The Daily - Tuesday, Apr. 17, 2018

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

For months, the federal investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia focused on Washington. Now, the inquiry has led back to New York, the president’s hometown, and to one man: Michael D. Cohen. Guest: Jim Rutenberg, who has been reporting on Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. For months, federal investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia have been focused on Washington. Now, the investigations have led back to New York, the president's hometown, and to one man, Michael Cohen.

It's Tuesday, April 17th. Mr. Trump is an incredibly smart guy, you know that, And graduated top in his class at Wharton. If I ask you, if you think about it, what is really the United States of America? Now, most people would probably immediately reply, oh, it's a country. Yes, and of course, that would be true. But if you think about it, it's also a company. And if you compare the president in a business sense, the president would be a CEO. Who better to make America great again, to make this company what it needs to be than Donald Trump?

Not only is Donald Trump not a racist, he believes that all people are part of one race, the human race. I think he's a wonderful man. I think he's going to be an amazing president. Donald Trump is, in fact, a great unifier. He's a man of great intellect, great intuition and great abilities. And I've worked for Mr. Trump now for a long time. And I can tell you that Mr. Trump's memory is fantastic. And I've never come across a situation where Mr. Trump has said something that's not accurate. Seriously? Yes, seriously. Jim, how did Michael Cohen and Donald Trump first meet? Well, in a way, it's an unlikely pairing, and in a way, it just makes all the sense in the world.

Jim Rutenberg has been reporting on Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen is a one-time personal injury lawyer, and he has bought apartments and helped his family buy apartments in Trump Tower. Reveres Trump from the get-go. And he basically helps Trump solve a problem. The problem is that Trump has an unruly and uppity condo board that is challenging Trump's authority. Michael Cohen, as a resident, picks Trump's side, contradicting his own fellow tenants.

Like, talk about drama in your condo board politics. New York City, we've thought we've seen it all. And he takes Trump's side, stages a coup, and delivers Trump the desired result and kills this uprising against Trump within his own building. And there's no better way to earn Donald Trump's loyalty

than to take his side, especially when money's at stake and it involves his real estate empire. So Michael Cohen, resident personal injury lawyer, basically puts down a rebellion on a Trump condo board. That's the first real interaction they have. Yes. And eventually, Trump brings them into his office and offers them a job.

As? Well, that's a good question. He's a lawyer, but to this day, it's a little bit of a mystery. What we know is he's a fixer. He's going to help solve problems. He's a consigliere. We know is he's a fixer. He's going to help solve problems.

He's a consigliere. What do we know about where Michael Cohen is in his career when he joins the Trump team? Well, he's in a lot of things. But what's really intriguing is he is in the taxi medallion business. The taxi medallion is what New York City taxi drivers need to have a license to pick up passengers. These things are worth a lot of money. You're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. Each. Each.

And he is in a business that has scores of them. So that's a lot of money. He's in real estate, too, in a big way. Again, those Trump Tower apartments that he's collecting, you know, those are pricey. And, you know, on top of all of this, he was a personal injury lawyer, right? So, again, successful personal injury lawyers make a lot of money. So, there's a lot of cash running through Michael Cohen's world. But a quality of personal injury lawyers is that while they make a lot of money, they're not known as the most by-the-book lawyers,

the most kind of polished attorneys. No, and that's why there was actually a joke on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Looking for something, Mr. Cohen? Robert Mueller? Why don't you have a seat, Mr. Cohen? When Ben Stiller, playing Michael Cohen, is asked, Is your name Michael Cohen?

Yes. And you're a lawyer. Ish. And that's kind of the understanding of Michael Cohen. He's not a traditional lawyer, you know, and this becomes very, very important in terms of where we are now. So what would Donald Trump in this moment, when he gets linked up with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump, in this moment, when he gets linked up with Michael Cohen, what would Trump have represented to this personal injury lawyer slash taxi medallion owner, Michael Cohen? Donald Trump is the embodiment of success to Michael Cohen. Donald Trump is this uber billionaire real estate developer, possibly the greatest negotiator in the history of this planet. This is American success. Trump's this kind of guy.

They're like guys from New York. They bond over that. And they're the same kind of guy from New York, you know? Meaning? Well, scrappy, but successful. Scrappy, but rich, right? And still kind of from the streets, like street brawlers who somehow found a place in America's highest sort of economic echelon.

And maybe you're starting to get at this, but what did Trump, who's at the pinnacle of his success, see in Cohen? This is an intriguing question. And what it really is about is Donald Trump learned at the knee of Roy Cohn. Donald Trump had a fateful first meeting with a New York legend. In a very down moment, Donald Trump went to a nightclub in Manhattan called Le Club, where he happened to meet Roy Cohn, who was famous for having defended Senator Joseph McCarthy back in the 1950s and the communist hunting days.

The ultimate New York City fixer. Really good at it, by the way. In that very first meeting, Cohn laid out for him his philosophy of how to fight back in a lawsuit, how to fight back against a federal investigation. And that was to hit back 10 times harder. Trump is looking for a guy who can help him with zoning problems, building problems, permits. Trump needs people who fix problems. And he misses Roy Cohn. From McCarthy to the mobsters he represented, Roy Cohn was a battler. He was tough, often downright nasty, in court or on CNN's Crossfire. — I said that.

— According to a book I've read. — Well, read another book. — So here comes Michael Cohen, and he slides into that role that Trump has been looking for. We know that Trump says this even more recently because he's in the White House. Where's a Roy Cohn? I need a Roy Cohn. You know, Michael Cohen, for the better part of two decades, was that person. Michael Cohen becomes the new Roy Cohn. Yeah. So these men see in each other, Cohen and Trump, something that they both need, that they're both looking for. Yes. And I think for Cohen, it's less of a need than a desire, right? Like Cohen

doesn't need Donald Trump. He's making money in his way. But this is making it for Michael Cohen. At this stage, given the line of work he's in, Donald Trump would have already been surrounded by a lot of different lawyers and probably a lot of different types of lawyers. So how exactly does Cohen fit into this constellation of attorneys that Trump works with? Well, right. So Michael Cohen is not his lawyer on the Atlantic City bankruptcies. Michael Cohen is not his lawyer on the building he wants to build on the east side. So that's where his role becomes sometimes more mysterious.

Okay. So he's not doing the big legal work of, you know, building contracts. He's not doing the kind of mergers and acquisitions kind of stuff. He's not doing the highly technical legal work that a giant real estate empire like the Trump organization needs. And so what kind of work does that put in Cohen's portfolio? Well, that's where you get threatening people who need to be threatened and cajoled and, you know, some legal work, sure. Is Cohen known for actually making threats? I think I've seen him deny he does, but he does.

He also told reporters in 2011 his role is to fix any problem. If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck, note the imagery, and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished. And in fact, he's clearly proud of it. In all fairness, who hasn't said something or done something that they regret? Simply trying to protect somebody that they care about. And I care about Mr. Trump, the Trump organization, the children. There was a situation during the campaign when the Daily Beast was going to write a story

that he very much didn't want them to write about Donald Trump and his first wife, Ivana Trump. And the quote, I'll read it because it has its own poetry. So I'm warning you, tread very f***ing lightly because what I'm going to do to you is going to be f***ing disgusting. You understand me? So that sounds like a person who very much does threaten. Revels in the role. He's an enforcer, a fixer, you know, it just goes with the whole persona. We'll be right back. So you signed and released a statement that said,

I'm not denying this affair because I was paid in hush money. I'm denying it because it never happened. That's a lie. Yes. If it was untruthful, why did you sign it? Because they made it sound like I had no choice. I mean, no one was putting a gun to your head. Not physical violence, no. You thought that there would be some sort of legal repercussion if you didn't sign it. Correct. As a matter of fact, the exact sentence used was, they can make your life hell in many different ways. They being? I'm not exactly sure who they were. I believe it to be Michael Cohen.

It's the summer, 2016, and a porn star named Stormy Daniels appears on the scene with the story she's trying to sell that she had an affair with the president some 10 years earlier. And it fell to Michael Cohen to figure out how to fix this. And so what he did was it happened that he knew the lawyer who represented Jeremy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, Keith Davidson. And they're able to work out an arrangement. But there's a campaign going on, right? So they have to be very careful with this arrangement. But there's a campaign going on, right? So they have to be very careful with this arrangement. And the arrangement is, as the whole world knows now, $130,000 to Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, for her silence. So that part's done. Problem solved.

And around the same time as Stormy Daniels, this woman, Cara McDougal, former Playboy model, says, I had an affair with Donald Trump around the same time. And she's looking to potentially sell her story. She ends up in front of the Inquirer. The National Inquirer. The National Inquirer, owned by the company called American Media Inc., which is run by a very close Donald Trump friend, David J. Pecker, who runs the largest tabloid news company in the country. And the inquirer proceeds to do what's called a catch and kill. Right, which we talked about with you. Which we've talked about now. It's a very commonly known phrase. It wasn't at the time where they buy her story and in a deal for $150,000, agree to kind of give her some exposure and her new role as a sort of fitness expert. and she will not talk about the affair during the campaign.

Cohen, who should not have had anything to do with that deal between Karen McDougal and the Enquirer. They are the two parties in the deal. The president and his lawyer are not part of that deal, officially on paper. Cohen talks to AMI during that process. AMI acknowledges it talked to Cohen during that process. And the other thing we know is Karen McDougal's lawyer at the time, Keith Davidson, who was also involved in the Stormy Daniels story, so he represented both women around the same time,

had been in contact with Cohen at least at the deal's conclusion, and we know that from our own reporting. So our understanding is that Cohen orchestrates a deal to silence Stephanie Clifford and advises another entity, in this case, American media, and how to silence another woman, Karen McDougal. Yes. All we know is there was communication. I have to assume that actions like this, you know, solving the problem of an affair that could become public in a presidential campaign,

making sure it stays quiet, that those have to be seen as the ultimate act of loyalty. Yeah. I mean, how more loyal do you get? And by the way, in doing this, Michael Cohen has now walked himself into huge trouble with federal investigators. We're getting some news that's a little bit startling here that the FBI earlier today raided the office of the president's longtime personal lawyer. The feds say he is under criminal investigation. Agencies disloved documents, including some related to Michael Cohen's $130,000 payment to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Let's talk about that. How has this work, the work that Cohen's been doing in his role as an attorney for Trump,

how has it become the subject of so much federal scrutiny? Because the feds look at someone like Michael Cohen, it's as close to Trump as you could possibly get, especially during that campaign period. So you want a way at him.

And so actions like what he did for Stormy Daniels gives them this opening. And it shows you that he is really in the thick of some, let's face it, some unseemly stuff about covering up news during a political campaign. But what else? What do you mean what else? Well, so in the current investigation, it will be campaign finance violations. It will be potential bank fraud or wire fraud. That's what the investigators are looking at. But there's really no way to say

where it leads. We know they're interested in those taxing medallions. Why? And why? There's a lot of money in those taxing medallions. But is it all in the service of some larger legal goal for prosecutors? It's to get really inside this guy's world. And then it's going to put some pressure on him because if they And then it's going to put some pressure on him because if they find something that's unrelated to Donald Trump, but really problematic for Michael Cohen, then we could assume there will be pressure on Michael Cohen to either face some really serious federal charges or maybe cooperate. It sounds like what you're saying is that investigators are hoping that they're going to find a way to break this most loyal aide to Donald Trump and essentially flip him?

It definitely appears to be in the mix. Let's put it that way. And I suppose there's precedent for this because the president has many very loyal former aides who in one way or another now seem to be talking to the special counsel. But none as loyal as Michael Cohen. And none, I would say, as knowledgeable about certain aspects of Trump world as Michael Cohen. From your reporting on this, Jim, does the idea of flipping Michael Cohen seem at all plausible? Does Cohen remain as loyal as he would have when Trump first brought him on all those years ago when he was a starry-eyed young lawyer?

I mean, I don't know about you. I've trained myself to be ready for anything in this presidency. So I think you have to say yes to that. It will be astonishing because if you look at what Michael Cohen says about his loyalty to the president. I'm obviously very loyal and very dedicated to Mr. Trump.

I like to keep myself in that little circle of extremely loyal people. He does. And we will do what it's necessary to protect him in the office of the presidency. So it will just be a huge deal. It will be dramatic on an interpersonal level, but much more importantly, it will be very consequential for a federal investigation, opening the door to the entire Trump organization. And that's why our colleagues wrote over the last

couple of days that the president's legal team is far more worried about Michael Cohen than other aspects of the Russian investigation. Even the special counsel? It sounds that way. What would it represent to Donald Trump if Michael Cohen were to cooperate? To me, it would have to feel like the bottom falling out because he's so central to Trump world. Not Trump world in Washington, but Trump world in New York, which is really- Like home. Like home. Yes. Right. In other words, in a very real way, like the one secure place in Donald Trump's world right now would be not secure at all. His Roy Cohn now potentially flipping

and also having his own files about Trump breached. There's no overstating how serious that is. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. Thank you. On Monday afternoon, Michael Cohen appeared in court in New York seeking a restraining order on behalf of himself and President Trump

to stop the government from reviewing the documents that were seized in last week's raid, citing the attorney-client privilege of his clients. During the hearing, a federal judge demanded that Cohen reveal the identities of those clients, in addition to Donald Trump. Among them was Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and an outspoken supporter of Trump. In a tweet, Hannity said he had occasionally discussed legal questions with Cohen,

but had not formally hired him as a lawyer. The hearing ended with the judge denying Cohen and Trump's request to block the government from reviewing Cohen's documents. Here's what else you need to know today. We support strongly the work of the OPCW fact-finding mission that is currently in Damascus. But that mission is only able to make an assessment of whether chemical weapons were used. Western leaders are accusing Syrian and Russian officials of blocking weapons inspectors from reaching the site of an alleged chemical attack by the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Even if the OPCW team is able to visit Douma to gather information to make that assessment, and they are currently being prevented from doing so by the regime and the Russians, it cannot attribute responsibility. The inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons arrived in Syria on Saturday. But as of Monday, they still had not reached the town of Douma, where about 70 people were killed in the alleged chemical attack on April 7. Once they reached the site, the inspectors planned to take chemical samples and interview victims so that they can publicly report which chemicals were used. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.