Reminder, dont miss full circle on facebook. You get to pick some of the stories we cover. You can see it week nights at 6 25 p. M. Eastern on facebook. Com Anderson Cooper full circle. The news continues on this very busy tuesday night. Im going to hand it over to chris. Cuomo prime time starts now. Thank you. I am chris cuomo. Welcome to prime time. We have new information and key players for you in the big breaking story. Michael cohen says a candidate for federal office, aka the president , directed him to commit felonies. Those Hush Money Payments to women before the election, cohen says they were made at the direction of trump himself, and they were crimes. This is uncharted territory. A president directly implicated in criminal behavior In Open Court by his lawyer. Were going to have cohens counsel joining us for what lies ahead. And what does this exposure mean for the president Going Forward . Thats where Michael Avenatti,
the lawyer for Stormy Daniels, one of the recipients o
realize they re going to have to tell the truth because the government knows more than they thought they did and it s the right thing to do. manafort may never have gotten to that. i saw it happen, particularly with fraudsteres who thought they could outsmart the government. it may just be manafort was willing to admit some things but not everything. tom is right, the government would not tear up this cooperation agreement lightly. they wouldn t say some insignificant, immaterial vague fact or statement. it s got to be something significant. and it has to it s likely something they can really prove with other direct evidence he s lying about. all right, that certainly sounds bad for manafort but how bad is it for mueller? manafort is a key witness to a lot of this stuff. doesn t it fly out the window?
there s the potential meeting that manafort may or may not have had with julian assange. again, all according to reporting from the guardian and unnamed sources talking to them. and then there is the other news. barbara, when you re making sense of it and you re talking about pardons potentially coming from the white house, how do you make sense of it, where do you go? i think there s some several layers going on here. number one, the one we know to be true is that manafort has lied and is now not cooperating any longer. and what s odd about that is the first thing a prosecutor ever says to someone who is cooperating is, the worst thing you can do is lie because if you lie, it make it s worse on yourself. not only will you get all of the time you otherwise faced, but now you can also be charged with making false statements. so for a sophisticated guy like paul manafort to make a suggestion against his interest suggests to me there s something
him to commit crimes for the principal purpose of influencing the election. in the world of trump, this might seem like just another day of headlines that all blend together in the noise. no. this is different. these are charges and claims by michael cohen that could put trump right next to him in court or indicted but for his being president right now. lucky guy. but this is not over for the president. cohen has information. manafort may. and right now they have no reason legally to stay quiet. and you know what? the president knows that. so does mueller. so does the new york attorney general who is investigating the trump foundation, and so does michael avenatti. it s probably the reason why when asked about cohen today, the president responded in a way he rarely does. he said nothing. not a tweet. not a word even at the rally in west virginia. he just dummied up. now, if you ve been following this, it all started with a
anything nor could it be possible that he does. he has nothing to do with our campaign. despite raising the work during his campaign. they helped us grow the campaign. publicly the white house strategy is to down play the proceedings. watching tv coverage and asking his legal team for updates. trump has said that he is being treated unfairly, that manafort may by holding out for a pardon. he will be the last man defending trump and bet it all on a pardon. they are expressing confidence after day one of the trial. any chance he may flip and cooperate? no chance.