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Trump Mum on Cohen Sentence, Prosecutors Flipping Tabloid. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 13, 2018 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Cohen told the court he felt it was his duty to cover up what he calls the president's, quote, "dirty deeds."

[07:00:07] ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: CNN meantime has learned both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are looking to talk with Cohen again. And Cohen, for his part, appears willing to tell his story.

President Trump has been publicly silent on the Cohen sentence. Privately, though, he is said to be seething. We're told he had just three words to say about Cohen: "He's a liar."

After the sentencing, current Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, though, had more to say about the Russia investigation, telling Yahoo! News, "Our strategy is to do everything we can to try to convince Mueller to wrap the damn thing up, and if he's got anything, show us."

Here, though, are the facts. Let's remind you where we're at, at this point. Here's what Mueller has done so far.

Four people have been sentenced to prison; seven guilty pleas; 36 people or entities charged; one person, former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, convicted at trial; overall, 192 criminal counts filed. So there's that.

Joining us now, CNN political analyst David Gregory; CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin; and CNN national security and legal analyst Susan Hennessey.

Good to have all of you with us.

Jeffrey Toobin, I want to start with you, because when you spoke with David Pecker last year, as we're learning about this AMI deal, he told you this was all about friendship when it came to Donald Trump; this was not political, right?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: That's exactly right. You know, I did -- I did a profile of David Pecker for "The New Yorker," and he was very open up about, A, his partisanship for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Cover after cover boosted Trump and -- and attacked his rivals. And he also said that, you know, he paid Karen McDougal money because he wanted to protect his friend. And -- and he was very open about that.

He did not say that it was specifically related to the campaign. I mean, obviously, it was helpful. I don't think he or I realized the magnitude of the legal problems he was getting himself into by talking to him -- by talking me about that. But -- and he also, I don't think, told me the full story of his relationship with Donald Trump, but there certainly was no mystery about the underlying friendship.

BERMAN: But now he and AMI says something much more than that, Jeffrey. In this legal document, they say, as part of this plea deal, that this money was paid for political reasons principally and to influence the 2016 election. That's a big difference.

TOOBIN: It is a big difference. And Berman, you know, sometimes people don't tell reporters the whole truth.

BERMAN: Yes.

TOOBIN: It's heartbreaking. But I think that's what went on there.

And -- and, you know, I think it would have been very difficult, it would have raised all sorts of First Amendment issues to prosecute David Pecker or "The National Enquirer" for partisanship. I mean, newspapers and magazines engage in partisanship all the time. That's what the First Amendment is all about.

But the payment of money is a different story, and that I think is something that is a problem -- that obviously, was a problem for Pecker. And he got immunity, and now he is obligated to tell the full story of his relationship to prosecutors about Donald Trump; and that could be a long story.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And let's remember that, in the legal circles, Michael Cohen and his credibility as a cooperator could have been a story line and will still be a story line, but it changes when you have somebody else come into the picture. And AMI has now come into the picture to back up that story.

And so if anybody thought that the special prosecutor who was talking to him about some things, or that the Justice Department was just going to hang all this on Michael Cohen, who could be so thoroughly impeached, they were wrong. And so now there's a second entity saying, yes, this was directed by Donald Trump. That's a big deal.

BERMAN: Oh, yes.

GREGORY: And of course, Michael Cohen not only cooperating here but having a lot more to say on other matters, including Russia to the special prosecutor, including what he could say on Capitol Hill, has got to be making President Trump very nervous.

BERMAN: And it doesn't just corroborate. In some cases, it adds even more information than was previously known with the AMI thing. And Susan Hennessey, I know you think this is a big deal. How big of a deal? In some ways, you look at this development, specifically with AMI, which just happened -- again, we learned about it within the last 24 hours. And you say this might be the most significant threat to the president since learning of the Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and the Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. Why is this so big?

SUSAN HENNESSEY, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, I think for the precise reasons that sort of Jeffrey alluded to. We actually are seeing a story where all of the statutory elements of a crime are now being met.

We have AMI and Michael Cohen, you know, saying that this was made for the principal purpose of influencing a campaign, you know. And we now have more than one witness.

[07:05:00] And I actually don't think that the legal technicalities, the question of whether or not a prosecutor is going to be able to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt in court, is the most relevant thing here.

I think what is relevant, however, that there is a credible case where the president of the United States has actually violated the law and violated a specific statute. And that's because whenever Congress is considering impeachment, even though they don't -- the president doesn't necessarily have to have committed a crime, Congress has never seriously considered impeachment without that piece.

And so whenever we sort of take the -- the cumulative picture, all of the various things that the president has done, including sort of the obstruction questions, areas in which the law is less clear, I do think that adding this piece, adding this piece of saying, you know, here is the president pretty plainly violating the law in a way that any ordinary person would understand -- you know, would understand that this is -- that there is reasonable evidence of this, I do think that that puts the probability of impeachment sort of -- it moves the needle really significantly, like I said, in a way that I don't know that we've seen as significant a revelation, you know, really since learning about Don Jr.'s response and reaction to that Trump Tower meeting and the offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton.

HILL: Well, it could be interesting, too, and David, you just alluded to this -- what more we may learn, right, as folks are brought back, including Michael Cohen, likely, before the House and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

What's interesting, too, is that we're hearing -- we're hearing from Republicans. We're hearing from Senator Burr say, "Well, listen, I don't know that I can get him when he's in jail. We are talking," essentially, he said, telling our Manu Raju, "We're in touch with his people." And so there's a very real chance that -- that there could be far more to come that could add to that, David.

GREGORY: Yes, I think the critical piece on that for the special prosecutor is what Cohen knows about contacts with Russians.

And I think there's an added element there. What these particular charges indicate is that the president, according to Cohen, was directing these payments. That the president was very much driving on all of this. And I think that will spill over into the Russia piece, as well, that he was driving and approving these contacts, that it's not just these other people who are off the reservation having these contacts, that this was much more centralized. That would be particularly damning.

All of this said, I think we should bear something in mind. As a political matter, I think Democrats are going to wake up this morning thinking, you know, yes, this is an unbelievable development. But they're still going to be cautious about moving to impeach a president because he may have committed crimes to cover up a sexual affair. They've seen this movie before, and it didn't work well for the opposition party.

BERMAN: Look, there may be an inverse proportionality between the information that comes out and Democrats' willingness to pursue impeachment. We'll have to wait and see.

And certainly, Republicans haven't budged in their defense of the president. Jeffrey, if we can, because it has to do, again, with you and your reporting. What's so remarkable about all of this is how much of it has been in plain sight for well over a year from your interview with David Pecker, which was fantastic and revelatory at the time. To the audiotape that we have of Michael Cohen speaking to President Trump, or then-candidate Trump about the payments to "The Enquirer."

Let's just listen one more time to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, DONALD TRUMP'S FORMER LAWYER: I have spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with --

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?

COHEN: -- the funding. Yes, and it's all the stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Yes, the president saying there, you know, $150,000: "How much do we pay for that, $150,000?"

Go ahead, Jeffrey. Then I have a question.

TOOBIN: If you just want to keep track of how much the president has lied about that. He said he didn't know about the payment.

GREGORY: Right. Right.

TOOBIN: Remember? I mean, there's that picture of him in Air Force One, where he says, "I didn't know anything about it." And here he is on tape talking about the deal. I mean, you know, I know it's hard to keep track of all this stuff. There's so much -- you know, the disclosures come bit by bit. But I mean, come on, he lied so extravagantly about this story from beginning to end.

And it's also worth remembering that, you know, on the eve of the election, if the American public had known that Donald Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels, an affair with Karen McDougal, and that he had paid or arranged for all this hush money, you know, that might well have swung the election. So this is an extremely important set of developments -- anyway.

BERMAN: Or maybe not. But the point is, what we know with 100 percent certainty is that AMI thought it was doing it to try to swing the election. I mean, that part of it is now clear. You have this corroborating witness, or witnesses, this corporation with everyone who works there, saying the same thing that Michael Cohen did, that this was a political payment to try to win the election.

Susan Hennessey, we had Jennifer Rogers on during our last hour, and she pointed out that AMI's cooperation agreement here is unusual. It's usually the type of agreement a company makes with prosecutors so that they don't do future misdeeds; they don't commit the same crime. And certainly, AMI has promised not to do this again, but it's hard to imagine how this type of situation would exist again.

[07:10:11] So her suggestion is that this cooperation agreement is about more. It's about further prosecutions, maybe the president but maybe not just the president. She says look at the Trump Organization and look at the Trump campaign. Do you see it that way?

HENNESSEY: Yes, I think that's certainly possible, and one of the futures of this AMI non-prosecution agreement is that they're going to sort of provide all of the information that they have on Trump. There's been reports that they've been buying up stories like this for a long period of time, and so maybe there's a great deal of damaging information out there. And I do think there's sort of an unopen question about whether or not there are other payments that might be problematic.

Ultimately, though, I do think that something that Jeffrey said earlier, you know, there are pretty substantial First Amendment questions here. The government is usually very, very hesitant to go after prosecuting, you know, a media outlet or members of the press. And so I also think that AMI might have a little bit of an advantage over sort of an ordinary organization in that sense, because the government is -- this is an area in which the government tends to want to tread very, very lightly.

TOOBIN: In the -- in the immunity agreement, or the cooperation agreement with AMI, there is kind of a hilarious section about how the staff is going to be trained in these issues.

I mean, you know, what the AMI staff spends most of its time is, like, torturing Jennifer Aniston about whether she's going to have a baby. I mean, that's -- that's really about what they cover. And John Travolta and Tom Cruise. I mean, the idea that that staff is going to have training is -- I'd like to be a fly on the wall during that class.

GREGORY: Can we also say what's remarkable about the -- the Cohen developments are the things he said at sentencing yesterday. He talks about, you know, the darkness of being around Trump; and this was not a person to be admired. He thought he was at some point.

I mean, this is somebody who was -- would take a bullet for -- for Trump at some point and now has turned on him. Obviously, facing his own legal jeopardy, he's done that.

But also, Allen Weisselberg, who is referenced there, who is a top executive in the Trump Organization, who's also cooperating as prosecutors may be making more of a case against Trump's business dealings with Russians.

I think these are devastating moments. People who are so close to Trump completely turning on him. Not only -- not only a cause for deep, deep stress for Trump, as we move forward, but just a remarkable development for someone who prizes loyalty the way the president does.

BERMAN: And I will note that the response from the president himself and his legal team to the developments yesterday, specifically AMI, has been muted and careful. I don't think they yet know how to respond to this, because it undercuts so many of the arguments they've been making over the last 48 hours.

HILL: It does, and there's also a question that's hanging over it, too. Right? Just really quickly before we go, is who was this other campaign official who was in on the meeting in August of 2015? Who was it? And that question is looming, too.

BERMAN: I bet you prosecutors know.

HILL: I think they might.

BERMAN: I bet you they've talked to that person.

HILL: I think they have.

BERMAN: All right. Jeffrey, Susan, David, thanks so much for being with us.

So when asked about President Trump's mounting legal troubles this week, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R), UTAH: I don't care. All I can say is he's doing a good job as president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So with all these new revelations, the new developments, the corroboration from AMI, does it finally give Republicans pause? We'll discuss next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:17:37] BERMAN: Federal prosecutors announced a surprise immunity deal with the publisher of "The National Enquirer." As part of that agreement, its parent company, AMI, admits it paid a "Playboy" model to suppress her alleged affair with Donald Trump, and they did it to help him win the 2016 election, and they say they did it in concert and coordination with the Trump campaign.

So how will Republicans respond to this? New information, we remind you.

Joining us now, CNN senior political commentator Rick Santorum, a former Republican senator and presidential candidate.

Senator, thank you for being with us.

RICK SANTORUM, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: In our last episode of "As the Senator Turns," Chris Cuomo asked you about the various Michael Cohen revelations in terms of campaign financing. This was prior to the AMI revelation. So let me read you what you told Chris prior to the fact that AMI entered this cooperation deal.

You said, "He could have been paying off women, the president, for a variety of reasons, including not wanting his family to know about that information." OK? You said he could have been doing it for a variety of reasons.

That's not what AMI says now. Let me read you from the court documents. It says, "AMI's principal purpose in entering into the agreement to pay Karen McDougal was to suppress the model's story so as to prevent it from influencing the election." It was political.

Does that change your view of the severity of the situation?

SANTORUM: Just because AMI did it, didn't mean that that's the sole reason that Donald Trump did it. I mean, what you gave is AMI's reasoning, not Donald Trump's reasoning, No. 1.

No. 2, to be -- these are campaign finance violations. As you well know, John, almost every presidential campaign -- I mean, I ran for president twice. I've never been, you know, accused of a campaign finance violation, but I was in the minority when it came to that in presidential races.

BERMAN: No.

SANTORUM: The Obama campaign in 2008 --

BERMAN: No.

SANTORUM: -- paid $375,000 in fines for campaign violations.

BERMAN: That is so different. That is so vastly different --

SANTORUM: It's not different. These are all violations.

BERMAN: -- than paying $150,000 to silence somebody --

SANTORUM: These are all violations. BERMAN: -- and then create an intricate scene to cover your tracks --

SANTORUM: OK.

BERMAN: -- for doing so. All I'm saying is there's a difference there. Now, you may say --

SANTORUM: No, there isn't a difference.

BERMAN: -- there's a lot of civil violations in campaigns. And there are.

SANTORUM: And this isn't even clear that it's a violation. As you know, the FEC has never -- has never prosecuted anybody for such a payment.

BERMAN: Senator --

[07:20:03] SANTORUM: You look at all the payments that are made to members of Congress --

BERMAN: The Department of Justice prosecuted John Edwards for something similar.

SANTORUM: But the FEC didn't.

BERMAN: But the FEC -- this is not the FEC. That's a --

SANTORUM: But the FEC has.

BERMAN: That's a totally separate issue. Please.

SANTORUM: John, hold on, let me finish.

BERMAN: You're trying to raise something completely outside the realm of the situation.

SANTORUM: John, John, hold on. Give me a chance to talk here.

BERMAN: OK.

SANTORUM: When a prosecutor looks at a -- at a charge of a campaign finance violation, one of the things that prosecutors should do is look to whether the FEC prosecuted it. In the Edwards case, they didn't. It was one of the reason they didn't get a conviction in the Edwards case, because the FEC said, "We don't see a violation here."

The other thing is that someone who does this type of violation has to do it knowing they're violating the law. Well, I don't know how Donald Trump can know he's violating the law when the FEC has never prosecuted a case like this before and doesn't believe that this is a violation of law. So you can't have intent if the FEC says it's not a violation.

BERMAN: You know, Senator, that the FEC can go after something like this and the Justice Department can. That is the way it works. SANTORUM: But the Justice Department has to look to the FEC.

BERMAN: No, it doesn't.

SANTORUM: Yes, it does.

BERMAN: No, it doesn't. That's just not the case.

SANTORUM: In the handbook -- in the handbook --

BERMAN: That's just not the case. The Justice Department --

SANTORUM: Absolutely it is the case.

BERMAN: -- John Edwards.

SANTORUM: And that's one of the reasons they lost.

BERMAN: They didn't lose. He was acquitted on one charge. There was a hung jury on the others, but they prosecuted. The important thing is here the guidelines in the Justice Department --

SANTORUM: Prosecutors can prosecute all they want.

BERMAN: -- are clear. They prosecute it. And Senator, I just want to get -- hang on, hang on.

SANTORUM: The guidelines are saying to look to the FEC as to --

BERMAN: Just take a step back.

SANTORUM: -- whether it's an underlying violation.

BERMAN: Just take a step back from this for one other thing. Is there any violation, is there any payment that the president could have made here that would bother you, that you would think would put him in legal jeopardy? Is there anything you can imagine?

I'm trying to figure out if this is just a blanket acquiescence to the president's claims here or whether or not there is some standard to which you would hold him accountable.

SANTORUM: Look, I think the -- the payments are unseemly. I think the whole -- the whole thing is an unseemly thing. But this is part of the criminalization of politics. And -- and this was -- this could have been a political move. It could have been a personal move. It could have been a business move. There's all sorts of reasons the president could have done this.

But the idea of taking, you know, campaign finance, quote, "violations," which are primarily and have been civil throughout the course of --

BERMAN: But not always.

SANTORUM: Almost exclusively. BERMAN: But not always.

SANTORUM: Well, yes, you have the John Edwards case. You don't have very many others. And let me assure you, there's lots of expenditures that campaigns make that are questionable expenditures.

BERMAN: Senator --

SANTORUM: -- and the FEC does investigate it, and they provide civil penalties.

BERMAN: Senator, you keep on saying it could have been another thing. I just want to be clear.

SANTORUM: This is -- this is blown way out of proportion.

BERMAN: I just want to be clear that you say it could have been other things, but what the prosecutors now say, the SDNY now says, with corroboration from AMI, is that it wasn't the other things. It was principally to influence the election. I read you one part --

SANTORUM: That's what AMI said.

BERMAN: Let me read you another part. Let me read to you. Michael Cohen says now, too, and AMI, and we don't know if there's other witnesses and evidence also. We're left with the impression there is.

Let me just read you the document here that prosecutors gave yesterday. "AMI made a payment in the amount of $150,000 in cooperation, consultation, and concert with and at the request and suggestion of one or more members or agents of a candidate's 2016 presidential campaign to ensure that a woman did not publicize damaging allegations about that candidate before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence the election." So when you say it could have been other things, they're saying no, it was was principally to influence the election.

SANTORUM: OK -- John --

BERMAN: Are you denying that that's what it says?

SANTORUM: John, that's what it says. That's what they say. That's not what the Trump campaign is saying. No. 1.

No. 2, let's assume you're right. Let's assume that Trump comes forward or his campaign, you know -- "Yes, we did it for political purposes." You still have to have the intent of breaking the law.

And as I've cited to you several times, the FEC has never -- has said that this is not a violation of the federal election commission -- federal election laws. So how can you be intentionally breaking a law when it's been the record of the FEC that this isn't a violation of the law? You can't have the requisite intent if the FEC doesn't consider it a violation.

BERMAN: Intent is a defense. It does not have anything to do, what you're using now, as the FEC defense. The president can absolutely offer a defense and no doubt will, if he's indicted, which I'm not saying he will be. But if he's indicted, he will say he did not know the law. We've already seen that a little bit. You have to knowingly and willfully violate the law, but to be clear that doesn't mean you have to be able to recite the code. What it means is that you have to have a general --

SANTORUM: John, you are missing my point.

BERMAN: Hang on. Hang on. Because I've read the DOJ guidelines, Senator. What it means is you have to have a general knowledge of the law.

I don't know if the president had that. I don't. I have a suspicion that AMI knew the law. Why do I have that suspicion? Because AMI backed out of the repayment deal they'd struck with Michael Cohen, because they had concerns about it. And then, after talking about making the payments to Stormy Daniels, they got cold feet.

[07:25:04] So it seems to me perhaps they knew something was wrong there.

The other part of it, that would have to come out in a trial if the DOJ prosecuted, which they very well might, were Donald Trump not the president of the United States. Correct?

SANTORUM: Look, the D.O. -- Prosecutors can prosecute anything. I mean, they can, you know, they can indict a ham sandwich.

BERMAN: Right.

SANTORUM: We've seen that in grand juries many times. The reality is there's no -- there's no crime here.

BERMAN: What I'm saying --

SANTORUM: The fact of the matter is that this is simply not something that the FEC considers a violation. And you can -- you can blow this thing up to say this is unseemly, this is a lot of things. I agree with that. But it is not a crime.

BERMAN: You agree -- you agree that there are many crimes in this country that the FEC doesn't prosecute. The FEC is not the beginning and end of all crimes in America. There are criminal violations of campaign finance code the DOJ just prosecutes.

SANTORUM: They are the principle enforcer of the federal election laws.

BERMAN: The criminal justice system allows for the DOJ to prosecute --

SANTORUM: I agree with that.

BERMAN: -- campaign crimes.

SANTORUM: I agree. They do.

BERMAN: So look, I just want people to know that you're raising a point here, but that is not the universal answer to this question. People can study what you're saying there --

SANTORUM: It's not dispositive.

BERMAN: -- and make it -- and make it for their --

SANTORUM: But it --

BERMAN: I -- I think it's a distraction from the main point. Senator, I want to get your take --

SANTORUM: I think you folks ignore anything that get -- that actually --

BERMAN: No.

SANTORUM: -- is counter to what is -- what is in the president's favor.

BERMAN: No, I think the knowing -- I think the knowing and willful defense. I think knowingly and willfully is a defense the president will give, and there's a lot of legal room there for the president.

I think AMI has a defense on First Amendment rights. There's a lot of legal room there.

I don't think the FEC not going after a criminal violation of campaign finance law means there wasn't a violation of campaign finance law. That's all I'm saying.

Can I get you very quickly --

SANTORUM: Yes.

BERMAN: -- on the possibility of a shutdown. Because you lived through some of them when you were in Congress.

SANTORUM: I have.

BERMAN: The president now owns the shutdown, by his own words. He says, "I own it." Good politics?

SANTORUM: Here's what I would say. The president was going to own it whether -- whether he owned it or not. I mean, this is one of the things that -- that we've seen in the past, is that, you know, if the president is out there saying, "I want this, and if you don't do this I'm -- I'm not going to sign this," you know, the person who -- like Schumer the last time, the president who's saying, "You either do this or I'm not going to go along," is the person who owns the shutdown.

So the president did what I think actually is smart politics. If you're going to own it, really own it. And try to set -- set the narrative in your favor.

So I'm not saying he should not or shouldn't shut down the government. What I'm saying is, if you're going to -- if you're going to draw a line, then probably stepping out there and taking it and try to -- trying to influence the direction of the debate is probably the best approach to take.

BERMAN: Senator Rick Santorum, not the next White House chief of staff, as you told Erin Burnett --

SANTORUM: That's correct.

BERMAN: -- the other night. Thank you very much for being with us this morning.

SANTORUM: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Appreciate it.

Erica.

HILL: CNN has learned incoming House Intelligence Committee head Adam Schiff is getting ready to call on Michael Cohen to testify. So what will lawmakers ask him after he admitted lying to them? We'll ask a member of that committee, next.

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