Transcripts For MSNBCW MSNBC Live With Ali Velshi 20181129

Interests . This i think only underscores the importance of our brangiing mr. Cohen back before the committee but looking into the issue of whether the russians possess Financial Leverage over the president of the United States. Today cohen officially named the president in court. This is key, because it ties trump to the trump tower moscow discussions, well past the time that the president claims those business negotiations ended. Of course, the president had something to say about it. Hes a weak person and what hes trying to do is get a reduced sentence. Hes a weak person. And not a very smart person. Hes trying to get a much lesser pris prison sentence by making up a story. Heres the thing, even if he was right, it doesnt matter. Because i was allowed to do whatever i wanted during the campaign. I was running my business, a lot of Different Things during the campaign. So very simply Michael Cohen is lying and hes trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me. So sum that up, trump says cohen is lying but that even if he isnt, it doesnt matter. Reminder, cohen now makes the 33rd person caught by mueller and the seventh guilty plea, the fifth of whom is in the trump orbit. To break this all down, lets start with nbc news investigations reporter tom winter. Tom, big scoop day for you today. Walk us through what is so critical about this development, you know, for all of the kind of nebulous reporting and threads that we have been pulling on about the Mueller Probe for so many months, this is very clear. Yeah, it is very clear, casey. I think a couple of big takeaways from this today. Ill get into the details of what cohen said he lied to congress about in just a second, but lets look at this. Michael cohen is now caught up in special counsels muellers investigation which means hes tied newspaper an investigation that is looking into the 2016 meddling of the russian government in the United States election and whether or not that has dmoig with the Trump Campaign. Before cohen was charged with a case that was spawned off uh the special counsels investigation and that was germane to some of the work that cohen did on behalf of the president. And it had to do with the campaign, but it didnt involve russia. Today directly involves russia. Second to that, we know from the Court Filings that have been made public in the last few hours that Michael Cohen is cooperating in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation. We have been reporting that Michael Cohen had been talking to the special counsels office. We know from the documents today there happears to have been sevn times over the last several months where there was some sort of a proffer offered by Michael Cohen mean egg was goi cohen meaning he was going to offer them information related to his plea deal. I think this has been ongoing and significant. As far as the things that Michael Cohen says that he lied about today r he sa, he says th fact that he spoke with President Trump only three times about the moscow project, this trump hotel in moscow, he said that was incorrect. He told congress, look, all the discussions that i had about this project they all wrapped up before the wyomiiowa caucus in. That wasnt true. He said these discussions continued on into june of 2016 and in addition to that i briefed the president and the family members, the trump family members that worked for the Trump Organization. So thats new information today. On top of that, we now know from Michael Cohen he said that he was not accurate and he was not telling the truth to congress when he admitted a conversation had he with what is Dmitry Peskovs office pp. And he is a lot more than a spokesperson. Who is someone who is very close to Vladimir Putin. So i think you now have a lot more communication and a lot more discussions about this project than we knew about this Court Appearance this morning. Remarkable set of facts and ones that could potentially ensnare others. Tom winter, thank you for the long day that you have put in explaining this to us. And Kristen Welker joins us live from the white house. Kristen, im told youve got the new reporting. Whats going on . Reporter moments ago Rudy Giuliani confirmeding some that in his answers to special counsel Robert Mueller, according to giuliani told investigators a story that is consistent with what Michael Cohen said today in court about the timeline of discussions about the trump tower potentially being built in moscow. So that is significant. Why . Because giulianis essentially saying here, look, President Trump was asked about this, he answered it, his answers were consistent with the truthful version of events that cohen said in court today. Now, this comes as President Trump lashed out at Michael Cohen earlier today before departing for argentina saying that he is weak and that he lied to essentially lower his prison sentence. And the president said there is nothing wrong with the discussions that he had about a potential deal in moscow during the campaign because he wasnt elected yet. Listen to what he had to say. I run for president , that doesnt mean im not allowed do business. I was doing a lot of Different Things when i was running. After i won, obviously i dont do business from january 20th. But more importantly, which is a following year. But i ran a business. In fact, i often joke about the fact that i was the only person that campaigned and simultaneously ran a business. Reporter and weve all been tracking to sclo tracking to closely the president s discussion and conversations about his business dealings. Heres what he said in 2017 soon after he was inaugurated. Take a listen. I could actually run my business. I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I dont like the way that looks, but i would be able to do that, if i wanted to. I would be the only juone that would be able to do that. As a president i could run the Trump Organization, great, great company, and i could run the company the country id do a very good job. But i dont want to do that. Reporter and we should also point out that President Trump has consistently said that he doesnt have business dealings in russia, hasnt had business dealings in russia. Now, of course, those comments are coming under fresh scrutiny as we learn about these new revelations today. All of this, when you take a step back, comes as we are witnessing this president frankly become increasingly what it appears to be, embattled as the special counsel investigation intensifies. And just this week, of course, that plea deal between his former Campaign Chair Paul Manafort and the special counsel collapsed. So the president s really been taking increasing aim every day at bob mueller. Today tweeting, he said calling it a joseph mccarthystyle witchhunt. Thats just a sample of some of the attacks weve witnessed this week and its against that backdrop that he heads to argentina for will all important g20 summit. And kansing that will meeting with Vladimir Putin, he did inseed foreshadow what we were going to be covering today with those tweets this morning, didnt he . Reporter he did indeed. Not surprisingly, congress is not too happy that they were lied to by Michael Cohen. I actually spoke with cohen right after one of his appearances on capitol hill. It was back in october of 2017 right after he spent about five hours talking to the house intel committee. Here is how he briefly described it to me. Were not going to be talking today. Cheer rio. Youve been so chatty before. How did it go . It went well. Thank you. But we now know that things didnt go so well as cohen thought, considering what happened today in federal court. For more on all this, im joined by nbcs National Political reporter mike live from the capital. Mike, other than being angry, weve also heard some lawmakers talk about wanting to bring cohen back to the committees. And were also hearing that they might be scraping through things to try to figure out who else might have lied. Well, thats right. You know as well as anybody that as democrats get ready to take back the control of the house and consider some of the investigative steps theyre going to take in the new congress, theres been discussion about how aggressively to pursue those steps. I think what todays news helps me clear for democrats, it gives me a little bit of runway in the early term to take some procedural steps. Ive heard multiple things from the house against committee who say one of their first actions in january could be to take a vote in the committee to send all of the transcripts of the 50 or so interviews that they conducted last year during the course of the russia investigation to the special counsel, to Robert Mueller. We heard from the incoming chairman adam schiff about this earlier today. Lets listen to him talk about the importance of that step. I think Michael Cohens guilty plea also underscores the importance of something else, and that is we previous othbeli witnesses were untruthful with our committee. We want to share those transcripts with mr. Mueller. In this case, the special counsel only had the advantage of written testimony that the witness made public. We think that the special counsel ought to have the benefit of the transcripts, not only of mr. Cohens testimony, but other witnesses like rother stone who may similarly have attempted to mislead the committee. Now we also know of course if the Senate Intelligence committee its still going on. They have a bipartisan investigation unlike what weve seen in the house. And what weve heard, new reporting that were posting very shortly on nbcnews. Com is that multiple Staff Members on the judiciary and the Intelligence Committee on the senate side are going to be combing through all the transcripts of the interviews they did to try to look for examples of where they think witnesses may have lied to the committee. And that might be the grounds for criminal referrals to the special counsel and his team. Stay tuned to nbc news. Com for that. Mike, thank you so much. Were lucky to have you on this story. Thanks. After all this, i want to bring it back to why this is all so crucial to the Mueller Investigation. Were going to bring in our allstar panel. Jill wine banks, legal analyst danny cevallos, and greg bauer, previously served as assistant director at the fbis office of congressional affairs. Greg, ill start with you on this because we were talking to mike about what this means to terms of the congress. This is a crime lying to congress that is pretty rarely prosecuted what do you read into muellers decision to choose this as how hes going to go forward with this plea deal . Is he setting the stage for other things . I think hes doing two things. Hes signaling to other witnesses that lying to whether its kr its congress or the special counsel team is a serious matter and those that lie will be prosecuted and he can gain some leverage over them in that way. And secondly, with Michael Cohen bob mueller has a pretty serious and significant cooperator, a person who knows a lot, perhaps more than anyone else, about the president s Business History for the last ten plus years, and also a lot about the campaign and specifically a lot about the trump businesses efforts in moscow. So this i think is a Significant Development and should lead to quite a bit of information for the special counsels team. Jill, Kristen Welker was just reporting that giuliani is now confirming some of what the president told the special counsel, essentially arguing that the president did not lie trying to say, look, we did not make the same mistake in our responses to Robert Mueller as Michael Cohen did when he talked to congress. What do you make of them trying to hammer that home . I think its a logical thing for them to do, but in the same way that i wouldnt take legal advice from Rudy Giuliani, i wouldnt take his opinion of the content of those written answers. Ill wait to see what mr. Mueller makes of those answers and whether they are true or not true. The other thing that kristen said was a reference to this being the mccarthy era again. And its a pretty ironic thing for the president who was mentored by roy cohen was the loir lawyer in that case to be admired. Hes been looking for his own roy cohen, why would he demean the hearings in that way . Danny, it looks like this may sort of give us some clues into where this goes next, but lets just underscore again, and greg touched on this, but the importance of having Michael Cohen cooperating specifically with the Mueller Probe as opposed to we know he was working with the Southern District of new york. Over the last few days weve talked about wikileaks and jerome corsi and roger stone, but all of those crimes require inferences and connecting dots. From the beginning, Michael Cohen time and time again provided direct links to criminali criminality. In the Southern District of new york several months ago he stood newspaper kwo up in court and said i committed a crime in terms of finance law and i did it with the president. Moving forward here we are again Michael Cohen pleading to a crime charged for the first time by the mueller team. Its an interesting trial e crime. Its rarely prosecute the. False statements to congress, even if theyre not sworn on under oath are still crimes. Theyre not perjury but they fall under section 1,001 false statements. And also this crime races a number of question rapes ises questions. If he does cooperate, hes still in the 0 to six month category. The other key factor is this allows him to transfer his case potentially and combine it, consolidate it with his other pending case. So it raises the question why go through the trouble of charging this particular crime with no huge sentencing consequences, what is muellers end game . A few days ago if you thought muellers team was on the ropes, theyve shown that they are anything but. Greg, danny mentioned this idea that mueller may have been on the ropes. That of course referring to Paul Manafort and some of the troubles hes headlining there. But some people compared the way mueller is approaching this case to going after the mob or mob families. Do you see those tactics in this move today with Michael Cohen . I do. Its what weve seen over the last several months, kind of the movement from the outer circle inward towards the crime boss, if you will. And, in fact, i would submit that the president s reaction to Michael Cohens the news about Michael Cohen today was exactly what as prosecutors hear from mob bosses and drug king pins, thats that the cooperator is lying and see hes saying things that arent true to get a lighter sentence in the is playing out like a organized crime operation would play out. Jill, one big question weve been looking at is how the president s team has played the pr game trying to undermine muellers credibility. Do you think based on what weve learned today were heading down a road where mueller could perhaps submit a set of evidence thats so convincing that republicans finally decide they cant stick by this president . I know that i may sound like poly anna in believing that the American People and even the republicans in congress will eventually see the facts. But it is getting clearer and clearer that mueller has really detailed facts, the kind of facts that he put forth in the indictment of the russians for hacking. He has details and documents. Once he proves the lies that manafort told, he will have the underlying evidence, not just that he lied, but of the true fact. And i think that can lead to all the problems that we have anticipated for the president. And because of the plea this time, for the president s son and soninlaw as well who have testified as well. So if they testified consistent with what cohen said, theyre in trouble too. All right. Jill winebanks, danny, thanks to both of you for your insights. Greg, youre going to stay with us well are coming back to you later on in the hour. Coming up, what you need to know about the russian born businessman and former trump associate with a criminal past. His role in the efforts to get the kremlins approval for a trump tower in moscow. Youre watching msnbc. I have no dealings with russia. I have no deals in russia. I have no deals that could happen in russia because weve stayed away. And i have no loans with russia. I have no investments in russia. None whatsoever. I dont have property in russia. Theres no talking to russia, there was no phone calls. I didnt make phone calls to russia, i didnt receive phone calls. I didnt have meetings. I didnt have texts. I didnt have any i have nothing to do with russia. Nothing to do with russia. Nothing to do with russia. Now, thanks to Michael Cohens latest plea deal, its looking more like that was not true. Cohen told Congress Last year that the moscow project ended in january, 2016, because of, quote, business reasons. Now cohen says he lied. His plea reads, quote, the moscow project was discussed multiple times within the company and did not end in january, 2016. Instead, as late as approximately june, 2016, cohen and individual two discussed efforts to obtain russian governmental approval for the moscow project. Individual two is presumed to be this man, felix seder. Seder is a russian born brooklyn bred Real Estate Investor once connected to a russian mafia stock fraud. He was a significant player in the trumps so he hho tour proj. To attract internationals in a zoning, skirting scheme. Seder spearheaded this trump tower project with Michael Cohen. In twist, seder promised to engineer the moscow deal with the help of russian president Vladimir Putin. In the summer of last year, the New York Times published portions of email exchanges between coen and seder, including this one dated november 3rd, 2015. Seder wrote to cohen in part, quote, michael, i arranged for ivanka to sit in putins private chair at his desk and office in the kremlin. I will get putin on this project and we will get donald elected. Seder went on. Buddy, our boy can become president of the usa and we keng near it. I will get all of putins team to buy in on this. There is no evidence that seder fulfilled that promise and cohen released a statement in 2017 saying seder was where are quote, prone to salesmanship. Our own ken dilanian spoke with seder this morning asking him you must have known cohen was lying. He responded saying, quote, i dont know anything, all i know is i always told the truth. Joining me now is New York Times pulitzer price reporting matt. Hes also an msnbc contributor, former colleague of mine. Its good to see you. In august of 2017, you and your colleagues at the time published some of those email exchanges we red through between sator and cohen. Can you give us a better sense of who this guy is, what kind of character is he and how important is he in trump world . Its not enough to be a russian immigrant with mob ties involved in trump soho and, as you said, zoning and all, i mean, thats not enough. If this guy didnt exist in the trump world, wed have to wed have to hire a novelist to write him. I mean, look. What youre seeing here is youre seeing somebody in 2016 through a huge part of the election who was keen to get the Trump Organization in business with with russia. And not just to make money. This is somebody who saw a political benefit to donald trump by getting close to putin. If you can do business with russia, if you can get close to putin, we can get donald trump elected. And so i think that what is important here is to remember that people around donald trump are having that belief that theres a political upside to getting close to Vladimir Putin deep into the election. So, matt, how seriously should we take saters claims . Is this a situation where trumps representatives were responding in kind and saying, yes, this is something that we want . Or is there some truth to the defense that sater was simply trying to selling some and nobody was really buying it . Well, theres not a trump tower in moscow, so, i mean, we have to secede that this didnt happen. But there was certainly an interest that the president himself signed a nonbinding but certainly document that showed his interest in the deal. They sought financing. There were efforts by felix sater to try to set up meetings in russia. So this was certainly a deal they wanted to get done. Now, whether it was what cohen has called puffery or salesmanship, it doesnt materialize and no money got made on the deal. But, again, it just shows the interest around the president of the United States in doing business and doing deals with russia. And everybody keeps lying about it. That really is the most stunning thing today with the special counsel walk through all of this. Matt, thank you as always. Its good to have you. Coming up, how Michael Cohens guilty plea this morning is connected to that infamous 2017 steele dossier that painted a picture of collusion between the Trump Campaign and russia. Youre watching msnbc. Your brain changes as you get older. But prevagen helps your brain with an ingredient originally discovered. In jellyfish. In clinical trials, prevagen has been shown to improve shortterm memory. Prevagen. Healthier brain. Better life. The greatest wish of all. Is one that brings us together. The lincoln wish list event is here. Sign and drive off in a new lincoln with 0 down, 0 due at signing, and a complimentary first months payment. Only at your lincoln dealer. And a complimentary first months payment. New listerine® ready tabs™ arent gum, mints, or marbles. Seriously, what is this . If you guessed theyre tabs that turn into liquid as you chew, so you can swish and clean your whole mouth instantly, then you were correct. And that was a really good guess. Nice job. Oprah 1 out of 8 americans struggles with hunger. This season you can help. Now through december 29th for every o, thats good ™ pizza, soup or side you purchase well donate a meal to feeding america®. Because o, thats good ™ welcome back. Im kasie hunt in for ali velshi. And we continue to follow the very latest open another guilty plea from Michael Cohen. The president s former long time personal lawyer. Cohen appeared in federal court and pleaded guilty to one count of lying to congress about a project to build a trump tower in moscow, russia. So, why does this matter so much . First of all, this is the first time that the special counsels investigation led by Robert Mueller has actually charged cohen who was often described as the president s fix every. This guilty plea also suggests that the president himself may have lied. H hes repeatedly said that he has no business interests in russia, but now the evidence suggests that he did. Not only did he pursue business interests overseas while running for president , those interests extended up and at least until the summer of 2016, just months before the election. Thats the latest piece of the puzzle for the Mueller Investigation which focused on russian interference in the 2016 election. Im going to bring in ken dilanian. Ken, i know youve been working on this not just all day today, but for many, many months. Seems like a lifetime. Doesnt it, though . Cohens name and russia have been connected since this infamous steele dossier surface. Can you walk us through the connective tissue there between cohen and the dossier . Sure. So remind viewers, Christopher Steele is a former english operative and he relied on sources inside russia. And while this is unverified, a variety of things in this dossier have proven to be factual. Dossier alleges at various points that Michael Cohen was a key gobetween, a key liaison between the Trump Campaign and the russians as part of their election interference effort. It says his role grew as Paul Manafort left the campaign. And then later it says he was involved in an effort to cover up and cover the tracks of this operation and it says that he traveled to prague to meet with russians in the summer of 2016. He has adamantly all along denied all of this and he even did so after he pleaded gill in the Southern District on those Campaign Finance charges a few months ago. And his lawyer lanny davis said theres nothing this to this, but now we know he lied. Fine, if you didnt go to prague, where did you go . Did you know anything about this trump russia or any trump russia coordination on election interference . Obviously if he knows, Robert Mueller knows and were going to find out sometime soon. Just to be clear, that prague meeting is one of these big outstanding questions. We have not learned anything new today about whether or not cohen is telling the truth about his travel to prague, is that right . Thats right. There is nothing in this Court Document filed today that really sheds any light on any role cohen may have played in the election interference aspect of any russian trump connection. I know there was a report a while ago that said Robert Mueller had obtained evidence usging that cohen was indeed in prague. That report has never been corroborated by any other News Organization and it just remains a great mystery. Ken dilanian, im sure that we he will be talking about many solved and unsolved mysteries here on these airwaves coming up. Thank you very much. Thank you. We want to talk more about this long, tangled web that is the russia investigation. And to help me do that, i have the political reporter for the wab post and greg bauer who also worked for the fbis office of congressional affairs. Hes been gracious enough to hang out with us for this hour and give us his sharp i sights. Gr insights. I know this prague meeting with ken is something that interests you. Why do you think this is a fulcrum of this investigation . It will be interesting as Michael Cohen now has apparently decided to open the kimono and share everything he knows with Robert Mueller. If he goes back to just denials about visitsing prag sitting pr dont know. Well find out as the facts on the mueller team come to light. But the steele dossier became such a punching bag, a political punching bag for the president and his defenders in a way that i think was inaccurate. I mean, much of the dossier apparently has been corroborated, not all of it, and so it it may yet be subject to further corroboration as the facts that the mueller team has developed unfold. Roz, we have sort of seen an up and down week or two for the special counsel because there was a perception that when it was found that Paul Manafort was still lying to prosecutors even though he cut a plea deal, that came across as a blow to Robert Mueller. Is there any suggestion here that cohen may be in a similar situation or do we think these two actors are substantively different in that way . It seems like these two people are on very different tracks. Manafort had been a difficult witness throughout for the special counsel and now we hear this week that his plea deal has been completely ruptured. Cohen, on the other hand, seems to be a more traditional cooperator. When he turned, he really turned. And he seems to be fully cooperating with the special counsels office now. We also have these examples of him sort of speaking publicly, you know, like right before the midterms tweeting about how, you know, this is the most important election of our lifetime and we should all be voting for democrats. So he has really thoroughly turned against the president and his interests. Roz, youve covered a lot of these cases, you know, broken a lot of these types of stories open. Considering the news events of today, im just curious what your kind of main questions are as far as the next turns in this investigation. Yeah. I mean, i think one of the Big Questions has always been to what extent was what trump was doing on the campaign trail, the way he was talking about russia, his refusal to acknowledge that russia seemed to be interfering in the election to help his campaign, to what extent was that driven by his business interests, by his longstanding 30year desire to build a trump tower in moscow and have business with russians . And he has always insisted not at all, that he had no business ties to russia, that that was totally unrelated. And here we are learning that in the same months when he is talking so warmly about putin, his right hand man, his top lawyer was continuing to very a add individual pursue a trump tower in moscow. Greg, what is your take on this . I think were going to see a much more robust effort on the part of chairman schiff to get to the bottom of these facts. And that trump tower meeting is a key fact that hasnt been fully developed, at least publicly. Well be interested to see what the mueller team knows about that. It seems to be a linchpin of much of this investigation. We were talking a little bit earlier in the show with mike about the fact that many of these Interview Transcripts that were done in the house against committee were never sent to the special counsel. While we reported that a while ago, i think many of our viewers might be surprised to learn that republicans were withholding that. Was there frustration on the part of the special counsels office, the fbi that they didnt have access to those transcripts . Im sure there was on the part of the special counsels office, although i cant speak for them. Ive always referred to that house against investigation as very partisan in nature with the republicans playing politics with an investigation. In return, i think at a minimum it would make sense to, assuming the special counsel was interested, for the committee to turn those transcripts over and let the special counsels team make of them what they will and see what evidence might be in there. Roz, i think one suggestion that weve all been certainly have been chasing on capitol hill today is this idea that with what we know now about what cohen says that he lied about, we may be able to take that information and it could show very clearly that there are other members of the president einn president s inner circle, perhaps even his son who lied to congress. Thats an interesting statement that youve made about the congress. And one of the statements that weve received today from cohen is that hes accused of lying to congress, but the document doesnt quote from his behind closed doors testimony to congress, it quotes instead from a written document submitted and made public. Far easier for muellers team to get a hold of. I think youre right, if you could line up all of that testimony, particularly from the president s son, lined up against what cohen has now acknowledged, there could be some real problems for donald trump jr. In what he told congress. Roz with the Washington Post and greg braur who say partner with Brownstein Hyatt farber sl farber shrek, thank you so much. Up next, Senate Committees a are scouring through previous testimonys. And why does russia have such a vested interest in our democracy in whats the gain for Vladimir Putin . Youre watching msnbc. bright electronic music [announcer] powerful cleaning. Thats what you expect from shark, and our newest robot vacuum is no exception. From floors to carpets, it tackles all kinds of debris, even pet hair, with ease. But what about cleaning above the floor . Thats why we created the shark ion robot cleaning system, our innovative robot vacuum paired with a builtin powerful shark handheld. The shark ion robot cleaning system. One dock, two sharks. Cleaning on a whole new level. bright percussive music we really pride ourselvesglass, on making it easy to get your windshield fixed. With safelite, you can see exactly when well be there. Saving you time for what you love most. Kids whoa kids vo safelite repair, safelite replace about the Colonial Penn program. Here to tell you if youre age 50 to 85 and looking to buy Life Insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three ps. What are the three ps . The three ps of Life Insurance on a fixed budget are price, price, and price. A price you can afford, a price that cant increase, and a price that fits your budget. Im 65 and take medications. Whats my price . You can get coverage for 9. 95 a month. I just turned 80. Whats my price . 9. 95 a month for you, too. If youre age 50 to 85, call now about the number one most popular whole Life Insurance plan available through the Colonial Penn program. It has an affordable rate starting at 9. 95 a month. No medical exam, no health questions. Your acceptance is guaranteed, and this plan has a guaranteed lifetime rate lock, so your rate can never go up for any reason. And with this plan, you can pick your payment date, so you can time your premium due date to work with your budget. So call now for free information. And youll also get this free beneficiary planner, and its yours just for calling. So call now. New listerine® ready tabs™ arent gum, mints, or marbles. Seriously, what is this . If you guessed theyre tabs that turn into liquid as you chew, so you can swish and clean your whole mouth instantly, then you were correct. And that was a really good guess. Nice job. Every road in the world is now an information superhighway. phone ringing and the car has become an accessory to the smartphone. Ride hailing, car sharing, carpooling. Mobility services are proliferating. And theres a new generation who dont seem to want to own cars in the first place. It all means massive disruption to the car industry, cities, businesses and investors. Im Martyn Briggs for bank of America Merrill lynch. President trump is on his way to argentina for a summit with leaders from the worlds 20 largest economies. Were told that hes going to speak with several leaders, including chinese president xi jinping. But one person he wont be spending time with is Vladimir Putin. Shortly after taking off from d. C. This morning, the president tweeted that he was canceling his meeting with the russian president. He said it was because russia has not returned the ships and sailors that ukraine says were seized during an incident on sunday. But that came less than an hour after he said this. I probably will be meeting with president putin, we havent terminated that meeting. I was thinking about it but we havent. Theyd like to have it. I think its a very good time to have the meeting. Im getting a full report on the plane as to what happened with respect to that and that will determine what im going to be doing. This focus on the u. S. russia relationship comes amid an abc news report that the special counsel asked the president about the Republican Party arizona 2016 convention platform. It involved a policy change that softened the position on the u. S. Providing arms to ukraine. A concession to russia. Nbc news has not confirmed this report and the president s lawyers have not commented on whether that was one of the questions that he answered. Joining us now to take a closer look at this is clint watts, a former fbi special agent and msnbc security analyst. Hes also the author of messing with the enemy, and back with us, ken dilanian nbc news intelligence and National Security reporter. Ken, i actually want to start with you because we just posted on msnbc. Com that story we were talking about a little earlier with mike. You, carol lee, garrett haake, others on our hill and National Security teams, a team effort on this story, walk our viewers through what it is that we know. Yeah. What were reporting is that the Senate Committees investigating the russia matter are now combing through witness testimony searching for inconsistencies and possible false statements in light of this Michael Cohen plea to lying to congress. And what i find deeply significant about this is you guys have gone out and talked to a number of Senate Republicans on the Intelligence Committee including susan collins, john cornyn who said that they are concerned about false statements made to their committee in this investigation. And its a felony to lie to congress. And you have democrats who have accused donald trump jr. , this is not new, but greater scrutiny being brought to this today because of the Michael Cohen plea, have accused donald trump jr. Of misleading their committee on his testimony about the russia investigation. He has adamantly denied that. But whats happening is they are copying through word for word these statements and looking for evidence of falsehoods. Well, one way to make members of both parties mad is to lie to all of them all at once, for sure. Clint watts, id like to talk to you about this from the russian perspective. Because i know you spent so much time thinking about it and, would on these kinds of issues. If youre Vladimir Putin and the people around him and you get this overture from people who are, you know, close inside the likely republican nominees orbit who want to try and build this tower, whats in it for you if you say yes, if you work with them . I mean, what are the russians how are they using this to try to getting some fr something fr everythings adouble edged sword and to create so many levers from a business deal where youre putting someone in a position where they could look like theyre influenced or if it doesnt go through, you could actually turn around and say i dont know if anyone knew but we were looking at a business deal. Theyre masters at doing this. And the way do it is essentially to influence the system, not to topple it, but do two things. One to sow chaos could were fighting each other rather than focusing on countering russia. Thats why we saw this aggression in ukraine and weve been slow to respond, because our alliances have been weakened over the last two years and internally we dont have agreement on whether we should support ukraine or pushback against russia. Against that are is get American Foreign policy changes that support what russia wants to achieve. You mentioned the Republican Party platform which essentially took a much less aggressive russia stance, a much less supportive role for ukraine than previous in that platform of 2016. This is all we know now going on during times were talking about a trump moscow project. Were seeing the dnc hacked emails being leaked out. Were seeing a trump tower meeting happen roughly at the same time. This is how all those ten tackles when it comes time for putin to go after an objective is how they layer them on there. So you go for it and if you dont youre now vulnerable to how putin and russia can manipulate that information. What was your top takeaway from what we learned in these criminal filings today . What cohen agreed to. What do you think is the next turn of the screw . I think whats fascinating is that cohen essentially said that these meetings were going on all the way into the summer. That directly counters what the president had said previously, what cohen had said previously, and it also shows that this was going on during the campaign. I campaign. Its also interesting this matches up with one of the questions the New York Times reported on where they specifically asked the president in those questions, if those are the questions he got. They specifically ask him, what were his communications with sater, cohen and regarding any russian real estate deals . We just saw the president said that his answers went in this week which makes me and i think everyone wonder, is this cohen plea today in relation to those written answers and what will we see from it . I think what we got now is multiple angles going. Manafort, youve got the flynn sentencing, corsi and stone which weve heard so much about and now cohen. It seems like everything is coming to a critical juncture in the next few weeks. Clint watts, ken dilanian, thank you both. Coming up trumps ties to Deutsche Bank. Its headquarters in germany raided this morning on Money Laundering allegations. Plus, at 5 00 p. M. Tonight, the man who will lead the house Intelligence Committee in january and decide what happens next, democratic congressman adam schiff appears on msnbcs mtp daily. Dont miss it. That geico has been offering savings for over 75 years. Thats longer than the buffalo wings been around. Dozen wings. And did you know that geico. lips smacking offers mo. coughing motorcycle insurance . Hoho. My lips are burning. laughs ah. No, my lips are actually burning. Geico. Over 75 years of savings and service. See how much you could save at geico. Com. Its too hot. Oh, this is too hot, mate. Police raided the offices of one of the Worlds Largest banks today as part of a Money Laundering investigation. They descended on Deutsche Banks headquarters. They are looking at whether they helped set up offshore companies to launder millions of euros. It was prompted by the panama papers. A trove of documents that exposed how the rich and powerful exploited certain offshore tax schemes. The bank says its cooperating with authorities. The bank also has a relationship with donald trump. They loaned him hundreds of millions of dollars to finance projects when other banks refused to do it. The president is not connected to the german investigation but special counsel Robert Mueller is reportedly looking into trumps relationship with the bank. Joining us to talk about this is Washington Post political reporter and msnbc political analyst David Farenthold who spent a lot of time looking into the trump Business Empire. Great to have you again. This is a fascinating topic. The Deutsche Bank. Its been frustrating for members of congress who want to know more about this relationship. What do we know about how the president got money from this bank and if im recalling your past reporting correctly, essentially he had access to funds that a normal business wouldnt be able to tap, right . Well, he got more than 360 million in loans recently from Deutsche Bank to finance two really big acquisitions. The doral golf course and resort outside miami and the acquisition of his lavish hotel in downtown d. C. Both places where other people felt he paid too much like maybe he wouldnt get enough financing. He got it from Deutsche Bank. And he got it from a particular office at Deutsche Bank, the Private Banking office. This is not the regular commercial lending side of Deutsche Bank where theres a lot of underwriting, checks and balances to make sure the loans they give out of sort of properly vetted. This was a Private Banking arm where there seemed to be less control but he still got commercial sized loans from them. Interesting. What do we know about the investigations into Deutsche Bank and the president s ties . Do we know anything about the Mueller Investigation and how it relates to the bank . Like so many things with Robert Mueller, we dont know that much about that part of it. There has been some reporting indicating mueller was interested in something about Deutsche Bank. Trumps ties to Deutsche Bank but we dont know that much more about it. No connection between trumps relationship with Deutsche Bank and russia. Obviously, Deutsche Bank has got lott lots of connections. We dont know about trump, Deutsche Bank and russia, all three. Theres also a couple of cases in state court that relate to different pieces of the president s Business Empire that may end up exposing some of it. One of them is looking at the trump hotiel in d. C. And whethe it violates the emoluments clause. What risk is there for the president in that case . Theres a couple of cases looking at emoluments. Thats sort of a 1700s term for payments from foreign governments. Emoluments through the trump hotel in d. C. From foreign governments. So theres two lawsuits looking at that. And what they aim to find, at least in the short term, is they want to get discovery. Look inside the files of trumps hotel and figure out which foreign governments have been paying for hotel rooms and paying for ballrooms. We know some there have been some foreign customers. The saudis paid a lot of money. Bahrain. The philippines had a big National Day Celebration at the hotel. What we know is only because it made headlines. There was a big public event people found out about. Those two lawsuits could dive into those relationships and customers. We may learn a lot from them. What could congress do to dig that information out if the court cases dont proceed accordingly . Congress has a lot of leverage in this case. The constitution says president s may not accept emoluments from foreign governments unless Congress Says yes. Says they can. So it gives congress a lot of leeway to investigate. Obviously theres been no investigating while the republicans have been in charge of both houses so far. When the democrats take the house in january, i think youll see a lot of effort to investigate whats happened to the d. C. Hotel. One particular Reason Congress could have more leverage is actually you and me, u. S. Taxpayers own that hotel. The building is an historic old building. It gives congress and the government a lot of ways to look into it. Very interesting point. David, thank you, as always. Really appreciate your reporting. That wraps up a very busy hour for us here. Thank you for watching. Deadline white house with Nicolle Wallace starts right now. Hi, everyone. Its 4 00 in new york. And there is big, breaking news in the Mueller Investigation today. Michael cohen, the president s former fixer and lawyer admitted today that he lied to congress about his work on behalf of donald trump. Specifically around an effort to develop a trump tower in moscow. It is the second time in as many Court Appearances that cohen has implicated trump in an endeavor now under scrutiny by federal prosecutors. The first came in august when cohen please epleaded guilty to eight charges and implicated trump as directing the hush money scheme used to silence women. Todays admission from cohen may represent an even greater threat to the president and force him to answer questions about his business and financial ties with russia, as well as whether he directed any of