People have made to congress to buttress the russian side of the collusion investigation. Thank you for that. We thank you for watching this hour of msnbc live throughout, i mean, from the very beginning craig melvin whos about to pick up our coverage from the day that Robert Mueller was appointed thrappoin appointed, this story has never been far from the headlines. Among these many days, this is huge. This is an infection pointing deep. Were going to continue our coverage. Good morning, craig melvin, msnbc headquarters here in new york city. That Breaking News on the Mueller Investigation is where we start. Shortly before President Trump left for his meeting with World Leaders in argentina, last hour just a few moments ago he called his onetime attorney and fixer Michael Cohen a quote, weak person, who is lying. Cohen made a surprise appearance in a Federal Courtroom in manhattan this morning. He named the president. He named President Trump in a shocking new plea deal involving Trum
let s start william barr, people with different opinions of him. i happen to have a very high opinion of william barr. he was a very good attorney general and could be a good attorney general in any administration. but he must recuse from the russia investigation and all the other investigations of the trump campaign, including the investigation of the southern district of new york. let s look at the facts. just today we ve learned the prosecutors in new york, they believed the president of the united states has committed felony campaign finance violations. robert mueller has already obtained kwiks of guilty pleas for the president s lawyer. we have the president s former campaign chairman, paul manafort, the vice chair of the campaign, mr. gates. we have the former national security adviser, michael flynn, a number of other guilty pleas, a bunch of them are cooperating with the prosecutors. president trump fired the
that was 99.5% lower than the federal guidelines would have contemplated because he was asking for just the couple days of time served. and it s just they re just night and day in different places with respect to what he s done. these are considered very, very serious crimes. you re talking about lying under oath, or to federal investigators. that s what this is about. kim, the president cease it differently than you do. he tweeted out not too long ago, i want to put that back on the screen because it s kind of about the most remarkable tweet i ve seen all week. it says totally clears the president. thank you. okay. just file that thought for a second. in the southern district of new york sentencing report it says as cohen himself has now admitted with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual one. we know individual one to be the president of the united states now, then donald trump candidate. tell me about how these two things conn
that michael cohen ultimately decided not to sort of return the call or get back in touch with that person, but it doesn t say anything about did he do anything else with that information? did he pass it on to anyone else in the organization? did me make anyone else aware of it? was donald trump aware of it? we don t know. maybe the special counsel is silent on that fact. it s relevant to the investigation and we wants to keep it quiet. we have hardly scratched the surface. we appreciate you both being here. stick around, matt, and i m going to talk with you about the manafort filing. i need to stick with cohen for a while here, though, to talk about the legal ramifications of tonight s russia revelations. i m joined by kim way lee, elliott williams, deputy attorney general in the united states under president obama, and msnbc legal analyst and former assistant special prosecutor special watergate prosecutor, in fact, nick akerman. let me start with you, nick. you and i have been t
you have written a book called the case for impeachment, i believe it s called. this is as close as it s gotten. it s not new information in that we knew from michael cohen s earlier testimony and the information against him that he said he was directed by individual one, but now the sdny seems to be saying they believe that to be the case. right. i mean, i think you see something very serious. the real question that comes out is what is the implication of the prosecution, the conviction of michael cohen for president trump? right, that s the question. during watergate the grand jury secretly indicted richard nixon i m sorry, secretly richard nixon as a coconspoor for. was that done here? we don t know. that didn t come out right away. you didn t see that, did you? there s no reference to anything that s been done with donald trump as a result of this. no, not at all.