Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. Anderson Cooper takes viewers beyond the headlines with indepth reporting and investigations. With Michael Cohen coming. His top lawyer is out of the country. Those that know the president best and work with him say he seems like he is backed in a corner and they dont know what it is that the president is going to do next in response to all of this. All right. Kaitlyn collins, thank you very much. Now my conversation with the public face for the moment of Michael Cohen, lanny davis is a Crisis Management expert and attorney. Tonight his expertise is used to address a question of his clients credibility because regardless of whether you put any credence in mr. Cohens critics or not, he doesnt have a reputation in the past as a truth teller. I asked lanny davis about it just before air time. The central push back is that Michael Cohen lied about these payments, that hes a liar. He told the New York Times back in february that either the Trump Organization or the Trump Campaign was a party with the transaction of miss clifford and reimburse me directly or indirectly. That was a lie. He said payments to miss
clifford was lawful and not a campaign expenditure. That was a lie. Why should the public believe him now . Well, first of all, hes admitted to lying and he has taken a course he hopes shows hes taking responsibility. Secondly, the prosecutors did a thorough job of investigating the facts. And what he said in what is called the allocution where he is talking to the judge about what he is admitting to, on the key issues involving President Trump. He said that he was, according to the words of the allocution, that he specifically was directed and coordinated through President Trumps direction the payment of this money to miss daniels and he took responsibility under oath and said that that was a an
illegal act because it had a primary political purpose which is the criminal violation of the Campaign Finance law. You can understand why some people are skeptical. Sure. Hes doing this under oath. You said you started working with him because he convinced you he really wanted to start telling the truth. He did though have his own friend and attorney David Schwartz go out on Television Time and time again. I interviewed him multiple times repeating the lies that cohen was telling back at that time. I dont know if he lied to David Schwartz. I mean, did did he lie to David Schwartz . If he lied to schwartz, couldnt he be lying to you . Of course. It took me a while to talk and get to know michael and his decision to change his life and as he said to me, hit the reset button and recognize you cant get a redo in life when you make mistakes and some of the things that he did for mr. Trump he talked to me about and not being particularly proud of or things
that he said that werent true on camera. He is not particularly proud of that. Isnt that A Change Of Heart only after his offices are raided and he realizes he is facing possible serious jail time . Sure. But when we talked, it was mostly about his feelings about mr. Trump, his positions on issues, his conduct of the presidency and what i found after quite a long period of time talking to him, a sincere conviction that mr. Trump represented a danger to the country. And would i help him tell his story which i guess im known as a Crisis Manager to get facts out and to no matter what youve done up to a point to take responsibility for your mistakes. But i mean that is such a huge change of heart for this guy. He was the guy that said he would take a bullet for him. Anything mr. He was on cnn
during the Campaign Take the bullet. Yeah. Saying things which were, you know, false but he would he was an attack dog for the president to now suddenly say he believes the president s a danger to the Kun Sflicountry . Thats a 180. There are people in life that have transformtive experiences and theyre sincere and there are people that continue to lie and are opportunityists. You have to judge which is which when you use instincts. I took a while in making the judgement that he was ready to talk about mr. Trump and his knowledge about mr. Trump and the disadvantages that he now saw that as a businessman were very dangerous as president. Now whether hes telling the truth or not is anybodys judgement. And your skepticism is certainly not only entitled founded on what he did in the past. I made the judgement that i believed him. I would believe him based on his words and his deeds. On sorry. Go ahead. I mean, so far i still believe hes telling the truth. On Good Morning America today, you said that Michael Cohen and i quote, can now speak completely the truth without the shadow of the potential Prosecution Hanging over him. You said you thought hed be willing to speak without any guarantee of immunity. If thats true, why doesnt Michael Cohen hold a Press Conference tonight or tomorrow morning and just speak the truth . If he has no Shadow Hanging over him, doesnt care about immunity, why doesnt he just stand up in public and say everything he knows right now . Well, several reasons. First of all, the criminal case in the Southern District is not over. There is still a question of sentencing and assessing under the guidelines. But wouldnt that speak in his favor if, i mean, if hes told the prosecutors everything he already knows, why cant he just now tell the public everything he already knows . I can only tell you, anderson, to complete the thought he hasnt finished his lawyer has not finished the discussions with the prosecutors who hes been very respectful of and until those discussions on all the details including he has a wife and two kids, period of incarceration that he is facing, his lawyers have given him advice that hes got to wait. He also has the Special Counsel who hes either going to be talking to or has talked to. I wont be able to tell you which. Right. But there are a lot of moving parts in a very tragic situation that there will come a time as i said in Good Morning America when the shadow of uncertainty becomes certainty. Hes going to be incarcerated. Hes going to leave his family behind quite traumatized that he wants to turn his life and Tell The Truth. You were just on with wolf blitzer. You said that Michael Cohen was
present for a meeting with donald trump p and don jr. About the Trump Tower Meeting. This is important. You also said that Michael Cohen testified truthfully to the Senate Intelligence committee and according to the chair and vice chair, he told them he had no knowledge of the meeting until he saw it in the press. How can both of those things be true . Either he knew about the meeting or he didnt know about the meeting. Well, i think the reporting of the story got mixed up in the course of a criminal investigation. We were not the source of the story. And the question of a criminal investigation, the advice we were given, those of us dealing with the media is that we could not do anything other than stay silent. So can you say now whether in fact Michael Cohen has information that President Trump was aware either before the Trump Tower Meeting that don jr. Was part of with russian attorney from the kremlin with
dirt on Hillary Clinton, either that Michael Cohen has information that president knew about it in advance or knew about it immediately after . Senator byrd and senator warner read the answer to the question about his testimony which is that he said he was not aware ahead of time. And did not hear anything to the contrary and that was the testimony before the senate as well as the house Intelligence Kmp Km committees and he said that testimony was accurate. So Michael Cohen does not have information that President Trump knew about the Trump Tower Meeting with the russians beforehand or even after . No, theres not. I know you wont say if you spoke to muellers team. Im not going to press you on thafrment y that. You said you believe Michael Cohen has knowledge about whether or not then candidate trump knew about the Computer Crime of hacking and whether or not mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on. Do you stand by that tonight . I think i was a little bit
more tentative on that. I think what i said was that at some point mr. Cohen might be able to be useful to the Special Counsel about whether President Trump knew ahead of time about the hacking of the Hillary Clinton emails. And its not a certainty the way he recalls it. May or may not be useful to mr. Mueller and i dont want to go beyond my intuition. Right. I know you have to be careful. I think what he can say would be useful. And thats the way i have to leave it. There are two fascinating details in the Charging Document that havent gotten a lot of attention. One is on page 16 of the criminal information document. It says that cohen coordinated with one or more members of the
campaign including through meetings and phone calls about the fact, nature and timing of the payments. Talking about the payments to Stormy Daniels and mcdougal. We know one person was the president. If there was another person involved in the campaign who he was talking about this with, emailing, discussing, do you know who that other person was . No, i dont. And, you know, Unidentified In youre reading from the information document. Correct. Underlying the plea. And i do not know that. And if i did, i would not be able to discuss that because hes still in the process of dealing with the prosecutors on all of the issues that still remain. Can you say if there is another person from the campaign or even who is now in the white house . I cant say. Zblfr oka okay. I cant say. Did you ever ask Michael Cohen that question . Ive talked to Michael Cohen about a lot of things but the specifics until the information came out, i was not aware of the details of what the government was saying and who was involved in the Chain Of Command on the decision to pay the what looks like an Illegal Campaign contribution that he has owned up to under oath which mr. Trump has not but, no, the answer is i dont know the identity of a number of individuals that are not identified in that information. Because obviously, the reason im pushing, if there is another individual that knows about the payments and part of the campaign and is still part of the white house that, would obviously be extremely important and a new detail and a fascinating one. The other detail in the documents is that Michael Cohen charged the Trump Organization 50,000 for what he listed as Text Services which according to the Court Document was related to work that cohen solicited from a tech company during and in connection with the
campaign. Previously Michael Cohen supposedly had no role in the campaign. Can you say what company that was and what services were rendered or was that another payment to protect then candidate trump . Or can you even say if Michael Cohen was involved in the campaign . I just learned all this in the last several days. As you know, the final Plea Agreement and the final statement in court was just a couple days ago. So i havent gotten the ability to find out the answer to that question either. I believe that mr. Cohen referenced that contract as something that he was doing to assist the campaign. But i dont know too much about that either. But officially Michael Cohen was not part of the campaign. Isnt that correct. So if, in fact, he was if he was telling the truth in what billing was, he he was claiming to the Trump Organization that he was actually doing work for the
campaign which here to for had not been known . Well, i think just reading it without knowing the details, i just read what you read, it appears that he had a contract to provide Technology Support and he supplied that vendor to the campaign and passed through the expense. But im just reading something that i dont know much about. I have not talked to mr. Cohen about so im just speculating. Lanny davis, i appreciate your time. Well break this down with jeffrey tu Jeffrey Toobin and Allen Dar Dershowitz and all that transpired on the last 24 hours, some of which he predicted and where things may go from here for his client and his one time adversary Michael Cohen. Im a fighter. Always have been. When i found out i had agerelated macular degeneration, amd, i wanted to fight back. My doctor and i came up with a plan. It includes preservision. Only Preservision Areds 2 has the exact nutrient formula recommended by the National Eye Institute to help reduce the risk of progression of moderate to advanced amd. Thats why i fight. Because its my vision. Preservision. Also, in a greattasting chewable. You made moonshine in a backwoods still. Smuggled booze and dodged the law. Even when they brought you in, they could never hold you down. When i built my family tree and found you, i found my sense of adventure. I set off on a new life, a million miles away. Im heidi choiniere, and this is my ancestry story. Now with over 10 billion historical records, discover your story. Get started for free at ancestry. Com discover your story. Its absolute confidence in 30,00or it isnt. Arts, its inspected by mercedesbenz factorytrained technicians, or it isnt. Its backed by an unlimited mileage warranty, or it isnt. For those who never settle, its either mercedesbenz certified preowned, or it isnt. The mercedesbenz certified preowned sales event, now through august 31st. Only at your authorized mercedesbenz dealer. You heard Michael Cohens attorney defend his clients credibility in defense of allegations he made in court is not to be trusted and he said mr. Cohen did not have information that candidate trum Health Care Plan pri trump had prior knowledge of the emails before the elections and he has information that may be useful to muellers investigation. What mr. Cohen said set off tremors in washington, triggering an eruption from the president about a man he thought was a standup guy. Michael is a businessman for his own account lawyer i liked and respected. Most people flip in the government lets them out of trouble even if it means lying or making up stories. I dont see michael doing that despite the horrible witch hunt and dishonest media. Joining us is allen dershowitz, also, his law school student, cnns chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. I want to go back to this thing
which is, i mean, if lanny davis is saying that Michael Cohen is unburdened. He doesnt care about immunity. He wants to speak the truth. Can he just speak the truth . Sure. I mean hes raising money for people to pay him to speak the truth and fund him. Can he just hold a Press Conference . He could. He is also under the thumb of the prosecutors at this point. And they may not want him to go public at this point. I mean they may want they may continue their investigation. They dont want his story out there. Thats possibility. You mean the mueller prosecutors . Mueller prosecutors or the Southern District. Thats where his case is. Right. So i dont know wh