The Daily - Why Michael Cohen Lied to Congress

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

President Trump’s former lawyer has pleaded guilty to lying about Mr. Trump’s business ties to Russia and has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation. It’s the second time this week that a subject of the inquiry has been charged with lying. Guest: Michael S. Schmidt, who has been covering the special counsel investigation 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, Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying about the president's ties to Russia and agrees to cooperate with the special counsel. What it means that a second subject of the Russia investigation has been charged with lying this week. It's Friday, November 30th. Mike, what happened in August of 2017?

What was extraordinary about this week was how ordinary it was. The Russia investigation heated up again. There was a shakeup week was how ordinary it was. The Russia investigation heated up again. There was a shakeup in the White House, again. Congress couldn't get anything done, again. There are all of these questions about ties between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia. Capitol Hill, the intelligence committees in both the Senate and the House, are looking into these accusations, these issues. What was really going on between Russia and the campaign?

In the course of that... But with the president's son-in-law now under intensifying microscope, his personal lawyer now part of the mess... Everyone in Trump's orbit is sort of hauled up to Capitol Hill to answer questions about what they knew. New reporting on the president's personal attorneys now being asked to provide sensitive information to the U.S. Congress. They want to speak with Michael Cohen.

House and Senate investigators have asked him to testify about any contacts he had with people connected in any way to Moscow. Cohen lashing out, claiming a lack of evidence to corroborate the Russia narrative, labeling the investigation a total fishing expedition and accusing lawmakers of a rush to judgment. So Michael Cohen, like the others, engages with the Hill and tries to provide them answers to the questions they have. With Cohen, there were a lot of questions. If you had to make a list of who you didn't want speaking to investigators or to Congress, Michael Cohen would be near the top of

the list. His name was in the dossier. There were allegations in there about meetings that he had had with Russians. And there was an even more specific business question about what they called the Moscow Project. And what was the Moscow Project? The Moscow Project was a deal that the Trump organization was working on to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. And in response to the questions from the committees, Cohen lays out three claims about this effort. He says that the efforts to do the project ended in January of 2016

and were not extensively discussed within the company after that. He says that he never agreed to travel to Russia trying to finish this thing and didn't consider talking to Trump about it. And finally, Cohen says that he was not in contact with the Russian government about the project. Okay, so with that in mind, what happened on Thursday? Okay, so with that in mind, what happened on Thursday? Michael Cohen went into a courtroom in lower Manhattan and said those things he said about the Moscow Project were not true.

All of them? He lied. About all of it. He walks in and says, on these three issues, I lied about the Moscow project because I wanted to try and protect Donald Trump. Donald Trump was under investigation for his ties to Russia. And if I went out and said, yeah, we were trying to build a tower with them in the middle of the campaign, it was not going to be helpful to them. So I was being loyal. And this is why I told them these lies. So what are we learning is the truth of what really happened in those three claims that Michael Cohen made in August of 2017. We now know that the discussions went on for at least six months longer than he said they did. About this Moscow project.

Based on his original story, the discussions happened before the Republican primary begins. We don't know why he lied about that. But if you're trying to spin this, you could say, look, we were talking about this, and then we realized we were running for president and we put this aside. Not sure that would hold up. But now with what we know today, the discussions went on through the primary up until the point that he was clinching the nomination. It went on longer than we thought it did. He discussed it several times with the president

and even talked to the president about traveling to Russia. Talked to Trump about the possibility in the middle of the presidential campaign of going to Russia to negotiate a real estate project. To complete the deal. And Cohen was indeed in touch with Russian government officials about this. He was talking to the government about it. At the end of the day, the deal never went

through. The tower was never built. But Michael Cohen did lie about it. Mike, why do these lies matter? What exactly do a set of lies about building a tower in Moscow have to do with the Russia investigation and its central aims, which are to understand what Russia did and why it did it and whether anybody around the Trump campaign was involved in it. Well, we still don't understand why is it that Donald Trump and Russia came together? And does this begin to answer some of that? Well, how would it? Well, Trump is running for office. His business is trying to do a deal with the Russian government. His fixer is working on it. And Trump has a platform where he can praise the Russian government and promote pro-Russia views. Wouldn't it be great if we actually got along with Russia? Wouldn't it be great? Is there anything wrong with it? Is that why in the summer of 2016, we saw Donald Trump and Russia moving closer and closer to each other. This certainly provides some evidence to that.

What we don't have here is Donald Trump saying, this is why I embraced Russia. We don't have that. We don't have a document that says, hey, we're trying to close the deal with Russia. Let's continue on the campaign trail to lean into that message. We don't even have Michael Cohen saying, Donald Trump told me that's why we're going to embrace Russia. What we do have is the appearance of something that doesn't look good. Someone running for office whose own business, the highest office, the highest office, whose own business is trying to cut a deal with a country that has a major foreign policy issue, is a major foreign policy problem for the United States. And he's not talking about it as a problem. He's talking about it

as a future ally, as a country he wants to work more closely with. I would treat Vladimir Putin firmly, but there's nothing I can think of that I'd rather do than have Russia friendly as opposed to the way they are right now. What you're talking about is a new understanding of incentives. Correct. We still don't have the answer, though. Correct. We still don't have the answer, though. We have here significant clues about what may have motivated Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Mike, what is Russia doing during this now extended window of time that Michael Cohen has now admitted that he and President Trump were in negotiations with Russia that help us understand all this. See, that's the thing. This is just one sliver of what was going on between the campaign,

the United States and Russia. What is also happening is that the CIA is increasingly coming to the conclusion based on its sources in Russia that Vladimir Putin is trying to help Donald Trump get elected president. Democrats, the DNC and John Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, are having their email stolen and Russia is arranging with WikiLeaks to get these emails out to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign. At the same time, American intelligence starts to see weird outreach from Russians to folks around Donald Trump. Donald Trump's son, in June of 2016, sits down in Trump Tower with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

And we're yet to mention any type of messaging on Facebook or on Twitter or elsewhere that was being pumped out by Russia to undermine or sow more doubt in the American political process. So presumably, Russian government officials would know that while they were doing all of this, Donald Trump was interested in doing a business deal with them. If the left hand and the right hand of the Russian government knew everything that was going on, yes. So what you're describing is a sudden universe in which everybody is acting in a way that suggests that they are mutually invested. Russia, by its behavior, is doing things that aid candidate Donald Trump. Candidate Donald Trump is working on a business deal with Russia that would aid him personally. Ours are kind of rowing in the same direction.

They appear to be working together. Why they're working together, how they're working together, we're not exactly sure, and how it all fits together, but they're all sort of heading in the same direction. Right. Just as Donald Trump is starting to clinch the Republican nomination. Summer of 2016. Mike, what does all this mean for President Trump?

It's clear that he benefited from Russia's interference in the election. It's clear that Donald Trump wanted to advance his business interests with this Moscow project. So clearly, this casts him in a poor light. But legally, what does this actually change for him? But legally, what does this actually change for him? The first thought that we had when we saw this document today was, what did Donald Trump say in the responses he gave to Mueller earlier this month? What do you mean? So two weeks ago, Donald Trump, after nearly a year of negotiating about an interview with investigators, sent in written responses to Robert Mueller. How many were there?

Well, we don't know how many there were. What we do know from our own reporting earlier this year, where we got the list of 49 questions that Mueller wanted to ask the president, is that one of them was just about this issue. What interaction and communication did you have with Michael Cohen, Felix Sater, and others, including foreign nationals, regarding real estate developments in Russia during the period of the campaign? Remind me who Felix Sater is. Felix Sater was a Russian-born American businessman who was working with Michael Cohen and the Trump Organization on this project and had helped them with Trump Soho, a building he

had built several years ago. So your first thought on Thursday morning was, did the president answer that question? And if he did, did he answer it truthfully? The first thing I did was go into my email where I knew I had the exact text of the questions that were given to Trump's lawyers earlier this year that Mueller wanted to ask and found this. And then I called Maggie and said, we got to figure out what Trump said

in his responses. We wanted to know whether the president had been truthful in his statements to Mueller, because if he hadn't, that would be perjury and would open him up to a whole new set of accusations that he broke the law. And that's what we spent the morning trying to figure out. So what did you and Maggie Hammerman find out? Did the president answer this question and did he answer it truthfully? After a series of phone calls with the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani told us on the record that the president's responses lined up with what Cohen had said in court, that the president, in his responses to Mueller, said he knew about the deal and had discussed it with Cohen. Did he say when he had discussed it? Giuliani said there was nothing in the questions

that was specific to the timing, and the president hadn't offered anything on that. So Giuliani is saying that the president did not lie about this. Saying the president's fine. So in admitting that he did talk to Michael Cohen about the Moscow project in the middle of his presidential campaign, what has he told us about himself? If Giuliani was being truthful, he's saying that the president is acknowledging that he knew that his associates who worked for him were trying to do a deal with the Russian government during the presidential campaign. Right. And I don't often like it when people compare him to other candidates. Obama or a John McCain running for president and at the same time having their fixers negotiating with a foreign adversary for a business deal. I think that a disclosure like that would be outrageous and ground shaking. And while today's development is a significant story, it may only be one of many that have come along the way.

And we often lose sight of that. Just how unusual it is to have a president do the kinds of things that he has done. Correct. I think if any other candidate had done this, this is like, you know, first or second paragraph of the obituary. This may not even stick to Trump. Mike, what does Cohen's admission to the special counsel that he has lied about all this tell us about Mueller's strategy when it comes to the original investigation into Russia?

We know that Cohen has gone in for dozens of hours to meet with Mueller's team. He's testified before a grand jury. And what we're learning today is that Mueller's team is willing to accept a plea deal from Cohen, even though they know he lied before, in that they trust what he's saying now. they trust what he's saying now. Okay, Mueller's team would say, we know Michael Cohen was a liar and didn't tell the truth to Congress,

but that's when he was working for Donald Trump. Now, he's working for us, and he's trying to prove to us that he can be helpful because he doesn't want to go to prison for that long, and he wants us to go to a judge and say, hey, be lenient on Michael Cohen. He's been helpful. We've also investigated what Michael Cohen's been telling us,

and we think he's being truthful. And is that the plan? That Mueller will advocate for a lighter sentence for Michael Cohen? I don't think Cohen would be doing this today if he didn't think there was a damn good possibility that Mueller would do that. We're back in the same situation that we were in with Manafort.

Paul Manafort has essentially two people who decide his fate. Bob Mueller, who could go to a judge and say, give him a shorter sentence. Right. Or Donald Trump, who could pardon him. Michael Cohen has already turned on Donald Trump. Donald Trump has already called Michael Cohen has already turned on Donald Trump. Donald Trump has already called Michael Cohen a rat. What he's trying to do, because he's a weak person and not a very smart person, what he's trying to do is end, and it's very simple, he's got himself a big prison sentence.

So the only person who can help Michael Cohen at this point is Bob Mueller and other senior Justice Department officials. Michael Cohen is lying and he's trying to get a reduced sentence for things that have nothing to do with me. So unlike Paul Manafort, who just a couple of days ago, you said, may very much be angling for a pardon. Michael Cohen has given up on that possibility. That's never going to happen. for a pardon, Michael Cohen has given up on that possibility. That's never going to happen. He appears to have taken a completely different path and tried to embrace the government as much as possible

as his only way of saving himself. Michael Cohen's walking into court today saying, I'm working for Bob Mueller's team. So Cohen is fully cooperating in the special counsel investigation in a way that we didn't fully understand before Thursday. And today marks the first time

that we kind of fully understand that everything that Cohen knows, Robert Mueller probably now knows too. We're not seeing this deal today like this if Mueller thought that Cohen was not helpful and not telling the truth. Mike, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Even if he was right, it doesn't matter, because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign. I was running my business, a lot of different things during the campaign. Or thanks for visiting us. We didn't address it in the whole thing. We were face-to-face. What's interesting about watching you in person and I wonder if this would happen in my absence

is how much hand gesturing you do like, there's a lot of physicality to the interview and I wonder if you, would you do that if I weren't here? Probably 33% less. Okay We'll be right back We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

I probably will be meeting with President Putin. We haven't terminated that meeting. I was thinking about it, but we haven't. They'd like to have it. I think it's a very good time to have the meeting. On Thursday, President Trump abruptly canceled a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, scheduled for Saturday in Argentina, just hours after both countries had confirmed it. In explaining the cancellation, the White House cited an unresolved naval standoff between Russia and Ukraine. But the decision came shortly after Michael Cohen pleaded

guilty to lying to Congress, suggesting that the president was seeking to avoid meeting with Putin amid embarrassing revelations about his ties to Russia. Russia said it had only learned of the cancellation after reading about it on the president's Twitter account. after reading about it on the president's Twitter account. The Daily is produced by Theo Balcom, Lindsay Garrison, Rachel Quester, Annie Brown, Andy Mills, Ike Sreeskanarajah, Claire Tennisketter,

Michael Simon-Johnson, Jessica Chung, and Alexander Lee Young, and edited by Paige Cowan, Larissa Anderson, and Wendy Doerr. Lisa Tobin is our executive producer. Samantha Hennig is our editorial director. Our technical manager is Brad Fisher. Our engineer is Chris Wood.

And our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolmach, Michaela Bouchard, and Stella Tan. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.