i think that there s been plenty of time for him to cooperate. there s no question that the debriefings are extensive but he wouldn t plead guilty if he was going to cooperate in my view because a defendant loses leverage doing that. the prosecutor want him to plead guilty and then when he does, that s kind of where the defendant loses a little bit of the grip there. if this is a plea agreement, straight plea agreement, no cooperation, i think it s unlikely then that michael cohen ends up cooperating unless something changes factually. i have to imagine special counsel r counsel bob mueller watching today very closely. of course he s been briefed on all of this through the u.s. attorney s office. my alma mater. i spent five years there before watergate. you know, i ve seen any number of variations and ways in which you get to the point where an individual eventually provides
be. so sometimes they get delayed months at a time or sometimes years at a time so the cooperation can be completed. that either means sometimes further debriefings with the government, it can be testifying at trial to make sure that s complete or otherwise to make sure that all the information that that person has is given to the government. so the fact that the sentencing has been put off by two months indicates some other activity is going on. the language in the submission to the court is fairly oblique and that s intentional and another sign that there s some cooperation activity still going on. that s a good point. let me ask you about that list of 49 questions leaked to the new york times that robert mueller would like to ask the question. does this signal to you, preet, that the mueller investigation is coming to an end? no, it doesn t signal that at all. it may mean that it s coming somewhat closer to an end with respect to some parts of it that deal with the president,
contradict something he told to the grand jury. steve: do you think he is answering questions in a way that doesn t touch the grand jury testimony? i don t know that. steve: that would be smart. he is a smart guy. you may not agree with him but he is certainly a smart guy, university of chicago law school and federal prosecutor for most of his life. as a grand jury witness, he is permitted to discuss what went on before the grand jury. grand jurors in public, grand jurors are not. and the lawyers are not. so we don t know if he has testified already. we do know he has had many, many debriefings by bob mueller and bob mueller s team which consists of federal prosecutors and former fbi agents who used to work for him. if anyone of us had been a witness for bob mueller, we would have an agreement with mueller not to discuss the testimony in public for fear of some contradiction coming back to bite. ainsley: why is he doing it? money?
the kidnapping remains open therefore we re not able to discuss investigative details surrounding the case. the fbi works closely with federal partners not only to ensure the government does all it cans to secure americans taken hostage and assist those defraud order further abused by hostage takers. the handling of the case came under the last two fbi directors, mueller and comey. the special counsel s office referred our questions to the fbi and there were no direct responses from comey s publisher. the handling of the american hostage especially what he would have learned from debriefings would have gone to the senior levels of the bureau but at the end of the day, they say it s not about politics, it s about an american s safety and how the bureau reacted in that situation. bill: we ll see where that goes. thank you. sandra: now revelations from a former obama official.
people were never heard from. most important thing out of all of this talking about intelligence is. the obama administration ordered the cia iranian ops element of no contact, not to have any debriefings of them come absolutely nothing to do with them, which quite frankly in the intelligence business is just stupidity, insanity. and so, that opportunity was completely amazed. the trump administration s harsh criticism of the iranian regime is justified. the president is on point and i m sure the director of the cia might pompeo handle this. you a persian linguist and the chief of hezbollah often the cia. he know about this stuff. at this moment the president has been trading support for the protesters and is talked extensively about the pitfall of the regime and consolidation of power. what is the best next move if we