good evening. we begin tonight with breaking news. while president trump and his treasury secretary refuse to hand over the president's tax records to house democrats, the "new york times" has obtained a decades worth of his tax information and they're findings are eye-popping. stunning. there is a lot of different adjectives to use. we'll talk to a reporter coming up. as the stiff-arming from the white house hit a new level today blocksing former white house counsel don mcgahn from turning over documents to the house judiciary committee. that comes, of course, the day after attorney general william barr refused to meet a deadline to hand over the full unredacted mueller report to congress. the same day that, as we mentioned, the treasury secretary steve mnuchin said no to turning over the president's taxes. and in at least that incident, tonight we're getting the clearest picture yet of why the president might not want that information out. it doesn't look good for him in that information.

joining me is suzanne craig of "the new york times." she serves the biline of this breaking story. "decade in the red: trump's tax figures show over $1 billion in losses." this is incredible in its scope and detail. can you just lay out in your reporting -- again, it's on "the new york times" so people should go read the full thing. we're talking over $1 billion over a decade. >> that's just for his core businesses. every year we looked at, he lost money and the losses grew as he went further into the casinos and the losses that happened there, but it's unbelievable. we would have thought at least in one of the years we saw, maybe the year he wrote "art of the deal," he would have made money. he didn't. he was bleeding money every year we looked at in his businesses. >> in certain years, donald trump, according to your reporting, lost more than nearly any other individual taxpayer in the united states, is that right? >> yeah, it's incredible because we had both his tax information and then we were able to compare

it to a database of people who make a fair bit of money. that was a 1/3 sampling. each in that he often years was the largest number for losses in america. >> the irony is -- >> it's stunning. >> he was actually the biggest loser to use a term that he would use if this was -- if he was labelling somebody else. >> if he was writing the headline at "the new york times," that would be it. >> that is true. he -- but, i mean, he lost so much money he was -- did he pay income tax? >> he paid income tax in two of the ten years. one of them was -- >> in only two of ten years? >> it was the alternate minimum tax for one of the years. one of them was he had a big salary number one year because of a deal he did with merv griffin. >> he only paid a small amount? >> very small amount. he hit the amt two years. >> so why was he losing so much money? >> because his businesses just weren't doing well. they actually were doing horribly year in and year out.

he had some decent investments, you know, we saw them here and there, but, you know, always they were just, you know, the losses just flooded them. like, he would make money here but then he would lose money. he had a foray into stock strayeding, f trading, for example. there were years he made money and then he just lost it. >> it's incredible that banks were lending to him. banks keeping him afloat. deutsche bank, he would default on loans to one part of deutsche bank and those bankers would say, okay, we're not going to have any more to do with him and go to another department at deutsche bank. >> later in his career he did and ended up dealing with the private wealth groups. the bank took a bath on him. for the banks when you look back at that period, a lot of them remember how bad it was and some of them will still not do business with him because of how it happened. it all came to a head in 1990 when his casino started to go

bankrupt. for years we thought that was sort of where it started. now we know he never made money in those years. it was shocking for us to see and we led with it, the year he wrote "art of the deal," this master of the universe memoir. >> written by -- >> somebody else. that year he lost tens of millions of dollars. >> it's incredible. the -- is there any response from the president on this reporting? >> they have -- the information that we have is from an irs transcript, and they're simply saying that the -- that the numbers and that they're saying that they're wrong, but they have not provided us with any information about what is wrong. they've just said the dript trat is questionable. >> so explain that. you do not have a copy of his tax returns. >> we don't. >> which is the fight with the treasury department. you have printouts from an official irs transcript. what is that? >> that's something they use in the irs wynn they want to collect year after year information on a taxpayer, irs employees use it when they're dealing with things like audits,

and, in fact, you know, we looked at it. we not only had it, we verified it. the individual who gave it to us also gave us ten years of his father's tax returns that we had because of prior reporting matched it number for number. it was unbelievable. we didn't find any inaccuracies in it. we also did other things to verify it. we couldn't see that there was any inaccuracies and we went to great lengths to verify it, including getting fred trump's tax returns. >> so what is this -- for the battle over tax returns, is there more in the actual tax returns that you would like to see? >> yeah, i mean, this was -- it's incredible what we were able to see just with the information that we were provided but we don't have the schedules. and one of the frustrating things we saw, for example, in one of the years he had more than $50 million in what's known as interest income. this is income you're going to get if you have mortgages or bonds coming in, you'll be getting interest from those. every year he had 10 or 13 or

less million dollars. one year he had $50 million. we couldn't explain it. we had access to a lot of his holdings to see what might be generating that sort of interest income. if we had his schedules we would know what the sources of that income were. to me when i think about the modern day tax returns and why they are so important it's because we need to see his sources of income. we need to know who is paying him and where that money is coming from. right now we don't know where that hidden hand is because we don't have his tax returns or the schedules that go with them. >> it's just incredible reporting. suzanne craig, appreciate it. it's on "the new york times" website. people should check it out. thank you very much. i want to get reaction now from senator richard blumenthal of the judiciary committee. i'm sure you've seen this. it certainly paints a picture of president trump certainly different than the picture he has painted of his biggest acumen. >> biggest loser is certainly a

contrast to his boast of his business acumen. more significantly, this reports raises more significant questions chan this wonderful reporting was able to answer and it sheds light on why president trump may be the first president in decades to refuse to disclose his tax returns. it also demonstrates irrefutably why the congress is well justified in seeking those tax returns, as has been done now by subpoena, and the american people should be asking, what's in those six years of current tax returns that donald trump wants to conceal? >> i mean, a decade in the red with $1 billion in losses is extraordinary. this time period examined in the reporting, it's not at the center of the battle between the trump administration and congress, but certainly all of this underscores the fact that there is so much that still isn't known about the president's finances. >> there is so much that is unknown here.

and it underscores the importance of the lawsuit that i have brought, along with almost 200 of employ colleagues. blumenthal versus trump. that seeks the story and evidence of his payments and benefits from foreign governments to him, which he continues to refuse to disclose to the american people or to congress, as is required by the emolumen emoluments clause. the chief anti-corruption provision in the united states constitution. donald trump is defying the constitution, breaking the law, by failing to disclose the details of his ongoing dealings with foreign governments, and so it is a stunning picture of spectacular collapse during those years, which is the term the report uses, but it also indicates very clearly why the american people deserve more truth from the white house, from this president about his business dealings. >> i want to ask you about the white house clearly continuing to stonewall.

the latest example instructing don mcgahn to defy the subpoena for documents. so, i mine, what are the democrats' options at this point? other than house judiciary committee chairman nadler saying they could move to hold mcgahn in contempt. >> holding don mcgahn in contempt means holding the president accountable. along with others who may have participated in obstruction of justice. and that accountability means airing the truth. right now the american people have many of the president's sycophants saying no collusion, no obstruction and case closed. but holding don mcgahn in contempt of court and enforcing that contempt through the courts is the prime avenue we have for telling the american people the truth about what happened. letting them hear and see from mcgahn and from mueller and from

the unredacted report, which we are also seeking, so they can make a judgement about what the proper remedy is and we can make that chase. >> chairman nadler also said the contempt vote for attorney general barr, that's scheduled to tomorrow. will democrats actually achieve anything, though, by holding him in contempt? does barr, you know, by extension, does the president even care? >> holding the attorney general in contempt of court is a very powerful marker and a message about this attorney general's contempt for the rule of law. from day one he has distorted and warped this report, beginning with his four-page summary then his statement at the time of the release of the report in his press conference and again when he testified before us at the senate judiciary committee. in fact, i've written to the inspector general of the department of justice because of some of his comments about

sharing information, which he couldn't recall precisely, with the white house, but he did recall that he made have given them the names of some cases. that may be highly inappropriate and we have recourse through the inspector general of the department of justice as well as through the courts to seek the truth from the attorney general, who is acting as the president's defense counsel, not as the people's lawyer. >> senator richard blumenthal, appreciate your time. joining me right now is cnn senior political analyst david axelrod, former senior adviser to president obama. first of all, just your reaction to this "new york times" reporting? >> well, a couple of things. one is donald trump built this mythology about who he was, the uber businessman, the ultimate success. this sort of explodes that myth. as you pointed out, he was the biggest loser among all taxpayers in the country. perhaps that's what he should have named his reality show instead of "the apprentice." over the 14 years on "the apprentice," you got a much different view.

the more important thing and the more relevant thing shows just how vulnerable he was and how he might have continued to be, which goes to the question of whether he, you know, whether his dealings made him a mark for, for example, the russians. and that's a big question. i mean, we know that deutsche bank and -- is the only lender that would lend him money. they are notorious for their dealings with the russians and for money laundering issues. this is, i think, the legitimate reason why the congress wants his tax returns, to try and run some of these concerns to ground. >> just in terms of stonewalling from the white house, how eff t effective can that be? you've worked in the white house. >> well, it can be effective for some time as it works its way through the courts. and, remember, you know, particularly on contempt citations, the justice department has to act on those. they're not going to. and, you know, i think the president feels emboldened.

they have a strategy, and that strategy is to label all of this as politics and they're going to resist and resist as long as they can, perhaps try and push it further down -- further down the field, but among his supporters i think the feeling is this is just democrats going after him for political reasons and not legitimate oversight, as prescribed by the constitution. >> right. his approval rating is at like 46% in the latest gallup poll. >> which isn't high but for him it's a record. >> certainly the economy is doing well. >> one of the reasons why his approval rating has risen. >> do you think the more that the administration stonewalls, the more congressional democrats issue subpoenas and the back and forth continues it only gins up the president's base? >> yeah, i think it does, but it also waters down the impact of these probes. you just need to read the mueller report to know that

there are very serious questions here, and the more that they get dismissed as politics -- >> right. the majority of people have not read the mueller report. >> right. and they haven't heard from mueller. >> right. >> so, you know, what the majority leader did today, mitch mcconnell, part of the president's strategy to say it's done, nothing to see here, move along, and i think that's how hair going to approach all of this going into the election. >> so what do democrats do at this point just in terms of with the upcoming election? >> it's a tough question, anderson, because we know that the public wants them to focus on the real problems facing people in their lives, but they also have a constitutional obligation to provide oversight. there are some serious allegations here about what the president and others did. so they constantly have to weigh those two. obviously speaker pelosi has come to the conclusion that certainly impeachment is not a politically positive thing to be done, and she has -- and beyond the politics of the democratic

party, it's not good for the country, in her view, to be so deeply divided, as impeachment would do with no republicans being supportive, but i think that they have to pursue some of these probes. otherwise you're so defining the standards down that future presidents are going to also feel that they can operate with impunity. >> david axelrod, good to have you here. thank you, david. a lot more to get to tonight, including information we're getting from another school shooting. this one not very far from denver. we'll have the very latest. also, what the fbi director said before congress that wasn't exactly in line with what the attorney general said. centers around a very keyword. we're keeping them honest, ahead. allergies with sinus congestion and pressure? you won't find relief here. go to the pharmacy counter for powerful claritin-d. while the leading allergy spray only relieves 6 symptoms, claritin-d relieves 8, including sinus congestion and pressure.

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find it exclusively at the home depot. breaking news from colorado, another school shooting. this time at a science school not far from denver. cnn's nick watt joins us now. nick, what is the latest on this? >> reporter: well, the headline, anderson, is that eight students shot by two of their fellow students on campus in the middle of the a regular school day. tuesday lunchtime. and according to the local sheriff, he says this could have been a lot worse. luckily there's a sheriff's sun station just a block away from the school. authorities from the school called in pretty quick, within two minutes deputies were on the scene. they could hear gunshots ringing out as they entered the campus. they engaged with the shooters. we're also told that when they arrived there was some sort of struggle going on between people of the school, unclear who they were, and these two suspects who had shot their fellow students at two different locations on

campus. now, the tragic irony here is that the columbine shooting just over 20 years ago just seven or eight miles away from here. one of the criticisms after that was that law enforcement didn't react quick enough. back then law enforcement would tend to set up a perimeter around a school. now they go in and engage the shooter, and that is what happened here. as i say, the sheriff saying that that speed of response, he thinks, saved some lives. those two shooters in custody. they're described adults -- one is an adult, i'm sorry, one is a juvenile. males. both students of that school. warrants are being worked on to search a car that they left on the property and also their two homes. and the sheriff's kind of tight-lipped on the details. he said, listen, there will be criminal prosecution, there will be criminal charges here so i'm not giving too much away, but initial reports that there was perhaps a third shooter, they say that was not the case, it was just an abundance of caution. they went through that school

room by room to make sure that there wasn't a third shooter. as i say, those two in custody. anderson? >> let me ask you. you say one was an adult, one was a kid. by adult do you mean over the age of 18? they both went to that school? was it an adult that already graduated? do you know? >> i'm assuming what you just said. the sheriff said they were both at the school. one is a juvenile, one is an adult. i'm assuming one of them has just turned 18. >> okay. >> that's where we are. both of them in custody. >> all right. the wounded. do we know how they're doing? >> eight wounded, anderson, three have already been discharged from the hospital. another three listed in good or stable condition and another two are still listed in serious condition. we were told by the sheriff that four were in serious. they were going into surgery a couple of hours ago. that's now down to two, so moving in the right direction. eight injured. >> nick watt, appreciate it. joining me now is author dave cullen who has written about the

death school shooting in parkland, florida and the columbine shooting that nick just referenced. the idea of two shooters potentially involved, often times there are reports of two shooters early on and it's eyewitnesss seeing the same person in multiple locations. if there are, in fact, two shooters, that's quite rare, other than columbine. >> it's pretty rare. it's a whole kind of phenomenon. there was the snipers at d.c. i just remembered one during the break in halifax. it was foiled. there was a young woman from chicago two actually flew there. actually, there were three people involved. it was mainly the two. >> so it's happened but it is rare. >> exactly. usually a leader and a follower. a whole different specific psychology going on there usually. >> one is a juvenile, one is an adult. again, we don't know exactly what that means. >> i thought it was a middle school so that's weird. >> i think it goes up to 12th. >> got you. >> i should double check on

that. but in terms of, like, the police response, as nib wck was saying, it all has changed since columbine. according to the fbi, most of the fatalities in school shootings or the violence goes on in the first six minutes. so police response time is critical. >> it's fantastic. it's a complete change because of columbine, the active shooter protocol. and also -- sadly the perpetrators follow this stuff too and they know. they know they have to maximize their firepower very quickly and get it off. but, yeah, it has -- that's why they usually commit suicide, too. >> a lot of times she's shooters have studied other attacks. >> yeah. almost always. and specifically they tend to study the columbine killers. i just found a graphic just this week that actually shows more than 40 of them have actually documented, you know, in their writings, studying eric and dylan from columbine and then so many of those studying each other. there is a whole web of them. but it generally traces back to

those two who the perpetrators see those two as kind of the founding fathers of this movement. >> that's sort of crazy to think about it in those terms. >> they call it -- pre-parkland i was blocking about 50 a week. kids online, the whole group of them called the tcc, the true crime community, that idolize them or at least pretend to to be cool with each other. by the way, that was, as i say, before parkland. after every shooting, it stops cold. i wake up to 10, 20, 30 of these a day. they stop as soon as it happens, usually for a week. parkland, they never came back until the last month or two, they're starting to gradually slowly. i wonder if it's emma gonzalez became more cool than so edgy that i'm a rebel. i think they made it less cool to be these kids. you know, i see it mostly by, you know, them, you know, waking and up just, like, all these

horrible things said to me. so it's sort of my data point. >> the fact that there is sort of this idolization of these people, again, emphasizes my belief that you shouldn't name these people. shouldn't focus on them. >> we're exporting it. other countries -- the ones in siberia where they don't have news shows like this is really scary to me. >> david cullen, appreciate it. thank you very much. >> did the fbi spy on president trump's campaign? tonight a new twist in that tale. we're keeping them honest next. this year, ancestry isn't celebrating mother's day. we're celebrating colleen's day. julia's day. marie's day. and all the one-of-a-kind women we call "mom." ancestrydna tells a story as unique as she is... ...with an engaging new experience that can help her uncover rich family details. give her ancestrydna for ...denise's day... . and at just $59, grab one for jeff's day, too. order a kit at ancestry.com

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a new voice is weighing in on the ongoing debate over the term spying first ignited by

president trump early in his campaign and more recently doused with gasoline by attorney general barr. on multiple occasions the president has accused the fbi and even president obama himself of spying on his 2016 campaign. here is what he told reporters on april 11th. >> there was absolutely spying into my campaign. i'll go a step further and in my opinion it was illegal spying, unprecedented spying. and something that should never be allowed to happen in our country again. and i think his answer was actually a very accurate one and a lot of people saw that -- a lot of people understand, many, many people understand the situation and want to be open to that situation. hard to believe it could have happened but it did. they were spying in my campaign and his answer was a very accurate one. >> the accurate answer he's referring to is your attorney general barr's one day earlier he seemed to align himself with the president's conspiracy theory with this testimony before a senate panel. >> i think there was a -- spying did occur, yes. yes, i think spying did occur.

>> and last week on wall to wall national television, mr. barr expressed exasperation that anyone would take use of the word "spying" saying it's a, "good establish word and isn't necessarily a pejorative." keeping them honest. and today christopher wray appointed by president trump after the firing of james comey distanced himself from the president and the attorney general use of the word and even took it a step further. >> i want to ask you, and i'd appreciate a yes or no answer, if possible. when fbi agents conduct investigations against alleged mobster, suspected terrorists, other criminals, do you believe they're edge gauging in spying when they are following fbi procedures? >> well, that's not the term i would use. >> thank you. so i would -- i would say that's a no to that question. do you have any evidence that any illegal surveillance into the campaigns or individuals associated with the campaigns by the fbi occurred?

>> i don't think i personally have any evidence of that sort. >> joining us now is michael isikoff, chief investigative correspondent at yahoo! news and garrett graff. garrett, do you see this as an act of defines by director wray to push back how the attorney general used the word spying or just answering it as he sees it? >> i think it's him calling it as he sees it, and i think it's important to understand and sort of look at the historical record. that it's really attorney general barr's comments that these court ordered surveillance programs that have come about and been developed over decades since watergate with very close oversight that it's his comments labelling them spying that is the aberration, not christopher wray's defense of them as normal

investigative procedures and surveillance programs. >> michael, how do you see this, because, like, attorney general barr, director wray emphasized that the real issue is whether the law was followed. again, though, wray says he's not personally seen any evidence that any illegal surveillance occurred. >> right. well, look, first of all, barr did say right after he did think spying occurred that the question was was there an adequate predicate for the spying. now, fbi director wray is absolutely right that it's not usually the term -- spying is not usually the way law enforcement officials would describe the standard surveillance they do in investigations, including undercover surveillance, which involves using informants to, you know, to approach targets and try to get them to say something incriminating or find out what they know. but beyond all this, you know, the semantic dispute, spying or surveillance, there is a serious issue underlying in this and

that's the inspector general report that, you know, is under way and may be out very soon, and i think the stakes on that are really high. >> in what way? >> this is -- well, michael horowitz, first of all, the inspector general, is the one guy in all of this who will have credibility. he's an obama appointee. he's independent. nobody has ever suggested he's a political animal, but the issue he's looking at is was -- did the fbi use appropriate procedures when they got the fisa warrant on carter page and when they began the counterintelligence investigation into the trump campaign? that's something that's -- that investigation's been going on for a year. there's a lot of questions about the role that the steele dossier played. what did the fbi know about its credibility -- >> right. >> -- when they used it to the court, and, you know, this is key to the narrative on both sides. if the i.g. finds there were problems in the way the fbi handled it, that's going to play

right into the president's hands. if he finds there was not, that's going to shoot down the main narrative that the president's defenders have been using. so i think we should wait for that i.g. report. i think it's going to be crucial to how we look at this whole set of circumstances. >> although, garrett, you can already hear, you know, the president and his supporters saying, well, this was a deep state actor, this was, you know, an obama appointee. he was the, you know, the i.g. >> absolutely. and i think one of the things -- and michael touched on this just now -- that's important to understand is that this really did start as a counterintelligence investigation not into the trump campaign but of the contacts around the trump campaign. and when you look at the core of the fbi's national security mission in the realm of counterintelligence, to counter foreign operations, foreign influence in the united states, it's important to remember and

understand that the fbi began this investigation as a defense of the trump campaign, not as an attempt to investigate or find dirt on the trump campaign. they saw suspicious activity taking place around the trump campaign and stepped in initially as an attempt to defend president trump's campaign and those around him from these foreign activities. it was sort of only with the dawning horror that they realized that actually the trump campaign was open for business. >> yeah. >> with the russians. >> michael? >> i have to take a little issue with garrett's drums there for you read the peter strzok texts with lisa page, it's hard to imagine that those two key fbi officials were trying to defend the trump campaign. but that said, garrett's absolutely right. you know, the fbi had legitimate reasons to really be concerned about russian approaches to the trump campaign and to figure out what was going on. the question is did they follow the right procedures in how they

went about that? >> right. >> and that's what horowitz is focussing on. by the way, anderson, you'll have a good chance to press the fbi director -- then fbi director comey tomorrow night on these very issues because he's been quite vague about how much he knew about the counterintelligence investigations. >> yeah. >> when it began. so, you know, have at it. >> well, it will be thursday night, but i got two nights to prepare. michael isikoff, thank you. garrett graff. up next, more on our breaking news from capitol hill. democrats threaten to hold former white house counsel don mcgahn and attorney general bill barr in contempt. i'll talk about it next. uh-oh, looks like someone's still nervous about buying a new house. is it that obvious? yes it is. you know, maybe you'd worry less if you got geico to help with your homeowners insurance. i didn't know geico could helps with homeowners insurance. yep, they've been doing it for years. what are you doing? big steve?

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some more breaking news. cnn has learned that house judiciary chairman jerry nadler told democratic leaders he's prepared to move forward with a contempt of congress vote for attorney general william barr unless the department of justice agrees to his latest set of demands. chairman nadler also sent a letter to former white house counsel don mcgahn threatening to do the same for him if he doesn't appear before the committee. earlier today we learned the white house told mcgahn not to comply with a subpoena for certain documents. now, one of the key questions the senate judiciary committee wants answered is did president trump obstruct justice? more than 700 federal prosecutors from democrat and republican administrations say yes. they signed an open letter saying the president would have been charged with obstruction of

justice if he was not the president. joining us now john dean. he cooperated with congress while still in the white house. also with us, former federal prosecutor and chief legal analyst jeff toobin. how strong, jeff, is the white house argument to push back about them actually testifying? >> i think their arguments very weak. as a substantive matter. but as a practical matter, their ability to delay this testimony perhaps into oblivion, for so long that it becomes essentially irrelevant or, you know, swallowed up by the campaign. i think that could easily happen. >> delay it because it moves through multiple courts? >> right. and even getting contempt, you know, it's not just the committee that has to vote on contempt, it's the -- it's the full house of representatives and then there has to be some sort of legal proceeding that begins the process in the district court. then the circuit court. and then perhaps the supreme court. none of that works very fast.

even if the merits of the argument are pretty strong -- are pretty clear, which i think they are here given the fact that mcgahn turned over these documents to congress. there is -- i think there is a clear waiver -- to mueller. >> to mueller. >> and i think there is a clear waiver there. i think the barr issue was actually a little closer in terms of the -- getting access to the full mueller report. >> john, you are no longer white house counsel when you testified to the senate watergate committee. did the white house try to stop you? if you were able to testify, why couldn't don mcgahn? >> well, i was actually called to testify before the senate watergate committee during pat gray's confirmation to become the director of the fbi. he was the acting director at the time. the senate judiciary committee held him in hostage unless i agreed to come up and testify, and i was perfectly willing to go, but the president said absolutely not. there are two privileges

involved, executive privilege and attorney/client. so i knew his thinking on this pretty well. but i -- that was not in -- that was very much in my mind when i totally broke rank with the white house and i realized there is no way unless they go to court and get a court order can they stop me testifying. and then you raise the issue of whether there is an exception because of the so-called crime fraud exception. in other words, if we were discussing criminal matters, which i believed we were, you know, that would not give any privilege at all. so i don't think any president wants to raise that. i think that comes right around into the mcgahn situation. >> but what's so different about the mcgahn situation, at least as far as we can tell, especially given what happened today, mcgahn basically turned the whole thing over to the white house. he does not appear enthusiastic to testify. john dean wanted to testify and as he said sort of dared richard nixon to stop him.

mcgahn seems determined not to testify if president trump doesn't want him to testify. >> what about mueller? i mean, what's the likelihood of -- he still works for the department of justice. >> correct. mueller is a somewhat different story. first of all, barr has said he has no objection to mueller testifying. >> right. >> mueller presumably wants to testify. and it's just a matter of him leaving the department of justice, which he's going to do anyway, for him not to be a subject to barr. so i think he is -- the judiciary committee is much more likely to get mueller's testimony than they are to get anyone under the control of the white house. >> john, what's the argument for why executive privilege wasn't waived when the president allowed mcgahn to testify about these very topics to mueller, not only that, the findings were public? >> well, the argument was that his lawyers gave consent. mcgahn apparently did want them to raise executive privilege and had some argument with ty cobb, who released him and said go over and cooperate.

which he did in spades. now, the interesting thing, anderson, there's a way to get his testimony or the facts he relayed to the special counsel. if you look at the report closely, they're all done in 302 reports. there are five of them running right up to february of this year. so you have -- you have two agents probably making contemporaneous notes. you had an attorney there who was probably asking questions. just subpoena them. bring them in front of the committee and get mcgahn's testimony. >> that's theoretically true, but they are also trying to show the public what went on here, and, you know -- >> that would do it. >> they want john dean. they don't want the person taking notes on john dean. >> john dean, thank you. jeff toobin. breaking news. a lot of people didn't mow where the american secretary of state actually traveled. coming up, some answers.

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is. cnn has confirmed he was in iraq earlier today and has since departed. according to pool reporters traveling with him he met with iraq's prime minister and president in baghdad. he made the visit after he abruptly canceled the scheduled trip to germany. he was supposed to meet with german chancellor angela merkel but called it off due to what were called pressing issues. the white house didn't explain what the pressing issues were. joining us is max boot, author of "the road not taken." edward lansdale the tragedy in vietnam. the way this trip played out is unusual. you don't blow off a strip to a major ally like germany. >> >> they don't normally announce trips to a place like iraq because of security concerns but they also don't schedule a visit with the german chancellor and blow her off to go to iraq. so i think we're still waiting to find out what exactly went on here. >> you read between the lines, pompeo on the plane after leaving said he was talking with officials there about increased

threat stream, the possibility of interference or attacks from another country, which i assume would mean iran but also possibly american targets inside iraq. >> yeah, i think it's really the iranian crisis which is ramping up and, you know, on sunday night john bolton announced that "uss abraham lincoln" carrier strike group was moving to the persian gulf because of a threat stream emanating from iran and the administration has been leaking that there are threats of iranian attacks on u.s. forces. it's not clear whether those are u.s. forces inside iraq. we have about 5,000 troops there. or whether it's u.s. forces in the persian gulf itself where we have obviously a naval presence. but either way this is a very dangerous situation where there's a sense that the administration and in particular john bolton, who has often talked about his desire for regime change, his desire to bomb iran, there's a sense that they're ramping up these tensions with iran, having abrogated the iranian nuclear accord and now ramping up sanctions designating the iranian revolutionary guard corps as a terrorist organization. and my concern is are they

trying to provoke a reaction from iran that could be an excuse to use military force. >> iran is obviously playing a huge role in iraq. that has been one of the concerns all along, especially in the absence of u.s. forces there. >> iran is probably the most important foreign player in iraq and, you know, with the majority shiite in iraq they're very heavily influenced by iran. iran backs something like 100,000 militia fighters who are basically more answerable to iran than to iraq. and you know, we have 5,000 forces there. 5,000 troops that could be very vulnerable to iranian retaliation because they don't like the sanctions that we're imposing on them right now. >> do you think john bolton wants a confrontation with iran? because no matter what, you know, that would be an extraordinary step. >> well, i think there's no question that john bolton wants a confrontation with iran. all you have to do is look at what he himself has said. i mean, in february he issued a video telling the ayatollahs congratulations on your 40 years in power, you're not going to be

around much longer. and he has made no secret of his desire to attack iran and to replace the regime. i think bolton's difficulty is trump is not really on board with that because trump is -- although he's kind of a bellicose isolationist, he makes war-like noises but he doesn't actually want to go to war. i don't think trump is just going to attack iran from a running start. but my concern is is bolton maneuvering in such a way that he is going to provoke hostilities and force trump's hand? that is the real concern here. >> also what any kind of conflict would actually look like given the fact that the president wants to bring back u.s. forces out of afghanistan, our longest war thus far. >> right. i think that's the essential tension. trump wants to take u.s. forces out of afghanistan, out of syria. he is basically a neo-isolationist. and bolton is very different. bolton is somebody that really believes in regime change and has talked about there's no alternative but to use military force, and they're really forcing iran into a confrontation because you know,

they've torn up the nuclear accord even though iran is actually abiding by its terms. and you know, they are turning the screws on iran. and so there's a real danger that the iranians could lash out and then we could wind up in a war. >> max boot, appreciate it. >> thanks, anderson. >> i want to check in with chris to see what he's working on for "cuomo prime time." chris? >> this is why the president doesn't want you to see his taxes. because they tell a story he hasn't been telling. now, they're just from the 80s and in the 90s but i'm sure i've talked to you about this before, coop, when i was still at abc we did a year-long investigation on his net worth in 2004, 2005, 2006. tim o'brien of "new york times" greatness, now at bloomberg, was part of that. chris vlasto, the big shot over at abc running the investigations now, did it. and the president insisted he was worth billions. hard to believe that given the information that's coming out now. we're going to go through the

highlights are of this information and what they mean going forward and what the politics will mean going forward about how the democrats will respond to what they now know is in the past in terms of what they try to get in the present. >> chris, it's a fascinating piece. "the new york times" broke. we'll have more on it in about four minutes. we'll see you then. we'll be right back. more news ahead. i've got an idea! oooh, what is it? what if we give the people iphone xr, when they join t-mobile? for a limited time, join t-mobile and get the awesome iphone xr on us. - [woman] with shark's duo clean, i don't just clean, ♪ i deep clean carpets and floors, so i got this. yep, this too, and this, please. even long hair and pet hair are no problem, but the one thing i won't have to clean is this because the shark's self-cleaning brush roll removes the hair wrap while i clean.

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i want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." chris? thank you, anderson. i am chris cuomo, and welcome to "prime time." breaking news, the best answer yet to why the president is hiding his taxes. when you see the years and the tears from investors in his gambits and maybe even a potential scam, it's hard to see how our president can brag about his business acumen. we have one of the reporters who broke the story. and we also have one of the oversight hawks in the house who's been fighting for the most recent taxes. where will democrats take the battle next? and senator mitch mcconnell has struck again. the master of disaster when it comes to trying to shut the door on democrats now says the probe is case closed. before we even hear from mueller? democratic leader schumer accuses him of aiding and abetting the russians. we'll debate. it's another big night. what do you say? let's get after it. all right. so the p