The day's biggest political and news stories, with interviews and reporting from around the nation. ricochetting across the political universe tonight which are the ones that involve -- appear to involve the president of the united states. that he was directed to make payments in coordination with the candidate and with the campaign of president donald trump to two women. one was in -- one involved a payment to a woman $150,000, believed to be karen mcdougal. the second to a payment believed to be stormy daniels in october of 2016, rather, for $130,000. and for that payment michael cohen told the court that he received restitution for that payment or he received the money back for that payment from the candidate who is believed to be donald trump. throughout this investigation, this particular investigation which stemmed from the special counsel's office, from robert mueller, has been done in coordination with that office and prosecuted by career and seasoned public corruption -- public corruption investigators here in new york both on the fbi side and the united states attorney's office. today they brought home a significant criminal information prosecutor noted, mr. cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time. i don't know if you expected a differen different statement from rudy giuliani. >> this is the same statement he's been putting out for months. the fact of the matter is if you read this indictment, he's doing it at the direction of donald trump. if he's doing it at the direction of donald trump, there's a conspiracy. it's an agreement, an agreement to commit campaign financing crimes. it's a five-year felony. this is a serious matter. cohen didn't do this on his own. he didn't suddenly come up with the idea, oh, i've got to go pay stormy daniels $150,000. he had no connection to stormy daniels. he didn't know who stormy daniels was. the only way he would have had the ability to know any of that was because donald trump told him about it. donald trump told him that there was a danger that she was going to release all this information before the election. >> and it's very, very well detailed in here. the question, of course, most thinking people realize that what nick said, there's no reason why michael cohen would have been paying random people. >> what's clear is that, i would actually sort of clarify that in the case of stormy daniels, her allegations that she had engaged in consensual sexual relationship with trump had been percolating prior to the time of her payoff. it was something that had been sort of rearing its head, going back down. so it was something that cohen and trump were both well aware of for sometime prior to the payment to her. prior to the election. and so the question, though, there were these repeated denials. this is a mystery that's been kind of unraveling over the course of a year. at first trump and his representatives said he had absolutely no -- he was not aware of these payments. clearly today that blows their statements out of the water. and so it's remarkable that, that these -- it's not just -- it's not just trump. i mean, it's important if you are looking at potential other -- the other people involved in this, potential campaign violation conspiracy, you're also looking at american media -- >> right. >> the ceos involved in this, david pecker. >> the details about american media and the fact they had conversations with the campaign about helping donald trump out by buying stories or figuring outweighs to avo outweighs out ways that -- >> we knew he made the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels. >> that's been acknowledged. >> right. it wasn't clear there wasn't a sort of smoking gun that had tied him to the $150,000 that was paid to karen mcdougal by american media to purchase, to basically catch and kill her story of the affair. today not only cohen directly involved in that, him admitting that, this huge bombshell that all of these things were done at the direct -- direction of trump. >> let's narrow into what the issue actually is here. michael cohen is to many people an unsavory character and not particularly relevant if he did things with his taxi medallions. the question is what the liability is for the president of the united states. lanny davis, michael cohen's newest attorney, has just tweeted. today he stood up and testified under oath donald trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. if those payments were a crime for michael cohen, why wouldn't they be a crime for donald trump? clint? >> there has been a tell in this from the very beginning. the squads that showed up to do the -- this is not a fraud case they were investigating. we've got actions of the president to be. we've heard tapes. we've heard tapes that even say, let's do it in cash. essentially saying, i knew what i was doing, i knew what the intent was, and i knew i should do it in this way. the question we've been biscuitsing discussing is does the president know this is a violation, this is a charge you can't do this? these guys seem to be operating almost like business as normal. they were very sloppy in terms of how this went down. in terms of the investigation, there's direct connections. usually in a criminal conspiracy they would try and cloak or shelf the money -- shell money in pieces to try and cover what the payments are for. this seems to be a very rapid case and as we saw with the special master, this moved very quickly after that evidence was proved. this means this case is very solid, in my opinion. they have the evidence lined up and that's why cohen is going this route today. >> so, tom winter, a lot of people are going to say he's lying. they said it already. a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant piereriod of time. it has how michael cohen set up consultant companies. encrypted serves used to communicate. i imagine michael cohen wouldn't be in that conversation if he didn't come with information the southern district of new york would find compelling and have proof of. >> yeah, i mean, i think a number of people have asked me, they said, so what about a cooperation agreement and what does it say in his plea agreement? when you directly implicate and when you provide the context that michael cohen was clearly able to do in court today under oath, he was sworn in when he did that, and then you directly implicate the president and you're able to provide information which is contained in the criminal information as far as the specifics about it, and he also testified that he did these things with intent, and that's something that the u.s. attorney's office in court, the prosecutor said throughout. they want to point out that he had intent, not just on the charges that relate to the president, but on the tax fraud charges, on the count 6, as far as the charge tied to banking, all of that. he was in a position where he was, ali, he was doing this with intent. he said so. when you come across and say those things, you have the allocution that he did today and he so clearly laid out the things that he did, those are things that are going to be corroborated and i think the criminal information and what the investigation was able to find clearly spells that out. we are also talking about banking issues here and we're talking about crimes that involve a paper trail. i mean, when you have money that's transferred from person x to person y, these are not things that you need somebody's testimony for. the bottom line is that's what happened. money was transferred from one person to another and that there's communications that can be found back and forth. so i think when you look at this, i think you look and you say there's a lot of underlying evidence to anything that michael cohen allocuted to in court. >> you kept us a step ahead with your reporting. thank you. i have to ask you, the statement that rudy giuliani put up, again, nobody surprised by the talking about mr. cohen's action reflect aid pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time, that's not entirely untrue. for a lot of people this is tricky. okay, michael cohen is all of a sudden my hero? he was a bit of a bad egg. >> he was known as trump's fixer, a total bull dog, somebody who would go on the attack against anybody who is coming at trump with allegations, stories, even if they were true. he was known to fiercely attack reporters who were preparing stories that were going to reflect negatively on trump. and so -- to change his story over time, but it's also interesting giuliani himself has changed, has been part of a changing narrative on this story. first they said they didn't know anything about these payments. then giuliani acknowledged that trump had been reimbursed -- that trump had reimbursed cohen for the payments made to stormy daniels. trump tried to sort of walk back some of the things that giuliani had said. they've had a hard time getting their story straight. so i think once again, the reimbursements, what happened with the money after the fact, it's interesting what we've learned today is that cohen actually submitted invoices to the trump organization. he claimed before that the trump organization was not part of this, that, you know, that there was no reimbursement through the trump organization. >> there are details in hereof not only invoices submitted, but extra money michael cohen was paid i guess in good will, for services rendered. >> right. >> this thing is backed up by documents and receipts. >> interesting documents will be looking forgo beyond the reimbursements that happen after the fact. it would be what was the communication that happened on the front end. what does directing -- when cohen says he did this at the direction of trump, a federal candidate, what did that look like in practice? were these conversations that they had? was this something that was put in writing? and i think those are the records that basically the proof that trump was involved on this on the front end, not the reimbursements on the back end, but the communication and the direction on the front end. that's where all eyes will go moving forward. >> there are details in count 7 about this. clint, i want to you sort of help us understand the degree to which this isn't some rando charged with some crimes. the fact is there is now no way that the president, despite what rudy giuliani has put out, can creatively excuse himself from this discussion. this isn't about just people in the campaign. >> no. >> he is talking about having been directed to do this by a federal candidate, but the candidate. he does not -- trump's name does not appear in here, but you'd have to have lost all your marbles not to be able to put two and two together unless it was hillary clinton. >> he was charged to keep outcomes in the election from occurring. that's what he was kacharged fr doing. what's different from the obstruction case, we talk about this alma tl the time. he said, he said, she said, she said. that is not the case here. there is documented in the deal, in the agreement today cohen said this, trump said this. no, cohen said this, trump said that, there is a tape and oh, by the way, here are the bank transfers, here are the financial transfers. here are the communications. that is a much stronger case than you're going to see -- >> this is easy to read. this is not complicated reading. >> any sort of conversational thing, money and communications is where it falls. that was filled with that. >> i thought it was interesting if you listen to the prosecutor when he came out of the courthouse and was addressing the crowd. he said after spelling out the charges, he went back to the campaign finance issue. and if i heard him correctly said he would be prepared to pursue additional campaign finance charges. so that really raises questions -- >> the trump organization as well and maybe the president. >> and maybe american media. >> what we still don't have clarity on, because we don't know because we haven't done this since richard nixon, is how the president faces his liability. back in april donald trump was asked about the payment to stormy daniels that had been coordinated by michael cohen. >> do you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? >> no. >> then why did michael cohen make that statement -- >> you'll have to ask michael cohen. michael is my attorney and you'll have so ask michael. >> do you know where he got the money to make that payment? >> no, i don't know. >> hard to hear, but the bought on the line is the president was asked if he knew about the payment and how it was made, he said no. john harwood, cnbc's editor at large, jessica levinson is a professor at loyola law school and expert on campaign finance. for those who think this is a campaign thing, that conversation in april that we just played the recording of makes it a presidency thing because the president was the president in april and he said he didn't know about all the stuff that's documented in here. but in the end, in answer to my question, campaign finance laws are often not prosecuted. the enforcement division of the federal election commission is weekly staffed and not well resourced by design. but in the end, is this a serious charge if we connect all the dots and realize the president is the other conspirator? >> i think this absolutely is a serious charge. so, if we look at what happened today both with respect to michael cohen and with respect to paul manafort, the only charges here that could directly implicate the president and cause him legal problems are the campaign finance charges because, again, what michael cohen has said is at the direction of a candidate, and we all know as you've said if we lost our marbles, that is president trump, essentially has conspired with me to commit campaign finance violations, and that is a serious charge. now, yes, you are absolutely right. when it comes to the daily ongoings of super pac spending, when it comes to spending by congressional candidates, is there a hideous lack of oversight by the federal election commission? absolutely. the commission, as you said, is designed essentially for deadlock and for inaction. but this is different. this is the president's personal fixer saying that president trump directed him, meaning they were in a conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws. that poses a huge legal threat to the president. >> so, john harwood, i want to read back lanny davis's tweet from a few moments ago in which he talks about -- here it is. he talked about his client. today he stood up and testified under oath that donald trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of flungsing an election. if those pamtsz were a crime for michael cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for donald trump? that is the question that good thinking people should be asking tonight. rudy giuliani has basically done what you would have expected him to do. they have thrown michael cohen back under the bus because the guy doesn't have a stellar reputation. >> first of all, on rudy giuliani, pretty much 100% of what comes out of his mouth any more is ridiculous. so let's set that aside. we have in lanny davis' statement a comforting reassurance to jessica's point earlier that we haven't all lost our marbles because lanny said specifically that he was talking about president trump. so, we have the president, in effect, identified as an unindicted coconspirator in a federal felony. so, that may not be relevant criminally so long as this justice department adheres to the guidance that said you don't indict sitting presidents, but it may be relevant to how long he's a sitting president because that is a relevant factor for the political reaction in congress. and i don't discount even the idea that we're going to see a different republican reaction -- 16 guilty -- counts of guilty today. >> virtually nothing, we have two or three republicans who can be relied upon to criticize the president when things happen. this is different. this is just really very different. now, we can ask nick ackerman in a little while what happens the day donald trump isn't the president. do these charges still remain and can he be put into handcuffs the day he relinquishes the presidency? but aside from that, what does congress do about this? >> there is something about hearing the word guilty eefr ovd over and over and over again in more than one courtroom, more than one defendant. that has the effect of focusing people's attention on more than what is going on here. do i expect the republican reaction to turn on a dime? no, definitely not. but as nick ackerman knows very well from watergate, the allies of richard nixon hung in with him very deep into that process until the truth and the reality smacked them in the face so hard that they couldn't ignore it. >> is this a smack, nick? is this the smack? >> the real smack here is that you've got manafort convicted of eight counts, serious counts. >> we haven't even touched on. >> facing 30 years in prison. you have cohen facing upwards of 66 years plus in prison. and what we're really not talking about is the russia investigation. >> right. >> because you've got two people that are primed to testify against trump, his family, his other cohorts that were involved in the russian matter. >> and to talk about what happened, clint, in that meeting in trump tower in june of 2016. >> yeah, i mean, we have basically three threads running right now. and one of the things i immediately want to ask, because i don't know the answers, we talk about can the president pardon himself. we're talking about things that happened before he was president. these actions could have changed the outcome of the election. remember, could you imagine both of these stories coming out in parallel in the fall, in the lead up to the election. this is what the violation is about. these stories were suppressed. that could have changed the outcome of the election. so when we talk about these charges, what i don't know, what i'd love to hear from nick and others, can he be charged for things that happened before he was president? how can he pardon himself? i don't know what the break down is on this, but this literally could have changed the outcome of an election that was really decided by 100,000 votes. >> let's add a fourth track which is the civil case stormy daniels has brought against trump. >> michael avenatti said tonight on nicolle's show his chances of deposing the president just went through the roof. >> right. what's clear is the judge in that case had stated while the criminal case was hanging, and now that it's been resolved, i mean it would suggest this case is going to move forward. and that's something -- i mean, it's not a criminal charge. this is going to be looking to dissect what happened here in civil court. and there is no -- there's nothing to suggest that case won't be able to move forward and trump could be entangled in it even more. >> nick, what is your view on this? >> hold on a second. john? >> i want to say, i want to step back and look at the larger picture from the president in his statement said nothing to do with russia, no collusion, all that stuff. but think about the people very close to the president who are either admitted or convicted felons now. michael cohen was not only trying to develop trump tower in moscow during the 2016 campaign -- >> correct. >> -- he's also somebody who has -- had a stake in a family bar that was a hang out for russian mobsters, okay. secondly, paul manafort, yes, he was not convicted today of charges connected to russian collusion. however, he's somebody who was convicted of charges related to vast sums of money he received from a putin-allied leader of ukraine who talked during the campaign about trying to get right with some of his funders, deraposka among them, and participated in the trump tower meeting. finally michael flynn who is a cooperating witness who was the national security advisor in the white house pled guilty to a crime about lying about his contacts with russian diplomats. so russia is bathed all through this process. >> right. >> and it becomes the ability of the president to construct anything like a plausible denial about knowledge or activity with russia. it just gets more and more difficult with every development like this. >> so, jegs ka, let's just go back to this for a second. on the face of it, we have campaign violations which you and i discuss. they don't get enforced. but more importantly to clint's point, it's always hard to know what effect a campaign violation has. but michael cohen has now stated it is in this information, it is in his guilty plea, he did what he did, he paid these two women for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the election. how do you put that in the mix of the crime? in other words, the crime is, one, illegal contribution and one excess contribution. now we realize the effect might have been substantially more serious than what we think of as an election spending violation. >> well, i mean in terms of the effect, that's something that certainly we will look at. so i would say is this different from the, quote-unquote, run of the mill violation that we see where somebody -- i mean, there's been many stories, for instance, about super pacs recently only deciding to spend money 13 days before the election so they don't have to report or not reporting at all and it becomes a cost of doing business. this is separate and apart from a violation that simply is the cost of doing business. now, we could argue that in a number of different congressional races and a number of different senate races, ballot measures, the campaign finance violations have swayed the outcome because people merely have not known who is trying to speak to them, who is trying to effect their ballot box decision. but this is, again, this is something that is distinct. >> right. >> this is the president's personal lawyer saying the president told me to violate campaign finance laws right before the election and let's also remember that this shows, based on that video that you showed on air force one, that the president not only, when he was candidate trump, violated federal law, but that it also shows that the president, when he was president, lied about it. >> right. >> and so -- >> consciousness of guilt. >> nick, you and i have talked about this. >> right. >> that's where we are. but again, you know, rudy giuliani said truth isn't really the truth the other day, so i'm curious, megan, as to what this does. what happens next, right? because there are a whole lot of americans thinking that's got to be it. this has to be the end of the legitimacy of the trump presidency if you believed there was any shred of legitimacy left. but the fact is what happens next? >> yeah, i think one of the big questions is -- and i don't know if this is happening while we're on the air right now, but what are republicans in congress saying? >> i haven't seen anything yet. >> what is the political reaction going to be if this is not something that's going to be handled in criminal court against trump, you know, honoring the not indicting a sitting president. what are the political implications, what are those going to be. and then i think that there's also just this -- i think there is also this -- i was involved in the coverage of the harvey weinstein story and the whole me too movement. and i just think culturally it's important -- campaign finance violations and the technicalities of these aside, it's really important to note this is really a conspiracy to silence women who had stories to tell. these women didn't say they were victims of sexual misconduct. in both cases they said they had been involved in consensual affairs with trump. but i do think it's important to step back and recognize that culturally this was -- these were powerful men who were making payoffs to silence women. >> we can make the argument all the publicity around the me too movement has moved the needle, has shifted things. i guess that's the question with donald trump. what moves the needle with him? >> what's going to move the needle, you're going to have michael cohen cooperating with the u.s. attorney's office and mueller's office. he's going to be laying out everything he knows what trump did. we know from christopher steele he was supposedly in prague after manafort left to take care of loose ends with the campaign to bury hackers that broke into the democratic national committee. we know that manafort now facing 30 years in prison, life imprisonment basically, is going to have to turn in his ostrich jacket for a jump suit, it's going to be focused on the russian investigation and putting together that case that's going to put an end to this whole idea that nothing happened on the campaign side with the russians. >> all right. we're going to talk a little bit about the manafort trial now. john harwood and jessica levinson, thank you both for joining us. i want to turn to that other bombshell news. paul manafort guilty, convicted on eight counts including false tax returns, failing to file foreign bank account reports and two counts of bank fraud. the judge declaring a mistrial in the remaining ten counts. trump choosing to talk about manafort but not cohen. >> paul manafort's a good man. he was with ronald reagan. he was with a lot of different people over the years. and i feel very sad about that. because it involved me, but i still feel, you know, it's a very sad thing thapdt happened. this has nothing to do with russian collusion. >> ty is a federal prosecutor and justice lawyer where she worked for rod rosenstein. seth wax man is a former federal prosecutor. ty, let me just ask you, at this point what's the signal that you read into donald trump saying what he said about what a great guy manafort is and how he worked for reagan and bob dole and it's terrific and it's awful what's happening to him? is that a signal to manafort, his legal team, don't fold? >> well, i mean, it could be looked at that way, but i think that president trump is doing what he's always been doing, which is to distance himself entirely from whatever he can. this is a significant conviction for paul manafort. even though there's a number of mistrials, the significance of the criminal convictions are large, and so just to distance himself from someone who has just been convicted of very serious crimes is what it looks like he's doing. >> seth, talk to me about the mistrials versus the convictions. there were no acquittals. what does this mean in the context of this trial and its success? >> yeah, i mean, you can't look at this as anything but a sweeping victory for the prosecution. to get someone on serious bank fraud, tax evasion charges, mr. manafort will be facing essentially a life sentence given his age. whether that's 11 years or 15 years, the judge will have a decision whether to stack those crimes in sentencing. the key point to all of this may be when the smoke clears, is paul manafort going to cooperate? is he going to walk into mueller's office, say, you got me, i need a deal now. then of course the x factor that's very difficult for all of us to answer is the president going to issue a pardon. >> ty, i'm just looking at e-mails -- tweets from lindsey graham that came out a little while ago where he said the american legal system is working its will in both the paul manafort and michael cohen cases. thus far there have yet to be any charges or convictions for colluding with the russian government by any member of the trump campaign in the 2016 election. so somebody is holding out hope that this isn't connected. >> well, i mean, i'm sure there's plenty of people who are holding out hope that this isn't connected. but i think judge ellis said it best. i mean, it's very routine in an investigation and prosecution to put pressure on people to do what seth was just talking about, cooperating. now mr. manafort is absolutely looking at a very significant jail time and he's going to have to make some really difficult decisions. >> all right. let me ask you, megan, what you think, what you're expecting. we saw the first response from a senator. do you think this turns yet or do you think everybody is going to keep -- >> i think we're all going to be watching. this really feels like one of the more remarkable days of the trump presidency, which is saying a lot. >> filled with remarkable things. >> which is saying a lot. to go back to what happens next, it's also interesting to note -- right now it's not connected to the russian investigation, but it's clear that if cohen were to provide valuable information to mueller that that could, in fact, affect his sentence. and i think that's another thing that there's going to -- you know, to be watching as we move forward. right now he's looking at 43 to 64 months in that category. that's what the guidelines say. he might be looking at getting a reduced sentence if he's able -- >> he would not plead to that without a cooperation agreement. normally i do these all the time in the criminal practice. you get a cooperation agreement that's under seal and you have a plea agreement like you have here that's public. >> right. >> so i would bet anything there is a cooperation agreement with mueller's office and he's looking to bring down that sentence, which the judge can bring down to zero if he wants under enough cooperation. i don't think he'll ever plead guilty to anything approaching 5 or 6 years without a cooperation agreement. >> let me bring natasha bertrand in from the atlantic. she was in the manafort courtroom today. what do you think happens with that? we have to remember, manafort has a whole 'nother trial coming up. the sense was regardless of what happens in this trial, the government continues to be able to put more pressure on him. do you think he heads into that other trial given what happened today, or do you think he starts to think of either figuring out whether he's getting a pardon or figuring out whether he has to sing like a bird about what happened in trump tower and other things having to do with the russians? >> i think it is possible that he chooses to cooperate with mueller now that he faces so much prison time, having been convicted on eight counts. it was somewhat of a surprise that he was found -- that the jury could not come to a consensus on ten counts when the jury gave a note to the judge saying that they could not reach a consensus on one count. everyone in the courtroom kind of assumed it meant one count and they would reach a consensus on the other 17. you could see that is somewhat of a small victory for the defense. this was really a sweeping success for the prosecution. we have to remember mueller's team already said they have three times as much evidence for the september trial as they did for this trial, over a thousand pieces of evidence versus just under 300 for this trial. so there is definitely an incentive for paul manafort to work with the government now, now that he's seen a jury is willing to convict him on charges like these. but i would also not homeland our brea hold our breath because no one thought manafort could go to this trial either. >> ty, a lot of this case was documentary and paper trail-y. the fact is these complicated cases are hard for juries because people don't understand the terms that are in them. is that second trial going to be easier for the government? does paul manafort get to think, all right, if they got me on eight charges here, i'm in trouble in the next one? >> i think what paul manafort's team is looking at right now and noticing is that the jury didn't convict on any of the conspiracy to commit bank fraud charges. so out of all the bank fraud charges, the jury only came to a guilty verdict on two of them and had a mistrial on all the conspiracy to commit bank fraud. that could be something that the mueller team needs to focus on which is, can we rely on gates? the jury could have been signalling, we're not going to convict on something we need to believe gates on, so you may see mueller's team shuffling to figure out which of their counts, which of their evidence they can sure up without needing gates. >> right. so, seth, when you think about this from the perspective nick gave us, the real prize is going to be russia, not the payoff to stormy daniels or karen mcdougal. does the prosecution in manafort -- do they get -- do they tie him to it in the second trial? are they able to do that? because it's still conspiracy to defraud the united states trial. >> yeah, i think it's going to be similar to the one we saw in alexandria. russia will be in the background. conspiracies don't just drop out of the sky in spring of 2016. there is a back story to all conspiracies. so manafort's interactions with the russians to the extent there were foreign accounts related in the d.c. trial in the fall, there will be some discussion about that, but i think very similar to the alexandria trial, it will be kind of a straightforward white collar criminal prosecution that will be document based, maybe a cooperate error two sprinkled in here or there. the question is whether that case is going to take place, is mr. manafort going to walk in and say, right now i'm facing ten years, that's tantamount to a life sentence essentially. the pardon is the x factor. >> so, natasha, again, i'm keeping an eye out for tweets and comments from republicans on the senator cornyn of texas has said, i don't think this implicates him at all, particularly on the russia investigation. again, the pattern continues of republicans not being able to face facts that this president has been dishonest on so many fronts and in this case this has now been something that he's been dishonest about while president, not just in the campaign. he's now been named whether it's legally important or not, he's been named as the other side of a conspiracy to commit fraud on an election. it doesn't seem to move republicans. >> no, not at all. and you're seeing a few kind of never-trump republicans who have been wary in the past of saying the president should potentially be impeached or impeachment is a remedy for this. now they're saying, now that he's been named as a potential coconspirator in this kind of election fraud, maybe it is time to start considering that as a possibility. like democrats, for example, should start vocalizing that more. but no, republicans by and large are saying that the manafort trial, for example, does not have anything to do with russian election interference, that neither does cohen and of course that's just not true with regard to the manafort trial. against the backdrop, just like seth said, is all of the work that manafort did for pro-russian oligarchs in ukraine and his attempts to cover that up while he was working on the trump campaign and over the course of the decade, of course, that he was working for the pro-russian government and ukraine. it's more about reading between the lines here, but i think it's safe to say republicans are not going to abandon the president any time soon. >> megan, there is a little bit of an achilles heel here for the president. in july when we started to hear that michael cohen might talk about knowing that donald trump knew about the trump tower meeting, i think it was jump 26 or 27, the president tweeted in defense of his son. >> right. >> i'm really worried about don junior and what's going do happen. that seems to be the soft spot here. we know don junior was in that meeting with paul manafort and a whole bunch of other people. we seem to have discovered, as every layer of that onion is peeled back, they're all lying about it. >> there had also been suggestions that cohen himself had information about that meeting and trump's knowledge of it. i think we don't -- we still don't know what cohen has that could be of value to mueller and his investigation. but to go back to -- it is important to sort of acknowledge that what happened today in these two cases does not implicate trump in russian collusion. so i also think what we're seeing in some of these political statements that are coming out, the statements that are coming out from republicans is that it sounds like we may be getting a preview of the response to today, that they're going to say, you know, they're going to repeat this line that this doesn't implicate trump in russia collusion while ignoring the fact he is for the first time being implicated in criminal campaign finance violations, yeah, exactly. >> they should be outraged, we're not in a normal world, we're not there. within an hour president trump is set to hold a rally in charleston, west virginia. chuck schumer, top democrat, said this. >> i understand the president's on his way to a rally. he better not talk about pardons for michael cohen or paul manafort tonight or any time in the future. >> well, that sounds like a dare to me. with me from the white house is nbc's chief white house correspondent hallie jackson. if there's one thing the president doesn't like to do is take instructions from chuck schumer. what an incredible afternoon, hallie. >> that is one adjective, one of many adjectives you could use, ali. the president is set to be speaking in west virginia, as you said, the half hour here. i don't know if i'm chuck schum error betting on what chuck schumer is talking about would take that bet. the president has already talked about michael cohen and paul manafort. right as he got off the plane, the president said i feel badly for both. a rather cryptic sounding sentence that seemed to presumably refer to both michael cohen and paul manafort. he went on to make more extensive comments about manafort his former campaign chair. did not elaborate on cohen. but it is possible that given how upset the president has been about the special counsel investigation, given how much he has called this a witch hunt and continued to do so even within just the last hour, that this may be under his skin and in front of a crowd of cheering supporters, people who are backing up every word he's saying, the president may want to let off a little steam frankly. we have seen him do this before. that is a pattern for this president. so it is entirely possible that he will talk about this investigation, that he will talk about maybe paul manafort, perhaps michael cohen's plea agreement here. and again, you called it incredible. i think another word for it, ali, for this afternoon, is incredibly significant, and perhaps extraordinary. put this into perspective here. this is the president's former long-time lawyer walking into federal court implicating the president in what prosecutors call an illegal hush money pay out, at the same time a guy who used to run his campaign who was intimately involved for several months at a crucial time of the election is getting -- for crimes, every campaign rally i was at, lock her up, you now have five people close to the president and his campaign who since election day have been convicted of breaking the law, ali. that is what today's reporting -- >> michael cohen and paul manafort added to that list, rick gates has pleaded guilty. michael flynn has pleaded guilty. george papadopoulos, unless he changes his plea, has pleaded guilty. he sent out a tweet suggesting that might happen. lanny davis is an articulate guy. he captured the sentiment of a lot of people saying, today michael cohen stood up and testified under oath that donald trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. if those payments were a crime for michael cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for donald trump? hallie, i think you can't overstate the degree to which this is a serious issue. a crime has been laid at the doorstep of the white house. >> reporter: that's right. what is the response? the white house has been picking up what's on its doorstep and referring it to the president's outside legal counsel. they're saying anything related to the michael cohen issue goes to the outside team. i can tell you this. we heard from rudy giuliani, the president's outside attorney who as you know is pushing back on this saying there is no allegation of wrongdoing that the prosecution lays out, and significantly talking about a pattern of lies and dishonesty from michael cohen. but i asked for some clarification. i said listen, did or did not the president direct cohen as cohen claims to make these payments? did that happen or not? is cohen accurate or not? i was referred by the president's legal team to that statement in the last couple minutes here. as far as the white house situation, i'll just tell you in or interactions, in my conversations with sources here late this afternoon, there was sort of a question of how they're going to be dealing with this, how they would be handling this. the president's comments at the steps of air force one about paul manafort almost in a way gave west wing staffers here a kind of out, ali. because now the president has talked about it. now it's the president's own words that are going to be driving pieces of the conversation as the discussion is happening. they can say, hey, look at what he said, don't worry about what i said. that might last as long as the next briefing for sarah huckabee sanders. we don't know when that will be. >> the narrative changed today for better or for worse, the story has changed, the legitimate ski of the presidency is under greater threat than it has been. thanks, hallie jackson. editor at large of the weekly standard, christina greer, ford ham university. welcome to both of you. christina, your take on this, what i think hallie says is crucial for us to understand. something did change today. there may be people who didn't think there was any legitimacy left to donald trump or this presidency, but the fact is this is different. today is different than it was six hours ago. >> i hope so. but here is part of the problem. we still don't have any repub c republican leadership speaking out saying, something has changed. the media is saying something has changed. democrats a are saying something has changed. this lack of separation of powers, the fact that this president has kept his thumb on his entire party and they've fallen in line, the fact they're talking about kavanagh, we shouldn't be talking about a supreme court justice nominee when this is going on. i hope something has changed. i hope someone is going to look into the fact that donald trump is a 40-year history of leaning on the lines of legality, of lying, of surrounding himself with people who are of ill repute, to say the very least. anyone in new york knows this. anyone who can read has seen the documentation. i don't know if chickens are coming home to roost because when he's the least. when he is at his rally, he has established that the media is a liar. that mueller is out to get him. he has created this scenario where truth isn't truth. and doing it since the campaign. it is up to him and 33% supporters, sort of us against the world. >> so while everything has changed, nothing has changed. you and people like you have been trying to get their party back. come on, guys, putting on statements how this doesn't implicate him in the russian investigation isn't the relevant part of this right now. your president is lying. what do we do about it? >> i think things have changed. reality has changed. a guilty plea from the president's personal lawyer with whom is was close in very many ways. and guilty verdicts have a real effect. is there a hard core supporters who will never leave him, sure. at this point, they get more reluctant in their support, and less willing to say, well, he tweets a lot, kind of a vulgar guy. i do think it begins to change things. last line of the defenders, it is not russia. how do we know it is not russia. michael cohen seems to be cooperating, he may well know about the trump tower meeting. >> and we definitely know that manafort does. he was at that meeting, if he flips and he hasn't flip was. and cohen has. documentary evidence and phone records of trump's actions and all kinds of aspects of the obstruction side of it. as well as the collusion side of it. so i don't buy the argument that this isn't important for the russia side of the investigation. >> this is a point that you have been making. >> this is striking to me on how history has repeated. nixon's personal lawyer, his bagman, the guy who carried around all the illegal cash to spread around. he wound up pleading guilty. and manafort being convicted today who was trump's campaign manager. and john mitchell who was nixon's campaign manager who was convicted. history has repeated itself today. >> let's play this out a little more. if there is somewhere around 33% and 43% of americans who continue to support donald trump as the evidence piles on, that gets harder ton do. but a lot of people that bill was talking about. would like their party back. how does this play out politically? how does it play out politically for people who are not democrats and are reluctant supporters who can't get away from the evidence. >> it is remarkable how the narrative has been shifting. used to be no communication at all by the campaign and russia. that was manafort's line. well, there may have been a few contacts but inconsequential. people on the right are saying, it would have been a dereliction of duty not to be taking these kinds of meeting and to see what kind of dirt they had on clinton. even if a ton of evidence came out that definitively said the campaign conspired with russia to undermine the election. and that way, they promised for example sanctions relief or they promised to up end the entire international order. people on the other side of the aisle on the republican side say this was standard, it was opposition research. that argument has taken hold. >> i think they have made that argument but i don't think it will take hold enough. at that point you lose enough party members that impeachment becomes a possibility. if there is real collusion on the wikileaks. >> you think it changes things. >> you are more optimistic than i because maybe for the past two years, we have witnessed this. all of a sudden they would wake up and say, you know what, this is a bridge too far. how many breaches do we need? >> i am saying as a practical matter the democrats end up winning the house. >> if russia doesn't collude. >> it looks for now that the democrats will win the house if they do and if there is real evidence on the collusion or the obstruction side, that is a real crime. it is a federal crime. if if you are the house of representatives, what do you say? we are not going to look into it? they at least have hearings. >> these are the people who are trying to push through kavanaugh. i think today -- much less likely. once you get into real impeachment hearings, and real looking into the evidence, it is harder for people to say, well, evidence is a crime. i think it changes. >> i want to make one final point which is that trump, if he did conspire with the russians, and all evidence points to him doing that, then he did it in a way that vladimir putin would do it, which would preserve plausible denyibility. to preserve that kind of plausible deniability. if we take that to be true, and people like michael cohen are found to have traveled to pawing to pay off these hackers, if trump himself didn't do it, then i can see the republicans saying, well -- >> to which donald trump could respond well, he was given a plea deal. >> they can say whatever they want. i am not defending the republicans. there is a huge amount of rationalization that is possible. >> you are optimistic. >> we hope you are right. >> and we don't know what all the tapes are. michael cohen has a series of tapes. what are on their tapes. >> we have another omarosa tape. cri kristina. >> these are people waiting for the n-word three days ago. we know that donald trump has surrounded himself and possibly given them to michael cohen. we know donald trump is engaged in this behavior in atlanta city, queens, in the five boroughs for decades. the separation of power is not working because the republican has not stood up to this president not once. even if there is a guilty verdict from manafort. even if cohen has turned himself in. i think they have been so willing to move the goal post every single time with this president. no matter what he says, and no matter what he does. the fact that he was sworn in as president after the "access hollywood" tape let me know that the republican is not working on