the humdrum congress. i ve said it before and i ll say it again, you two have the most interesting jobs right now in politics. hang on. we ll take it. thank you very much. next, the trumps and their businesses in russia. it s complicated. i m alex trebek here to tell you about the colonial penn program. if you re age 50 to 85 and looking to buy life insurance on a fixed budget, remember the three p s. what are the three p s?
correspondents. what s beginning going on. reporter: tsenators have bee causing them to go back and look at the committees that have been investigating russia and take another look at some of the transcripts of some of the witnesses they have talked to already and starting to think about possibly additional witnesses based on what we know about cohen s plea deal. these two investigations have been publicly dormant although quietly continuing to work and today a lot of renewed interest in going back through and saying if we know these statements weren t true, who else might have locked themselves in positions and interviews that many cases were behind closed doors with only staff who might not have been telling the truth. now they know they have some back up in the form of the special counsel who is going to go after people for lying to congress which is not something that s typically done but gives a lot more force to these
it means they have evidence about whether or not other people have lied to congress. i think they have to be worried. if they can prove that michael cohen lied, anybody else was not truthful, then they can probably that they lied too. i think we would see that. i think the bigger picture here is we have to be asking why are these people lying. yes these false statement, the perjury counts are very very important and mueller has shown that over and over again why they re important. it s important because it covers conflicts of interest as well as just corrupt our criminal justice system but i think it s also important because lying is usually to cover up some other criminal activity. i saw that time and time again as a prosecutor. people don t lie for no reason. i think that s probably what is weighing on people. when will it come out the real reason why these lies are being told? i know that house intelligence or house lawmakers,
working on this deal. it s just astounding. you have worked covering donald trump for such a long time. people who know him, i spoke to someone who knows him and michael cohen today, they say donald trump wants to be famous and he wants money. nothing else really matters. the appearance of some kind of a collusion with russia during the campaign didn t really matter to him. if the presidential thing didn t work out, he wanted to make money and he s been making money in russia off miss universe pageant. he really wanted to do that. that is a huge motivator. mimi, what is the underlying crime here. remind us of that. there s some folks who might think to themselves but what exactly did he do wrong? well, the underlying crime that michael cohen pled guilty to is perjury, false statements to congress. that s a serious crime in and of
question why haare so many peop lying to congress. why do they need to lie to robert public schomueller? why are they lying about what happened during the transition or the campaign? that s a big question. that was mark warner s argument when i talked to him. after a while they re not lying because they think it s a great hobby or because it s fun to come down here to congress and lie and put the rest of your life and career in jeopardy so why are they lying? what s the thing they are trying to cover up? if not for themselves then for whom. you re seeing people start to flip and these different pieces around the edges. people don t come down here and lie to congress and take that issue lightly. exactly. when you look at how the goal posts have changed in terms of what the republicans will stomach from this investigation and from donald trump lims, the