interest. you would have to ask michael cohen but i do think that part of it is that the underlying claims in the case really, that the tide really turned in our direction. then the other piece of this is that as a matter of discovery you were all going pretty aggressively from documents for michael cohen s side which could have been embarrassing to the president. i don t know how he felt about that but certainly part of a legal proceeding is discovery. i also think there is a reality for michael, he s said this and i believe this to be true he s got a lot on his plate and a lot of financial stress on his plate. i really think that s what drove this, is that simply he s got so many guns to point and only so many resources and he s going to focus a lot more on what s going on with mueller than with you guys. i think it is as simple as that. guns to point puts the wrong it s one thing to file a nuisance suit against a news organization when you are riding high. it is another
memos because comey has basically said everything on the public record that is in the release of those memos. it is the fact they were released under pressure by a political party in the house of representatives about an ongoing federal investigation. that s the critical point. that s the real witch hunt. these are republicans carrying out a witch hunt against republican-appointed leaders of the fbi and the doj who are trump s hand-picked selections who are releasing documents that basically corroborate the case against donald trump. if you look at one of the memos from comey written in february 2017, he effectively says that large portions of the steele dossier have been corroborated. i explained the analysts from all three agencies graed it was relevant and portions were corroborated by other intelligence. was possibly why the president keeps coming back to this. he wants to know if the salacious parts of it have been proven. i was a little insulted when you didn t initially co
not even on background but they say it openly on the record. they accept this premise that really the president is a criminal, that michael cohen has something to give that would implicate donald trump in criminal wrongdoing. if my you never hear from them, well, it s really unfortunate for michael cohen that he s in this situation but i don t think the president did anything wrong so he shouldn t have any worry. if my personal lawyer s office was raided, i would be very concerned for him but i wouldn t be worried about it for myself because i m confident i didn t do anything wrong, i wouldn t worry about an investigation coming to me. i think you can take a couple things away from it, but maybe the most important thing is, i think a lot of people in donald trump s orbit who work for him in government are kind of new to him. i know what happened during the campaign, they had kind of seen what happened in office, they may have some concerns about the russia investigation. but what hap
showtime, john heilemann. you know what also? guest host of deadline white house today. that s the best thing on my resume. i m heading to houston. i thought you were saying after this you had to go take a nap for the rest of the day. they are not mutually exclusive. donny deutsch is here. republican strategist and political commentator susan del persio, columnist david ignatius and former justice department spokesman, now an msnbc justice and security analyst matt miller. good morning to you all. let s get right into it. aside from the memos themselves, early reaction from the president and from members of congress. but what does it all mean for the russia investigation? rudy giuliani will be playing a key role in that question as the former new york city mayor joins the president s legal team. there are new developments to just about every part of the equation from michael cohen to paul manafort. we ll jump into all of it right now. we ve got leakers, hookers, wiretaps. i
justice. and i can tell you there s a lot of confusion about what was actually said in that room with rod rosenstein and the president in the oval office. there was a bloomberg report that rosenstein told him he wasn t a target of either the mueller investigation or the michael cohen situation. but two sources have told me that that s not their understanding of what was said in that room. it may be what donald trump took out of the room and told people, but there was only three people in that room, and i m very skeptical that that actually exactly happened the way that trump may have told people. jonathan, i ve heard that part of the hold-up in making personnel changes at doj is that he would like to replace both jeff sessions and rosenstein. that one or the other does not do the job he wants done. are you hearing that there s any process under way at the white house counsel s office or anywhere else to bring him