consternation among, you know, for the president and those closest to him. how does he, the president navigate that? it s going to be difficult. because it s going to we ve seen in the past, the president, when someone who is close to his orbit, while they re in his orbit, he defends them. and, you know, tries his best to denounce the investigation and the minute they get caught up, they plead guilty, they start cooperating, then he s never heard of them before, right? they played minor roles in his campaign. they were just a coffee boy. michael who? you can t really do that. stormy who? don jr. was just a great point. you can t really do that with a family member. so that s where this investigation gets close to donald trump jr., who obviously was at that crucial trump tower meeting. so he has always been a central figure in this investigation. two other areas of investigation with the inaugural committee for example, might implicate vaccine trump or jared kushner. t
tell his side soof the story on camera, something that s pretty unusual for someone who s just been sentenced to prison. why d he do it? president trump decided to attack his family, on top of all the other personal attacks on michael by the president of the united states. he gets that. but to attack his wife, her father, his uncle, whatever else mr. trump does, michael thought that he had to defend his family. does michael cohen think that the president is a bully? yes. and partly, the transformation that he s undergone, some of those clips that i ve saw are cringing, knowing him the way i know him now, that he evolved once he became president and saw somebody that he thought was dangerous to the country, and that s the process that he went through that i actually call a transformation that led him to this moment, to tell the truth about donald trump.
and you believe that that s genuine? it s not out of convenience? yes. because the president called him a rat. the president called him a rat. i did put my own message up on twitter today that, let s get this straight, the president is the top law enforcement officer in the country. he calls somebody who tells the truth to the prosecutors a rat and someone who stonewalls prosecutors sympathetic. that sounds more like the rule of the mob than it does the rule of law under a president. so, going back to your question, michael, over a long period of time, convinced me that it was real. i ve seen other transformations in people s lives. but his willingness to publicly stand up to the president of the united states, be attacked personally, have his life virtually destroyed at this point, going to prison for three years, refuses to accept a pardon, told me to say that publicly, all other ways of testing sincerity, i think to me, he s met, but the ultimate
uh, michael cohen, you told me day one, he s going to win. i did. day one. you never had a doubt. because i know mr. trump. i ve stood by him, shoulder to shoulder, for the past decade. i ve seen him in action. i know when donald trump wants something. there s nothing that s going to stop him from achieving his goal. their goal is to malign a very good man. a man who i truly believe will go down in history, if they leave him alone as the best president michael, they re not going to leave him alone. well, i m going to do whatever it is that i can do to ensure that they leave him alone. i ll do anything to protect mr. trump. this week, michael cohen asked for leniency in court, saying that he has been living in a, quote, personal and mental incarceration ever since he went to work for donald trump. and then, there s maria butina. after 18 months, they appear to have one picture of her with a russian, who s head of the russian cultural center, who shows russian movies
test is what he says. is it corroborated and mr. mueller, i can assure you, has corroborated everything that michael has told him over 70 hours. let s talk about that for a second. i want to play a little bit of michael cohen s interview, where he talks about whether he s still cooperating with robert mueller. take a look. are you still cooperating? if they want me, i m here. and i m willing to answer whatever additional questions that they may have for me. right. so you re saying there are certain areas that you can t get into, because you re still cooperating with them? correct. and out of respect for process. who are the issues that the special counsel s office still needs michael cohen s help with? so i m in the same ground rules that we have such respect for mr. mueller. and i ve known mr. mueller off and on through the years, that to interfere or be in front of him on any issue is just inappropriate. and michael, from the very beginning, said, even the