good evening, breaks news on herman cain's campaign. his attorney is here with new information on ginger white, the atlanta woman who accuses cain of a 13-year affair. lin wood joins me now. mr. wood, a pivotal moment for your client's campaign and everything resting really, i guess, on this woman, ginger white's word against herman cain's word. ha makes you so sure that your client is telling the truth? >> well, i have seen no evidence, piers, no evidence to support the accusations of ms. white. i have seen her go out on what we now know is not just an interview where she could tell her story and be done. but now she's engaging in a media campaign, one interview after another after another. i'm told she'll be on one of your competing networks tonight and she's offered no proof. no facts. she offered some phone records. they prove nothing other than she knew mr. cain, he has admitted that he was a friend of hers. she's offered two autographed books that were autographed with inscriptions that he could have signed to anybody in a book signing in a bookstore. what you have it boiled down is do you believe herman cain or do you believe ms. white? ms. white we know, has apparently and tragically been going through some severe financial problems in the recent weeks and months. we know that she reached out to mr. cain in the last several weeks asking him for his help and herman cain helped her. just like he's helped a large number of other people. >> okay. let me jump in here. >> it's not there. >> okay. let me jump in there. what we know from the phone records is that ginger white texted herman cain 53 times between mid-october and mid-november and herman cain texted her back 17 times. >> correct. >> on one occasion she texted him at 4:54 a.m. herman cain replied within two minutes at 4:56 a.m. we also know that herman cain didn't tell his wife about any of these text messages or about any of his dealings this woman or the payments. a cynic would say, this is deeply suspicious behavior by a man who is in the middle as this is going on of a presidential campaign. >> no. during the time period that you reference where she has apparently produced records, october 22nd, through november 18th, herman cain was not only in the middle of a campaign from october the 30th through november 18th and literally through today, he's been in the middle of a media firestorm, the victim and target of unproven accusations. accusations which he denies and i believe him. the idea that he would respond to what, 53 messages, he didn't instigate a single message. he would respond to her at a time where she was reaching out to him in a text message asking him for help because of her financial problem. and it's also interesting -- >> mr. wood, do you know what the -- do you know what mr. cain's messages said? >> i know -- i know just a few of them. i've seen where she would write and say where she couldn't make her car payment, she couldn't pay her rent. can you help me? mr. cain would go, how much do you need? and then she would list other things and he would say i can't go that amount. these were short text messages, but what her records also show, that no one wants to discuss is that there were redacted messages, text messages during this same time period, 2,600. we don't know who she was texting besides mr. cain. the text to mr. cain and his few responses made up about 2% of her texting bill she may very well be casting a wide net trying to get monday. >> let me stop you it. doesn't matter who else she's texting. the ohm thing that matters for the purposes of this republican race is why herman cain felt the need to pay this woman money. let's get to some factual stuff here. how much money has herman cain paid ginger white? how many times has he paid her? how has he paid her? >> i know that herman cain has,as he has stated publicly, over the last several months on occasion has helped her with her rent. let me stop you for a moment, piers. because i'm not here to engage in a discussion of my client's friendships or areas that involve those friendships. i'm not going to do what the media really wants done and that's to relegate the political process into a jerry springer show. what we have here is a man who for the last four weeks has been subject to almost on a weekly basis a new accusation, some anonymous, two individuals have gone out and identified themselves and spoken out and i don't believe there's any credible proof that substantiates those charges. what you want to do and what the media wants to do and unfortunately, i'm afraid some of the american public wants to do is to take this and say, all right, mr. cain, you've been accused and therefore, you are guilty. you are guilty unless you, mr. cain, can prove yourself innocent. you just flip the system of justice on its head. that's not the way we ought to be treating mr. cain or any other political candidate. >> mr. wood, again, with respect. it's not as simple as that. that's not what i'm asking you. i'm only asking you as his attorney for some factual evidence which may well help your client. i mean, you still haven't answered me as to how much money, how he paid the money and how often he paid it and when the payments first started. do you know the answers? >> thank you. i do know the answers. it's not my place to come on to your show and to tell you information that is privileged between my client and myself as his attorney. i can tell you what herman cain has said publicly. and i believe herman cain and i can also tell you that i have not seen any evidence that would cause me to disbelieve mr. cain. you want me to give you details and it's not my place to do them and i would suggest to you that it's not even herman cain's place to do that. unless you want to, as i've said, relegate the political process into the jerry springer show. we're in the middle of a campaign at a time when our country has a lot of things that are broken. what i've seen up close and personal trying to help mr. cain over the last three weeks is that our political process appears to be broken too. because we cannot allow our decisions on a candidate's character to be made based on unproven accusations. and we cannot allow those accusations. >> one of the problems with this position. mr. wood, one of the problems with the position is clarity. it would be much easier because, for example, your client has made it clear he paid a lot of people. he's a very generous man. i have no reason to disbelieve him. but do you know how many other people he's paid money to? do you know how he pays this money? what is the methodology? it's an unusual thing for somebody to do, particularly when he's made it clear publicly today and he didn't have to, that he didn't tell his wife he was making these payments to this woman or that he was texting this woman. >> he's an honest person. >> he's putting stuff in the public domain. i'm asking you really for clarification about your client's public statements. >> what are you going to prove by my answering questions about when or why he paid her, if it was in response to a need for rent. what does that prove? does it prove that he had a 13-year physical relationship with her? no, it absolutely does not. it only proves that he was a friend and on occasion he tried to give her assistance as he has done other people. you want me to answer you questions that i don't believe that a candidate or any individual should be forced to answer. >> this is shockingly naive mr. wood. >> let me stop you there, let me tell you, piers. >> this is shocking. the idea that a presidential candidate, the idea that a presidential candidate can be paying a woman who claims to have had a 13-year affair. he admits to paying her money to calling her at 5:00 a.m., making repeated texts over a period when he's actually actively running for president. the idea none of this is remotely relevant is preposterous. you know it's irrelevant. >> thank you. >> i'm not saying he's guilty of anything. i'm just trying to get fact out of you. the fact that you as his his attorney know the answers but don't feel it's relevant to tell me the information is an in itself a little strange. >> thank you. i'm sorry to you find me naive or if you find my statements about mr. cain preposterous. what i find naive is the failure on the part of members of the media to be asking the tough questions of the accuser, someone who has obviously a troubled past, who has an incentive potentially financially to go out and to make these kind of unfounded accusations. why don't you look at yourself piers and the members of your media and recognize that you in fact and the media are participating in the deteriorating yeas of our political process. one's character should not be decided in a presidential campaign or in their own private lives without a look at the entire body of their life. and look at herman cain. i said when i first spoke on his behalf at his press conference that was a good and decent man. a successful businessman. he has ideas about how to fix the country. and now the media wants to take the focus off of those ideas and they want to go into the he said, she said. i think the naive person here is the media and its failure to focus on the right issues. >> okay. let's hold it there. have a short break. we'll come back and explore your belief that it's the media's fault. >> sure. for some, it's a lifelong passion. for others, it's something discovered yesterday. we all have things that speak to us. they drive us to get up early, and stay up late. getting lost in the things we love has never felt quite like this. for a hot dog cart. my mother said, "well, maybe we ought to buy this hot dog cart and set it up someplace." so my parents went to bank of america. they met with the branch manager and they said, "look, we've got this little hot dog cart, and it's on a really good corner. let's see if we can buy the property." and the branch manager said, "all right, i will take a chance with the two of you." and we've been loyal to bank of america for the last 71 years. [ man #1 ] i was fascinated by balsa wood airplanes since i was a kid. [ man #2 ] i always wondered how did an airplane get in the air. at ge aviation, we build jet engines. we lift people up off the ground to 35 thousand feet. these engines are built by hand with very precise assembly techniques. [ man #3 ] it's gonna fly people around the world. safely and better than it's ever done before. it would be a real treat to hear this monster fire up. [ woman ] i think a lot of people, when they look at a jet engine, they see a big hunk of metal. but when i look at it, i see seth, mark, tom, and people like that who work on engines every day. [ man #4 ] i would love to see this thing fly. it's a dream, honestly. there it is. awesome. that's so cool! yeah, that was awesome! [ cheering ] i wanna see that again. ♪ what this says is, is that somebody is awfully afraid that i'm doing too well in this republican nomination to continue to dig up these stories to try and put a cloud and a damper on my campaign. >> that was of course, herman cain advancing a conspiracy theory with wolf blitzer. cain's attorney, lin wood is with me exclusively. >> we're not going to call each other any names this time. >> it's a spirited debate. >> it's okay. i'm teasing you. >> the one thing, let me clarify one thing that we have in common. i like herman cain. >> i do too. >> i enjoyed meeting him. i met him in vegas, we had a great interview. i found him personable shlgs charming, appealing candidate. that's not the issue. it's not about whether i like him or not. it's about whether he's a fit man to run for president of the united states one of the biggest jobs in the world. and character to me is important. it's not the be and end all. but it is important. when a candidate is accused now by five different women of various forms of sexual misconduct, it is slightly stretching kre dual at this to suggest that all of the women are fantasies, isn't it? >> we've had two of them that have spoken out publicly. let me suggest to you that five lies do not make one truth. and when you talk about the importance of character, there's no question that that's a legitimate issue for the american public to decide in terms of its candidates. but let's look at it from the perspective of that candidate's entire career and life. don't judge people's character based on accusations made in the media that have not been proven with facts and, in fact, have been clearly denied by the candidate. again, i go back, i'm sorry that i'm not satisfying you by giving you the details of the whens and the wheres and the hows. that's not my place to do it and i don't think it's herman cain's place to do it. >> listen, mr. wood, here's the problem. because the very moment when you were announcing that this was a private matter and therefore, it wasn't in the public interest to discuss st. >> that's not what i said. >> effectively, you said that this kind of allegation, because it didn't involve harassment was a private matter, right? >> i said very clearly that as i understood the nature of this accusation, which i was unaware of at the time because i didn't learn about it as mr. cain didn't learn about it until a few short hours before the broadcast was going to air on monday. i said very clearly that we're not talking apparently about allegations of harassment in the workplace or some type of what could be described as a sexual assault. it appears that this individual's accusations are going to be about alleged consensual conduct between adults and i, as a matter of principle, whether you or the media agree with it or not, i believe that our political candidates and our public officials despite their positions, still maintain some zone of privacy. i would submit this to you, piers. kr don't you have cnn, sponsor a debate next week, ask all the candidates to appear and tell them that you're going to be asking them about all the details of their life about their friendships, about whether they've had extramarital affairs, about whether they've had sexual activity outside of marriage, whether they have ever said things or done things that they didn't tell their wife about. extend that invitation, piers and i bet you that no one shows up. because those are areas that you don't have the right to go into and just because there is a false accusation made -- >> hang on, hang on. let me ask you something. if it turned out that herman cain had had a 13-year affair with this woman and she had come on to him right at the moment he's at the top of the polls in this race demanding money in a way that could be construed, you said she was troubled and he felt that he had to help her and he had known her 13 years, he doesn't dispute that, there there was a potential for blackmail. this is surely a matter that is -- particularly when herman cain today i might add has said publicly, incompete didn't tell. he raised that. he's treating this as a private -- he's talking about it publicly. >> and because the media refuses to move to the issues and want to focus on the salacious, herman cain did say today that he had not told his wife. he also said that it was stupid on his part. it was a mistake. you know, what y'all like to focus on in your world in the media is you want to folk focus on governor perry for getting about an agency or mr. cain struggling to make sure he's got the right issue before he blurt out an answer. these people are human beings, they're not computers or robots. they're working long hours trying to learn information to convey information to raise money. it's a tough toll on these people individually. they're not going to be perfect. but herman cain, on top of all the rigors of the campaign, has had to face for the last four-plus weeks, the toll that false accusations have made on him and his reputation and on his family. not just his campaign and the campaign strategy. and if we -- >> it may be mr. wood. >> if you want to go out. >> i don't want to take any moral -- it's not to do what i think. it's purely about the credentials of a man to be president. if it turns out he's lied about this and certainly it is murky, the woman says -- >> i disagree with you. >> there was an affair, he says i knew her for 13 years, i've been paying her money, i've been calling her and texting her, i didn't tell my wife. but it's not an affair. this is not as simple as you're making it out to be. >> i think it is simple. >> not making the whole thing up, is it? >> i don't know why she decided to go out and give this interview and make she is accusations against mr. cain. i know from what i've learned that her situation was desperate and sadly desperate people sometimes do desperate things and maybe she saw 15 minutes of fame and she believed or had been promised, who knows, that this might change her financial life and her future. but what i do know and i want to go back to this. this idea that one person can come out and make an accusation that turns a friendship into an alleged sexual affair, let me tell you, the candidates in this race better be careful because if any one person comes out and says that about any other candidate, you're going to be on the air saying that you want that candidate to answer every detail of his or her life as it might relate to this person and probably others and that's a slippery slope that i don't believe this country wants to go down. i don't think it helps our political process. >> let me pick you up on that point about the payments. herman cain has said that he is a generous guy who has paid lots of people. so far we don't know of anybody else. it would be obviously helpful to your client -- it would be helpful to your client, given there's no evidence he's paid anybody else if you just said yeah, herman cain pays a lot of women to help them out when they're in times of need. is that true? are there any other women that he pays? >> that's like did you beat your wife last night? >> no because he said it. i'm not saying it. >> for your question -- >> i'm not saying he has. he said -- >> paying a lot of women -- >> he's paying other people. >> you put in your question the idea that he had paid a number of women money. >> men, women, whoever. it's obviously -- it would be more helpful if he has paid men money. then it would -- >> he has. he hasn't paid anybody money. >> the payments to people in need of both sexes. if it turns out he's only paid this woman or a few women quietly without mentioning this to his wife, it looks suspicious. >> so you just -- >> then you have a candidate who may not be believable and credible as a candidate. that's why it's important. >> you just made up a question that doesn't contain one fact. herman cain has helped males, people in his church, relatives of his, friends, both male and female. but that's his private life and he's not obligated to come out and to tell you the details of that and violate the privacy of the people that he's helped. for you to insinuate that there's something out there that says oh, well, if he's been paying off or giving money to a number of women, there's not one fact to support it. that's the problem with these unfounded ak sayings. >> do you have any facts to disprove it? you seem to know more than i do but you don't want to tell me the fact. >> no, sir. i'm not here to talk about the private matters of mr. cain. i'm not going to tell you the people that have been in need that he has helped. that's not my place. you go back -- >> private matters of mr. cain. why are you doing the interview? we're talking about the scandal. >> it's a good question after sitting here for the last 15 minutes. but i came here to try to put what was going on in herman cain's life and his candidacy into perspective. to try to bring attention to the fact that i don't bel