during this year. with that, let s bring in our front four, peter baker, chief white house correspondent for the new york times. former u.s. attorney joyce vance who spent 25 years as a federal prosecutor. frank figliuzzi, former fbi assistant director for counterintelligence who in the past has worked for one robert mueller. and jeremy bash, former chief of staff at the cia and the pentagon. joyce, i would like to begin with you. did we get it about right that this is trump s own doj just alleging that he directed a felony and part two of my question to you is if this were donald trump civilian, would today s papers have included an indictment perhaps? i think that those are the perfect questions to start with. you re absolutely right. this is not robert mueller and 17 angry democrats making these allegations. this comes from the southern district of new york, a
moment. the government has proven through evidence that while trump was securing the republican nomination for the presidency, vladimir putin was authorizing a direct payment to him and his business of hundreds of millions of dollars. if that doesn t establish a very troubling pattern of financial impropriety and potentially outright bribery, i m not sure what does. peter baker, put it that way and it sounds serious. in your early reporting, is there any accounting yet from inside this white house that anyone there views this as the deathly serious moment that it clearly is? well, it is deathly serious. it s a big moment in this investigation. we re starting to connect the dots. what we ve had up until now is a series of disparate factual scenarios that didn t necessarily tell us the whole picture and the one person who has the whole picture is robert mueller.
venerable u.s. attorney s office that s tough but fair and charges people with crimes and has a great track record of convictions. so that s where this charge comes from. by the same token, if president trump were citizen trump, he would likely be charged in this indictment. the protection he has against indictments stems from doj s policy of being very hesitant, if not forbidding the indictment of a president and then i think in fairness to the president, we have to mention that this violation that he s charged with, the campaign finance violation, typically you hear prosecutors or police say ignorance of the law is no excuse. when it comes to the campaign finance violation, though, prosecutors have to prove defendants knew that they were violating the law, so that s maybe the one outstanding issue here is whether there s evidence that trump when he engaged in this conduct with cohen knew he was violating campaign finance law. but that s pretty slender hope for the president.
feeling penned in. joyce, you are a lawyer and it s kind of hard to believe our president is now referred to as individual 1 in these federal documents. could it be? is there any way that for him this is just beginning? it s undoubtedly just beginning. mueller has, as we ve always said, shown us the tip of the iceberg. we don t have good sonar that lets us know what s buried beneath. but increasingly it s clear that mueller selectively puts information into court pleadings and limits it to what s essential to get him to the next step. we don t know what else is out there regarding the president, but it seems very unlikely his troubles end tonight. frank, what neal katyal said that we just ran is devastating for donald trump. well, and let s go to the other clip you played where trump was actually saying to the best of my knowledge no one around me is talking to russians.
cohen, suggested that individual one, trump, meet with the president of russia in new york city during his visit for the u.n. general assembly. the defendant admitted that this account was false and that he had, in fact, conferred with trump about contacting the russian government. here s michael cohen during that radio interview, september 17, of 2015, followed by trump just three days later. there s a better than likely chance trump may meet with putin when he comes here for the united nations. people want to meet donald trump. your outside counsel intimated you may have a meeting with the russian president. do you plan on trying to do that? well, i had heard that he wanted to meet with me and certainly i am open to it, i would love to do that if he wants to do that. i don t know that it will take place. i m not sure. i know people have been talking but we ll see what happens but certainly if he wanted to meet i d like i d enjoy doing it. federal prosecutors in the southern