The smoldering arsenal stays warm as whatever tactic is operative, Rudy Giuliani appears not to know what’s going on:
Ken Dilanian: Former federal prosecutor to me, just now: "Between the Lester Holt interview and the tweets, Trump puts them on the 5 yard line," on making an obstruction of justice case.
What seemed so obvious finally moves toward confirmation.
- 1/ Tonight @CNN reported that Cohen is prepared to tell Mueller that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting between Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort and Russians before the meeting happened.
- 2/ Tonight Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis told MSNBC that Cohen's team is not responsible for the CNN story. Since that time, CNN (and later, MSNBC) confirmed that their sources continue to maintain that Cohen is prepared to tell Mueller that Trump knew of the meeting beforehand.
- 3/ That could mean that Cohen told associates about his knowledge, and those associates in turn told CNN. It is worth noting that Cohen said he was present, along with several others, when Trump Jr. told Trump about the Russian offer but that there are no tapes.
- 4/ So what are the legal implications? The most obvious legal implication is whether Trump Jr. lied to Congress when he was interviewed regarding the Trump Tower meeting. However, in his prepared statement, he said nothing about Trump's knowledge.
- 5/ During questioning, he may have answered a question about this topic, which could be problematic for him, although he did refuse to answer questions about a later conversation with Trump, citing attorney-client privilege.
- 6/ If Trump Jr. didn't answer questions about this topic previously, Congress could bring him back and ask again, which could put him in a difficult position. Regardless, a potential charge for lying to Congress (or the FBI) is the most straightforward way that this news matters.
- 7/ In fact, Cohen himself arguably has liability because he told Congress he "never saw anything–not a hint of anything–that demonstrated [Trump's] involvement in Russian interference in our election or any form of Russian collusion." (Cohen could argue this wasn't collusion.)