asha rangappa, welcome to the "newshour".t is your main takeaway tmom these indts returned today? >> i think there are two big takeways from the indictment. irstfirst is these are the charges we're seeing from mueller that is directly supporting the i.c. assessment that russia as a nation state hacked into the d.n.c. email server,ni wead the information and tried to influence the election and went ntother than that, went state boards of elections and took voter data. we had indictments of russia's before, but those weren't directly tied to russian intelligence. there were links, but these are essian military intellige officers. the other big takeway is thats mueller ing after the russians, and this is important because, ultimately, this is a unterintelligence investigation and, under the special counsel regulations under which he'sed appoihe does haven't the authority to create a public report to congress. these indictments are, in a way, a vehicle for him to let the public know exactly how russia executed its covert operatio

joining us are carrie cordero and asha rangappa. carrie, the president has never been under oath about this. so i mean if michael cohen not only tells this to robert mueller but also has people who can corroborate it, legally speaking is there any risk for the president? >> well, there's risk in terms of the broader russia investigation. so a lot of times we talk about collusion. >> right. >> but what that really means if we want to translate it into the legal framework is conspiracy. and it's very clear that the mueller investigation is conducting a broad conspiracy investigation. that's what they charged the russian intelligence officers with, conspiracy to defraud the united states. and then they did the hacking and the unauthorized access to computer systems to facilitate that conspiracy. so the closer we get to either the president or his inner circle having advance knowledge of any of those activities, coordinating in any way in those activities, then the closer we get to their legal exposure in the big overall investigation.

you know, earlier today on twitter asha rangappa, the former fbi officer, made a joke he was going in to meet his handler, was going to discuss any concerns he has, any counterintelligence contacts he has, his surveillance detection routines, anything that a handled asset would want to report in to his boss. and at this point i'm really starting to wonder because why would he go off the record in a private meeting with vladimir putin at a time he has been u under the gun for more than two years in the belief he has conspired with russia to rig a u.s. election and may possibly have involved himself in other nefarious activities and he just decides he's going to go prove it. >> evelyn farkas, it is an astonishing thing to watch. with any other politician who is suspected of anything in this direction, that politician would go out of his or her way to be much stiffer and more formal and more distant in relations with russia or whatever country was in question. >> right, lawrence. i mean, any other president or politician for that matter, and granted, okay, he wasn't a politician until re

we have asha rangappa. she is going to lay out what could be part of a prosecution theory here. ith the potential defense understanding of this. asha, what have you got? >> that was quite a trip you took with mr. giuliani, chris. but i'm going to bring it back to earth here with the facts. so one of the things that he mentioned about cohen was that he has a credibility problem, and i think that's true. but with regard to the content of what happened with the notification of the trump tower meeting, remember that don junior, according to senate judiciary committee transcripts, made three calls to a blocked number before and after that trump tower meeting was offered to him. and then on the day of the trump tower meeting, two hours later, he made a call to a blocked number. now, the senate judiciary committee didn't subpoena those records, but i guarantee you mueller has subpoenaed those records. >> and can you get the number behind a blocked number? >> yes. he can get from the phone company with a subpoena, he should be able to get those numbers. >> what's your theory? that that b

allen dershowitz, author of the new book, "the case against impeaching trump," and asha rangappa, former fbi special agent of new york and senior lecturer for global affairs and analyst at cnn. welcome to you both. alan, let me begin with you. interesting mixed message from rudy giuliani. nothing to worry about from robert mueller, yet the scorched earth against his team continues. >> yeah, because there is something to worry about, obviously. in the end, if the president sits down with mueller, he may be walking into a perjury trap. if he is unwilling to sit down, he may be subpoenaed. then probably there will be a year or so of litigation, but in the end probably he'll have to appear in front of a grand jury. his great vulnerability is a perjury rap. as i argue in my book, you need to commit a crime to be impeached, and if he's committed previous crimes, there's no evidence of that, that won't work. but if he commits the crime of perjury, he's in clinton land. >> that gets to the question, asha, the perjury trap is one concern. it looks like they're not going to do an interview. you he

>> "outfront" now, former nixon white house counsel, john dean, asha rangappa, and audio expert, paulinsburg. he has 40 years experience in this area, including working on the o.j. simpson and waco cases. john, let me start with you, moen moichael cohen appears to officially turned on trump by releasing this tape. a trump he made of a man that he said he would take a bullet for. maybe he meant, shoot a bullet at. how worried should trump be? >> well, i think there's good reason to be concerned. this is -- michael is certainly in the process of turning towards state's -- becoming a witness for the southern district, if they're inclined. you know, i think that he -- there's, what, 4 million pages of records that were seized from michael cohen. about 3,000 of them were deemed to be attorney/client privilege. there's a lot of evidence there. and i think there's a lot of reason for trump to be concerned about all of those years and all that evidence. >> asha, here's the thing. nobody looks good in this who's involved with it. let me just be honest about that. but the president tweeted earl