for a while, for a few weeks, with the "access hollywood" tape that everybody said was going to kill

him, reince priebus was going to walk over it, smart republicans, decent republicans said this smells too terrible to withstand, to survive. and here we have a president basically being charged by the federal district of new york up there with basically covering up a couple affairs with money and power and doing it in a way that i can get away with this crap. this is stuff i can get away with. i've got this fixer lawyer here, cohen, he does this crap for me. i've got a magazine that's going to buy this crap and kill it for me. i've got it all wired. i can get away with it, just like he said in the "access hollywood," i can get away with it. i thought it was interesting the way you talked about it tonight. >> well, you laid it out, chris. that attitude that was caught on tape was not just bragging about sexual assault, which itself is potentially felonious conduct. it was also, as you just put it, his belief that lets you get away with it. well, that's not how those people felt, because many of them spoke out. that's not how the prosecutors in new york have deemed the conduct. and they say michael cohen had that same mentality. if you want to call it the trump

organization mentality, it is we'll just get away with it, the rules don't apply. i mean, this was a two by four striking michael cohen in the head over and over today. and this is someone who went out there and did media leaks and tried to say he was doing it both ways or he was going to do this because it was for the good of the country, or he said he wasn't taking a pardon, as if this was something for him that's sitting around on a silver platter, i mean, the privilege of that. and this is the federal prosecutors, as you're alluding to, saying no, it doesn't work like that. you're busted. that's why you're in trouble. you're busted. that's why you're sort of cooperating. and it still wasn't good enough, so you should do hard time. that comes against another thing i think's going to royal the city you're in, the manafort filing, which is getting attention, although it's partly redacted. chris, it says in here on page nine -- we only dealt with this briefly on my hour -- paul manafort authorized people to speak with the administration on his behalf and then lied to mueller about it. paul manafort was in contact with, quote, administration officials in 2018. who are they? did they lie about it? are there other people inside

the white house who are on the hook in these implicated crimes? >> let's talk about your interesting way of putting it together, street corner cop. you said there's the good cop, the bad cop. you basically said the new york prosecutors were the bad cops. the good guys were the mueller's crowd in washington. talk about how that worked, because it seemed to work against michael cohen. new york thought he's a sleazeball, basically said you're as bad as trump. you're as bad as trump because you're a fixer. you help guys like him. you're an enabler. you help bigshots get away with crap nobody should get away with, buying off women, empowering yourself at the expense of other people's powers and dignity. and then we're going to screw you! but down in washington, they can stay nice to you because you've been whispering in their ear for a couple of months, and they're going to be nice to you, but you're going to serve time. looks like real time. >> i think there's a strategy here. remember there was talk from pinned pu pundits about when sdny got involved -- mueller hand off the case? no, he never handed it off in

that sense. he referred things jurisdictionally, but he's a by-the-book guy, but he never gave up control as he said under penalty of perjury to the russia probe. so mueller's the good cop, saying give us what you've got, we'll take it in and try to award people who cooperate, but sdny is the bad cop, saying this isn't cooperation, this is crap. you didn't fully cooperate. this isn't going to be treated under the legal jargon as technical total cooperation, which gives him the sentencing guidelines benefits. and by the way, you only did it because you had to. so, what does that tell us? it tells us you've got folks who are quite independent up at sdny. it stands for southern, but your panelists know some people refer to it as the sovereign district of new york, and that's the place that produced james comey, ma mary jo white, rudy giuliani, preet bharara. >> tell me about that culture. rudy giuliani was up there. what is it about the southern district that they're so tough, they suddenly look like dick tracy? what are they about? they seem to be the tough guys

of the government, not the deep state in d.c., that nonsense, or the 17 democrats. these look like -- what do they call them, the g-men. they're going to get the bad guys, the fbi. >> you definitely have a pride and attitude up there that this is the most important district, this is the only district with its own foreign policy, just like people say about the new york city mayor's office is different than being the mayor of boise, idaho. no disrespect to idaho. and so, i think there's an attitude that they patrol wall street, they patrol weorld trad center, they deal with things on a national-international level, and that feeds that attitude. and again, to not lose the threat as we talk about what mueller got out of this, he got his cooperation from cohen. he tells the story through the footnotes of his filing here, that michael cohen came in and thought he was smartest guy in the room, tried to volunteer a little bit in his first meeting with mueller's team but lie about trump tower. they said we already know about trump tower moscow, so you just screwed yourself. then they brought him to the next meetings and got him to flip and turn.

meanwhile, up in new york, prosecutors are saying that's fine, but what we're doing tonight -- and again, chris, this cannot be overstated -- what we're doing tonight is stating that the sitting president directed a campaign crime because he thought it would help him win an election, which through the electoral college he did win. that's where we are. >> that's my lead, too. thank you, ari. go ahead. >> why is cohen not getting credit for cooperating with the southern district? they say in the document because he refused to answer questions about other crimes they were investigating and past criminal conduct, which is bizarre, because he seems to have fully cooperated with robert mueller, but for whatever reason, he would not -- he only met with the southern district prosecutors a handful of times and he refused to answer their questions about manners they cared very much about, and that's why they're bringing the hammer down him and he's facing 3 1/2 years in prison. >> we're also receiving a sentencing memo in the case of paul manafort, who as we learned last week, you got all big three tonight, allegedly broke the deals of his plea deal by lying to prosecutors as well. and the sentencing memo on

manafort says he lied about his contacts with his russian business partner who mueller was previously described as someone with ties to a russian intelligence. more significant is the filing states that the evidence demonstrates that manafort lied about his contacts with trump administration officials, which he had denied. "for instance, in a text exchange from may 26, 2018." that's this year. manafort authorized a person to speak with an administration official on manafort's behalf. furthermore, a review of documents recovered from a search of manafort's electronic documents demonstrates additional contacts with administration. mimi, i want to talk to you about this russia thing and what we're learning here. it wasn't just the trump tower business. it was going on right through the campaign. in other words, trump was working for money while working for votes, anything but a conflict of interest. but the idea there were russians. and this is the whole thing about the russian thing, all the time these spooky russian figures reaching out like tentacles, trying to establish relations with trump against hillary clinton, at the same time the trump people are either

grabbing onto those tentacles or trying to send their own tentacles back to mass cow. they're both sides trying to hook up, to use a modern term, and it's getting out into the public information now. your thoughts. >> absolutely. i mean, in some ways, we've all been focused on a sort of narrow scope of this. you know, russia hacked the election, hacked the e-mails, you know, did anyone within the trump campaign know about that or help that? and i think, again, we still don't know the definitive answer to that, though it's looking more and more like the answer to that question is yes, from these filings. but i think it's much broader than that. it's about -- the word synergy is really perfect, right? it's not collusion as much as people working, coordinating together towards a common goal, which also sounds a lot like conspiracy. that's pretty much the definition of conspiracy, if that goal is criminal. and here we know the goal for the russians was criminal. and you know, i think there's a very good chance -- not chance, but i think the evidence is starting to pile up more and

more that trump and his team were also working towards that criminal goal, which was to swing the election in illegal ways to get a trump tower business deal out of it and other things that i think we don't know about. and one point i want to come back to about what you read about manafort's lies. you know, these guys, over and over again, they lie, and they keep getting caught by evidence. and i mean, it shouldn't be shocking me because i've seen it with defendants before. i'm sure barb has, too. you know, they keep getting caught and then they try to change the story to fit the evidence that they're confronted with. manafort did it. cohen apparently did it. and i think people are still doing it to this day, like stone and corsi. and that's why you just can't take things at face value that they say. >> you know, we were in catholic school about 1,000 years ago, they used to have the milk bottles. they said the white bottle was clean, so the dark milkshake was the sin and you were evil. look at the three different

examples we've got. flynn goes completely clean this week. he's apparently going to walk. cohen couldn't decide when to do. he would give some information up but not enough to get sprung. and this other guy, manafort, is just being hard-nosed. he's just a hard guy. >> it's not too late for cohen, though. he can still cooperate with the southern district and get credit for that later. >> what was your key on that? i heard you earlier -- what indicates to you he's still in play, if he comes out with more information against trump, for example. does he have a chance to get lesser of a sentence? >> well, clearly, factually, there's information the southern district is interested. they basically said that, right, by saying that he wouldn't cooperate on past, other criminal areas, other areas which i am inferring relates to the trump organization and other dealings, you know, not necessarily related to the campaign, or maybe related to the campaign. you know, remember, cohen implicated the trump organization, essentially, as part of that criminal scheme. so, i think the information -- he has the opportunity, he has

things that are of value to the government. you know, the government would be obviously leery of still cooperating with someone who's lied, but he has enough also truth-telling on his side on the mueller side, and there's specific mechanisms in the criminal, federal criminal rules that allow for a defendant to get cooperation credit after being sentenced. so, i think the opportunity's still there. >> mimi, you've been great all night tonight. i've been watching you all night. thank you for helping all our shows. you're the pros. stick with us, tonight's bombshell report is highly explosive. incredibly damaging to the president's claim that the special counsel's investigation's a hoax or a witch hunt. this is coming out of new york. this is a home game for him. the feds up in new york are going after him, accusing him of directing, which is basically directing a crime. in fact, new york federal prosecutors believe the president of the united states did direct michael cohen, according to today's paper, their memo, to direct two federal offenses by paying two women -- we know who they are, stormy and mcdougle -- for their silence about alleged affairs by

what's called catch-and-kill. again, federal prosecutors write that cohen admitted with respect to both payments he acted in coordination -- and here's the word -- and at the direction of individual one. that's donald trump. in addition to the special counsel's filing seems to undermine president trump's claim that he had nothing to do with russia. according to page four of the special counsel's filing tonight, michael cohen made false and misleading statements concerning outreach to russian officials. cohen had, in fact, conferred with individual one, believed to be president trump, about contacting the russian government before reaching out to gauge russia's interest. in other words, they decide to get together, trump and manafort, to get together with the russians. the meeting ultimately did not take place. joining me is congressman ted lou, democrat from california, house judiciary committee, patricia bertrand and david is washington bureau chief with mother jones. congressman, thank you for joining us. a lot of paper here tonight, but the one thing that jumped out at

me was president of the united states, individual one, directed a crime. >> thank you, chris. when you look at what the prosecutors did in the southern district of new york, they allege that donald trump directed two campaign finance violations. these are felonies. and you can infer intent by looking at a defendant's statements. so, i'm a former prosecutor. and if you look at what donald trump said, he did not say, hey, i made these payments to kara mcdougle and stormy daniels because it was perfectly fine. he denied doing it at all, because he knew it was illegal. now we have a president who committed two felonies while running for president. >> it's so intricate, congressman. if you look at the document today, the memorandum, the amount of paperwork and phony shell organization creation, everything, it seems like they know that there's criminal intent here. >> absolutely. individual one, who is donald trump, was mentioned over 20 times in these documents, and it's very clear donald trump was intimately involved with a lot

of these decisions, or a lot of things that michael cohen was doing, and prosecutors are basically laying out that michael cohen brazenly violated the laws and donald trump directed him to do so. >> what about impeachment here? when you look at this, is this enough to bring charges? is this enough for hearings? is this enough for committee hearings by the house judiciary committee on this president's behavior? >> so, i'm on the judiciary committee, and my view is that impeachment, like the power to declare war, is one of congress' gravest responsibilities. it should never be our first option. i think we need to wait for the special counsel investigation to conclude. these were court filings that were done for sentencing purposes. we don't know how much special counsel mueller knows about what's going on with russia and these other related activities, specifically at donald trump. we should wait for the investigation to conclude and make a decision then. >> when do you think that would come? give me a time frame right now. here we are, right before the holidays. congress is going to be in the third of january. >> right. >> you're ready for business

pretty early. when do you see the judiciary committee getting started and looking at these charges? >> we get subpoena power january 3rd. there is something very telling in the michael cohen sentencing filing by special counsel mueller's office. they state that he gave information on russia-related matters core to their investigation. that means special counsel mueller understands full well that his core investigation is russia collusion, that these other things like obstruction of justice, perjury, campaign finance violations, they're tangential, but he would not have said that if he didn't intend to deliver on his core mission. i think that will happen sometime next year. >> congressman lieu, thank you for joining us this friday night. according to the memo just discussed, cohen spoke with a russian national who claimed to be a trusted person in the russian federation, who could offer the campaign, what a phrase, political synergy. collusion is another word for it. prosecutors say cohen provided useful information concerning certain discrete russia-related matters core to its

investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with company executives during the campaign. i want to bring in david on this and natasha. david first. we're talking here about cohen's relationship with trump executives, the family members, the people at the top, working on russia stuff, but this phrase, synergy, sounds to me like a synonym for collusion! >> well, it could be. they claim that that conversation didn't lead to anything. but the second quote that you just cited from i think is the most significant thing on the russian front in all these filings. we've got to take it slowly. that cohen provided mueller with useful information, certain discrete russian-related matters, plural. so we're not talking just about the moscow tower project that we know about. russian-related matters core to its investigation. trump keeps saying there's nothing about russia here. mueller is telling us core to our investigation -- >> hacking? >> i don't know what it's about, but the other part, that cohen

obtained because of this contact with trump organization executives. so, here you have the trump organization being tied to russian-related matters that mueller says are core to my investigation. you know, trump told us -- >> trump turned his company over to his kids. >> well, kids? could be the kids -- >> well, they're the top people. >> it could be trump himself because he's still running the company. there's been no real distance there. but during the campaign, this all happened during the campaign. there was something going on between the trump organization and russia, or russia-related issues, beyond the moscow project, that we don't know about, and it blows out of the water, which has already been blown out of the water, the claim -- >> who's this russian we're hearing about that is a trusted official, meaning close to putin who was reaching out to the trump organization? >> well, that person has not been identified. i know that i and other reporters will be on this trying to figure this out. >> it's not the tower -- >> probably not -- >> papadopoulos connection. >> but we see again and again and again, whether it's in skia,

papadopoulos, whether it's the maltese professor, whether it's carter page talking to people. again and again we're coming up with dozens or over a dozen points of contact between the trump clan and russia during the campaign, let alone trump contacting putin's own office for help on a project that any filing says would have earned trump hundreds of millions of dollars. hundreds of millions of dollars. that's real money. >> even here. let me go to natasha now. your thoughts about the russian piece of this tonight, because i see two leads in the paper tomorrow morning. that's the way i still look at things. one lead is the president basically directing campaign violations at a very high level, lots of money, hundreds and hundreds of thousands to catch and kill stories about his affairs. then this russian thing, picking up information from the cohen memo and the manafort memo. there's people coming in from the dark, from moscow, who want to connect with russia, create some synergy with his campaign. and of course this financial

thing that went all the way through. according to cohen, it never stopped, and that's in the filing today. the campaign never caused the money-making effort on the part of the trump people to stop. >> yeah, and mueller also revealed something else really interesting about trump's interests in fomenting a relationship with vladimir putin during the campaign. he revealed that trump and michael cohen were having conversations in the fall of 2015 about reaching out to the kremlin to try to connect trump and putin while putin was in new york for the u.n. general assembly in september of 2015. so that indicates that whether or not trump at that point was pursuing the trump tower moscow deal, there seemed to have been an interesting on his part to get in touch with vladimir putin that early on in the campaign, which is absolutely remarkable. i mean, he had just announced a couple months earlier that he was running for president, and now he's eager to meet with vladimir putin, one of the first world leaders he's eager to meet with is putin? i mean, that just raises so many questions in and of itself. then of course, the fact that not two months later you have

another russian offering to make this connection between trump and putin is also extremely suspicious. but i have to agree with david here. i think that the most pivotal point in that mueller filing about michael cohen is the fact that he has information related to the core of the investigation. does that have to do, for example, with michael cohen potentially going to prague to pay off russian hackers as the steele dossier said? remember, that put cohen at the center of these efforts of potential conspiracy between the trump campaign and russia. so i think that that right there just means that there's so much more left to cohen's cooperation, even though the southern district of new york is very unhappy with the extent to which he's cooperated with them, which may indicate that cohen is more reluctant, perhaps, to throw people associated with the trump organization under the bus. he does not seem to be shy about detailing the efforts between trump and the rest of the campaign to coordinate with the russians during 2016. >> thank you, natasha. let me go back to kent. it seems to me the wall -- was

the wall too high to climb in terms of criminality? in other words, as much as cohen tried to help nail trump, as much as he tried to help on the russia front, the business end and the synergy, all that stuff, it wasn't enough to make up for his own crimes, so he's still going to have the book thrown at him. or is he still able to climb that wall and get out of this thing? >> i think it's not about that he didn't give them trump, because he clearly did. look, if donald trump wasn't the president and was able to be indicted -- remember, justice department policy says you can't indict a sitting president -- it's pretty clear that he would be the target of an investigation about illegal campaign donations related to these payments of women, based on what cohen has given him. i think he didn't get the deal because had he refused to answer questions about his past criminal dealings. and you know, there's been rumors about ties to organized crime. who knows why he didn't want to answer questions about certain things. he's had a long and colorful business history. >> right. >> but i just want to go back to one thing natasha and david were just saying. donald trump in his first presidential news conference was asked five times whether he was

aware of any campaign officials or himself personally was in touch with the russian government or russian officials, and he flatly denied it. and this footnote you've been referring to in this mueller document completely refutes that. had says he conferred with michael cohen about reaching out to the russian government. we shouldn't forget that. i know we're used to donald trump not telling the truth, but this is a major deal. he adamantly denied any ties to russia and these documents suggest there was outreach to russia, and that michael cohen has told the special counsel a lot about it. >> okay. how much underworld possibility is there here? because we talked a couple days ago about manafort and something brilliantly said, i think susan page, said there are worse things than imprisonment. when you deal with russia and ukraine, these are frightening people. if there is a connection with the mob, there are threatening possibilities to everything in your life. does that make sense to you, because you just alluded to it? is there a notion that these guys have a darker context in

which they have to survive? >> well, in terms of manafort, i've always resisted that idea because the russian mob, the russian government, mob-connected people don't tend to bump off americans in the united states. but he may be worried about it. you know, you can't discount it. with cohen, i think it's a little darker situation and we're not clear about his past business ties and who he's got relationships with in new york. and i'm not discounting that that could be a motivation for him, because it's really strange. like, why would you not -- you're cooperating with robert mueller. you're telling him everything he wants to know, but you won't answer basic questions from the southern district of new york, won't even meet with them about your past history and they're going to lock him up. why not? >> because they've had a lifelong mandate to fight the mob and it's possible they would like to get a kill there. barbara, last thought on that. is there reasons you have experienced in your life as a prosecutor that there are people who are more afraid of other forces than they are of the law? >> well, sure, there are other things. sometimes what's going on is they're protecting someone else.

there's a loved one, there's a family member or someone that they fear that they want to protect. so, that's the kind of thing, because it's in michael cohen's best self-interests to be fully cooperative. everything he tells them they're not going to used against him, they're going to use in the prosecution of other people. so the conclusions that come to my mind are either someone he wants to protect or there's someone he fears. >> well said. thank you, natasha bertrand, david and ken dilania nnk and barbara mcquade and ari melber for joining us from "the beat." much more on today's breaking news. senator richard blumenthal with the senate judiciary committee, will join us next to discuss the court filings and what we learned today about russia, about criminality, about a president who's been, well, he's got his name mentioned. he's called individual one. and according to that filing from the southern district of new york, he directed the criminality in that campaign violation. in another big story today, trump has his eye on a new attorney general whose history includes criticism of the mueller investigation. big surprise. and his sweeping view of

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simple. easy. awesome. click or visit a retail store today. we're continuing to follow the breaking news tonight. boy, is it big. in three separate filings, federal prosecutors have provided a number of new bombshells tonight. federal prosecutors up in new york say trump directed lawyer michael cohen to cover up a campaign contribution in the form of payments to two women with whom he had sexual relations. we're also getting new insight into what michael cohen has told the special counsel in the ongoing probe of potential coalition, well, sinnynergism w russia, they call it. according to the filing from mueller's office, cohen not only provide information about the moscow real estate project over there that trump pursued during the election but also provided information about attempts by other russian nationals, trusted nationals, they're called, to reach the campaign and set up a sort of synergy between the trump people and the campaign

against hillary. so, it's russia and trump against hillary. separately, prosecutors detailed how trump's former campaign chair, paul manafort, lied to them repeatedly while he was supposedly cooperating with them. for more, i'm joined by u.s. senator richard blumenthal of connecticut, who sits on the judiciary committee. senator, a lot tonight. how do you react to the southern district of new york's report that the president directed the criminal violation of the campaign laws to cover up his affairs with susan mcdougle and with stormy daniels? >> the sentencing memorandum, first of all, is a bombshell in showing why prosecutors in the southern district of new york, independent of the special counsel, believe that donald trump committed a felony that enabled him, or at least helped him to become president, and covering up those payments was part of what was done, part of

the conspiracy of which president trump is an unindicted co-conspirator. think about it for a moment, unindicted co-conspirator. and the further information in this bombshell memorandum shows facts in evidence that link that conspiracy to russian collusion with the trump campaign and potentially obstruction of justice. so, the pieces of the mosaic or the puzzle are coming into place and the walls are closing in on donald trump and his inner circle, including his family. >> well, the president said in that infamous "access hollywood" tape that he could do what he wanted with women because he's a celebrity, he could get away with it. is he right or is he caught? is he caught now because he was basically charged by the federal prosecutors up in new york, not here in washington, but up there, charged with campaign violation and a campaign violation being payments to shut people up, to pay them off, and to kill the story?

>> there's a basic tenant of the american rule of law that no one is above it. no one is above the law. that was the lesson of watergate. i hope it will be the lesson of this dark period in our history, too. remember that those government prosecutors who have in effect named donald trump as an unindicted co-conspirator, so far unindicted, are not in this special counsel's office. they're in a separate office and they will survive any effort by the president to shut down the special counsel. but all the more important now to ensure the independence and integrity of the special counsel. because as the walls close in on donald trump, he is going to be more desperate, more destructive, and potentially more damaging, and that's why i am going to demand of this new nominee, william barr, as

attorney general, that he commit specifically and unequivocally to protect the integrity and the independence of this special counsel. >> by the way, on that topic tonight, because it is emerging as a big story between now and the next year, the republicans still control the senate with 53, 54 seats. they can get a majority vote and get this guy confirmed. how do you as a democrat stop that, if you want to do so? >> i'm going to be asking tough questions and i'm going to be demanding specific commitments. for example, that he will commit to approving any subpoenas issued by the special counsel. >> i see. >> approve the budget, approve the indictments that may be handed down and avoid constricting the authority of the special counsel. i think my republican colleagues are going to be very, very interested in those answers. i think they want this investigation to be completed, and their fear is that there's

an attorney general who will, in effect, commit another saturday night massacre, even if it's a saturday night massacre in slow motion, which is the danger from the acting attorney general, matt whitaker. and remember, william barr has cast dispersions on the prosecutors in bob mueller's office. he has said that hillary clinton and uranium one are worthier of investigation than collusion between the trump campaign and the russians or obstruction of justice, and i want specific, definition commitments he's going to protect the special counsel. i'm going to press for legislation that will require full disclosure of any findings in evidence from the special counsel, including a report. and i think those kinds of commitments are absolutely necessary. >> okay. >> and democrats as well as republicans can unite about them. >> before you leave tonight, i want to get your thoughts up in the tri-state area, up there in new york, the new york southern district of new york has basically pointed out, they have said charge the president with

directing a political activity, the cover-up of that campaign contribution in great, intricate fashion, according to that memo today, about how michael cohen really went around to try to create the paperwork to make it look like something it wasn't. they say in that memo today, in that sentencing memo, that michael cohen knew what he was doing. he's a lawyer. he was politically sophisticated enough to know he's breaking the law. and proof of that was the way in which he was covering it up, with such intricate effort. do you believe it's possible or plausible that the president of the united states, who was directing him to do so, didn't know he was doing so to cover up a crime? >> i believe it is totally implausible that the president had no idea there was a cover-up ongoing here, if he knew the facts, as apparently, the southern district of new york believes that he did. it seems both impossible and implausible that he didn't understand the motive and the criminal intent here as well as the actions. and one more thing.

this hammer over michael cohen, the recommendation for additional time i think is a point of leverage and we'll see more coming from michael cohen. >> knowing what you know of the law as former attorney general of connecticut, sir, all those years, longer than you've been a senator, much many more years, do you think that the reason the president wasn't indicted is because he's president and that's it? that otherwise, he's guilty? >> i happen to believe the president could be indicted. i may be in a minority in that opinion, and the trial could be postponed until after he finishes his service. i think that there are legal obstacles to such an indictment, and the special counsel or the southern district of new york is going to have to convince itself and the american people, and ultimately, a judge, that those obstacles can be surmounted. but the report, i think, will be extraordinarily damning, whether

or not there is an indictment. >> when he leaves office, he gets an indictment. that's certainly reason for your democratic party to find a nominee who can defeat him this next election. thank you very much, senator richard blumenthal. great to have you on. up next, president trump says there's nothing to see in the court filings tonight. he's clear! he's clean as a whistle! there's nothing here. he is baghdad bob. he's not seeing what's happening on the war front here. you're watching "hardball." her. take your razor, yup. alright, up and down, never side to side, shaquem. you got it? come on, get back. quem, you a second behind your brother, stay focused. can't nobody beat you, can't nobody beat you. hard work baby, it gonna pay off. you got this. with the one hundred and forty-first pick, the seattle seahawks select. alright, you got it, shaquem. alright, let me see. and then, more jobs robegan to appear.. what started with one job spread all around.

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welcome back to "hardball." we're continuing to follow the big news tonight of the three separate sentencing memos regarding trump's former lawyer, michael cohen, and trump's former campaign chair, paul manafort. we're getting new insight into what cohen has told the special counsel in the ongoing probe of potential collusion with russia, or as the russians call it, synergy. and in manafort's sentencing memo, we're learning manafort lied about contacts with his russian business partner as well as his contacts with members of the trump administration when they were in office. but donald trump tonight is claiming that he's not worried. he tweeted, "totally clears the president. thank you!" let's bring in tonight's "hardball" roundtable, adrian elrod, former director of strategic communications for hillary for clinton -- hillary for clinton! hillary for america. that was not intentional. for america. sher michael singleton, political consultant and sam stein, politics editor with "the daily beast." sam, let's go through the first

one. i'm struck by trump's resolute denial of reality. >> you're struck by it? i'm not struck by that. >> the prosecutors up in new york, not the 17 democrats he talks about, not the witch hunt, all that stuff, the deep state. feds up in new york said, >> they said definitively he directed his lawyer to break campaign laws. he directed the commission of a crime. unlike you, i'm not struck by him denile reality, this is how he exists to build an alternate reality in which he is clean and innocent and above it all. at some point, facts are stubborn things. in this case it is very clear that tweet he put out is erroneous. it's a lie. he's in serious potential legal jeopardy here and what they lay out is a case in which he deliberately went out of his way to pay hush money payments to people because he knew specifically, specifically that it would have a bad campaign

impact, a violation of the campaign finance laws. >> i thought it was very direct. as i said earlier, it was almost like a sermon for the prosecutors. people like you, who work in legitimate campaigns, working for people like hillary, working very hard all the time. in the daylight, everybody knows what you're doing. knocking on doors, position papers. here's this sneaky business of paying off these two women, violating campaign laws, it's a campaign contribution. you're working a publisher to catch and kill and it's all done intricately to avoid being caught. >> that's what i've been thinking about a lot today, while we were slaving away at hillary clinton's campaign, writing policy papers, really focusing on the nuances in these health care proposals she was putting out, these guys were in trump tower conspiring on how to implement the moscow project -- the contrast between the two campaigns, the motivations he had to run for president were so different. that's what i keep thinking about today. >> i wonder the idea of winning is everything, doesn't look too good. >> it doesn't. john edwards, that was a walk in the park in comparison to what's going on now. the fact of the matter is, we're

going into january, chris, the president is going to have to answer for this. democrats are going to have oversight. i suspect that michael cohen will likely be subpoenaed. >> any of your guys likely to break loose, marco rubio, anybody that might say enough is enough? >> i don't foresee that happening until there is a dig isn't decrease in support for this president. i don't see that happening. >> having a beer, talking about this, yeah, they got him -- the new york guys got him, big deal. is that what they're going to say, big deal? >> we were talking about this before the break. the issue is, so many people have in some ways become de sensitized to this stuff. the american people should be concerned and freaked out about what's going on with the president of the united states. >> to the point, i think that what happened in watergate is actually very informative here.

there were dead enders, but they weren't a small group. they're a fairly large group of nixonian dead enders up until there were tapes. when the tapes came out, it was hard, tangible proof. >> george wallace, people like that? >> yeah, and once you see something or hear something that cannot be refuted. that changes things. we have documents and allegations and testimony. he can dismiss by saying these are disgruntled ex-employees, angry democrats. all the media conspiring against me. once we actually see primary evidence, that is a game maker. >> what is the primary evidence? what makes you think that's going to change? 35% of republican voters? >> what hit me was new york feds, new york state officials -- the state governments, virginia's going to go after him, everybody who sees crime is going -- president trump dropped major hints this morning that he was anticipating something big coming. he's right.

just before dawn preponderate launched a preemptive strike in a series of angry tweets, many with typos and misspellings, proving they're his, lashing out at his special counsel. among other things, robert mueller and lying james comey are best friends. throughout his tirade, he attacked john brennan and james clapper, hillary clinton and justice department officials including his own deputy attorney general rod rosenstein. he never gets tired of hillary, does he? >> she's always the foil, the one he goes to. it's a common thing among republicans, by the way. >> when you test that with republican voters, that -- hillary clinton and nancy pelosi are two individuals -- >> two strong powerful women. >> fog machine, when they were afraid trump was going to lose the second debate, they said we're going to unleash the fog machine. that's forget the evidence, forget everything, just remember, what side are you on? what side you on? and just remember where you are and go after trump. >> the problem with trump,

though, is that he's reducing his own side. it's not just the -- >> is he? >> he's not going after the hillary clintons of the world. today he spent time going after his old secretary of state, rex tillerson and calling him dumb as a rock. >> why did he do that? >> because he said something about him earlier in the morning. >> dumb as a rock? >> it's odd, he appointed him secretary of state. >> it's fifth grade. >> it sounds crazy. but four republican voters, they look at tillerson's comments and they say you're not loyal to the president. the president has a right to critique you and fight back. i don't agree with that, but -- >> explain this behavior by your kindergarten class. here's the president going after his very recent secretary of state. watch. >> it was challenging for me, coming from the disciplined,

highly process oriented exxon mobil corporation to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot of things. i'd have to say to him, well, mr. president, i understand what you want to do but you can't do it that way. it violates the law. it violates a treaty. i think he grew tired of me being the guy every day that told him you can't do that. >> nobody wants to be trump's hall monitor. anyway, trump responded this afternoon with a tweet calling tillerson dumb as a rock and said he couldn't get rid of him fast enough. he was lazy as hell. nice way to treat your recent major employee. >> i mean, but look. we do know he's exactly right. i remember during the campaign, when donald trump, i want to say, that he made it very clear he loves reading "people" magazine and the new york tabloids. that's what he likes to read.

he doesn't like complicated policy papers or read the daily intelligence briefing. that's been -- those are facts we've known for a long time. >> sometimes it's worth stepping back and recognizing what just happened here. the former secretary of state said he had to stop the president from breaking the law. that's crazy. i mean, that is just crazy. and we just sort of take it because it's, you know, every day in trump land. >> speak for yourself. i brought this up because what's noteworthy though is the manner in which they talk to each other. >> we're talking about the president of the united states of america. the expectation is that this is someone who's objective, has discernment, approaches things from all sides, all issues, spending long hours reading through the briefing papers, not someone getting oral briefings. that's absurd to me. >> i don't think we've ever thought that was happening with donald trump. as president. >> we shouldn't stop or seize our expectations. >> nbc news reported the

president's outgoing chief -- not really an outgoing personality, but he's outgoing, john kelly answered a narrow set of questions from the special counsel earlier this year, questions related to potential obstruction of justice. a person familiar with the matter says kelly was asked about a conversation he witnessed between the president and former white house counsel don mcgahn who spent over 30 hours testifying before the special counsel. in that conversation the president asked mcgahn to publicly refute, that he the president ordered the firing of the special counsel, robert mueller. according to "new york times" mcgahn did refuse trump's order to fire mueller in 2017 and never issued any denial that he had done so. sam? just think about it. the president -- talk about obstruction of justice. he fires the fbi director, then fires the guy named to go after him and that's not obstruction? >> no. it's all happening like right in front of us and sometimes we are just like can't keep track of it all. i go back to the moscow tower meeting arranged with don jr., a massive deal. let's say we didn't know about

it and it came out tomorrow, it would be cataclysmic. but it's now baked into the cake. a lot of stuff is just baked into the cake. >> i think the sun is going to pay here. just pass -- we forget so quickly, yesterday they buried, down in texas, college station, they buried a former president. i thought the public tribute, while it didn't reflect all national opinion, there's a lot of populist attitude out there, i think it reflected a lot of nobility in the american government. a lot of people -- i watched those people, joe biden, al gore, a lot of people paying tribute to that man that was real on both sides. >> absolutely. we had a true moment. i think it was not just yesterday, it was this week where we saw both sides come together to honor such an incredible former president and now we have today where it seems like all of that is -- >> the clintons were there too. there was chatty stuff going on there. a niceness there. and then the weirdness happened. he hands it to an attendant, like he's god, and they didn't treat him with a lot of warmth. >> it felt like, you know, there was a politics where we knew we

could be nasty to each other but at the end of the day we're collectively into it and then no longer. >> no longer. well, for a while anyway. thanks to my panel. that's "hardball" for tonight. lots more on this story coming up tonight. it's a news bombshell, the president directing criminal activity. that's starting right now. good evening from new york, i'm ali velshi in for chris hayes on an incredible night of news. three new court filings tonight. two of them sentencing recommendations concerning former trump fixer michael cohen, one from the office of the special counsel robert mueller, the other from the united states attorney for the southern district of new york. co-hen is set to be sentenced next wednesday and the sdny is