general harry litman, also joins us, and nick akerman is staying with us. nick was a former watergate prosecutor and is an msnbc legal analyst. thanks to all three of you, liz, let s start with you. you have written a book called the case for impeachment, i believe it s called. this is as close as it s gotten. it s not new information in that we knew from michael cohen s earlier testimony and the information against him that he said he was directed by individual one, but now the sdny seems to be saying they believe that to be the case. right. i mean, i think you see something very serious. the real question that comes out is what is the implication of the prosecution, the conviction of michael cohen for president trump? right, that s the question. during watergate the grand jury secretly indicted richard nixon i m sorry, secretly richard nixon as a coconspoor
why should we care? we should care because we do want free and fair elections in our democratic process. this document is speaking potentially on what should come or what could come, either the criminal justice system or through impeachment process, why we should care. i m glad you brought that up, kim. because in this very long document that part can be understood by a guy like me who s not a lawyer. where you finished off, it went on to say it is this type of harm that congress sought to prevent when it imposed limits on candidates. very direct line to the offense to dmiks democracy, not just under the law that michael cohen in his words, of individual one, donald trump. kim wehle thank you, elliott williams, thank you. one of the key takeaways from the sentencing memo filed does read like a menu, actually. filed by michael cohen is the
a number of other guilty pleas, a bunch of them are cooperating with the prosecutors. president trump fired the director of the fbi, james comey, in order to stop this investigation. he s repeatedly tried to fire robert mueller. he fired jeff sessions because jeff sessions wouldn t shut down the investigation. there s just no way that william barr can come into this job and oversee the investigation. he has to recuse. he s been appointed by the president at this juncture. if he thinks he s going to shut it down or control it in any way, it s not going to happen. if william barr does not recuse, he s going to be spending almost all of his time sitting in front of the united states house of representatives judiciary committee explaining himself. let me ask you this. because when attorney general jeff sessions recused himself, rod rosenstein took over the
substance of that skrooutreach. we do know bob mueller knows a significant amount about it. so the 2015 outreach, one of the things i thought was significant, the filing notes that michael cohen ultimately decided not to sort of return the call or get back in touch with that person, but it doesn t say anything about did he do anything else with that information? did he pass it on to anyone else in the organization? did me make anyone else aware of it? was donald trump aware of it? we don t know. maybe the special counsel is silent on that fact. it s relevant to the investigation and we wants to keep it quiet. we have hardly scratched the surface. we appreciate you both being here. stick around, matt, and i m going to talk with you about the manafort filing. i need to stick with cohen for a while here, though, to talk about the legal ramifications of tonight s russia revelations. i m joined by kim way lee, elliott we elliott williams, deputy attorney general in the united states under
a particular outcome in the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows. a lot of people are overwhelmed with all this information. why should we care? we should care because we do want free and fair elections in our democratic process. this document is speaking potentially on what should come or what could come, either the criminal justice system or through impeachment process, why we should care. i m glad you brought that up, kim. because in this very long document that part can be understood by a guy like me who s not a lawyer. where you finished off, it went on to say it is this type of harm that congress sought to prevent when it imposed limits on candidates. very direct line to the offense to dmiks democracy, not just under the law that michael cohen in his words, of individual one, donald trump. kim wehle thank you, elliott