i want to bring in michael zelden.former special assistant to robert mueller at the department of justice and a cnn legal analyst. good to see you. all right, so reuters is reporting that only 161 of the nearly 300,000 documents reviewed have been determined to be protected by attorney-client privilege. what does that mean to you? is that a particularly low number? >> well, it is a low number except to the extent that michael cohen, as we understand his relationship with president trump and other clients, functioned as a businessman than he did as a lawyer. so the communications he had with his clients and with the president seemed to be more business dealings than legal advice. and so that reflects the nature of those relationships, and so the low number of attorney-client privilege-protected documents isn't surprising. >> so there might be another deadline or an extension to hand over all the documentsment. >> it seems as though the judge has given them to the 27th of june to make final decisions on whether anything

. >> michael zelden is joining us now. he's a former special assistant to robert mueller and is legal analyst. do you believe what clapper believes, that it's hard to believe the president didn't know about these meeting? >> it seems hard to believe, but we don't know. and there is one easy way for us to find out, which is for the president to sit down with mueller and answer his questions about it. the president during this time period has no executive privilege. it's pre his inauguration. if he wants to settle this ultimately as a legal matter, sit down, talk to mueller, tell him what you knew and didn't know, ask thnd then we can get report. >> if you were his lawyer, would you let him do that? >> i don't think as his lawyer i would have a choice at this point in time. there may not be a basis to inquire of him on obstruction, but on this, i don't think he has the opportunity to avoid it, so the question is how doum yo you mitigate the damage an interview could cause. >> caputo says they were both set up by this fbi inf

joining me to do that, legal analyst michael zelden. good morning, how are you? morning, fine, thank you. how are you? >> i'm good. to me, this is almost like at least in the case of manafort the president or giuliani trying to slip a note through the prison bars here. i mean, it does seem to be clear communication coming from this administration to those who are caught up right now, and i'm talking about cohen and manafort, that don't worry, we're looking after you, we've got your back. keep your mouth closed. am i being too blunt, or is that the way it is? >> well, it's hard to know. firstly, i have stopped listening to rudy giuliani because each day he says something different, often within the same day he says things which are different. so to believe that he actually is speaking for the president as opposed to himself, i can't credit it at the moment. that said, i think there is a history that is listed about the president pardoning people after they were charged or convicted when they felt the charges were political. whether that's telling these guys be qui