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Buzzfeed: Trump Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired January 18, 2019 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[05:59:19] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Friday, January 18, 6 a.m. here in New York. We're spilling coffee, because it's just that big of a day.

Two words that everyone needs to learn this morning. Suborning perjury. It means telling someone to lie under oath. It is a crime. It is impeachable, and it is breaking news. Perhaps major breaking news.

Overnight an explosive new report in Buzzfeed says that President Trump personally instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Suborning perjury is a crime. And it is impeachable.

So yes, this involved Michael Cohen, the president's one-time lawyer and right-hand man, who is a convicted felon and an admitted liar, but the Buzzfeed report indicates it is not his word that is central here, citing two federal law enforcement officials. They report that Mueller's office learned Trump directed Cohen to lie through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and from company e-mails, text messages, and other documents.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Cohen, of course, pleaded guilty in November to lying to Congress about the Russia investigation. He claimed negotiations about the Moscow tower project ended in January of 2016 when they, in fact, ended in June of that year, after Donald Trump was already the presumptive Republican nominee.

Cohen said that he lied out of loyalty to the president and to align with his political messaging. CNN has not independently confirmed the Buzzfeed report, but if this report proves true, this could be a game changer.

Democratic lawmakers are already seizing on the report. Former attorney general Eric Holder tweeted, "If true -- and proof must be examined -- Congress must begin impeachment proceedings." This raise the stakes for Michael Cohen's testimony before Congress in just a couple of weeks.

So let's begin with CNN's Shimon Prokupecz. He is live in Washington with all of the breaking details. What have we learned? SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's certainly explosive

reporting and really would be the first clear sign, like you said, if true, that the president was involved in a major coverup, that there are obstruction issues here that we have not seen the likes of before in terms of this White House.

So went ahead and published the story and, like you guys, they said just moments ago -- they say that it's not just Michael Cohen's words that federal investigators and Mike -- and the Mueller team have. They say that there are text messages, e-mails, other documents that federal investigators and the Mueller team have which corroborate some of this information. The fact that the president wanted Michael Cohen to lie to members of Congress.

The other thing -- and this is also usually significant -- is that Buzzfeed says that Michael Cohen and the president met some ten times, ten times over this deal over the Moscow project. Hugely significant, because obviously, the president has sought to downplay any role he may have had in this project.

Now, timing in all of this is the -- potentially the next attorney general just testifying days ago here on Capitol Hill, was asked about this issue, if the president would suborn perjury or if he was involved in any kind of obstruction, what could potentially and what should potentially happen.

Here's that sound.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC), CHAIRMAN, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: So if there was some reason to believe that the president tried to coach somebody not to testify or testify falsely, that could be obstruction of justice?

BILL BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: Yes, under that -- under an obstruction statute, yes.

GRAHAM: So if there's some evidence that the president tried to conceal evidence, that would be obstruction of justice potentially, right?

BARR: Right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: So the other thing in the Buzzfeed story is that the Ivanka Trump and Don Jr., they say played a bigger role, as well. Don Jr. had testified also before Congress. He tried to minimize his role in the entire project. Buzzfeed saying not so, that he was much more involved.

Obviously, many, many questions. We're going to hear a lot today, and the big day really will also be when Michael Cohen, as you guys say, finally testifies before members of Congress on February 7.

CAMEROTA: OK, Shimon, thank you very much for giving us all that background.

Joining us now to discuss the ramifications of all this are Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent; Josh Campbell, a former FBI supervisory special agent; Joe Lockhart. He was the White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton; and John Avlon.

BERMAN: Big day, big table.

CAMEROTA: Yes. We're going to need a bigger table, because this is huge.

So, again, CNN has not confirmed this, but according to Buzzfeed, let me just read you the passage that has gotten so much attention, because this is not Michael Cohen's word versus Donald Trump's word. It's bigger than that.

Here it is: "The special counsel's office learned about Trump's directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company e- mails, text messages and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office."

Asha, suborning perjury is not ambiguous. That is a crime. It's impeachable.

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's pretty cut and dry. And just to be clear on why this -- in this context, it is especially egregious is this is directing someone to lie to Congress. And it's really, you know, this is the president in his office as the president actually impeding the functions, the legitimate oversight functions of a coequal branch, which is looking into activity and, essentially, thwarting their ability to be an effective check on him.

So just to put that into the big picture. Because we've had a lot of people poo poo: "Oh, it's just a lie. What's the big deal." This goes to the fundamental structure of our government.

[06:05:06] BERMAN: The response from Rudy Giuliani overnight to the Buzzfeed story was this: "If you believe Cohen, I can get you a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge." You know what that's not? A denial.

Rudy Giuliani did not deny the essence of the Buzzfeed story last night. Now, he may not have had time to gather the facts, but he did not deny it.

Josh Campbell, again, this is not ambiguous. Suborning perjury is a crime. It is impeachable. How I do know it's impeachable? Because it has come up in articles of impeachment before.

Richard Nixon, Article 1, Section 3: "Approving, condoning, acquiescing and counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers."

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: No, you're right. And we've long described this -- this whole Mueller investigation on the fruits of it as either a political issue or a legal issue. This is both.

Impeachment is obviously a political process. To remove a president for high crimes and misdemeanors, if it's determined that the person that, you know, has either broken the law or has engaged in some type of malfeasance.

But what this also mentioned, as Asha pointed out, this is also illegal. You cannot suborn perjury. You cannot direct someone to lie to investigators, which is what the allegations are here, which are obviously very explosive.

Now, you played the statement there from Rudy Giuliani. I think we all know by now what his role is. He's not a lawyer. He's a P.R. person. And now we know why they've engaged in this long campaign of attack against investigators, because they knew that something like this would probably come out. We've seen the pattern of, you know, allegations of malfeasance time and again. This is the latest. This is explosive.

And the last thing I'll say, that I think it's also important to note, is that at the end of the day, we're dealing with two liars. Right? You have Michael Cohen who has admitted to lying. You have the president of the United States, who lies on a daily basis. And so it's all going to come down to what was in that reporting, as far as the text messages, the e-mails. Something to corroborate what Cohen is saying.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And I think that's the fundamental difference that Rudy's statement isn't addressing. Which is these two reporters, who are excellent reporters, seem to have the receipts. They have evidence that goes beyond one person's word against the other.

So the attempt to set up a, you know, he said/he said about this is utterly irrelevant if there are texts, if there are e-mails, if there's contemporary documentation. And just the -- the idiocy of this, the triumph of greed over decency that we're already were in an environment where we're fully expecting hyperpartisans to say lying doesn't matter. Again, you run into the cold, hard facts not just of this case but of history.

CAMEROTA: To be clear, I'm not sure if they have the documents. They have two federal law enforcement source who have told them that this is what it's based on, those receipts, the documents, the text messages. And so we just don't exactly know. But if they do --

AVLON: If they do.

CAMEROTA: That is certainly well beyond Michael Cohen.

BERMAN: And the timeline is interesting, too. Which is that they had that information, according to the story and according to these two law enforcement officials, before they even went to Cohen. So they went to Cohen after they had the evidence there, which is interesting. CAMEROTA: And so, Joe, I mean, up until now there's been a lot of

"What's collusion anyway? One man's collusion is another man's cooperation." Suborning perjury is not like that. There's -- it's not open to interpretation.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: No. And it's very -- it's been very hard to wrap our arms around what Trump knew and what -- exactly what is collusion, what is cooperation.

You know, if you go back over the last, whatever, 50 years or so, these are exactly the things that the last two impeachments centered around. When -- when my old boss, Bill Clinton, what the House voted out was suborning perjury and obstruction of justice.

BERMAN: Yes. You have the scars to prove it.

LOCKHART: I do. I do have the scars to prove it. And, you know, Lindsey Graham, the president's fiercest defender, closest friend in the Senate, is now in a really tough spot.

You have him speaking in 1999 from the Senate floor, making exactly the case that could bring down Donald Trump; and you have him at the hearing that you showed in the opening, questioning Barr, you know, sort of getting him on the record in a sort of eerie moment of "If he does this he's got to go," right? And then we find out he did this.

BERMAN: Again, just to be clear, not only do we have two examples where presidents were impeached or nearly impeached for suborning perjury, we have an incoming attorney general who says that suborning perjury is bad and does constitute obstruction of justice and is worthy of an investigation. Bill Barr, he said it crystal-clear in the hearings. He put it in his memo. We played you the sound from before.

Asha and Josh, just on the investigative side, because you've both been on that also, how do you put together that case? Explain to me the types of text messages, e-mails, you know, testimony from the Trump Organization that would lay out a case that Donald Trump told Michael Cohen to lie.

RANGAPPA: Well, let's just rewind, take a trip down memory lane. I mean, we know that, you know, the FBI went and executed a search warrant on Michael Cohen. They had thousands, hundreds of thousands of documents. And attorney/client privilege does not apply under a crime-fraud privilege. So anything that had this kind of information would be available to prosecutors.

And now Michael Cohen is cooperating with them.

So, you know, we've seen over and over again that they have been quite sloppy in their communications. So I mean, honestly, I don't know that it would be very hard if he had those ongoing conversations, you know, to find direct communications where there is either a direct or indirect implication that this is the story that needs to be told about the Trump Tower Moscow deal. CAMEROTA: So Josh, this leads us to what Robert Mueller's next move

is. Senator Chris Murphy last night, upon reading this bombshell in Buzzfeed, tweeted this: "Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller should not end his inquiry, but it's about time for him to show Congress his cards before it is too late for us to act."

What does that mean? Can Mueller release a piece of his report before it's finished?

CAMPBELL: So no disrespect to the senator, I disagree with that completely, for the same reason that I disagree with Rudy Giuliani every time he says, "Put up or shut up." Investigations don't run on the timetable of politicians. It runs on the timetable of the investigators. And they're going to do what they need to do to cross every "T," to dot every "I."

CAMEROTA: But if they've concluded this one, can they release it piecemeal?

CAMPBELL: They could, but I don't know that that would necessarily help the rest of their investigation. Because again, when you have multiple people, this is an enterprise (ph) investigation. If you have one person that you eventually get to cooperate, that may be something that you then want to question someone else on. So it really makes no sense to lay out the cards.

Obviously, we would all like to know -- we would like to have Bob Mueller right here, seated next to us, telling us everything that he's done.

LOCKHART: There's room. There's room.

CAMPBELL: It's a big enough table.

LOCKHART: I'll give up my chair.

CAMPBELL: But again, it's going to work on that timeline. And I think politicians and people that are, you know, getting antsy and wanting this to be over, you know, they're just going to have to wait.

And the last thing I'll say is the point that Joe made is a good one. He was talking about Senator Graham speaking of, you know, politicians and people in that realm.

This is not just a day of revelation, but this is a day of soul searching, especially for people like Senator Graham and those who have been, you know, enabling the president. These attacks on law enforcement, these attacks on Bob Mueller. These attacks on the investigators who are working to unearth this corruption. This is a day of revelation, because if they're honest with themselves, they're going to have to do some soul searching, prepare for the fact that they may have been wrong, they may have been used and this president might be a crook. RANGAPPA: Can I just jump in on that? I mean, we don't have Mueller,

but Congress can do its own investigation on this particular issue. So I just want to put that out there.

AVLON: Yes. But that goes to the heart of the problem. You know, when the House Intelligence Committee under Devin Nunes was allegedly looking into this and other things, they utterly gave up the ghost. They did not try to do their job. They fell in with the White House.

And that's the problem, is that honesty is in precious short supply in Washington these days, because hyperpartisanship has proven to be such a compelling drug that it has caused people to give up any sense of perspective or principle that transcends party. And that was key in the Nixon case, obviously. That's when Republicans went to Richard Nixon and said, "Guess what? The jig is up." And it's hard to imagine that happening the same way today.

BERMAN: Well, can we role play here for a second?

CAMEROTA: Fantastic.

AVLON: Hey, now.

CAMEROTA: OK.

BERMAN: Not the first time I've asked Joe Lockhart that question. OK. We have part of the script here, which is the Buzzfeed report comes out, Rudy Giuliani, what is your reaction? "Michael Cohen is a liar, OK.

The next part of the play is this. OK, but here's the evidence that the president suborned perjury and asked Michael Cohen to lie. What's your reaction to that, Rudy Giuliani?

LOCKHART: Maybe the Ed Koch Bridge I'll sell, or another bridge, the George Washington bridge.

You know, listen, I said this yesterday. Giuliani's role in all of this is to confuse everyone. It's to really just say this is all --

CAMEROTA: It's working.

LOCKHART: -- really complicated. And it's working, and he's very good at it.

The problem is, this is a complicated case. This piece is simple. Very simple. And to the point about I disagree with Chris Murphy for a different reason. Democrats should not want to get ahead of Mueller, because it will become hyperpartisan in that context. They want Mueller to make the first move and then come in behind him, and politically, that is critical.

BERMAN: Can I can suggest what the next line in our roleplay game might be? Which is that here's the evidence. Then Rudy Giuliani might say, "OK, well it doesn't matter. This was a lie or suborning perjury about something not central to the Russia -- you know, it's not collusion."

AVLON: Before he was president, that's murky. People lie about money all the time just like sex, and it's really not at that level that the founders intended.

LOCKHART: But the problem is, it is central to the Russia issue. The Trump Tower project, there is a reason the president has sought to downplay it, to deny it, to say it didn't really happen. There's a reason that -- his family's involved. That gives you a sense of why he wants to down-play this.

It is central to the motive. It is a piece of the puzzle of why does he act this way towards Russia? Why is he taking this -- why have we changed our policy? It may not be evidence of a crime, but it gives you a sense of why he wanted to obstruct justice here.

[06:15:08] CAMEROTA: Yes. But Cohen testified after Donald Trump was president, to the Congress.

LOCKHART: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So the suborned perjury is when he was president.

BERMAN: When he was president of the United States, he swore an oath to uphold justice.

OK, Donald Trump Jr. is mention misdemeanor this Buzzfeed story, Ivanka Trump is mentioned in this Buzz story.

Also, we heard from Rudy Giuliani in the last 48 hours, saying the only crime you can commit is somehow collusion with the Russians. Was that a projection? Did he know this was coming? Much more ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right. The breaking news this morning, this bombshell report from Buzzfeed News that President Trump personally instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a proposed Moscow tower project. It is a crime to suborn perjury, and it is impeachable.

We're back now with Asha Rangappa, Josh Campbell, John Avlon and Joe Lockhart. The disclaimer is CNN has not matched this reporting. The other disclaiming is these two reporters from Buzzfeed who broke this story, they are terrific reporters. Just so you know.

CAMEROTA: They've had other important stories.

BERMAN: And they've had a lot of scoops on this angle.

John Avlon, to you. One of the things that I first thought of when I woke up and read this story from Buzzfeed that the president suborned perjury was that, over the last 48 hours, Rudy Giuliani has been trying to limit the scope of the president's culpability here in what would be a crime.

[06:20:04] In his interview with Chris Cuomo, in his subsequent tweets on the subject, he said, "There is no involvement in collusion with Russians on the e-mail hack, the only possible crime."

So within the last 48 hours, you have two things happening. Rudy saying the only possible crime is if, basically, President Trump personally hacked the DNC e-mails. And you have Buzzfeed saying the president committed a crime by suborning perjury.

AVLON: Yes. And you see Rudy really making an effort to protect and isolate his client and define down the possible damage to saying that, yes, if Trump didn't personally know about and/or order, you know, Vladimir Putin to hack the DNC, then we're good here.

The problem is, of course, that the scope of the investigation, as we now know, seems to be much bigger and more specific and more serious. And it's very difficult to spin your way out of the kind of facts that this Buzzfeed article indicates the Mueller team has about the suborning of perjury and the motive of greed, which may explain a lot of the previously inexplicable softness toward Vladimir Putin and Russia.

CAMEROTA: The other problem is something I like to call the legal code, the law. I mean, since when does Rudy Giuliani get to decide what the only crime is that exists? Collusion?

AVLON: He's playing the ref.

CAMEROTA: But I mean, this is absurd. We know that suborning perjury is a crime. It's a federal crime. It's an impeachable crime.

LOCKHART: But -- but as Josh mentioned earlier, he's not speaking as the president's lawyer. He's speaking as his political flak. The person who's trying to, you know, change the subject, narrow, expand, do all of these things.

What Rudy Giuliani is doing right now has nothing to do with the law and has nothing to do with the president's defense, except for politically. Because they know that this eventually will go to Congress. And all they care about at this point -- and I have some experience with this -- is making sure that the base and the base that dictates the Senate -- remember, the government is shut down right now, because Senate Republicans are afraid of Trump's base. Making -- all they want to do is make sure that that group of people, that 33 percent of the public, are able to parrot back Rudy Giuliani's -- "Well, if he didn't hack the DNC, fine with me."

And that's what you're going to hear. When everyone goes out and talks to Trump voters over the next couple of days, they're going to parrot back what Rudy Giuliani said, what they heard on FOX, what they heard from Sean Hannity. That's the game here.

BERMAN: It is interesting. We in a shutdown. We'll talk about this a little bit later. But I wonder if President Trump will regret keeping Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and other leading Democrats around today and tomorrow to react to this Buzzfeed story.

Adam Schiff already out in comment. It would have been harder for him to respond if he was in Afghanistan, I will say that. Also mentioned in this Buzzfeed story, Asha, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka

Trump, which suggests that they had knowledge of this Trump Tower project, greater knowledge than has been reported previously. Now, they're not on the hook for suborning perjury, as far as we know. But being mentioned in this article and being mentioned in connection with something which is so problematic can't be a comfortable place to be.

RANGAPPA: No, it cannot be a comfortable place to be. And I think we just go back to, if this story is true, Mueller has the receipts. I mean, just as he filed that indictment against 12 GRU officers and knew every keystroke and every Bitcoin exchange, he has reconstructed entire conversations.

And so let's remember that we have a question about whether Trump knew about that Trump Tower meeting. I mean, I think this shows two things. Mueller has more information than we know, and also that Donald Trump was involved in a very in the weeds degree with what's happening with the people around him.

This kind of is consistent with the micromanaging approach that is starting to look very inconsistent with the idea that he had no idea what was going on in his campaign and, certainly, no idea what his son and son-in-law were doing when they met with the Russians.

AVLON: Yes. And there's the deeper irony in all of this, is that Trump has been -- Trump's favorite president has been Nixon for a long time. He's echoed him during campaign and slogans. Adopted a lot of the --

BERMAN: Second favorite. His favorite is Trump.

AVLON: Well, fair enough in a Trumpcentric universe.

But there's an element of first his tragedy, then his farce that greed may have been the core sin that led to this cascade of problems for the president, and it does -- may envelop his family. And that will be dependent, too. And so you're going to have the situation where hyperpartisanship is the last refuge of scoundrels. And that may determine that the topography that we're going into politically be on the cut-and-dry facts.

CAMEROTA: I'm glad you brought up the greed, because I think that, if you're looking for the motivation of how all of this began, who knows? It's impossible to get into somebody's psychology. However, he stood to gain millions of dollars from the Trump Tower in Moscow, and he had a man-crush on Vladimir Putin. So he wanted to be friends --

AVLON: That's a legal term, by the way.

CAMEROTA: He said it. I'm not -- I'm actually not just interpreting this. He wanted to -- one of his stated goals when he went into office was to better relations with Vladimir Putin. He admired Vladimir Putin.

[06:25:05] So these -- so he pressed Michael Cohen to arrange a meeting for him before he won with -- in Moscow with Vladimir Putin so that -- that's all you need to know. This is --

LOCKHART: And remember, Trump is not a professional politician or a foreign policy expert. He didn't come to this with a particular world view, except for where there's world there's cash for Donald Trump.

And so he didn't. He didn't -- he hadn't been talking and writing, you know, scholarly articles about why the Russian relationship is important and why we need to change it and why we need to reset it. He was looking for cash.

So I think if, you know -- we can divine a lot of motives. But for him, he's a businessman. It comes back to making money, and that's the simplest explanation.

CAMPBELL: And the point, Joe, you make is a great one, because it goes back to, you know, Rudy's ring fencing, right, where he's trying to protect his client. And he mentions the DNC hack, as we've said, as though that's the only crime that he could have committed. It's all these other things.

And again, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the president of the United States intended to, you know, be a Russian stooge or -- you know, none of that matters. It matters what were your actions and what did you do and do you run afoul the law? And that's what investigators will be looking at now.

And what's -- one thing that's very interesting is I can't imagine, as Joe mentioned, I mean, this is what Rudy's trying to do. I know it's easy to kind of describe him as a caricature, but he's -- he's good at what he does as far as P.R.

But at the end of the day, I can't imagine, if you're a viewer out there in the president's base, and you're prepared to parrot these talking points, how is it OK that someone who's a Manhattan liberal billionaire, who we now know is, you know, possibly colluding with the Russians and having people lie to Congress, how does that fit with larger values? That I don't understand.

AVLON: That train left the station a long time ago.

LOCKHART: You know, FOX will explain it all to us tonight.

BERMAN: I am very curious, again, what Democrats will do with this over the rest of the day; and I'm also retroactively curious about some other things the Democrats have done in the past few days. If you guys didn't get the Bill Barr/Amy Klobuchar exchange done, we played one exchange where Barr, who will be the next attorney general, really made clear that he thinks suborning perjury is illegal. But there was another one, as well.

Listen to Senator Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota, really pressed this point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: In your memo, you talked about the Comey decision; and you talk about obstruction of justice and you already went over that, which I appreciate. You wrote on page one that a president persuading a person to commit perjury would be obstruction. Is that right?

BARR: That -- yes.

KLOBUCHAR: OK.

BARR: Or any -- well, you know, any person who persuades another --

KLOBUCHAR: Any person, OK. You also said that a president or any person convincing a witness to change testimony would be obstruction. Is that right?

BARR: Yes.

KLOBUCHAR: OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I don't know if Amy Klobuchar knew this story was coming, Asha, but Barr's on the record on this story.

CAMEROTA: Also, Barr -- Barr's reaction is funny, because it's almost like the question is so stupid he's like, "Yes?"

RANGAPPA: Right.

CAMEROTA: Like he's trying to figure out what's going on.

RANGAPPA: And it's -- this is important, because part of why there were objections to Barr, is that he has a very expansive view of the presidency.

And his memo, which he wrote, which is really kind of laying out this idea of the unitary executive and why facially valid exercises of the president's power can't be obstruction. He's essentially laid out the roadmap in this memo for exactly why this would be an exception to that and that even the president, when he is essentially concealing or falsifying evidence, that that would not fall within the purview of a valid exercise of his powers that -- and obstruction would apply to him.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much for all being here with your insights on this important news morning.

Ahead, we have a CNN exclusive that you must see. We take you to the front lines of the fight against ISIS in northern Syria. Is the terror group defeated as President Trump claims? We give you the facts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)