Trump Calls Cohen `Weak’ After Mueller Deal

and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Today, one of the most significant developments in the Muller Russia investigation, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to a new federal charge, admitting that he lied to Congress about Trump's pans to build a Trump Tower in Russia in order to be consistent with the countet. Trump's representative. Trump dismissed the importance of Cohen's plea to reporters, He's lying about a project that everybody knew about it. I mean,

we were very open with it. We were thinking about building a building. I guess we had an inform. It was an option. I don't know what you'd call it. We decided I decided ultimately not to do it. There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it. Joining me to discuss the plea is Bradley Moss apartment Mark said, so, Brad, how significant is the latest Cone plea and cooperation deal. Well, this is absolutely huge. You know, there's not a good day for President of Trump, or

his legal team or his family. This is the president's former personal lawyer, one of his most inner circle allies and associates, pleading guilty and admitting that he knowingly lied to Congress about the nature of the president's financial investment or interest in Russia during the campaign, when there was a Russian disinformation campaign going on that was supporting the president, when there were when there was concerns about whether or

not the president's financial exposures was a national security risk, when there was all these issues tied to meetings with Russians and Trump Tower and everything else. All this, all this time, we've been told nothing happened with this deal,

nothing would happen with this deal. And now Michael Cohen has come out and admitted, under penalty of perjury before the judge in a signed document that he lied to Congress about it, that this deal was going on into the summer of and that the president was being repeatedly briefed and the president's family was being repeatedly briefed on

the details of the negotiations. Let's discuss the timing not only Cohen's upcoming sentencing, not only the blow up of the Mantafort deal on Monday, but perhaps more important, the submission of President Trump's written answers to the Special Council. Yeah, this is this is not a coincidence that this is all happening. Now, so what did we have? We had?

The President finally submitted those written responses to a number of questions provided by the Special Council, the addressing like what he knew about the Trump Power meeting, what he knew about the platform change at the Republican Convention, and what he knew about interactions with people such as Felix Sader and Michael Cohen about a possible deal in Russia for a Trump Tower. Now we know the president's answers to the questions about the Trump Tower meeting. He says

he has no recollection of being informed. He says he has no recollection of knowing anything about with you that we don't it know what his answer was on this issue with the Trump Tower stuff. We only have his public statements so far. But if the President lied in his responses, if he committed perjury and knowingly provided false information to the Special Council. He is facing serious potential

legal or political problems. This is why the Special Council wanted to sit down, because they wanted to understand what the President knew and to what extent he was concealing information from the government. On that respect, we now know that Jerome Corsi has been giving information. We know that Roger Stone's in the Special Council's crosshairs. All these things. The news is tightening around Donald Trump, and his commentary is only going to get more angry and unhinged as

it gets worse. I'm curious about one thing, Brad, what do you make of Muller initially pushing Cohen off to Southern District prosecutors so seemingly not interested in now making a plea deal with him, which the Southern District didn't Well. I think that was partially um D o J bureaucratic move.

I believe my understanding of when this all initially came about that they were looking at Cohen, that the Deputy Attorney General, Rob Rosenstein, who was overseeing the probe, decided that this particular area into the issue of campaign finance violations and money longer. I was sorry wire fraud wasn't really within the scope of Special Council's mandate, and so

they gave it over to the Southern District. But when Michael Cohen initially played guilty on those felonies, he agreed to cooperate with the US government in general, and that included the Special Council, who was allowed to have these numerous sessions with him. I think it's seventy hours of discussions with him in which they've gotten extensive amount of

testimony from him. They've got his text messages and emails, his documents, everything he had on his phones, all of this data, and they're using it to build cases in different suments against potentially different individual rules where there was false material statements or where there was other felonies potentially committed. Brad Now. Trump said an impromptu press conference after the Cohen deal that he had a right to do a business deal with Russia, and he kept repeating that what

is he not saying about that deal? Well, that's that's all fifty four thousand dollar question. Yes, so long as the president was a private citizen before he became the president of United States, he had a right to make any business deals he wanted that were consistent with the law. But here were the problems. He repeatedly stated the public during presidential debates and the primaries and the summer and

press conferences that he had no deals in Russia. He kept calling it fake news that he had any deals in Russia, where we now know that was completely false, that there was this ongoing negotiation that Cohen was briefing

him on. Cohen's ongoing discussions with the Putin's senior officials with Felix Sader, who was a uh Kremlin linked business associate of the Trump circle, was trying to make this deal, trying to make a big meeting between Putin and Trump happen in the summer or the early fall of All these things are going on, And this is the problem of how to what extent the president has been misleading the public in the context of the presidential election, and

more particularly to this investigation, to what extent he provided false information at a special council and his responses. All right, just about a minute here, But what kind of time is Coin facing with this particular police So long as he continues to provide the co operation, it's zero to six months. It's basically just being packed on as you know, icing on the cake to his already existing felony plea deal. He's looking at several years, but it's more as he cooperates,

it's gonna be more leniency. All right, Thanks so much, brad. That's Bradley Moss, a partner at Mark's ad and UM. Just a reminder, under federal law, it's a crime to knowingly and willfully make material false statements to Congress or to any branch of the federal government in connection with

matters your investigation. That's what completed to President Trump has been complaining about the Ninth Circuit since the California federal judge blocked the Trump administration from shutting down the doccer program in January. He ramped up those complaints after another California judge blocked Trump's attempt to ban asylum at the border for those crossing illegally last week. The order today is not we can get around that very easily. What

I do say Ninth Circuit is it's very unfair. When everybody files their case in the Ninth Circuit, they file it for a reason. The President's complaints are nothing new for the circuit. It's been stereotyped as too liberal by conservatives for years, Just how liberal is the Ninth Circuit. Here to answer that question is Steve Sanders, a professor

at Indiana University's Mare School of Law. Steve Trump is complaining about the Ninth Circuit, a federal appeals court, but most of his real complaints have been about individual district judges in that circuit. Explain the distinction, sure, well, District judges in the federal system are are trial judges trial court judges. There the first level of the federal judiciary. Uh and in most states have at least one so called federal district. Many states, like California and larger states

have two or three different districts. The Ninth Circuit is a court of appeals which sits over a group of states. Actually, in the Ninth Circuits a pretty large group of states California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii, Alaska, and Montana. Uh and the Ninth Circuit takes appeals from litigants who are dissatisfied with the results they've gotten in the district courts in those states, and occasionally the Supreme

Court takes appeals from those courts of appeals. The Ninth Circuit is one of twelve such courts of appeals spread around the country. Each one, um, well most of them, eleven of them oversee groups of states, and then there's another court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, so Steve. For years, the Ninth Circuit has been stereotyped as the most liberal circuit, so much so that conservative groups mounted an effort to split it up in just how liberal

is the Ninth Circuit compared to other appellate courts? Um, You know, I don't know that I've seen. There has been no recent data, at least reliable scholarly empirical data that measures the liberal or conservative sort of temperature of each federal circuit. You know, for one thing, it's it's hard to do that kind of work. How do you know many decisions that courts issue are really difficult to

characterize as quote liberal or conservative. So I have a basic problem of what kind of data are you starting with? How are you going to what are your inputs going to be to try to decide that kind of thing. There's a recent study that try to base its judgment on the political donations that were made by law clerks to judges in those circuits, which seems like a really tenuous and and and end of unreliable way of measuring

a circuit um. The most systematic study of the liberal versus conservative nature of the Federal circuits um was done back in UH, well in early two thousands. The data ended at two thousand and at that point, the Ninth Circuit was pretty liberal. It was more liberal than most of the Federal circuits in its decisions. But again that data is now almost twenty years out of date. UM. Other Republican presidents like Trump and George W. Bush had

had appointments to those courts. I think a lot of the Ninth circuits liberal reputation stems from, you know, a small number of very high profile liberal judges that that court his heads in some cases dating back to appointments that were made by Jimmy Carter in the late nineteen seventies. Stephen Reinhardt, who just passed away within the last year, was a sort of liberal lion of the Federal judiciary. UM. There's another UH judge named marsh Marsha Burzon who still

sits on that court. But the Ninth Circuit also has conservative judges. I think some of this comes from the stereotyping of California. The Ninth Circuit headquarters is in San Francisco, a lot of its cases come out of California. And

so I think there's a mixture of factors. I would say that, you know, what President Trump is saying is based on probably things that his Federalist Society advisors and friends have been telling him, which he's in turn vastly oversimplifying and turning into sort of cartoon character versions of a commentary on the on federal judges. And and indeed, but those even those perceptions that he's being hold about are probably about ten years out of date. There are

studies showing that the Circuit is becoming more centrist. Now. President Trump has also said that the Ninth Circuit is the federal appeals court reversed most by the Supreme Court. What do the stats tell you about that claim? Yeah, that is flatly not correct. And and here I'm relying on some data that was gathered by a scholar at the University of Texas named Stephen Flattock, who I believe

has occasionally been a guest on Bloomberg Law. And the data that he found indicates that over the last five years. Over the last five Supreme Court terms, three federal courts of appeals have actually been reversed by the Supreme Court in a higher percentage of cases than the Ninth Circuit.

Of the Third Circuit, which is on the east coast, the Sixth Circuit, which is sort of in the middle of the country, and the Eleventh Circuit, which is in the south, all had higher reversal rates than the Ninth Circuit um the Ninth because the Ninth Circuit is so large, it covers a geographically very large area, it has lots of judges, and so therefore it has a very large

caseload in absolute numbers. Um the Ninth Circuit may look like it's getting more reversals, but as a percentage of all the cases decided, it's actually down there near the middle. There three circuits that in the last five years that higher reversal rates at the Supreme Court. And Steve just how much does whether a circuit court is liberal or conservative have to do with the reversal rate? Not very much.

You know. Some of these courts that have been more frequently reversed, like the Eleventh Circuit, is actually considered a relatively conservative Court based on the appointments who appointed the judges who are sitting on that court, and so I

don't think there's a correlation there at all. The Supreme Court in the last year or two and a couple of very high profile cases, one civil rights discrimination case, another immigration case upheld the Ninth Circuit in in in in opinions that had come to quote unquote liberal outcomes, if you want to put it that way. So I don't think there's very much of a very much of a correlation there. It's also important to remember that the Supreme in something like seventy of the cases it takes,

the Supreme Court reverses the lower court. In Supreme Court sometimes takes cases and affirms the judgment of the lower court. But usually if the Supreme Court is going to get involved in a case, it's because it's troubled by something that happened below. And so it is the norm for circuits when cases get to the Supreme Court for circuits to be reversed. More often, something like seventy of the

cases the court takes are reversals of lower courts. The one final thing it's important to note that the Supreme Court here's a tiny fraction. They because there's so much to say about this, but thank you that. Steve Sanders, It's professor at Indiana University's Mara School of Law. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg