trump soho hotel was financed with funds that came out of eastern europe in a partnership with felix sader. he was working with michael cohen to get the deal done. when we litigated we asked him about the fact that felix was bringing investors routinely into his office from russia in the mid2000s. trump said of course we were meet with russian investors in the mid-2000s. who wouldn't have? russia was very hot. >> take me through and take our viewers through what michael cohen knows. how much damage can he do to donald trump? >> i remember sitting on this show when trump was really leaving him out to dry. you don't need even my insight to tell you when somebody is consulary, their right-hand man for ten years, they know everything. >> for a president, it's like the body guy. >> or ceo, it's your luntieuten. he was in the family. it's interesting to watch the arc of michael. i'm going to use the analogy of netflix. michael, you have many episodes also. michael was the arch -- i'm going to take a bullet for you. so loyal. then he was hung out to dry. he, obviously, was indicted. michael now,

but tell me a little bit about felix sader. >> he got a little bit of a checkered past.l problems. was insighted and so forth. again, working off what the judge was saying i look at this one of two ways. e-mails that were hacked. stone and corsi possibly linked to them. then a link to the trump campaign. starting to get luke warm, so to speak. >> dana: then you the report by the guardian that has not been corroborated. i think maybe we can take skepticism about manafort going to visit asange. >> one thing i have learned in 32 years of doing this, been in a lot of witness interviews. the denials were very clear talking about how we never met with asange, we had nothing to do with him. those seemed quite credible. i think it lanes slightly toward mueller trying to finalize, finalize this. >> dana: could bit that mueller finalizes. what he finalizes is that there were people involved in this that lied but we're not coming up with collusion that ties the president to it so there's our report. >> that's a very good crystal ball prediction. i have said this before. you're goin

>> craig, a man named felix sader who appears to be identified as individual 2 in these michael cohen court documents. he was intimately involved with michael cohen in trying to get this trump tower moscow deal done. he is a convicted felon, had ties to russian organized crime, had a long history of cooperating with the u.s. government. a very colorful character, also worked for the trump organization. what these documents show, though, the significance of them is that there was much more interaction with the russian government than was previously understood. we knew that michael cohen had reached out an e-mail a top aide to president putin about this project, but we thought there was no response from the russia russians. what this document shows is that the russian government reached out to michael cohen, discussed the project with him, and these discussions were ongoing long after michael cohen said they stopped. they continued to june 2016, right in the heart of the presidential campaign, and donald trump said there this was a well-known project. that is absolutely not true. at the

talk about don jr., and there is some old reporting from 2017 that talks about michael cohen and felix sader, and sader mentioning taking ivanka to russia and have her sit in huetin's chair, so hu hue -- putin's chair, and so what we don't know is that it is going to his family and certainly much more quickly and closer than he wants it to be. >> and talk to us about this, the implications of all of this. extraordinary timing the michael cohen guilty plea, and setting out these facts under oath, and the president on the plane going to the world summit, and you want to go to the summit with strength, and political strength and certainly not this legal cloud hanging over your head, and now the consolation of the putin summit, discuss. >> it is remarkable. it is perhaps unprecedented. we have had presidents go to summits before with some kinds of legal clouds hanging over their heads, but never anything this ominous, and this closely connected to the players in the summit. so, the notion that this, this guilty plea involves the trump organization, and michael cohen and russia, that the presiden

may 4th, 2016, individual two who is felix sader who did business with the trump organization. i had a chat with moscow. assuming the trip does happen, obviously the premeeting trip, that can happen any time you want, but the two big guys were the question i said would be confirmed when he becomes the nominee. not so much the particulars, but it talks about travel to russia and the big guys. it's about the fact that mueller's team has been meticulous and you are going to call him a liar? here's the other witness. what did you learn? >> the timing is threatening for the president. he already submitted the answers. it's interesting too if you look at paragraph seven, the reference is a senior campaign official knew about the business trip for the moscow project. we know manafort's plea blew up. it may have blown up because they knew he was lying. now the president may have submitted false statements because his source was manafort's. >> it calls into question anybody who has been testifying to congress. he was lying in information he provided to congress. now anybody else involve

one is felix sader, a mob-linked felon-turned-fbi informant involved in the cohen plea who tried to facilitatehe deal in 2016. >> sader is one of the most enigmatic figures in the trump saga. he and his father both allegedly had ties to the russia mafia going way back. felix grew up mostly in brake, in the brighton -- in brooklyn, in the brighton beach area, sort of the headquarters for the russian mafia. >> reporter: why did none of the heavily hyped trump deals never go through? >> one problem trump had was getting the approval of the russian government. he was always concerned that the bureaucracy and the kremlin was too -- time consuming, that there was too much. that's one of the reasons he was so interested in cultivating putin himself. >> reporter: but trump has made money from russians. he sold this mansion in palm beach to a russian billionaire for $95 million. and there was one business deal in moscow that did succeed. >> russia is our partner. >> reporter: in 2013 he made millions when he partnered with a russian billionaire to hold the "miss universe pageant" in the shadow of the k

. >> these e-mails are from felix sader, a developer with strong ties to putin that told the senate intelligence committee that he was like the enter merary, the go-to guy for the moscow real estate project. the very least, sader is a rush born real estate developer turned united states citizen and a guy that plays close to the edge. also an alleged fbi informant that has boasted about his ties to the russian president. in this 2015 e-mail to cohen, sader writes "buddy, our boy can become president of the u.s.a. and we can engineer it. i'll get all of putin's team to buy in on this. i will manage this process. there's no one on this trump that wants donald elected more than i do." the moscow real estate fell through and the president and cohen didn't go to moscow. the e-mails seem interesting to say the least, shep. >> shepard: catherine herridge reporting live from washington. let's go to jeffery cramer, former federal prosecutor, assistant u.s. attorney, now the managing director at berkeley research group, which is a good to see you again. >> good afternoon. >> shepard: the lying has been wel

. >> a lot is being made of this communication went back and forth between michael cohen and felix sadersentially described as extension of the kremlin. >> yes. melissa: like so many high-ranking people we hear about in russia, does a little bit of everything. it is all related to money. all related to putin. so the two of them are having a conversation back and forth maybe this deal with the president, maybe the building. maybe he could become president. what needs to happen in that conversation in order for the president to be implicated in some sort of wrongdoing? >> well i don't know the answer to that but i think know what bob mueller is trying to do. i think he is trying to show a series of agreements that somehow connecting, when you connect the dots, run through a circuitous route from the trump campaign to the kremlin. not everybody in the agreements know everybody else, take as series of agreements, like a jigsaw puzzle, you have to fill in the pieces, some of those pieces were filled in today by michael cohen. but if the president has said under oath, i had no deals in russia,

now this idea of the $50 million penthouse for vladimir putin, felix sader a real estate promoter andump tower, said it was his idea to float the idea to vladimir putin to give him a $50 million penthouse for free figuring that all of the other russian oligarchs would want to list where vladimir putin is living. sader has tried this before, giving away apartments to celebrities to entice people to come in. he called it a marketing ploy. one of the people he tried to do this is with madonna. nobody can reach her. sources close to the president said that the president knew nothing about this offer to putin and it was a stupid idea. >> shepard: what is the white house saying about this cancelled putin meeting? >> well, it's more what the kremlin is saying than what the white house is saying. the kremlin casting doubt on it saiding it was domestic politics in the united states. you mentioned the optics of meeting with president putin after this cohen business came out. sarah sanders issued a statement saying the russian witch hunt hoax which is hopefully is nearing an end is doing very we

trump business associate and convicted felon felix sader says he and cohen discussed offering offeringdimir putin a $50 million penthouse in that building. sader tells nbc news that the project was his own idea. quote, as soon as the russian stuff broke, it was like, well, this deal is over. it is not clear whether president trump knew of the intention to give away the penthouse. a spokeswoman for his business said of the tower project, like many real estate companies, the trump organization has explored opportunities in major markets all over the world, including russian. nothing materialized. >>> rudy giuliani is criticizing the timing of michael cohen's new guilty plea. in a statement yesterday he said, it is hardly coincidental that the special counsel once again files a charge just as the president is meeting with world leaders at the g20 summit in argentina. in may of 2017, a senior white house advisor was named a person of interest in the russia probe, right before president trump made his first ever foreign trip. at last year's g20 summit, the "new york times" was reporting on

s testimony, jared kushner's testimony, felix sader and others, what missing pieces does it fill in,t other documents should we pursue when we have the opportunity, who needs to come back to committee, who else do we need to raise concern with the special counsel in terms of truthfulness. we're undertaking that analysis now, and i'm not prepared to reach any conclusions. >> look, you have a ways to go, i get it. you're not chairman yet. you don't have the staff yet. i get that. you have mueller's investigation and a parallel track, if anything, farther ahead of intel committees in congress, he had a level of subpoena power that as you said you didn't have thanks to lack of cooperation on the other side. how aggressive can you get in the first six months versus what mueller is doing now? do you feel you have to stand back for a little while? >> no, i don't think we have to stand back. we'll do our best to de-conflict with the special counsel. that's how we started out our investigation. of course, things broke down when the majority decided their agenda was different and their agenda

a week after cohen first reached out, felix sader calling saying it's about putin.called today. and then march george papadopoulos he met with a professor about russian government connections and then russian hackers stole hillary clinton campaign chairman john podesta's e-mails and days later after that papadopoulos met trump and jeff sessions and he suggested reaching out to guess who. vladimir putin. and then in april of 2016, jeff sessions met with the russian ambassador, a meeting he would neglect to later mention in a senate hearing. a few days later, russian lawmaker torshin met donald trump jr. at an nra dinner in kentucky. may 19th, paul manafort became the campaign of the truchair of campaign and then they met with russians in the infamous trump tower meeting. you know, the one with a promise to get dirt on hillary clinton. and as that meeting was being set up, sater and cohen at the same time were busy chatting up putin's press secretary and discussing travel dates until just after that meeting when cohen met sater in the lobby of trump tower saying he co

insisted i have zero investments in russia but actually he wash business associate they had named felix sadereresting because remember, there were amazing e-mails that came out between them that said can you believe two guys from brooklyn are going to get a guy elected president and putin's going to help us put it all together? it was a pretty striking boast which seemed crazy at the time. if michael cohen has some new insites for robert mueller about what they really meant back then, when they were promising trump a trump power in moscow and boechting they were going to get a guy elected president. if there's a connect there, that's going to be fascinating. >> it's not a stretch to call all of these guys a human pack of liars. >> it sounds like he was still of the mind-set i will take a bullet for donald trump and now -- and you don't lie to congress about trump's business dealings in russia unless you know it's going to get you, cohen in criminal trouble, or it's going to get trump in a lot of criminal trouble. it sounds like michael cohen has now gone from taking a bullet for the president

cohen also details a plan he was working on with the russian-american business associate felix sader to travel to moscow to discuss the deal ahead of the 2016 republican convention in cleveland. cohen was even looking into the possibility of trump making the trip to russia, as well. cohen writing to sader, "my trip before cleveland. donald trump, once he becomes a nominee after the convention, the ranking members of the house and senate intelligence committees" -- >> this is michael cohen -- >> reporter: want to bring cohen back for truthful answers. >> it means that when the president was represent during the campaign that he had no business interest in russia, that that wasn't true. >> if anything the president has said is true that there's no there there, why are all his closest associates being found guilty of lying about theirs to russia -- their ties to russia? >> reporter: rudolph giuliani told me there's no contradiction between the president's responses to mueller on the question of the trump tower moscow n moscow and what we have learned from cohen. we've also learned tonig

while the campaign was going on, michael cohen and a man named felix sader, a convicted fel n, were trying to build this tower and enlisting the help of the moscow government. and they said something flippant like trump can become president and putin will help us. trump said during the campaign he had no business investments or financial ties with russians. that appears to be false as it relates to this project. now michael cohen has pled guilty to lying to congress about the scope and nature of his involvement with this project. chris? >> joining us now by phone, tom winter. he was in the courtroom. what was it like in there? what did you see and hear? >> reporters who regularly cover this courthouse in new york, southern district reporters we got a heads up at approximately 8:30 this morning that there would be a significant proceeding in usa versus john dou doe. we didn't even know it was going to be michael cohen. when we got in the courtroom we recognized a number of people from the special counsel's team, prosecutors. approximately 8:50, 9:00 a.m., mi michael cohen strolled into the