joining us now with the history and with what s happening now is paul kalen, cnn legal analyst. and casey franks. great to get both of you here since you both know so much about the history of this case. casey, i want to start with you. it s impossible to talk about the arrest this past saturday of epstein without rewinding the clock to what happened more than a decade ago. there were something like 36 minors involved in these accusations and this case against jeffrey epstein and then he got a very unusual some would say unprecedented deal from the person who is now the labor secretary o basically avoid being prosecuted. just explain what your paper uncovered about all of this. well, what we uncovered is that mr. epstein was able to hire a very powerful group of lawyers who engaged in behind
investigation perversion of justice and i think the fruits of that are occurring today in new york city courtroom. and we re very proud of it. i can understand why. paul, explain how this is possible. explain how acosta would ever agree to is the. there were 36 underage victims. he agreed not to alert them to this plea deal and that he was able to avoid a federal trial. why would any prosecutor agree to that? on the surface this is a shocking resolution of this case in florida. the human trafficking charges are very serious. you can get a life in prison sentence federally for human trafficking. and what they did in florida and what alexander acosta negotiated was a deal where epstein took only a single plea for solicitation of prostitution and they dropped all of the federal charges which had been outlined
more information about how kalimnik has been the focus of a grand jury investigation. that s one massive moving of the goal posts. stick around. joining us now to discuss it, former new york city prosecutor paul kalen. the president s lawyer no longer denying that members of the trump campaign colluded with russia. should we imagine they have gotten wind of evidence that the especially counsel has turned up? people say giuliani is a loose cannon, et cetera, but he makes statements with cause. we have seen it in the past. yes. he always starts out with broad generalities about the president s innocence and the campaign innocence. then eventually as we saw happened in the stormy daniels case when there was a denial that the president knew anything about the payoff, eventually giuliani came out and said, well, he did know about the payoff. but he found out later. and it was personal money. this is much bigger. the reason i say that is this is
director james comey with top russian officials in the oval office. the president reportedly said this. quote, i just fired the head of the fbi. he was crazy, a real nut job. i face great pressure because of russia. that s taken off. meanwhile, a source close to the fired fbi director is speaking out. telling cnn comey believed president trump was trying to influence him in regards to the russia investigation. now we re going to hear from comey himself. comey is expected to testify in the coming weeks before the senate intelligence committee. but until then the investigation goes on. let s talk it over with cnn legal analyst paul kalen and kru hayesings college law professorer reportery little paul start with you wrote interesting op he had on friday potential for obstruction of justice case against president donald trump took a quantum leap how so. i think it took a quantum leap in legal sustain ability
journalistic efforts not criticizing them. paul does the president need special counsel his own special counsel not using that in a formal term you know what i mean outside the white house legal team. he absolutely needs his own counsel. this is not admission of guilt it s just sensible thing to do. some people say to me there is a white house counsel. why doesn t the white house counsel represent the president? because the president really is the white house. but that lawyer his job is to represent the institution of the presidency. and the white house. the president has institutional responsibilities but also personal. i mean we don t know what s involved in this investigation. could for instance there be an investigation of mr. trump s prior financial dealings through his various corporations with the russians? i m not saying he had those. but i m saying it s a possibility. and that s why he would need a lawyer to say you know, mr. president, maybe you shouldn t be tweeting in