well, giuliani s defense of michael cohen involved, of course, talk of cohen turning against the president grew louder. imagine if that came out on october 15th, 2016. cohen didn t even ask. cohen didn t ask. cohen made it go away. he did his job. michael cohen, i think, would tell you he has nothing incriminating with the president and really shea should stop going after him. they re torturing the guy. this is basically if you have a trial you would say, which lie do you want to pick? there s nobody that hasn t warned me that if his back is up against the wall he ll lie like crazy because he lied all his life. rudy s defense shifted from first saying there was no collusion to arguing that collusion isn t a crime. this started as collusion with the russians. no. right. now they go to obstruction of justice, collusion among the players. what they re really trying to do
okay? now, what happened here in the cohen case is a different animal entirely. this has nothing to do with the campaign apparatus and everything to do with trump, his lawyer, and their sneaky scheme to avoid more damage to his campaign. cohen admitted to making illegal campaign contributions for the principal purpose of influencing an election. and he tied it directly to the president, saying he was acting at the president s direction. he said someone then running for federal office. obviously it s donald trump. when he paid off karen mcdougal and stormy daniels. so the president s argument that cohen didn t commit a crime just isn t true. how do we know? title 52 of the u.s. code. all right? now, you compare that to the obama campaign violation. it s like comparing apples to, you know, elephants. the obama matter was settled as a civil matter with the f.e.c.
they are done. if this is a place holder they re going to put this down as a place holder and deal with it later. that s not to say they can t deal with it later but it is a little surprising to see there is immunity for something he s not charged with and that they do not agree on the sentencing guideline range, which means this is a negotiated plea agreement, so to speak, which ordinarily happens when there is not cooperation. very interesting. all right. sarah fagan. you know what s most odd about all this to me is that the southern district attorney didn t use trump s name either. it makes me wonder was that part of an agreement, that cohen didn t use trump specifically? it s odd you that refer to him as a candidate. but then why would the attorney come out and refer do any of the four of us i don t have a law degree. law degree? when is the last time you practiced it? i want to ask our legal experts about that. i think it has to do with what was said earlier about
on what white evangelicals defending trump repeatedly said. they said they gave trump a mull began. he said he didn t do t. we had people like franklin graham, the president of liberty university, jerry fall well. they believe trump because he said he didn t do it. michael cohen appears to be saying that he did it. at what level, at what point would they say this man that we have called evangelicals dream president a nightmare? include them, absolutely. michael also said that trump didn t authorize him to do it. now, of course, you know, he said under oath today he did which is a very valid point by one of the earlier guests. however, you know, for people looking for justification, michael cohen said he didn t do it then he said he did do it to save his own neck. but donald trump, why is everybody around him, like when does it become a reflection on donald trump that he has nefarious characters who commit
prosecutor noted, mr. cohen s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time. i don t know if you expected a differen different statement from rudy giuliani. this is the same statement he s been putting out for months. the fact of the matter is if you read this indictment, he s doing it at the direction of donald trump. if he s doing it at the direction of donald trump, there s a conspiracy. it s an agreement, an agreement to commit campaign financing crimes. it s a five-year felony. this is a serious matter. cohen didn t do this on his own. he didn t suddenly come up with the idea, oh, i ve got to go pay stormy daniels $150,000. he had no connection to stormy daniels. he didn t know who stormy daniels was. the only way he would have had the ability to know any of that was because donald trump told him about it. donald trump told him that there was a danger that she was going to release all this information before the election.