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Don Lemon Tonight

Michael Cohen Drops 'Bombshell;' Trump Tower Moscow Deal; President Trump Criticizes Mueller Investigation, Falsely Claiming It's an 'Illegal Hoax;' President Trump in 'Terrible Mood, Spooked and Completely Distracted' by Michael Cohen Pleading Guilty to Lying to Congress. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired November 29, 2018 - 22:00   ET

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

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

[22:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: As we teach our kids and as Walter Scott explained perfectly, what a tangle web we weave when first we practice to deceive.

That's all for us tonight. Thank you for watching. "CNN TONIGHT" with D. Lemon starts right now.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: OK. So, it may not have been illegal, but it certainly shows you where his priorities were, right? At that point.

CUOMO: He just said it.

LEMON: If you -- yes. If want to be--

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: He just said it, I may have lost.

LEMON: I may have lost.

CUOMO: I was going to go back into the business. Why would I deny myself any opportunities?

LEMON: There would an opportunity missed. He couldn't pick up an opportunity a year later, two years later for a building?

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: He wanted to be in Russia. They'd been trying to do a deal for a while. He liked very much doing the Miss Universe there. He was enamored of Putin. He wanted to get in there.

LEMON: Chris, you can do that any time. There is no timeline on when you can build a building in Moscow. If your priorities are -- if your priority is to win the presidency, to do the business of the people of the United States, basically become an employee of you and me, the people of the United States, then why not do that? That's where your priorities should be.

His, according to him, his daughters, his sons are perfectly capable of running the business without him and if there -- if it even smacked some sort of impropriety or of some sort of collusion as he says then maybe he should have just not done it and wait until he figures out or until it's determined if he's going to be the president of the United States. There is no timeline.

CUOMO: Right. Right, of course that's what he should have done but he didn't want to do that.

LEMON: But he didn't.

CUOMO: And you say, well, the kids could have run the business. I don't think the president believes that. We don't even have any proof for all those papers they showed us that day, those mountains of trees that he had in papers, I don't know what was in those documents.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: I don't know he walled himself from any of the business. The reporting is he's still very much in the loop.

LEMON: That's what I was going to say.

CUOMO: What happens in the business.

LEMON: Yes. He's still running it.

So, hey, can we talk about Michael.

CUOMO: Sure.

LEMON: You've known Michael for, what, decades now, right?

CUOMO: I've known of him. I really got to know him through the campaign.

LEMON: Same here. It's weird because I was coming back from the beach here in New York one weekend. And he just called me out of the blue and we had a conversation, he's talking about, you know, the campaign, just general stuff as a reporter. And we started -- and so we developed this rapport where we speak occasionally.

So, today I spoke to him. Nothing specific that I would give away anyone's confidence or that would mean anything except for how he's doing and how he feels about what the president is saying, what Rudy Giuliani is saying about him.

And everyone, you know, the president is saying, he has no credibility. He's doing this because he wants a reduced sentence. Well, the fact is it's been reporting. You know as an attorney which is a 5k 1.1 motion.

CUOMO: The cooperation deal.

LEMON: The cooperation. He said he doesn't have a signed deal. But I think they will write a letter to the judge saying that the information that he gave to the special counsel was helpful in this investigation and that might help. He is no--

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: That's what -- that's what today did also.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: Bob Mueller putting his name on this pleading.

LEMON: Right.

CUOMO: Asserting that Michael Cohen was valuable and credible is very helpful to his cause. Which works for and against him in terms of public perception.

LEMON: Public perception, but what's the incentive, though, for him to lie right now? Why would he lie about the lies that he lied about?

CUOMO: None. He would be really reckless to lie to Mueller's investigators when he already has guilty pleas under his belt.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: I do not believe his counsel, which is highly competent, would have ever allowed it.

LEMON: Yes. Funny thing, though, I have to say, when I asked him -- I said, you know, Michael, I saw your face when you were going towards the cars and all the media was there. What were you thinking? I was thinking, where's the car?

CUOMO: I do not -- I do not envy his position.

LEMON: His position.

CUOMO: And, remember, all of this--

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: For us, this is winding up.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: Mueller's going to put out his report. We're going to see where it leads. We're going to see how much it offends the public's sensibilities and whether or not our Congress wants to take action thereon.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: That's where it ends for us.

LEMON: yes.

CUOMO: Not for Michael Cohen. That's where it begins because he's going to get sentenced in December, and then life as he knew it is going to be over for his family, his wife, his kids, for him, his business, everything is going to change.

LEMON: One thing I will tell you, is that we can sit around and discuss -- before I get to that point, you know, it's -- with this whole thing about him and how much, you know -- what he has to die about. I don't -- again, I don't understand why he would lie at this point, especially when you consider what this is going to do to this family and if he is caught lying then he is in the position of a man -- of Manafort, right, where he faces something that's much stronger.

[22:05:09] So, you know, that part I don't get what people are saying. The only thing that really matters right now, we can sit around in these groups, people can speculate on television, Rudy Giuliani can say what he wants to say, the president can say what he wants to say, the information that Michael Cohen gave to the special counsel, someone thought it was important enough and credible enough--

CUOMO: Seventy hours.

LEMON: And that's Robert Mueller. That's the only thing matters.

CUOMO: And remember why Mueller and his guys, the men and women on his team believe in what Michael Cohen is saying. It's not a personality contest. They have documentation of the same. So, they know what he can show.

LEMON: Right.

CUOMO: And that's why they have such high value on this. And, remember, Michael Cohen could have told them things that they've heard many times before. He could have just been corroborative of things. And see, that's the danger going forward.

There are two big takeaways for me from today. One, it's not over with Cohen and Mueller. There are a lot of things that he sat and bore witness to that he knows and remembers, he recollects and he can help Mueller with, at a minimum, even if he's not the main piece he can corroborate things for Mueller. Of that I am sure.

Second, this is not going to wind up in a trial. This is not going to be about a burden of proof. This is going to wind up being a political assessment of the president of the United States. And I don't know which way it comes out. That's why I always say to people, the idea that this report will injure the presidency in a very real way, I don't know.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: I just don't know that because the president is so insulated from prosecution.

LEMON: Yes. Well, if his answers, the written ones, are inconsistent with what Michael Cohen said and there is proof in the documents and with what we don't know what Robert Mueller has, if it's inconsistent with that, I'm not an attorney but I would think it would spell big trouble for the president because that means he didn't tell the truth.

CUOMO: It would depend on what.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: It would depend on what. Look, you're going to get him for lying. I mean, I'd be shocked if that doesn't come out in the report. I don't know about in the written interrogatories but it's going to come out because the man lies all the time, the president, so that's going to come out.

He has been Teflon to that kind of scrutiny in a way that I've never seen in any elected official ever to this point. However, one of the things that's very interesting and irony here, they dragged their feet with those questions. Months and months and months.

We will. We won't. How? How many? Let's negotiate. You know what Mueller was doing during all that time? Interviewing people. Learning more. Being able to put more into the questions. Being able to cross- reference more things.

And I'll tell you something, I worked at a great law firm. I was a student of some of the best minds in the business. Lawyers at this level do not ask questions they don't know the answer to.

LEMON: Yes. Well, I'm going to let you go, my friend, but I'll tell you, my friend, the late, great Aretha Franklin, what she used to say is lies on top of lies, and that's all that is. Thank you. See you soon.

CUOMO: All right, bud.

LEMON: This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.

Thanks for joining us, everyone. And this has been a really huge day in the Mueller investigation.

Our blockbuster news, the peptide's former fixer and keeper of secrets apparently not keeping those secrets anymore. I'm talking about Michael Cohen.

He's saying that he was lying to protect the president when he told Congress that negotiations to put a Trump Tower in Moscow ended before the Iowa caucuses. Cohen, as part of his surprise guilty plea today to a charge from Robert Mueller, now says those negotiations continued well into the presidential campaign until June of 2016.

He also says he discussed the project with Donald Trump himself on more than three occasions and briefed Trump family members working with the Trump organization. That means then candidate Trump was trying to do business with Russia in the middle of a campaign that Russia interfered in to help elect him.

And get a load of this detail, which sounds like it would be straight out of the Trump playbook. One idea for marketing Trump Tower Moscow was to offer Vladimir Putin the $50 million penthouse. That's according to Felix Sater, a Russian-born one-time business associate of Trump's who worked on the project with Michael Cohen. For what it's worth, Rudy Giuliani tells CNN the president never heard

about the idea, but Trump Tower Moscow was just one of the topics Cohen discussed in over 70 hours of questioning by Mueller's team. He's expected to continue cooperating with Mueller.

[22:09:57] But here's the thing that's got to have this president really, really, really rattled right now, the news broke after he turned in his written answers to Mueller's questions, including questions about the Moscow project.

And if the president's answers don't match what Cohen now says, that spells big trouble. Rudy Giuliani says there's no contradiction and we haven't seen those answers but Robert Mueller has.

The president reacting to all of this just about the way you'd expect because sources are telling CNN TONIGHT that he is, quote, "in a terrible mood, spooked and completely distracted." Which sounds about right.

A little over an hour after Cohen dropped his bombshell this morning, the president stood before the cameras on the South Lawn and did what he always does. First, deny.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He's trying to get a much lesser prison sentence by making up a story. So very simply, Michael Cohen is lying and he's trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Then backpedal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We were thinking about building a building. I guess we had in a form it was an option. I don't know what you'd call it. We decided -- I decided ultimately not to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: And then there is a formula here, and then make excuses.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Now here's the thing, even if he was right it doesn't matter because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, it has nothing to do with me, but I was thinking about doing it and deciding -- and decided not to and it doesn't matter because I could do whatever I wanted. Pure Trump. You know what else is pure Trump? Lying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: So, Michael Cohen has made many statements to the House, as I understand it, and the Senate. He put out a statement talking about a project which was essentially I guess more of less of an option that we were looking at in Moscow.

Everybody knew about it. It was written about in newspapers. It was a well-known project. So, he's lying about a project that everybody knew about. This deal was a very public deal. Everybody knows about this deal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, that is not true. The potential deal for Trump Tower Moscow never came to light until after Trump took office. Long after the deal was cancelled.

CNN did some digging and found that the project was first mentioned briefly in an article in "The New York Times" in February 2017. The details were few and far between until Cohen testified on Capitol Hill in August of 2017.

So, no, it was not a very public deal and it certainly was not public while Donald Trump was running for president, and that is because Trump never mentioned it.

Despite question after question about any involvement with Russia, on July 26th, 2016, he tweeted this, for the record, "I have zero investments in Russia." And the next day he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I have nothing to do with Russia. I have -- John, John, how many times do I have to say it? Are you a smart man? I have nothing to do with Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Not one word about the Trump Tower Moscow deal. In fact, he never mentioned it. Not once. In all the times he was asked about Russia during the campaign, after he was elected and after his inauguration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, CHIEF ANCHOR, ABC NEWS: You said you have no investments in Russia but do you owe any money to Russian individuals and institutions?

TRUMP: No. Will I sell condos to Russians on occasion? Probably. I mean, I do that. I have a lot of condos.

I don't have any deals with Russia. I had Miss Universe there a couple of years ago. Other than that, no.

We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to. I just don't want to because I think that would be a conflict.

I own nothing in Russia. I have no loans in Russia. I don't have any deals in Russia.

I had the Miss Universe pageant, which I owned for quite a while. I had it in Moscow a long time ago, but other than that I have nothing to do with Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: You're the one -- I don't have -- I could but I didn't because I think it would be a conflict. He said it right there. Listen to what happened when CBS' Norah O'Donnell asked then campaign chairman Paul Manafort about Russia back in 2016.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NORAH O'DONNELL, CO-ANCHOR, CBS: So, to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs?

PAUL MANAFORT, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: But that's what he said -- that's what -- that's obviously what the -- our position is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Just a little awkward. Yes, we got to play it one more time. Let's play it, please.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[22:15:01] O'DONNELL: So, to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with anyone Russian oligarchs.

MANAFORT: But that's what he said -- that's what -- that's obviously what the -- our position is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: That was really, really awkward. I still have no idea what he said there but that's -- doesn't that just sum all of this up, the whole day, just all of it? That's what he said -- that's what -- that's what -- I mean, if that's what he said that's what happened.

But as we always say around here, facts matter and as more facts emerge from the Mueller investigation, the real question is what will this president do? Lots to talk about. Laura Coates, Harry Litman, we're going to dig into it next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We knew it wouldn't take long. President Trump in Buenos Aires for the G20 tweeting tonight about the Mueller investigation. Quoting Alan Dershowitz, criticizing the investigation and falsely claiming it's what he calls an illegal hoax that should be ended immediately.

[22:20:00] Going on to quote Gregg Jarrett and calling it, wait for it, a witch hunt. Let's discuss now with Laura Coates and Harry Litman. Good evening. Laura, to you first.

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Hey, Don.

LEMON: The president has been reluctant to condemn Russia and it seems we may be learning why.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you're very generous about the word reluctant. It seems like all this time one of the main questions that Robert Mueller has had and everyone looking at the collusion investigation has been to figure out why would there be a foreign country, particularly Russia, that would think that they would have a receptive year to a United States campaign for the presidency?

Why would there be some inclination on their parts that they had a safe haven? And when you follow the money trail and follow whether or not somebody would be a mayor net or have some self-interests or financial ties, well, that might give you the motivation why, one, Russia would feel as though they have that receptive ear and why perhaps the president has acted, at least to the outward eye, that he is beholden to Russia and not criticizing them.

What you saw from this Cohen guilty plea, if we are to believe it, and certainly Robert Mueller who has much more access to information than we do and corroboration, if we're to believe what he has to say then Michael Cohen is telling you what that motive may be. That there may be that financial tie. Answering the question why they had a soft landing in the president's campaign.

LEMON: And you know what, Harry, I mean, clearly, Robert Mueller wouldn't accept Cohen story without corroboration. Do you think there could be some audiotapes maybe?

LITMAN: I don't know about audiotapes but you're certainly right about corroboration. We saw it this week with both Manafort and Corsi. Mueller had true evidence of what had happened. He questioned them and they refused to come clean and he -- and he severed any further relationship with them.

I think Laura is spot-on. And the Cohen deal exposes a whole sort of welter of personal, commercial and political connections between Trump and Russia. We're not exactly sure what is the point of acute vulnerability that he obviously was so concerned about in lying throughout the campaign.

But there's a lot of grist for the mill to think about. We have family members involved here. We have the lured allegations of the Steele dossier. We have at a minimum, his imperial ambitions to build the biggest building in Europe and all that might have entailed.

We have, as you reported, the potential fifth huge condo for Putin. There obviously another level of the story that basically will reveal, why was it so important to Trump and Cohen who was then lock add the hip with him to keep it quiet and under wraps?

LEMON: Laura, there is no other way to put it, the president lied today. The president claimed that his proposed Moscow tower was well- known during the campaign. That's simply not true. We only learned about the deal after he was elected. We've seen, you know, this song and dance before. What does it say that Trump is getting caught in another lie?

COATES: Well, this lie in particular is unique because, again, a lot of the lies you're talking about and misstatements or alternative facts, if they'd like to call it that, at some point in time have been made to the media, have been made to the American people, have been made with his Twitter thumbs, have been made through people who are his mouthpieces.

But this time we're talking about he actually has written these questions down. And one of the questions he was asked by Mueller according to our CNN reporting has been about that Trump Tower Moscow.

And so, as before, he had opportunities to backpedal, opportunities to clean up and sanitize his answers. Well, now that era of backpedaling is over because it's written in the pavement in front of Mueller's office. And now he can use that as a contradict to show whether or not the president has made -- not just misstatements but actually has made false statements to federal officials and investigators.

And now that era of backpedaling is done. The president is probably fuming, paranoid, confused, irritated, all of the range of emotions about it. But mostly, he's probably mostly concerned that his answers are now stuck with him.

LEMON: Written out. So, here's what I -- and that's the reporting that we have about this mood and the way he's acting. That's what the reporting shows, Laura, exactly what you say.

But what we learned -- Harry, what we learned from Michael Cohen today. Michael Cohen could have told, you know, Mueller that in just a couple of minutes. I mean, let's think about this. A number of this -- 70 hours, right? So, he say, OK. He knew about this. That we had this tower thing. That takes what, maybe two, three, four, five minutes max? But he spent more than 70 hours speaking to Mueller.

[22:24:59] He also worked for Trump for 10-plus years. I mean, what else could he have told?

LITMAN: Right. So, we certainly have a very rich account on the whole sort of dirty dealings side of Trump's period before he was a candidate and they are bolstered by the immunized testimony of the CEO of the Trump organization who was there all the way back to Trump's dad, Weissenberg, and by Pecker, the CEO at American Media. So, we have a lot of rich stuff here.

And yet this part -- I don't know percentage wise how much it was that Cohen told him, but there -- this is the discreet part of Cohen's involvement that really overlaps and forms part of the tangled web of the Russian connection. We have the re-emergence of the colorful character of Felix Sater, the Russian organized crime guy who said, buddy boy, we're going to make Trump president. And we have Cohen--

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: And we can orchestrate it. Yes.

LITMAN: And we can orchestrate it. We have Cohen saying, you know, pulling the plug on the Russia trip just at the time of the Trump Tower meeting.

So, I think you're right, that much of what he has told Mueller has much to do with the previous probably questionable transactions. But this is the one rich part, and as Laura says, this is a really important point that was filled in today.

We now know one of the questions was -- that Trump answered was about this point. And so, he is locked in. I mean, he was locked in also to the WikiLeaks point and locked in also to Steele, but he probably was able to hedge that. Here, no, he didn't know it was coming and he may, in fact, now be committed to a false account.

LEMON: Harry, Laura, thank you so much.

COATES: And you know--

LEMON: I got to run, Laura. Sorry about that.

COATES: Thank you.

LEMON: Thank you so much.

COATES: It's OK.

LEMON: All right. We want to know who put this deal together and when. My next guest has a lot of details about the players and the timeline of this Trump Tower Moscow deal and he's going to connect the dots for us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:30:34] LEMON: Tonight, a source telling CNN the President's in a foul mood, spooked, and completely distracted by Michael Cohen pleading guilty to lying to Congress in an effort to cover up Trump's knowledge of the Moscow tower project. Joining me now is Michael Isikoff. He's the co-Author of "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump."

Good evening, your book, wow. So let's discuss now. You know in this new filing by Michael Cohen, Cohen says that he was trying to protect individual one, that's President Trump. There is also individual two. That's Felix Sater, a Russian-born one-time business associate of Trump's. So talk to me about the -- about who this guy is and his role as it relates to Trump and that -- and Trump Tower Moscow.

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, CHIEF INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT, YAHOO! NEWS: Sure. Look, Felix Sater had been on the scene with Donald Trump for some years. He was a real estate adviser. He had a card that identified him as such. And he had a somewhat checkered past. He was a convicted felon who had been implicated in a mobbed up scheme on Wall Street and then turned government informant.

And in September of 2015, which is after Donald Trump has already declared for the presidency, he's -- the campaign is underway. Sater pitches this idea for the Trump Tower Moscow project to Michael Cohen. There's e-mails saying, you know, he shows that, you know, this is a way to help make world peace, bring Russia and the United States together, help get Donald Trump elected President, and for us to make lots of money.

That was clearly the prime motivation here. And, you know, the public story, the narrative from the Trump folks, starting with Michael Cohen after all this emerged, after the election was in January 16, Michael Cohen tries to get in touch with somebody in Putin's office, Dmitry Peskov, the Press Spokesman. Doesn't even know how to get in touch with him, calls up Maggie Haberman of the New York Times asking for an e-mail address for Peskov, she doesn't have it.

He finally sends it to the public address and never gets a response. That was the public story. In fact, we now learn none of that was true. The day after Cohen sent that e-mail, Peskov's office responds. There is somebody identified as a special assistant who wants to know more, takes notes, asks how the Kremlin, Putin's office, can be helpful in this project.

And then it goes on for six more months, all during the primaries, while Donald Trump is running for President, and saying kind things about Vladimir Putin. We now learn that he -- his business was in contact with Putin trying to secure this business deal...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: So...

ISIKOFF: There are talks about Trump flying to Moscow to meet with Putin as late as June...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: But there is also this, Michael. There is also this, because he's saying that the deal, he didn't know about it, right?

ISIKOFF: That Trump didn't know about it?

LEMON: Yeah. But he signed a letter of intent. He knew the type of deal could hurt him politically. Why would he lie?

ISIKOFF: Well, I think it's obvious why he would. But it's more than that. If you read the plea deal, Michael Cohen says he briefed Trump on this multiple times. You know, more than three times. And members of the Trump family, and we have reporting tonight from my colleague, Hunter Walker, about how Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. were very much involved in the plans for this project.

But the really stunning thing is that, you know, all of this was known to the Trump organization.

LEMON: Hmm.

ISIKOFF: The whole time the Russia story was blowing up. And, you know, the e-mails, the texts, they all had access to it. And they never said a word while Michael Cohen went to the Senate and brazenly lied about it and, you know, which he has now pled guilty to. And so, you know, just from a pure political damage control 101, the idea that you knew that all this damaging information was out there, and they did nothing to correct the public record.

[22:34:54] In fact, the President was saying, you know, as President I had nothing to do with Russia. As far as I know, nobody I was doing business with was in contact with anybody in Russia. It was all not true.

LEMON: All right. As we just say, a lie.

ISIKOFF: Yeah, well...

LEMON: Thank you.

ISIKOFF: I will let you say that.

LEMON: Thank you, Michael. I appreciate your time.

ISIKOFF: Anytime.

LEMON: Get the book, "Russian Roulette." Robert Mueller's -- he isn't the only Russia investigation, right? Congressman Eric Swalwell is here to talk about the House Intel Committee's investigation. With Democrats in power, how are they going to move forward?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So Robert Mueller's investigation isn't the only one looking into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Both the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees are also investigating. The blue wave now puts Democrats in charge of the House Intel Committee. Under the chairmanship of Devin Nunes, followed by Congressman Mike Conaway, Republicans on the committee focused on leaks and ultimately debunked claims the Obama administration improperly unmasked Trump associates.

[22:40:09] And then even though Democrats say listed -- dozens of witness they still wanted to interview, the committee shut back -- shut down back in March. Well, but come January, they're going to be back in business. So Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell, who is on the House Intel Committee, he joins me now. Good evening. I remember when that was shut down, you came on, and you were beside yourself, as were many Democratic Congressmen.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D), CALIFORNIA: I was pretty fired up, Don, but we're not powerless anymore.

LEMON: Yeah. You just heard your colleague say some of the witnesses who testified before the committee, that they -- that they lied. I am sorry, that's the wrong thing. So let -- you said earlier today -- sorry. That was wrong, sorry. You said earlier today buried, in the basement of the House Intelligence Committee, are pages of lies and testimony from Trump family and associates. Talk to us about that.

SWALWELL: So we have heard from dozens of witnesses from the Trump family, the Trump campaign, and the Trump businesses. And their transcripts are buried beneath the Capitol under lock and key. And Devin Nunes, every time we requested that those transcripts would be sent over to Bob Mueller and his team has blocked that.

And the reason we have requested that they be sent to the Mueller team is because we believe that there have been lies told to us, and that it would be important for the Mueller investigation to know about that.

LEMON: Do you think you'll be able to get those?

SWALWELL: Yes. So we're about 34 days away from a new Congress. And one of the first things that we're going to do is we're going to fast- track that testimony over to the Mueller team.

LEMON: All right. So listen. Your committee investigation ended on a pretty ugly note. What are you hoping for once it reboots in this new Congress?

SWALWELL: Well, first, to conduct the investigations the Republicans wouldn't and fill in the gaps. Not to be redundant. Not to seek a pound of flesh. But especially when it comes to following the money, we want to know about the prior personal, political, and financial connections that Donald Trump, his family, his businesses, and his campaign had with Russia to be able to look where we weren't able to look before, to subpoena Deutsche bank.

To subpoena the bank records, the cell phone records, the travel records that the Republicans wouldn't. Don, we ran a take them at their word investigation where they would come in, they would refuse to answer questions, and we weren't able to probe them any further. And many times, Republicans actually told them, you don't have to answer the Democratic questions.

If you want to get up and leave, you can just leave. That's the investigation we ran. Those days are over. We're actually going to do the job to protect our democracy.

LEMON: Well, the question is what is your ultimate power in this because -- and the -- I guess what is the outcome here, because you can get these folks back. And I am not sure if Michael Cohen's going to tell you anything differently than what he's telling Mueller. So then what gives here? What's the end game?

SWALWELL: Well, Mueller can only tell the public what he can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And so he's got evidentiary limitations. But that's not our, you know, that will not be our focus. We're not prosecutors. We want to make sure that in the 2020 election a foreign adversary doesn't interfere again. And the best way to make sure that doesn't happen is to understand how they did it before. So we can put those witnesses, you know, in front of our committee.

We can subpoena those documents. But most importantly, it's going to be a future forward-looking investigation to just make sure that this never, ever again happens to the -- our democracy.

LEMON: But it will also expose, if it turns out the way that you think it's going to turn out, right? It will expose your Republican colleagues for something -- for somewhat of a cover-up. Because that's what you're alleging, or at least...

(CROSSTALK)

SWALWELL: They covered up. They protected. They obstructed. And again, those days are over. Now, I can tell you, Don. We have already had meetings where Democratic members have all agreed that we don't want to go back in time. We don't want to hold a grudge. We want to extend a bridge to Republicans to join us. But we have a job to do.

And we hope that they hear the message that the voters sent this last midterm, which is they want a balance of power against so many of these abuses of power.

LEMON: Hmmm. Also in June of 2016, Felix Sater invited Michael Cohen to Russia for an economic conference, right, and then promised an introduction to the Russian Prime Minister and possibly even Putin. And Sater, he's been cooperating with the Mueller investigation for over a year, turning over documents and e-mails. What else do you think Sater knows?

SWALWELL: I've always thought that Sater is one of the most critical witnesses. And, Don, just to show you how the Republicans tried to prevent us from even interviewing Sater, they allowed Sater to be interviewed just a few days before Christmas in New York while we were about to have a government shutdown. So no Democratic member was even able to go to that interview.

[22:44:59] But what Sater knows is he knows about, not only the political interests that the Trumps had in getting dirt from the Russians, but about the business interests that they had at the same time as this campaign was taking place. And he extended that offer. Connect Trump and Putin. We can engineer this. And in his words, we can get our boy elected President.

LEMON: All right. Thank you very much, Congressman. I appreciate your time.

SWALWELL: My pleasure.

LEMON: Michael Cohen once said he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. But that's clearly no longer the case. The Trump family and loyalty, that's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:49:50] LEMON: So Michael Cohen once said that he would take a bullet for Donald Trump. But that was then. And this is now. Now, Cohen says he is guilty of lying to Congress out of loyalty to this President. And loyalty has always been very, very important to Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We could use some more loyalty. I love loyalty. Loyalty can be a wonderful thing. Loyalty is very important. I am loyal to a fault. I am loyal. Loyalty, you know, some of these people have like a 10 percent loyalty. Meaning if they sneeze in the wrong direction, they're gone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: What do today's developments say about loyalty in Trump's inner circle and the future of the Mueller investigation? Here to discuss, Frank Bruni from "The New York Times," and Michael D'Antonio, the Author of "The Truth About Trump."

Good evening, gentlemen. I mean he talks about loyalty. It is kind of laughable, don't you think?

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yeah. I mean any number of names could come up. But I was thinking for a moment of Jeff Sessions, the first Republican Senator to endorse Donald Trump back before anyone knew his campaign would go anywhere. Yeah, Trump was really loyal to Jeff Sessions. Where is Jeff Sessions now?

LEMON: Interesting. Michael, listen. Cohen was one of Trump's inner circle, right? He was in a core group that included the family. It was supposed to be bound by loyalty. Was today the ultimate betrayal in Donald Trump's eyes?

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think it was. But I think this has been obviously unraveling very slowly. The President's been aware that Michael Cohen is sort of a lost soldier. He's the (Inaudible) who has gone over to the side of the investigator, investigators, and prosecutors. And this is obviously very disturbing to the President.

But we all in our lives, you know, we get this choice, are we going to be loyal to an individual and do what' wants us to do at all times and take a bullet for him, or are we going to be loyal and true to ourselves and to some level of morality that is higher than personality. And I think, you know, one thing that you've got to say for Michael Cohen is he's made a really tough choice.

He's decided to be his own man. I think he wants the love of his family, and has decided, you know, I am going to try and do the right thing now and I tell the truth.

BRUNI: I am not sure I see it that sunny-lee. I am not sure Michael Cohen has decided to be loyal to morality and to do the right thing, per se. I think he's still acting out of self interest. I think he wants a lighter sentence. Trump is right about that. He's wrong that Michael Cohen's lying now. And we know that what

Michael Cohen is saying now about what happened from January 2016 to June in terms of the Trump Tower or the desire of Trump Tower in Moscow. We know he's now telling the truth because it's backed up by the documentary evidence that Mueller has.

That's why he had to plead guilty to lying to Congress before. But I don't think he has suddenly found morality and rectitude and public service. I think he is once again acting in his best interests and his family's best interests. And no one should begrudge that, but it's not...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Well, it's part of what he did say that he -- I think Michael did say that he's acting in his family's interests, which -- and, you know, today when the President said, you know, he wants a lighter sentence. Who wouldn't?

D'ANTONIO: Of course who, wouldn't, right?

LEMON: Who wouldn't want a more lenient sentence? But he does not have a deal with the special prosecutor, Michael, for a more lenient deal. And how it wouldn't behoove him to lie at this point and then go back and lie to the special prosecutor? Wouldn't that, in fact, backfire and lead to possibly a longer sentence?

D'ANTONIO: Right, right. Well, you're right, Don. He doesn't have a deal. And, you know, I do have a pretty sunny outlook on life. So I will cop to that myself. I am loyal to my optimism.

LEMON: People do find religion so to speak in these times. I mean honestly, they do.

BRUNI: Especially in prison.

LEMON: I am somewhere in between you two. I think maybe he started out, you know, the way you put it, Frank. And I think he may have ended up closer to the way you're putting it, Michael.

D'ANTONIO: Well, what's amazing to me is to think about how much Michael Cohen gave up to Donald Trump. So he was a young man who went to a law school that wasn't exactly Harvard or Yale. Trump gave him all these rewards and status probably before he was ready for them, elevated him very quickly. And he gave in exchange essentially his ethics, his morality.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: What is this favor Trump that was talking about? That he said he hired, Michael, he said he hired him today because...

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Well, not -- didn't hire him today but today, he said he hired him because he was doing him a favor. What's he talking about? D'ANTONIO: Oh, I think that's just silliness. I don't think there's

a specific thing. I think he hired Michael Cohen because he met him in real estate circles and in business circles. He saw that this was a guy I think who had written all over him, I am vulnerable to this. I will join into this, what is essentially a conspiracy.

[22:54:59] You know everything that Donald Trump did through his business life was to evade straight up competition. These are not people who wanted to go toe to toe with somebody. They always want to have an advantage. And that it's some way of gaming the system. And I think Cohen indicated he was ready to do that.

LEMON: In the short time I have left, Frank, I mean if that is indeed so, then it would seem that Donald Trump picked up on a weakness of someone and knowingly exploited it.

BRUNI: Totally. I think, you know, Michael mentioned he didn't exactly go to Harvard or Yale law school

LEMON: He said he was weak today, you know?

BRUNI: Yeah, no, well. I think what he did notice in Michael Cohen is someone who is not going to have this kind of life, who is not going to fly at this altitude for anyone else but me, and so he's going to be grateful, and he is going to serve me in the most subservient and differential manner.

LEMON: Isn't that what conmen do?

BRUNI: Well, yes. But that's why right now this is so tough for Trump. And that's why you can kind of sense that fury, because the whole point of Michael Cohen was someone who was always going to do what he was told. And he is now defying his master.

LEMON: Very interesting, thank you, gentlemen.

D'ANTONIO: As stressed out as Michael Cohen might be, this is quite a day for him, if you think about him standing up for himself.

LEMON: Yeah. Thank you. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)