embarrassing information out of the public eye. >> keith davidson who is an attorney who represented karen mcdougals. mcdougal, daniels and bouchard have cases against davidson. saying that he was working in collusion with cohen. weeks after the fbi raid on his home and office, with the legal pressure on michael cohen building, he invoked his fifth amendment right in stormy daniels other lawsuit, the one against trump and michael cohen to invalidate her mnda. the president was still defending cohen and himself amid speculation that campaign funds were used to pay off daniels. >> he did absolutely nothing wrong. there were no campaign funds going -- >> why is he pleading the fifth. >> because he's got other things. he's got businesses. but i'm not involved. >> in that civil litigation with stormy daniels, cohen and trump would later fold. withdrawing their part of the suit and saying they wouldn't enforce the mda. as michael cohen's problems multiplied, many wondered how long his self-professed loyalty to donald trump would even last. >> mr. president, could michael cohen flip? >> everybody flips. >

embarrassing information out of the public eye. >> keith davidson who is an attorney who represented karen mcdougal and stormy daniels. mcdougal, daniels and bouchard have cases against davidson. saying that he was working in collusion with cohen. weeks after the fbi raid on his home and office, with the legal pressure on michael cohen building, he invoked his fifth amendment right in stormy daniels other lawsuit, the one against trump and michael cohen to invalidate her nda. the president was still defending cohen and himself amid speculation that campaign funds were used to pay off daniels. >> he did absolutely nothing wrong. there were no campaign funds going -- >> why is he pleading the fifth. >> because he's got other things. he's got businesses. but i'm not involved. >> in that civil litigation with stormy daniels, cohen and trump would later fold. withdrawing their part of the suit and saying they wouldn't enforce the mda. as michael cohen's problems multiplied, many wondered how long his self-professed loyalty to donald trump would even last. >> mr. president, could michael cohen flip? >> e

it doesn't matter whether it's paid directly by cohen handing a bag of money to karen mcdougal or payingid. >> many critics saw the recordings of eerily reminiscent of another presidency in crisis. >> there's a lot of parallels here. there are secretly recorded conversations. there is a white house that is increasingly crushed under the weight of paranoia. what we don't yet is there going to be a tape as important in the trump-russia probe as there was in watergate? which helped end nixon's presidency. >> looking back at statements nixon made during watergate, he tried to same tactics that trump is using now. >> i have never heard or seen such outrageous, vicious dwushing reporting. >> the most dishonest people. >> because when you don't have the facts or the law on your side, which nixon didn't, that's what you do. you attack the investigators and try to discredit the investigation so that people won't believe what's put before them. >> and the tape michael cohen released may just be the beginning. >> it raises the specter that he has a lot more on trump and a lot than can just be easil

the "national enquirer" buying and burying the story about karen mcdougal may just be the tip of the iceberg. the "new york times" reports donald trump had a plan to buy up all the so-called dirt the tabloid supposedly extra kiewsmed up on him since the 1980s. but the deal never happened. new york's "village voice" that published a lot of investigative reporting it was liberal but the model for similar papers around the country died this week. victim of print publications and other city papers have shrunk or shrivels or gone away. the "village voice." i'm howard kurtz. i hope you are enjoying the labor day weekend. ratings go up and down. but i want to take a moment to thank you. this show had more viewers in august than any cnn show in prime time. let's continue the conversation on twitter and my facebook page. you can comment and i'll comment right back. you might want to subscribe to my podcast. you can subscribe at apple itunes, google play, or foxnewspodcasts.com. we'll be back next sunday with the latest >> good morning, it is monday september 13th, this is "fox & friends first

thousand and sixteen just months before the election the enquirer paid a former playboy model karen mcdougal one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her story of an affair with trunk the agreement stipulated that mcdougal could not tell her story to anyone else but the enquirer never published it caught the story and then effectively killed it and the paper did the same with the story alleging trumpets fathered a child out of wedlock in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and those are just the catching cool stories involving trump and the enquirer that we know about and no one would be shocked if there were others what david pecker does is he buys the rights to those stories but that he never publishes those stories those stories never see the light of day he keeps them in a safe but in return david packer gets other things from trump other stories other bits of gossip and he trades on that with donald trump if you go out and pay a substantial amount of money for a story and then you put that story aside you kill it during the course of a campaign you're effectively making a campaign con

thousand and sixteen just months before the election the enquirer paid a former playboy model karen mcdougal one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her story of an affair with trunk the agreement stipulate that mcdougal could not tell her story to anyone else but the enquirer never published it caught the story then effectively killed it and the paper did the same with the story alleging trumpets fathered a child out of wedlock in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and those are just the catch and kill stories involving trump and the enquirer that we know about and no one would be shocked if there were others what david pecker does is he buys the rights to those stories but that he never publishes those stories those stories never see the light of day he keeps them in a safe but in return david packard gets other things from trump other stories other bits of gossip and he trades on that with donald trump if you go out and pay a substantial amount of money for a story and then you put that story aside you kill it during the course of a campaign you're effectively making a campaign contri

thousand and sixteen just months before the election the enquirer paid a former playboy model karen mcdougal one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her story of an affair with trump the agreement stipulated that mcdougal could not tell her story to anyone else but the enquirer never published it caught the story then effectively killed it and the paper did the same with a story alleging trumpeted fathered a child out of wedlock in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and those are just the catch until stories involving trump and the enquirer that we know about no one would be shocked if there were odds what david pecker does is he buys the rights to those stories but then he never publishes those stories those stories never see the light of day he keeps them in the safe but in return david packard gets other things from trump other stories other bits of gossip and he trades on that with donald trump if you go out and pay a substantial amount of money for a story and then you put that story aside you kill it during the course of a campaign you're effectively making a campaign contribution

federal charges and said candidate trump said for him to arrange payments to stormy daniels and karen mcdougalection. laura ingle is here with more. michael cohen was in court today. >> yeah, this came out of nowhere and he was spotted downtown in the federal courthouse. he denied to say why he was there. it's possible he was in a meeting about his probation. we reached out to the u.s. attorney's office, the certain district court. lanny davis offered no comment. there was no real response. nothing on the court docket. we're continuing to work our sources for more. >> jon: there were meetings between cohen and robert mueller. do we know about what transpired? >> this report coming from abc news. this is a very big one. it would indicate there's some cooperation going on. there was reportedly multiple interviews and multiple places according to abc news sources. some in washington d.c., some in new york city. apparently these two were not alone. according to the new report, prosecutors in the u.s. attorney's office in the certain district of new york were also on hand. the special counsel's que

implicated the president paying hush money to adult film actress stormy daniels and playboy model karen mcdougalring the 2016 election. like those references to adult actress and -- any way, playboy, the whole thing, this is so trumpian. cohen released a secret recording of himself and the president discussing a possible payment to mcdougal. let's listen to this tape recording. >> i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend david, you know, so that i'm going to do that right away. >> give it to me. >> i've spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with -- >> so what are we going to pay? >> funding, yes. and it's all the stuff, all the stuff. because here you never know where that company, never know where he's going to be. >> get hit by a truck. >> correct. i'm all over it. i spoke to allen when it comes time for the financing -- >> listen, what financing? >> well, i have to pay. >> don't pay with cash. >> no, no, no, no. >> how are you? >> well, cohen isn't a new figure in trump world. of course, a tape from 2015 that was released

different kinds of sexual misconduct, you know, relating to donald trump or stormy daniels or karen mcdougalthis is something he does a lot. but here's the thing about that strategy, is that it relies on a culture that doesn't believe women, right? that doesn't believe women when they speak. i'm actually old enough, ari, to remember a time when we didn't believe women, like a full five or six months ago. so now the culture has changed a lot. it's a post me too era and that trick is a little bit harder to pull. >> and when we mention that kavanagh is hold up there, you put your finger on it with who he's hold up getting advice from. the headlines tell the tale. trump wanted to even bring back rob porter who faced spousal abuse allegations. speech writer resigned over similar allegations. the fox news cover up. how does that fit into what you think judge kavanagh heard today in that white house? >> right. i mean, if we look at who donald trump uses as advisors, it tells us everything about the strategy that he's going to implement going forward. actually tried today to think about a man that d

he said he made payments to buy the silence of stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. and he said he made those payments at the request of the candidate. this is donald trump. well, late friday night, cohen offered to tear up the nondisclosure agreement with stormy daniels, apparently in an attempt to spare the president from having to give a deposition in the case. and we know what the president's own attorneys think about letting him answer questions. in one of the early excerpts from his book, woodward reports that former trump attorney john dowd warned the president he could end up in a, quote, orange jumpsuit if he testifies before special counsel robert mueller. the white house today trying to call woodward a liar. >> a number of people have come out and said that woodward never even reached out to corroborate statements that were attributed to them, which seems incredibly reckless for a book to make such outrageous claims, to not even take the time to get a $10 fact checker to call around and verify that some of these quotes happened when no effort was made, it

addition to implicating the president in relation to the hush money payments to stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. for more, i want to bring back my panel. betsy, let's start with you. we don't know the purpose of these talks especially when it comes to the reporting from vani"vanity fair," but what doe this mean for the president? >> over the course of the last several weeks around the time when michael cohen's legal problems started getting really dramatic and came a to the forefront, cohen and his lawyers basically jumped up and down, waved their hands over their heads and said please talk to us, robert mueller, we have things that you may want to know, you should come talk to us. so it is not a surprise that mueller and his team essentially took up cohen on that offer and now they are in communications. and in fact you would probably hear arguments that mueller was being dare lierelict if he did bring in cohen after the onslaught we saw when he was facing the most dramatic moments of his legal crisis. so it is not a surprise that cohen and mueller are now in communication. the big open questi

the president's defense was that he had personally made these payments to stormy daniels and karen mcdougalthat that sort of exonerated him. no, that was actually the root of the crime was a private company paying for a campaign expense. so i'm interested to see what other potential overlap there was between the trump organization and the trump campaign, whether there was any additional criminality there or allegations of criminality and that is what the president should be worried about a what giuliani is worried about as well. >> giuliani was on fox news reacting to all of this. take a listen to what he had to say. >> the plea agreement has -- cooperation agreement has nothing to do with the trump campaign. the reality is no evidence of collusion. all you have to do is look at the plea. the plea is to crimes that have to do with manafort's past. no involvement with president trump, no involvement with the campaign, no involvement with russia. >> lot to deconstruct there, but let's do it. he's saying this is rather limited if you read the text of this information. it's a different story. >

why republicans -- the base of the party doesn't care about stormy daniels, doesn't care about karen mcdougal or doesn't care about the president setting a poor role model example, that's why. because they get judge kavanaugh, they get judge gorsuch, they get abortion banned in a third of the country in a couple years, that's what they want -- >> you think abortions going to be banned per se? >> its being gutted right now. >> i'm not doubting its going to be chipped away at or gut because -- >> in new york -- roe v. wade is going to be overturned. >> absolutely. not in new york, not in california, not in illinois, not here in d.c., but in south dakota, in alabama, in mississippi, it will be illegal to have an -- to perform abortions and there will be doctors prosecuted -- >> you disagree? >> you don't think so? >> no. >> you don't think so? >> the idea that you know that jeffrey, you think is just crazy. of course we don't know that. >> so donald trump was lying in the campaign when he said if i get two appointments roe v. wade is going to be overturn, that was a lie. >> he did say that. that

it relates to payments made by the trump organization to cohen to pay off stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. we've got that. we don't know how far that's going to extend. and then we come back here, full circle, almost. the mystery op-ed. donald trump is obsessed with finding out who wrote this. we know from reporting john kelly, the chief of staff, would rather he sort of move beyond it. donald trump is not the kind of guy that moves beyond public criticism from the senior levels of his administration. you combine -- any one of these, brook, very stressful. you combine all of them, and you're dealing with just a massive pressure situation with lots of moving parts and almost none of this, by the way, donald trump can control. and i think that's what's probably the hardest thing for him. he can't really do anything to change a whole lot of this stuff that you see. back to you, brooke. >> so, hang on, because i want to hone in on the guy on the center of your diagram. and you just heard jeff zeleny talking about this new phone policy, right? so if you want to go in the sit room, you leave th

thousand and sixteen just months before the election the enquirer paid a former playboy model karen mcdougal one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for her story of an affair with trunk the agreement stipulate that mcdougal could not tell her story to anyone else but the enquirer never published it caught the story then effectively killed it and the paper did the same with the story alleging trumpets fathered a child out of wedlock in the late one nine hundred eighty s. and those are just the catch until stories involving trump and the enquirer that we know about and no one would be shocked if there were. what david pecker does is he buys the rights to those stories but that he never publishes those stories those stories never see the light of day he keeps them in a safe but in return david packard gets other things from other stories other bits of gossip and he trades on that with donald trump if you. you go out and pay a substantial amount of money for a story and then you put that story aside you kill it during the course of a campaign you're effectively making a campaign contribution if

trump wants to weigh in on karen mcdougal, i think everyone would say she's a pure hottie. is she lying? >> there's a point made earlier that really stands out to me. you talk about the supreme court. think about brown versus board of ed. that was a unanimous decision because the justices felt it was in the national interest of us to get this right. when you listen to the presidents make the remarks and the way he's trying to push this nomination through, that's what ginning up all of the -- what we're seeing in the electorate right now. we're going to lose rights as a result of this. >> here's what's on my mind. we keep talking about what poor brett kavanaugh's daughters are feeling. i do feel sad for them. i feel sad for them. even if they didn't go to the hearings. i feel horribly sad for dr. ford's family. if you're kavanaugh and you are truly innocent, what do the midterms mean to you? why not say scan the school, do an fbi investigation, clear my name. my name, my honor, my legacy is far more important than an election. i get it. that's absolutely important to chuck g