business in russia and then go out and lie to the american people by saying the same thing. in his way, he was telling me to lie. so, garrett, that was such a headline grabbing moment when it sounded as though there was going to be an overt direction to lie to congress. and this is much more subtle of michael cohen saying he got the message. and i m wondering what you think of that testimony that he ll say? this sort of perfectly explains and is consistent with the buzzfeed reporting and then the special counsel s unprecedented denials saying that they don t vefds have evidf that. which is not to say that cohen sort of didn t feel that way that he had been instructed to lie. it s just that the special counsel did not have evidence of a direct overt act, as you said. this is sort of the who will rid me of the meddlesome priest question, which is if donald trump and michael cohen have worked together long enough, he
e-mail. well, if we now have michael cohen saying that prior to that conversation the president knew that julian assange was posting or going to post hillary clinton s e-mails, that really changes the context of some of those conversations and incidents that we have long been suspicious of. and don t forget, that just two weeks ago cnn reported that the special counsel had evidence of stone communicating directly with wikileaks. something that s been widely denied both by the president and stone and wikileaks. so if that s true, this puts this testimony in larger context and potentially greater legal jeopardy because there s evidence to back it up. we know he s handing over evidence today, michael cohen according to this advanced testimony, things we haven t seen before from checks, personal checks from the president when he was president to pay off reimburse michael cohen for stormy daniels to financial statements to deutsche
talking, but kim jong-un didn t reciprocate until the very end where he said something complementary about kim jong-un where he then smiled and nodded. i don t think kim knows how to deal with reporters in the room. it s probably the second time in his life where he s been in a room with a free press and i m not sure he knows who to look at. and the president was thrown a question about michael chon and did not answer the question. director clap, he what are did you see in that brief moment? with respect to the question, i think we i could bet my paycheck that that dinner will be over in time for the testimony. and the president will be well ensconced in his room with the tv on. and, you know, i m not surprised he didn t answer the question. one thing i think might be worth pointing out is, you know, this promises of rapid economic
about those wikileaks releases in advance. that would make a liar of the president under penalty of perjury. that s on the one issue. advanced knowledge of the wikileaks releases. the other issue is this famous june 2016 trump tower meeting where michael cohen says will testify, that he believes donald trump jr. told his father about that meeting in advance. he describes this encounter with don junior comes behind the desk, whispers in his ear the meeting is on and the president responding that he s happy that the meeting is on. and so that would be two incidents where the president was aware of communications with russians with wikileaks which, again, get to the central question of the special counsel s investigation. this raises the issue does the special counsel have more than michael cohen s testimony to corroborate those incidents? remember, special counsel has a lot of cooperating witnesses who are very close and deeply involved in this campaign, rick
gaetz among them. he has a lot of tools to gather electronic evidence of those things. this is a significant moment in the russia investigation. garrett graff, you have a book called the threat matrix where you have been connecting these dots for us and everyone for months now. what do you see in michael cohen s testimony today? ? yeah, think jim is right to draw our attention to that summertime frame. because part of what is significant about the idea that the president might have been aware of the july release of the wikileaks as opposed to the september and october fall wikileaks events is that that changes the whole timeline for the summer and how these plots could have unfolded. remember you have the late july comment that the president makes publicly that has always puzzled us that has been cited in the president s in the special counsel s indictment of russian military intelligence saying russia, if you re listening, please hack hillary clinton s