Weisselberg. how does that look to an investigator? remember, robert mueller forwarded this case to the southern district for an investigation of michael cohen. well, on wednesday michael cohen became a convicted felon eight times over. so a question now is what s the southern district s enend game? they have managed to prosecute and convict michael cohen. it seems like their target now is the president of the united states, but he cannot be indicted and prosecuted in a criminal case while in office, according to d.o.j. guidelines, which the southern district is bound to follow. and so what are they trying to do? it could be that they are looking at people who are higher up than in the trump organization, so that would include don junior, jared and ivanka. and it could include, ken dilanian, donald trump. i mean, donald trump s friends have warned me for months if not years now not to view donald
Upon to defend himself he would have strong defense to discharge. the object is the ultimate audience is congress. if we are talking possible impeachment maybe this has relevance but as far as whether the president can be charged with a federal crime bob mueller has been clear he will follow and respect department of justice guideline which says you cannot and shall not indicted sitting president. reporter: the second part of that whether he can be indicted has never been decided so we have guidance documents from 1973 and 2000. in your mind is that settled? rudy giuliani says he got an assurance verbally from mueller epstein that they acknowledge the doj guidelines, can t indicted sitting president. i think that is pretty settled. the noise lanny davis, paid hack for the clintons and the 90s is spreading around on media today, communication messaging, impeachment and nothing else. there is no evidentiary value to
There is this great debate i think it s now moot because mueller is going to follow the policies of the doj. that doesn t necessarily help things. the statute of limitations is still out there, he could still bring a charge after the president leaves office. more importantly, he can detail a criminal conspiracy in a report to congress just as the house of representatives might switch parties. bret: it brings us back to the fight over the campaign finance law and whether this if it all happened as cohen pleads to that violation. there are four former fec chain who says it didn t, obviously giuliani is making that case and you wonder where the lawyers are going to go. before the trial started, the judge in the manafort case said i think the prosecutor shouldn t have unfettered power. what you re may be doing here is to lay out for something that would involve impeachment of the
Davis wanted to make sure we knew. this is something that has been debated hotly, a couple of justice department memos from 1973 and 2,000 that talk about this and essentially the understanding is you can t indict a sitting president in most normal circumstances. rudy giuliani has said he has had conversations with mueller s team and during that he said they ve aurally acknowledged the doj guidelines. whether that means they agree with them or would seek some type of exemption, if not about indicting a sitting president. according to the justice department he can t do it. bret: a stormy daniels attorney has been out and about and a lot of tv shows tweeted today rudy giuliani, buckle up buttercup. you and your client completely misplayed this. the development will permit us to have the stay lifted in a civil case and will proceed under an expedited deposition of
Possible where mueller is unlikely to issue a report after that. you know, there is this guideline within the department of justice about when you do things close to an election, i think it s 60 days from an election, you are not supposed to. and i think the assumption is that mule worry follow along with doj guidelines. so that gives you a couple more weeks. we re now looking at eight months that they have been having these negotiations about an interview. mueller s office, while they have said they wanted to talk to the president, they do seem to be letting the president s team and i think the president s team sees advantages in trying to draw this out. you can make the flip case which is that mueller s folks are giving them an awful lot of room by which mueller s folks can say we gave them every opportunity and. they didn t take it. i don t believe it will be an outright. no i believe it will be a counteroffer om some kind but i don t think we ll see that number tomorrow. tomo