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Trump Contradicts His Intel Chiefs; Police Update on Houston Manhunt; Houston Suspect Commits Suicide; Rick Gates Could Testify. Aired 12n-12:30p ET

Aired August 03, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

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[12:00:25] NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm Nia-Malika Henderson. John King has the day off.

New drama in the Paul Manafort trial as the prosecution preps the jury for the testimony of a key witness, Manafort's former deputy.

Plus, China strikes back against the U.S. trade war, but the ongoing tit-for-tat isn't showing up in today's solid jobs report.

And lessons from last night's Tennessee primary, Trump endorsements are working, but being a long-time Washington insider running for statewide office, not so much.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DIANE BLACK (R), TENNESSEE GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: Tonight is my 19th time on the ballot in a state that Dave and I love. Eighteen times I came out on top. But tonight we have a different story.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: President Trump's cabinet.

BLACK: Yes, make America great again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: And we just want to note that we're waiting for a news conference to begin in Houston where authorities will give an update on a -- the suspected killer of a prominent Houston doctor. And we'll bring that to you when it starts.

But we'll begin with the president himself, who seems to be operating from a completely separate playbook than his own administration. Yesterday he instructed the nation's top security chiefs to speak at the White House press briefing on election security. They were about as clear as they could be, Russia was and is a big threat.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Our democracy itself is in the cross hairs.

DAN COATS, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: We acknowledge the threat. It is real. It is continuing.

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: Make no mistake, the scope of this foreign influence threat is both broad and deep.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: But mere hours later, the president went completely off the intel community's script at a rally in Pennsylvania.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In Helsinki, I had a great meeting with Putin. We discussed everything. I had a great meeting. I had a great meeting.

We got along really well. By the way, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. That's a really good thing. Now, we're being hindered by the Russian hoax. It's a hoax, OK. I'll tell you what, Russia's very unhappy that Trump won, that I can tell you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: CNN's Kaitlan Collins is live from Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.

And, Kaitlan, is the president an outsider in his own administration when it comes to this message on Russian meddling and what should be done about it?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Nia, he certainly seems to be. Despite the White House insisting it was President Trump's idea to have those national security officials come out and brief reporters on election security and make quite clear that, yes, they do believe that Russia is still a threat, you did not hear that messaging reflected in the president's speech in Pennsylvania that lasted for more than an hour. Instead, his only reference to Russia was to say that the Russia investigation, which is an investigation into Russian meddling in the election, was a hoax. That just does not match with what his national security officials said during that briefing. A briefing that, I should note, the president's own intelligence chief said he still doesn't fully understand what it was that happened during that one-on-one with Putin.

So it seems to be a tale of two different White Houses here right now, Nia.

HENDERSON: Thanks for that reporting, Kaitlan.

Here with me to share their reporting and their insights, Michael Shear with "The New York Times," Ayesha Rascoe with NPR.

I want to go now to Texas. We've got Houston police are holding a press conference and we'll listen in now.

CHIEF ART ACEVEDO, HOUSTON POLICE: Chief Banbridge (ph), Captain Stiller (ph), Chief Dobbins (ph), and Captain Naul (ph) here.

Ever since this incident occurred, it's been a high priority of the Houston Police Department to catch this suspect for a matter of -- for many reasons. It's very rare when someone's killed and you can't even figure out a motive and they're actually targeted. And, most importantly, it was creating a lot of panic in the Texas Medical Center. As we all know, it's a world-renowned jewel. And so these people haven't slept. They actually didn't have much sleep last night either. They've been looking for this man. And this morning, I'll just get to the -- to what everybody's wondering. This is our suspect.

The suspect's deceased. He committed suicide when he was confronted by two members of the Houston Police Department patrol assets here in the southwest division. And I'm going to run you through it.

[12:05:04] We -- we were very fortunate in this city that we work very diligently to create and build bridges of trust. And we're committed to relational policing, which we really believe is the number one force multiplier for our city is the community we serve. And we serve everyone that lives, works, or visits the city of Houston. And so this is the case, without the public, we wouldn't be standing here today.

You all know how we identified this suspect. We've talked about it before. And then this morning, as we searched through the night, and we've been searching for days now for the suspect, actually most of the week since we identified him Sunday into Monday.

At 9:21, the Houston communications center -- emergency communications center received a call of an individual chasing a suspicious person.

At 9:25, that individual -- by the way, the individual gave the wrong address. So we started responding but we couldn't find where they were at.

At 9:25, the individual calls and says that the suspect is near the Jewish community center. And the caller at that time at 9:25 said he believed that the suspect may be the suspect, Pappas, who we were looking for, for the murder of Dr. Hausknecht.

At 9:30 a.m., the caller calls back because what occurred is this reporting party works for the Houston Parks board. He was on duty near the bayou over here. We have a problem with graffiti. And he checks that area on a regular basis to make sure nobody is committing the -- vandalizing any walls or homes in that area. I've actually talked to the witness and he said that he saw an individual, that turned out to be Mr. Pappas, suspect Pappas, sitting there near that area where there's a lot of vandals. He turned around, jumped the curb, came to make contact with Mr. Pappas -- suspect Pappas, who started walking away.

Pappas was probably about 7,500 yards from him when he actually yelled, hey, I'm sorry, I thought that you were a -- you were a graffiti vandal. And Pappas just, according to this witness, puts his arms out like this and then starts walking again.

The witness then looked and actually found a wallet that suspect Pappas either discarded intentionally or unintentionally. We don't know. Left it there where he had been sitting. He looks in the wallet and realizes, finds the ID, recognized the name Pappas thanks to the efforts of the media who have done -- been great partners in getting out this information and social media in terms of the Twittersphere and everything else we've used as a department. When he notices it's suspect Pappas, he calls back and he says, this is Mr. Pappas. I found his wallet and his ID.

At 9:34, units finally, when we got a better location, arrived in the area. A solo officer patrol unit at 9:35 gets even a better address right over here behind us, where you all can see where -- where the officers are way back. You can see those police cars. One of our officers spots a suspect. The officer recognizes him, gets out of his police car, and at gunpoint starts ordering Mr. Pappas and starts giving commands. Suspect Pappas had his left hand up and had his right hand secreted where the officer could not see his hand.

The suspect said something about suicide, and the officer said, let me see some hands or something of that nature. The suspect has body armor on and was not complying with our officer's command. When the officer saw he wasn't complying with the command, he actually made a tactical repositioning, repositioned himself on the other side of the patrol car to put his engine block between him and the suspect.

Fortunately for our officer, a second -- a back-up unit arrived in the opposite direction. And when -- as that officer started forming a "t" formation on the suspect, suspect Pappas took the gun and shot himself in the head.

He was pronounced at the scene deceased by a Houston fire department from what appears to be, again, a -- one single shot to the dead, self-inflicted gunshot.

I just -- I'm very thankful today for quite a few things. Number one, I'm thankful that we're going to end this week with a great sense of relief in the city of Houston and the Texas Medical Center. I'm thankful that we, in this instance, the community came forward. The community was our absolute greatest force multiplier. And, obviously, our detective, our patrol officers did not rest. Our command staff did not rest until we had this suspect in custody.

[12:10:04] And I'm very thankful that this suspect, although he committed suicide, you normally don't put on a bullet proof vest when you're thinking about suicide. And when you start thinking about -- based on my experience, that's just an opinion and a hunch, but I thank God that that second officer got there when he got there because the suspect was not complying with the commands or the officer, kept his hand -- his strong hand with the weapon in it secreted where the officer couldn't see it. And it wasn't until he saw that second officer. I'm convinced that had we not had that second officer arrive from the -- from a different angle, we might have had a shootout here. And I just thank God that our officer's OK.

I also thank God that our witness, who was really (INAUDIBLE), who works for the parks board, I really believe when he was doing this and stopped, he's trying to get him to come up. And if you know anything about this suspect, we've talked about his skills, we've talked about the fact that he's a very good marksman, and actually had a holster secreted in his clothing that we found and so on and so forth, so a very dangerous person.

The other thing I want to say is that we will conduct an investigation here into this shooting, like we do any other shooting. The investigation will continue.

Now, this morning, we've heard reports that some media outlets are putting that there was a hit list by this suspect. That we had found a hit list. Let me just address that really quickly.

When our officers, our investigators, conducted the search warrant on Sunday night into Monday morning --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tuesday into Wednesday.

ACEVEDO: Or, excuse me, Tuesday into Wednesday, pardon me, I misspoke on that, Tuesday into Wednesday morning at the suspect's residence, they found a very extensive intelligence file that this suspect had put together on Dr. Hausknecht. He had -- he knew everything that you could possibly find on this man. And I'm not going to go any further into details, just to say that those were very expensive. Inside that intelligence file, we found one sheet with some of Dr. Hausknecht's information. But contained within that sheet was probably, you know, a couple dozen names of potential doctors and other employees of the Texas Medical Center. When we determined that those were potential employees with the Texas Medical Center, we actually passed that information on to the medical center and they -- they dealt with it to make sure that notifications were being made and -- as they identified those employees.

Again, this has been the culmination of a lot of great work by the men and women of the Houston Police Department. A lot of outstanding leadership by the men and women you see here behind me that have not slept. And, obviously, by our detectives that have not slept.

And, lastly, I think this case illustrates that with the cooperation and with the engagement between local law enforcement -- local law enforcement and the communities we serve, this is what we get. We get resolution. We get it quickly. And we get it before there's another loss of life. And with that, I'll open it up to any questions.

QUESTION: Chief, do we know how Pappas has been getting around? (INAUDIBLE), by foot, (INAUDIBLE)?

ACEVEDO: That -- that will be part of our --

HENDERSON: Let's go straight to CNN's Ed Lavandera for more.

Ed, talk about the extent of this manhunt.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, it has been rather intense throughout, really concentrated in the city of Houston. Police, as you heard the police chief there talking about it, they had found his car inside his home and that they suspected that Joseph Pappas left his home earlier this week on this ten-speed Schwinn bicycle, the same bicycle he's suspected of having ridden to carry out the attack and the murder of Dr. Mark Hausknecht.

So, really, the search for this suspect has really been concentrated in the Houston area simply because he was believed to have left on -- left on his bicycle. So there wasn't a sense that he could have gotten terribly far. And, obviously, this kind of plays out to the scene because in the neighborhood that we're at is about -- a little over a mile away from where Joseph Pappas lived. So all of this very concentrated in the southwest area of Houston.

HENDERSON: Ed, thanks.

And we'll be right back.

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[12:18:25] HENDERSON: Let's return now to another one of our top stories.

President Trump in an apparent split with his own intelligence community yet again over Russia's meddling in U.S. elections. His top intelligence officers spoke at the White House briefing yesterday on election security, saying it was and is a serious problem. But the president persists in blasting what he calls the Russian hoax.

Here with me to share their reporting and their insights, Michael Shear with "The New York Times," Ayesha Rascoe with NPR, Michael Warren with "The Weekly Standard," and "The Washington Post's" Karoun Demirjian.

Michael, I'm going to start with you, because you were in that press briefing yesterday.

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Right.

HENDERSON: What do you see as the daylight between the intel community and the president?

SHEAR: Well, it appears to be gaping daylight. I mean it -- the thing that was striking, sitting in that Briefing Room yesterday was the number of times and the kind of overwhelming way that all of the nation's law enforcement and intelligence officials that were standing there repeatedly said what the president has refused to say, which is that Russia was, is, and will be meddling in the elections.

I think what's important about it is that if you talk to the people who are charged with trying to prevent the meddling, and that's both the kind of information warfare, the FaceBook and the social media warfare from Russia, but also the potential hacking into the infrastructure of the voting machines --

HENDERSON: Right.

SHEAR: And the roll -- voter rolls and the like. If you talk to the people who want to prevent that, they can do a lot, but it requires the president of the United States lighting a fire under everybody. It requires the president's moral leadership and the bully pulpit that only the president has to both motivate the private sector in the case of FaceBook and the other companies, and to motivate the government to, you know, to really move to do this important thing ahead of the elections in 2018 and 2020. And that's the thing that is so striking that isn't happening.

[12:20:27] HENDERSON: Right. I mean his absence very much felt there yesterday when you see all those intel chiefs.

SHEAR: Absolutely.

HENDERSON: And Ben Cardin, senator from Maryland, says that means something, particularly for Putin. Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BEN CARDIN (D), MARYLAND: What they were saying at that meeting is that Mr. Putin will fill a void. If he thinks he can move with impunity and attack our system, he'll attack our system. And what President Trump did in Helsinki and what he did yesterday in calling the Russian probe a hoax, it gives a green light to Mr. Putin to continue his activities here in the United States to compromise our system of government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: Karoun, how do you think Putin sees this?

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, I mean, look, there's discord and chaos coming out of the message that's coming out of the United States right now, right? So Putin -- that's kind of the objective if you're Russia right now, keep everything a little off balance, keep everybody fighting each other. And that's what Russia tried to do, you know, just with the population during the election, but now it's happening with the Trump administration, which is a bonus, really, for Putin. So that message that Ben Cardin was delivering right there is actually bipartisan, really. A lot of people are very frustrated with the president for not taking a harder line against Putin, using every opportunity he can to echo the really strong sentiments that are coming out of the rest of his national security teams and say this is not OK.

But he doesn't do it. And Congress does not have the power right now to push him to do it because there's no real appetite from the leadership to directly cross the president with any sort of a bill that would slap new sanctions.

HENDERSON: Right.

DEMIRJIAN: And they don't want to rush. And so you've got this -- this -- people are stuck in the middle of the road. And so it seems very, very unlikely that anything tangible or concrete is going to change before the midterm elections.

HENDERSON: And Trump says his critics have essentially got it all wrong, and he talked about this last night at that rally in Pennsylvania.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But I got along great with Putin. A couple of hours later, I started hearing these reports that, you know, they wanted me to walk up. Here's a podium here. They wanted me to walk up and go like this. They wanted me to go up and have a boxing match. Whatever happened to diplomacy?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HENDERSON: Well, that's not exactly what people wanted him to --

MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR WRITER, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": It would have made great TV though. You know, we can't deny that.

HENDERSON: Right.

And what's interesting also is it's clear that at least some folks in the intel community still don't know what Trump said behind the scenes with Putin, let alone what he did or didn't do in front of the cameras.

WARREN: Right. This is the perfect example of the way Trump kind of perceives how state craft is done. It's done between two leaders. All of the stuff that the State Department or the foreign ministry have done beforehand --

HENDERSON: Right.

WARREN: All of the history that backs up all of this, that's less important to the president than what happens in a room one on one.

But, of course, that's where -- that's why we have this daylight here. That's why we have this divide within the administration.

I think it was a little odd at the briefing yesterday. They kept insisting, Sarah Sanders insisted this was the president's idea to have all of these people out there.

HENDERSON: Right.

WARREN: And that's what makes it so confusing. I sort of wonder if all of this focus on this only makes the president sort of dig in harder because he has conflated the two ideas that Russia meddled in the election and somehow that invalidates his own victory in the election. We don't know if any votes were changed. It's hard to quantify that. But for the president it seems to be admitting what everybody around him admits and tells him is the same as admitting he's not really supposed to be there.

HENDERSON: Right.

And, Ayesha, it also means that he can -- the intel chief can be on one page and he can still be at his rallies talking about Russia being a hoax. AYESHA RASCOE, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, NPR: And so it was a really

strong show of force to have all of those people at a briefing. That's really unusual to have all of those security people there. But to not have President Trump backing that up, President Trump is the one who's been giving them mixed messages. So it hasn't been coming from the rest of the administration. So, really, until he gets out there and really starts driving that message home, they're still going to have questions about whether this administration is really committed to election security.

HENDERSON: Yes, and we'll see if that happens over these next crucial weeks and months.

[12:24:44] Up next, prosecutors move from Paul Manafort's fancy jackets to the gaping holes he allegedly left on his tax forms.

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HENDERSON: More drama in day four of Paul Manafort's trial with more testimony on Trump's former campaign chairman's taxes. The prosecution is seemingly paving the way for their star witness, that's, of course, Manafort's long-time deputy Rick Gates. Gates has already taken a plea deal with the special counsel. And on yesterday, Manafort's bookkeeper testified that in 2016 Manafort was nearly broke and he lied to banks about his finances to get loans. The indictment alleges that Manafort asked Gates to doctor those financial documents.

[12:30:07] And we've got CNN's Shimon Prokupecz, who's been all over this case.

Shimon, what have we learned so far?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, I think just -- another devastating --