Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Former Trump Attorney Michael Cohen Gives an Interview; Michael Cohen Says President Trump Directed Him to Make Hush Money Payments to Women Alleging Affairs with President Trump; Political Turmoil Consumes Key U.S. Allies in Europe. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 14, 2018 - 8:00   ET

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


[08:00:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: It is an extraordinary new interview. Michael Cohen contradicts the president. He says Mr. Trump told him to make those illegal hush money payments to two women who alleged that they had affairs with the president. Here is a portion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I will not be the villain of his story.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's saying very clearly that he never directed you to do anything wrong. Is that true?

COHEN: I don't think there is anybody that believes that. First of all, nothing in the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me, as I said in my allocution, and I said this as well in the plea, he directed me to make the payments. He directed me to become involved in these matters, including the one with McDougal, which was really between him and David Pecker, and then David Pecker's counsel. I just reviewed the documents in order to protect him. I gave loyalty to someone who, truthfully, does not deserve loyalty.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was trying to hide what you were doing, correct?

COHEN: Correct.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he knew it was wrong?

COHEN: Of course.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he was doing that to help his election?

COHEN: You have to remember at what point in time that this matter came about, two weeks or so before the election, post the Billy Bush comments. So, yes, he was very concerned about how this would affect the election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To help his campaign?

COHEN: To help him and the campaign. (END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And that's not all Michael Cohen had to say, not even close. He also had a lot to say about the notion of loyalty.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: The special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them was credible and helpful. There is a substantial amount of information that they possess that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you're done with the lying?

COHEN: I am done with the lying. I am done being loyal to President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, let's bring in our phenomenal panel. We have CNN political commentator host of CNN's "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered," S.E. Cupp, we have former CIA counterterrorism official and CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd, and former FBI special agent and CNN legal and national security analyst Asha Rangappa, and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig. Well, we're out of time, guys. Thanks so much.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: S.E., it is remarkable to hear Michael Cohen on every level, on a human level, on the Shakespearian level of watching this downfall play out. And on a legal level, what do you hear when he is speaking out publicly now?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is a tragedy. It's a Shakespearian tragedy. But it's very disorienting for those of us who have come up against Michael Cohen in our dealings with President Trump. I have been on the receiving end of Michael Cohen's threats. And everyone who has watched his rise through the Trump Organization, getting some very public camera time in the year leading up to the election, and seeing all of these sort of goons around Trump rise up with him. And now Michael Cohen is going to jail. And it is very disorienting to see him now try to play his case in the court of public opinion. His case is settled legally. He's going to go and testify before Congress. There is a lot more Michael Cohen is going to do.

But right now he wants to win in the court of public opinion. That's a big ask. This is a guy that lied repeatedly, not just in terms of what he did for Trump, but he lied as a fact, as a fact of life and working for Trump on behalf of Trump. He lied for a living. And so to now say I'm done lying, and this man is a liar and no one should believe him -- yes, he's a liar. He's a liar that had your help for 10 years. So it's odd. It's bizarre. It's surreal. I feel bad for his family. But for Michael Cohen to say this man didn't deserve my loyalty, these men deserve each other in every way. BERMAN: You talk about the drama here. There is also a very public

trial being played out here. Yes, it has been decided for Michael Cohen by the court and by the judge, but he is trying to have a public trial and in a way I think respond legally to claims that the president made just yesterday. The president said he didn't direct Michael Cohen to break the law. The president said there was no crime here. And Asha, I think Michael Cohen very clearly and intentionally laid out not just his case but federal prosecutors' case. Michael Cohen says he was directed by the president to make the payments. Michael Cohen said the president did it to influence the election. Michael Cohen said the president knew it was wrong and that he was covering it up.

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. And what stuck out to me there is he also mentioned that with the McDougal payment, that was almost directly between Trump and AMI, according to his interview, and that he was just a minor intermediary.

[08:05:00] So he's placing Trump squarely in the middle of these campaign finance violations and making it clear that this was done knowingly and willfully.

I will also add that I think this loyalty theme is important. Just as kind of a corroboration, because let's not forget that Mueller is also looking into obstruction of justice. And a key part of that was that loyalty oath he wanted Comey to take. And so there is a sort of pattern of expectation of loyalty among the people that are working for him to do the things that he wants them to do. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

CAMEROTA: Phil Mudd, your investigative ears always hear interesting tidbits. When Michael Cohen says there is a substantial amount of information that Robert Mueller possesses that corroborates that I am telling the truth, that means he handed over something, I suppose.

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Sort of. I think we're missing half the story. Mr. Cohen, I hope he goes to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200,000. What's the story here? The story isn't his cooperation with the Mueller team. I think the story is the documents from the southern district of New York that indicates that Mr. Cohen despite wanting to play the victim didn't really cooperate with him.

Now, why is that? I think the reason the president is worried is not because he was playing off a Playboy model but because Cohen for his decade plus relationship with Trump and his relationship with the Trump family knows a lot about dirty money that goes well before the campaign. The story is whether Cohen in the documents acquired by the feds implicate Mr. Trump or his family in dealings that precede the campaign. I think that's what we're missing here, and I think that's why people want to talk to Cohen still. What does he know about dirty money going back years?

BERMAN: Elie Honig, you obviously have been watching all of this. You watched what Michael Cohen says. You worked with the southern district, in the southern district of New York. What do you see here now that we keep getting more and more and more from people directly involved in this case?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think the general public is now seeing what prosecutors go through any time we deal with cooperating witnesses. A huge number of federal cases are based on cooperating witnesses, and we understand people don't like them. They're inherently -- they're cooperating witnesses for a reason. If they were clean, they would be eye witnesses. But cooperating witnesses are there because they've committed crimes with the very people that they're testifying against now.

And the conundrum is you can have someone who has valuable, usable information, but in a really unattractive packaging. I don't mean physically. I mean just in terms of overall credibility and overall presentation.

What I would want to say to Michael Cohen, if I was preparing him, heaven forbid, to be a witness of mine at a trial, what I would tell him is you need to fully embrace this. I think S.E. was saying this. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot be the hero and the victim. The best cooperating witnesses, of Michael Cohen, the best thing he could say is I was totally in with Trump. I was all in with him. I did whatever he wanted. I lived that life. I loved it while I did it. Now I'm in a different position. Now I need to tell the truth. I get it. It's in my best interests. But don't try to make yourself into an angel.

CAMEROTA: We have some more sound, S.E., that we want to play of Michael Cohen talking about how he now feels about President Trump's relationship with the truth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I know the truth. Others know the truth. And here is the truth. The people of the United States of America, the people of the world, don't believe what he's saying. The man doesn't tell the truth, and it's sad that I should take responsibility for his dirty deeds.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Again, a day late and a dollar short since he probably knew that about the president a while ago.

CUPP: Yes, not to mention you are responsible for some of this. You helped facilitate at least some of the things we know of, I'm sure plenty of things we don't, that are either inconsequential to this investigation or purely personal matters. But this was your job, to be responsible, to be the guy, the fall guy so that it didn't touch Trump, it didn't touch the principal in his universe.

And so, again, to Elie's point, if Michael Cohen, if it's important for Michael Cohen to get some sympathy out of this, he needs to say, I was a bad guy. I did bad things. I did what was demanded of me, and I was surrounded by bad people. And I'm trying to do now what I think is right. And I'll pay my dues and pay my -- serve my time. But I did bad things. He can't play a victim here. BERMAN: Phil, I hear your angry breath.

(LAUGHTER)

CUPP: Hopefully not at me.

MUDD: Michael Cohen is not sad. Michael Cohen is sad because he got caught. It wasn't like he did this for 20 minutes. I have got more sympathy for the weeds in my front yard.

(LAUGHTER)

MUDD: Here's the question I have for him. If you are so sad about what you did, why did the southern district say you still don't cooperate? Why?

CAMEROTA: I have the answer. Or I say, Elie Honig has the answer. You think that it's not just that he's not coughing up more information about Donald Trump. You think it's that he might have implicated his own family if he had cooperated more.

[08:10:08] HONIG: That's possible. The southern district's problem with Michael Cohen is he didn't want to answer everything. He said I'm not answering that. They did find him credible when he did answer, it's possible. And then the question you have to ask is, who is he protecting? Why is he declining to answer those questions?

CAMEROTA: And it's possible that it's not just Donald Trump, that there might be something more personal that he didn't want to answer.

HONIG: Sure, it could be any member of his family. I've had that situation. I've actually given people passes from time to time. If they were a great cooperator and say, well, my spouse was also involved in this and it wasn't a big enough deal, you can give them a pass on that. But yes, that may well be what's motivating him.

CAMEROTA: Does that wash with you, Phil Mudd?

MUDD: If you are going to cooperate -- if you are going to cooperate, you've got to come clean. This is not very confusing.

BERMAN: I understand, Phil Mudd, the S.E. argument that Michael Cohen is not a particularly believable guy. However, the case that he's making, Asha, is that the president can't be believed. And if we have sound for the president, because the president and Michael Cohen are now engaged in a very public debate about the fact pattern here. Let's play a little bit of this really confrontational interview that the president was part of yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me tell you, I never directed him to do anything wrong. Whatever he did, he did on his own. He's a lawyer. A lawyer who represents a client is supposed to do the right thing. That's why you pay them a lot of money, et cetera, et cetera. He is a lawyer. He represents a client. I never directed him to do anything incorrect or wrong, and he understands that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, so Asha, Michael Cohen, in addition to refuting point by point what the president just said there, and you can choose who you want to believe there, it's also worth noting that this is, I don't know, the fifth or sixth version of the story that President Trump has given here about these payments. At first he didn't know about them, then he didn't make them, then he directed them, now he didn't. Where are we?

RANGAPPA: John, with Michael Cohen doing this interview, this is going to be the president's Achilles heel, because he's going to keep talking. And from the get go I have said his lawyers need to put him in a padded room with mittens on and no phone because he will continue to implicate himself. He keeps telling different stories. Sometimes he kind of gives details, well, I did know about this payment. At some point he's just going to come out and say I ordered the code red.

BERMAN: You're darn right I did!

(LAUGHTER)

RANGAPPA: And so I think that one of the things that we are going to watch, because he just cannot help himself, is him responding in a very public forum to what Michael Cohen is saying, and I think in the process potentially implicating himself further. He is directly in the crosshairs of a criminal investigation right now, and he needs to be careful and listen to his lawyers.

CAMEROTA: S.E.?

CUPP: I keep trying to refresh Twitter to see, because gird your loins, people.

(LAUGHTER)

CUPP: Trump is going to tweet about this, and it's going to be on fire. And I keep looking. And they must not have addressed this on "FOX and Friends yet because undoubtedly he's watching.

CAMEROTA: Wait a minute.

CUPP: No, still nothing. Still nothing.

BERMAN: So you in that interview, you didn't think when the president was pressed yesterday on FOX about his role in these payments, you don't think that he was sort of forced to answer the key questions?

CUPP: Forced? No. Were they asked? Politely. Yes, and this is not personal to Harris. I like Harris a lot, but that was not an interview. That was an infomercial. When you ask the president if he enjoys being president, that's almost an "SNL" parody.

CAMEROTA: That's at the end. First, she asked him about all this substantial stuff, and then you're always looking for some sort of kicker or some sort of human interest thing to ask the president. But is your objection also that he wasn't fact-checked during the substantial part of the interview?

CUPP: Well, he wasn't. And he was wasn't -- there was no pushback. There was no follow up to say come on back to reality, here's what actually happened. How do you address this? It was a very soft touch in that interview. And I watched the whole thing. It wasn't just a cutesy moment at the end. There were more cutesy moments than substantive ones. When you say your approval numbers are so great, how does that make you feel? Those are not real questions. That's not an interview. Again, that's an ad. And FOX is very upfront about the role it's playing, but I don't think we, as news consumers, should take too much stock in an interview where hard questions are not asked and real answers are not given.

CAMEROTA: On that note, panel, thank you all very much.

OK, now to France, the U.K., Germany, they're all reeling with political unrest at the very same time. So why is this happening? We discuss all of that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:32] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: These are very tumultuous times for western democracies, to say the least. I mean, this was what we've seen just this week that you and I have been.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

CAMEROTA: In the U.K., of course, there is all sorts of concerns and questions about Brexit. There's violent protests in France.

Angela Merkel is stepping down soon. That era is ending in Germany. And, of course, there is the political conundrum, questions back here in the U.S.

Why is all of this happening at the same time?

Here to make sense of it is Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group and author of "Us Versus Them: The Failure of Globalism".

Ian, great to have you here.

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: Good point.

CAMEROTA: So the Theresa may chaos, the turmoil in Paris, Germany.

BREMMER: It's no a coincidence. Germany is not in turmoil. Their economy is doing well and there is a fairly smooth transition from Angela Merkel to AKK, the leader she wants to lead her party and hopefully coalition. So actually Germany is fine.

But the rest, it is the end of Merkel and in part it's backlash to all the migrants that she brought in and people were unhappy with.

France, people, a lot of folks very unhappy feeling like the government is not a fit for them, that is rigged them. Macron doing a very bad job. I soon as I left Paris for the G20, we talked to each other around that, suddenly, massive demonstrations and his ability to respond to them very limited.

And Theresa May is now a lame duck prime minister in what is a lame duck E.U. country because they are in the never ending process of leaving.

[08:20:00] And so as a consequence, her stock has gone down. The U.K. stock is going down, U.K. markets have gone down. Their unemployment is going up. It is a big challenge.

BERMAN: A big challenge, may be an understatement. One of the things about the Brexit situation is it seems like there may not be a clear way out of it.

BREMMER: That's the likelihood of a hard Brexit, in other words, a no deal where the U.K. economy is in comparative free fall, a serious recession because they can't bring terms the E.U. would be able to accept, has gone significantly up because Theresa May has won her vote of no confidence, but the deal she spent two years negotiating is a dead letter in parliament. She can't get it through. She had to poll that vote a week ago, if you remember.

So, you know, they could maybe get a vote on Norway, a Norway plus deal, as you call it, which would limit the economic damage of the U.K. and the E.U. with common market access, but it gives them absolutely no say in the process. So they lose sovereignty with a deal that otherwise feels like what they had before Brexit. That's really hard.

The one thing that, you know, there is growing grassroots support for is let's have a people's vote. Let's vote again. That's the one thing that Theresa May has said under no circumstances would she do and she's there for another full year.

So, you're absolutely right. This has become more challenging for the U.K., and the rest of the world doesn't care all that much about it.

CAMEROTA: So, what are the underpinnings of it? Is there a connection of between what's happening in Britain and France and the nationalism that we're seeing here in the U.S.? Is there some sort of nexus?

BREMMER: There is lots of reasons. There is the economic pushback for economies doing well. The top 1 percent, top 10 percent doing well, a global middle class doing well over the past decades, but the people voting in favor of these nationalists movements unhappy. There is a demographic shift with migrants. There are these failed wars that have cost a lot of money on the backs of these people and critically, there's social media.

Social media is really important because without social media and without external intervention in social media, does the Brexit referendum actually pass? Maybe not. Does Trump actually win in the United States? You know, would macron have been able to get rid of the establishment parties in France and come him himself? Maybe not. So absolutely there are connections.

It is good for us to take a breath in the United States and recognize that for all we talk about Trump, this is going on in so many other countries around the world. And when Trump goes, whether it's after one term or it's after two, we don't resolve these problems magically, right?

BERMAN: So, first of all, I want to note that this is your job to analyze this. Your job is to look at all this and predict where it is going and know, trying to figure out where --

BREMMER: I shockingly actually get paid for this.

CAMEROTA: This is a hobby.

BREMMER: You look at it more closely than anybody. I think you believe the bigger challenge and the bigger question is what happens between the U.S. and China. The number one and number two economies in the world -- and I read that you used the world a possible Cold War is looming.

BREMMER: That's right. You know, as much as I believe that the softening economy in China come brearing the right now and the numbers for them do not look great is making Xi come bearing gifts for the Americans and saying, maybe wind down the clock to get through the 2020 elections and then I can deal with somebody else, somebody that's easier for me to deal with. That's their strategy.

And it may well turn out. It's panning out in North Korea, right? Maybe you pan out with the Chinese. But what we know is that the relationship between the U.S. and China, the players that matter is becoming much more factitious.

Why are we extraditing the CFO, the daughter of the founder and the Chinese have now put away two Canadians making it very clear that there is going to be a price to be. And they will keep taking these. Rule of law takes a hit in that environment. The Chinese are trying to lead the world in the roll-out of 5G technologies and they are putting a lot of money into emerging markets.

The Americans are now going to other countries around the world and saying we want you to ban Chinese 5G. And our allies are agreeing with that, the French are now reviewing. The Germans are now reviewing. So, one of the most interesting things in this Cold War and it came out of the G20 meetings in Argentina just a week was that it wasn't just the United States.

For all that our allies do not like Mr. Trump, they recognize that his policy on China is aligned with their challenges on China.

[08:25:07] And we're starting to see multilateral engagement squeeze Beijing, soon to be the world's biggest economy. That's a big challenge. Far bigger than what's happening in the U.S. and Europe.

CAMEROTA: Ian Bremmer, thank you for putting it all in perspective for us. BERMAN: (INAUDIBLE)

CAMEROTA: No, he really didn't. He seems cheerful.

BERMAN: He does.

CAMEROTA: Somehow.

Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. Federal prosecutors now investigating President Trump's inaugural committee, a pro-Trump super PAC. Was foreign money being illegally funneled through them? Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: A source tells CNN president Trump's inaugural committee is being investigated by federal prosecutors. "The New York Times" reports prosecutors want to know whether foreign donors illegally channeled money into the president's inaugural fund and a pro-Trump super PAC.

Joining us now is the former director of national intelligence and CNN national security analyst, James Clapper.

Director, thank you so much for being with us. You were director of national intelligence up through the inauguration, basically, and certainly during the campaign.