that s right. scott wapner reported this today on cnbc.com that this high-level administration official called a top investor, unnamed, and said what should we do? the market is not only giving americans the jitters but apparently the white house as well. the president has been bragging about the upward moves in the markets all along as being a validation for his economic policies and so you have to think, look, if you experience the worst christmas eve ever, if you experience the worst december since the 1930s, then it has to make you pause and wonder. apparently the investor told this official, if i were you, i would tell trump to stop criticizing fed chairman jerome powell. but there s a lot of nervousness about the fed and whether they re going to continue on this path of rate hikes through 2019, chris. contessa brewer, where we are all going to take a deep breath over the weekend and see what
not would i do it in this situation? probably not. if i were manafort s lawyer. but it s not as unusual as some people on your air have suggested. i have known lawyers who have representing representing, subject of investigations, go to the lawyer who is representing the cooperator and ask him, what are they asking your guy, what s your guy saying? and sometimes you get a blank wall. sorry, i can t talk to you. we have a cooperation agreement. sometimes you have a lawyer say, look, i can t really tell you in detail, but if i were you, i d prepare on this subject and this subject and this subject. that happens. sure. it happens a lot in mob cases, by the way. it happens in other cases, white collar cases, chris. let s not make out make this out as a mob case simply because we have a president who at times is yes? no, sounds by the same rules you re putting out there for me.
all right. two manafort questions. the first one, the suggestion of a joint defense agreement between manafort and the president, rudy giuliani all but said that s what it is. right. manafort s lawyer said, not really, we just have a fair exchange. is that okay? yeah, it s okay, and it s not would i do it in this situation? probably not. if i were manafort s lawyer. but it s not as unusual as some people on your air have suggested. i have known lawyers who have representing representing, subject of investigations, go to the lawyer who is representing the cooperator and ask him, what are they asking your guy, what s your guy saying? and sometimes you get a blank wall. sorry, i can t talk to you. we have a cooperation agreement. sometimes you have a lawyer say, look, i can t really tell you in detail, but if i were you, i d prepare on this subject and this subject and this subject. that happens. sure. it happens a lot am min mob cas by the way.
the question of who wrote the op-ed piece for the new york times? that s a great question. if i were you, i d ask the same question. we don t talk about our reporting until we publish. we don t talk about what we re i working on until we re ready to say something and print. i m not going to get into that. we don t have anything to do with this op-ed. they are separate departments. we don t know who the person is from that. peter, has the times put any restrictions on you, on what you can investigate about this story? well, again, i m not going to get into what we re doing or what we re not doing. that s really the kind of thing we don t do in general. i don t think i m going to go there tonight. peter baker, thank you for much for joining us tonight. we really appreciate it. well, they re all denying it. we have, as of this minute, 27 denials from senior officials in the trump administration. they are all denying they are
graham, a republican, has to say about cohen coming back to the hill. he s on record, cohen is, if you got something new to say, don t we get to and be dumb i nbc news, you need to come to te committees and say what you re going to say under oath and to every american. if i were you, i would be very suspicious of michael cohen right now. shannon: harmeet, what do you think? who is in more trouble, don jr. or michael cohen? michael cohen is undoubtably in trouble but for things that have nothing to do was donald trump or the russian investigation, and one key tell here is that if this cohen prosecution had to do with the mueller and russia investigation, mueller wouldn t have handed off to the u.s. attorney s office in the southern district of new york. he would have kept it and that would have been a clue to us that this whole investigation involved the russia collusion, and it seems to or he would not have handed it off. i completely agree with