Hearing about that and much, much more on cuomo primetime. All right, appreciate it, j. B. Lets do that right now. I am chris cuomo. Welcome to primetime. As you heard, the president s lawyer tonight says he was wrong to suggest that potus never signed anything after our primetime exclusive that proved that potus signed a letter of intent on the russia deal. But how about the president . He looked you in the face and he said, listen to me, there was a deal, everybody knew about it, there was a letter, and it was signed by michael cohen. Now, theres another wave in this story. Mueller, it seems, does, in fact, have sights on roger stone, onetime key advisor to the president. Wait until you hear what he told me. The spin offensive is in full effect. And a mistake of colossal proportions. Thats what a Senior Administration official calls President Trumps decision to pull troops out of the fight in syria. Even Senate Republicans are lit, and were going to go one on one with a key democratic senator about what this is all about. And potus promised a wall. Now that promise is wait for it crumbling. What happened . Thats the great debate. Hump day, everybody. Lets get after it. All right. Were getting closer to the truth about the depth of the president s ties to russia. We showed you the letter of intent that trump signed to build a trump tower in moscow. Lawyer Rudy Giuliani had said the president never signed it, but now he says, quote, i was wrong if i said it. I havent seen the quote, but i probably meant to say there was never a deal, much less a signed one. Thats the mayors statement. I take him at his word. Hes invited on this show to make the case whenever he wants. The question was never about having an actual business or a done deal. Just be clear about this. It was about whether or not the president had any involvement with russians when he told you he didnt, and the answer is he did. So, we still have an outstanding question. Will the president come clean about this . We were thinking about building a building. I guess we had in a form, it was an option, i dont know what youd call it. It was just reported very well by kathryn harris, who is a terrific reporter on fox. She talks about a letter that he signed. I dont even remember it. Listen, again, i worked with kathryn harris. She is a good reporter. The president does not need fox to tell him what he signed. I want to bring in two former intel officials, phil mudd and mike rogers. Welcome to you both. Heres my theory of the case. They are not getting ready to be in front of a judge or prosecutor. They have never been preparing for that. Rudy giuliani, the president , et cetera, are preparing to convince the American People he did nothing wrong, and they will spin and they will twist the facts to suit. Im not going to disagree with you, chris. I think theres a lot of it there. Heres the one thing that baffles me on this, however. So, if you think about all of the lying thats gone on that has resulted in either an indictment or a plea deal by any of the folks surrounded by him flynn or papadopoulos, cohen there is a key element in all of it. They all lied about russia. And thats what you know, after awhile, i start thinking theres where theres smoke theres fire. The nutty thing is, it would not have been wrong for the president , who is in real estate business in new york city guess what . The russians are there. Theyre playing in that market. Youre going to bump into russian businessmen in new york city. Why create this elaborate story other than, hey, yes, we tried to go into business in russia, it just didnt work out, for whatever reason, i was president , i decided not to go ahead with the deal. But thats what bothers me and im with you on Rudy Giuliani. I do not believe he intended to mislead anyone. I think he is trying to create this narrative or theyre trying to create the narrative about the fbi being bad, the Justice Department being bad because there is all of these folks who are now flipping who are going to be in front of judges and probably testify along the way as to what the Trump Organization may have been doing that may or may not have been appropriate. All right. And, mike, like i said, the mayor is invited on here. Lets get after it. You layout the case to the audience. Youll get more time than anywhere else. Phil mudd, you have had a sour look on your face for much of mike rogers statement. Why . You look at Rudy Giuliani and whether he lied, the question is simpler. Hes too lazy to do his homework. He said Melania Trump was comfortable with what the president did and the various payoffs to women. In a remarkable moment, the first ladys office comes out and says, the first lady has actually never had a conversation with giuliani about this. I dont think giuliani lied. I think he went out and said, im not sure ive done my homework on whether the president signed or not, but it sounds better to say he didnt sign and thats what im going to say. Exactly, exactly. Thats what theyre doing here. Lets shift to the next wave of it. The special counsel wants the congressional testimony from roger stone. Now, when i hear that i feel like, this is pretty premature, then. Certainly if he were getting close to taking any action, he would have already looked at the testimony. Be that as it may, roger stone is certainly going to be part of any p. R. Campaign as there is in this situation. Look at the statement he put out. Vintage stoern and also a great window into how team trump is going to handle this. This is adam schiffs wet dream. Wheres the russian collusion . Wheres the wikileaks collaboration . Where i allegedly hacked or stolen emails from wikileaks and passed them to donald trump or the Trump Campaign or anyone else . This is his thing. Make your case. Im going to fight. We dont believe you, mike. And thats what were going to see at every iteration of this, but nobody knuckles up the way roger stone does. Thats why the president kim him so close for so long. I have to tell you, i worked organized crime in the fbi in chicago. I met guys like this. Theyre pretty tough until the gavel falls and standing in front of the judge. Im not buying it. Heres where i think he may may be in some legal problem, if he facilitated, knowingly facilitated the leak of stolen computer information or data wikileaks if he knowingly did that, he conspired to do that, hes in violation of a Computer Fraud and abuse act. And so thats a real crime that has real penalty to it. I cannot believe that the special counsel clearly to me looks like theyre preparing at least a charge for lying to congress, and maybe even the fbi. But im going to bet, because hes not cooperating, that wont be the only charge. And thats where i think he has to worry about it. But im telling you, this guy dresses like a gangster, talks like a tough guy. Again, ive seen a hundred of these guys. Hell fold eventually when those charges come up and hes looking at a lengthy prison term, four, five, six, seven years. That changes people swohe swore he would never testify against the president. Hes not italian. Hes not a mob guy. Half the guys werent italian. They opened up their doors, the chicago mob had polish folks and jewish folks. Here they had a whole collection plenty of desperates. They didnt have to all be italian. Phil, what i think is most likely with roger stone not that its a problem, but you have to look at the materiality of it. What was he lying about . It seems most logical what he was lying about is who he talked to and what he knew and whether or not he told the president the same. In terms of him helping distribute, mikes right about the legalities of it. I just havent seen any proof of that. The changing stories part, listen to these sound bites. I actually have communicated with assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation what i actually said in my testimony was i had never communicated with, with assange. The hype, baby, the hype can get you, phil. If they find it to be material. If they find out, listen, you lied, man, you wanted to sound like you were the man. You werent the man. Weve got you. Is that material . I think it is. Theres two pieces here. One is the simple piece that were seeing. That is as we saw in cases like manafort busted for lying, flynn busted for lying, if you stand in front of whether youre under oath or not to congress, youre going to get busted. I think the most fascinating part of this case, chris, easily is look, we had, as you just had on tape, roger stone talking about his communications with people connected with wikileaks. What does mueller have now . He has communications, including phone and email. I presume text messages. He has a lot of interviews of people who are affiliated with stone. He has presumably things like travel records, did people affiliated with stone go to london . Did they go to the embassy, the Uruguay Embassy . I would wager whether roger stone had inappropriate contacts with wikileaks. Meantime hes going to charge him, i suspect, with lying. Thats going to be a hammer. If you want to do something about this charge, you better talk to us about wikileaks. I think it will be more than that. Thats the only party disagree were phil tonight. I think there has to be more charge than that. If its just lying, they dont have enough. Theyre going to have to put a case together that has more weight in it. Thats my only concern with where phil is at tonight. And the sour look, by the way. The timing matters also in that theyre just asking for that testimony now . You know, youd think they have more ducks in a row the time theyve been processing this. We always keep it simple on this show. I believe very much in go with the least assumptions. Why did they lie . They keep lying about things related to russia. There must be a reason. I dont want to waste your guys expertise on just mueller. Its important but its not the only thing. Mike, the theory of the president s quick move to withdraw troops from syria is, it breaks my heart to write those letters home. And we said wed go there, do the job. We did it, its over, were leaving. Well, if thats his theory of the case, why isnt he pulling us out of afghanistan . Why pull us out of the most recent theater . Why not yemen, why not iraq . Why not places in africa where we have u. S. Personnel exposed, trying to push back why this way, mike, whats your take . This is so frustrating to me. This is exactly what barack obama did. The only difference is barack obama planned it out and had discussions with our allies when he announced we were pulling out of iraq. Many of us, me included at the time, were screaming, hey, this will cause a huge problem, and guess what . It caused a huge problem. We are going to get ready to repeat that same very mistake, only now in syria. After the president did a great thing, he told the military g forth and kick some fanny in syria and get this thing done, and they did. All the shackles were taken off. They had different rules of engagement. They had different target sets they could do. They could engage in different training exercises with different factions within syria that i think were very, very helpful. And now, again, i dont think this was just about that. The turks were saying, hey, were going to come down into turkey. Thats a hard problem. Youve got to face it. The russians have said, hey, were going to continuing this. The syrians have been executing americans. They just executed a 26yearold american who was participating in an n. G. O. , the government of syria. So, to do that on the heels of that, boy, i tell you, it just gets my Blood Pressure up. It makes us look weak. It destabilizes our allies who are coalition forces, saying, we cant really leave. And our soldiers who are standing in the ditch right there pointing guns at bad people are thinking, what in the heck am i doing here . Well, this was not the way twitter is not the way to conduct they put out a video also. Ill just say i hope the timing has nothing to do with a distraction from other stories. I hope he wouldnt leverage the men and women in theater that way. Mike, fim, lets leave it there. Im short on time. Fellas, i appreciate it. Be well. If i dont speak to you before, Merry Christmas to both of you. Merry christmas. Heres what the president said on syria just so you know. We have won against isis. Weve beaten them and weve beaten them badly, so our boys, our young women, our men, theyre all coming back, and theyre coming back now. We won, and thats the way we want it, and thats the way they want it. Its got a lot of republicans and lot of people in the military shaking their head. Theyre hearing echos of Mission Accomplished from president george w. Bush. Nobody knew this was coming. Why not . Why this move right now this way . Next. All right. The president ordering a full and rapid withdrawal of the u. S. Military from syria, declaring isis defeated. Tonight someone within trumps team, a Senior Administration official, says this will, quote, put american and allied lives in danger and that it is a mistake of colossal proportions. The announcement of american troops coming home traditionally has been greeted by scenes like this one, you know . The difference between this and the confusion you now see swirling around because in 1945, the work was really done. There was a plan for peace, and the vision was a way forward, explained to the American People. Compare that to this. Remember bush declaring, Mission Accomplished, in iraq . Thats what this is sounding like to republican ears right now, and even those in military official capacity. 97 of the deaths in iraq happened after the socalled major combat end on may 1st, 2003, after Mission Accomplished. So, this isnt the first time that trump has tried to declare victory in syria. Thats an important piece of context here. He tweeted his own Mission Accomplished back in april. Now, since then, the message from his own has been consistent. Were not done. Forget about that Mission Accomplished. Dont listen to him, listen to us. Theres a lot of work to do. There is instability. We have to stay. Dont be rash. Heres trumps own chairman of the joint chiefs of staff talking about this. With regard to stabilization, we still have a long way to go. A long way to go. Chairman of the joint chiefs. Why . Because its not just about taking land. Thats what isis wants. Thats what the lavant is about, that area in syria and iraq they think is theirs and it isnt, and they got their as ss beaten off it, true. There is a major diplomatic underway to fix the problems that let to this mess in the first place. Heres whats happening with trumps state department. Just last week, okay. Nobody is declaring a Mission Accomplished. I think its fair to say americans will remain on the ground after the physical dee fet of the cal fate to ensure that defeat is enduring. Wheres the coordination, chairman of the state, joint chiefs of staff. Pompeo, mattis, this isnt just about winning battles on the ground. Heres what he said in august. It really comes down to finding a way to solve this problem of assads making. I mean, you know, when you look at it in this context, wait, who is telling him to do this or why is he doing this . Thats why somewhat of sane cal suggestion i had exiting the last segment. Is this done for distraction . Is this done to keep eyes off the Mueller Probe and him lying about a letter of intent in a russia deal . I hope not, because its not going to work. More importantly, it could jeopardize all the work that was done on the ground. If the president isnt listening to his own administration, who is he listening to . To be honest, he told us. Well, i watch the shows. I mean, i really see a lot of great, you know when you watch your show and all of the other shows and you have the generals he knows more than the generals. He watches tv, watches fox, the same ones that tell him theres 30,000 isis fighters in syria and iraq. Trump has an answer for that as well. I know more about isis than the generals do, believe me. Just not true. The president s own party is doing something we have rarely seen. You hear me . Call him out all the time. Whats that . Thats the sound of republicans letting the president get away with what is anathema to them. Not this time. Listen to this. Obama had made this decision, republicans would be all over him. Its hard to imagine that any president would wake up and make this kind of decision. Colossal, in my mind, mistake, a grave error. All right. The lack of planning, the rashness, not selling it to you, not selling it to congress you have the fact of all this going on in terms of miscommunication. List tone this tidbit. Republican bob corker, hes a player. He goes to the white house for a meeting with the president. Hes sitting there waiting. He gets sent packing without ever getting to talk to the president. Why . Why diss your own . Key democrats on the other hand say this move is overdue. One of them is connecticut senator chris murphy who joins me now. I wonder, it would be nice to know, senator, that the reason the president is doing this is because he met with you all, believed you, and decided to just act. But i dont think thats the case. Do you . No. Who knows why the president is making this decision today . As much as i think its been a mistake to have 2000 american troops there who, frankly, arent close to enough to tip the balance of power the way that he did it is totally handed. It makes the country weaker. He pulled the rug from under our diplomats on the ground in the middle east. And your allies. He did it right on the precipice of a turkish offensive against the kurds after promising the kurds the last year and a half we would protect them. Listen, i think we have vastly overstated what 2000 american troops can do inside a country that has hundreds of thousands of fighters on all of the other various sides. But the way in which he did this is just a head scratcher to both people that support the troops being there and me who oppose them. You can argue you dont have enough people there. As long as youre going to add more people, dont call it advise and assist missions because thats dishonest to the families of the men and women who have to go shed their blood on those battle fields. Like thing move, i dont understand. As you said t