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joining our discussion now, tim o'brien, the executive editor of bloomsberg news.ack with us michael avenatti and ari melber. tim o'brien, on a day like today, what do we need to know about the bograpmy of michael cohen. >> he first shows up in a dispute between tenants in a trump building. and i think trump brought him in to play a familiar role we've seen over the years with trump. a lawyer who's not really a lawyer. a lawyer who's a fixer. a lawyer who helps trump weaponize the legal system to take opponents, critics, journalists, and to solve problems. and trump himself has a predilection for thugs and for people who talk and act tough and michael cohen certainly fills that role. i think what's different here is it's the first time, i think, that trump has ever had a lawyer who's been a close adviser who's now the subject of a major investigation. and by all indications, the attorney-client privilege is going to get pierced here. the u.s. attorney's office had enough evidence to go there. >> and michael avenatti, on the attorney-client privilege, how do you exp

tim o'brien, executive editor. ben white, chief economic correspondent for politico and cnbc contributor. tim, i start with you, both of you, first, let's open our minds, open our hearts. let's assume nothing. let's pretend we just land eed earth, knew none of this back story. how big of an admission is it that president trump is now saying michael cohen helped him or dealt with the stormy daniels situation which just a couple weeks ago is going, i know nothing, don't ask him, don't know her? >> in terms of the investigation in the southern district of new york and the legal parameters around this issue, it is seismic. he's no longer david dennison, he's donald trump. >> until now, i hear a lot from michael avenatti, lots from fox news. we don't hear of actual legal action being taken besidings in a civil manner. why is it a real problem? >> we're not going to know about legal action until the prosecutors run this through. the issue in play is how much of whatever they suspect michael cohen did that involved crimina

joining us now tim o'brien, michael avenatti and jill win wine-banks back with us.here's no other confirmation to this story, usually when someone breaks a story, within six hours or a day everyone else has the story. so i'm wondering about your assessment of this story, where it stands tonight, and michael cohen's general state of jeopardy as of tonight after his first day in court. >> i think mcclatchy is a responsible, hard minded news organization and you saw earlier stone, the reporter who interviewed with rachel, said i think they spent over six months on it and they have at least two sources. i would trust the credibility of mcclatchy over almost anybody who works in the trump organization, given the fact pattern, michael cohen and trump himself have had years of sort of flagrant lying on this one. but this may come down to who you believe, mcclatchy versus cohen. >> and the hannity show is one of the places that michael cohen flashed around his passport saying i've never been there. talk about the trouble that michael cohen is in now in judge woods' courtroo

joining me now tim o'brien, danny is a val loss, betsy woodruff and natasha bertrand. thank you all for being here. tim, i got to go to you first. comey writes about the january 27 dinner that he had one-on-one with the then newly elected president. the setup of the dinner, both the physical layout of a private meal and trump's pretense that he had not already asked me to stay on multiple occasions convinced me that this was an effort to establish a patronage relationship, somebody probably had told him or maybe it just occurred to him at random that he had given me the job for free and he needed to get something in return. this only added to the strangest of the experience, the president of the united states had invited me to dinner and decided my job security is on the menu. trump hadn't even given him the job. he was just supposed to stay on. what do you make of donald trump's apparent attempts to bring james comey in his sort of mafia-like family in comey's words? >> later he also asked comey to go gently on michael flynn. so clearly what was going through the presi

. >> tim o'brien used to be on the show, he works for bloomberg, he got into a big lawsuit. why am i telling you this? you can go and look at the deposition donald trump did and you can see he can be good under oath, he can know how to play the game, i don't recall. but he can also get caught lying. and that could have -- we keep saying constitutional crisis and i believe that's overhyped. not in this context. if he lies in an interview with mueller, we have a whole new ball game. >> and that's the risk his lawyers have been concerned about. the whole obsession with perception and pumping up his own net worth and the palpable weirdness of posing as someone else to talk about how wealthy you are, that has served him well but not in a deposition context. truth cannot we transactional in those stakes. when you are dealing with the president under oath, it is a constitutional implication. now bringing in rudy giuliani, who i worked for for years, is to professionalize his legal team with someone who has real weight in the law enforcement community and potentially with bob muelle

i'm joined by columnist tim o'brien, the author of trump nation. p sued him for libel after he reported a relatively low estimate of trump's net worth. i don't know if that's libellous, tim, but thank you for coming on. >> it's good to be here, chris. >> i was joshing earlier. we have a president of the united states with at least three aliases. as i pointed out, george washington, abraham lincoln, i don't think they had aliases. they don't have accusations about whatever happened in moscow hotel rooms either. there's a -- what do you call it? not a dark side. it's sort of a different side to trump where he operates almost like a con artist. >> well, it's not almost like a con artist. donald trump is a con artist, and he's been, i think, pulling a long con on the american public for decades. a lot of what he's doing now in the white house is very similar to what he did during his business career, which is to create this or try to create this aura around himself of being incredibly smart, incredibly wealthy, incredibly strategic, and a great performe

. >> tim o'brien. >> skpoo and he was caught in various points. >> 46 lies. >> but if you read the transcript he was forced to admit stuff which in some cases is worse than lying. >> he is protected by executive privilege. there is no way he would ever testify to mueller i'm telling you that. >> what do you make of his personal lawyer taking the fifth. >> to go back to my rico point, cohen is the consignaturelieri. that's. >> that's what they do. >> he was operating a racketeering organization. he was not functioning as a lawyer, he was functioning as someone who was making illegal deals for donald trump. >> what an hour. my thanks to knick conves sory and rick strengthel for getting me through it. "mtp daily" starts right now. two days in a row on time. >> i hope to get through my breaking news. >> if i can get through mine -- >> tonight as talks break down over trump/mueller interview, has is the president keeping his legal battles from clouding his decision on syria. >> we are looking very, very seriously, very closely at that whole situation, and we will see what happens, folks. we will s