A recap of the days news. The Washington Post by the way who are doing a lot of heavy lifting, cataloging all the false and misleading claims President Trump has made since he took the oath of office. His complete disregard for the truth is shocking. It probably shouldnt be. After all, he told us this himself. And just remember what youre seeing and what youre reading is not whats happening. So why dont we take a moment, shall we, to break down just a few of the president s most recent lies . Just this week, he again threatened to shut down the federal government, to shut it down on october 1st if congress doesnt give him the money for his Favorite Campaign promise, you know what that is, to build a wall on the southern border. We started building our wall, im so proud of it. We started. We have 1. 6 billion. And weve already started. You saw the pictures yesterday. I said, what a thing of beauty. Well, i dont know, mexico u. S. Steel Just Announced that theyre building six new steel mills. If you care about the truth, nope, thats not the truth. The only thing u. S. Steel has announced is that it will restart two blast furnaces, restart two blast furnaces, not six new steel mills. And its probably no coincidence the president seems to be especially truth challenged when it comes to russia. And this tweet from july 24th, he famously claims russia will be pushing for democrats in the midterms because, according to him, they dont want trump. But i want you to listen closely. This is Vladimir Putin himself coming from his own mouth, he said at the Press Conference after the disastrous summit in helsinki. President putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do
A recap of the days news. Its like a witch hunt. The witch hunt continues. The entire thing has been a witch hunt. This is a pure and simple witch hunt. A lot of witches have been caught. But its not a witch hunt, no matter how many times he says it. The fact is is special Counsel Robert Mueller has brought 191 criminal charges against 35 defendants. There have been five guilty pleas, five guilty pleas so far. And former Trump Campaign manager Paul Manafort is on trial right now in the first case to come out of the mueller investigation. Those are the facts. So here we are again, asking the same question we have asked before, and will ask again, im sure, who are you going to believe . Are you going to believe the president who has made well over 4,200 false or misleading claims
so far . Or are you going to believe your own eyes and your own years . Facts still matter. The truth still matters. Were living in reality, not an alternative reality. I want to bring in Cnn National Security analyst juliette kayyem, and Carrie Cordero. And the author of the threat matrix. Thank you all for joining us. Julia, start with you, so lie after lie, and the disappointing part is, this isnt new. Its not by accident. And well no doubt hear and see more next week. Yeah, that i mean, that is not a lie. We can be assured of that, and the sort of continuation or the repetition of the lie becomes Donald Trumps own reality. I think what youre also seeing, though, is that his sense of what reality is bumping up against the reality of facts. And youre seeing it mostly, of course, in the russian investigation. Those facts dont lie, the number of people who have pled guilty, the number of people who are testifying, the number of indictments that are going on,
the ties that are getting close, if not within essentially the oval office, and so i think part of the lying is a reaction to the reality that donald trump is facing, at least as it pertains to the russia investigation at this stage. Yeah. And then we have this news that the Manhattan Madam, Kristin Davis met with muellers team, theyre interested in her ties to roger stone. Why does roger stones name continue to pop up in this investigation . Well, what we know so far in the Public Reporting is that roger stone appears to have had contact both with guccifer 2, the gru Russian MilitaryIntelligence Officers who attacked john podesta and other democratic emails, as well as with wikileaks which was the platform where these emails came out. And thats just based on Public Reporting. That stuffs relatively old. Part of whats interesting about muellers ongoing interest in this, i think hes up to seven or nine different roger stone advisers or colleagues that he has been interviewing, is that he has some sort of ongoing interest with roger stone. And obviously we dont know what it is. But we know that mueller doesnt yet know the thing that mueller is looking for. And that, in and of itself, is pretty interesting to us. Yeah. Every every step of the way, carrie, mueller has you know, hes been methodical in who he meets with. Hes laser focused, certainly wouldnt be meeting with this woman unless he had good reason to do so. Well, thats right. I mean, i think garretts on the right track, which is that the investigators and the special counsel team, they are interviewing people around roger stone. And so whatever is the piece of the investigation most likely the piece that goes to the heart of the inquiry into whether there were individuals affiliated with the campaign, roger stone being one of them who actually may have had advanced knowledge or been involved in some way with the russian influence campaign, they are circling around roger stone to determine how much information they can learn based on what witnesses say as well as what their Documentary Evidence or the digital evidence that theyre obtaining says. And then theyll determine whether or not they want to talk
to him specifically, whether thats through a voluntary interview or whether thats through grand jury or whether they decide they dont need to talk to him at all. Theyre figuring out the answers to what their questions would be for him in advance through these other witnesses in his circle. And juliette kayyem, i am sure, a lot of people are wondering what does the Manhattan Madam have to do with the russia investigation . I think that 2018 was missing was the Manhattan Madam, remember, she came into sort of prominent in the Elliott Spitzer, the former governor of new york. Sometimes its the 1980s and 1990s all over again. Look, their relationship is described as that theyve had ties. We dont know what these ties are. We dont know what the nature of the relationship is. He represent or she ran for office once. He was her campaign manager. She worked for him once. And so the fact that she voluntarily came forward, maybe either because she has exonerating evidence or because she sees as carrie was describing the sort of you know, the wagons circling around one person and she may have information. So, you know, mueller is a busy guy. Hes not interviewing people that may not have something relevant. And the fact that this cast of characters that surrounds the Trump Campaign from 2016, you know everyone from, you know, stone to the, you know, Stormy Daniels to now the Manhattan Madam, you know, thats the nature of the people he hung out with. And thats a Character Quality that is represented in the president of the United States. Theres no thats not a judgment. Its just these are the people he surrounded himself with. Yeah. I was in my neighborhood the other day and i saw them from afar, and i was like, oh my gosh, theres a Manhattan Madam and roger stone in the same neighborhood, it was so odd. I know. The fact were reading about Elliott Spitzer again is its sort of you have to be of a certain age to remember this. Garrett, i want to read this statement. Roger stone says Kristin Davis is a longtime associate of
mine. I am the god father to her 2yearold son. She knows nothing about russian collusion, wikileaks. I am highly confident she will testify truthfully if called upon to do so. What do you think, garrett . Juliet had a point there i wanted to emphasize and expand upon. Mueller is not on a wild goose case to turn up criminal investigations, criminal charges against anyone for anything. In fact, it was cnns reporting originally on monday this week that showed that he has turned over the tony podesta and Vin Weber Ends of his investigation to the Southern District of new york, the manhattan federal prosecutors. What that means is that what hes actually doing, and we see this with the Michael Cohen case and we see this in a number of other instances, hes handing off things that dont seem related to his core russia probe. So the fact that he is staying focused on roger stone means that he thinks roger stone is the center or part of the center of this russia question. This isnt sort of some unrelated tax charges or, you know, some prostitution or escort charges dating back to the 1990s, totally unrelated. This is something that is central to bob muellers investigation that roger stone is the key to unlocking. Okay. I need you guys to stick around. Well continue on for one more round after this. When we come back, a former Trump Campaign aide socialized with alleged russian agent maria butina, weeks before the election, inviting her to his birthday party. According to the Washington Post. Wonder what they talked about. No. No, no, no, no, no. Cancel. Cancel. Please. Aaagh being in the know is a good thing. Thats why discover will alert you if your Social Security number is found on any one of thousands of risky sites. So breaking news now on alleged russian agent maria butina. She reached out to a former Trump Campaign aide weeks before the election, closer contact with trumps team than previously known. Back with me, juliette kayyem, Carrie Cordero and garrett graff. And theyre reporting that she sought out interactions with j. D. Gordon who served as Trumps Campaign director on National Security for six months before he moved over to the transition team. Thats according to testimony and documents provided to the Senate Intelligence committee. Significant . Oh, absolutely. What we have to remember is the case thats trying to be made, right now shes in jail. What shes saying or not saying is going to be relevant for any investigation. Whats more important is the extent to which we are now
seeing how early on in this campaign the National Security team, this is not like some finance person, this is the one of the leads of trumps very small National Security team were receptive to someone like maria. Right . In other words, no other campaign in the history of the presidency has had so Many Russians hanging out around the various teams. So what this reporting shows is that those overtures were very, very close to the election day itself, and they were social enough that people that she was invited to Birthday Parties and concerts and whatever else. These arent random. I saw her at a conference kind of relationships. These are actually she gets invited by leaders of the National Security team and not some other part of the Trump Campaign. So i think this is very significant, both in terms of how close it was to the campaign, and how close her ties were to the National Security apparatus of the trump transition. This is some of the details, get them right here, garrett, they exchanged emails in september and october of 2016, j. D. Gordon invited butina to a concert and a birthday party. What were seeing is an alleged russian agent getting close to someone in trumps orbit. Right . Yeah. And, remember, there are some unanswered, loose threads involving j. D. Gordon already in this investigation. He was involved in the attempt to change the platform language of the republican at the Republican Convention to make it more prorussia, more antiukraine. That was the same convention, of course, that had Paul Manafort, had rick gates, where Jeff Sessions was meeting with Sergey Kislyak on the side of the convention. It spools some interesting and intriguing avenues that could help us answer some of the
fundamental Unanswered Questions we still have about what transpired in the middle of the Trump Campaign in 2016. So Paul Manaforts accountant testified today, carrie, and one of them is Cindy Laporta who got immunity. She said she falsified a 900,000 loan amount so manafort could pay less taxes. Is that damning . Its very its dramatic. She has been granted immunity so that she would testify and not incriminate herself. She has admitted she knew some of what they were doing was illegal. So i think that testimony probably was very powerful. And the cooperation of the accountants and the bookkeeper,
what that does is that provides Additional Details and context to what i think is really a very documentheavy trial, and a documentheavy case. In other words, most of the serious evidence that will support the elements of the crime, if the jury does find him guilty, will come from the actual documents themselves and the falsified records. Someone like this, though, she provides a face and personal knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes. So, carrie, this is really a preview of what were going to hear from the prosecution star witness, rick gates . Well, in some ways, rick gates will, i think, provide even more details if, in fact, he does testify. He will have additional questions from the defense about, you know, his Cooperation Agreement as well. And he was part of this scheme. So that adds a different dimension to his testimony where she was someone, as i understand from the proceedings today, who expressed remorse at having known that some of this was wrong activity, but has a little bit of distance in that she was the accountant, she wasnt the person sort of pursuing the scheme. With so much juliette, with so much evidence against manafort, what is his strategy . Is he banking on a pardon from the president or a mistrial . Oh, his strategy may be just to delay this as long as possible and hopefully win in court. I think at this stage we dont know his strategy because as carrie was pointing out, the evidence does seem pretty damning so far. Its document heavy, but also you have these five witnesses who worked with him day in and day out who are testifying against him. So its you know, we always are looking for is there sort of some Grand Strategy to all this different behavior, stone or
manafort or the former National Security adviser. Maybe the strategy is every man to himself now. These are how conspiracies unravel, right, is that no one knows what the other person is doing. So flynn doesnt know what his deputy is saying. Stone doesnt know what flynn is saying. And this is basically how conspiracies fall apart. There may not be a Grand Strategy for any of them except for selfpreservation at this stage, and some of them looking at the writing on the wall, why we have so many guilty pleas at this stage, theyre saying the only saving grace at this stage is if i plead. You know, this is you know, youre seeing people basically not know whether theyll survive the unraveling of the grand conspiracy. So its every man and woman in some cases to themselves. Garrett, just to wrap it up here. I know you dont have a crystal ball. Take us forward to next week. What do you expect . Well, what i think were going to see is, you know, Paul Manafort try to push this forward as best he can. He is probably holding out hope that there might be one juror in the midst of this who has listened to the president say this is a hoax, that this is a witch hunt, that Paul Manafort, you know, is being caught up and railroaded by the special counsel. You know, its a pretty damning case based on evidence and testimony. But all you need is one juror sitting there saying, you know, i dont know that i buy this. All right. Thank you all. Have a good weekend. When we come back, the Human Rights Office condemning President Trumps attacks on the media saying he is violating not only freedom of the press, but human rights. Is this president damaging this country beyond repair . When i received the diagnoses, i knew at that exact moment. Im beating this. My main focus was to find a team of doctors. Its not just picking a surgeon,
its picking the car