quote, by delegation from the attorney general, the assistant attorney general in charge of the office of legal counsel provides legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. all executive branch agencies, that s important. provides legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. guess who s not part of the executive branch? state attorney generals like new york s attorney general barbara underwood who just subpoenaed michael cohen as part of an investigation into the trump foundation. yale law professor una hathaway says the idea of a state attorney general trying to indict a sitting president, if a case went forward that it would be up to the courts to decide whether the president is immune from criminal prosecution. up to the courts, not the department of justice. so, if you were hypothetically looking for a trap door in the office of legal counsel s opinion on indicting a sitting president, the trap doors are
happening with michael cohen, strangely, the prosecution, the southern district of new york, did not announce a cooperation deal with him. now a number of lawyers and you and i have spoken since then have told me that sometimes a cooperation deal emanates from a plea deal. where do you think we are on that? it s hard to know. i thought it was real surprising to see cohen plead straight up to this indictment. it looks like he has someplace between four and six years of exposure. hard to know why he would have done that. he could have possibly gotten some cooperation. there s been some speculation that his wife might have had exposure. he might have gone ahead and entered a plea of guilt to spare her. i just don t think we know yet and, of course, prosecutors could decide down the road that cohen does have some value and conclude a cooperation agreement with him at a later time. i think the tag line for the trump administration is i don t think we know yet. joyce, always great to
the first loopty loop came over the weekend. top trump aide gives mueller coveted details. white house counsel strategy evolves into survival tactic. monday trouble came in the form of the president s long-time personal lawyer, loans inquiry may soon put michael cohen in a bind. that was a generation ago. on tuesday, wow, the president s campaign chairman paul manafort was convicted of eight criminal felonies. he s facing around a decade in prison with another trial ahead. on any other day, that story would have had the front page all to itself. but look over to the left of your screen. it was pushed to the side in the relatively humble font by this, pleading guilty, cohen implicates president. the president s personal lawyer saying he committed eight different felonies with two of those felonies, quote, in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office. we know that to be donald trump. there is reason this headline is in all caps. there s a reason it stretche
but i guess the point is allen weisselberg can t get out there and plead the fifth. you know, there are different flavors of immunity, and they come with some different rights and responsibilities. but one of the important things to remember about immunity is that it s always better to have a witness who is cooperating with you voluntarily because they ll share information that they know. they re doing that to get a good deal for themselves. when you give a witness immunity, you compel them to speak to you. the only answers you get are the answers to the questions that you know to ask that witness. so it s always preferable to have someone cooperating voluntarily and it s just not clear yet what s going on here. i need you to go deep into the recesses of your mind into ancient history all the way back to tuesday when was that about six years ago in the trump administration. right, it is. it s light-years, and when michael cohen announced when they announced what was
the go ahead, said, yes, pay michael cohen for this reimbursement. somebody who would have given an order to allen weisselberg. if that order happened, it s not mentioned in the cohen charging documents and i think every reporter in america is trying to figure out what more is the southern district going to do. is there more out there they haven t told us about yet? that s the big question. if anybody gets the answer, it will probably be you. david fahrenthold, the washington post reporter. thank you for your time. for more on this conversation, the legal implications of this, i m joined by former u.s. attorney for alabama, joyce vance. jase joyce, great to see you, thank you for being with us. your first reaction to allen weisselberg, the trump organization cfo being given this immunity. what s your first reaction as somebody who has been at the other side of the deal on this where you ve given people immunity. why? so typically you give immunity to someone because you re hopi