respect to all of these russian contacts. if this was oh, these are my buddies i have known them for long thyme, why was it necessary not to disclose these contacts. as people sat in a courtroom in front of criminal proceedings as someone who was a prosecutor the idea of the sort of acting guilty, right right. with the essential consultants things i m as a seeing a lot of people saying pay for play in washington. corpse lewandowski hung out a shingle and said i m going to do this. and he wasn t getting bank transfers and wasn t a secret llc. in the governor mcdonald case money for access was okay. money for access to people in power was okay. why did you have to do this through some who knows what llc? right. i think it s clear, everyone is saying typical pay for play. it wasn t. cohen was selling something else. accuracy. by not registering as a lobbyist
the explanation for the cover-up with the russian contacts? if this was so, these are my buddies, i have known them for a long time, why was it so necessary to not disclose the contacts? that threw a line here as people sat in a courtroom in front of criminal proceedings, as someone who was a prosecutor, this idea of this sort of acting guilty, the sort of you know, with the essential consultants thing, i m seeing a lot of people saying, pay-for-play in washington, people do start lobbying. cory he walewandowski said, i mg to do this and he was not getting bank transfers. money for access was okay. so money for access to people in power was okay, so why did you have to do this through some who knows what llc? right. i think it s clear, everyone is saying, yeah, typical pay-for-play. it wasn t. cohen was selling something else, secrecy. by not registering as a
necessary to not disclose the contacts? that threw a line here as people sat in a courtroom in front of criminal proceedings, as someone who was a prosecutor, this idea of this sort of acting guilty, the sort of you know, with the essential consultants thing, i m seeing a lot of people saying, pay-for-play in washington, people do start lobbying. cory lewandowski said, i m going to do this and he was not getting bank transfers. money for access was okay. so money for access to people in power was okay, so why did you have to do this through some who knows what llc? right. i think it s clear, everyone is saying, yeah, typical pay-for-play. it wasn t. cohen was selling something else, secrecy. by not registering as a lobbyist, he was given the opportunity for the other companies to have what they hoped to have been quiet influence. i think you really saw that when
he s kind of acting guilty, just to be clear. well, the other thing is obviously one of the things that mueller is looking into clearly is obstruction of justice. based on just what we know publicly and what we know from the fbi and the justice department, the special counsel, there is a case there. i don t know that it would be a successful case, but there is a case there. right. and the obstruction or part of it was trying to get comey, like we said before, to let general flynn get off the hook. which gets us back to the question of why he was so concerned that general flynn ultimately not be the center of this investigation. stick around everyone. shortly after the 2016 election, the former director of national intelligence james clapper told me he saw no direct evidence of collusion. looking back what about now. we re going to talk to james clapper. we ll talk to him after the break.