you saw members of congress asking for specific names of specific people who might know more information about the things that michael cohen had already brought up. who could they call next? you named some of them. we need felix sader will appear in an open hearing in just a few weeks. democrats are following the breadcrumb that were left behind and pursuing them into other hearings. you re not hearing democrats use the i word. nancy pelosi, democrats in leadership are trying to stay away from that issue. republicans on the other hand are talking quite a bit about the possibility that democrats are using these hearings to lay the groundwork for impeachment of this president. they re using it as a political tool to keep their base very much in line behind this president. democrats are holding off so far. you wonder how long that lasts.
ali honig, an attorney for the southern district of new york. so ali, how would manafort been ab mueller been able to manafort that intentionally lied about these things. well, is it the kind of thing that you would likely just misremember, as manafort s lawyers tried to argue, or is it the kind of thing that there was no common sense way a person would misremember, or that he had a motive to misstate it. and i thought it was really interesting, mueller s team got into the motive. why did he misstate it? one of the interesting things the lawyer said was, he was trying to augment his chances to get a pardon. what does that tell you? there s really only one person in the entire world who can issue a pardon to paul manafort. so i thought that was an interesting little bread crumb. but do you think that is alone explaining his motivation for lying, or could there be other motivations? there could be numerous motivations. they said on the record, that was one. but lying is a complex
congress and we saw those legal documents for the first time, were there any clues there as you read the documents now knowing what you know, your reporting that the president instructed michael cohen to lie that the special counsel was indicating they knew that or were pursuing that. there s been chatter that the story is suspect because michael cohen didn t say this in his speech. that s not true. it s our understanding that the special counsel didn t require michael cohen to lay out all of the relevant details. there is a bit of a bread crumb or several bread crumbs in the memo. one of the four or five points that michael cohen was credible and helpful according to special counsel is when he told them about the drafting of the statement to congress. that s a clue. that suggests to us that there
presented his case. we have other court filings, other things have been referred to the southern district, et cetera, but we have not heard mueller s case. and that s where the rubber hits the road, if you will. until then we can talk about what mueller is doing based on the bread crumb, but we have no idea. what s interesting about the impeachment is do they go by on the new york southern district court on the election charge, which is felony charge? if they wanted to go after that via impeachment, they should probably wait until it s all done so they have the case it s all laid out for them that way, and then move forward or wait for even mueller because they may have something even more substantial to go after. listen, the democratic leadership, and particularly the folks taking over these investigatory committees have been very clear about the fact they have no intention of impeaching anytime soon because what they want to do is build a case. they ve said this on the record
every time you re kind enough to come on the broadcast. what just happened and where did this leave us? what just happened was aptly described by my friend john heilemann, and that s the bread crumb. there are a lot of bread crumbs here. to give a shout out to john s tweet, good spinach, my friend. good spinach. i do want to add a little cabbage to that. at the end of the day, it wouldn t surprise me if trump wrote the op-ed but that s just a head game that takes us to a whole other level. i do think in some of the key code words that just popped up that there is agreement or acquiescence by certain members of the vice president s staff, maybe not the vice president himself, but this has a level of signoff by throwing that word in there. yes, it could be a head fake but i also have been around this town long enough to know that people have a way of saying while the principal may not have written this or know of it, he is in agreement with the