What’s in the latest court filings about Cohen, Manafort

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• Judy Woodruff:

  President Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen has provided investigators detailed information about contacts between Russia, the Trump Organization and the Trump campaign.

  In a court filing this evening, the special counsel says that Cohen has provided prosecutors with details on — quote — "certain, discrete Russia-related matters that are central to the investigation."

  It is just one of three major developments from Robert Mueller's team this week.

  In a separate filing, federal prosecutors in New York detail how Cohen made payments to silence women at a critical moment in the campaign at the direction of Mr. Trump.

  William Brangham is here to bring us up to speed.

  So, William, what's been happening tonight?

• William Brangham:

  Well, we know this has been something on the minds of many reporters who are covering this.

  Certainly, the president, we saw him wake up this morning and issue several tweets in anticipation of this. He again, as he has often done, criticized the Mueller investigation, said that all of the prosecutors are conflicted. He said that this was a witch-hunt and that the whole thing should be thrown out.

  What he was worried about is what happened earlier on Tuesday and what happened, of course, today, which was these three major filings detailing crucial details about the cooperation that three major figures have been providing.

  Let's take a look.

  The first filing was on Tuesday, and it concerned Michael Flynn, President Trump's short-lived national security adviser.

  Last December, Flynn admitted to lying to federal agents about talks he had during the transition with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. After pleading guilty, Flynn agreed to cooperate with Mueller's team, and he's been doing so for a year.

  This week, Mueller's office issued this heavily redacted sentencing memo asking for no prison time for Flynn, citing his extensive cooperation, including sitting for 19 interviews.

  Among other matters, Flynn talked about — quote — "interactions between individuals in the presidential transition team and Russia." The filing described Flynn as — quote — "one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight regarding events and issues under investigation."

  Because of the redactions, however, it's not clear what else was discussed, but the document indicates there are at least three distinct investigations he's helping with, including the Russia probe.

  Like Flynn, former Trump lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen has also been cooperating with the special counsel. Cohen first pleaded guilty in August to eight counts unrelated to his work for Trump, but then, last week, he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about negotiations he did on a failed Trump real estate deal in Moscow.

  Those negotiations went on throughout the 2016 campaign, and Cohen says then-candidate Trump was updated on the discussions.

  Former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted on eight counts of bank fraud and related crimes this summer, and later pleaded guilty to other conspiracy and witness tampering charges. He too agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully with Mueller's team, but that apparently didn't happen, because Mueller last month accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to investigators.

  So, Judy, as we just heard, Paul Manafort was accused by the prosecution of repeatedly lying, and Robert Mueller just issued a filing tonight detailing how he alleges that Manafort broke that cooperation agreement.

  We will go through it and update our viewers on all of that.

  But let's turn to the Cohen filing today. This was from the Southern District of New York, 38-page filing that they put out today, and it was a very tough indictment that they put forward about Michael Cohen. They reiterated that his behavior throughout the process, they refer to it as repugnant.

  They said that there is going to be some serious consequences for him. They recommended the maximum sentence for him. They detailed the four specific crimes that they are alleging he has committed.

  And those crimes are willful tax evasion, making false statements to a financial institution — these were personal loans that he took out from banks — illegal campaign contributions — these were the arranging of hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and the other women, if you remember — and then making false statements to Congress.

  This was about that Moscow-Trump real estate deal that he had lied to Congress about, and now they are pointing that out.

  And for this, they are recommending, prosecutors, what they say is a substantial term of imprisonment. Could be up to four years. They went on to describe Cohen's motivations in all of this, again, pretty tough language.

  Listen to this — quote — "He was motivated to do so by personal greed and repeatedly used his power and influence for deceptive ends. Now he seeks extraordinary leniency, a sentence of no jail time, based principally on his rose-colored view of the seriousness of the crimes."

  They went on to absolutely reject his request for leniency. They noted also — and this is important — that some of these crimes occurred right in the middle of a campaign. Remember, specifically about the Stormy Daniels hush payments, those were meant to keep someone who might have potentially very embarrassing information from going public.

  He arranged what we now believe are illegal payments to her that violated campaign finance laws.

  This was another quote from that regarding this payment — quote — "Cohen's crimes are particularly serious because they were committed on the eve of a presidential election and they were intended to affect that election."

  So, tough talk from them.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Tough talk and tough recommendation.

  But, at the same time, within, I think minutes after that filing came out of the Southern District of New York, you had Robert Mueller's office issue of filing that had a different take, frankly, a milder recommendation for Michael Cohen.

• William Brangham:

  That's right, Judy.

  The — it's somewhat in contrast to the way Mueller treated Michael Flynn earlier this week, where he said he's really been cooperating, and we want to give him no sentence whatsoever.

  The Mueller letter did detail, yes, he has lied about all of these things, but they said that he's gone to great lengths to try to do better, to admit to his crimes, to explain who was cooperating with him in those crimes. They said he had offered seven prefer sessions. These were conversations that Cohen had with prosecutors.

  They specifically detailed how he told them about this Moscow real estate project. And the important thing to remember with this is, Cohen lied to Congress about all of these negotiations he was doing during the campaign and into the transition, where, simultaneously, you have then candidate and then president-elect Trump saying nice things about Russia, while his main lieutenant is trying to negotiate a potentially multibillion-dollar deal to build what was going to be the biggest building in all of Russia.

  So, Mueller — I'm not a prosecutor, so I don't know exactly what this means. But they did say, we will abide by what the judge's recommendations are.

• Judy Woodruff:

  All right, William, that is a comprehensive look at that.

  And, as you mentioned, we have this second Mueller filing tonight having to do with Paul Manafort. You're going to take a look at that, and we're going to try to come back to you at the end of the program to find out what's in there.

  Thank you, William.

• Judy Woodruff:

  As we reported earlier: In a court filing late this evening, special counsel Robert Mueller's team detailed how former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied repeatedly to prosecutors, after Manafort had agreed to a plea deal, and to be truthful with prosecutors.

  William Brangham has been going over this latest document, and he is back to help fill us in.

  So, what do you see here?

• William Brangham:

  The important thing, before we get into the filing, is to remember that getting Paul Manafort to agree to a plea deal and to cooperate was really a big deal for Mueller's team.

  Remember, he was the campaign manager at a very crucial part of the Trump administration, the very fledgling Trump administration at the end of the campaign as well. He was there at this infamous Trump Tower meeting where Don Jr. and Jared Kushner was there. So he might have a lot of information central to Mueller's investigation.

  Mueller's team earlier this year was able to get him — guilty pleas against him about bank fraud, money laundering, lying about his work as a Ukrainian lobbyist.

  And as part of that conviction, they got him to agree to be — a plea. And so, today, they said, you agreed to be truthful with us, and you were not.

  And they laid out fully. They said that Manafort had lied about the following items. He lied about interactions with a suspected Russian operative. This was about to coordinate a story apparently to make him look better.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Right.

• William Brangham:

  He lied about the nature of one particular wire transfer. He lied about a separate other Department of Justice investigation. But, because of redactions, we don't know what that is.

  And he lied about contacts with Trump administration officials. This last part about the contacts with the Trump administration is particularly tough, because it's not illegal, but you're not supposed to be telling the Trump administration what prosecutors are asking you about.

• Judy Woodruff:

  The pieces just continue to come together.

  William Brangham, thank you very much.

• William Brangham:

  You're welcome.