trump, with allen weisselberg, and others, and i did it in order to protect him. and i guess the thank-you that i got from my loyal boss was michael cohen should, as i once said, take a bullet for him and lose everything, lose my freedom, my company, my law license, my family's happiness, everything. to me, i'm with you. i don't understand it. >> the president is at least, though, named as individual-1 by prosecutors, and you in your allocution made very clear what you just made here in terms of the fact that this was directed by him, for his benefit, and you were acting out his wishes, and so he's therefore the most culpable person. you make a point as almost the very last thing you say in the book, which i wanted to ask you about because i think it may relate to this. the president is named as individual-1. you went to prison for those felonies. he's clearly the person who directed the commission of those felonies. but you say at the very end of the book that the president and attorney general william barr ousted the u.s. attorney in the southern district of new

trump, with allen weisselberg, and others, and i did it in order to protect him. and i guess the thank-you that i got from my loyal boss was michael cohen should, as i once said, take a bullet for him and lose everything, lose my freedom, my company, my law license, my family's happiness, everything. >> joining us now is daniel goldman, the former majority counsel for the house impeachment inquiry and former director of investigations for the house intelligence committee. he's also a former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. thank you very much for joining us tonight. i want to go right to that question of why was michael cohen the only one charged in that case in the southern district. why, for example, was allen weisselberg, the trump accountant who participated in that scheme to pay stormy daniels -- why wasn't he also charged? >> well, it's hard to tell. it's hard to look behind the veil. but the one biggest problem with any additional prosecutions is that michael cohen was not signed up as a cooperating witness and could not be use

and he basically ignored that, told me to take the check and go bring it to allen weisselberg for depositatement was nothing shy of, you know, anybody that pays taxes is stupid. i have to tell you, during those two-year tax periods of 2015 and 2016 that he paid $750 a year, i paid close to $3 million. so i guess i am stupid and i am the sucker, because not only did i end up paying, what is it, about 2,000 times what he paid, i'm certainly not a billionaire, and i ended up getting hit with tax evasion. so lord knows what he's going -- lord knows what he's going to end up getting hit with. if i ended up getting 36 months on $1 million, lord knows what he's going get. he may end up doing the next century. >> i know you've been busy crunching those numbers and doing that math because it's so galling to you that you went to jail for this. in fact, also, you paid the check to stormy daniels, and that -- by the way, on that front, on the stormy daniels front, "the new york times" says that there's no line item deduction reimbursing you for the stormy daniels expense. he may have deducted as a le

sort of coming up with this plan to cover up the payment, which was an illegal payment, with allen weisselberg. we've seen the checks you provided to congress, including at least one signed by the president's sons. it's clear the trump organization was used to sort of launder that repayment. it's clear that ami and david pecker were involved in this -- in strands of this scheme. why is michael cohen the only person who was charged? >> because they elected to make me into the scapegoat. i did what i did. i took responsibility for it. but the -- mr. trump, allen weissleberg. just to correct you for a second there, rachel, it wasn't just don jr.'s signature that was on some of the checks, the president's signature was on two of the checks at the very beginning, which i provided to congress as part of the open house testimony. why i'm the only one, it doesn't make sense. as i stated, i was acting at the direction of and for the benefit of mr. trump. and how i became -- i'm not the one who had the affair. he did. i'm not the -- i am the dummy who paid $130,000 to keep it quiet, but this was my conv

he works very closely for a long period of time with the cfo, allen weisselberg, and the accounting firm, and they spend an enormous amount of time preparing these taxes. now, one of the things that you'll also notice is he always files for extensions. so it's not just that he has x-period of months in ord toer get everything under control. he actually takes a very long time, closer to a year. so the answer is, he's fully aware of everything. and i say this again in the podcast, i say it again in the book. there is nothing that goes on at the trump organization, including what's going on right now, that donald trump is not intimately aware of and involved in. and the same holds true in the white house. when he turns around and he makes statements as he did to my guest right now on the podcast, omarosa, oh, i didn't know you were fired. how did it happen? what happened? who did it? and he knows everything. nothing goes on without donald trump's knowledge and approval. >> michael cohen, the president's former attorney and fixer. michael cohen, thank you very much for joining us. >>> and st

cohen, had any view of these tax returns, ever saw them except for he believes, donald trump, allen weisselberg, don junior, ivanka trump and. >> art of the deal, his book is "dealing with the devil" my mother, trump and me. does any of what katy said surprise you? >> not a bit. in fact, what i believe will happen is that we'll see all of the things that michael cohen said and that katy just talked about born out in ways that this material suggests because i have absolutely no doubt trump has just as he does everywhere else in his life, has cheated and lied and tried to ensure that he maximizes his income in matter whether that's legal or not. far beyond what anybody had seen so far. >> i am struck by something that katy said from her reporting with michael cohen, this idea that trump thought he would continue to tan go with the irs indefinitely. to a lot of people, that sounds absurd even more absurd coming from the president of the united states. what do you make of that claim? >> that that's the way he's been all through his life. he's kicked the ball down the road on, you know, a range of c

. >> you said he would have cfo allen weisselberg and me concoct the highest possible number inflating the valuation of the buildings and golf courses by using the absolute, most oefg comparab optimistic comparable properties. >> mr. trump wanted to be higher in the forbes 500 list. and he would just come up with a number. he said, i'm worth $8 billion, i'm worth $10 billion, and our job was then to take the assets and figure how are you going to back up that $10 billion that he wants to be. >> reporter: new york federal prosecutors acknowledge cohen did provide information to law enforcement including the special counsel's office. but also noted that cohen's description of those efforts is overstated in some respects and incomplete in others. >> so does that diminish your credibility, the fact that even prosecutors weren't sure they got the full thing? >> yeah, i'm not so sure it diminishes anything considering i believe about 18 investigations were opened based upon the information that i provided including the need for his tax returns. >> reporter: cohen knows readers will question

. >> you said he would have cfo allen weisselberg and me concoct the highest possible number inflating the valuation of building and golf courses by using the absolute most optimistic comparable properties. >> one of the reasons we were doing it is because mr. trump wanted to be higher in the forbes 500 list. and the way to do that, he would just come up with a number. i'm worth $8 billion. i'm worth $10 billion. our job was to take the assets and figure how you're going to back that $10 billion number that he wants to be. >> reporter: new york federal prosecutors acknowledge cohen did provide information to law enforcement including the special counsel's office. but also noted that cohen's description of those efforts is overstated in some respects and incomplete in others. so does that diminish your credibility, the fact even prosecutors weren't sure they got the full thing? >> i'm not sure it diminishes anything. considering, i believe, about 18 investigations were open i provided. including the need for his tax returns. >> reporter: cohen knows readers will question the validity of

i believe allen weisselberg, his cfo, is complicit in it, as well as don, e vunk vauivanka, eric. i believe the entire trump clan is complicit in all of this tax evasion. i mean, these are legitimately what judge pauley stated in my case. these are sophisticated schemes within which to deprive the irs of income, of taxes, that are desperately needed. not putting your money in either capitalone or first republic bank, as i did, and providing all the documents to the accountant. right? that's also stated in my book, "disloyal," and the sentencing memo. i truly believe this is a very sophisticated scheme of hiding money, whether it's by claiming that he paid $70,000 to cut his hair. look, donald trump cut his own hair. so i'm not really sure where the $70,000 came from. it seems like a lot of money for a haircut. or paying ivanka as a consultant. >> yeah. >> consultant for what? for what? for designing -- for designing her spas in, you know, various different buildings that were working on? the whole thing is a scheme. there's always a scheme when it comes to the trump clan. >> let m