--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hello. Hello, is this Johnny Harris?
--:-- Johnny Harris: This is Johnny Harris. Johnny Harris, senior producer of videos here at Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Johnny Harris, you're not in the office today, but rumor has it, you bought yourself a Quip toothbrush.
--:-- Johnny Harris: Yeah, I just got the confirmation email. It's all fancy with a tracking number and it's on its way. And I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of excited about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You went to getquip.com slash explain?
--:-- Johnny Harris: I did. I actually first went to getquip.com and then I realized, wait a minute, I have to support my people and this thing I listen to every day. And so I hit the slash explained and actually got a bunch of free stuff at the same time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh my God. You're killing it. You're killing it. I need to find out your thought process. What led you to this decision?
--:-- Johnny Harris: It's not every day that the president's personal lawyer has his offices raided by federal agents, right? Feels that way now, but yeah, no, it's not an everyday occurrence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Zach Fryer-Biggs, national security reporter at Vox, what exactly happened on Monday?
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: We're still sorting out details, but the rough overview that we got now is that Robert Mueller, the special counsel who's investigating Trump and his campaign tied to the Russian meddling in the 2016 election, found some material on Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. Brought it to his boss, Rod Rosenstein, deputy attorney general, who decided that this shouldn't be part of the Russia investigation. It should be this other thing. So he gave it to the prosecutor in New York, who decided to authorize a raid of Michael Cohen's office.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: What they were looking for is whatever communication they could find about two payoffs that Michael Cohen gave to two women who claimed to have had relationships with President Trump before he was president. That's Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's all sorts of accusations that those payments may have violated campaign finance law. They may have included some bank fraud, some wire transfer fraud. There's all sorts of things that they could have caused.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: And so that's what they were looking for. Could they have just asked him, hey, Michael Cohen, we're interested in these particular documents? A raid seems pretty dramatic. You don't do a raid unless you're concerned that someone's going to be destroying evidence or if you're concerned that they may not give you everything you ask for.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Otherwise, if you are in sort of an amicable place, you're just going to ask and hopefully they turn over the documents you need. So this does suggest a level of concern about getting the evidence they want.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: There's a scene in Breaking Bad where Jesse tells Walter White. Seriously, when the going gets tough, you don't want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer. Know what I'm saying?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are the FBI and Rod Rosenstein implying that Michael Cohen's like a shady dude here?
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: It's certainly implied that they have some pretty good evidence against him. Otherwise, you don't get a judge to sign off on a raid of a lawyer's office.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a sensitive situation because obviously he's got attorney-client privilege. And the president tweeted that attorney-client privilege is now dead.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Is that true? No, there's a very specific exemption for if the lawyer involved is trying to commit a crime or helping a client commit a crime, then attorney-client privilege doesn't apply.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So no, attorney-client privilege is very much alive.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: So how has the president been handling all this? On Monday, Trump was meeting with his military commanders to discuss options for Syria. He allowed reporters into the room before that meeting and proceeded to give a fairly impassioned defense of Michael Cohen, of himself, and attack Mueller pretty directly.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I just heard that they broke into the office of one of my personal attorneys. He referred to the raid as an attack on our country in a true sense. It's an attack on what we all stand for.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: He described the Mueller probe again as a disgraceful situation. It's a total witch hunt. A phrase he's used many times before.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He ostensibly argued that the actions taken as part of the raid were a threat to our democracy.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Today, we got a lovely comment from him, which is a little puzzling, saying that he hasn't obstructed justice as part of this investigation except to defend himself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know what that means. If you can figure out what that means and tell me, I'd be really appreciative.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: That's why you're here, to tell us what things mean.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump views many of his actions as a defense of himself, even if he may be towing the line with obstruction or something that would get him into legal jeopardy.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: You got to remember, he comes from a mindset of combat when it comes to any legal proceeding. And so he's viewing this as he's got to fight, even if pretty much every lawyer I've talked to about this case says that he should just keep his mouth shut.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: How might this play out? I mean, why are they focusing on potential payoffs and checks and bank fraud maybe?
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: So what it comes down to is that the payments themselves aren't necessarily illegal unless they were meant to help Trump win the election, in which case they'd be a campaign contribution.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the $130,000 for one of the payments, $150,000 for the other payment is well in excess of what you can legally contribute to one candidate.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: And they never reported it as a campaign contribution. And then the other part is that Michael Cohen said that at least for the Stormy Daniels payment, he got it from his personal credit line.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Depending on what the bank asked for he may have been violating certain banking rules if he lied about what he was going to use the money for
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: And so that the other part of this is how did Michael Cohen get the money? Was he honest about where the money was going? And was it intended to help Trump win the presidency?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Is there a chance that Michael Cohen goes to the clinker? The clinky? What is that one? What do they say? Slammer or the clink, I think normally, because it's the single sound of the lock closing and, you know, you recognizing your inevitable doom inside of a jail cell.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: What's the worst thing that could possibly happen to him? He could face jail time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I personally doubt it. Most of the time when you're dealing with campaign finance issues, it's really sort of slap on the wrist, but it's possible.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: So then why bother? Why make a huge stink out of raiding Donald Trump's personal lawyer's office?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Mueller in particular is a Boy Scout. He just well and truly is the square-jawed example of what someone thinks of when they're looking at law enforcement.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: If he found evidence of a crime, he's not going to let it go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This all stems from the Russia probe, but obviously has nothing to do with Russia. It's about these payoffs and these alleged affairs.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Is this the final sort of coup de grace that says, like, no, the Summer Zervo, Stormy Daniels, that is all part of this other thing, this bigger thing?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think it becomes a question of how the Justice Department decides to use this material. If they're going after Cohen partially to try to gain leverage so that he'll flip on Trump, then it's definitely part of that overall narrative.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Mueller's got a history of dealing with especially organized crime investigations. He's the guy who led the investigation that brought down the Gambino crime family.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The way you bring down organized crime or large family organizations is you start from the bottom, you find low-level people, you find whatever crime you can against them, you flip them, and then you build upwards to the top.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: You need people to flip. That's what we've seen Mueller doing thus far with Trump campaign aides, whether it's Gates, whether it's Papadopoulos. These people have taken plea deals and are working with Mueller to build cases higher up in the food chain.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If that's what he's looking for, I am sure that the US attorney in New York would be willing to plead Cohen out in exchange for testimony and cooperation.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: I think it's pretty unlikely that Cohen is going to go ahead and do that just because I'm sure he'll be taken care of by some people in the Trump orbit if he just keeps his mouth shut.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Not dissimilar to, frankly, the mob. Soldiers don't go to hell. It's war. Soldiers, they kill other soldiers.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: We're in a situation where everybody involved knows the stakes. And if you're going to accept those stakes, you've got to do certain things. It's business. We're soldiers. We follow codes. Orders.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He said, speaking of the Bob, that he would take a bullet for the president, right?
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Yep. So this doesn't seem like the kind of guy who's going to flip.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, I mean, he has lasted in the Trump family for an incredibly long time. And we know that Trump values loyalty above pretty much all else.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: So you'd have to expect a pretty high level of loyalty if he's been around this long.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This whole mobster lawyer thing isn't just some perception. This comes from Michael Cohen himself.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Turns out the president's lawyer sort of has a tendency to threaten to if you even dare to
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That's in a This is Today Explained it was this meta moment when I was listening to the podcast while I was like getting ready for bed.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Okay. And it was that you did this ad that was like, you look at your old pathetic toothbrush. That's all moldy and gross.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was all moldy and gross. Holy smokes.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: And you're like, and so I'm like sitting there like, wait a minute. It felt like the Truman show. Like I'm being like, an ad is being like spoken to me through like the ether.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so I look, I, this, this is a true story. I'm not exaggerating.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: I looked at my old, this is like a 18 month old toothbrush. And I'm like, man, this is just, this is a sign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I immediately like put the toothbrush down, went to getquip.com slash explain and bought the thing.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: And I was feeling so like hyped about this serendipity that I was like, I'm going to upgrade to the metal version so that I can be like 100% in on that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. So is what they say true? Do they start at $25?
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: Do they come with free brush head refills the first time? Is it all there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's all there. It didn't come with free brush heads until I put the slash explained part.
--:-- Zach Fryer-Biggs: And then it was like free brush heads. And I was like, sweet.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is Today Explained. I'm Sean Ramos from Michael Cohen is Donald Trump's personal lawyer. But he's really so much more than that.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Andrew Prokop writes about the politics for the Vox.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's more of an all-purpose problem solver, cleanup man. I'll do anything to protect Mr Trump the family now vice president Pence
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Michael Cohen has been compared to Tom Hagen from The Godfather
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There you go I think he himself may have made that comparison too
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I know almost every big lawyer in New York
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Who the hell are you
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I have a special practice I handle one client. Now you have my number, I'll wait for your call.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, he views himself as Trump's consigliere.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he's talked in very colorful terms about how he's going to try really, really hard to make sure that anything Trump doesn't want to happen doesn't end up happening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You'll be the first one to know, Sean, you and of course all your viewers.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I'm going to be the personal attorney to Mr. Trump. I'm not going to be in government, but I'm going to remain technically in the same role for Mr. Trump, for President Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can you give me an example?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: OK, so one thing that Cohen himself told a reporter in 2011. If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn't like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump's benefit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If you do something wrong, I'm going to come at you, grab you by the neck, and I'm not going to let you go until I'm finished.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, my. Oh, my gosh.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So we should probably get back to square one. Who is Michael Cohen and what does he do?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Cohen is a lawyer who, you know, he's been associated with Donald Trump for about a decade.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: But before that, he came up in New York City doing a lot of work, both business and legal work for a community of Ukrainian immigrants.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing he did was he bought up a lot of taxi medallions, you know, the permits that let you drive a taxi.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They used to be really valuable in New York before Uber showed up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yep, yep, exactly.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so he was doing this in the 90s and the 2000s.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So he made a lot of money there.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He was involved in various other businesses too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cohen and his brother both married women who had immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And that seems to have opened a lot of doors for them in the Ukrainian immigrant community.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they pursued business opportunities from there basically.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There was a floating casino or a gambling company that he was involved in in Florida that ended up failing.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But he made a lot of money off of all this stuff.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It's not entirely clear how, but he seems to have been successful one way or another.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: OK. Sounds like he'd be a great candidate for the Trump Organization as an attorney.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Yeah. And the way he got involved with Trump is pretty interesting.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He had gotten pretty wealthy and he started buying Trump Organization properties for himself and encouraging his family members and business associates to buy them too.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he eventually became treasurer of the board of Trump World Tower in New York.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It was great timing for this because there was a big fight going on over control of the condo board.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: There were some owners who were very angry at Donald Trump and had taken control of the board.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Cohen ended up fighting to wrest control of the board back from them and to deliver it back sort of on Trump's side.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So that really impressed Trump.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he ended up offering Cohen a job at the Trump Organization.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He was named executive vice president and special counsel.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was in 2007.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And he got involved in a bunch of different things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One particular line of business that he was very involved in was pursuing Trump investment opportunities in the former Soviet Union, the country of Georgia, in Kazakhstan, and eventually in Russia, too.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So at what point does Michael Cohen become such a close personal counsel, consigliere, as you said, to Donald Trump?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It seems like their relationship took a step forward in 2011.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump was considering challenging Obama for his reelection.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: While I'm not at this time a candidate for the presidency, I will decide by June whether or not I will become one.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Cohen became like a leading political advisor to Trump as he considered running this campaign.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It ended up not happening. Trump decided against running that year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But Cohen continued to build up that trust with him and take on bigger and bigger roles in the Trump organization.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Cohen has this reputation for going after Donald Trump's enemies.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What kind of tactics does he use?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: It sounds like there's a lot of sort of verbal bullying.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Well, he can use either carrots, as we've seen in the hush money that he gave to Stormy Daniels, or he can take a harder line and use some sticks.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So after Trump began running for president in June 2015, the following month in July, the Daily Beast was preparing a story about an old deposition from Trump's first wife, Ivana, in which she said that Donald Trump had raped her at one point during their marriage.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Cohen was asked to respond about this, and he said a few things.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He falsely told the Daily Beast that legally you could not rape your spouse in New York.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Quote, by the very definition, you can't rape your spouse. It is true. You cannot rape your spouse.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And there's very clear case law.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Then in an attempt to stop the story from being printed, he really, really threatened one of the reporters involved, Tim Mack.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So Cohen said, still don't have, and I will come after your Daily Beast and everybody else that you possibly know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I'm warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I'm going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Oh my god, what? And this for sure he said? Like, there's no tape of that, but he said that to a reporter.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know if it was taped, but Tim wrote it up and put it in the Daily Beast, and Cohen has never disputed saying that, so pretty clearly said it.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: One of the biggest legal issues swirling around the president right now is obviously his connections to Russia, his campaign's connections to Russia.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What kinds of connections does Cohen have to Russia?
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So in the fall of 2015, Donald Trump is already running for president at this point.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Michael Cohen, working for the Trump Organization, gets involved in a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: The Trump Organization signs a letter of intent saying they plan on proceeding with this project, basically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And Cohen is emailing with a longtime business associate of his named Felix Sater.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And it's a very interesting email exchange that we learned about last year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Sater emails Cohen, I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Buddy, our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I will get all of Putin's team to buy in on this.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Cohen later said that Sater was just using colorful language and salesmanship, you know, enthusiastically trying to get this project made.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A few weeks after that in mid-January 2016.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So this is just weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Trump is the front runner leading in the polls.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Cohen writes to Vladimir Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, in an email.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's basically asking for help with permitting for the Trump Tower Moscow project.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: They're having trouble obtaining the local permits to move forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Cohen writes, I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Cohen was very clearly reaching out to both a top Russian government official and was involved in business pursuits related to Russia during the campaign.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, he says he never got a response from this Russian official and that Trump organization abandoned their plans for the Trump Tower Moscow soon afterwards.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So it all amounted to nothing in the end. It was just a business opportunity.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was exploring it and it went nowhere.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And that there was certainly no collusion or even further communication after that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Other than the fact that this guy, Michael Cohen, seems to be a bit of a bully on Trump's behalf and fancies himself conciliary to the head of the family.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Why should we care about him? Is he important? Is he someone we need to be keeping an eye on?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think he's an extremely important figure for the future of Donald Trump's presidency right now.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Trump has been, as far as I know, his only client in recent years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he has a lot of documents on his work for Donald Trump and the Trump organization over many, many years.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And now the Justice Department has these documents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So Cohen knows a lot.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: He's been around a long time, close to Trump for a long time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think it's safe to say that he's what happens, what comes out of this raid and whether Michael Cohen is eventually charged could have very, very big implications for the future of Trump's presidency.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this is this weird liminal space you're in now between ordering your Quip toothbrush and having your Quip toothbrush after going to getquip.com slash explain.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: How are you going to spend the coming days of anticipation?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, I now have this feeling of kind of like I'm ready to move on.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And now every time I approach my current toothbrush, it just feels kind of awkward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Like, you know, I'm moving on from you, but I can't quite yet.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so there's this kind of weird tension in my life that I'm really ready to move on from.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But it's going to be a few days.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And I'm looking at the tracking now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's going to be two days before it's here.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: So I don't know.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's kind of this weird middle ground.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: I feel like I'm in toothbrush limbo at the moment.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If it gets there by, you know, Friday morning and there's like a Friday afternoon brush that you can, you know, foresee, you're going to have to call us back and report on how satisfied you are with your Quip toothbrush.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I have pretty high expectations, you know, that there's all this promise about it being able to tell me when I'm supposed to switch sides.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And I'm kind of an ADD brusher.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so this kind of that's actually one of the main features I'm excited about is like the guidance that it will give me to brush.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: And so I have high expectations.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'll give it a thorough review and let you know how I feel.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Excellent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Johnny, thank you so much for listening.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thank you for, you know, supporting the show and love your work.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Thank you, Sean. I appreciate it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'll let you know how it goes.
--:-- Andrew Prokop: Great.
