here is gloria borger with a look at robert mueller. perhaps the most interesting man in the world and theatively lit >> reporter: robert mueller is a mystery man. as the leader of the russia investigation, he and his team have become a political pinata after squeezing indictment, jail time and plea deals from former trump advisers including the president's ex-fixer now singing and faces prison and his ex-campaign chairperson,ccused . >> there should have never been any mueller investigation. there was no collusion. >> reporter: it's been a frame job since one of his lawyers. >> they are a group of 13 highly partisan democrats that make up the mueller team, excludeing him. trying very x ve, very hard to him. >> reporter: he hired his attorney general and hired

cnn's gloria borger has this. >> reporter: special counsel robert mueller is a mystery man.most private public figure in washington. but as the leader of the russia investigation, he and his team have become a political pinatta after squeezing deals from former advisers. >> there should have never been any mueller investigation because there was nothing done wrong, there was no collusion. >> reporter: it has been a frame job since says one of his lawyers. >> they are arer they are a groy partisan democrats that make up the mueller team excluding him trying very, very hard to frame him. >> reporter: an angry president fired his attorney general and hired someone more to his liking. and now delights in calling mueller a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue. ♪ it is hard to remember that at the start -- >> i think he is the right guy at the right time. >> reporter: -- mueller was a bipartisan favorite. >> he would have been on anybody's list of let's say the top five people in the country to have taken on this kind of a responsibility. >> reporter: the resume is long. at 74, he has

gloria borger picks up her report with a look at mueller's history with james comey.fbi when his phone rang. it was james comey, then deputy attorney general. it was the first time mueller and comey would find themselves in a very controversial legal drama. >> i was very upset, i was angry. >> comey was worried the bush administration was determined to keep a warrantless eavesdropping program that mueller, comey and their boss thought was illegal. but ashcroft was in the hospital recovering from surgery. leaving comey in charge. >> i was concerned given how ill i knew the attorney general was, there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to do that. i called director mueller, who had been a great help to me. he said, i'll meet you at the hospital right now. >> they had to literally race administration officials to ashcroft's bedside. >> the director instructed the fbi agent's present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. >> in the end ashcroft backed comey and mueller. >> he enlisted bob mueller because

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gloria borger, seth, thank you both so much. great conversation. >>> as the president faces all of this mounting legal pressure, he is also trying to convince someone to take the job as his new white house chief of staff. already, several of his closest allies have declined. >>> also, the u.s. is teaming up with russia and the saudis as part of this effort to weaken the global response to a dire climate change report. we have details on this major scientific setback. >>> and thousands and thousands of women could be missing a key genetic test for breast cancer. why researchers are now saying the current screening guidelines are totally out of date. do not miss this. we'll be right back. ♪ -we have the power -to make a difference, right now. we have the power to make sure everyone has clean water. to provide access to education for all. -to rid the world of aids, -once and for all. we have the power. to choose to include. to create clean energy. to raise capital. and be fearless entrepreneurs. to understand different perspectives

we have cnn chief analyst gloria borger. kaitlan said something so interesting, the idea of what you normally see behind closed doors. this far surpasses i would expect to see behind closed doors. >> there was no decorum. these were people meeting in the oechl offic oval office. remember in home alone the kid middle you are not the boss of me? this is the new world order. there was no decorum and it was melee. it was clear that shuck schumer could barely look at donald trump. nancy pelosi pushed back when he tried to say i know it's difficult for nancy to talk because of the implication being she may not be speaker. they didn't give any ground. effectively they got the president to say okay, i will proudly have a shut down if we don't get agreement on a border wall. as kaitlan points out, republicans don't want. it's astonishing because this was in the open. even behind closed doors as you were pointing out, they were more formal and productive. >> in this case, the expectation initially was we were not even going to have ca

gloria borger, this is what we got from our colleagues on the hill. this is what nancy pelosi has said privately about this whole thing. she said, quoting her, it's like a manhood thing for him, him being trump, it's like a manhood thing for him, a if manhood would ever be associated with him, this wall thing. >> well, i mean, you could see it in the way she was responding to him when he said to her, and i thought it was kind of a condescending way, well, this is kind of a difficult time for nancy, implying she doesn't know if she's going to be speaker. so it difficult for her to speak for her party. she kind of left him have it right back and said don't do that. i know what i'm doing. and i think that that's where the manhood thing comes from. she was clearly trying to school him that she can count votes and that she knows what she's doing and wanted to move on from that. so what we witnessed there was the new world order here, divided government, here it is. and this kind of lack of decorum and mutual respect for each other was completely obvious fr

joining me are obama white house veteran david alex rod and gloria borger.now you have new reporting on how the president is dealing with this entire process. >> he's frustrated, he's not happy. i was told he feels somewhat humiliated by the way this has played out publicly. this is a president who says the best people want to work for my administration, and you want to offer a high-level job that most people would jump at in any other administration. and he gets turned down and everybody knows about it and he doesn't have any plan b. and so he's not happy. >> david, it is hard to kind of, you know, reconcile a president who says he only hires the best and the brightest and the smartest, and they are back logs of people who want to work for his administration with the reality. >> yeah, i have one word for him, anderson, craigslist. i mean, nobody wants this job. there's a reason for that. who has left this administration save maybe nikki haley who has left this administration with their reputation intact? people watch what's going on and, more than that, the

here is cnn's gloria borger. >> reporter: robert mueller is a mystery man.st private public figure in washington. as the leader of the russia investigation, he and his team have become a political pinata after squeezing indictments and jail time and plea deals from former trump adviser, including his ex-campaign chair. >> there should have never been any mueller investigation. there was no collusion. there never has been. >> reporter: it's been a frame job says one of his lawyers. >> they are a group of 13 highly partisan democrats that make up the mueller team, excluding him. are trying very, very hard to frame him. >> reporter: an ang represidery hired someone more to his liking on the investigation. now delights in calling mueller a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue. it's hard to remember that at the start -- >> i think he is the right guy at the right time. >> reporter: mueller was a bipartisan favorite. >> i would have been on anybody's list of the top five people in the country to have taken on this kind of a responsibility. >> reporter: the resume is l

here's gloria borger. >> reporter: special counsel robert mueller is a mystery man.ic figure in washington. but as the leader of the russia investigation, he and his team have become a political pinata, after squeezing zinlts, jailtime and plea deals from formerly trump advisers including the president's ex-fixer now singing and facing prich and his ex-campaign chair now indicted and accused of lying. >> there should have never been any mueller investigation because there was never anything done wrong. there was no collusion. there never has been. >> reporter: it's been a frame job says one of his lawyers. >> they are a group of 13 highly partisan democrats that make up the mueller team excluding him are trying very, very hard to frame him. >> reporter: an angry president fired his attorney general and hired someone more to his liking on the investigation. and now delights in calling mueller a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue. ♪ >> reporter: it's hard to remember that at the start. >> i think he's the right guy at the right time. >> reporter: mueller was a bipartisan

chief political analyst, gloria borger.f, i mean, if this was a bad day for michael cohen, and it most certainly was, it was also certainly a bad day for the president. >> well, think about how much we know that michael cohen has already told prosecutors. he has already told them that the payments to stormy daniels and karen mcdougal were authorized and directed by donald trump, which, of course, makes sense since he was the main beneficiary. beneficiary of those payments. he also told them that he was negotiating to build trump tower moscow during 2016, during the republican primaries. at a time the president was not telling the truth about that. those are only the public aspects of what he's been telling -- what he's been telling prosecutors and based on everything we know, michael cohen has insight into all of donald trump's personal dealings and i would be extremely nervous about him now that he is very much on the government's team. >> laura, who was made pretty clear today, at least according to cohen, is that these p

cnn chief political analyst gloria borger. help us understand, gloria, how significant this is what happened today. >> this is really significant, particularly if you're the president of the united states and you are watching this play out. what you said earlier, that michael cohen ran the president over, he did. and what's really important here now is that he said he intends to continue to cooperate. so this is just the beginning of the story. this is not the end of the story and one thing that michael cohen said in court that struck me was he said he's committed to ensuring that history will not remember me as the villain of this story. the implication being there's someone else. >> he believes the implication is being the president. he also cooperated because he believed that, i guess if he didn't or one of the reasons he wasn't because the president might otherwise get rid of the investigation? >> i think that he, in all respects, is a cooperator according to he was a day late and a dollar short. the timing of this is extre

>> thanks to gloria borger.of speculation and rejecti rejection, president trump does not have a permanent replacement for the chief of staff? how this will affect the administration? that's next. ...i just got my ancestrydna results: 74% italian. ...and i found out that i'm from the big toe of that sexy italian boot! so this holiday season it's ancestrydna per tutti! order your kit now at ancestry.com >> as we end the year, the president is in the midst of more staff changes and turn over. we saw ryan zinke announcing that he will be resigning as he faces a growing number of ethics investigations. that coming one day after president trump announced mick mulvaney will be the acting chief of staff in the early part of next year replacing john kelly. with me to discuss this is jackry wolf who is our digital director. part of the reason if not the only reason zinke stepped down rather quickly was that he was facing so many ethics investigations and he said in a statement yesterday he didn't want to spend thousands

also with us, gloria borger.our reaction to this back and forth and why do you think tillerson after not saying anything for months and months said what he said. >> i think the emotion and outrage in this one tweet, i mean, given the source where this is coming from, we see tweets like this from the president all the time. but this about left me speechless. he's referring to his former secretary of state, granted one that he fired by tweet. but it's somebody who was the head of exxon, who was there for decades. i mean, somebody who came in and at least tried to do his job and tried to do it quietly. i feel like there's been this enmity there ever since it was reported back many moons ago when tillerson had called trump a moron after a meeting. at least it was reported as that. it wasn't long after that that trump forced tillerson to go out publicly in front of cameras, to moron. so now that tillerson has spoken, they say he's undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't pay attention to detail, wanted to do thing

with me now cnn chief political analyst gloria borger and sarah coynes. trump seems like he's trying to confuse people. will it work? >> it hasn't worked with federal prosecutors and hasn't altered the substance of what they've charged so i don't think it's going to confuse the courts. remember on air force i on that famous moment when donald trump said he knew nothing about the payment of stormy daniels. he's moved a lot. i think what he's trying to do is obfuscate all of this. but it's not going to work. >> what do you think? >> brooke, i think a lot of people have been trying to compare this to john edwards' pruce a prosecution and it's very different -- >> he didn't want his wife to know about it versus the american people. >> and the jury only acquitted on the weakest charge opinion. n on the other five charges it was hung. they had concerns they didn't have proof of direct payment. you have cohen saying it, ami saying it, pecker saying it, howard saying it and a tape that reflects discussion about this payment. that's a lot of immunity given and a l

analyst gloria borger. i wonder what stood out to you. there are so many facts in what he said, but for me this is a different michael cohen. >> this is a contrite michael cohen and somebody who really wants to get the president. he said i'm not going to be the villain. what struck me was something i think we all assumed. he flat out said nothing at the trump organization was ever done unless it was run through mr. trump. we have to remember this is a small family business. trump signed off on everything. when he came out on air force one that infamous day and said he didn't know about the payments to stormy daniels or said i didn't know this or michael cohen did this, you have to take it with a grain of salt. he was involved in everything just as he was involved in everything during the campaign. he was his own campaign manager in many ways. that's how he operates inside the white house and how he trait operated the trump organization. >> it would have to be proven because of michael cohen and he lied before and was asked in the intervie

attorney greg brower and political analyst gloria borger. i want to know what each of you are watching for in today's filing. >> all of that that jessica is talking about. i think the major question wool g -- e -- we'll get an answer to is did flynn help mueller get to the bottom of the question of the improper communications between flynn, if they were improper, and proper communications between flynn and the russian ambassador and also trying to influence a vote in the united nations on israeli settlement before of course they took office. and did he lie to the feds about what he said and what he did? i mean, don't forget, you had an acting attorney general running to the white house counsel with her hair on fire trying to tell him that mr. flynn, general flynn, could be subject to blackmail. and it took 18 days for the white house to get rid of flynn saying that he had lied to the vice president about actually what he had done. so some of these questions i think are going to be answered in this memo and we'll be able to see how much coope

cnn's gloria borger traces cohen's gold-made journey from fixer to flipper. ry. the president's former lawyer and enforcer michael cohen turns on his boss, decides to fess up to his own crimes and is sentenc sentenced to priss op. it's been a long and winding road. >> the words the media should be using to describe mr. trump are generous. >> he wauls the ultimate loyali. >> kind, humble, honest and genuine. >> the true defender. >> the trump fixer who said he would take a bullet for his idol, his boss. >> and they say i'm mr. trump's pit bull, that i am his right-hand man. i mean, there's -- i've been called many different things around here. >> now in the plot twist worthy of shakespeare, the fixer has flipped. >> i'm done with the limping i'm done being loyal to president trump and my first loyalty belongs to my wife, my daughter, my son and this country. >> reporter: prosecutors say he's provided relevant and useful information on contacts with persons connected to the white house, and in his own conversations with individual number one, aka candidate donal

our chief political analyst gloria borger reports on cohen's journey from fixer to flipper. >> the words describe mr. trump are generous -- >> reporter: he was the ultimate loyalist. >> principled. >> reporter: protector and defender. >> kind, humble, honest, and genuine. >> reporter: the trump fixer who said he would take a bullet for his idol, his boss. >> they say i'm mr. trump's pit bull, that i am his -- i'm his right-hand man. i mean, there's -- i've been called many different things around here. >> reporter: now, in a plot twist worthy of shakespeare, the fixer has flipped, with prosecutors saying he has provided relevant and useful information on contacts with persons connected to the white house and his own conversations with individual number 1, aka candidate donald trump, to criminally influence the election. in more than 70 hours of interviews, cohen confessed to his own financial crimes and past lies and stands to pay the price. >> he's a weak person. and not a very smart person. >> reporter: a betrayed trump says it's all a lie, the deceit only serving cohen's self-interest

. >> joining us, cnn chief political analyst, gloria borger. so first, trump's tweet. is he witness tampering? >> he's pretty close to the line. the president has had a pretty consistent message throughout this process, which is anyone who testifies or cooperates with law enforcement is weak, gutless, and inherently a liar. and the flip side is anyone who stays silent is heroic and has guts, to use his term. he is right on the edge of witness tampering. federal law makes it a crime to do anything to dissuade or try to postpone or delay someone's testimony. and if you look at the president's tweets from this morning, if i was a prosecutor and we had a wiretap up on someone's phone and they said those exact things that the president tweeted, i would say, wow, we just got him on obstruction. so, he's really right on the edge. >> so twitter is just a fine line? >> twitter gives you a window into someone's mind. and the president is unfiltered and what he says is absolutely fair game for evidence, for trial, for mueller's report. >> and gloria, we know all of this is coming

our chief political analyst, gloria borger is here. ma communications director jen psaki and former rnc chief of staff mike shields. gloria, here we are again with a lot more that we don't know about than what we do know about. >> right. criminal investigation, what criminal investigation? we weren't aware of this. i think mueller is so good at dropping these little bread crumbs for us. i think everything is planned. i think one of the messages we got from last night, while we didn't get as much information as we in the media might have hoped because so much of it was redacted but i think the clear message that comes out of this is if you cooperate with us, we're not going to punish you. come on in. jump in. flynn has already given us a lot of information and in the statement, it said, you know, he's -- and that helped us immeasurably get other people to testify, but you know, the president's been out there saying don't cooperate, don't jump in. maybe i'll pardon you. i'm not going to take a pardon off the table. i think that's the mess

i want to go now to john dean, former nixon white house counsel during watergate, gloria borger and garrett graff, author of "the threat matrix, inside robert mueller's fbi." gloria, this could be very significant. >> yeah, i understand -- i think shimmon described it really well. the key we're looking for here is how valuable a witness was general flynn. how much substantial assistance did he give to mueller. and, you know, flynn is at the center of this, particularly during the transition where, you know, we know that he's been -- the special counsel's office has described about how he lied about his communications with the former russian ambassador, sergey kislyak, before the trump administration took office about sanctions, and whether he and other people in the campaign were calling foreign nations to find out how they would vote in the united nations about israeli settlements, which is something you don't do until you've taken office. and we also know that the acting attorney general, remember sally yates, ran down to the white house with her hair on fire talking to the then white hou

. >>> and with these big developments, let's go to mark preston, our senior political analyst, gloria borgerchief political analyst and harry lipman, former deputy assistant attorney general. harry, how important is this latest development? obviously, there are several today but this latest one, criminal investigation into the inaugural committee. >> yeah, i would say it's huge. first of all, you have now compared with a few weeks ago, when there was just stray criminal conduct, everything now is going off within inches of the president. his business dealings, his candidacy, his inauguration, and people as well. this latest strikes perilously close to melania trump because the main vendor who got a seven-figure salary in the inauguration is stephanie, who's very close to her. ditto the campaign finance, potentially implicates trump junior and to shimon's point, it's not michael cohen who's carrying the water all by himself. remember on the inauguration, richard gates, the deputy chair of inauguration's already cooperating and likewise, besides cohen, you have david pecker on the campaign fin

. >> formernismon watergate counsel john dean, gloria borger, jeffrey toobin, a former federal prosecutorzell done joins us, as well, a former assistant to robert mueller. jeff, how significant is in that rod rosenstein and andrew mccabe were so concerned that president trump's behavior was veering toward obstruction they opened a case even before a special counsel was appointed? >> well, it just shows how concerned they were about these conversations between the president and comey, the ones comey described so vividly in his testimony in his book where the president asked for loyalty, where the president asked for comey to go easy on mike flynn. all of that was leading to thanks concern about obstruction of justice even before comey was fired. i mean, those conversations were so bizarre. remember how comey testified that he typed them up in his car because he was so concerned about memorializing them. he wasn't the only one is what the message is of this development. >> you know, gloria, the obvious pushback on there is that you know, someone hearing that folks in the fbi and d.o.j. were