indictments or plea agreements or cooperation deals or anything else we may hear about. and on top of that, there is the freaking unbelievably weird story about the president s long-time personal lawyer michael cohen, which broke this morning in the wall street journal. did you see this? did you see this? in one of the surreal things about this presidency, no matter what else is going on and happens in any given day in the news, in the back of our minds, we all know somewhere that this president, whatever he s doing, good or bad, you know, exciting or embarrassing, whatever it is, this president is also technically known as individual one in a multiple felony criminal case that s about to send his long-time personal lawyer and business associate to federal prison for three years. the president is individual one and named as such by prosecutors when they brought charges against cohen for paying a quarter of a million dollars in hush money to make sure two women wouldn t go public with
investigators playing with your thumbs or talking about the weather. i know he was not a official cooperating witness in the district of new york but it s my understanding he was fairly, if not fully corporative and that the investigations that we have known about publicly. is it your impression, my last question for you on this, it is your impression what the wall street journal is describing and cohen is not denying and there may or may not be documentation of backing up his assertion this was at the die rekrection of the president it your assertion this is the campaign related expenditure that may be, may have criminal implications? how could it not be? it is not $130,000 to one woman but if it is a payment that was made at the direction of president trump and potentially could have influenced the election, isn t that the exact kind of payment cohen was in trouble for and the exact payment people on this network have been saying for months could potentially implicate the
i don t know what the document is but there is documentation. this is what i ll say about cohen. he s pled guilty to lying about things. there have been things in the past he s lied about publicly. cohen pleaded guilty to lying to congress. he is that is part of the reason he s going to prison in march. it would seem incomprehensible to me and against any better judgment for him to go to congress again and lie. he s already going to prison for this. so this is the kind of thing, this document and what he is saying about the president directing him or the president s knowledge of this payment ahead of time is the exact thing i m sure he ll be asked about on february 7th. this is the reason he s going. there are things in the mueller probe cohen won t be allowed to talk about. there will be things totally off the table. this seems to me squarely in line with what he s going to be asked about and allowed to talk about and that s why this hearing will be so important.
charges. most notable were charges of campaign finance violations stemming from payments cohen made to playboy play mate karen mcdougal and stormy daniels. aim of preventing the payment of learning of extramarital ateff s affairs. payment cohen said the president directed him to make implicated the commander in chief in a crime. cohen asked for leniency. he hoped for no prison time but the judge refused that request in part because cohen denied to fully cooperate. at this point the extent of what he did and did not tell law enforcement remains unknown. in a statement release, his lawyer promised more information is forthcoming. at the appropriate time after mr. mueller completes his investigation and issues his final report, i look forward to assisting michael costate
silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign and to the candidate and the campaign. reporter: that includes $130,000 payment cohen made just days before the election to porn star stormy daniels to keep her quiet about an alleged affair with the president which he denies. michael avenatti represents daniels. she feels very vindicated. she believes that she has fought the good fight and she s going to continue to fight the good fight. reporter: the president has said he didn t know about the payment at the time. did you know about the $130,000 payment to stormy daniels? no. reporter: the president s attorney rudy giuliani tells nbc news late tonight there is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government s charges against mr. cohen. it is clear that as the prosecutor noted, mr. cohen s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time. the president himself has sugges