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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Michael Cohen's Stunning Testimony Released. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired February 27, 2019 - 05:00   ET

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

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: In a couple of days there would be a massive dump of e-mails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.

[05:00:07] Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of, wouldn't that be great.

Despite advance word, Michael Cohen would not talk about today's testimony that features heavily in these prepared remarks. Cohen claims that the president pushed hard for the Trump Tower Moscow project all during the presidential campaign, while saying publicly he had no business in Russia. Cohen offers his explanation for why.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: He will say, to be clear, Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.

BRIGGS: Cohen is also set to testify extensively about hush payments to Stormy Daniels. When the president was directly asked about the money last year on Air Force One, you remember, he denied knowing anything about its source.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Mr. President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, no. What else?

REPORTER: Then why -- why did Michael Cohen make this, if there was no truth to the allegations?

TRUMP: Well, you'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael's my attorney and you'll have to ask Michael Cohen.

REPORTER: Do you know where he got to money to make that payment?

TRUMP: No, I don't know. No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: But Cohen will tell the House Committee on Oversight he paid and that Mr. Trump wrote him a series of illegal reimbursement checks. Quote: He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair and to lie to his wife about it, which I did. Lying to the first lady is one of my biggest regrets. She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly -- and she did not deserve that.

ROMANS: President Trump making it to Vietnam, he never fought in the war there, of course, receiving a medical deferment. And Michael Cohen plans to share a conversation he had with Mr. Trump about that deferment when he testifies later this morning.

He's set to tell lawmakers: Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur but when they asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment. You think I'm stupid. I wasn't going to Vietnam. Cohen adds, I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now.

Basically, Cohen will be testifying knowing that the president is likely watching that testimony or at least reading and hearing about it.

BRIGGS: Yes. And the president is unnerved by all of this. He's commented to all of this on his preferred media which is Twitter.

The president saying regarding Vietnam, quote: I have never spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, his nickname for the senator. The third rate senator from Connecticut, how is Connecticut doing? His war stories of his heroism was a total fraud. He was never even there. We talked about it today with Vietnamese leaders.

How exactly did they talk about the Vietnam War with Vietnamese leaders?

ROMANS: Is the president mocking an American senator to Vietnamese leaders in Vietnam?

BRIGGS: That would be concerning given the deferments, given the nickname that Tammy Duckworth, a war hero and congresswoman, has given to the president, they have their own dueling nicknames. Hers is cadet bone spurs for the president. It would be stunning that on a foreign stage, with foreign leaders, he'd be mocking a United States senator.

But Blumenthal was dishonest about his service in Vietnam. He did though serve this country.

ROMANS: But the president of the United States famously has said his personal Vietnam was surviving the night life of New York City without getting an STD. And that's, you know, insulting, quite frankly, for many people who lost their lives or family members in Vietnam.

BRIGGS: A lot to comb through in these 20 pages.

Yesterday, Cohen was grilled by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed-door for nine hours. That is the very committee that Cohen lied to initially. Multiple sources familiar with the interview telling CNN he apologized for that lying during his 2017 testimony.

Here's what Cohen told reporters as he left the meeting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: I really appreciate the opportunity that was given to me to clear the record and to tell the truth. And I look forward to tomorrow to being able to, in my voice, to tell the American people, my story. And I'm going to let the American people decide exactly who's telling the truth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIGGS: The committee's ranking Democrat, Virginia Senator Mark Warner wouldn't discuss details of Cohen's testimony but did suggest the stakes are sky high.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA), RANKING MEMBER, SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE: Two years ago, when this investigation started, I said it may be the most important thing I'm involved in my public life in the Senate. And nothing I've heard today dissuades me from that view.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[05:05:05] BRIGGS: This is the adult committee, if you will, in Congress, on Capitol Hill, probably the one who has done the most bipartisan work when it comes to Russia investigation. So, they're going to determine how much of this is pivotal, how much matters. Mark Warner is not a flame-thrower. Not one to over-exaggerate words. That means a lot.

ROMANS: President Trump getting ahead of Cohen's testimony with a tweet, attacking him and his credibility from every direction, tweeting: Michael Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me unfortunately. He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the state supreme court for lying and fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He's lying in order to reduce his prison time using Crooked's lawyer, reference I think there to Lanny Davis.

BRIGGS: Lanny Davis, the attorney, who we also heard from yesterday, and will hear from throughout these three pivotal days on Capitol Hill that will likely be subject of many upcoming books.

Cohen also under attack from a high profile Trump ally in Congress, Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida, evidently threatening Michael Cohen on the eve of his public testimony. Gaetz has been called the, quote, Trumpiest congressman in Washington, tweeting this. And this is stunning, folks.

Hey, Michael Cohen -- do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot.

ROMANS: A sitting congressman --

BRIGGS: A United States congressman with what many law professors say is textbook witness intimidation.

Folks, just let that marinate for a while. That was a new low, even for a man who shouted down the father of a Parkland victim because he said President Trump's wall would do more to protect Americans than gun legislation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed to reprimand Gaetz, insisting comments like his make it harder for committee's to get truthful information. Gaetz then issuing an apology of sort, deleting the first tweet and posting a new one.

While it's important to create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was not my intent to threaten as some believe I did.

Now, let me just give you a little context. Initially, he sent up that tweet. His spokesperson said that tweet speaks for itself.

ROMANS: That's right.

BRIGGS: Gaetz went before cameras, was unapologetic. Clearly the wheels spun and someone in leadership got to him then the apology.

ROMANS: All right. Let's talk a little bit about Michael Cohen. We have -- we've made a mashup of sounds of things that Michael Cohen has said about the president in the past, showing just how stunning this reversal is, just how close he was to the president. What a fierce supporter he was of the president, listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: I will use my legal skills within which to protect Mr. President-elect Trump to the best of my ability. I protect Mr. Trump. I'll do anything to protect Mr. Trump. I'm obviously very loyal and very dedicated to Mr. Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: You know, he was a constant present supporting the president during the campaign. In so much of the video, you see him behind the president. You see him always there, a fixer, a fixture around the president. The president now trying to minimize things, he was just one of his attorneys. Clearly, this is somebody close to the president.

BRIGGS: Not many people spend ten years working for a man that they don't have a tight relationship. Michael Cohen reportedly saying he would take a bullet for the president. He would do anything for the president for those ten years.

And it appears that this relationship began to break down when Michael Cohen did not get to come to the White House as he expected. Some thought he was so confident that he might be considered for chief of staff or legal counsel. He was left out of the mix because someone decided this guy cannot be around the White House. The president made that decision and you see the investigation unfold from there.

ROMANS: All right. Michael Cohen's testimony before the House begins at 10:00. You can join CNN for live coverage and analysis all morning. We'll have more right after this break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:13:19] BRIGGS: All right. Welcome back to EARLY START, 5:13 Eastern Time.

Again, setting up this dramatic demeanor from former Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen, 10:00 a.m. this morning, when Michael Cohen will change the Trump presidency if he is to be believed. And a lot of this comes down to credibility. One liar versus another.

On the other hand, Christine, a lot of this comes down to direct evidence.

ROMANS: That's right. And there will be documents that Michael Cohen will bring to this committee. He will show a check that the president wrote as president reimbursing Michael Cohen for hush money payments to women that Cohen said the president had affairs with. That he wanted to be kept out of the public eye. And Cohen says he regrets lying to president's wife about them.

BRIGGS: And as for that one, we will ask Elie Honig, an attorney, what legal damage could come out of that first one.

ROMANS: It's also going to show some letters that he wrote at the president's behest that threatened Trump's high school, his college, and the college board, which, of course, runs the SAT not to release his grades or test scores. In his testimony, he will say the president was adamant that these never become public.

And the irony, Michael Cohen says, in the testimony, is that, you know, in 2011, Mr. Trump had criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades and he declared that Obama was a terrible student. But Trump went to great lengths never to have his grades ever shown.

Also, there's a whole section here about documentation showing that Trump arranged for a fake bidder to purchase a portrait of Trump at the end of a charity auction, reimbursing the bidder from his charitable organization, essentially buying it for himself and inflating the price with a fake bidder.

[05:15:06] BRIGGS: And that one comes down to the Trump charity which is under investigation. The Trump Foundation, just like is the Trump business, just like is Trump inauguration, just like Trump transition under investigation, presumably that evidence has been turned over to either the SDNY or the New York attorney general.

ROMANS: That's right. We haven't seen the president's tax returns and that's something that many of us have been, you know, hammering away at for some time now. The first president in modern history who has not shown his tax returns. We don't know what they show.

But there in this testimony, Michael Cohen is going to say that the president showed him what he claims is a $10 million tax refund. And he said he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him that much money back.

BRIGGS: That's certainly not evidence of tax fraud. Just the loopholes that could exist in the U.S. tax code.

ROMANS: It is more detailed how close Michael Cohen was to this president.

BRIGGS: There will certainly be questions about insurance fraud. We've heard something about insurance claims related to damage to Mar- a-Lago down in Florida. Just so many question that the House Oversight Committee will have today.

And when you talk about just the drama that's set up today, on one hand, you'll have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who never shies away from the spotlight. But on the other hand you'll have Jim Jordan, a Republican, who is a staunch defender of this president, will certainly attack every ounce of credibility of Michael Cohen he can. Now --

ROMANS: Yes. Let's talk to Zach right now. Zach Wolf is here joining us from Washington. He's the CNN politics digital director.

Zach, you've been listening to us chewing over the 20 pages of testimony here. The president's former attorney and fixer is going to go in front of the nation and call the president of the United States, a racist, a con man, and a cheat.

ZACHARY WOLF, CNN POLITICS DIGITAL DIRECTOR: It's an incredible thing that we're about to see. He's about to essentially finger him as individual number one, in this -- you know, in his own legal problems, say that he gave the personal checks to avoid being detected for those payoffs to women alleging affairs. He's especially going to spill the beans on the president.

I don't -- reading over this. My jaw was kind of dropping to the ground at the language he was using. You know, just -- and to sort of end it with the draft deferments while Trump is in Vietnam. You know he's going to be burning the midnight oil, watching this unfold as he's trying to meet with world leaders with North Korea's Kim Jong-un. This is an incredible moment we're seeing right now.

ROMANS: And Michael Cohen, it's almost as if he's speaking directly to the president at times in his testimony.

WOLF: That's right. He directly addresses him, it's like he knows president Trump, his former boss, this person he said he sacrificed so much for, he knows he's going to be watching and speaking directly to him. It's something.

BRIGGS: And a lot of this will come down to the documents, the evidence that Michael Cohen brings to this testimony. We've shown some of the elements.

But a lot of it comes down to the credibility. And do the American people believe Michael Cohen? And when we talk about that Trump Tower meeting in 2016 with Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, here's one of the pivotal questions of do you believe Michael Cohen? Does he seem credible?

Because he says, I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump in early 2016, something peculiar happened. Don Jr. walked behind the desk and spoke to the president in his ear. He said, I could clearly hear him saying, the meeting, the Trump Tower meeting with Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, the meeting is all set. I remember Mr. Trump saying, OK, good. Let me know.

What does it mean if that in fact is true, Zach?

WOLF: I think that would be a horribly damning thing if it's true. The problem is, it's very hard to prove, you know, we'll have Michael Cohen saying it. But there's sort of a difference between that and some kind of a paper trail.

You know, the White House has already been saying that Cohen's a liar. Cohen's admitted to lying. He admits in here to lying.

So, it becomes hard to believe him on some of these more pivotal accusations, I think. You know, at least that's what the Trump's -- President Trump's advisers and advocates will say.

ROMANS: We've been talking about some of the documents that will be presented today, including a copy of a check the president wrote from his personal bank account after he became president, to reimburse Michael Cohen for the hush money payments he made to cover up for Stormy Daniels. He's also going to bring copies of financial statements for several years that he gave to such institutions such as Deutsche Bank and other things here.

[05:20:01] How important are those statements, do you think?

WOLF: I was reading -- one interesting there is that these are apparently documents that show that Trump was inflating his net worth, apparently, to get on the Forbes list or to buy the Buffalo Bills, and that's different. Cohen is going to say apparently, or he plans to say that other times, when he was paying taxes, he would deflate his network.

I'd rather see the two kind of side by side. The smoking gun for me would be to see the tax returns.

ROMANS: Yes.

WOLF: We have him talking about that, but not seeing it. You know, "Forbes" has talked a lot about, you know, stuff that Trump has provided to them.

So, we know a lot about sort of the inflated worth that he's made. Those will be less helpful. But I think it will be interesting to take a look at them.

BRIGGS: Yes. And probably less important than some of the accusations that Michael Cohen will make, if in fact, he is to be believed.

Zach, how much does this change the trajectory of the Trump presidency potentially?

WOLF: That's a really tough question. And honestly, I'm not sure, at the end of the day, it will that much. It certainly puts a stain on everything that Trump is trying to do.

You know, we've been talking essentially about, you know, the hush payments. The Russia investigation, all of these things for a good part of the Trump presidency. It's already been stained by all of this. That's the first thing I would say.

And then secondly, as to whether or not this will affect his re- election which is perhaps more important at this point, you know, Americans already knew a lot of bad things about Trump when they elected him.

ROMANS: Yes.

WOLF: According to exit polls, they didn't really like him much when they elected him.

So, I'm not sure this is going to change that perception of him. It could certainly drum up more opposition. It could harden, you know, get more people excited to oppose him.

BRIGGS: So did people vote for a knowing racist, con man, cheat?

That is frightening but I think to the accusations of proving collusion, proving tax fraud, some of these investigations of New York and the SDNY, aside from the special counsel, Michael Cohen could change the consequences of this president. We will speak with Elie Honig about that ahead.

ROMANS: We will.

And we're going to take a quick break here, Zach. Don't go away. This whole testimony begins at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time. Just under 4 1/2 hours.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:26:55] BRIGGS: OK. In just a few hours, Michael Cohen will deliver bombshell testimony about President Trump to a House committee. But we already have a pretty good idea of what he's going to say. We've already obtained his -- well, frankly his jaw-dropping remarks.

Joining us from Washington, former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.

Elie, great to see you this morning.

ROMANS: Good morning.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning, guys.

BRIGGS: There's reference to a check that the president wrote, reimbursing Michael Cohen for payout to Stormy Daniels. There's also reference to the president being aware that Roger Stone was in communication with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

Through these 20 pages, what to you is the most potentially legally damaging for the president?

HONIG: Well, the strongest case, Dave, is made out with that check, with the campaign finance, the hush money violations.

I sort of went through. I saw six or seven different areas that if proven, if believed would make out liability, criminal liability by the president. The one where the proof is the strongest is those hush money payments. Cohen already pled guilty to this. We know that he said during his guilty plea that he was directed to do it by the president. We know DOJ signed on to that.

Now, we have financial documents and a check not just from the president's organization or foundation, but a personal check from the president while he was president in 2017. So, I think that's the most strongly supportive of the potential criminal conduct that's outlined in this opening statement.

ROMANS: All right. So glad to you have walk through this, again, this testimony, in just a few hours, these 20 pages certainly a bombshell.

Let's bring in Jim Sciutto. He's our chief national security correspondent. He's, of course, traveling with the president in Hanoi, where, clearly, this is on the president's mind if you look at his Twitter feed, Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It is. You know what's interesting here if you look at Cohen's statement is that we have been told that Cohen would not touch the subject of Russia during this testimony, that was off-limits in effect because of ongoing special counsel's investigation.

But there's a lot in the statement here that gets to the core. I mean, these are not small revelations for him. They get to the core of the question the special counsel has been looking into.

One is, did the president, then candidate, know in advance about those WikiLeaks releases? Cohen appears ready to testify that, yes, that Roger Stone told Trump in advance about them and that gets to the fundamental question of cooperation here. You know, there are some who will say foreknowledge of that as the president said is operation research, et cetera. But at the end of the day, that's getting a heads-up from WikiLeaks

which intelligence views as really an organ of Russia, as a middle man between stolen -- emails stolen by Russia with the intention of interfering in the U.S. election to help Donald Trump. It raises the question, Cohen is testifying this, does Robert Mueller have proof to back that up?

ROMANS: Right.

SCIUTTO: Does he have -- because Cohen says that there was direct communication between Stone and Julian Assange. Does Robert Mueller have electronic evidence of that? That's one thing.

The other thing goes to the Trump Tower meeting in 2016 where Cohen says that Don Jr., the president's son and candidate's son, let him know that meeting was coming, which, of course, makes a liar of the president.

END