The latest news from around the world with hosts John Berman and Poppy Harlow. New york saying a crime is not a crime. What is going to be next . The skys not blue . Red is not red, an apple is a banana . It is just a bizarre world. And if thats a defense and thats what theyre going to put forward we are in for a crazy ride ahead. We may already be in one. Jennifer, to you. I just had last hour on a former law school classmate, good friend of rudy giuliani. Hes a former Assistant Prosecutor in watergate. He was just with me. He said that the fact that there is not an official Cooperation Agreement, at least that we know of maybe it is under seal between Michael Cohen and muellers team in the Southern District on this suggest that maybe the Southern District and muellers team dont even need Michael Cohens testimony and that could be a problem for the white house. How do you see it . Well, it is very interesting that Michael Cohen doesnt have a Cooperation Agreement here. It means that t
signaling in a couple ways. first of all, paul manafort now has been found guilty by a jury of his peers on eight counts, and felonies, as you just said. for the president to try to trivialize that in some way sends a terrible message around the country about not standing up for the rule of law second, if the president were to try to exercise his pardon power, it would be a gross abuse of power here. there are justice department guidelines for pardoning. the president has ignored those already in his term. if he were to pardon people who could testify against him in different areas, it would be such an obvious part of an obstruction of justice claim that i would hope that judges would conclude that that is even beyond the bounds of presidential pardon power. but as we know, that s something
pretty clear statement there. that s from democratic senator ron wyden of oregon. let s discuss with ron brownstein and julie pace. what a news cycle, guys. it s only been about 17 hours and a lot has changed. but a lot hasn t changed because it is the same message from the president, as well. ron brownstein, what do you make of the reaction we are getting from the president this morning, slamming michael cohen and calling paul manafort a good man, a brave man? look. it is consistent with everything we have seen from him both in the mueller investigation itself and more broadly, in his presidency. it is about mobilizing and consolidating his base and keeping republicans in line. ultimately as you talked about in the last segment, we talked about a lot in the last 24 hours, unless the special counsel or the southern district of new york want to challenge the judgments of the justice department under richard nixon and bill clinton so they had some self-interest in both cases that