Trump's Ex-Campaign Chair Guilty on 8 Counts in Fraud Trial; Trump Praises Manafort for Refusing to Break Unlike Cohen; Cohen Implicates Trump in Illegal Hush Money Payments; Cohen Lawyer Says He has Information that would Interest Mueller; GOP Rep Hunter and Wife Indicted for Misuse of Campaign Funds.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. This morning two of the president's former right hand men are felons and the White House is ready to fight, unleashing a new strategy -- paint the president and his former fixer -- paint the president's former fixer as a liar. That's the strategy of the White House this morning. And the president with this message moments ago, quote, "If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen." OK. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felony counts and implicated the president in a hush money scheme. Cohen says then- candidate Trump directed the porn star and Playboy Playmate payoff to influence the election. This is just days before Americans went to the polls. And this morning Cohen's attorney says his client is ready to tell all to the special counsel.</s>LANNY DAVIS, ATTORNEY FOR MICHAEL COHEN: It's my observation that Mr. Cohen has knowledge that would be of interest to the special counsel about the issue of whether Donald Trump ahead of time knew about the hacking of e-mails, which is a computer crime that was the subject of the indictment of the 12 Russians.</s>HARLOW: An already ugly fight is about to get uglier. Plus, the other felon in the president's inner circle handing Special Counsel Mueller a victory, a major victory. Ex-Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort convicted on eight counts, facing 80 years behind bars. What this means for Mueller's team this morning and will Paul Manafort flip? Let's begin with our reporter Kara Scannell on Michael Cohen. You were fantastic yesterday. Amazing reporting all the way through. Let's push it forward and let's talk about where we go from here.</s>KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Michael Cohen will be sentenced on December 12th, that date is set. But I think between these four or so months in between we're hearing from Lanny Davis, one of his attorneys, that Cohen wants. He has information he wants to provide to Robert Mueller, the special counsel's team, and he's kind of dangling out little hints of what that might be, suggesting them -- that Trump knows about pre-hacking. You know, we know that Mueller's team is investigating and asking questions of all of these associates of Roger Stone.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>SCANNELL: You know, Roger Stone is one of the people that was referenced, although not by name, in that indictment of the 12 Russians.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>SCANNELL: He was communicating with the campaign and it seems like Michael Cohen is trying to bridge that and say that he happens to know something about that. Roger Stone hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, he's been, you know, on our air and others talking about this. So I think, you know, we're going to see Cohen trying to get in with Robert Mueller's team and we'll see if they get the best deal he can get.</s>HARLOW: Let me just ask you before we move on to the next thing. What was it like for you being in the courtroom yesterday? Because no one that's watching us, none of us saw Michael Cohen firsthand say I did all of these illegal things at the behest of the president but you did. You heard him. What was that moment like?</s>SCANNELL: Well, it was really stunning. I mean, Michael Cohen is -- you know, he's about to allocute, which is to describe to the judge, all the crimes that he committed and he asked the judge if he could stand to do it, and he had notes because he said he wanted to stay focused and so he went through his personal tax charges, he went through misstatements to the bank and then when we get to the campaign finance moment, you know, he says so clearly, in coordination and at the direction of the candidate for federal office, which we all knew was Donald Trump, and starts to list how he had worked with American Media, the publisher of the "National Enquirer."</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>SCANNELL: And their payment for Karen McDougal that he assisted and the payment to Stormy Daniels to silence both of their allegations of an affair just before the campaign. And he also said specifically that he did it for the principal purpose of influencing the election, you know, so clearly implicating the president there. It was a silent courtroom. You know, he's just saying this in the words to sort of echoing.</s>HARLOW: Wow.</s>SCANNELL: And it was really just a stunning moment to hear him very directly. There was no waver in his voice. Just very forcefully standing up and stating that he did this at the direction of the president.</s>HARLOW: And that moment you get up and you run out the courtroom and bring the news to all of us. Kara, thank you. All right. Again we just heard from the president moments ago. He said don't hire Michael Cohen as your lawyer. That's swipe this morning. We'll see what else might be ahead. Ryan Nobles joins me at the White House this morning. The White House has a plan, has a strategy, it is discredit Cohen, clearly the president is part of that strategy as he's doing this morning. What else?</s>RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Poppy. It probably doesn't come as too big of a surprise that this is the plan that the White House has to try and discredit Michael Cohen as a figure in all of this drama and suggests that he's just not a credible voice in all of this. And it began with the president's tweet this morning where he is telling people that if they're looking for a lawyer that they probably shouldn't retain the services of Michael Cohen, but we should point that things here were a little bit uneven yesterday. Many members of the White House team seemed a bit stunned and shocked by the news. The president we're told in a dour mood as he traveled -- mood, I should say, as he traveled to West Virginia last night. And they took a step back and just decided that, you know, Michael Cohen, now a convicted felon, he's been accused of lying in the past and that the argument that they need to make to the American people is that he's someone who can't be trusted and therefore should not reflect poorly on the president. And the other tactic they're going to take, Poppy, is to try and show that this isn't connected to Russia in any way, and that no one has yet to provide evidence that the president is guilty of collusion with Russia. And this all tracks back to a bigger point that the White House is attempting to make and that this isn't necessarily a legal problem for the president of the United States, it is a political one. In the more that they can to try and distract from the Mueller investigation and continue to retain that support that people trust the president of the United States the less their chances are of the president facing impeachment. Poppy, that all comes back to the midterms. That's what you saw the president doing last night. They want to make sure they hold on to as many Republican votes as possible in October because that could be the president's salvation -- Poppy.</s>HARLOW: The job must have -- may have gotten a lot harder for Republicans in Congress to do after the last 18 hours. Ryan, thank you. Joining me now CNN legal analyst Paul Callan and federal and white- collar criminal defense attorney Caroline Polisi. So, all right, let me read you a line that struck me on the front page of the "Washington Post" this morning from Dan Balz's fascinating column. He writes, quote, "Everything that happened in a pair of courtrooms hundreds of miles apart strengthen the hand of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and weaken that of the president of the United States." Is there any disputing that that is correct this morning?</s>PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: There's no disputing that it's correct, but the question is for how long does it strengthen the hand and how will this play out ultimately? And the thing I worry about in terms of people getting overly excited about the fact that if they're opposed to Mr. Trump that this will be his downfall is that legal cases against president of the United States and impeachment proceedings are extraordinarily different -- difficult to bring.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>CALLAN: I'm not so sure that in the end, in a month from now, that this story will have staying power.</s>HARLOW: Really?</s>CALLAN: Yes.</s>HARLOW: Fascinating. I mean, Caroline, to Paul's point, how likely do you think it is that the Southern District of New York which prosecuted Michael Cohen on this doesn't try to challenge the assumption, the precedent. It's not law, a precedent, that a sitting president cannot be indicted.</s>CAROLINE POLISI, FEDERAL AND WHITE COLLAR CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: You're right. It's an Office of Legal Counsel memorandum, it's disputed among sort of legal scholars because obviously it's not in the Constitution. So I think a really interesting point that Preet Bharara made last night on ANDERSON COOPER" is that if you look at the criminal information, and an information, just a charging document that Michael Cohen pleaded to, it's essentially the same thing as an indictment. The prosecutors just didn't have to go through getting a grand jury to sit. And the information doesn't actually have this language about the president. Michael Cohen, of course, in his allocution to his guilty plea stood up in federal court and stated that he did this, these campaign finance law violations --</s>HARLOW: At the behest of the --</s>POLISI: At the behest of the president.</s>HARLOW: But you think it's notable that it's not included on paper?</s>POLISI: I do. I do think that's notable because --</s>HARLOW: Why wouldn't it?</s>POLISI: There's a lot of this buzzword unindicted co-conspirator. The president is not technically an unindicted co-conspirator in this information. He's not actually mentioned in the information so I think that was a -- you know, a real move on the part of the SDNY prosecutors not to sort of go one step deeper. It would have been different if they named him in the information.</s>HARLOW: What do you think -- it's a great point. Why do you think they didn't, Paul?</s>CALLAN: Well, it's an interesting set of charges against Cohen. The charge essentially is that the payment to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal were campaign contributions that were unreported and they were corporate campaign contributions.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>CALLAN: Now the idea here is that Cohen clearly is guilty of this, he's admitted it but if the president was using Cohen to make the contribution it's an entirely different thing because the president has the right to contribute to his own campaign.</s>HARLOW: But he has to disclose it.</s>CALLAN: It's a very, very different -- he has to disclose it.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>CALLAN: So the only thing that --</s>HARLOW: And we know it wasn't disclosed?</s>CALLAN: That's correct. So the only thing the president would be guilty of is a failure to report it whereas the theory against Cohen is a much more elaborate theory and a much more serious theory.</s>HARLOW: Can we talk about cooperation here? Because, you know, so many headlines this morning and last night were oh, and Cohen isn't even cooperating. That's not totally the case. There is a bargain in this plea that essentially says that in return for pleading guilty they will bring such things the SDNY won't, for example, not bring further charges but I think it's interesting that only the SDNY or the tax division agreed not to bring further charges. It does not include, for example, the DOJ or the special counsel here.</s>POLISI: Right. And that's sort of the leverage that they have in their tool kit.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>POLISI: Typically, I mean, the commentary is correct that typically the usual course in terms of procedurally you would enter the cooperation agreement concurrently with the plea deal. However, that by no means means that a cooperation agreement is excluded at this point. This is a highly unique case, Poppy, so, you know, some of you have gone so far to think that potentially there's a cooperation agreement under seal. I don't tend to agree with that but certainly there could be cooperation down the road.</s>CALLAN: Yes, I think --</s>HARLOW: Why wouldn't Michael Cohen -- I mean, if he's already pleaded guilty to all these counts, why wouldn't he cooperate to try to get a little bit less prison time?</s>CALLAN: I think he would be eager to cooperate and I also think that Cohen will supply ultimately a possible road to incriminate the president in a far more serious way than what we're talking about today.</s>HARLOW: Which is what -- can we just play, guys, Lanny Davis. Michael Cohen's lawyer? He said as much. Let's listen to him.</s>DAVIS: But I do -- to answer your question -- know that Michael Cohen has information that would be of interest to Mr. Mueller in his probe of a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy very similar to the indictment of the 12 Russians. I believe that Mr. Cohen would be able to provide information useful to the special counsel. I won't call it smoking gun information, somebody else will have to judge that.</s>HARLOW: Don Lemon then asked him, are you talking about the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians and he said no, it's something else.</s>CALLAN: Yes. Well, this may be something entirely off the radar that people don't know about, Lanny Davis does obviously, but I've always thought that Cohen is the Achilles heel of Donald Trump because for so long he was the guy who for the Trump Organization solved the difficult problems in whatever way he had to and in that business world my suspicion is that if you push on Cohen, you're going to find that Donald Trump may have been involved in business transactions or family members of the Trumps were involved in business transactions that will create liability and exposure for them. And I think that's probably a greater problem for Mr. Trump than this case.</s>HARLOW: Quickly, I would say that perhaps the only reason Cohen may not cooperate would be if he thinks he would some way get a pardon from the president. Clearly the president doesn't like him very much.</s>POLISI: Right. And Lanny Davis, you know, says he's not looking for a pardon.</s>HARLOW: Right. But let's not forget that it was just a few months ago that the president pardoned Dinesh D'Souza.</s>POLISI: Yes.</s>HARLOW: For campaign finance violations.</s>POLISI: And the interesting thing about the pardon for Dinesh D'Souza was that his defense wasn't that he didn't commit those crimes, it was that it was a selective prosecution, a vindictive prosecution.</s>HARLOW: Right.</s>POLISI: That was a clear signal. You know, I think one of the things that people aren't considering is the fact that maybe the Southern District prosecutors don't want or need Michael Cohen's cooperation. They may not think he's a credible enough witness. So that's an option.</s>HARLOW: Sure. And that credibility is so important, right?</s>POLISI: Yes.</s>HARLOW: Thank you both. Nice to have you. Ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also found guilty on eight charges. A win for the Mueller team? What does it mean moving forward? Next, a former Watergate prosecutor who is texting with Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, yesterday in all this chaos, will join me. What he heard from the president's lawyer. Also, he's a founding member of the, quote, "Trump caucus." One of the president's first supporters in Congress. Well, now Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife have been indicted, accused of using campaign funds to pay for a lavish lifestyle. And in Iowa, a small town this morning is grieving a great loss as an autopsy is set for the body believed to be the missing Iowa college student Molly Tibbetts. An undocumented immigrant charged with her murder.