kind of forgotten until you should us this morning, how withering the national inquirer was in the lead-up to the election last year. i ve covered the inquirer before, in the case involving bill cosby, you re looking at some of those covers right now. you look at two people directly referenced in a criminal investigation that we now find out there is immunity given to the ceo of american media, referenced in the information that michael cohen pled guilty to, david pecker, and as we ve been discussing, allen weisselberg. when you have two people who are key figures in specific counts involving michael cohen and they were given immunity, they provided information to prosecutors, that s pretty damning evidence, on all of all the materials they were able to take from michael cohen as part
organization for decades, the accountant, the money man, the cfo, close confidant of the president and his father before him, granted immunity in connection with the michael cohen case, following the revelation that long time friend and supporter david pecker, ceo and publisher the national inquirer. joining me now, tom winter, daniel goldman, joyce vance, and kristen welker. tom, first to you, set the stage of what has happened today with allen weisselberg. andrea, today, what s different from yesterday, yesterday we were talking about david pecker and payments or a payment that was made to karen mcdougal. today, allen weisselberg, this has to do with another count in the information that michael cohen pled guilty to on tuesday.
tom winter, this is the publisher eof the national inquirer, who has been promoting his career and has been in supermarket tabloids across the america in 2016, trashing hillary clinton with fake news, false headlines, horrible pictures, some doctored-up, and headlines against his other opponents, if we can see some of those graphics. look at some of these false stories about hillary clinton. he has used that tabloid and also, according to the associated press, has a safe where he was storing all of his most important secrets, which is widely known within the national inquirer newsroom, even, that some of this would of course also include the two women and the two causes that involved the inquirer, in particular the mcdougal case, tom. that s right, andrea, i had
and this is what we run into a little bit with both candidate donald trump and donald trump in the administration right now, is they say things and then it turns out that those things are not true, and then reporters say, hey, but what about the other thing, and they say, yeah, no, we re not going to talk about that. so it s a strategy that we ve not seen in washington ever really work before, because most press secretaries, most politicians realize that getting caught in the lie is like usually way worse than whatever it is you re being asked about. so whether it s the president s got a plan to fire the secretary of state, or the president dictated misleading statement in his son s name, or there s a tape and it shows that the president knew that the national inquirer had the rights to this story about an so whether it s the president s got a plan to fire the secretary of state, or the president dictated misleading statement in his son s name, or there s a tape and it shows that the
dictated misleading statement in his son s name, or there s a tape and it shows that the president knew that the national inquirer had the rights to this story about an alleged affair, and every time they say they don t know anything about it or the story is false, it s fake news, then time after time, it turns out it s real, and then they just say, move on. so we ll see what happens, if they can enhance the tape, i guess. let s turn to a former fed. all right, cynthia, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. short of hiring a sky writer, as i ve said before, it appears mr. cohen is anxious to work with the feds. two questions for you. how does this tape being out there affect that bid? and secondly, what do you make of the tape? well, i don t think it does mr. cohen any good to have released the tape. what we ve seen over the last couple of months is cohen trying