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The foundation right now. brian todd, thank you very much. and to our viewers, thanks very much for watching. follow me on twitter and instagram at wolf blitz. tweet at cnnsitroom. announcer: this is breaking news. and the chairman of the house oversight committee which just wrapped up a dramatic seven-hour hearing with michael cohen telling reporters he believed the president broke the law while he has been in office. do you believe that the president committed a crime while in office? based on what looking at the checks, and listening to mr. cohen, it appeared that he did. that is a big moment for this ....
About that during the hearing today and he said he never saw satchels of rubles and in some ways maybe helped the president there. he also helped the president a little bit on the wikileaks question because he said that roger stone was freelancing. not at the direction of the president. again, if michael cohen wanted to just lie during this hearing, he could have done a lot more. but today he seemed to be trying to weave between all of the things that the republicans were trying to catch him on and what he has already admitted to. and not, harry, going so far as in one of the filings where they said roger stone was directed by a senior member of the campaign or someone directed a senior member of the campaign to tell roger stone to do this. michael cohen, if he knew that was he didn t go that far but he did move the bar in a huge way on wikileaks by saying that conversation happened. one other thing that he did was there was a lot of talk about the catch and kill. bad stories abo ....
To what else is out there, we know that the president of the united states has lied for a long time about his finances. and in some ways that are certainly not illegal, like lying to forbes about your net worth. those kind of things happens all the time. to me something that michael cohen said today opened the door to something much more sinister and perhaps illegal. let me play it. i am giving to the committee today three years of mr. trump s personal financial statements from 2011, 2012, and 2013. which he gave to deutsche bank to inquire about a loan to buy the buffalo bills and to forbes. it was my experience that mr. trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes. okay. again, to forbes, not against the law. but lying to a bank to obtain a loan, totally different. one of the crimes that was committed admitted to by michael cohen. and, right, and michael co n cohen, partly going to prison for that. what does it mean, if this is true, and again, we don t k ....
Cover it up? and that is the question that needs to be answered. but just looking at it, once you get into this piece of wikileaks and roger stone, julian assange and this pouring out of wikileaks, there are tentacles that could lead to other places. and what is the cover-up? what are they trying to hide and cover up. that is the issue. harry, can i just once again because we re talking about two big issues that developed today. russia investigation with trump tower and the wikileaks connection and also the hush money payments. the checks that we saw, a couple that michael cohen submitted as part of his exhibits. donald trump signing and paying to michael cohen and weisselberg and donald trump jr. involved while he was president. can you explain in english for us why that would be a crime. so the reason why that would be a crime is that under campaign finance rules, there are limits to how much money could be contributed to a campaign and disclosure ....
Early 2016, in january i believe, in january of 2016. right. so that is what their answer was. so they didn t know michael cohen was lying when he lied about it. the new answer obviously from michael cohen is that it went much more extensively, ten briefings and both ivanka and donald trump jr. and so i think they re excuse or answer has been, look, we didn t remember and the answer we gave was because that is all of the documentation we have. and so it is going to be interesting to see i think the previous guest, the congressman there seemed hesitant about whether or not they wanted to hear perhaps in open testimony from the family members. barrett, one of the interesting things is obviously that is significant if they want to leave that for the southern district. but the question that i have is you have michael cohen saying donald trump would say wouldn t say go lie. he would say, you know, michael ....