shepard: still waiting for a response from the president himself on the cohen sentencing. he ignored questions at the white house ten minutes ago. yesterday the president said the hush money were not a campaign contribution. the feds disagree. a document filed saying the president ordered michael cohen to buy silence of two women. the payments were more than the contributions limits and were not reported as contributions is a felony. translates, he paid a porn star and a playmate not to tell their stories in an effort to influence the election. less than an hour after the sentence, prosecutors announced that they reached an agreement with the parent company of the national inquirer not to prosecute its people. that company, ami paid for the story of karen mcdougal who said she had an affair with donald trump before he was president.
different ways of looking at this. in the case of michael cohen, you know, he had pled guilty to these campaign finance violations before. but what leapt out at me in the main cohen sentencing memo from the southern district is they re throwing the book at him. yes. and they are making clear they don t believe him on many matters. in fact the southern district. the southern district, not the special counsel. right. even after he agrees to cooperate or proposes to cooperate and tells them all this stuff about the president and the campaign finance violations, he then clams up when they ask him about some aspect of his own criminal conduct and some of those sentences leapt out at me. page 15, cohen repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge. page 16, cohen specifically declined to be briefed on other
of specific points about this, you know, as you are watching coverage about this stuff, anybody talking into tv all the time hasn t done their homework. you have to read this stuff. it s all there. when it comes to manafort, mueller says that you re lying about having met him. during the election. you talked about wikileaks. and this gets redacted. he lied about the number and content of meetings with him. all of that winds upstarting to be redacted, which means there is more there, which means there has to be a continuing effort that we re going to see more of this. that s also true with something i starred here. the payment structure. there is a whole segment in this memo here about payment structure with manafort. all of a sudden company a, company b and then it is redacted and gone. it makes me wonder what might have happened with the movement of money to manafort that is obviously part of something they re still investigating. neal?
you know, he had pled guilty to these campaign finance violations before. but what leapt out at me in the main cohen sentencing memo from the southern district is they re throwing the book at him. yes. and they are making clear they don t believe him on many matters. in fact the southern district. the southern district, not the special counsel. right. even after he agrees to cooperate or proposes to cooperate and tells them all this stuff about the president and the campaign finance violations, he then clams up when they ask him about some aspect of his own criminal conduct and some of those sentences leapt out at me. page 15, cohen repeatedly declined to provide full information about the scope of any criminal conduct in which he may have engaged or had knowledge. page 16, cohen specifically declined to be briefed on other uncharged criminal conduct. cohen s efforts fell well short
do the allegations i just want to say, a couple of specific points about this, you know, as you are watching coverage about this stuff, anybody talking into tv all the time hasn t done their homework. you have to read this stuff. it s all there. when it comes to manafort, mueller says that you re lying about having met imduring thim. he lied about the number and content of meetings with him. all of that winds upstarting to be redacted, which means there is more there, which means there has to be a continuing effort that we re going to see more of this. that s also true with something i starred here. the payment structure. there is a whole segment in this memo here about payment structure with manafort. all of a sudden company a, company b and then it is redacted and gone. it makes me wonder what might have happened with the movement of money to manafort that is obviously part of something they re still investigating.