let me say that the cohen filing last week, the idea that michael cohen, the representative of donald trump was in communication with vladimir putin s office during the 2016 campaign about getting financing and land for a trump tower. i think that trumps, so to speak, everything we re searing here. that was the most significant thing. especially because the president was denying it. during the campaign. even once he was the presumptive nominee. neal and michael, perfect guests for this. really could not have done it without you matter of fact. the memo, in terms of what we know and then you get into the speculative nature of it, where does it take us from here, here s what we know for sure, it can t be over because they wouldn t have redacted these things so we ll come back and have more on the breaking developments and we ll put two legal minds to the test of where we go next. what matters here and what doesn t? next. coaching means making tough choices.
that jumped out to me was just the contrast between flynn and cohen and manafort. here you have the description of flynn as someone who started cooperating early and seemingly without much trouble and there was nothing no discussion in the letter about him having lied to the special counsel s office once he started cooperating. the letter makes it clear what the special counsel office values in cooperating witnesses. that is consistency and coming on board early. what is the chance that the president of the united states sees these documents and decides to start tweeting which is our main metric for his level of agitations. tweeting is always a possibility with president trump. and predictability in that regard is not very high. i haven t been very good at predicting that. but i would also add one other comment about flynn versus cohen. when you see the language in these documents today and you look back to cohen s history, simply the credibility of the information provided by fl
no, fair point and understood. i don t see dove tailing between flynn and cohen. by any stretch, it s completely different universes. however cohen is an example of all the possibilities of redaction. not that there is dove tailing and not that there s any coordination between what they are looking at with flynn and cohen, but in terms of more wood to chop, cohen can know many, many things that have nothing to do with straight line behavior of the campaign and russian interference. it could go to specifically to the timing of what the president knew and didn t know based on michael cohen s presence in the same room. the trump foundation and fiduciary matters of money. that has nothing to do with russian interference. absolutely, but there are a lot of different places it can go. why offer this context? if you are in trump land tonight and these documents come down, how do you feel? i m wigging out because last week we had cohen who knows about a lot of different things
may have referred it out to other u.s. attorneys offices like he did with michael cohen. we don t know. but, you know, the fact is that if you look at the language as it refers to the coordination between the trump campaign and the russians, i don t see a reference to ongoing. i love mike. i have to disagree. there is the second part of the memo which talks about michael s word, collusion, and the contacts between the trump campaign and russia. then right afterwards, there is a long blacked out paragraph. i don t think that s about something else necessarily. it could very well be about the same exact thing. i m not known as a politician, but you can both be right. one, when we are investigaing what s happening around cohen, sources suggest close to that investigation there is a compartmentalized nature to the probe. they may end, for instance, their aspect of looking at the president s role of what he knew and what he didn t.
possibility with president trump. predictability in that regard is not very high. i haven t been very good at predicting that. i have one other comment about flynn versus cohen. when you see the origin in the documents today and you look back to cohen s history, simply the credibility of the information provided by flynn is likely higher than the information and the credibility of the information provided by cohen. just from what we have seen and what we do know, setting aside or being called on to speculate about by redactions and so forth. cohen has been all over the map where flynn has been much quieter publicly and you see a close out document like this and it suggests a much cleaner process from mike flynn s perspective than from michael cohen s perspective. i agree. the unknown has to be frightening.