political stuff. did you know that no, i didn t know anything about it. so just keeps on saying he didn t know. then, in testimony before the senate judiciary committee in september of 2017, don jr., back to the son claimed that his father, quote, wouldn t have wasted his time with it. i in every spoke to my father about it. okay. so that s the history of the trumps continually denying they knew about the meeting. joining me now former assistant u.s. attorney for the southern district of new york. gentlemen, good to see you. lie begins about the concept that this was about adoptions. more detailed than a lot of people want to get into, but russia stopped the adoptions of russian babies to america to protest the magnitsky act, which punished oligarchs with assets in america which is personal to vladimir putin. concept that there was this meeting about adoptions that had
nothing to do with anything else is not plausible. it turned out to be a lie as you just illustrated for us. a lot of people are saying we re in a he said-he said situation. and a as a prosecutor, when you get in that situation it s not just a throw up your hands and say who knows, you have to look at the corroborating evidence. what do the external facts tell us. the first one i would go to is the lies. why lie? why there s a lot of lying going on. you would ask a jury. why is everybody who was in that room lying about it, with this adoption cover? that s number 1. there s other corroboration that supports cohen too. phone records from don jr. to this blocked number. we know that the president had a blocked number. right after don jr. finds out there s going to be a meeting and after the meeting itself. and so i think, again, that s another important piece of corroboration that would weigh on the scale towards cohen s version of events. so, danny, this is interesting, becaus
fifth. that s what it s there for. i would guess he s going to invoke the fifth amendment. then, the ping pong is sort of back on the prosecutor s side of the table. by the way, there s no ability to exzerlts executive privilege. right. not executive or attorney/client privilege unless he can prove those discussions all happened in the context of a meeting with michael cohen discussing danny s right on the attorney client. next s that s for national security. not for this kind of thing. but, if he invokes the fifth, the prosecutors then have to make a decision, do we want to immunize this guy. are we willing to give him a pass. he seems like an enabler more than a primary doer. second, do we want him as a witness. that guy worked for the organization for 40 years. we heard two minutes. he said our friend david, who we think is david pecker from american media, owner of
for the armed conflict, check. and the evidence of collusion makes for a desire by donald trump personally to work with russia during the campaign, you feel that s provable at this point or not? i think if you look at the record, and the record is that you mentioned it in reference today in today s show, the initial trump tower meeting, when they were going to be meeting to get dirt on hillary clinton, as part of what they said in quotes, the russian help, the government s help to donald trump. so that s established. let me bring in eric because i want to moderate and make sure we get all views. eric, your response to this statement from someone who, as you understand, served in good graces with the republican party, that your super pac may be supporting a president who is, quote, treasonous. yeah, look, i mean, i think it s a little laughable. the idea here is that this isn t just a liberal fantasy, it s a status quo fantasy of the last 30 years. don t forget, candidate trump
with foreigners. you re allowed to meet, if you re in a campaign, you re allowed to meet with somewhat squirrely foreigners who don t have the greatest resmys and the greatest reputations for dealings in the world, but what tips me off that maybe there s something here and same as the original trump tower meeting, the lying about it. when i was in government, let s say something asked me to take a meeting. you should check these things out. maybe it s someone i realized into the meeting, maybe this guy doesn t have the greatest motives, you end the meeting or say i m sorry, i can t help you with that, or whatever, and three months later, someone comes to you from the fbi and says or six months later, did you have a meeting with that guy? you said, yes, i did, and nothing came of it, i didn t do anything wrong. you should go see what else he tried to do with other people in the government or whatever. but that was not what eric prince, who seems to have been in the meeting said to congr