'Special Report' All-Stars on significance of Cohen plea

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'Special Report' All-Stars on significance of Cohen plea

Michael Cohen pleads guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," August 21, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Jonathan Turley on this show earlier, this first panel will deal with Cohen, Michael Cohen, what he pled today in New York in the southern district. Rudy Giuliani, the president's attorney, saying "There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president and the government's charges against Mr. Cohen. It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time."

Lanny Davis, Cohen's attorney, says "Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?"

With that, let's bring in our panel: former senior National Council spokesman Michael Anton; Catherine Lucey, White House reporter for the Associated Press, and Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon.

Catherine, in the plea information that we have, Cohen admits to reimbursing these payments for Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels. But in the case he agrees to reimburse the National Enquirer for the payment made to Karen McDougal. The plea also states that the McDougal payment was made in coordination with the chairman of the corporation, David Pecker, and one or more officials from the campaign. Basically it's the first indication from this plea agreement we've had that Cohen and the campaign were connected to this payment by McDougal through National Enquirer. A lot of developments today but let's focus on the Cohen part.

CATHERINE LUCEY, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Yes. This is part of a big one-two punch against the president today in court, and I think we'll talk about both cases. But what we are seeing here is details from the president's personal lawyers, his personal fixer, a person who he worked with closely for many years about how these payments which we've all been reporting on and talking about for some time were carried out.

Back in April, I was on Air Force One with the president and asked him if he knew about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. At the time he said no, he didn't know anything about it. The president isn't named in the court paperwork.

BAIER: He's named by Lanny Davis.

LUCEY: But he's named by Lanny Davis, and certainly it is pretty clear that this is who is being spoken about.

BAIER: Matthew, the significant of this, Michael Cohen, the inner, inner circle for more than a decade, and where potentially does this go?

MATTHEW CONTINETTI, WASHINGTON FREE BEACON: Right. I think you see the outlines of the coming legal debate in the statements from Giuliani and Lanny Davis, and it all centers around the legality of this payment. And so we ran through the tape with John Edwards some years ago with a similar sort of issue, and there the legality was in question. And so now the same arguments are going to be applied over to President Trump's alleged involvement in this payment.

What I am more struck by, Bret, is that for years now Donald Trump has kind of kept his enemies scrambled. They don't know how to criticize him, they don't know how to respond to him. And in the past few months what we have seen is the way to actually respond and get Trump in trouble is by adopting his own reality TV approach to the world. And so who was causing President Trump the most trouble these days? It's Michael Cohen who did the dramatic reversal and have the secret tapes.

BAIER: Omarosa.

CONTINETTI: It's Omarosa who did the very similar thing right off of her stint on "Celebrity Big Brother," and it's Michael Avenatti who, even though he is not a politician, is garnering more energy on the Democratic side than any candidate out there.

BAIER: The critics of the Mueller investigation, Michael, will say this has nothing to do with Russia collusion, but potentially it could if Michael Cohen somehow brings something else to the table. It's all speculation. We don't know what we don't know. Assess this today.

MICHAEL ANTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL SPOKESMAN: We are into month 15, I think, of the investigation, launched in May of 2017, and we still have no evidence of Russia collusion. We have indictments that don't have anything to do with the 2016, with colluding with Russia in the 2016 campaign. Every charge brought against Paul Manafort had nothing to do with his work for Trump.

And one of the things that striking to me to pick up on something Matt said is the fact that they are charging the Cohen payment as a campaign finance violations suggests to me very strongly that if you just call it something else it's not illegal. So they have to -- to a lot of people, it looks like a stretching and bending of the law to fit this case, not a clear we know what the campaign finance law says, you broke it.

And another question that I find odd is most times when people get caught in campaign finance they get fined. Not even particularly huge fines, five figure fines and so on. Why are people looking at -- we don't know yet I suppose, but jail time, real serious consequences for things that have been treated as more or less like political traffic tickets for decades?

BAIER: They are saying three to five years for all of these charges. Catherine, last thing. It seems like that battle about what is campaign finance violation, and whether you can argue this was this or not may be a battle line being drawn already.

LUCEY: I think we are going to see now, obviously Michael Cohen is being charged with a number of things, not just campaign finance violations, but I think we're going to see is what is the legal exposure here for the president, where does this go? Michael Avenatti wants to depose him in the Stormy Daniels case. He's hoping to lift a stay there. So that's one area. Does the deal not explicitly say that Cohen is going to cooperate, but it doesn't necessarily preclude him from doing so. Does he try and speak to Mueller, does he do something else that brings more pressure on the president?

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