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Erin Burnett Outfront

Mueller Team Interviewed White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders; Special counsel Says It Has Evidence Of Longtime Trump Confidant Roger Stone Communicating With WikiLeaks; Trump Lands In Florida For Weekend Trip to Mar-A-Lago Hours After Declaring National Emergency At Border To Get Wall; Ann Coulter: "Only National Emergency Is That Our President Is An Idiot; Democrat Representative Ocasio-Cortez Takes Victory Lap After Amazon Cancels Plans To Build New Headquarters In New York City; Special Counsel: Manafort Deserves Up To 24.5 Years In Prison; 5 Dead, 5 Police Officers Injured in Illinois Mass Shooting; Interview with Andrew Gillum. Aired: 7-8p ET

Aired February 15, 2019 - 19:00   ET

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

BRIANNA KEILAR, ANCHOR, CNN: All right, Brian Todd, thank you for that report. I am Brianna Keilar. Erin Burnett OutFront starts right now.

ERIN BURNETT, ANCHOR, CNN: OutFront next breaking news, the Special Counsel's office interviews Sarah Sanders as new court documents show Mueller has evidence of Roger Stone's communications with WikiLeaks. Plus, President Trump declaring a national emergency and then dashing off to Mar-a-Lago for a nice long weekend.

And the breaking news, five dead in a shooting in Illinois, five police officers injured. At this hour authorities are still trying to understand why. Let's go OutFront.

And good night, good evening, I'm Erin Burnett, OutFront tonight breaking news in the Russia investigation. Sarah Sanders interviewed by the Special Counsel. So we now know that the President's Press Secretary sat down with Bob Mueller's team late last year. According to Sanders today, "The President urged me, like he has everyone in the administration, to fully cooperate with the Special Counsel. I was happy to voluntarily sit down with them."

That's a pretty misleading thing to say, because the truth is that the White House did not want this interview to happen. CNN has learned, White House lawyers would not immediately agree to grant Sanders interview to the Special Counsel. So they didn't even want to do it, so voluntarily, all right, well, even after she did speak to Mueller, Sanders kept talking about the Russia investigation publicly, calling it a witch-hunt. Never ever, ever once disclosing that she had been questioned in the investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Certainly the President has voiced his unhappiness from the beginning that this has gone on, this ridiculous witch-hunt for more than two years. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Roger Stone last week, Paul Manafort, Michael

Cohen, Michael Flynn, are you concerned - is the President concerned that as more and more of his associates, former aides are brought into this investigation, are indicted, plead guilty in this investigation, that this presidency is in danger?

SANDERS: Not at all. In fact, I think nothing could be further from the truth. The more that this goes on, the more and more we see that none of these things have anything to do with the President.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Witch-hunt, nothing to do with the President, and yet the person saying those things was a witness and she is the President of the United State's Press Secretary, at best misleading. She was called to an interview with team Mueller all of that before she said those things. She kept answering questions without disclosing that. That is really hard to understand.

Evan Perez is out front in Washington. And Evan, what could Sanders know that could be of interest to the Special Counsel?

EVAN PEREZ, SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT, CNN: Well, I think she would know a lot about the public statements that are being made, especially by the White House, especially those made from the podium. Look, I think we've seen in some of the court filings, certainly in the indictments and some of the court action from the Special Counsel that they've taken interest in public statements and whether or not public statements are being used especially ones that are either false or misleading, whether they're being used to put out a narrative perhaps to guide other witness, whether as a way to obstruct an investigation and to guide witnesses to lie and match their stories with the false or misleading stories.

So again that's something we've seen repeatedly from the Special Counsel that appears to be one of the legal theories, Erin, that has been guiding this investigation. So if you're Sarah Sanders, you have made a lot of statements from the podium and some of them have been misleading, some of them have been false, how did those come about? Those are the questions that Special Counsel would have been very interested to find out. Were you told by the President to say these things?

If you noticed by the way, Erin, over the course of the past year or so, Sarah Sanders has changed the way she does her job at the podium. And in the past she used to say categorically that something was or wasn't true. Now she says, "The President says it's not true," or, "The President says this."

I think that's one indication that she's learning that perhaps she's got to be able to say where things are coming from and they're not coming from her. And I think again this tells us a lot about what this investigation has been looking at and this is part of the obstruction part of this case that the Special Counsel has been focusing on. BURNETT: Right. I mean, obviously, she was part of putting out those

statements we got about the statement the President crafted on Air Force One about the meeting in Trump Tower. She was there. She was a part of that. These are all crucial things, I know perhaps on the list.

PEREZ: Exactly.

BURNETT: All right, Evan, thank you very much.

PEREZ: Thank you.

BURNETT: And I want to go now to the former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Harry Sandick, former Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security under President Obama, Juliette Kayyem, and CNN Anchor and Chief National Security Correspondent, Jim Sciutto, also the author of the new book, The Shadow War Inside Russia and China's secret operations to Undermine America. Obviously, very relevant expertise for this conversation.

Juliette, how important could Sarah Sanders be to Mueller's investigation?

[19:05:00]

JULIETTE KAYYEM, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: I think significantly important. Look, she's in the room where it happens. I mean let's just not deny this. She's in the room. They're having conversations about how they're going to present whatever bad news has happened that day.

She has gone, as we've heard, she's gone from sort of saying categorically this is true or not true to sort of now invoking Trump. But when you think about the communication strategy, she is it. I also want to say what's really interesting about this is Sarah Sanders had nothing to do with the campaign, so she's not really a part of the campaign. So clearly Mueller's interest in her actually has to do with when he's President.

So every time she says this has nothing to do with the White House or the Trump and as President, that's actually she knows that's not true because she herself has been interviewed and she wasn't part of any of the shenanigans going on during the campaign.

BURNETT: I mean, Harry, this is what is stunning. She says - okay, now she never disclosed it. Now we know. She never disclosed it and yet even after she'd been interviewed, we just played her saying this has nothing to do with the President. This is all a witch-hunt. Maybe that's her personal opinion on the witch-hunt. She knows it has something do with the President, she is his Press Secretary.

HARRY SANDICK, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: It's a very tangled web because I would predict that her lawyer told her don't talk about your interview, don't talk about what you said or what you were asked in public because that's what a good lawyer would tell their client in an investigation. But her very job involves talking to the public in the largest possible forum almost every day and so how can she ...

BURNETT: And maintaining their trust in the President and his presidency, which she has undermined.

SANDICK: It seems to be a conflict in her role as Press Secretary or a spokesman for the President.

BURNETT: And Jim, not only that but as Juliette points out, she did not work for the President during the campaign. She works for him now. So this does open the door to what exactly Mueller is asking about in the timeframe.

JIM SCIUTTO, CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, CNN: It does. I think for folks at home who are having some trouble, maybe some frustration following this long investigation I mean because you have two strands here. One is, was there actual collusion conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, was there exchange of information, et cetera.

Then, the other line that we know is was there obstruction of justice. And under that umbrella is the question did this administration, did this President, but also the people working for him including the White House Press Secretary who has a very significant role in communicating to the American people, the position of this administration. Were they intentionally misleading the American people and therefore members of Congress and therefore the prosecutors in this investigation about the nature of those communications.

I think the fact that Robert Mueller, because Robert Mueller does not waste his time with witnesses, the fact that he spoke to the White House Press Secretary indicates at least that he's interested in that line of investigation, and it's a reasonable one.

BURNETT: And Juliette, when we talk about Sarah Sanders, we also of course know top White House aides have been interviewed by the Special Counsel in addition to Sarah Sanders, John Kelly former Chief of Staff who picked Sean Spicer, also Senior Communications Advisors, all of them now have been interviewed, and there could be others that we are not yet aware of, what do you take away from that?

KAYYEM: Yes. So I find this list fascinating because, obviously, some of them are from the campaign, some of them crossed over. But these are the names we know. I mean, you and I watching TV, getting to know the team, the campaign, the White House, these are the names we know because these are the ones Trump has put before us. And so the fact that they've all been called in is incredibly telling about how close Mueller is to the Oval Office.

There's one name I am going to say that I find absolutely incredible we never hear about and that's Kellyanne Conway. She is the campaign manager and she's a senior advisor in the White House. Her name is nowhere as if she weren't campaign manager through this. Now, she might have been interviewed, we don't know. But as these names percolate out I just keep sitting here thinking, didn't she have a campaign manager at this? BURNETT: Right. And that's the big question is that the next thing

we find out. I mean Harry this also comes as we're getting a new court filing tonight and obviously here it is, everyone, six pages from the Special Counsel. Prosecutors are saying for the first time directly that they have evidence that Roger Stone communicated with WikiLeaks obviously which Pompeo, Mike Pompeo has said he's an arm of Russian intelligence. How significant is that? They're now directly putting his name in there, Roger Stone-WikiLeaks.

SANDICK: I think it's very significant and this is the continued use by the Special Counsel of court filings to tell the story. We saw on the Russian hacking indictment several months ago the reference to Stone and we saw the Stone indictment which seemed implicitly to tie into the hacking indictment. Now, he says it out loud in this filing which is a fairly routine filing.

[19:10:00]

It's a question of whether this case should be assigned to the judge, Amy Berman Jackson who also has the Manafort case. She may not be viewed as a great judge for Stone, Stone wants it to be away from this judge, and file this motion saying, "My case has nothing to do with the Russian hacking indictment." And Mueller responded with great detail about why it's very, very connected to the hacking indictment.

BURNETT: He certainly does and you know what, Jim, prosecutors in the filing say that during the investigation of the Russian hack of the Democrats, when sort of all of this opened up and started, they say in here, "The government obtained and executed dozens of search warrants on various accounts used to facilitate," here's the crucial words, "the transfer of stolen documents for release as well as to discuss the timing and promotion of their release. Several of those search warrants were executed on accounts that contained Stone's communications with Guccifer 2.0 and Organization 1."

So now we are now told Organization 1 is WikiLeaks. And Jim, in a sense, this obviously could matter for collusion, the scope of the warrants just laid out there, the feeling of the information and the releasing of it could mean Stone was communicating about stealing and releasing.

SCIUTTO: It is. Listen, I was trying to bring it back to folks at home who are following every single moment of this, but this is a key question. Did the Trump campaign have foreknowledge of WikiLeaks' release of stolen Hillary Clinton emails stolen by Russia channeled through WikiLeaks? Remember U.S. intelligence views WikiLeaks is kind of the middleman here to get these emails out into the public eye.

And if the Trump campaign through Stone knew they were coming and then even more explosively was Stone communicating back to WikiLeaks and saying, "Listen, today would be a good day to release those emails because for instance this is the day that the Access Hollywood tape came out." This was a key part of the investigation. That gets to the ultimate question of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia.

We don't know that to be the case. The Special Counsel's investigation is a black box. We're reading these signals. They're like smoke signals coming from this black box. This is one of those smoke signals which could be ultimately significant.

BURNETT: And, of course, remember we know from the Stone filing itself a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone to get more dirt from WikiLeaks and we still do not know who that senior Trump campaign official, who directed that person to do that. So you've got, as you say, these breadcrumbs, these smoke entrails where they lead obviously the crucial question and that sentence is still so crucial.

Thanks to all of you and before we go I want to remind everyone Jim's new book, The Shadow War Inside Russia and China's Secret Operations to Undermine America available now. We're very proud to talk about that. Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

BURNETT: And next, the President declaring a national emergency for his wall but then why is he saying this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Plus, Beto. Beto O'Rourke says a part of the wall should be ripped down, is he just taking Trump's bait? And five people are dead in a mass shooting in Illinois late today. We're on the ground as we try to understand exactly what is happening there.

[19:15:00]

Breaking news, President Trump just landing in Florida as you see for a weekend getaway at Mar-A-Lago, flying Air Force One hours after declaring a national emergency to get his wall. A national emergency that Trump himself admitted today that he did not need to declare.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Trump's move is not just angering Democrats. Here is a public voice of Trump's face, Ann Coulter responding.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANN COULTER, AMERICAN COMMENTATOR: The only national emergency is that our President is an idiot. This is the worst open borders the country has ever had under the President who ran against open borders.

(END VIDEO CLIP) Kaitlan Collins is OutFront at the White House. And Kaitlan, this

move shockingly uniting the left and the right in opposition.

KAITLAN COLLINS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, CNN: Yes. Republican lawmakers have warned the President for weeks not to declare a national emergency but he did so anyway today because frankly, Erin, he felt that he was out of options to get funding for that border wall. And now those Republicans fear that he's not only going to undermine them but also Congress and that they're worried that there's a Democratic President in office next that they'll also try to use a national emergency to advance their own priorities.

Even Marco Rubio a Republican Senator from Florida saying today, "We have a crisis at our southern border, but no crisis justifies violating the Constitution." Now the President's Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is making clear today that he believes they have the authority for the President to do this. But clearly as you heard the President lay out in the Rose Garden today, they are ready to face an onslaught of legal challenges for this.

BURNETT: All right, thank you very much Kaitlan. And Out Front now the Democratic Congresswoman from New York, Carolyn Maloney. She sits on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. And thank you very much for your time. So Democrats and Ann Coulter, you are on the same side.

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (D-NY), OVERSIGHT AND REFORM COMMITTEE: We're united on this. The only crisis is our President. It's not a national crisis or an emergency crisis at the border and you can't declare one when there isn't an emergency. And it would set a very terrible President for other Presidents if he did this, then I can tell you Democratic Presidents would be calling that gun safety as an emergency and that we should pass immediately background checks and other steps to protect people.

Already several members of Congress are filing bills. In opposition, Chairman Nadler of judiciary which would have jurisdiction on this and Representative Castro from Texas. They have both filed bills that this is not our right, it's illegal. And Nancy Pelosi is calling it unconstitutional. Everyone is getting ready to go to court, but I tell you the one thing he has accomplished, he's got everybody talking about his silly emergency statement, instead of the Mueller investigation.

And the gun violence that we just saw in Illinois and the issues that we ran on for Congress of protecting pre-existing conditions in healthcare lowering the cost of prescription drugs. Honesty in government, intro one, which we need.

[19:19:59]

So many Infrastructure, we need to build some bridges not these silly walls and repair our infrastructure. Know that we're not talking about these critical issues and we're focused on all of this talk about as an emergency which is going nowhere. It will be in court. It will be in the house being debated, but he's going to divert us off of the --

BURNETT: So you're confident that it can be put off?

MALONEY: Oh, absolutely.

BURNETT: Because he's saying he's got money already. He's got money from the Pentagon. He says he's got $8 and in fact today, Congresswoman, he was asked, "Okay, how can you guarantee that money you're going to get from the Pentagon," which is where he's saying it's going to come from, "is not going to come away from men and women in uniform who are currently serving?" And he said explicitly he's talked to the generals here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We had certain funds that are being used at the discretion of generals, at the discretion of the military. Some of them haven't been allocated yet and some of the generals think that this is more important. I was speaking to a couple of them. They think this is far more important than what they were going to use it for.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Do you believe generals, plural, said that?

MALONEY: They way generals would say that is by telling Congress that has the authority to initiate spending and to transfer spending, not the President of the United States, and they haven't done that. So if they really wanted that to happen, they would call the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the appropriate committees and ask for legislation and steps in that direction. That's how things are done. That's why it's unconstitutional. He can't just come in and shift money around that's appropriated for needs that are debated and voted on and come out of the committee process and the appropriations process.

BURNETT: I want to ask you about another big story tonight, Amazon, abruptly canceling plans to build, it would be a massive headquarters in New York. People like your colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have been celebrating this. You've seen this from some several progressives. She said, "Today was the day a group of dedicated every day New Yorkers defeated Amazon's corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world."

It's your district, not hers, now is that how you see it?

MALONEY: Absolutely. My constituents want jobs.

BURNETT: This was 25,000 job.

MALONEY: Twenty minimum, it would have been many, many more, 25,000 jobs at 150,000 minimum for the for the job. Many entry-level jobs would have been - many, many more they were working with the community on job fairs and the other types of entry-level jobs that they would have. There were promises for a new school and having - as a former teacher, I was intrigued with their plans to have a curriculum in 30 different schools supported by Amazon on high-tech.

We should be really diversifying our base of taxes, our base of businesses. We're too dependent on financial services. And it used to be that we would protest wars, now we're protesting jobs. People are complaining about jobs coming to your - this is the best - let me tell you, Erin, if this had gone through, it would have made overnight New York City the high-tech capital of the East Coast. The most important job center for tech jobs.

And as a former member of the City Council, I have worked through several mayors in trying to figure out how to diversify our economy. We've been investing in high-tech schools, ones on my district, Cornell Tech to train the next geniuses in tech. Now, we would have had a place for them to go to work. But Amazon ...

BURNETT: But you don't because the progressives in your own party, including people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who get so much attention now. They stopped it.

MALONEY: Well, I'm a progressive too but I'm pragmatic. If someone is going to bring a job to my district, to my city and billions of dollars in tax revenue, you also had a story this week that we were $3 billion under projected revenues for the state and roughly $1 billion under projected, this is the first quarter, we're $4 billion dollars less than we usually get and yet we're kicking out a company that would have been paid - they were projecting over 10 years roughly $27 billion in taxes and not to mention the economic activity, the small businesses were thrilled because there would be more activity.

I am disappointed. It used to be if you wanted to change something you worked with the contract to change it. You didn't just take them out.

BURNETT: No, they probably said they didn't talk to them.

MALONEY: I know. They just said, "We don't want it." And they are demonstrating and against it and it's jobs, it's jobs, I've never seen anything like this. Most of the time people are trying to figure out and spending most of their time trying to figure out how to bring jobs to New York and to keep them here.

BURNETT: All right, thank you very much, Congresswoman. I appreciate it.

MALONEY: I appreciate you and your show.

BURNETT: Thank you. And next breaking news in Bob Mueller's case against Paul Manafort, we just have some new filings coming in. Mueller essentially saying that Manafort - well, he's saying Manafort should go to jail for the rest of his life. Wait to hear the exact request on years. And a mass shooting in Illinois, five people are dead. We are on the ground tonight with the very latest.

[19:25:01]

Breaking news in the Russia investigation, the Special Counsel saying former Trump campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, should go to prison for 19 and a half to 24 and a half years. That is a life sentence for a man who turns 70 on April 1st. Evan Perez is OutFront. And Evan, there's a lot here coming out. We'll start with the sentencing memo that literally was just filed. What else do you see there?

PEREZ: Well, that's right, Erin, what the Special Counsel or prosecutors are asking the judge to do is to give him essentially the rest of his life in prison for being found guilty by the jury in Alexandria, Virginia last year on bank fraud and financial crimes. And they say essentially that Manafort acted for more than a decade as if he were above the law and deprived the federal government and various financial institutions of millions of dollars.

This goes to the heart of that case in Alexandria, Virginia. There was tax fraud, bank fraud, again, financial crimes that Manafort and the President supporters would argue have nothing to do with the Russia investigation and that's a fair argument. One of the things they talk about - one of the things that the Special Counsel points out in this filing is that Manafort had all of the means to do things the right way. He chose to commit crimes even while he was working, obviously, for the President as the chairman of his campaign. Some of those crimes continued into the time that he was working for the President's campaign.

[19:30:00]

So again there's a lot of information coming in here including from the sentencing memo and a separate filing that just came in from a transcript from a closed, sealed hearing that was going on in the federal court in D.C. again having to do with Paul Manafort, Erin.

BURNETT: All right. So let me ask you about that. I do simply want to make the point while they'll say tax fraud, bank fraud have nothing to do with Russia, they're right, but who knows, right? This financial situation, the hole he was in could essentially end up being the motive for any sort of collusion or conspiracy if there is any which goes to the heart of the other transcript that you're talking about --

PEREZ: Exactly.

BURNETT: -- which is Manafort's conversations and lies that the special counsel is saying about his interactions with an alleged Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik, right?

PEREZ: Right. Exactly, this is exactly right.

The two cases, even though they did end up being split up partly because of Paul Manafort's legal team did let them join and be tried in one jurisdiction, they had to do two separate cases. So, in the D.C. case, you see the argument from the special counsel, they're making their argument that Paul Manafort essentially was financially desperate. He had been cut off from the spigot in Ukraine, the Russian money that he had been doing business for many, many years over there. So, one of the key figures in that is Konstantin Kilimnik. This is a

business associate that the special counsel says is essentially a Russian operative. Now, there's a lot of stuff still redacted in the transcript of this hearing that we just got, but in it, you can see that the defense is trying to make a big argument. And they're saying that it's more complicated than that.

That Konstantin Kilimnik wasn't just a Russian spy but they're suggesting that he had multiple meetings with diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Kiev, that he was essentially talking at providing information, perhaps he was a double agent providing information. He was an informant for the U.S. at the same time he was working with the Russians. So, the judge in her response to this says that's not material. You know, this does not go -- this doesn't necessarily mean that what he was doing was not nefarious and that he wasn't trying to lie to prosecutors to hide this.

BURNETT: All right. So, Evan, I know you're reading through this. Hopefully, we can stay hooked up, because there's more questions I want to ask you.

I want to bring our panel in as Evan is trying to read this. I want to understand here. This transcript that we're talking about is 68 pages. Then I'm going to make a point about those 68 pages in a moment.

But I want everyone to know who's with me. Harry Sandick, Southern District of New York, is back. Juliette Kayyem back. And Frank Bruni of "The New York Times" joins me as well.

So, Harry, let me go straight to the question I'm going to ask Evan as well once he has a chance to look at this a bit more. From page 49, and I'm just showing this. The early pages have plenty of redactions but from this point on, I mean, this is it. You're talking about 20 some on pages of redactions straight.

Significant?

HARRY SANDICK, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SDNY: Yes, I think that must relate to ongoing investigations by Mueller and to places where even discussing the nature of Manafort's lies in his proffer sessions with Mueller would reveal essentially secrets that the prosecution believes should not be released for the public.

BURNETT: So, Juliette, let me ask you about the significance of this, because everyone keeps saying Mueller is almost done. If he were almost done would he be seeing transcripts that come out that have this much black in them?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: No. Everyone -- yes, everyone is the Trump team. Everyone is Giuliani, right? So we have to be careful repeating what they're telling us.

There's no -- look, Roger Stone just got indicted and if Roger Stone actually ends up speaking, that's going to be a whole new series of investigations. Going to the unredacted part though, I do want to say --

BURNETT: Yes.

KAYYEM: -- and I have bad eyesight, but it's just -- what's interesting because we can't -- you know, why would Manafort have done this? Why would he have protected Kilimnik? Why would he have lied and ruined the possibility to get out of jail while still alive?

And the judge says something interesting and says that Manafort appears to have not only wanted to sort of protect himself but to exonerate Kilimnik in these -- by these lies. It says so on -- page 26. This is a theory that we've never heard before which is Manafort is protecting -- wants people to believe that Kilimnik is not who we all knee who he is, which is sort of an asset and a friend of Putin.

The judge consistently says this is what Manafort is doing. He's trying to protect Kilimnik because Kilimnik might be doing other things that Manafort wants to protect and the judge says it right there openly. And it's just that -- I read quickly, but this is the piece that stood out to me. I had never heard the theory before.

BURNETT: And, Frank, this also comes as, you know, someone last night was saying Manafort's in a situation where when he had to choose perhaps he was worried about his life or his family's life at the expense of Russian crime, Russian -- I mean, this is opening up a whole lot of questions, the motives of Paul Manafort.

[19:35:07] Because what he did by doing all of this, he's not a stupid man, is most likely going to go to jail for the rest of his life.

FRANK BRUNI, THE NEW YORK TIMES: No, it's a stunning and breathtaking thing. This is one of the most protective falls in American politics I think we've ever seen, because as you said, he may spend the rest of his life in prison. If that has happened because from the moment he was on prosecutor's radar, from the moment he was indicted, he has lied in an effort to get away with it. He's been caught. He's continued lying, and he has dug his hole as deep as it can be done.

As you said, he wouldn't just do that haphazardly or casually. Why did he feel he could not tell the truth and try to mitigate the damage and the punishment he was going to face.

BURNETT: I mean, Harry, that is the crucial question. We've all talked to people who have been interviewed by the special counsel. I've talked to people who have been interviewed several times, some publicly on the show, some of them privately. They all say the same thing.

Special counsel doesn't a question if they don't already have the answer, they don't already have everything already lined up. Paul Manafort had the same experience. So, when he lied he knew they knew he was lying.

SANDICK: The picture depicted in this transcript is exactly that. And it's agonizing to read. You see the judge saying that they would ask him a question, he would answer it incorrectly. The special counsel would then show a little bit of the facts that

they knew and then Manafort would change his answer but only to the extent that he now knew that some of the facts were known by the special counsel leaving part of the lie in place and then gradually retrench again and do it over and over again.

BURNETT: It's pitiful.

SANDICK: And then his lawyers say it's unintentional. How could it be?

BURNET: Evan, are you still there?

Sorry, Evan. I know you were reading through it. I just wanted to ask you because there's obviously plenty of redactions here, because right as you were starting to skim through and read we were pointing out page 49 on and how it's all redacted. Just wondering what you thought the significance of that was and how that was all sort of in a row and towards the end here of the transcript.

PEREZ: Right. So, there's a couple of things that are happening. There is, according to the special counsel, Paul Manafort lied about another investigation. Another investigation that is still ongoing. We don't know what that investigation is, and so, it may well be I think one of your guests mentioned that it may well relate to that investigation.

We also know, Erin, from the transcript, we can tell there's this big fight going on between the defense and the special counsel's office. One of the things they talk about is essentially the idea that the defense wants certain information unredacted, to be public. It appears to relate to some of Kilimnik's meetings with U.S. diplomats. They think this makes Kilimnik to be no big deal.

The judge isn't buying that. The judge is saying that doesn't matter because in the end, he still lied. She's already ruled that he lied to hide his relationship with Kilimnik, his communications with Kilimnik. And also, it's important to note that according to the special counsel, according to the judge now, part of what was going on was Paul Manafort was meeting with Kilimnik to talk about some Ukraine peace deal that apparently was being floated.

BURNETT: Right.

PEREZ: Perhaps that would have helped relieve sanctions on the Russians, right? That's part of the story here. Then the other thing is that he had passed polling data to Kilimnik, at this secret meeting, as the special counsel says there was a secret meeting at the Havana Club in New York.

Again, this is information that the judge says it doesn't matter who -- you know, whether Kilimnik was also providing information to the diplomats, whether he was a double agent or not. He was trying to hide it and he was trying to essentially obstruct the investigation.

BURNETT: Juliette, can I ask you though because you know it comes out when we're saying he lied and then they would show a little bit, then he would change the lie a little bit, he'd show a little more. You see it bit by bit by bit. He knew full well that they knew he was lying all the way.

So that opens up the question, Juliette, as to why. I can only think simply here of two reasons. One, there's something worse than spending the rest of your life in jail that he foresaw. And, two, he's betting on a pardon.

PEREZ: Right, so, it could be both. It could be that things are worse than we see right now and also that he's hoping that because it's already looked so bad, Trump's going to come in. Let's just take a step back on this lovely Friday we are spending again together.

So Sarah Sanders we learned today goes in to discuss the Russians and whether this meeting in Trump Tower. Roger Stone, we learned from Mueller is in direct contact with WikiLeaks and we don't know who else was in contact with WikiLeaks because Mueller says they have the -- they have the e-mails but they do not have -- they did not disclose if anyone else is on the e-mails or communications. And now, Manafort is going to jail for the rest of his life if he doesn't get pardoned because he also lied about the Russians.

So what's the common theme here? The Trump -- the Trump team is lying about the Russians. I don't know how much more evidence that we need to say this actually has everything to do with the president at this stage.

[19:40:06] BURNETT: Frank, final word?

BRUNI: Can I give you one more reason why he may have lied? At this point in his life, it may be a reflex. Paul Manafort has been a scam artist his whole life. I don't think it's the only reason but I think his lying muscle at this point in his life is pretty well developed.

BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, all of you, as we continue to go through the steps that we have, at least 68 pages and, of course, as we said, the special counsel requesting that Paul Manafort spend the rest of his life in jail.

OUTFRONT next, a gunman kills five people in Chicago. We're going to live to the scene to try to understand what we know right now about this developing story.

And Beto O'Rourke coming out swinging against President Trump just moments ago.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Breaking news. Five people are dead. Several more injured after a gunman opened fire at an industrial manufacturing plant in Aurora, Illinois, near Chicago. The gunman was believed to be an employee of the Henry Pratt Company. As I said, manufacturing company but police are still trying to understand what happened here in this tragedy.

Sara Sidner is OUTFRONT from Aurora.

Sara, what more have you learned?

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, really terrible day here in this Aurora neighborhood.

As you mentioned, five people dead. We also know that the shooter himself has been killed. Five officers wounded and as the police put it, a number of civilians, we do know some of those civilians, several of them are in area hospitals.

[19:45:07] This neighborhood is an interesting place. It is a place where you've got lots of hard working folks who live around an area that is -- also has manufacturing plants. So, what you see is a mixed neighborhood of people.

A lot of the neighbors that we spoke with telling us that they didn't hear a whole lot but they certainly found out when the shooting began because, all of a sudden, there were so many police officers. We saw SWAT officers. We saw all sorts of manner of emergency vehicles came here.

We also saw a chaplain, as you might imagine, extremely stressful for the police who were involved in this and helped bring this to a close and terrifying for people who were inside the building as the shooter went around. We know that a witness spoke to one of our local sister stations and has said to them that, you know, this person seemed to be shooting at every and anybody, that it was just a terrifying situation inside of this company today -- Erin.

BURNETT: I mean, Sara, do they have any idea what this -- anything about this person? The motive? How they got there? Anything at this point?

SIDNER: Look, at this point, you know, there is a lot of speculation. We do know his name. It's Gary Martin. He's 45 years old.

And there are comments from the same witness that talked about what it was like being inside that he believed that he may have worked in one of these buildings around here. So, that is what we know right now. There is going to be more information, of course, coming down the pike later.

But, right now, I think the real concentration has been on the victims, on the fact that there are five people dead. There are five officers, police officers wounded and numerous other civilians wounded. You know, this has been a very difficult day and as you might imagine, there is still a scene here. You can see the flashing lights. Still a lot of a police presence here in Aurora -- Erin.

BURNETT: Such a tragedy -- thank you very much, Sara.

Up next, Beto O'Rourke slamming Trump, saying racism has defined his presidency and he's not the only one speaking out tonight.

And Trump's rocky relationship with the truth. Has he come clean about his health?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:50:05] BURNETT: Tonight, taking on the president, Beto O'Rourke who is still weighing a run for the White Hose, slamming Trump's border visit to O'Rourke's hometown of El Paso. Beto O'Rourke saying that it was intended to, quote, stoke the anxiety and the paranoia, and the fear and the hatred and the racism that has defined Trump's presidency.

Now, he is not the only one going after Trump tonight for the wall.

Kyung Lah is OUTFRONT.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Kamala Harris.

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A packed gymnasium greeted Senator Kamala Harris and her first campaign town hall in South Carolina, talking up her middle class tax cut and gun safety measures, though she also addressed the president's national emergency declaration.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will tell you that it is absolutely going to be the subject rightly of litigation. We should expect that the plain language actually speaks to the moment and that there is an emergency. But this is an emergency of this president's own creation for political purposes and it's responsible -- height of irresponsibility.

LAH: It's the latest fight for the 2020 Democrats, all disagreeing with the declaration.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand echoing her Senate colleagues.

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The only national emergency is the humanitarian crisis that President Trump has created at our border by separating families from children and treating people who need our help inhumanely.

LAH: Potential 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke saying he'd take down the wall separating his home town of El Paso and Mexico.

CHRIS HAYES, MSNBC HOST: If you could, would you take the wall down here, like you have a wall?

BETO O'ROURKE (D-TX), FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: Yes, absolutely.

HAYES: You'll knock it down.

O'ROURKE: I'd take the wall down.

LAH: Asked if she agreed with O'Rourke's stance, Gillibrand didn't rule it out. SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So, I could

look at it and see which part he means and why and if it makes sense, I could support it.

LAH: Harris asked, said this.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I believe there's a need and there should be a need -- we should create as a priority border security. Border security should always be a priority for our country. The question is, where do we need to put the resources to make sure that our border is safe? What the president is doing right now is irresponsible.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAH: Harris next heads to a different part of the state, Columbia, South Carolina. After that, on to New Hampshire. And that is going to be over the long holiday weekend.

We should point out, Erin, that it's going to be a very packed early state, a total of six Democratic presidential hopefuls will all be in New Hampshire, at least toward the tail end of the holiday weekend -- Erin.

BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much.

All right. And now, let's go to Andrew Gillum, former Democratic nominee for Florida governor, and a rising star in the Democratic Party. So, let me ask you, Beto O'Rourke, you know, you saw them there. He says that the wall in El Paso that's there. It should be ripped down. Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and all weighing in. And I'm wondering what you think.

Are they right to take on Trump's wall? Is that a winning issue? Or should they be saying, you know what, I'm not going to talk about. I'm going to define my own issue, my own turf?

ANDREW GILLUM (D), FORMER FLORIDA GUBERNATORIAL NOMINEE: Yes. I mean, I will supplement my judgment for that of Beto O'Rourke who represented the El Paso area in Congress about that particular area of the wall. I will tell you, what irks Democrats about this whole talk about the wall and this made up crisis in the president's own mind and in his own head is quite frankly what this wall represents.

It's no -- it's not so much about a physical barrier as much as it is about the rich centuries old tradition of people being able to come from anywhere and make it to America and being able to make the best of themselves, the highest use of themselves, to be able to pursue the American dream. What this president is attempting to do is to dim that light. I think that's why you see such a strong rebuff, particularly from folks in the middle and on the left to this idea of a crisis at the border when the facts defy that.

BURNETT: So, when Beto O'Rourke comes down and says the president is a racist, you agree with that? GILLUM: Well, I mean, there's no doubt about it, this president has

made it a hallmark of his administration so far to race bait, to create moral equivalency between those who would seek to divide us off of the way that we look, the language we speak, the country or region of this country or origination. That's not who we are as a country.

And I think it's incumbent not just upon Democratic candidates for president, but quite frankly, people and the president's own party to call a spade a spade, to decry the president for his derisive and divisive politics. It's not who we are and I think that we ought to collectively, on the left and the right and in the middle, reject that brand of divisive politics.

BURNETT: You know, when I mentioned you as a rising star in the party, you ran a close race in Florida. Of course, you lost, but it was a close race, 32,000 votes.

[19:55:00] GILLUM: Yes. Thanks for the reminder. I needed that.

BURNETT: Yes, I know, I'm sure -- I'm sure it's not something you need reminding of.

But I say it because the Democratic nominee is going to need you, right? You are an important voice in Florida. Do you have a favorite candidate yet? Do you want to be getting in early to help someone campaign? Are you going to wait?

GILLUM: Well, I mean, what I'm going to do to help is in a state where I literally came within a rounding era of becoming governor, one of the most diverse and obviously one of the largest swing states in the country is I'm going to do everything I can to make this state a state that will be ready to go blue for whomever the Democratic nominee will be.

We got a great batch of candidates. And whoever that individual will be, that's who I'm planning to help.

BURNETT: So, I've got to ask, because, you know, you want the state to go blue. And your state is known for many things. One of them is that you don't have an income tax. And a lot of Democrats in Washington are pushing for the exact opposite, right? Raise taxes and they want to race them on the wealthy.

I want to play for you something Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger said today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHARLIE MUNGER, WARREN BUFFETT'S PARTNER: I think it's stupid for a state to drive the rich people out. They are old. They keep your hospitals busy. They don't burden your schools, the police department, your prisons. They give a lot. Who wouldn't want rich people?

(END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: He mentions Florida specifically being smart in recruiting wealthy people, having no income tax. Are members of your party going too far with their plans to raise taxes?

GILLUM: I'll jus simply say that everybody needs to pay their fair share. In the state of Florida today, 44 percent of people, working people, say that they cannot make ends meet at the end of the month. There's no reason why big corporations out there should be paying no taxes, federally. We have seen reporting on that lately when working people are out here starving to make sure they can keep a roof over their head and food on the table and clothes on their and their children's backs. There's an inequity in the system. And that's what we've got to go after, is leveling that inequity so that everybody pays their fair share.

BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time, Andrew Gillum.

GILLUM: Of course.

BURNETT: And new tonight, the cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney calling for an independent panel to oversee President Trump's health, this after he criticized the White House for lack of transparency on the report on Trump's physical, which was incredibly bare bone.

OUTFRONT now, again with me, Dr. Jonathan Reiner.

And, Dr. Reiner, thanks for coming back.

I wan to give you a chance to explain why do you believe so strongly an independent panel is needed instead of the doctors who really are in the president's chain of command that did this report?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CARDIOLOGIST TO FORMER VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: Yes. Hi, Erin.

Look, I have worked for the last 18 years off and on with many people in the White House medical unit. And the docs and nurses and P.A.s who work there are some of the finest people I have known. They are true patriots doing really difficult work.

But they have an impossible job. Their patient is their commander in chief. It can be very difficult in that setting not to become sort of part of the team that tries to craft a message.

Imagine if the person who examined your pilot worked for your pilot. We depend on people in key positions having independent medical exams. I think the time is now to create an independent panel to assess the fitness of the president and vice-president.

BURNETT: Right, of course. Last year, we saw the doctor who examined the president saying he would live to 200 years. His gene was so good. I mean, it was -- it was farcical, right?

Obviously, this year, it's much more calm. But nonetheless, it raises these questions. And you are fundamentally -- when you look at the information we were given, you are worried about the president's health. Why, Dr. Reiner?

REINER: Well, he is not moving in the right direction. You know, the president's weight has gone up. His cholesterol hasn't gone down. We know he has coronary disease. We know that from his CAT scan last year.

You know, he is on a train going to a destination that he does not want to arrive at, you know? If you don't treat these risk factors like high cholesterol and you don't reduce, you know, elevated weight and you don't do exercise, you are really increasing your risk of having a heart attack.

I calculated the president's risk of having a serious cardiovascular e cardiovascular event like a heart attack over the next 10 years and it's 17 percent.

BURNETT: Is that -- that's high, you say?

REINER: Yes. That's super high. To turn that around, the president needs to get moving, lose some weight, really drop the carbs in his diet and get his cholesterol way down. And it would be good to see him moving in a different direction than he seems to have gone over the last year.

BURNETT: Yes, it doesn't seem that he -- the reporting, he doesn't go to the gym. Try to eat more healthy, but we did see his health go up four pounds. So, he is technically clinically obese.

Thank you very much, Dr. Reiner. I appreciate your time.

REINER: My pleasure.

BURNETT: And I appreciate yours as well. Have a great weekend. Thank you for joining us.

"AC360" begins now.