MSNBC conservative: Cohen’s plea deal proves Trump was ‘beholden’ to Russia during 2016 campaign

Conservative columnist Bret Stephens said Michael Cohen's guilty plea delivered damning evidence against President Donald Trump -- and showed Russia had undermined the integrity of American democracy.

The New York Times columnist told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that Trump's pursuit of a real estate deal in Moscow during his presidential campaign had made him vulnerable to Russian efforts to influence the election.

"The president as a candidate for the office was vulnerable to Russian interests and, in fact, there is a good reason to believe (that)," Stephens said. "The central question here is, why was Trump so improbably sympathetic to Russian interests? Why did he strike such a dissonant note against every other Republican in the field, never mind every other Democrat in the field, that Russia was a country he wanted to parlay with, he wanted a better relationship with. Now that's now becoming clear."

Trump was essentially hedging his bet by continuing to pursue business relations with Russia as a presidential candidate, Stephens said -- but he said those talks came close to collusion.

"His assumption was he was going to lose the election but might win deals in Russia afterwards," Stephens said. "I don't know whether that's collusion, but anyone who cares about the integrity of our electoral system should worry that a major candidate for president was so beholden to interests and favors of an adversarial foreign power he was likely willing to bend what he said and thought to curry favor with that power."

Stephens said he hadn't seen proof of collusion, but he said Trump and his eldest son had demonstrated a willingness to collude.

"This remind me a little of the famous summer 2016 meeting, when they said nothing came out of it," he said. "Yes, but you went into the meeting with the intent to collude, and that should be just as significant as whether a deal materialized or not."

Cohen told the court his efforts to secure a Moscow deal ended the same month as that Trump Tower meeting, and he called off plans to visit Russia the same day news broke that Russian hackers had stolen DNC emails.

"The only reason it didn't materialize is by the summer of 2016, there was so much focus on Trump's bizarre Russia policy it would have been politically crazy for him to stay with a deal," Stephens said.