michael cohen to lie to congress about the so-called moscow project. that was knocked down in a remarkable but somewhat ambiguously worded statement from the office of special counsel robert mueller. and then since then, the president s lawyer, rudy giuliani, has made things even worse by claiming and then retracting information material to both the russia probe and the future of this presidency. it is all wildly confusing, even, frankly, for someone who follows it for a living. let s take a step back and look at what we know for sure. whether or not buzzfeed s report turns out to be true, there does seem to be widespread consensus the president instruct ing a witness to lie to congress would cross an obvious bright red line. it would constitute an impeachable offense and that s that s what drove the freakout over buzzfeed s story. that freakout we now know included the president s legal team. a source familiar with the matter telling nbc news that friday morning after the story
trump s team. look through it and see if there were any documents that supported the claims in the buzzfeed story. of course, the way he said it leaves it open to question. what is he talking about? especially because the president has at times raised this question of tapes. apparently some senior administration officials, according to peter alexander who has been speaking to people there, are concerned about rudy giuliani. they say that he s getting in the way of things. at what point does the president look at rudy giuliani and say, i don t think you re helping me any longer? i mean, why hasn t he done that already? a rational client would have done that a long time ago. i mean, when the client has to go out a few days after the lawyer is appointed and say, you know, he knows it s a witch hunt, he ll get his facts straight eventually, which is what happened when rudy first started the job, you know you ve got a problem from the beginning. it s only gotten worse.
this at the at the same time it appears there were going on. the contradiction catches the eye of the prosecutor. shifting stories tends to show something that gets referred to as consciousness of guilt. they know they ve done something wrong, which is why they have to lie about it. at one point president trump said this business was very legal and very cool. if it was, then why were you lying about it? why were you telling different stories about it? that seems to suggest the truth is something even worse than the risk of being caught in a lie it s a great point, barbara. we don t know what in the buzzfeed story ends up being true or not. but one of the details is the idea of ten face-to-face briefings between michael cohen and the president on trump tower. that s a very front of mind kind of thing. there s a kind of motive that supplies the way the president talks about vladimir putin from the beginning which is down
statements by mayor guiliani. for him to try to take it back the next day is adding further confusion to an already sort of murky situation. it s hard to imagine what the strategy is here, whether it s just a lack of precision on the part of the mayor. either way, it s left people wondering which part should we be looking at, which part should we be considering to be hypothetical. jewel waguiliani was asked a buzzfeed story. he said he knew the story was false because i had been through all the tapes, the texts, the e-mails and i knew none existed. the new yorker goes on to ask what did you go through? there were no tapes you listened to no? no tapes. i ve listened to tapes but none concern this. what purpose does rudy guiliani serve? what s his role? yeah, he s not the attorney
testimony. all behind closed doors and we re still in the dark about exactly what they said michael isakoff, that is a great point. i think there s a divide between journalists and prosecutors on this. the prosecutors say you have to leave them alone, it s a criminal inquiry and the journalists tend to want public transparency. you saw chris murphy say this. i thought it was interesting on friday after the buzzfeed story. it s even more important in some ways after the carr statement to say, look, we got to do something here in congress publicly about what the heck is going on in this country and with respect to this president. absolutely. you know, with all due respect to all your legal analysts who talk about the sanctity of the investigation, fine, robert mueller has a job to do. he should do it. and he can do it. others in our democracy have jobs too that are just as important. michael isakoff, thank you. thank you.