variety of issues. okay, so, but i m asking you, if you kacame from the trump organization. you seem to be avoiding what was said by cohen himself, that he charged can i answer your question in one word? what we know, there are contributions that are made by corporations and we know that the supreme court has had a terrible time figuring all of this out. and you don t use complex, subtle, confusing criminal law as the basis either for charging or impeaching a president. that s why people are mostly fined violating the laws. okay. alan, you know, it s very it s helpful to donald trump to think this is all that complicated. it s not that complicated. did michael cohen commit a crime? you bet he did. let s think about why campaign finance laws exist at all. right? the reason they exist is so that we know who finances campaigns and we know what they spend the money on. the trump campaign and donald
which is that he said he was not aware ahead of time. and did not hear anything to the contrary and that was the testimony before the senate as well as the house intelligence committees and he said that testimony was accurate. so michael cohen does not have information that president trump knew about the trump tower meeting with the russians beforehand or even after? no. there s not. i know you won t say if you spoke to mueller s team. i m obviously not going to press you on that. you said last night that you believe michael cohen, quote, has knowledge about whether or not then-candidate trump knew about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not mr. trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on. do you stand by that tonight? i think i was a little bit more tentative on that. i think what i said was that at some point, mr. cohen might be able to be useful to the special
he wants to speak the truth. can he just speak the truth? sure. i mean he s raising money for people to pay him to speak the truth and fund him. can he just hold a press conference? he could. i mean, he is also under the thumb of the prosecutors at this point, and they may not want him to go public at this point. i mean, they may want they may be continuing their investigation, they don t want his story out there. mueller prosecutors mueller prosecutors particularly the southern district, because that s where his case is. i don t though what thefully has been between cohen and the prosecutors, but certainly, as a legal matter, there s nothing stopping him from telling his story right now. professor dershowitz, you said that the white house, that the assertion that the white house made today that the president committed to crime here today, do you think michael cohen committed a crime here? well, it all depends. these campaign finance laws are so confusing that even
distinguish between political sin and federal felonies, and a lot of the commentary so far has failed to do that. you said that all candidates for president violate campaign election laws. let me tell you don t tell me what i said. i have the quote right here. i said failing to report well, yeah. failing to report a lawful contribution is the political equivalent of jaywalking. candidates violate election laws all the time. how many and how many of those alan, let me talk for a second, for god sakes. it s a crime for the campaign to do it. okay. oh, everybody does it how many campaigns do it with $130,000 to one woman and $150,000 to another woman in hush money nothing illegal about that. nothing illegal about that. it comes from a campaign. it s perfectly okay.