that he isn t still a figure, a witness potentially a subject. we don t have any indication he s a target in the collusion or obstruction investigation. there are things that pertain to what cohen has firsthand knowledge of, right? the thing about cohen in this whole thing, everyone thinks just because parts of it are in new york doesn t mean parts of it are not down here with bob mueller. but there are significant questions about cohen on the russia investigation. he s in the dossier we know the dossier is part of the allegations that they re looking at. there are allegations about meetings that he had. there are questions about his efforts to do russian real estate deals during the campaign. so, there is this whole notion that, like, oh, michael cohen is a new york thing. it s not a washington problem, it s not a mueller issue. but i don t think they re mutually exclusive. they re not. and you ve also reported that bob mueller subpoenaed trump organizations. a th that could well
steam roll the president. he also told us that he doesn t know if bob mueller has the president s tax returns and what they would tell an investigator about the president s ties to russia. he said that he and jay sekulow and others of the president s attorneys, quote, aren t there yet on recommending an interview for the president with the special counsel and that he didn t, quote, get tripped up during last week s media interviews when he suggested that the president knew about cohen s payments to porn star stormy daniels. and on that payment, he insists that the president didn t violate campaign finance laws because, one, the payments would have been made even if mr. trump were not a candidate to spare the family embarrassment. and, two, the money was repaid by the president to cohen. and on this picture of rudy at the yankee game, he told me he was texting yankee friends, not the president or bob mueller. but giuliani also responded to the new york times report which details a mor
the north korea meeting. now we have a date on that. so, then you have to prepare the president for this. it s not like you take him and throw him in there and say, okay, here s the interview. there s deep concerns about the president, what he would say and he needs to be prepared for these things. john dowd at one point wanted the president to go in and read a script. so, i don t know when this is going to happen. what do you make of the idea that this is all, you know, rudy talked as much about foreign policy as he did about the mueller probe. everyone is all mixed together in trump landia. it is very much a consideration, the question of the interview has to be timed after the north korea meetings and you have a great piece we re going to get to about how north korea is now not just a reason to delay an interview with bob mueller, but a midterm strategy. we ve never seen this before, all these issues smashed together. remember rudy giuliani hasn t practiced law in a long time. b
pattern with that. well, and the first fact started with the president saying there was no connection, there was no payment, i didn t know anything about it. then you go to the issue of like the timing. i mean, it was a couple weeks before the election. you re suddenly worried about embarrassing your wife? that s right, that that was really avoiding the strictures of the campaign finance law. a lot of it seems to suggest it may have been a campaign finance violation. what do you make of the broader sort of posture that rudy is taking on, you know, time to wrap things up? he kept saying we ve given bob mueller 1.2 million documents. i said, when you met with him, did bob mueller seem satisfied? he seemed satisfied with document production. it s a long time since rudy giuliani has practiced this kind of law. i think he had this misconception who he is and how big-time investigations work,
he provided cover for this very controversial act. the idea ten days later he turned around and was suddenly out to get the president makes no sense. i think what happened is he did what any good prosecutor would do. there are two things. he did what any new prosecutor would do. he saw the memos come out, comey s memos of obstruction of justice. he needed to do something to clean up his own reputation after signing offer the memo. he appointed jim comey bob mueller a. bob mueller. it had nothing to do with getting out after the president. it had to do with disturbing facts that came to light. what do you make of the idea of the sort of public musings about presidential interview with bob mueller that jay and rudy aren t there yet? they seem to we ve heard this from the legal team for months now, we re a week away from making a decision, week away from making a decision and it continues to drag. but rudy has even said he doesn t want it to happen before