is the person that is going to handle this media relationship. one of the defenses is the idea that president trump and jared kushner and some of the other people just weren t versed in this kind of stuff, they just had no idea what they were doing. that might be a problem for running things, i m not sure that you love this situation, but to be fair, it can comprise a valid legal defense. but here was michael cohen saying no, they knew what they were doing towards the election. take a look. nothing at the trump organization was ever done unless it was run through mr. trump. he directed me to make the payments. he directed me to become involved in these matters. including the one with macdougal, which was really between him and david pecker, and then david pecker s counsel. i just reviewed the documents in order to protect him. you have to remember at what point in time that this matter
answer questions about this nda and other payments to other women. based on the way that functions, do you think there are other people affiliated with the trump organization that broke campaign finance law? i do. because i m aware of other payments that occurred in 15 and 16. i m not at liberty to get into the details. my client was not alone. ms. macdougal is not alone. there are other payments, and i have no question let s break out what you re saying, because people are going, wow. donald trump, after fighting this, after taking your client to arbitration and threatening millions of dollars, is backing down. what you re saying is maybe in their interest, to fold in this public manner, because there are other people with a similar situation, that would raise other potential violations of the law? that s what i m saying. and donald trump does not want to face a deposition by me where i ask him questions about the payment to stormy daniels, ms. macdougal and others, as wel
i would agree with you. i mean, i m a good friend of the president and i don t condone lying to the public. so that s where we are, cynthia. jay gold bergs, who has known donald trump for a long time, has to go on television tonight and say he doesn t condone lying to the public. the washington post estimates he lies about 7.6 times a day. they re going to have to up it after this week. i don t think there s any question about that. it ll be interesting to see how mueller looks at those lies and what they do to corroborate cohen s lies. because cohen has lied, too. over the last year or so. there are interesting little nuggets in the indictment about other people in the campaign who knew about the payments to stormy daniels and to ms. macdougal. and i would predict that now we re going to see concentrated effort by this
was an affair she had with donald trump after he was married to melania. now, let me emphasize that i don t know if any such affair took place. but what david pecker did was he required macdougal as a columnist for his fitness magazines. he also runs fitness magazines and he paid her $150,000 on the condition that she say nothing about any relationship she may have had with donald trump. and i said and i said to pecker when i interviewed with him, you know, why did you do that? and he said because trump is a personal friend of mine. and i think that tells you much of what you need to know about pecker s agenda for his publications, which is to help trump by running positive stories, and if possible, as with the macdougal matter,
macdougal is in new york and not in washington with robert mueller but in terms of an overall gestalt of what cohen knows about trump and what cohen can add to mueller s investigation of trump, it seems to be important to that aspect of the investigation. so to the extent that there is a fissure between the president and his former lawyer, that may assist the mueller investigation. shanin, thank you for your expertise. yes, sir. i want to know what you think. go to smerconish.com this hour, and answer the survey question. will the contents of this recording help or hurt president trump? what are your thoughts? tweet me, or go to my facebook page, my twitter account, i will read some responses. what do we got?