he is not acting on behalf of the government. so it can t be anything except some sort of message. even though they were under a joint defense agreement, it does not dissipate the smell and attempt of witness tampering and corruption. it s the circumstantial evident, direct evidence will shoal the kind of obstruction that went on. speaking in code doesn t do. ask all the mafia bosses that are in jail. how big do you think this e-mail revelation is? members of congress have seen it from michael cohen and who is this guy robert costelo? dangling or offering pardons with the motive of disswaying
grateful for setting up this kind of a back channel. so we don t really know what that means. cohen sympathizers say this is the first step in dangling a pardon. is that what this was about? were they trying to place kind of a mole as an attorney working with michael so that attorney could tell rudy giuliani everything michael cohen was thinking. this is of course before michael cohen declared his independence in july. and i spoke with the attorney last night, robert costello who call the that utter nonsense and said, look, what we re trying to do is smooth out what had become a rocky relationship between cohen and the president and there were storied written at the time about the president being angry with michael and vice versa and he said michael asked him to please make sure they all know that i m good, as you know they were part of a joint defense agreement at that time.
continue. and we know the conversation went all the way to the white house. so you can decide for yourself how this squares with cohen s testimony before congress, but as i ve said, it s less about what he can say and more about what he can show. ergo the e-mails. now, this shows plenty. especially in context. the person sending the e-mails is somebody named robert costello. why is he interesting? because he was not cohen s attorney. that s key here. he was pushing his services claiming close ties to giuliani. the timing of costello showing up in all this also key. the feds had just searched cohen s homes and office. giuliani had only been on trump s legal team a few days at this point. cohen was trying to figure out if he should stick to a joint defense agreement with the president or if he should, as he eventually did, flip.
make sure they all know that i m good. as you know they were part of a joint defense agreement at that time. and shortly after the first e-mail was sent, the president had some kind words for michael cohen on twitter. yeah. the president did. he said michael is a businessman for his own account, lawyer, who i have always liked and respected. most people will flip if the government lets them out of trouble. even if it means lying or making up stories. sorry. i don t see michael doing that. despite the horrible witch hunt and the dishonest media. so the president at this point was making the case, i gotcha, michael. i know you re on my team and i think look, everyone at this point after the raid on michael s home and office was kind of worried, what did the feds get? so they were both worried. what did the feds get? and you could see there was concern from the white house too. fascinating. gloria borger, thanks so much. sure. so earlier i spoke with
cohen. when he was still liked by those guys. right. they go back to april 2018 when they still had a joint defense agreement. they were sent by an attorney named robert costello. he was somebody joining michael cohen s defense or wanted to join michael cohen s defense. they large ri about michael cohen s relationship with the president and with the white house. i want to give you a little phrase from it. he describes this and said it was very very positive. you are loved. sleep well. you friends in high places. so these are part of the documents that cohen gave over to congressional committees. the interpretation of what s being said in those e-mails is really it differs depending whom you ask. you had a chance to speak