Michael Cohen ‘thinks it’s checkmate for Trump’: Ex-lawyer thinks the president knew about Trump Tower meeting

President Donald Trump's longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen reportedly believes it is "checkmate" in the investigations into Russian collusion and obstruction of justice.

Donny Deutsch, a longtime friend of Cohen, explained the thinking on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" on Tuesday.

"You have an interesting sort of keyhole into this world through your relationship with Michael Cohen," Wallace noted. "But I'm guessing you're not surprised by news that today we learned that the president's one-time campaign chairman handed polling data to Russians, that one of the Russians who was inside, deep inside, Trump Tower with Donald Trump, Jr. and everyone else running the Trump campaign was charged by the Justice Department, related to another case."

"Just talk about the culture and why there were so many Russians everywhere," she said.

"You know, so many Russians, I said dating back from the early 1990s, Donald Trump couldn't get money from any place else other than Russia," he explained.

"According to Michael Cohen -- without specifically going into these allegations -- after spending 70 hours with the special prosecutor, he thinks it's checkmate for Trump," Deutsch revealed.

"I had many discussions about where I would ask him about the meeting at Trump Tower -- the famous meeting -- did Donald know? And his answer would be, without specifically answering, [Trump] knew everything that was going on everywhere," he continued.

"So I don't think this would be a surprise to anybody," he added.

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