are you upset with mr. cohen? mr. president, is michael cohen telling the truth? is michael cohen telling the truth? mr. president, is michael cohen telling the truth? and that from a president who usually loves shouting questions with the media. this week the typically chatty president hasn t answered a single question. it s been a rough few days for the president. the start of the week we found out federal investigators have 12 audio tapes from trump s former fixer michael cohen and a new poll found that a majority of americans believe russia has compromising information on donald trump. on wednesday one of the cohen audio tapes was released and the public heard then candidate trump talking about buying the rights to a former play boy play mate story about an alleged affair. then a federal judge rejected the president s effort to stop a lawsuit alleging he violated laws regarding conflicts of interest with foreign governments. we also learned the trump organization cfo who has
second to potential obstruction. if really does go to the heart of both strands of the mueller investigation. the quell of collusion, of course, is this is the evidence, the most explicit public evidence of collusion where you had somebody say in writing, the russian government is offering help to your campaign and the campaign says, great, i love it, let s do it. and then they said, yeah, but it didn t work out. our efforts to get help from the russian government fizzled, so thus no collusion. and then there is also the obstruction question of was the president putting out a false narrative as i think matt miller talked about to try to tamp down questions and tamp down investigators questions about this very meeting. so, of course, all this cohen stuff is very interesting. if it s true, would certainly be of interest in the investigation. there s no question it would be. and cohen i m sorry.
special counsel robert mueller that the president knew about the trump tower meeting between his son and campaign leadership and russians with ties to the kremlin who promised dirt on hillary clinton. in light of the tape released earlier this week, in which cohen and trump appear to discuss the minutiae of how to funnel hush money to a former play boy play mate, it is certainly in line with the nature of donald trump s interest in matter big and small to have known about a meeting like this. what we now know about trump and cohen s relationship and what we ve now heard with our own ears is that trump was not at all walled off from the seedy era expects of being donald trump. in fact, he was very much hands on. if cohen s account proves true, donald trump s daily collusion denial may undergo an extreme make over and his supporters may soon be conditioned to accept that collusion isn t a crime instead of there was no collusion at all, and that is just the p.r. battle front. the legal pr
come clean? yes, i think we have seen every indication over the last several weeks, particularly over the last week. and people in cohen s orbit have been saying to me not only does he want to come clean, does he want to do the right thing by his family and the country as well, but he feels like he has been on the other end of a concerted attack by the president, by rudy giuliani, by members of the president s family. and the message that i have received is he feels like he s been attacked and every time he gets a talkttacked, he is going attack back. we ve seep that a couple times the last couple weeks. if it were to happen again why is he trying why is he trotting his evidence out in the media instead of having private meetings he has a well regarded attorney? why not have these meetings outside of the glare of the media where people can question his credibility, where people can question his motives? people in his circle said he was not behind the leak last night. they wer
them. and if he does decide his only path forward, his only way out of this jeopardy because he s not going to get a pardon any more, that seems clear is to talk about both what he knows about russia and what he knows about trump s business dealings before the campaign ever began. it is an enormous, enormous threat to the president. emily, let s put up the headline for your piece that came out. we love people who file in the 4:00 hour. fury, cohen is mad as hell and he s not going to take it any more. this jumped out to me. cohen reached out to another trump foe. on friday morning cohen texted steve bannon. that s this morning. the former white house chief strategist ejected from the white house after making a series of unflammatory remarks about the president and his family to michael wolff and his book fire and fury. in one claim bannon told him he in knew about the meeting in trump tower. the chance he did not walk up to his father s office jumo