next, who is allen weisselberg?breaking down what we know about the trump organization's chief financial officer. and what it could mean for president trump. you're watching msnbc live. we're back after a quick break. you ok there, kurt? we're about to move. karate helps... relieve some of the house-buying... stress. at least you don't have to worry about homeowners insurance. call geico. geico... helps with... homeowners insurance? been doing it for years. i'm calling geico right now. good idea! get to know geico. and see how easy homeowners and renters insurance can be. discover card. i justis this for real?match, yep. we match all the cash back new cardmembers earn at the end of their first year, automatically. whoo! i got my money! hard to contain yourself, isn't it? uh huh! let it go! whoo! get a dollar-for-dollar match at the end of your first year. only from discover. - [narrator] for powerful suction, you need a shark. with two swappable batteries, at maximum suction the shark ion f80 has more run time than

that's not true about pecker or weisselberg. they aren't as complicated a witness as michael cohen would be. so when you look at the legal jeopardy the president is now in, you can see the prosecutors at the southern district building a deliberate case where you now have two significant cooperating witnesses. we have another witness who has been into the grand jury, allen weisselberg, and liability for the trump organization which, of course, reimbursed michael cohen for this payment. seems to have been a fraudulent act and also an illegal corporate contribution when they did that. you have an executive still unnamed at he company that authorized that payment that can't be the president itself because it was after the inauguration. it would most likely be one of his sons. who has their own legal jeopardy. you see them putting together this case. the question is, what comes next? the department of justice policy isn't that they won't indict a sitting president but that inherent in that policy is there has to be some other mechani

alan weisselberg, another person believed to be involved in those hush money payments. he has been given immunity by prosecutors. one day after his former personal fixer was sentenced to three years in prison, the president is on a twitter tirade about michael cohen and that money. hans nichols is at the white house for us. it's the first time we've seen the president respond to the sentencing of michael cohen. >> he has broken his silence. his old argument was there is no collusion, as it pertains to russia. the new argument is there's no crime as it pertains to these payments. and he seems to be blaming his old lawyer. take a look at these tweets from the president. i never directed michael cohen to break the law. he is a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. it's called advice of counsel and a lawyer has a great liability if a mistake is made. that's why they get paid, despite that, many campaign lawyers strongly stated i have done nothing wrong with respect to campaign laws. this tweet goes on. you get the gist of it. blame michael cohen and claim you didn't kn

weisselberg. pecker and weisselberg sounds like the tag line that follows, have you been in an accident? weisselberg is the long-time family accountant of the trumps. he was fred trump's accountant. he goes back to 1974 with this family company. he is said to have been donald trump's tax preparer. are we kind of forgetting every night how much he is able to share with the feds? >> weisselberg is an important witness. he's the guy who had control of the checkbook in large part, so when these checks would have been written, he would have been a critical player. we hear in that tape where trump and cohen are talking in the context of the campaign these payments that are going to be made. there is talk about running the formation of the business that will be used to hide the payments past weisselberg. weisselberg can also talk about who else in the company would have been involved in any sorts of transactions, most importantly, what they would have known and why they would have been engaging in certai

how does allen weisselberg figure into this case?. >> in this case he talked to the new york attorney general's investigators. he was deposed. provided evidence. separate and apart to whatever immunity he might have gotten in the federal investigation of cohen. weisselberg was a helpful witness for the new york attorney general. he told them he was not aware he was on the charity's board. he told them ivanka, donald junior and eric who were supposed to be on the board of directors for this charity looking out for its interests, making sure its money wasn't misused, the board hadn't met since 1999. they were certainly not doing that job. he knew about how the money was being spent. he told the new york a.g., look, you asked me what the policies are, what our policies are to make sure we aren't misspending charity money, there are no policies. >> my question for you, david, is the president tweets every d day, goes absolutely bananas that michael cohen was cooperating with mueller and the sdny. goes berserk over the flynn sentencing. d

he goes out of his way to name allen weisselberg. this is some dirty stuff, i better cover myself because this man won't cover me, and he's right. >> as you know, as a lawyer he has an obligation to not do those things. the s.d.n.y. tries to say that he directed -- the president, then candidate trump then directed him to commit a felony. i would flip that the other way. he was relying on his lawyer for good legal advice. if his lawyer gave him what is an illegal path, i don't think it is. if the s.d.n.y. is right, his lawyer gave him an illegal path, that's as much on the lawyer as the client. >> anna, when you listen to the tape -- i knew it was going to be instructive just on the line. there's too much there, because there's too much weird language used. i knew there was suggestion it involved campaign officials. that's the worst fact in terms of the federal election violation. it didn't involve cohen, there was an election official involved. i know what they're going to say, campaign violations, that's what this is about? no, it's

and there's been a sense, at least among some that i know, that weisselberg, he knows a lot. he knows everything that was going on. is he a big deal, potentially? >> well, he certainly could be on great many issues. this hush money payment, considering that it is alleged that he had a role in that. but it may also be that with respect to other information michael cohen can provide about the trump organization, about the effort to make this trump tower deal in moscow or other financial entanglement with the russians, you would imagine that the cfo, chief financial officer, or the accountant for the organization itself, may know where the financial bodies are buried. so it could be obviously a very key witness. >> as we have been discussing, you've said that the president could be indicted while he's in office, after he leaves office, related to the michael cohen crimes. but the president told reuters last night that he was simply relying on his lawyer, namely michael cohen, and that there was no violation, he said, because the payments were civil. what do you make of that defe

al anne weisselberg with the trump organization got an immunity deal. secretly recorded conversations he had, including with the president of the united states. cnn obtained one of the conversations where he talks about weisselberg and the money pay-offs. listen to this. >> i have spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with -- >> what are we going to -- >> with funding. yes. and it is all the stuff -- >> the assumption is that that's just one of many secretly-recorded phone conversations that michael cohen had, and now that the federal prosecutors presumably have all of them. >> don't forget, they railed his offices. they've got everything they need. they raided his offices. they have everything they need and more. so you have a president who has said, first of all, that he didn't know about this, right? look where we are now. today he is saying it is peanuts. he went from "i didn't know about it," you have recorded conversations about how you're going to do this pay-off. you have his good friend, mr. pecker and ami, saying, yes

>> well, weisselberg is a potentially corroborating witness. he's the kind of person you want to have in bringing evidence that emphasizes that cohen is telling the truth. you work hard to find others engage and in the process to se yes he's te -- yes, he's telling you the truth. >> what do you think of his defense that he was relying on his lawyer? >> advice of counsel defenses have been tried by criminals for ages and they almost mefr wonev. typically lawyers do what their clients tell them to do. it's the client directing the lawyer to do something. not the lawyer doing something illegal on behalf of the client and not telling him. that's the rarity. i think that is a bit of reaching for it. reaching for straws. >> how much of -- how significant is it that ami, not just david pecker but ami is cooperating with the special counsel or sdny in this investigation? >> i think it's important because it gives it back to the trump organization and donald trump personally. all of these court filings are in agreement on one point which is the presiden

allen weisselberg who couss co d he spoke to. he has served as chief financial officer for the trump organization for decades. over the summer, he was granted immunity by federal prosecutors so he could help them with the cohen investigation. "vanity fair" describes him as the most senior person in the organization. that is not trump. overseeing many of his bosses an personal financial dealings, has prepared trump's tax return, and is the one guy people have said this over and over who knows where all the bodies are buried. how does all this fit together? the entire question about whether the president committed an impeachable offense now hinges on the testimony of two guy, david pecker and allen weisselberg who are both cooperating witnesses. that is a wow. i want to go right to the white house where nbc's kristen welker who co-wrote that article is standing by. tell us more about how things are playing out inside the west wing. >> president trump up and tweeting today on defense. let me read you the key parts of these tweets. t

weisselberg wrote the checks. between these two guys there may be stories we don't even know about. >> we've talked a time or two about this idea prosecutors don't just rely on the idea of the uncorroborated word of one witness. michael cohen will never take the stand in a future case and testify without any backup. instead what prosecutors do, we'll have layer and layer of evidence that confirms and reinforces the strength of their case. and that's what we see now. we've got weisselberg the check writer, david pecker at ami. there's some indication the chief officer at ami is also cooperating. and each would have given prosecutors evidence and prosecutors would have painstakingly kraublt painstakingly corroborated it. we have this detail there may be more audiotapes from michael cohen. but it will be a solidly built building rather than something that will crumble and that's the strength we see emerging now that the southern district of new york has the reputation for putting together so meticulously. >> i guess

two of them, cohen and weisselberg, now cooperating with federal agents. now on the remaining players, trump's children, don junior, eric and ivanka. >> why work for me, why not go someplace else? >> well, i actually did go someplace else for a year and ultimately sort of the siren's call of working on your projects threw me back there. the sexiest projects out there, the best projects out there. and honestly, being in this field, i couldn't want to work for anyone else. >> the trump organization hopefully will be everywhere globally and we'll continue to grow it, take what you made, such a phenomenal brand and continue to extend that really and make it just a family company. >> all right. so with me now are tim o'brien, executive editor of bloomberg view who wrote about the growing pressure on donald trump jr. back with us, nick akerman, former watergate special prosecutor. tim, let me begin with you. you look at this from where the prosecutors are standing. they're slowly squeezing people one by one, people that were part of the trump organization. allen

weisselberg was really interesting.eposition they got from him showed him how lax, even your expectations for a trump enterprise, how lax they were at the foundation. he had no idea he was on the board of the foundation. it turned out that the board of the foundation, which included ivanka trump, eric trump and donald trump, jr., all supposed to be sort of looking out for the financial interests of the foundation, overseeing its money, making sure it wasn't mismanaged. that board hadn't actually met since 1999. >> and, tim o'brien, i know that you have registered absolutely zero surprise with any of this reporting. it's not that you have the specific knowledge that david obtained, but when david was out there and discovering that donald trump has not put any of his money into the foundation and donald trump has not made payments on all sorts of charitable promises that he made, that's the donald trump you discovered when you were writing your book about donald trump years ago. >> this is a familiar person obviously. i t

they're getting david pecker, allen weisselberg. these are on the witness side of the house.er folks are the targets and that's who we're waiting to find out about. >> it's just kind of weird. i didn't know, i didn't know, i didn't know, and all of these people around him are being sent to jail. jack, so the sdny, they have cohen now, and now a deal with ami. what does it say about the case that they're building? are the president's defenses crumbling? >> the president's defenses are definitely crumbling. what you outlined there was a potential conspiracy involving ami, the trump campaign, perhaps the trump organization to violate campaign finance layws. i mean any argument that might have been seriously waged earlier to the effect that these payments were not meant to influence an election, it seems to me have completely been shattered. there's not a chance that since he involved the campaign staff in helping to organize this scheme with ami, that they can't -- they cannot with a straight face any longer maintain that this was to protect the family or protect his reputation

allen weisselberg, as you said earlier, is now cooperating.ody knows where the money has gone better than he does, as the cfo of the trump organization. and so that business enterprise is beginning to look like a criminal racketeering enterprise in the classic sense of the word, and the federal authorities could well be going after it with additional indictments of those individuals who were in the room or had other knowledge. and just a really important point here, they can be indicted. there's no constitutional bar to indicting them or donald trump's inner circle like his family, and i believe very strongly that the president, himself, can be indicted. there's no constitutional bar to it. i'm going to be asking the office of legal counsel for an opinion that in effect retracts its prior opinion indicating that the president cannot be indicted because i think the president, himself, can be indicted it only to stop the statute of limitations from running. >> right. there's a statute of limitations that if he is re-elected, i think the statute

. >> i want to get all of you on the record about allen weisselberg. he ran the money at trump organization. a narrow immunity deal with the southern district of new york. what he is on tape, what he is referenced to on the secret recording from trump was basically someone who processed invoices. so in the manafort indictment, you guys talked about a paper case. it seems like there's also paper evidence of this operation. >> yeah, and i think that's referenced numerous times in the criminal information that michael cohen plead guilty to and referenced in other documents we've seen with this case. as far as going forward here, which is what everyone is asking about and what you may be hinting to is that prosecutors and investigators are going to have to take a look at all the evidence they've gotten here. they've taken michael cohen referenced in court yesterday how many phones were taken. they reconstructed documents that were shredded. there's a lot of information that investigators and prosecutors in new york have in this case. they've taken testimon

and it's all the stuff. >> allen weisselberg is the cfo of the trump organization.ted immunity. news of the deal with ami came moments after cohen's sentencing for crimes which included arranging payments and lying to congress about the trump tower project in moscow during the campaign. >> cohen's adviser speaking out stating that cohen's false testimony was shared with the white house and it's possible president trump knew cohen would make false statements under oath. not a peep from the president on wednesday, but behind the scenes, we are told the president is seething and assuring associates cohen is a liar. we have athena jones with more. >> reporter: good morning, dave and christine. this is the first time a member of the president's inner circle received significants prison sentence associated with the russia probe. there was a pattern of deception by cohen. the u.s. district judge agreed saying cohen thrived on the access to powerful people. he became one himself. cohen told the court he took full responsibility for his crimes and speaking about trump, he sa

weisselberg's testimony, a guy who knows the books. now you have american media, david pecker who runs the "national enquirer" and the southern district of new york releasing this after sentencing yesterday. ami made a payment of $150,000 in cooperation and consultation and concert with and at the request and suggestion of one or more members of a candidate's 2016 campaign to ensure that a woman did not publicize damaging allegations that that candidate before the 2016 presidential election and there by influence the election. the president is trying to make the case. it's not direct campaign finance violations. ami and michael cohen and the president is getting lonely on this one. >> with ami, we were away from michael cohen. he has lied about things. a bruiner group of people saying it was a project to hide the affairs. yesterday was significant. >> i agree with that. an additional piece of evidence is the manner in which the monies were paid and repaid. michael cohen sets up a limited liability company and schedules something or oth

michael cohen, of course, but allen weisselberg, the trump organization cfo.oing to jail, weisselberg has been granted immunity for his cooperation. as you know better than me, prosecutors don't handout immunity unless they've gotten a fair amount of cooperation already, right? >> it's either that and with a combination of having gotten information and also believing that person's testimony. and information is so valuable that you're prepared to accept that that person might not be punished for any involvement that he or she had in the activity. so sometimes it's the case you give immunity to somebody who, you know, is a big player in some enterprise, sometimes you give immunity to somebody who is a little bit larger player. it is so important to your making case against other folks that you give special privilege to that person, so they have that. i think that's very significant. and they also have people who are not necessarily within the trump organization, but someone like david pecker who is the head of a.m.i. that owns the "national enquirer," also has t

there is one important note about weisselberg. prosecutors gave him immunity.volved in writing these checks to cohen and, therefore, involved in trying to silence women before the 2016 election, that would be the beginning of their troubles. so, remember this list of at least 16 trump associates who had contacts with russia during the 2016 campaign or transition. remember that? there it is right there. well, don junior, ivanka trump, and jared kushner are all on it. donald trump, jr., was very involved in his father's presidential campaign. attended the infamous june 2016 trump tower meeting with russian lobbyists. when "the new york times" first reported the story, trump junior, don junior, put out an initial statement claiming it had nothing to do with clinton or the campaign. but then he had to revise his statement several times after it was revealed he agreed to the meeting when offered dirt on clinton. remember the e-mails, right? here's how he explained it on sean hannity in the summer of 2017. watch this. >> just sort of nonsensical, gas garbled and quic

that is david pecker, who we know was in the room, and allen weisselberg who got immunity from the southerntrict of new york a month ago. so you want to follow that money trail, aaron, and you want to see where did that money go, who knew what because those two other men, david pecker and allen weisselberg could implicate donald trump in this conspiracy. >> we will leave the discussion there. ned price and jeff mason, katie, thanks, we'll see you in a little bit here. >>> a texas judge rules obamacare is unconstitutional. what the decision means for the millions of americans who plan to sign up for it ahead of today's deadline. when my hot water heater failed, she was pregnant, in-laws were coming, a little bit of water, it really- it rocked our world. i had no idea the amount of damage that water could do. we called usaa. and they greeted me as they always do. sergeant baker, how are you? they were on it. it was unbelievable. having insurance is something everyone needs, but having usaa- now that's a privilege. we're the baker's and we're usaa members for life. usaa. get your insurance quo

and weave allan weisselberg, the chief officer of the trump organization giving up where all the financial bodies are buried. when you look at all that in aggregate, the president didn't rob a bank, he robbed the american people of the full value of their vote. for that he needs to be held accountable. >> i've been watching cohen do all this purp walks in and out of court. here's the chart of the mmo mob op and this is how it works. >> he did say there were more than just members of trump implicated in all of this. and that's what we could see at executive two, could be at the center of the next prosecution. >> trump is denying he did anything illegal. trump said last night, michael cohen's a lawyer, i assume he would know what he's doing. and even if it was only civil there's no violation based on what we did. well, that's a cover. it looks like he's surrounded by former guys he was in back rooms with, people he say conniving with like pecker, like cohen but used to be deal making in the back room to keep things away from the public and now these guys are all coming at him saying he's a c

ivanka's on the board, allen weisselberg is on the board.claims he didn't know he was on the board. this is like a cesspool. >> yes. it is. this is how trump organizations work. it's all one big pot of money. they don't run a public corporation that has shareholders that reports to the s.e.c. it's all whatever they say it is and they never accepted that that's not how you can run other organizations like a campaign, which is finance laws, like a charity, which is covered by a whole bunch of other laws including tax laws. so they treated this like a slush fund, like a piggybank, and if the check came from the foundation, or the check came from trump, it was all interchangeable in their minds. but here's what i think you and i were talking about, which is really sort of galling, first of all, they never made these big payments until the "washington post" began to interview them and began to question, began to investigate, where is the money? why haven't you paid the money? and it was only then, as you point well, we better get on this and actu

the weisselberg thing is a great example.k for him to write checks out of. one proof of that was with alan weisselberg just wrote the checks for this one. there was none of the processes that a charity is supposed to have to protect its money, to make sure its money is not being misused. it was just a checkbook in alan weisselberg's pocket. >> this charity existed, they would raise money, they would have events and raise money, it would go into a coffer from which president trump would buy tim tebow helmets and nothing to do with charity. >> that's right. many of these cases he bought the portraits at a charity auction. his thought was as long as my money from one charity ends up with another charity that's okay. that's not the way the law works at all. >> this is still ongoing but yet it's shutting town. first of all, what are the facts as it pertains to the trump family being able to be involved with any type of charities in the future, and why is it shutting down if this is just allegations at this point? >> so the attorne

. >> are we talking specifically family members, alan wlen weisselbe weisselberg, he had the immunity, those kind of people? >> well, i think our story said that they were interested in what precisely mr. weiselberg knew. i think they're looking at what some other people knew. we weren't in a position to say precisely who those people were or are. >> sure. we've said the prevailing view in the justice department is that you cannot indict a sitting president. but what are the options at the state level, both now and once trump leaves the white house? >> well, at the federal level, he could still be charged, if he leaves -- if he's not re-elected in 2020, the campaign finance violations would still be within the statute of limitations. he could theoretically be charged at that time, if there is sufficient evidence for them to bring a case against him. as far as possible state crimes involving the company or other executives at the company, i think that there were state prosecutors who started looking into that around the time of mr. cohen's guilty plea. they got waved off at the time by

it's a very small operation, and the only people i can think of other than alan weisselberg are people's whose last name is trump. i think that that would make my very uncomfortable were i one of those people. mueller also says that cohen has revealed communications with persons connected to the white house. i guess whether inside or outside during the period 2017 and 2018. that's a signal to any of those people who may have had communications with michael cohen during that time that they better be talking to robert mueller and doing so in a very truthful way. then, finally -- and this i think is quite significant it's about the preparation and circulation of the false filing he made with the senate and house intelligence committees. what he suggests there is that there were people there may have been a conspiracy with cohen to submit that statement to those congressional committees. who knows how many people were involved in that. that's a big deal. >> we don't know who those people are. not just -- >> not yet. >> who they are specifically, so those are some of the mysteries that are ou

those are can all be found and identified and they have at least partial cooperation from alan weisselberg, executing the trump financial actions for decades. i anticipate they'll not have a great deal of difficulty, they just have a lot of work to do to uncover what money flowed where, when, what is known. in the summer of 2015, don't forget, donald trump said the disclosure forms from what we've seen are not designed for a man of mr. trump's great wealth. they're not. there may be a lot of things that he was not legally required to disclose that may be disturbing when they come out. >> and to what end, jeffrey toobin? the house intel, the nt is still in republican hands. does he fear that the american public has some sort of investigation fatigue that he could come up against? >> i think it's funny to think about fatigue before they've even done anything. >> we've been mired in lots of investigations up till now. >> that's true, but there have been no congressional investigations of this white house. and look, let's think about something very specific. here you have an american relations

we know allen weisselberg and others have been cooperating with the southern district of new york investigation. there could be others, trump family members implicated in that. one appears to be an unnamed individual mentioned in the indictment. on the mueller side, there's a lot we don't know. i think the big question is, next what happens to roger stone. beyond that, were there others that are involved in the conspiracy relating to e-mails and other help from the russians? >> everything is fine. don't worry. everything is fine. this is all great. paul renato, thanks for coming on and breaking it all down. i appreciate it. >>> next i'll speak to a democratic congressman about all this white house turmoil and what it means for house democrats. >>> a bit later, a look at who is looking behind the scenes to mount pleasant a challenge to tru - mount a challenge to trump in 2020. i've always been amazed by what's next. and still going for my best, even though i live with a higher risk of stroke due to afib not caused by a heart valve problem. so if there's a better treatment than warfarin... i want

weisselberg and mr. picker. lord knows who else might be in the room when they were discussing. >> tapes. >> might be tapes, probably e-mails. likely documents and probably people that these people talked to, and good prosecutors can always figure a way to get that stuff into evidence. you don't build a case on one person. you build it on many people and many pieces of corroborative evidence. that's how we do it. >> turn to you and ask how things changed politically. pete talking about the appetite among republicans in congress to deal with this, but this was a spectacle in the federal courthouse in manhattan. michael cohen closing this chapter. heading up to prison if he gets his way. what changed politically as a result of this as you see it? >> down in washington, d.c. not much changed. >> no? >> really. a deal of he said/he said. this guy is a serial liar. goes back to the campaign, all the polls show mr. trump, right, winning, and so he is just somebody i think is seen as somebody not credible and senators

. >> i have spoken to alan weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with -- >> funding. >> yes. and it's all the stuff. >> so we have that tyape. we also have the tape of the president being asked about it on air force one and denying any knowledge of it. this story has consistently shifted. and now he's saying, well, i didn't direct him to. it's on the tape, mark. >> one is to say i did not direct my counsel to break the law. i think there is a great debate as to whether or not a payment of this sort is a violation of campaign finance or not. i think it is pretty realistic to say that somebody who is a celebrity would not know whether that's a campaign finance violation or not. >> when you're running for president of the united states, these are things that you need to know or surround yourself with people who do know that law. >> well, that's a fair point that clearly michael cohen does not know the law. i think that's a concern. then he shouldn't be in that position. but i think more fundamentally a question is veracity. if the president says that he didn't know about it and

. >> i've spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up. >> never happened. michael cohen is a liar. that never happened. in the next few months, trump called cohen a liar, a flipper, weak, someone who made up stories, but had very little to do with him. very little. he worked for him for ten years, more. and last night just before cohen's sentencing the president weighed in on the hush money payments to daniels and mcdougal one more time telling reuters and i quote here it, number one it wasn't a campaign contribution. if it were it, it's only civil and even if it's only civil, there's no violation based on what we did. okay? okay? based on what we did? that's not what the judge said today. the judge citing what he called a veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct including buying the silence of stormy daniels and karen mcdougal. and it's important to know all of this happened in less than one year. and still, and still here we we are every night. imagine if you or i did that or anybody. i haven't had this much drama in my life in the entire time i've been

. >> eyewitness testimony from witnesses like allen weisselberg who placed trump in the room when the deal went down. as importantly, forensic evidence. aud audiotapes, those tapes cohen was making of trump. they've got text messages and e-mails. the only thing that giuliani says was correct is that no prosecutor is going to rely solely on the testimony of somebody like michael cohen who is a cooperating witness or as we say in the hood a snitch. so you don't rely only on a snitch, but they're not doing that. they've got plenty of evidence. >> here comes danny savales with snitches get stitches. >> that's the saying as it goes. here's the thing, and i would say this respectfully to the great paul butler, rudy giuliani is doing what most defense attorneys do which is slam the cooperating witness, say this man is a liar and the government got hand in hand with a criminal. >> but this is his public defense. this is not an actual legal defense here. >> right. >> it won't stand up in court at all. >> well, typically in court defense attorneys attack the credibility of a cooperating witness

. >> i've actually spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with -- >> so what are we going to -- >> -- with funding, yes. and it's all the stuff. all the stuff because, you know, you never know where that company -- >> somebody maybe gets hit by a truck. >> correct. so i'm all over that. and i spoke to allen about it. when it comes time for the financing, which will be -- >> what financing? >> we'll have to pay -- >> don't pay with cash. >> no, no, no. i got -- no, no, no. >> initially, remember on air force one, i don't know anything about it. you have to ask michael cohen. as far as the president's claim that those payments were a campaign violation, the facts say otherwise. remember michael cohen was sentenced to three years in prison. that is a fact, not one that rudy giuliani, who appears to be the president's new fixer, can talk away. but that's definitely not stopping him from trying. >> the southern district says you can get out of jail if you do this. he's got three years now. there's a real motivation to sing like crazy. he's got to do a lot of singin

a guy named allen weisselberg who has been trump's cfo since the '80s it's a small company. he knows it all. he's agreed to cooperate with authorities to some degree in the case against cohen. if people like that start to turn or they see a real risk to themselves. they may value themselves over trump. and the information is not that compartment alliesed. a few people know it all. >> david farenthold and christina wilkie, that was great. >>> james comey called out republican lawmakers for failing to stand up to president trump. >> so, another day of hillary clinton's e-mails and the steele dossier. this while the president of the united states is lying about the fbi, attacking the fbi, and attacking the rule of law in this country. how does that make any sense at all? republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter. we have words of a president matter, the rule of law matters and, and the truth matters. where are those republicans today? at some point, someone that's to stand up and in the face of fear of fox news, fear of their base, fear of mean tweet

. >> i have spoken to allen weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with funding. >> so what are we going to do? >> yes. it's all the stuff because you never know where that company, what he's going to be -- correct. i'm all over that, and i spoke to allen about it, when it comes time for the financing. >> listen, what financing. >> we'll have to pay something. >> pay in cash. >> no, no, no. >> the president late in the campaign, talking to the man he once called his lawyer and now calls a rat. as for his current lawyer, at about the same time the president was tweeting about cohen yesterday, rudy giuliani was on abc's "this week" he had plenty to say including a new theory about the hush payments, namely the allegations couldn't be true because the six figure payouts were too small. >> when it's true, and you have the kind of money that the president had, it's a million dollar settlement. whether it's not true, when it's a harassment settlement and it's not true, you give them 130, 150,000. they went away for so little money, it indicates their case was very very weak. >> ge

i've spoken to allan weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with funding -- >> so what are we going to do -- >> with funding, yes and all the stuff. i'm all over that. when it comes to allen with the financing -- >> what financing? >> the president late in the campaign talking to the man he once called his lawyer and now calls a rat. as for his current lawyer at about the same time the president was tweeting about cohen yesterday, rudy giuliani was on abc this week. he had plenty to say including a new theory about the hush payments, namely the allegation couldn't be true because the six figure pay outs were too small. >> when it's true and you have the kind of money the president had, it's a million dollar settlement. when it's not true, when it's a harassment settlement and it's not true you give them $130,000, $150,000. they went away for so little money it indicates the case was very, very weak. >> if it ain't a million bucks, it ain't nothing. he also talked about the president's legal exposure in the hacking of democratic e-mails. first, the president had nothing to do w

also, allen weisselberg has ref received immunity. he's been with the trump organization for 40 years, he's the chief financial officer. he obviously knows a lot. stick around. much more right after this. [man 1] ...this is my body of proof. [man 2] proof of less joint pain... [woman 3] ...and clearer skin. [man 3] proof that i can fight psoriatic arthritis... [woman 4] ...with humira. [woman 5] humira targets and blocks a specific source of inflammation that contributes to both joint and skin symptoms. it's proven to help relieve pain, stop further irreversible joint damage, and clear skin in many adults. humira is the number one prescribed biologic for psoriatic arthritis. [avo] humira can lower your ability to fight infections. serious and sometimes fatal infections, including tuberculosis, and cancers, including lymphoma, have happened, as have blood, liver, and nervous system problems, serious allergic reactions, and new or worsening heart failure. tell your doctor if you've been to areas where certain fungal infections are commo

. >> allen weisselberg hasn't spoken to mueller yet. >> there's been no leaking, no information.u really watch the one that nobody is talking about because he may be the one that everybody is going to be unraveled by. >> and let's put up the list of all the mueller witnesses so far from donald trump's orbit. it's quite a list. you can go through the inner circle of everyone who has spoken and cooperated with the investigation. jonathan, at this point, how panicked is donald trump? >> i think there is certainly concern. it's a number of fronts at once, which is compounding it. there's the ongoing investigation with the sdny. there's the ongoing robert mueller probe. at this point it's six or seven trump entities who are all being investigated. the business, the inaugural committee, the campaign, the administration. so there is obviously a sustained amount of legal pressure. there's going to be a new attorney general in the state of new york. already alleged to ramp up investigations there. the democratic house is going to start their own investigations. the president and people ar

already really great that's out there for people interested, is expensive testimony from allen weisselberg. a lot of it is there, partly redacted. he talks about how every check had donald trump's signature on it and how chaotic things really kind of are behind the scenes there. it's great reading. >> thanks for being with me tonight. >>> still ahead, an important update on the family seen in this viral image taken at the border. talk to the california congresswoman who took action. >>> plus, tonight's thing one thing two starts right after this. i'm alex trebek here to tell you about the colonial penn program. if you're age 50 to 85 and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three p's. what are the three p's? the three p's of life insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. a price you can afford, a price that can't increase, and a price that fits your budget. i'm 65 and take medications. what's my price? you can get coverage for $9.95 a month. i just turned 80. what's my price? $9.95 a month for you, too. if you're age 50 to 85, call now about the numb

he and michael cohen, weisselberg, around the trump enterprise, are steeped in how you futz with the legal structures, to hide money inflows, hide expenses, to move money around and that's a particular set of skills that -- >> not only that, but to sell the myth of yourself in order to make more money. remember the whole premise of the apprentice is he was a successful businessman, which is fundamentally not true. donald trump drew a paycheck like you and i do. he had a w-2 form. >> as everyone knows -- >> or me e. there is no billionaire who needs a w-2 who draws a salary because he was playing the role of a successful businessman. that's part of the grift he knew how to do. >> there's two ways of looking at that. either he's fairly sophisticated in terms of hiding corruption and criminality -- >> right. >> -- or he is a big enough player that most people tasked with going after criminals left him alone. we know donations and maybe -- who knows why he was -- >> in the case of manafort, right, manafort was not -- a lot of what manafort was not doing particularly sophisticated -- ther

let's also remember weisselberg, nobody's talking about him, but he knows all the dirty little business secrets, and that could be a whole vein of investigation we haven't dealt with. it may not be directly related to the mueller jurisdiction, but it certainly is of interest to the american people and the southern district of new york, the new york attorney general. i think there is a lot more crimes to yet be uncovered, and you're right, korsi and stone are still there and there may be many others whose names we haven't even heard yet that only mueller knows about. >> a big piece of that puzzle we could learn more about today. thank you all very much for your time. >> thank you. >>> and moments ago at the u.s. capitol where president george h.w. bush lies in state for visitors to pay their last respects. we saw the president's service dog enter the room, sully is accompanying individuals who have benefitted from the americans with disabilities act, which bush signed into law while he was president. tomorrow a ceremony at the national cathedral in washington, and president bush will be