and ever since we saw it in the last couple of days obviously because jim comey released his book and has been doing a number of interviews. but even especially last week when michael cohen s offices and home were raided by the fbi and suddenly all of these communications with donald trump, the attorney-client privilege as he s put it out there, was vulnerable. it was out there for the world. and so donald trump is very, very nervous right now about what that means for him. this is a president who in his past life relied very heavily on nondisclosure agreements in terms of the way he did business in general. and so suddenly all of these communications, these so-called private communications are vulnerable. and so he s getting very nervous as a result. matt, i m going to list four threats to the president and the presidency. mueller, cohen, comey, stormy. any one of those names chief among equals?
with regard to this russia investigation. they are trying so hard to kind of carve some sort of a positive spin on this whole situation, and unfortunately it s not really worked out for them. they ve tried very hard to make this look like comey, for example, is leaking information, and you have the michael cohen situation right now. you have the situation with robert mueller s investigation where they assert that it s a witch hunt and that they are being framed for all of these things. when you have jeff sessions coming out and saying he will actually step away too, it really compromises everything that the white house is trying to achieve in terms of terrifying to make it look like this is not a legitimate investigation. and so it really it is really a startling revelation, but something that plays well to jeff sessions in this whole entire episode. mr. apuzzo, where does mr. cohen, as we head into a
boy, i d have to rank them. i wouldn t put stormy up near the top although the wrinkle to that is for cohen, it becomes a problem because if you are facing the possibility of a criminal investigation, the last place you want to be is in civil court. yeah. so i can t imagine cohen we saw that he dropped his libel lawsuits against buzzfeed. you know, we see that he wants a delay in the stormy daniels case. the last place that cohen wants to be is in a civil courtroom when he has the possibility of a criminal case going on. so those two kind of go together. i mean, look, mueller is still mueller is still the special counsel. c-o-u-n-c-e-l. yeah. we still don t know what he has up his sleeve. he has the authority to, you know, pull evidence from all corners of the federal government and the intelligence agencies.
our thanks. because every so often we like to compare where we are to normal and because we re preparing to cover a somber event tomorrow, we thought this friday night would be a perfect opportunity for a conversation with our friend presidential historian and author michael beschloss. so, michael, i have asked some form of this to you a number of times. i have a list here. mueller, cohen, comey, and stormy. just take the existence of those four. how can we compare these times to anything close to normal in your life s work and study? well, have you ever seen a president with this kind of legal trouble coming from all directions? you know, we used to think that richard nixon was the gold standard for that, and it was nothing like this in terms of the number of dangers from different places. and the other thing, brian, is that during nixon s time, there was a general feeling you shouldn t sort of bother a
you have the situation with robert mueller s investigation where they assert that it s a witch hunt and that they are being framed for all of these things. when you have jeff sessions coming out and saying he will actually step away too, it really compromises everything that the white house is trying to achieve in terms of terrifying to make it look like this is not a legitimate investigation. and so it really it is really a startling revelation, but something that plays well to jeff sessions in this whole entire episode. mr. apuzzo, where does mr. cohen, as we head into a weekend, where does he stand legally, and what s the anxiety level among intimates of the president as far as how much trouble he may be in but perhaps worse, how much trouble he could represent for the president? sure. you know, we could get a sense of the seriousness here from the court hearings and from the filings. the search warrant on cohen s offices, his safe deposit box,