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Michael Cohen to Testify that Trump is a 'Con Man' and 'Cheat'; Trump to Meet with Kim Jong-un Today. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired February 27, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:11] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, February, 27, 6 a.m. here in New York. And breaking overnight, a document, this document, that has the potential to redefine the Trump presidency.

While you were sleeping, CNN obtained this 20-page statement that Michael Cohen is prepared to deliver to Congress in public today. Cohen is the president's former lawyer and fixer and now a convicted felon, convicted for lying, so that hangs over what he will say today.

But what he will say includes a half dozen, maybe more, new allegations, each of which, in and of themselves, would be huge scandals, presidency-threatening scandals.

At the top of that list, a claim we have not heard in public before: that Cohen witnessed a conversation in July of 2016 where Donald Trump was told in advance that WikiLeaks was planning a massive dump of e- mails that would be damaging to Hillary Clinton's campaign.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Again, if you're still sleeping, now would be a good time to wake up, because Michael Cohen also plans to provide documents to back up his accusations.

Michael Cohen says he will provide the panel with a check that President Trump wrote to him to reimburse him for that payment to Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet about her alleged affair with Mr. Trump. This check was written while Donald Trump was president, and this puts allegations of criminal activity directly in the Oval Office.

Today, Michael Cohen plans to call the president a, quote, "racist," "a con man," and "a cheat."

So as Capitol Hill braces for this explosive testimony, President Trump is in Vietnam for his second summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. But Michael Cohen is clearly on his mind. The president has attacked his credibility early this morning on Twitter ahead of all of this public testimony that we're about to share with you.

So let's bring in Jim Sciutto, CNN chief national security correspondent; Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor; Garrett Graff, a CNN contributor; John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst; and Abby Phillips, CNN White House correspondent; and M.J. Lee, CNN national political correspondent. Oh my gosh, we have so much to talk to all of you about. So let's dive in.

Elie, let's just talk about, first, the jeopardy, OK, that -- that Michael Cohen is presenting. Here are some of the new things that will be presented in his testimony today, according to his -- the written statement.

He will say, "A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked Democratic National Committee e- mails ahead of time. The answer is yes."

And he then goes on to explain how he knows that Mr. Trump knew beforehand. And here is Michael Cohen what he plans to testify to.

"In July of 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump's office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on speaker phone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of e-mails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of 'wouldn't that be great.'"

Elie, tell us what you hear here.

ELIE HONIG, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: So Alisyn, I see six or seven different areas where if true, if proven, would make out crimes committed by the president.

And this is a good example, because with each of these separate areas, you have to ask to what extent is Michael Cohen backed up, corroborated, as the lawyer said? You can't really expect people to just take Michael Cohen at his word.

And so if you look at this incident, the first couple things that popped to my mind, first of all, get that phone record, right? Was there, in fact, a call from a phone number from Roger Stone into the Trump Org or Trump Tower? I would bet that Mueller or the Southern District has that. So that's an important piece of corroboration.

There's another piece of corroboration, though. If you think back to Stone's indictment, DOJ alleges that senior Trump campaign officials directed Stone to be in contact with WikiLeaks and, at one point, that one of those senior Trump campaign officials was directed by some unnamed person, and there's speculation about who would have been doing that direction.

So there's a good amount of corroboration for that allegation. And if it's true, Alisyn, then it gives us a direct connection between the president and foreknowledge of the president about the WikiLeaks dump.

BERMAN: This is the first time that we have had someone testify -- this will be the first time.

CAMEROTA: Under oath.

BERMAN: Under oath, that Donald Trump was told before WikiLeaks dumped the stolen e-mails that it was going to happen. And his response is, "Wouldn't that be great?"

Jim Sciutto, you've been covering this from the very beginning. You know better than anyone that the president has denied this. Denied this to the American people, denied it in conversations "The New York Times," denied it repeatedly.

This, again, if true, is new information, and it gets to exactly what the president was aware of in terms of stolen e-mails.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: And gets to the fundamental question of the special counsel's investigation. And that is, was there cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia as it interfered in the election?

And in fact, there are two incidents that Cohen is going to testify under penalty of perjury. Under penalty of further jail time today, he will testify, one, that Stone told Trump in advance about this WikiLeaks release, as you mentioned. The new -- the newest thing here is he is saying that there were direct contacts between Roger Stone, Trump's adviser, and Julian Assange who runs WikiLeaks. That's something we didn't know before. And if the special counsel has electronic proof of that -- remember the special counsel has enormous resources here -- if he can corroborate that, that is significant.

Also crucially on that point, we should note the president answered in his written questions to the special -- special counsel that Stone did not tell him about those WikiLeaks releases in advance. That would make a liar of the president under penalty of perjury. That's on the one issue. Advanced knowledge of the WikiLeaks releases.

[06:05:10] The other issue is this famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Michael Cohen says he will testify that he believes Donald Trump Jr. Told his father about that meeting in advance. He describes this encounter where Don Jr. comes behind the desk, whispers in his ear, "The meeting is on," and the president responding that he's happy that the meeting is on.

And so that would be two incidents where the president was aware of communications with Russians with WikiLeaks, which get, again, to the central question of the special counsel's investigation.

This raises the issue, does the special counsel have more than Michael Cohen's testimony to corroborate those incidents? Remember, special counsel has a lot of cooperating witnesses --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

SCIUTTO: -- who are very close and deeply involved in this campaign, Rick Gates among them. He has a lot of tools to gather electronic evidence of those things. This is a significant moment in the Russia investigation. CAMEROTA: Garrett Graff, you have a book called "The Threat Matrix,"

where you have been connecting these dots for us and everyone for months now. What do you see in Michael Cohen's testimony today?

GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, I think Jim is right to draw our attention to that summer timeframe. Because part of what is significant about the idea that the president might have been aware of the July release of the WikiLeaks, as opposed to the September and October fall WikiLeaks events, is that that changes the whole timeline for the summer and how these plots could have unfolded.

Remember, you have the late July comment that the president makes publicly that has always puzzled us, that has been cited in the president's -- in the special counsel's indictment of Russian military intelligence, saying, "Russia, if you're listening, please hack Hillary Clinton's e-mail."

Well, if we now have Michael Cohen saying that, prior to that conversation, the president knew that Julian Assange was posting or going to post Hillary Clinton's e-mails, that really changes the context of some of those conversations and incidents that we have long been suspicious of.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And don't forget that just two weeks ago CNN reported that the special counsel had evidence of Stone communicating directly with WikiLeaks. Something that's been widely denied both by the president and Stone and WikiLeaks.

So if that's true, this puts this testimony in larger context and potentially greater legal jeopardy, because there's evidence to back it up.

We know he's handing over evidence today, Michael Cohen, according to this advanced testimony, things we haven't seen before: from checks, personal checks from the president when he was president to pay off -- reimburse Michael Cohen for Stormy Daniels, to financial statements to Deutsche Bank, things we haven't seen before.

But this WikiLeaks piece is potentially is the most -- has the most legal jeopardy, has the highest stakes. And in the context of what CNN reported two weeks ago, there could be evidence to back it up.

BERMAN: Abby, you cover the White House every day. You know what the president has said about this. What do you see?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I think what you're going to hear from President Trump and his allies, obviously, is that Michael Cohen is not a reliable person on this, that he has a lot of interest in trying to implicate the president in order to lighten his load, lighten his sentence on the charges that he already faces.

But, of course, you know, the counterargument to that is that if he is lying in that way, lying to Congress and lying to the special counsel, he could make his situation worse. So he -- he is very much incentivized to not say something that is untrue in an attempt to lighten his sentence, then it turns out to be not true and then he gets -- he ends up being worse off.

But what these two elements, I think, really speak to that is problematic for the president is that from the get-go, I think there's a lot of disbelief that, in a campaign in which the president was the top -- obviously, the candidate, it was being run by his family members, essentially -- that he would somehow be completely out of the loop on major events that are going on. I think that's what this all speaks to.

The idea that Don Jr., his son who he's very close to, would somehow not talk to him about these moments was hard for a lot of people involved to believe. So many people are going to be inclined to believe Michael Cohen when he says that Don Jr. did tell the president at some point.

And then beyond that, that the president -- one of the president's closest confidants, Roger Stone, also would not have told him of some significant development in the campaign that, potentially, could have benefited him was also difficult for a lot of people in Congress to believe and a lot of people analyzing the situation on the outside.

So there -- there's a lot that Michael Cohen is presenting here that isn't -- that doesn't seem far from the realm of possibilities. Now whether he is prove it --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

[06:10:04] PHILLIP: -- seems to be a much different situation. And, frankly, a very, very -- I think a very high bar. I think he's going to have to really show the goods here on what he has that could actually to corroborate this information.

CAMEROTA: And supposedly, he is bringing along some documentation. But I think that this today is going to require people -- the general public's critical thinking, and they're going to have to decide who they believe today.

Both Michael Cohen and President Trump, frankly, have a history of lying, as we know. It's been well-documented by the fact checkers. And so people are going -- when they hear Michael Cohen they're going to have to use their critical thinking skills and decide who they think has a bigger motivation to lie today.

AVLON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: The president or Michael Cohen.

And by the way, let's remember that the lies that Michael Cohen told in the past were in the service of getting Donald Trump elected. They were on the same side. I think this is also important to remember.

AVLON: Correct.

BERMAN: That's what he says in here.

CAMEROTA: For most years, they were on the same side, so they were both lying in tandem.

AVLON: That's right. And that's why I think it's really important to -- I assume that the American people are adults enough and citizens enough not to simply do a "he said, she said." Because the "who benefits?" question is dramatically different.

And who -- people who have switched their stories over time lie the second time when facing jail time 100 percent? This is someone who now has nothing left to lose, and he's presenting evidence. And this evidence answers a lot of questions that were screamingly obvious in the past, because he's the insider, the guy in the room who now seems to be telling the truth.

BERMAN: Well, let's actually bring in a new piece that Michael Cohen is introducing here that gets to the issue of evidence. Because he puts new meat on the bones when it comes to the payments that Stormy Daniels and says things we have not heard before again.

This is P-141 first. He says, "He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair and lied 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. She did not deserve that."

First of all, this is also the first time that he directly says that the president had the affair with Stormy Daniels. Before --

CAMEROTA: It was alleged, yes.

BERMAN: -- he had said it was alleged and all that.

CAMEROTA: And they were trying to --

BERMAN: So he says they had an affair. He said he lied to the first lady.

Then he goes into much greater detail. He will present to the committee today, we are told, a check written by the president of the United States for this payoff. This is 139.

"As Exhibit 5 to my testimony shows, I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank 14 (ph) account on August 1, 2017, when he was president of the United States."

While he was president of the United States. OK?

"Pursuant to the cover-up, which is the basis of my guilty plea, to reimburse me -- the word used by Mr. Trump's TV lawyer -- for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf. This $35,000 check was one of 11 check installments that was paid throughout the year while he was president."

M.J., again, you covered the Stormy Daniels issue from the beginning, as well. The president wrote a personal check to Michael Cohen that he will present to Congress today. Cohen also testifies that the president, again while he was president, talked to Cohen about these payoffs.

M.J. LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, John, this hush payment piece of this is just so incredible and on so many levels.

I mean, first of all, just the quote that you read from the Cohen testimony. You're absolutely right, that we are now going to hear him say in public, on the record in front of cameras for the first time, that Donald Trump asked him to pay off this adult film star that he had an affair with. And then in addition to that, again, just worth restating, asked him to lie to his wife about it.

I don't know that you get a bigger sort of personal betrayal than this, when you're bringing the extramarital affair that we have been talking about this whole time as sort of the alleged extramarital affair. Well, Michael Cohen is now telling the world, "No, this is a thing that happened, and not only did it happen, he wanted me to be involved in paying her off so that she would say quiet. And in addition to that, the president wanted me to lie to his wife about it as a part of this bigger cover-up."

So that is just incredible on its own.

And then the details of it, too, that he is stating for the record that these repayments, these reimbursements came personally and directly from the president. And he's going to present evidence of it, this $35,000 check that we have been talking about for a while now in the context of this hush payment scheme. He's going to sit there and say, "Look at this. This is a check that I have with Donald Trump's signature on it that shows that President Trump was essentially paying me back while he was in the Oval Office, in the office of the presidency." That is just incredible.

And if I could just say one more thing, just in the bigger picture, too, about this idea of the personal betrayal. I mean, it is not just about the extramarital affair and the, you know, asking to lie to the first lady about it. I mean, there's so many other details here, right?

[06:15:07] Michael Cohen hitting the president for being a person of immense greed. There are details about Michael Cohen being asked to help hide from the world Donald Trump's SAT scores and his grades in school.

And then, of course, the Vietnam detail that -- in the very end, where he says, "Mr. President, I find it ironic that you're in Vietnam right now when you and I had a conversation about you not wanting to serve." And he said that Donald Trump told him, "I didn't have surgery. Just tell the world that there was some sort of medical procedure." And also, quote, "You think I'm stupid? I wasn't going to go to Vietnam."

I mean, there's so much in here, and I assume that Michael Cohen is going to get the chance --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

LEE: -- to talk about all of this in such great detail that really just gets to Donald Trump's character.

CAMEROTA: And M.J., in a moment of cosmic synchronicity that we could not have staged, here is President Trump arriving at the hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam, obviously, for his second summit with Kim Jon-un. You can see his motorcade arriving.

It's all just so -- I mean, look, we've pointed out that there's a split screen all week, but this split screen here, where Michael Cohen is talking about what he had to hide about President Trump's deferments to actually fight in Vietnam, and what he now suggests was made up bone spurs.

BERMAN: Do we still have that picture, if you could pull it back up? It was interesting to me they were pulling a curtain there as the president was arriving.

One of the things I think we need to watch for throughout the morning here is there are moments where cameras will be allowed near the president, where will be having dinner with Kim Jong-un. They'll have a quick little meeting, a handshake.

Jim Sciutto, I know you're watching this very closely over the course of the morning. Reporters will be near. I imagine there will be questions, not just about this North Korean summit, but questions about these new revelations for Michael Cohen's prepared testimony today.

SCIUTTO: Yes. There will be, and of course, a press conference tomorrow.

But think as the president pulls up there, to meet with the leader of North Korea on a primary, arguably the primary immediate national security threat to the U.S., and that's North Korea's nuclear weapons, this we know from his tweets, they're public, that this is on his mind. Cohen's testimony is on his mind.

And we know that the president in the past has commented that the larger Russia investigation has been brought up to him by other world leaders when he sat down with them to discuss issues of consequence. And he feels that that's damaging to him, damaging to his standing, that he's had this hanging over his head when he's had those meetings.

So here the president has something enormous hanging over his head, his long-time lawyer and fixer to testify to issues central to the Russia investigation. It is difficult to imagine that that is not inside his head as he is faced with what is an enormously consequential summit here to these nuclear questions.

And a summit which the president enters with challenges, a whole host of advisers around him lowering expectations about what he can achieve here, but also his advisers telling us, my colleagues and me in advance of this meeting, that they're concerned that the president might go too far with the knowledge of what's hanging over his head. That he might be pressured, pressure himself to make a headline here to distract from what's happening back home. And his own advisers have the concern that, in doing so, he might give

up too much without concessions from the North Korean side. So he -- the president and his advisers might like to separate these two things happening today, but, boy, they're not separate.

CAMEROTA: They're interwoven --

SCIUTTO: You know, it's hard to imagine it's not inside his head.

CAMEROTA: -- at the moment, as we can see right from our screen.

AVLON: And that was always part of the Trump's design to try to see if the hostile foreign power could overwhelm the headlines that would come out of Cohen's congressional testimony. Now that we've seen the testimony, we think that it actually won't, that this actually has more impact.

But the point Jim makes is really crucial. As we look out in the, you know, real geopolitical history-making moment of the summit, has a president ever gone into a negotiation in this scope in a weaker, more needy position because of the revelations coming out at home? Because he needs to make a deal to come out and to compete with this news. And the people across the table will know that.

So that's the context in which this negotiation's beginning, and it really hammers home the seriousness of the job he's embarking on.

BERMAN: And again, we will be watching throughout the morning each time there is a public appearance between the two leaders very carefully to see if the president does respond to this. He already has on Twitter.

CAMEROTA: And we'll bring you all the news, obviously, whenever there's any news made in Hanoi. We're watching it closely, and we will bring that to you.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, I want to bring you back here, again, as we look at this 20 pages, a remarkable 20 pages filled with new revelations here.

Can one assume that Michael Cohen has testified to all of these things already to the special counsel and the Southern District of New York and the 70-plus hours? I've lost count of how many hours that he's talked to them and testified to grand juries.

Has everything in here already been said under oath under penalty of perjury before? That's one question. And do you think that he would -- that the special counsel and/or the federal lawyers will have to some extent approve of going public with these claims?

HONIG: So yes and yes, John. Look, the way cooperation works, and I've been through this --

CAMEROTA: Elie, hold on just one second. I just want to let people know what you're seeing. This is Kim Jong-un's motorcade. It has just arrived at the hotel where he will be meeting with President Trump. We just watched President Trump's motorcade arrive a few moments ago. And here is the curtain, John, you have referenced that will be pulled aside so we can see some things.

BERMAN: I don't know. I don't know that it will be pulled aside.

CAMEROTA: We don't -- we just don't know.

BERMAN: What I'm suggesting is they're probably trying to limit, and that was the full extent of our coverage.

CAMEROTA: The visibility.

BERMAN: So that is the only tape we've been given of this right now.

CAMEROTA: Here we go.

So we may see Kim Jong-un getting out, or we may just go right to a flag shot when they don't want us to see --

BERMAN: To be clear, these are pool shots that -- that are put out from the ground there, and we're only being given certain things here, certain views. And we will only see when they want us to see. Go ahead, Jim.

SCIUTTO: I was just going to say, that curtain is -- is a security precaution. It does not have to be related to the Cohen challenges, et cetera. You will often see that on arrival, because it prevents a, you know, potential attacker from getting a view of the principals, the president, or Kim.

And Kim, in particular, I will note, in the last 24 hours, at the demand of his security team, a whole host of reporters that were in that hotel where he's staying that had a view of his arrival, the departure were removed because of that very issue, just so they wouldn't get a vision of him.

So that curtain and the inability to see them as they arrive, not necessarily related to the -- to the prospect of being asked uncomfortable questions.

CAMEROTA: That's helpful.

SCIUTTO: More likely a security precaution.

BERMAN: All right. We're looking at a live picture right now of a stage where, very shortly, we will see the president and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un.

And Elie, we've got about a minute before that happens. If you could finish the answer about what the special counsel will have heard already in terms of this testimony from Michael Cohen.

HONIG: Mueller and/or the Southern District have to know all of this. When you're cooperating with somebody, you sit with them for days on end, it's a painstaking process and you get everything they know. There's no way that they would clear this or vet this.

And there's no way, frankly, Michael Cohen's lawyer, who's smart, would allow him to go -- to go in front of the cameras and in front of Congress today and say this unless it was fully vetted.

And the keyword today is going to be credibility. The Republicans are going to do what every criminal defense lawyer I've ever seen has done to one of my cooperating witnesses at trial, which is call them a liar. Keep track of how many times today the Republicans call him a liar.

What I think we should be doing as the general public is looking for does what Michael Cohen say make sense? Does it jive with things that we've seen before? And to what extent is he backed up by other evidence?

We've gotten a sense of that in the opening statement: the checks, the other records and documents that he's brought up. And remember, this is just an opening statement. We're just getting started. There's going to be a whole lot more coming out today.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Garrett Graff, I want to warn you that we may have to interrupt you when we see the president and Kim Jong-un together for the first time here. That may happen in about a minute, we're told.

But in the meantime, remember, as we all do, that explosive BuzzFeed story that said that the president had directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. That will come up today. And, in fact, he is going to address it.

He is -- this is what he's going to say: "Mr. Trump did not directly tell know lie to Congress. That's not how he operates. In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there's no business in Russia; and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie."

So, Garrett, that was such a, you know, headline-grabbing moment when it sounded as though there was going to be an overt direction to lie to Congress. And this is much more subtle of Michael Cohen saying he got the message. And I'm wondering what you think about that testimony that he'll say?

GRAFF: Yes, and this sort of perfectly explains and is consistent with the BuzzFeed reporting and then the special counsel's unprecedented denials, saying that they don't have evidence of that. Which is not to say that Cohen sort of didn't feel that way, that he had been instructed to lie. It's just that the -- the special counsel did not have evidence of a direct overt act, as you said.

This is sort of the "Who will rid me of the meddlesome priest?" question, which is -- which is if Donald Trump and Michael Cohen have worked together long enough, he doesn't necessarily say -- need to say, "Hey, Mikey, I need you to lie about this," because they sort of understand each other's roles. [06:25:07] And really, this is what Michael Cohen was supposed to do

for Donald Trump for a decade. You know, he was the fixer. I mean, that's not a title you get because you're doing sort of totally obvious things. And remember, we've sort of seen this interaction, actually, with the president in the recordings that Michael Cohen released last summer, where he was talking about those hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels. And you hear Michael Cohen basically saying, sort of summarizing, "You know, Mr. Trump, I'm going to do that thing that we talked about."

And Donald Trump says, you know, "Well, OK, Mike, you go ahead and do the thing that you need to do." And sort of they both know that what they mean is, you know, "We're going to pay the hush money to Stormy Daniels," but there's not a direct conversation that we hear on tape with that happening.

BERMAN: Can I make one addendum or addition to what you're talking about in terms of the BuzzFeed article and whether or not the president directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, which Cohen says he did not.

Cohen does say say, though, that the president's personal attorney reviewed and edited his prepared testimony. And again, he may not have just committed perjury when he spoke out loud to Congress. He committed perjury in the statement he provided beforehand. And that statement was reviewed, says Michael Cohen, by the president's personal attorney.

Elie, you're the attorney among us. Does that put the personal attorney in any kind of jeopardy here? If they edited it, were aware that Michael Cohen was going in there with dishonest statements?

HONIG: You hit on the key point. If the attorney was aware that that was false, 100 percent that attorney's on the hook for obstruction of justice, for witness tampering, for suborning perjury.

And John, there is corroboration. DOJ has already, to an extent, signed onto Michael Cohen's version of facts. When Michael Cohen pled guilty to giving this false testimony, in his plea documents and in his sentencing documents, DOJ said and certified that Michael Cohen provided information about, quote, "the circumstances of preparing and circulating his false testimony."

So preparing and circulating. What that told me at the time is, other people who were involved in reviewing this. Other people were involved in putting this lie forward, and now Michael Cohen says that at least some of the people who were being alluded to there were Trump's personal attorneys.

CAMEROTA: Abby, this can not be a pleasant or comfortable day for the people around President Trump. You know, obviously, they know all of this is happening. They have been reading Michael Cohen's written statement that he prepares to give. And it's just going to be hard, I would imagine, for them today to figure out the -- how to thread this needle when all this is happening on Congress. What are you hearing?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I think that there are two things happening here.

One, it's that the president is obviously thinking about this as he's going into these high-stakes negotiations. It's on his mind. It's potentially affecting his mood, not just with his aides, but in the context of this conversation with Kim, whereas Jim rightfully pointed out, it makes the president much more eager to get a deal. I think people looking at the situation have always understood that to be the case.

But the second thing is that we have been hearing from White House aides a sense that they believe that Michael Cohen would not necessarily present anything blockbuster or particularly new in this public hearing. It seems that that is not the case.

And that, if you were one of the aides trying to convince the president that this was no big deal, you're probably in some hot water right now, because obviously, this is a big story. Obviously, Michael Cohen is coming out here with information that he believes is -- is going to be new and is going to break some new ground, at least from the public. And that is going to hurt the president in, I think, a major way as he goes into this.

BERMAN: All right. We're about to see very shortly as the president and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, we are told they are going meet here very briefly.

CAMEROTA: We're told they're walking in the room as we speak.

BERMAN: Shaking hands, and then they will attend this dinner. Incidentally, we're told that the dinner was a problem, because they were trying to figure out what the menu would be; and the White House was insisting on a very simple menu. Here they are.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, what do you hope to achieve when talk to the chairman?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it will be a very successful, great relationship. I think it will be very successful. We look forward to it. We both do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you walked back at all (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

TRUMP: No. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, are you going to declare an end to the Korean War, sir?

TRUMP: We'll see. Thank you.