and mr. chairman you and i have a personal relationship that is not based on color. and to even go down this direction is wrong, mr. chairman. >> first of all, i want to thank the gentleman for what you have stated. if there is anyone who is sensitive with regard to race, it's me. sharecroppers that were basically slaves. i get it. i listened very carefully to mrs. tlalib, and i think she said she was not calling a racist. i thought that we could clarify that. because mr. meadows you know and of all of the people on this committee i have said it and

gotten in trouble for it. you're one of my best friends. >> likewise, mr. chairman. and i can see and feel your pain. i feel it. and so, i don't think mrs. tlalib inextendtended to call y that. >> to my colleague, mr. meadows, that was not my intention and i do apologize if that is what it sounded like, but i said someone in general. and as everybody knows in this chamber i'm pretty direct. if i want today say that i would have, but that's not what i said and thank you mr. chairman for allowing me to clarify. again i said someone and again that was not referring to you at all as a ray scist. >> i thank the gentlewoman for

her comments, for the chairman for working to clear this and that the chairman is intervening. >> to the gentleman, first of all thank you for allowing us to resolve that. the gentleman that asked a little bit earlier -- >> i will withdrawal my request. >> i need the unanimous consent. i think i need to officially withdrawal my request that it be stricken. >> okay, now, i will recognize you for your unanimous consent. i think you want to put in the record some documents? >> thank you, mr. chairman. >> i put forth the record that michael cohen must be the most gifted council in american

suggesting he it is not a real company and just like he is not a lawyer. i ask that the l.a. times article be put in the record which outlines the $1.2 million payment and the misgivings there after. >> any other unanimous consent requests? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i ask unanimous consent to make february 9th, 2019, the "washington post" article that shows him to be a selfish manipulator who is all about himself. it even has a false anecdote about how he once claimed to deliver his own baby. >> without objection. >> i ask unanimous consent to make the may 9th "washington post" article south korean firm paid michael cohen $150,000 as

they sought a contract from the u.s. government as part of the record. it says they paid a shell company made by cohen. i ask that you make his sentencing statement to the southern district of new york part of the record. a statement that pligss that he cannots to falsely blame the president, but only the -- without objection, so ordered. >> and the august 28th, 2018 cnn article, feds scrutinizing his former account and bank loans. they were subpoenaed to come before a jury and required a lawyer. he blamed his tax evasion on his accountant.

and the 2019 order filed by the appellant division. this order that proactively applies starting february 28th establishes that cohen committed a serious crime and seated being an attorney when he was convicted of this. and the july 2016 article michael cohen secretly recorded trump, does that make him a bad lawyer. it describes ethical violations. he recorded his client, trump, without the client's knowledge. >> without objection. >> thank you. >> thank you, chairman, i ask for consent, 11 tweets from the fake fan account that michael cohen -- it is described as a

place for women that love and support michael cohen, strong pit bull, sex symbol, business orient oriented. >> thank you, mr. chairman, i ask unanimous consent to make the april 20th, 2018 article in mother jones titled michael cohen says he has never been a pr prague, he told me a different story. >> without objection. very well. i have some concluding remarks and before i do that do you have anything you would like to say? >> yes, yes mr. chairman i do have closing remarks i would like to say myself, is this the appropriate time. >> you can do it now. first, i want to thank you, chairman. i appreciate the opportunity to share some final thoughts.

i have acknowledged that i made my own mistakes and i have owned up to them publicly and under oath, but silence and complicity in the face of the daily destruction of our basic norms and civility to one another will not be one of them. i did things and i acted improperly at times on mr. trump's behest. i blindly followed his demands. my loyalty to him cost me everything. my family's happiness, f friendships, my law license, my company, my livelihood, my reputation and soon my freedom. and i will not sit back and say nothing and allow him to do the same to the country. indeed given my experience working for mr. trump, i fear if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a

peaceful transition of power. this is why aagrgreed to appear before you today. in closing i would like to say directly to the president, we honor our veterans even in the rain. you tell the truth even when it doesn't. you respect the law and our incredible law enforcement agents. you don't villainize them. you don't disparage generals, gold star families, prisoners of war, and other heros with the courage to fight for this country. you don't attack the media and those who question what you don't like or what you don't want them to say. you take responsibility for your own dirty deeds. you don't use the power of bully pulpit to speak out of those that speak out against you. you don't separate families from one another or demonize those looking to america for a better life. you don't vilify people based on

the god they pray to and you don't cuddle up to our enmys instead of allies, and don't shut down the government if is un-american. and it is not you, so to those that support the president and his rhetoric, as i once did, i pray the country doesn't make the same mistakes that i have made or paid a heavy price that my family and i are paying. >> thank you, we know that mr. cohen has been dishonest in the past, that is why he is going to prison in two months, but there are things today he said in several hours of questions that

don't add up either. he said he never defrauded any bank, he was having a conversation happening for mr. comer. she going to prison for that offense. he said he understood the need to represent his client with legal advice, but in his written testimony he said he never bothered to consider whether or not payments to women for improper -- whether payments to women were improper or the right thing to do. he attested that he not have any corn contracts, and he admitted to conflicts. the eta bank he said to chairman cummings that he and the cfo

allen weiselberg went back to figure out how to make a $130,000 payment, but he says mr. trump funded me to use my own funds to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact the campaign. in response to a question about he setting up a fake twitter account, that he did not direct the commission of that twitter account. he says i didn't set that up and it was done by a young lady that works for the firm, when he did ask the red finch firm to set it up. finally he said he didn't want a job with the administration even to the attorney with the southern district of new york stated that this was a fact when asked about this, he said i would not call them liars but that statement is not accurate.

mr. meadows and i sent you a letter asking you to have mr. rosenstein here. last week when you announced that mr. cohen was coming this week it is the same week we learned the deputy attorney general of the united states was not this sad display that we had to go through in the last several hours. again it's not my words, take the words of the former general council. so i hope we learned some things here today. mr. chairman, as i said earlier, your first big hearing, the first announced witness of the 116th congress, is a gentleman going to prison in two months for lying to congress. i don't they is what we should

be focused on. >> thank you very much, i sat here and listened to all of t s this. it is very painful. it is very painful. you made a lot of mistakes and you admitted that. and you know one of the saddest parts of this whole thing is that some very innocent people are hurting, too. and you acknowledged that. and that is your family. you have come here today and you -- in my heart after -- and when i practice law i represent

a lot of lawyers that got in trouble. and you have come saying i made my mistakes. but now i want to change my life. and you know, if we as a nation did not give people an opportunity after they made mistakes to change their lives, a whole lot of people would not do very well. i don't know where you go from here. as i sat here and i listened to both sides, i just felt as if --

and people now use my words, they took from me, they didn't give me any credit. we're better than this. we're so much -- we really are. as a country, we're so much better than this. and you know, i tell you mr. cohen, i tell my children i say when bad things happen to you do not ask the question why did it happen to me? ask the question why did it happen for me? i don't know why this is happening for you. but is my hope that a small part of it is foro our country to be

better. if i hear you correctly is sounds like you're crying out. for a new normal, for us getting back to normal. it sounds like you want to make sure our democracy stays in tact. the one meeting i had with president trump i said to him the greatest gift that you and i, mr. president, can give to our children, is making sure that we give them a democracy that is in tact. a democracy better than the one that we came upon. and i'm hoping that the things you said today will help us begin to get back there. i mean come on now. come on, when you got the washington post, our president has made at least 8718 false or

misleading statements. that is stunning. that is not what we teach our children. i don't teach mine that. and for whatever reason, it sounds like you got caught up in it. you got caught up in it. you got caught up in it. and in some kind of way. i know it is painful going to prison. i know it has to be painful being called a rat, and let me explain, a lot of people don't know the significance of that but i live in the inner city of baltimore. when you call someone a rat. that is one of the worst things you can call them, when you go to prison that means a snitch. i'm just saying. and so the president called you a rat, we're better than that. we really are.

and i'm hoping that all of us can get back to this democracy that we want and that we should be passing on to our children so they can do better than what we did. so you wonder whether people believe you, i don't know. i don't know whether or not they believe you. but the fact is that you have come you came, and this is one of the hardest things to do. there is racism, man that thing hurt me. as a father of two daughters, it hurt me. and i can imagine how it must feel for you. but i'm just saying to you, i

want to first of all thank you. i know that this has been hard. i know that you face a lot. . i know that you are worried about your family. but this is part of your destiny, and hopefully this portion of your destiny will lead to a better, a better, a better michael cohen a better donald trump. a better united states of america. and a better world. and i mean that from the depths of my heart. when we're dancing with the angels, the kwle be asked did we

stand on the sidelines and say nothing? did we -- i'm tired of statements saying people coming here saying oh, this is the first hearing, it is not the first hearing. the first hearing was with regard to prescription drugs. remember a little girl, a lady sat there, her daughter died because she could not get $333 a month in insulin. that was our first hearing. second hearing. hr 1, voting rights. corruption in government. come on now. we can do more than one thing. and we have got to get back to normal. with that, this meeting is

adjourn adjourned. [ applause ] >> quite the emotional exclamation point to what is, in some ways, an indescribable day. michael cohen perhaps summed up things best when he said my loyalty to trump has cost me everything. in some ways that's what these eight -- now 7.5 hours have been about. we found out how much he did on behalf of the president. we will answer questions once it happens. it is day one, it has been that kind of bomb shell day. starting with michael cohen the president was not just involved in illegal hush money chescheme but part of it was carried out

as president. august 1st, 2017, one of 11 installments to reimburse him. cohen also testified that mr. trump called him up a year into the presidency to tell him to lie about president trump's knowledge of those payments and i have not even mentioned the russian investigation yet. cohen said he wanted him to lie to congress about the trump tower moscow deal. he claimed to know in advance about the hacked e-mail dump. and as far as the other investigations into president trump, cohen revealed the southern district of new york is probing the president on an undisclosed matter. some of cohen's testimony was exculpatory. he says he has no prove, and he says there is nothing that might

be sibtive for blackmail. we have our guests joining us now. and with me here at the table, sam nunberg and mimi roka. and now a legal analyst, mimi and sam, kicking it off with you. i have a question that i asked you earlier in the day, he is in cooperation with the southern district, how did the southern district's client do today in front of congress? >> i think he came across as very credible. these are the things that prosecutors look for. should we trust a witness, can we trust a witness. first he didn't go too far, and

i look at something they said in his sentencing. they said exactly that about him. they say he tells us when he knows something and he doesn't try to implicate them in something he can't. if he were out to get trump to damage him by any means, if he were to make up stories about him, he would have said yeah, trump told me to lie to congress, but that is not what he said. he explained it as it happened. i knew that is what he needed know do. he did it the way he always communicates it. that's how people talk, they don't go give explicit instructions. i think we're over looking what a big deal it is about the campaign finance fraud. the check -- >> is this, if you were at sdny, is that a smoking gun.

is that big for that scandal. the information charging michael cohen, the southern district prosecutors laid out that the way this worked, the campaign finance fraud, it is a pretty complex scheme. they reimbursed cohen through 11 different payments, makes it look like it was a retainer. but the fact that it is in that charging document mean it's is not just michael cohen saying it and fact that he has a check that shows exactly that. this payment just like the prosecutor said, just like he plead guilty to, this team is pretty well established at this point. >> that is what we have.

it is not just your run of the mill campaign finance -- >> but he called it kept calling it a garden variety finance crime. >> no, it is not, they had shell companies, they had third parties involved. they were hiding the payments. i don't think it qualifies under money laundering, but it has that feel to me. and it was a scheme that continued once he was in office. it is all one scheme, and that is just stunning to me. they already have more on trump than they ever had on nixon as far as an actual crime being

committed. this is donald j. trump's personal nightmare. today, more so than anything that happened before. >> he hated today more than losing the shut down. they attacked his net worth, his business, his family, and how he operates. no one defended them, did they? >> no, they could only attack michael cohen's character. and i don't think that necessarily his base has changed, and they're not any closer towards impeachment or indictment. this was a candidate as you know that didn't want to release his taxes. he didn't want to have personal issues come out and they all came out in one hearing and this was basically donald trump's idea of if i run for the president, you know -- >> i'm going to pause you there, here is michael cohen. >> thank you all for being here today. i'm humbled, i'm thankful to chairman cummings for giving me the opportunity today to tell my truth and i hope that as

chairman cummings said it hopes in order to heal america. i thank you all again, have a good day. >> how involved was donald trump junior. how involved was donald trump junior. >> let me go down to kacie hunt there. that was -- that promoted it as if he would be taking questions and that was an in and out pretty quick i'm guessing they liked elijah cummings closing statement? >> it seems so. i think you could see michael cohen essentially crying where elijah cummings was talking about his experience. we expected -- we were told that he was planning to take questions from reporters following that appearance. they seem to have changed that calculation at the last second. but you know as you and your

panel have been talking about, this is really as much as we did learn specific new details that are very important in driving all of this forward, this was also a very human day. one that really hinged on a credibility argument for republicans saying the man you just saw walk by our cameras is a liar, and that there is no reason why americans should trust him, and you know he essentially went in here with a demeanor that sort of said i am a humbled person that has decided to change my ways, and many of your prosecutors will attest that when you're facing what he is facing, with the prison time he is looking at, people tend to have that kind of mentality. so i think the question will be who do people believe here and how does this contribute to what democrats can ask for behind clothed doors tomorrow. >> kacie we have talked about

this a few times, any second thoughts among the republican side of things about how they avoided defending the president, but instead just always directed it back at cohen, but allowing some things to go unresponded to which is a very untrump thing to do. >> it is interesting, chuck. i'm fascinated to know what president trump who, as we seem to think has been watching this overnight, thinks about the job that republicans did defending him. i note they're echoing what the white house is saying today about cohen. cohen is -- the white house is essentially trying to discredit him, but it is a great point that republicans made this all about cohen. the president, that is totally defensible. it is very hard to defend some

of these actions taken. the reality of the president of the united states was paying tends of thousands of dollars to someone covering up an alleged affair with a porn star in the run up to an election. how do we lose sight of this? >> let me let you go to go see what you can find in the scrum. if the control room can listen, we have so many quotes lined up, number seven, the necktie, how does cohen know when to lie. let me play that for you sam. how familiar is that language to you. >> he said mr. trump did not directly tell me to lie to congress. can you explain how he does

this. >> sure, it would be no different than me saying that is the nicest looking tie i have ever seen, isn't it? and you say yeah, it is the nicest looking tie i have ever seen. he doesn't give you questions, he doesn't give you orders. he speaks in a code and i understand the code because i have been around him for a decade. >> and it is your impression that others who work for him understand the code as well. >> most people, yes. >> sam nunberg, you work for donald trump, do you understand the code that michael cohen speaks to. >> i do, but granted i didn't have to do things that michael cohen did, i had distance. if you went in his office, you had an inquiry or a question, and you knew what reality was, and you're trying to get the real information, you just say no, never happened, sam, it never happened. it never happened. and you knew that meant don't

confirm to the reporter that there is remotely any truth to it. or that it is a lie, it doesn't matt matter. >> it does sound like he smart enough to never say what he meant to say. it doesn't sound like a mob boss. >> there is another important point there. who is questioning michael there, one of the few republican that's is one of donald trump's -- i believe he voted against the emergency with nancy pelosi. . i think the process here go, this is the first public one. >> ben wittis. sometimes we care about three --

what threads do you want to keep pulling on to this point after listening to michael cohen's testimony today. >> i think you're pulling on the two most important threats. the payments to stormy daniels, and karen mcdoogle issue that we thought of as a prepresidency problem for him, number one. number two, the direction without explicit direction of michael cohen to lie is a problem for him. particularly if people come to believe that michael cohen is credible that that was his specific intention in doing this. it doesn't matter if you ever say director mr. cohen, please

lie. so i think those are two really important threads here. there are a couple others that are also important. one which you eluded to before. it is the question of russia collusion and particularly this meeting at which roger stone is alleged to have called the president or candidate, and told him that he had been in touch with julian assange and that a big dump was coming of e-mails, and that is potentially a problem less because of the underlying conduct being criminal because at least it has been reported that the president may have told bob mueller people that it didn't happen. and then finally i just want to flag one other thing which we have not talked about, but i think is really important, which is that this is 7.5 hours of

hearing in which the committee is getting a huge number of tips and leads about who else they should be talking to. they merge from this with a giant witness list of people to ask very specific questions to within the trump organization, the campaign, and the family about specific conduct and they emerge with a lot of references to a lot of documents. so if every hearing is creating a record that establishes the need and the agenda for the next hearing, this hearing did that very fully and i think you can expect for example allen wesselberg to be asked to testify relatively quickly. >> i was just going to say is there a limited immunity that he

has. how will those negotiations go in front of congress, will it be more complicated. >> i think so, we don't know the details of the immunity agreement. we know it is limited, they are different types within -- my understanding so far is that it was limited to his dgrand jury testimony, that means he needs different immunity with respect to this. will they want to give him broader immunity so he can testify more broadly. so i don't know, as a prosecutor, this is slightly different. >> sam, you're basically our budsman on people that work here, tell us about allen weiselberg. how panicked would donald trump be if he is getting questioned.

>> alan knows where all of the financial bodies are -- >> tell us about that when we come back. here is chairman cummings. >> i'm going to make a short statement. i probably won't answer any questions, i'm tired. >> two years ago i said that when hillary clinton and donald trump were running against each other, i said this is not about hillary and this is not about donald trump. this is a fight for the soul of our democracy. and that statement is truer now

than it was then. today, i think, is a very important day. i tell my staff that in 200 years from now people will be reading about this moment, so i will say to you, the press, get it right. we have a situation where we have strayed so far away from normal in our country. and we have to get back to center. and i think today was at least an opportunity to do that. a lot of people -- we got a lot of criticism as you could heard about michael cohen coming before our committee. just think about what we're dealing with. we have rosenstein saying it is possible the american people

will never see the report or just about anything that comes out of mueller's investigation? and i think the american people in the last election were crying out? even the people that love the president. even the one that believes she -- he is doing a great job said we want accountability? there are quite a few districts, and so today as i said earlier, what is happening over the last two years is that there has not been any accountability.

none. none. could not get a subpoena. could not get a hearing. could not get witnesses and all we were trying to do is do our job. the constitution is abundantly clear. it says to us every two years we raid our hand and we say we swear to uphold the constitution. and part of that constitution say that's we have to be a check and balance on the executive branch. that is what this is all about. mr. cohen coming in and bringing corroborating evidence, i think the checks are very, very significant. he talked about the man he knows, and basically what he did was reintroduce the american people to the man he has known

for sten years. the republicans didn't want to hear any of that. and so that is all well and good, but that won't get us to where we need to get to as a nation. the question becomes, you know, where do we go from here? well, we're going to study our testimony and figure out what we got there. we've got transcribed interviews of people that we're going to be looking at. we have not gotten the kind of cooperation that i would want from white house council with regard to documents that we need. but again we're going to follow up on this testimony and if you ask me exactly why we're going i can't tell you exactly the areas we're going, but we will do things in a very methodical way. a very careful way because the thing that i emphasized to the members of our committee.

it must be a committee with integrity. i want to be effective even efficient in everything we do. you have to reclaim civility. two, we need the information. when we have an uncooperative executive branch, basically who does not want us to get information, and they tell all of you all by the way, they want to suppress you all, how do you even make a government accountable? so we're going to, i again we appreciate i would describe to donald trump that he knows and we'll see where we go from there. >> what is the most important thing that you learned today?

>> i believe he told the truth. i have been practicing law for many years. i'm used to watching witnesses. i think that he -- i think that he, first of all, i think he is very -- a lightbulb went off and he said you know what? i'm going the wrong way. i want to change and reverse things. i think he is reforceful, and he said the reason he is coming in because he just wants his sentence reduced. i think that is not likely, but don't miss this. and he agreed with me and i told him, if you come in here and you lie and these were my exact

words, i will nail you to the cross. and i meant that. we can't keep going on lying and lying and lying. we will never get to any sense of normalcy. but yeah, i believe him. >> how about investigating the hush money payments, will you be talking to them? >> yeah, we probably will. there are areas we have to be careful with. special council, the southern district of new york, and others have basically said there are things they're looking into. there are a number of areas that we could get into and didn't get into that they're looking into. this is, i think they're still a number of shoes to drop. we have worked very carefully with special council to make

sure that we did not interfere with the investigation. one more thing. i have a bad cold. do you believe -- >> i want to be clear, and i don't know where you missed this, i said that i would rather have no hearing than have a hearing that interfered with mueller. i think he is doing very, very important work. one of the things that we have to get back to, we have a situation that folks are lessing with our election. this is series. there is a lot that will come out of this. i just talked to adam schiff,

there is a number things he can use from our hearing for his hearing, but we have a number of committees looking at different aspects of the trump administration. and don't get it twisted. we are doing -- i said it from the very beginning. we need to make sure we address those issues, they confront the american people on a day to cda basis like the affordable care account. but we're also going to paint a picture in what is happening to our democracy. >> based on what you heard do you believe that the president committed a crime while in office? >> based on what -- looking at the checks, and listening to mr.

cohen, it appear that's he did. again, if -- and i don't, that is not for know say. i'm basing that on what has already been filed. here they filed mr. cohen is pleading to charges where he says he was directed to commit a crime by the president, so i think we really will have to see what mueller says. one of the things that i did and i want to be clear on this, a lot of you all have been asking me to do interviews, and i literally literally turned down at least 150 interviews in the last few months. once we know cohen was coming. you know why? the thing that i did not want to do was just assume what he was going to say. i want him to come in, say what he had to say and then try to

tell you what we found out. i refuse to be a hypocrite when the -- when my republican colleges, when they were in control. they would go out, make a headline, a big headline, and try to have a hearing to get the facts to catch up with the deadline. so i wanted to make sure we did that again. >> i have been sitting there for what, nine hours? eight hours? i need to study the transcripts, see what we have, keep in mind i want to proceed very cautiously. but no one mentioned the word impeachment. not one. they did, but not us.

so again, i want to -- i am hoping that this is -- not hoping, i know, this is either the end of the process or the . >> you spent several years in the minority of this committee. this was your first really big hearing as chairman. >> here we go again. >> how do you think the two parties behaved today given mistakes? >> i felt that when you get to be my age, you don't -- i don't -- i probably would judge it in a different way than a younger person. but i've been on this committee 22 years. i've seen a lot. i've seen some of the people do this worst thing in the world. i've seen lawyers disbarred. i've seen all kind of stuff. and i see it as a part of our history. so the fact that people were arguing back and forth, it was

not as bad as i thought it would be. >> where do you rank this hearing through the other ones you've had through the years? >> this would have to be -- this and the toyota hearing, number one and two. remember toyota? yeah, that was big. thank you, guys. >> what do you want the president to know based on today's proceeding? >> what i want the president to know, i want you to clip my closing argument. i want the president to be reminded of what i said to him in the oval office two years ago. i said to him, mr. president, you could be the greatest president in the world if, if, if, if you went out there and not just represented and did

good things for 35% or 40% of the people. but for all the people. >> of course the went out and said i told him he'd be the greatest president in the world. cut out the if. that's what i want. you know why? you know, when i spent time in the hospital, six months, you get a chance to think about your life and your death. you try to figure out what it is that you want the most. and i think most of us, we want to know that our children are going to be okay. we want to know that they are going to experience a democracy. that they're going to have an opportunity. and they're going to have better opportunities than i had. and that's what i -- i want him -- when he goes out there and he does things, i want him to think about children. i want him to think about the children that he separated from their parents. i want him to think about the

fact that we had children in cages. i want him to think about the education of children. in other words, the things that will -- more important than all of them, i want him to think about the democracy, a true democracy. got to go. >> you just heard elijah cummings there emphatically defend what the oversight committee said. he said we never used the "i" word, impeachment. the republicans did. i left you with a small cliff-hanger. o tell us who would have the answer to this. allen weisselberg. >> allen worked frd donald's father. allen had one of the first

officers when trump moved into trump tower. he has a staff which is weird for anybody at a trump organization. >> why is that? >> because people don't -- he runs a very lean operation. >> the only person with staff is supposed to be trump. >> this isn't a criticism of the trump administration. but you do your work and you have to do the work of five people when you work for donald trump. and he's somebody that the president greatly trusts. also he's handled all the finances. now, another issue -- >> if he got subpoenaed and he was coming to capitol hill, how nervous would donald trump be? >> he would personally hate it. allen prepares all the final statements. >> and they go over what to say. >> i could have to send trump reports of certain things. allen has to send him updates. >> i want to bring up the name of matthew calamari.

said who could give us more information about potential insurance fraud? tell us who he is. >> matthew, by the way, very disliked by anybody who works for the circle. he's somebody who donald hired who was a security guard, this guy. and was beating somebody up. >> saw him at the u.s. open beating up somebody and then donald trump hired him? >> he became his security guy. he was technically keith's boss. has multiple trump apartments. his son works for donald trump. i hear he's done a lot of the dirty lifting, i'll say. >> that's interesting. carol, there's a mystery probe that we also learned about. let me play the back and forth with michael cohen who let the cat out of the bag about a mystery probe.

i want to ask you about it on the other side. >> when was the last communication with president trump or someone acting on his behalf? >> i don't have the specific date, but it was awhile ago. >> and what did he or his agent communicate to you? >> unfortunately, this is being investigated by the southern district of new york and i've been asked not to talk about these issues. >> fair enough. is there any other wrong doing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding donald trump that we haven't discussed today? >> yes. and again, those are part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the southern district of new york. >> well. carol. that certainly got our eyes perked up. i'm sure yours given how competitive we all are about trying to untangle what they're investigating of the president.

but that seemed to be indications of a new probe. >> well, remember, you know, chuck, i'm glad you seized upon this moment. because it is an important one. about an investigation of the trump inaugural. and we've also looked very deeply at requests they have made of the trump administration for other records and inquiries they've made. meanwhile, we have a lot of sources who are saying that prosecutors are flitting around the trump organization looking more closely at that organization and possible fraud, possible let's call them exsen tristies of accounting. >> didn't michael -- it was funny you say this. when michael cohen brought the two checks and he said it came

from trump organization, it sounds like there's some financial fraud or tax fraud that may have been committed by the trump organization in 2017. >> i feel like a lot about what michael said about that check has been reported in many other pages of ours and other news organizations. i did not find that that shocking because we wrote about it when he pled guilty. we were whispered to about what they believe to be donald trump's biggest vulnerability. and that is actions he and his family members took at trump organization. now, that's not a news story you publi publish. that is like stuff you hear. we don't know exactly what michael is referring to. but it strikes me that if it's in the southern district, it has to do with the trump organization. i find it interesting michael talked about when was the last time you spoke with donald trump

and that that conversation is a subject he can't discuss. because it's part of the investigation. that tells you a little bit. >> let me go to my former southern district of new york aea. >> obstruction of justice popped in my mind. remember when his office was searched, trump had a strong reaction to that. tried to claim everything in there was going to be privileged and that was horrible. that went on for awhile. there was some reporting about him having reached out to cohen. i don't know if he did or for whom. and if there were efforts to make sure he wasn't going to cooperate, that could be a significant obstruction. we know he's worried about the southern district because we go back to his who's in charge here. >> which by the way, matt whitaker is having to go back to capitol hill to testify on this topic. people kept thinking the sdny is

his bigger problem. today may be a big clue as to why. everybody else, what a day. my great team, thank you, guys. that's all we have for tonight. we're handing the baton right now. more of this coverage in this unbelievable day. again, a criminal conspiracy was actually alleged by michael cohen. that is news sitting there. a a ari melber, you've got the baton. >> thank you. a truly historic day in washington. tonight i'm about to be joined by special guest donny deutsch who just talked to michael cohen after his testimony. i'm going to give you a short intro. if you follow the news, you know the gist. michael cohen testifying under oath against donald trump for many, many hours. la