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Don Lemon Tonight

Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, and Mike Flynn's Fate Numbered; Trump's Lawyer Trying to Cool Down Tensions; Mueller, Paul Manafort Lied About Contacts With Trump Administration Officials This Year; Incoming House Democrats To Revive Russia Investigations; Trump Lashes Out Against Mueller, Tillerson; Manafort, Cohen Filings Reveal How Much Mueller Knows About Workings Of Team Trump. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired December 07, 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: Thank you for watching. "CNN TONIGHT" with D. Lemon starts right now. There is a lot of news to unpack.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: What a week. This is like maybe two weeks in one day with everything that came out today, don't you think?

CUOMO: I know. I looked younger at the beginning of this week.

LEMON: You don't really want me to go there.

CUOMO: You can't bring yourself to say something nice, can you? You're still upset about the handshake thing, aren't you?

LEMON: What handshake? No, no, no, no.

CUOMO: That's how long the week has been.

LEMON: I know that I'm right. I just didn't want to -- I just didn't -- look, I didn't want to get too heavy about performative grace, right? Taking, putting the onus on the victim to be cordial to the oppressor or the abuser. That was my bigger point. It is not incumbent upon the Obamas to be cordial to the people who have oppressed them over racism.

CUOMO: It's true, but boy does it say a lot about them that they were.

LEMON: It does. It says a lot about them but I'm just saying -- listen, it says a lot about them because they are in a position of power and privilege because Michelle Obama can go out and again, this is -- can go out and sell a million books in one week.

CUOMO: Yes.

LEMON: The average person who is the victim of racism the way the Obamas were and other-ism the way the Obamas were cannot do it. They are dying in their own communities. They're being discriminated against. They're not getting jobs. So, in the same way that you would expect a woman who may be a victim

of the Me Too movement, and I'm not talking about, you know, abuse, physical abuse, that's another level, but someone who may be in their workplace, you wouldn't expect her to be cordial to the person who perpetrated it. So why do you expect the Obamas should -- they didn't have to. They did. -- should be cordial to someone who abused them in that way.

CUOMO: Your analysis is spot-on.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: And the only thing I ever added on it which is the right thing to add on, is that Obama acts a certain way in deference to the fact he is president of the United States.

LEMON: Right.

CUOMO: And he treats Trump in a way because of the office that he holds.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: And he put that above himself and that shows his selfishness that we don't see in the current president. Let me ask you this.

LEMON: Wait, wait, wait. Before you go on, why would you for an office, for something that is inanimate, why for an office for a person who has denigrated the office invited someone in who said the M.F. the person who's done the same -- the things about. You know, this president, another president who was accused of having an affair in the office? Why do we put so much, you know, clout into, everyone has held this office to a certain standard? No.

Until people are outraged by that treatment, until you stop -- because you take them -- they're off the hook for their behavior, and it allows them to continue without any ramifications.

So, if you tell someone you are not going to treat me that way. I do not have to accept it. I don't care about an inanimate office or something some --some notion that you have about what this office is when you're not treating -- I don't really -- I don't really understand that, and I don't buy that argument. I just -- I just don't.

CUOMO: I get it.

LEMON: It's a false argument.

CUOMO: I do.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: I believe in the presidency. I believe in the respect for it. But maybe it's because I went to military school. And you know, there were a lot of guys I hated who were superior officers of mine, but I had to respect the rank--

LEMON: Well.

CUOMO: -- because that was the formation of the layers of respect and efficiency of the organization.

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing, Chris.

CUOMO: But the presidency of the United States, you have to respect it because it has so much power and so much influence in our government.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: And if you don't respect it--

LEMON: You do.

CUOMO: -- if you debase it even the way the individual who occupies it does.

LEMON: They're not in the Oval Office, Chris. That's not disrespecting the office. Disrespecting the office is what this president does on a daily basis. It is not trying to make someone who has abused you, to make them comfortable.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: I totally get. What I'm saying is--

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: And so, that's it. And I think it's easy for you to be able to sit there and say that because maybe this president only offends your sensibilities. He hasn't offended you as a person who is LGBTQ.

CUOMO: True.

LEMON: He hasn't offended you as a person who happens to be a person of color.

CUOMO: True.

LEMON: He hasn't offended you as an immigrant in this country. He offends your sensibilities.

CUOMO: True.

LEMON: But for you, you can sit there and say that because this whole idea about an office, that doesn't matter when people are in real-life danger every way -- every day. And so, again, the Obamas, I commend what they did. I absolutely do. But the average person does not have--

(CROSSTALK) CUOMO: Would not have to do that--

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: -- they couldn't do that.

CUOMO: I totally get it. I totally get it.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: I'm just saying they were at George H.W. Bush's funeral.

LEMON: Right.

CUOMO: And to make it about something like that, to make it about something else other than that was also another layer of the assessment of where respect was supposed to be accorded. I want to ask you about something else. It's your show.

LEMON: Yes. By the way, before you go, if they had not done it, that's what the story would have been about.

CUOMO: Yes.

LEMON: So, they know it. Obviously, they had talked about it. So I think they made the right decision. But that was -- that was just right.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: You never give people who do you wrong--

LEMON: Right.

CUOMO: -- something to hold over you when they're supposed to be beneath you.

LEMON: Right. Go on. So, what do you want to know?

CUOMO: How surprised were you by how tough the Southern District was on Michael Cohen today?

[22:04:56] LEMON: I was very surprised because I thought when they said that he was -- and I think they wrote a letter, something of the sort, when they said that the information that he gave was so significant, that they recommended, you know, no prison time or what have you. That was for--

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: The special counsel.

LEMON: Yes. That was for Flynn. But was it for -- Yes, for Flynn. I get them all confused, there's so many. But I thought that because they recommended that, you know -- because they said that he had helped them out, they wouldn't give him a lot of prison time or wouldn't recommend a lot of prison time. I was actually surprised by that.

CUOMO: Yes. The special counsel. It's interesting because it showed us that while I've always assumed that the special counsel and the Southern District are going to be on the same page all the way down the line, they're not.

LEMON: They're not.

CUOMO: The special counsel said Cohen has been helpful to them. They want whatever sentence he gets for his crime of lying before the Congress to be concurrent, which means it runs at the same time so he doesn't get extra time. And they were a little lukewarm about not taking a position on his sentence the way they did in Flynn. But the special -- the Southern District threw the book at him.

LEMON: Well, and we should know that the Southern District is not playing, and that's where -- you know, we may think that Mueller holds the cards. Maybe it's the Southern District. Maybe there was a strategy in handing the Cohen thing off because then there are no pardons. People can be prosecuted in ways that they can't be federally. So, I would pay close attention to what happens in the Southern District.

CUOMO: True. But Southern District is still federal, so he could pardon him for it. If they were state charges brought up by the state of New York--

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: -- the president wouldn't be able to pardon. And even if he does pardon somebody, someone is leaving out in the analysis, you can't self-pardon.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: You can't pardon somebody to help you in an overt quid pro quo on an understood one. It's not as simple as some people may think.

LEMON: Well, I got to go because, you know, we got a lot of show.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: All right, my friend.

LEMON: But let me just say I think you were right when you were talking about the president. Listen, I think people who think this president is going to go to jail, they're going to realize, like, I'm not going to talk about Santa Claus. You know what I mean. Maybe they're not going to get everything on their Christmas wish list. Let's put it that way.

CUOMO: I don't think they will.

LEMON: Yes.

CUOMO: But I do just by getting to be with you, my brother. I love you, and I wish you a very good weekend.

LEMON: Have a good weekend. I'll see you on Monday.

This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.

Maybe it's the cover-up and the crime all at the same time. At the end of a week of bad news and worse news for this president, the walls are really closing in tonight on one of the biggest days so far in this Mueller investigation with one huge development after another rocking the White House.

But what may be the most stunning of all comes from the SDNY, the Southern District of New York, in its sentencing memo for former Trump fixer and keeper of secrets, Michael Cohen. OK? So please listen to this. This is from page 13. It's referring to the schemes to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and here's a quote that I have here.

"In particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with, and at the direction of individual one." You know who individual one is? Donald Trump. Prosecutors say those payments were meant to influence the campaign, which is a violation of campaign finance law. That's a felony. Listen to what former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal said just said to Chris.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEAL KATYAL, FORMER ACTING SOLICITOR GENERAL: Tonight, the Southern District of New York prosecutors, career prosecutors, and Trump's own Justice Department said, you know, in no uncertain terms, Cohen, you committed a felony, and the man who directed you to commit that felony is Donald J. Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: It is impossible to overstate how important that is. Here's the question. Now the question is what are they going to do about it? What are they going to do about it? And there's more.

In Cohen's sentencing memorandum from Robert Mueller, the special counsel makes it clear that his interest in the Trump tower Moscow project is not just about Cohen's lies. It's about Russia's influence in our presidential election.

Another quote for you. "The fact that Cohen continued to work on the project and discuss it with individual one," remember individual one is the president, "well into the campaign was material to the ongoing congressional and SCO, special counsel's office, investigations, particularly because it occurred at a time of sustained efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the U.S. presidential election."

And then there's today's heavily redacted Manafort filing. Mueller's office says that Paul Manafort testified to a federal grand jury twice in the past six weeks. Twice, which suggests prosecutors were using Manafort to build a criminal case against someone else. And then there's this from page nine of the filing.

[22:09:52] Quote, the evidence demonstrates that Manafort had contacts with administration officials. Manafort said in February 2018 that he had been in communication with a senior administration official up through February 2018," which raises a very significant question.

Why is Paul Manafort talking to people in the White House as recently as this year? But that's not the only thing we learned about the Mueller investigation today.

Sources telling CNN that White House chief of staff John Kelly has been interviewed by Mueller's team. The questions centering on Kelly's recollection of the president's reaction to reporting about how he had tried to fire Mueller.

Now sources say Kelly, who is widely believed to have one foot out the door, is not on speaking terms with his boss. You know who else doesn't appear to be on speaking terms with his former boss? The ex- secretary of state, Rex Tillerson.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REX TILLERSON, FORMER UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF STATE: It's challenging for me coming from the disciplined, highly process- oriented ExxonMobil corporation to go to work for a man who is pretty undisciplined, doesn't like to read, doesn't read briefing reports, doesn't like to get into the details of a lot of things, but rather just kind of says, look, this is what I believe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: And there's more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TILLERSON: The president would say, well, here's what I want to do, and here's how I want to do it. And I'd have to say to him, well, Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can't do it that way. It violates the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Don't forget, the president certainly hasn't -- Tillerson privately called him a moron. The president tweeting of course, tweeting, an attack on Tillerson, calling him "dumb as a rock, lazy as hell." Remember the president saying that he'd hire all the best people?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're going to make America great again. We're going to use our best people.

I'm going to get the best people. We're going to deliver. We're going to get the best people in the world. (END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: I wonder what like the worst people would be. I mean, can you imagine? What are the worst people? These are the best people.

The president hired Rex Tillerson, the man he now calls dumb as a rock and lazy as hell. He hired John Kelly, the man who won't even speak to him now. He hired Paul Manafort to run his campaign at the most crucial moment when he won the nomination.

He hired Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. He hired Michael Cohen who pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress in his testimony about the Russia investigation.

Do you want me to go on? Or, I mean, there are so -- I mean, I only have two hours tonight if there isn't more breaking news by the end of this. On and on and on. That tells you a lot about Donald Trump's judgment about people.

And here is something else, something else that calls his judgment into question. Remember what he said after the deadly violence in Charlottesville?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group -- excuse me. Excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Look at me. Very fine people on both sides. Very fine people on both sides. One of those very fine people was found guilty today of first-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer.

So, when this president talks about very fine people, all the best people, think about that. Lots to talk about on our big stories tonight. The revelations from sentencing memos tonight for Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort.

Mr. Shimon Prokupecz is here as well as Ms. Sara Murray. Good evening to both of you. I'm glad you're on, and I'm glad you're all safe and we're in the building tonight.

So, first of all, let's talk about Michael Cohen, Shimon. A major takeaway from the SDNY filing, is that he, the president is now directly implicated in a crime of illegal campaign contributions.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: And you know why the president, Donald Trump, is not charged in anything here? It's because he's the president, and the Department of Justice, as we all know by now, has essentially a governing rule, a governing law that you cannot indict a sitting president. If Donald Trump is not the president and he was a citizen, a regular

citizen, the U.S. attorney's offices of the Southern District would probably have indicted him.

The FBI agents who have been doing this investigation are political corruption folks, and they've been digging in on this for quite some time now.

[22:15:03] LEMON: Yes

PROKUPECZ: And you know, you talked about what the Southern District said. Look, Michael Cohen came into court essentially and said as much last time when he pleaded guilty. And when you look at what the Southern District -- you know, and we can show it again on the screen, and how they describe what the president here did in saying that in particular, and as Cohen himself has now admitted -- this is when Cohen stood up in court, sworn testimony -- with respect to both payments, that is, the hush money, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of individual one. Individual one, of course, is Donald Trump.

So, now this becomes a question of, as you said, what happens next. And really, ultimately, you know, up to members of Congress if they want to pursue this and where this goes next. But in terms of where the FBI can take this or where the Department of Justice could take this, it's really no further at this point.

LEMON: Sara, I want to bring you in now because President Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani of course is saying something tonight. He's speaking, he's telling CNN this. This is a quote. "When you look at what was revealed today, there's nothing that links the president to collusion with the Russians. So maybe that should fold up their tent -- they should fold up their tent, give a report to the Justice Department, and go home."

Nothing to see here. Move along. Let's get this over with. Let's go home. There's nothing here. OK. So, Sara, correct the record for us because we learned a lot of ways--

SARA MURRAY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

LEMON: -- that Trump is how he is connected to Russia in these filings.

MURRAY: Nothing to see here except kind of a lot. I mean, when we were looking at the Paul Manafort filing, for instance, you're looking at all the different things Paul Manafort allegedly lied to investigators about, and one of the big things he lied about was this guy Konstantin Kilimnik that he did work with.

This is a Russian national, someone that prosecutors believe has ties to Russian military intelligence and someone who is working closely with the former Trump campaign chairman.

And when you dig into the Cohen filing, when he eventually came clean with the special counsel's office, you know, came clean about lying to Congress, he shared that they had this Trump tower Moscow project in the works for much longer than they were previously honest about.

And he also comes clean about the fact that he spoke to Donald Trump about his contacts with the Russian government as well as potentially planning a time for Donald Trump, then about to become the Republican nominee, to go and visit Moscow.

And there was another Russian national that just got sprinkled into this Cohen filing that we saw from the special counsel's office that apparently reached out to Michael Cohen in November of 2015, Don.

Think about how early that is in the campaign, saying they wanted to help create some political synergy with the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and this person, who is not identified in the filing, even offered to set up a meeting with then-candidate Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. And it says Cohen didn't follow up on that invitation.

But you know, that's just an inkling of the ways that the people surrounding Donald Trump were in contact with the Russians. And of course, what we saw from candidate Trump and then President Trump was, no, nothing to see here. I have no ties to the Russians. No one in my campaign was in touch with the Russians. I have no business deals with the Russians. Not entirely truthful or accurate there, Don.

LEMON: All right. I appreciate both of you, guys, both of your reports tonight. Thank you so much. Lots more to come on tonight's revelation of the Michael Cohen and Manafort investigation. New York prosecutors, not Robert Mueller, the first to implicate the president in a crime. What does that mean for the investigation?

[22:20:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: An extraordinary court filing today ahead of Michael Cohen's sentencing next week for tax fraud and campaign finance crimes. The prosecutors saying Cohen made illegal campaign contributions to influence the 2016 presidential election in coordination and at the direction of President Trump.

I want to talk about this now with Jack Quinn, Garrett Graff. Garrett is the author of "The Threat Matrix." Also with us, Renato Mariotti. Good evening.

So, let's start with Mr. Mariotti. You know, you say that federal prosecutors are essentially saying the president committed felonies by directing the payments to Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal -- and Karen McDougal during the campaign. Does this mean they have the corroborating evidence to back that up?

RENATO MARIOTTI, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It certainly means they have more evidence than just the say-so of Michael Cohen. So, if you read that full document, the prosecutors trash Michael Cohen, make it crystal clear that they do not necessarily trust him or think he's the most truthful and upright person ever.

But then they very definitively make clear that Michael Cohen was directed by Trump to commit these crimes, crimes by the way that Cohen pled guilty for. He was charged and pled guilty for. And they also have citations in there that make it clear that the probation department, a totally separate arm of the government, also came to the same conclusion.

So, that's big news. Now it doesn't mean that they could necessarily prove it beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. But what it does mean is that that is where the evidence points to. That is their conclusion. And that is not Mueller. That is the Trump Justice Department making that conclusion.

LEMON: OK. So, you're a federal prosecutor. We have the Southern District of New York implicating the president in a crime. So, what do they do about it, because they answer, as you said, to the Trump Justice Department, to the attorney general. And the A.G. answers to the president.

MARIOTTI: Yes. It's pretty astounding, and you have to imagine right now that if Donald Trump is watching this, his steam is coming out of his ears, and he wants Matt Whitaker to do something about this.

But U.S. attorney's offices are pretty independent. And here you have the Southern District of New York, a very distinguished office that is doing its job and prosecuting this without interference. Frankly, that's a good thing for the rule of law, but there have been a lot of pretty unprecedented efforts by the president and his allies to obstruct and to undermine this investigation.

So, it will be interesting to see if that happens. I wouldn't put it past him once Trump realizes -- and his tweet didn't suggest that, but I think he has to have realized that things are starting to look really bad for him.

LEMON: So, Jack, what does it say? What does it say to you that the first accusation of a crime by President Trump is coming from New York prosecutors, not by, not from Mueller?

[22:25:03] JACK QUINN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I don't attach any particular importance to it. It does underscore a point Renato made that the Southern District of New York, perhaps more so than any other U.S. attorney's office, operates independently. It has historically been recognized as quite independent. It regards itself as independent of main justice.

I think the most remarkable thing about the filings regarding Michael Cohen were embedded in the special counsel's memorandum to the court. Which identified four separate areas of cooperation the special counsel is getting from Mr. Cohen.

And if you look at them, they're really quite remarkable in that each and every one of them should send shivers through the White House because they all identify different forms of connections to people who were in the administration, are in the administration, and talk about how Mr. Cohen is providing important information.

For example, at one point he talks about getting information from Mr. Cohen regarding matters core to the investigation. Core to the investigation must mean Russia/Trump campaign connections obtained from company executives, Trump company executives during the campaign. What Trump company executives were deeply involved in the campaign? That can only mean, I believe, the Trump family.

LEMON: Got it.

QUINN: And so, all four of these have signals like that, that have to be keeping people awake tonight.

LEMON: If you haven't read Garrett Graff's latest article in Wired, you've really missed it because here's a headline. It says, "The Mueller investigation nears the worst-case scenario." Nears the worst- case scenario. And you write how the innocent explanations from President Trump over the last two years are steadily being stripped away. Talk to me about that.

GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. Particularly when you look at the Cohen filings today and the Manafort filings, what we see are continued, extensive contacts between the Russians and the Trump campaign over a period that is even longer than what we had previously believed.

As Sara was saying, you know, as early as November 2015, you had Russians with connections to the Kremlin showing up and offering political synergy between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

And one of the things that this sort of begins to fill in some of the details of, that has always puzzled us, is that in the e-mails setting up that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting --

LEMON: Don Junior.

GRAFF: With Don Junior, the e-mail to Don Junior says, this is part of the Russian government support for the campaign. And we've never really understood what that meant, but it seemed to imply that there had been some ongoing support and that that wouldn't be news to Don Junior. And this begins to potentially fill in some of that.

And so what we have, I think, is we are steadily into worst-case scenario territory where it appears at the very least Russian intelligence was deeply involved and embedded and active on the periphery of the Trump campaign.

And, you know, the next couple of steps make it seem like there is no real difference between the business collusion that was taking place and the election collusion that was taking place as Jack just outlined.

LEMON: I want everybody to stick around. Michael Cohen isn't the only one in the spotlight today. The special counsel explaining in a filing why cooperation with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort fell apart. We're going to break it down next.

[22:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: In court documents filed today, Robert Mueller saying, Paul Manafort lied about five major issues after agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors. That includes lying about contacts with Trump administration officials this year. Back with me, Jack Quinn, Garret Graff, and Renato Mariotti. It's almost so much -- like the players say OK, this person -- wait -- which person who was accused of lying am I talking about here? It's hard to get -- keep up with it.

Anyway, I digress. Jack, let's talk about Manafort, this filing, about why his cooperation agreement fell apart, OK? Mueller's office is saying that Manafort lied about his, quote, contact with administration officials. Why is he in touch with folks at the White House as recently as this year?

JACK QUINN, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: That is a really important question. Why there were all these ongoing contacts and not just by Paul Manafort? But, you know, look. I think Paul Manafort was trying to have it both ways. I think, he was dancing with the Special Counsel at the same time that he was trying to keep his illicit affair with the President of the United States going.

LEMON: You know that never works, right?

QUINN: It never works. But, listen, to me, another really big curiosity in this whole thing is, why was Paul Manafort lying to protect Konstantin Kilimnik? Why was he resisting acknowledging that Kilimnik was his co-conspirator? This is just remarkable. This is a guy who, as Garrett said earlier, has been identified by our government as likely to be connected to Russian military intelligence. So why is Paul Manafort protecting him? And, you know, that question begs an answer.

LEMON: Garrett, President Trump likes to say that Manafort didn't have a big role in the campaign. I'm not sure if he was exactly a coffee boy. But he only, he is saying, you know, he worked for just a very short time and you know, didn't really do that much. That is not true. He was campaign chairman, played a critical role at the convention. So when we learn that he is talking to the White House this year that is a big deal.

GARRETT GRAFT, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's a big deal, especially when you begin to realize that he is been under indictment for about a year now.

LEMON: Yes.

GRAFT: Which means that for months after he was indicted as part of a $65 million money laundering scheme, even as he was engaging in other witness tampering involving, again, Konstantin Kilimnik, which Jack rightly points out is an incredibly odd, but very consistent pattern of lies stemming from Paul Manafort through this entire enterprise, that he is still engaging in conversations with the administration.

[22:35:22] That is surprising, and I think if I was someone in the administration and Paul Manafort was calling me, I'd be hanging up on him pretty quickly. So the fact that those conversations were ongoing is -- is troubling.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: You would give them a new phone who (inaudible). So listen, Renato, let us explain this Konstantin Kilimnik thing a little bit, OK? So, they say that they lied about the interactions with him. His Russian associate, who has ties to the Russian military intelligence accused of hacking the Democrats. And then they go on to say that they may have worked together to tamper with witnesses. So talk to me about the significance of this, Renato.

RENATO MARIOTTI, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Well, here you have an American and a Russian, an American being the former chair of Trump's campaign, you know, conspiring with a Russian to commit a crime. It's obviously serious, and it begs the question, what did they have to hide? Why does this Russian intelligence operative care so much about Paul Manafort that he is willing to risk himself getting in trouble to aid Paul Manafort? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

Also it doesn't make a lot of sense to me, why Paul Manafort felt the need to reach out to people in the Trump administration directly when his attorneys were talking to Trump's team. I mean the safe way to communicate when you're under investigation and certainly when you're under indictment is through your attorney to other attorneys. Those conversations could have been protected by common interest privilege.

Instead, he is going out of his way to talk to people in the Trump administration, about what? Like what are they talking about? Are they talking about a pardon? Are they talking about secrets that they didn't want the attorneys to know? You know, that is the obvious implication to me. So there's a lot of interesting questions raised here as to what he is talking about and why.

LEMON: Gentlemen, thank you. Have a good weekend. I appreciate it.

MARIOTTI: You too.

LEMON: Filings today giving greater detail about the Trump campaign's links to Russia. A big question now, what will the incoming Congress do about it? We're going to talk to a member of the House Intelligence Committee next.

[22:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Well, prosecutors say Michael Cohen has committed two crimes in coordination and at the direction of Donald Trump. What does this mean for the President of the United States? Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Denny Heck of Washington. He sits on the House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees. Good to see you. Did I do something? You hadn't come on in a while. Everything OK?

REP. DENNY HECK (D), WASHINGTON: I don't know if you heard about that general election that we had. We're all a little tied up there for a few weeks.

LEMON: You were just a little busy. Listen, it's going to have you on. Give me your takeaways from the filings today, will you? HECK: Well, aside from the obvious bombshell that the President is

now essentially an unindicted coconspirator in not one, but two felonies, there was the obvious reference to the ways in which Michael Cohen is cooperating, which suggests that a lot more is to come. And I think that anybody that thinks Director Mueller is near the completion of his task, probably isn't reading between the lines of the sentencing memos. I think there's a lot more to come. I think there are more indictments and I think there are more bombshells.

LEMON: OK. More specifically, do you think there's now enough evidence to prove that President Trump committed a crime, possibly even a felony?

HECK: Yes.

LEMON: OK. Why?

HECK: Well, because Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to it and because they named the President individual one, which I don't think they would have done in any way, shape, or form. They weren't required to reference the President, but they did so. And I have to assume that that is on the basis of significant and material corroborating evidence that they have collected.

LEMON: There is today stunning news through the Michael Flynn revelations that came out, so much new information about the Russia investigation. Your party is taking charge of the House come January. You will have subpoena power. What do you plan to do first?

HECK: Well, we're going to fully exercise our responsibility under Article 1 of the United States Constitution to provide a check and balance on the administration and to hold him accountable where appropriate. You'll see the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee on which I have the honor to sit, I think, try and tie up some loose ends that were left undone.

There are some pretty significant outstanding questions that we never got answers to. For example, we all now know about the June 2016 meeting between Trump operatives and family members and the Russian operatives. And we also know that there was a phone call made shortly thereafter between a member of the family and a blocked number. We've been trying to determine the source of that number for quite some time, but we received no cooperation either from the witnesses or from the majority party. And I'm just using that, Don, as one example of where we may be able to follow up and provide some information that is relevant to this investigation.

LEMON: Yes. Let me tell you something. This is about what your colleague on the House Intelligence Committee, Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier said. She told my colleague Brianna Keilar today that she believes Donald Trump Jr. lied to Congress on two occasions. Do you agree that he lied?

HECK: I certainly would like to have him back and compare and contrast some of the things he said then with some of what we know now. LEMON: So what did he lie about?

HECK: But to say I'm suspicious is an understatement. Well, listen, as I have said before with respect to that meeting, it is prima facie collusion. It's hiding in plain sight.

[22:45:00] The very fact that they would take a meeting and talk with Russian operatives on the promise that they would be provided dirt against Mr. Trump's opponent at the time, Secretary Clinton, is in and of itself collusion. And Mr. Trump Jr. repeatedly indicated that that wasn't the case. And yet we've had continuing indications that there may, in fact, have been continuing conversations and other evidence that would bear on this very question.

LEMON: I always appreciate your time and your input. Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Congressman Heck.

HECK: Thank you, Don.

LEMON: You know, with bad news from the Mueller investigation and a former cabinet official making harsh comments about his time in the administration, it's been a bad day for President Trump. And if his Twitter is any indication, he is feeling the heat.

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LEMON: So with the Mueller investigation flexing its muscles today revealing just how much they know about the Trump campaign and how much former Trump aides have told them, it was another bad day for the President. Let's discuss now. Michael D'Antonio, he is the author of "The Truth about Trump." Also Susan Glasser of "The New Yorker." Good evening.

Susan, I'm going to start with you. When you step back and you read these documents and you think about the fact that we are talking about actions taken by and involving the President of the United States, it is jaw-dropping. Have we become inured to the muck that this country has been dragged through for the last two years?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST, THE NEW YORKER: Well, I don't know if we can be into inured and have our jaws dropped. I mean, I'll tell you that I was just reading this document, and in a way.

LEMON: Well played, by the way.

(LAUGHTER)

GLASSER: I found a certain comfort in the legal probes, right? You know, the idea, I've always felt this way that, you know, there's a -- the legal system that we have in this country, it's like an armor protecting us from the Twitter news cycle, from the blandishment of these folks. It's laid out there in this sort of dry compelling probe, reading actually some of these legal filings tonight, and you are this stirring defense of the American political system. You have you at one point in the Michael Cohen -- one of the Michael

Cohen filings, you know, the Justice Department, whoever wrote this, the anonymous lawyer and author of this document has talked about how other Americans spend the lead up to the 2016 election volunteering in their community and helping to make democracy work, while Michael Cohen was working to subvert it and the basic principles of our campaign law.

It was a very stirring sentence to find in the middle of a legal document. So, I think that is something to take comfort in, but then you have this unfolding spectacle of the tweets and you know, even by the standards we've been living with of the last few years to have the President attacking his former Secretary of State, you know what that is like. He used the same epithet actually applied to Rex Tillerson that he is applied to you before.

LEMON: I know, I was surprised. I was like wow, I'm up there with Rex Tillerson.

GLASSER: You know. I mean, hey, you know, CEO of Exxon and former Secretary of State. Think about the Bush funeral.

LEMON: I'll take everything. I'll take the money, but everything else Rex Tillerson can have, including his time working in this administration. Listen, let's -- Michael, I printed out all the tweets from today, right? But the -- it ended with totally clears the President. Thank you.

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, right.

LEMON: What's he talking about?

D'ANTONIO: I'm 6'4", I've got a nice head of hair and I'm very athletic. I mean, this is crazy.

LEMON: The television today adds pounds and inches in hair. So, there you go.

D'ANTONIO: This is -- this is a collision of reality represented by the Southern District of New York and Robert Mueller and abject lying in the part of Donald Trump, but also all the people around him, and this is one of the shocking things that you alluded to at the start of this segment is that, we now have five major associates of the President of the United States, who have been found guilty or pled guilty to serious crimes.

And we've almost forgotten how to add this up and I think what Susan said about how we're blessed with this justice system is really true. We've got somebody keeping track of it all, because you need a team of attorneys to follow this President's craziness, and not only the lies, but also the suggestion of crimes, because we now have with the paperwork related to Michael Cohen. A very strong suggestion that the President participated in criminal activity.

LEMON: With campaign finance violations and on, but you know, there's campaign finance violations. OK, fine, but Susan, I mean, isn't there a real national security concern here? Because Michael Cohen told the Special Counsel about contacts between team Trump, the Russians going back to 2015, a trusted person in the Russian federation offering synergy on a government level. We're talking about serious national security situation here, right?

GLASSER: Well, that is right. And in fact, actually, there's a tantalizing I think and significant sentence in one of the filings today in which the Special Counsel's office says that Cohen has provided information that relates to the core part of the investigation involving Russia and the questions surrounding the 2016 election.

[22:55:07] The convergence between two different story lines is pretty striking. In the last couple weeks, remember, we found out that essentially the President was seeking to leverage his Presidential campaign to do business in Russia. And he had pursued for years the idea of a major project, a major building project in Moscow. It hadn't panned out and the fact that Michael Cohen is now admitting, admitting under oath, you know, to the Special Counsel that he called Vladimir Putin's office seeking help in that real estate deal while Donald Trump was campaigning for President. Remains to me, I think one of the signal breakthroughs in terms of our knowledge of this campaign.

That came out a couple weeks ago. So you add in the details today, but one other thing, I've got to point out, the level of breathtaking corruption by those surrounding the President of the United States is something that should be remarked upon. You know, these people were not just like petty criminals. Paul Manafort and Mr. Cohen, Michael Cohen were ripping people off in a massive scale. Tax fraud is alleged that he is now pleaded guilty to. Michael Cohen, you know, monetizing his relationship with the President and the Trump administration, $4 million essentially was paid to him after Trump became President, he was elected President, and he apparently it was all a con, according to the prosecutors in their filing today.

He was basically ripping these companies off and saying I'm going to provide you information and then not -- he didn't have anything to say about the repeal of Obamacare. Again, these are the people that the President surrounded himself with. You've got ask can any thinking person has got to ask, did he know about it? Was he unaware that his closest associates were criminals?

LEMON: Yes. Those are good questions. That is all we have time for. Thank you both. I appreciate it. We'll be right back.

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