republicans you know, ken earlier was speaking and i totally feel his pain about how frustrating it can be to work on mueller s time. he has the ball at least until some congressman decide to move impeachment. a point about michael cohen and why the buzz feed issue of corroborati corroboration s so important. without it, you re left with michael cohen testifying. of course. he s no john dean. just going to say it. no, he s a liar. invettorate liar. that s a huge problem. that s precisely why this is so important, right? like, what is reported and what is disputed and why it s so important in the broad scale of thing. ultimately, there will be a question of what the public evidence says about what happened, right? well and that goes to the core of the issue of what will be either adjudicated in courts of law, if it s people not having to do with the president, or ajust dated in essentially the united states congress and that s another issue. i wasn t super impres
for now. thanks for being with us. all in with chris hayes starts right now. good evening from new york. the special counsel in a rare public statement disputing buzzfeed s blockbuster report that the president of the united states elected michael con to lie to congress about negotiations to bailed trump tower moscow, siting two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation. they report trump also planned to visit with russia during the campaign and visit with putin drktly and that the president and two of his children all received regular detailed updates from cohen on the status of the project which the president defended after cohen s sentencing. there would be nothing wrong if i did do it. i was running my business while i was campaigning. there was a good chance i wouldn t have won in which case
acting as the president, not some preelection event, if when he is the president, he directed cohen to lie to congress, as it appears he did, let s not mess that up. because it comes in the context of we know cohen lied and we know that president knew he lied because of what he lied about. so let s just slow down and get right. that s a good point. your thoughts. i think one thing we re missing and this happens often with president trump is look over here is that bill barr memo talking about what was clearly criminal wasn t just suborning perjury but intimidating a witness to lie. how did the president respond? he responded by trying to intimidate michael cohen saying watch his father in law. he s like a russian of criminal activity.
updates from cohen on the status of the project which the president defended after cohen s sentencing. there would be nothing wrong if i did do it. i was running my business while i was campaigning. there was a good chance i wouldn t have won in which case i would have got back into the business and why should i lose lots of opportunities? the special counsel s office learned about trump s director to lie to congress through interviews with multiple witnesses in the trump organization and internal company emails, text messages and a cash of other documents. the president s lawyer denied a buzzfeed story and now after declining the comment and not commenting on the story itself, the special counsel s office issued a statement. buzzfeed s description of specific statements to the
it was something mcconnell couldn t get away from. we all kind of already know that trump told cohen to lie because there s no other reason for cohen to have lied. there s no other reason for cohen for trump to keep lying about cohen, right? we know cohen lied. we know trump lied on the campaign trail. we know cohen was consulting with trump s people before he did his testimony. all that s established. there s no chance that the buzz feed story is wrong. the question is simply, can they prove it. and that s always been the question up in the air. when we say can they prove it, we re not really talking about can they prove it in a court of law. can they prove it to lindsey graham. can they prove it to mitch mcconnell. can they prove it to the point where the republicans have to do something about the crazy liar that happens to be running the country. that point about waiting for the got em moment has been this kind of perennial issue here. i think that you know, ultimately al