denying knowledge of his son s 2016 trump tower meeting, but sources tell cnn the president s former fixer, michael cohen, now says that trump is lying. so, the real question here is whose story could hold up in court? joining us to discuss that is michael moore, former u.s. attorney for the middle district of georgia. good morning. good morning. so, on the surface, you know, this information that cnn was able to uncover, it does sound very damning. sure. but you ve got the legal mind, and you re the person, if you were putting yourself in the prosecutor s seat, how damning is it legally? it s a bombshell if they can corroborate it, if they can back it up. and my guess is that bob mueller s been working to do that. especially if you ve got michael cohen now saying that trump knew about the meeting ahead of time. that s sort of in preparation to collude with russia. so how do we corroborate it? they could do it through phone records, through e-mails, memos that perhaps cohen w
but there s a little bit of a twist that i think s with the testifying about trump coming up with a statement about what the meeting was. it always defied him to say he didn t know what it was, but he was still able to come up with the explanation of what it wasn t. well, what if she didn t tell him? if she didn t tell him what it was when he was aboard air force one and he came up with this reason or false story about the meeting, that meant that he knew what it was ahead of time, that he was already in anticipation of it. and you ve got somebody who s a control freak, a micro manager, and it s pretty clear that he does things on his own and thinks he s the smartest man in the room. it denies logic to think he would have let something like this happen or that his children, knowing his personality, would have not gone to him and told him, hey, we ve got a meeting with russians, we re fixing to break the story on hillary clinton. and his public speech he gave saying i m going to lay all
chairman of the house intelligence committee and his fellow travelers there. they ve tried to say this entire narrative is a lie made up on the basis of the christopher steel dossier. that essentially a political document designed to destroy donald trump is the basis for all of this. at this point, the calls are coming from inside the house. okay. michael cohen is mad and not going to take it anymore is a vanity fair headline. cohen, very knowledgeable about cohen. she reports there s a lot more to come. there s a lot. you re with someone for ten years. you don t think there s a lot. the trump organization is a big business and nobody in that place made a decision without his knowledge. so the idea, it s not christopher steel. it s his own people. he is known to be a micro manager. somebody who refuses to let go of the reigns in any way and as of didn t necessarily work for him as a businessman because he s been bankrupt 11 times. certainly doesn t trust expertise of other business
yeah. and also it wasn t to do with the election. it had to do with the trump brand and his relationship with his family. which is difficult to square because everything we know about donald trump is that he s a penny pincher. he controls all of his money. he s a micro manager of the bills for his buildings. when he pays the bills. when he pays them. so it s surprising that $130,000 would somehow leave his bank account and him not know about it or question where that money was going. but that s the argument the lawyers are making tonight. then the other issue with the political motivation, that s to try to clean up what rudy giuliani had said about michael cohen making that payment to try to help trump in the election. he s now trying to claim it wasn t that. caroline, when you retain an attorney, i want to get this because it makes no sense. you retain somebody to handle your legal business so he s available or she s available. but when they have an expense like staples, p
out these kind of actions without his knowledge, encouragement, and endorsement. we know he s a micro manager. we know he gets rid of people. he calls them names when they do things he doesn t like. these things are not believable, and yet i m stunned that no democrat is standing up to make a solid political argument that ties all this up. paul callan, you heard the two attorneys. who do you think has a stronger case here? well, in this case i think that david schwartz defending has probably the stronger case, and i only say that because when stormy daniels takes the money, the $130,000, a lot of people are going to say, why did she take the money if she wasn t agreeing to a contract? she could have given the money back and said donald trump didn t sign the contract. remember, she s represented by a lawyer in this transaction. he hasn t signed the contract, or put the money in escrow. i m not going to put it in my bank account. but once you take the money in a contractual agreement