the white house, that will be really the most interesting piece of information from a prosecutorial point of view. just to be clear, all the reporting is about where the money is coming in from. we know where some of the money went to, stormy daniels, $130,000 in an anonymous play rate, at $1.6 million for elliott brody. finally, nick, you cover money and politics. you influence peddling. you cover dark money. you cover this sort of beat for years as well as anyone. have you ever seen something like the vehicle that michael cohen created? no, not in lobbying. what we normally see are the consultancies like lobbying companies. and they do what they have to do to not register. right. because for some reason, they think being a lobbyist is the most honest person in washington. they are a person who registers and says, i m a lobbyist. on the issues, they write disclosures.
the explanation for the cover-up with the russian contacts? if this was so, these are my buddies, i have known them for a long time, why was it so necessary to not disclose the contacts? that threw a line here as people sat in a courtroom in front of criminal proceedings, as someone who was a prosecutor, this idea of this sort of acting guilty, the sort of you know, with the essential consultants thing, i m seeing a lot of people saying, pay-for-play in washington, people do start lobbying. cory he walewandowski said, i mg to do this and he was not getting bank transfers. money for access was okay. so money for access to people in power was okay, so why did you have to do this through some who knows what llc? right. i think it s clear, everyone is saying, yeah, typical pay-for-play. it wasn t. cohen was selling something else, secrecy. by not registering as a
stand up to the interest groups that run washington, and so all these people that want things, sheldon adeleson where he played a rant of him, were the health care government were very hard to go against, i will go against them. and that has not borne out. no. i thought what was interesting about the speech today, on the one hand he could say, you know, these are the pharmaceutical companies are the biggest lobbyists in washington. at the same time as michael cohen, as you said, was taking $1.2 million from novartis and that didn t seem like a contradiction to people. and there s a way in which, to jennifer s point, the 40% of the country that s with him, the people in that room are sort of are hermetically sealed off it seems. it s not just fox. the entire leadership of the republican party has been nurturing this base for years. i think it s been clear for at least some folks from the
capital. is that true? to find out if this is normal behavior, i m joined by a new york times reporter who wrote a story called how to get rich in trump s washington. i want to start with a tweet the president sent out that i thought was interesting that seems to acknowledge the allegation here. he says, why doesn t the fake news media state that the trump administration s antitrust division has been and is opposed to the ataround t purchase of time warner in a currently ongoing trial. such a disgrace in reporting. this understands that he precisely knows what is being alleged here. that s why they hired michael cohen to try to move the administration off that position. that s the whole reason. or to understand what is happening inside the white house. and can they move out of the position? what is different here, chris, is the secrecy. the cory lewandowski model is
reporting is about where the money is coming in from. we know where some of the money went to, stormy daniels, $130,000 in an anonymous play rate, at $1.6 million for elliott brody. finally, nick, you cover money and politics. you influence peddling. you cover dark money. you cover this sort of beat for years as well as anyone. have you ever seen something like the vehicle that michael cohen created? no, not in lobbying. what we normally see are the consultancies like lobbying companies. and they do what they have to do to not register. right. because for some reason, they think being a lobbyist is the most honest person in washington. they are a person who registers and says, i m a lobbyist. on the issues, they write disclosures. i m a paid advocate talking about these four things. that s very honest. there s a whole world of people who are on the lighter end of what cohen was doing who set up consulting and say i m an