here's another dynamic at work, though, making the new reporting we got from emily james fox important. the special master we viewing evidence in the michael cohen criminal investigation processed millions of documents already, right? handed almost all of them over to the prosecutors in the southern district of new york. those prosecutors have been weighing that evidence, while they decide whether or not they are going to bring criminal charges against michael cohen. that process has been going on for a long time. it will not go on indefinitely. it will come to a close. and then if prosecutors are going to bring charges, mr. cohen and lawyers will have to start talking to the prosecutors about the kinds of charges cohen might face, and the prospect he might try to get a break from the government, get lenience from the government in exchange for cooperation. cooperation in this case means he'll give them some information, information that would be of greater value to those prosecutors than whatever value they might see in putting him in jail. now, if they got the goods on you and you're

. >>> let's bring in senior reporter at "vanity fair" and msnbc news, and contributor emily james foxld for a long time. just walk us through a bit of what we heard how the decision was made to make it public. >> well, i think the most interesting thing is it is very clear that in the height of the election president trump was clearly plugged into all that michael cohen was doing. whether that was this payment made, or the talk of the payment made to ami or something about his divorce tapes being unsealed or not, and what clear is the president knew about everything that was going on. i think that was a very calculated strategy made by michael cohen and his attorneys yesterday. since friday, people in cohen world had been telling me the narrative that rudy giuliani put out was not accurate, and it was not the full story and there was much more to know. i don't think anyone believed it would come out so soon, but we saw a lot of growing frustration. the narrative they believed was not accurate. people were really believes it, and cohen believes that there is a calculated strategy in th