court today. >> reporter: he did. it was his arraignment. he pleaded not guilty. the judge let him out on $15,000 bail, but the judge also said that he wanted prosecutors to file the grand jury information recordings from the grand jury by wednesday. so there is the possibility that on wednesday we could for the first time get our view, a view inside the grand jury when those recordings are filed. if they're made public, we will get access to them, anderson. >> appreciate you being there. the news continues tonight. want to hand it over to chris for cuomo primetime. >> anderson, thank you very much. i am chris cuomo. welcome to primetime. the president's dirty secrets have been exposed. tonight we can finally answer the question of why the president didn't want you to see his taxes. this "the new york times" access to just a chunk is more than ample proof of all kinds of problems for the president.

now, you'll see tonight that between what we have learned and now that we have a much better understanding of what we need to know, we are on an entirely new footing in terms of our analysis of this president and potential problems for him. okay. and for you in particular. you will now understand why the president has done certain things with the covid relief bill, with his tax bill. you will understand now why he structured it the way he did, what it means to him. what you won't understand, but we'll all be on the same page, is that we need to know who has lent this president unbelievable sums of millions that are personally guaranteed -- i'll tell you why that matters -- and are due in just a few years. all right. so, this much we know, okay. all of this time that he has

been spending trying to deal with this and what it means, he wanted to keep this from you because he is not what he has told you, and because he doesn't have what he says, because he has money coming in from places that he didn't want you to know, and because he has money going out that is not only undercutting the idea of his wealth, but raises significant questions about who would lend him this money. why would he be personally guaranteed? very unusual. in high net worth situations like his own with corporate entities, why would he personally guarantee? why would he have to? who is it to? national security issues. ideas of his policies. what his personal conflicts are. we have john bolton tonight, former ambassador, head of national security. he didn't know about these loans. can you imagine that? you'll hear that conversation for yourself. now, i want to tell you

that -- let's set the stage with some of this out. everything i'm about to play for you, we now know was b.s. >> i'm really rich. >> i built a great company. one of the best companies. >> i built a great company. >> no, he built a great brand, not a company in terms of something that makes something, that sells things and takes things in and is managed and grows and has staff, and has underlying equity asset value. what does that mean? something you can borrow against, because if he were such a great businessman, donald trump would not have to be personally on the hook for $421 million, personally, okay. when is it due? it starts coming due in the next four years.

personally liable. his great company, what does that mean? whoever was lending him the money didn't think he had a great enough company to use it as collateral. think about that. now, you've grown accustomed to politicians selling you a fairytale, and i get it. i get why you don't want politicians telling you donald trump is a lying no-good nick. but this is about the facts and donald trump has been lying to you in ways that you'll see, matter more than we would have expected. he's been doing it for almost a decade. >> i paid a lot of tax. and, you know, look, i don't mind. i'm proud to pay. if i owe it, i pay it. >> not true. in fact, one of the few honest things that he has said was when he didn't know he was being recorded. listen to this. >> when you're a star, they let you do it. you can do anything. >> donald trump celebrity pays really well. he makes a ton of money.

now, he may think that entitles him to an entirely different set of rules because that's how he's been playing. this is not -- i know you've heard a lot today and yesterday and you'll hear tomorrow and other places tonight. i can't believe he doesn't pay any taxes. we all know these rich people game the system with their fancy accountants. you pay the accountant so he or she signs the return so you can get away with whatever they're putting there. we know that. we know nobody wants to pay more taxes than they absolutely have to. why? because you need your money and you don't trust where it's going and how they're going to use it. this isn't that. this isn't just another rich guy working the system. he is in control of that same system. he was hired to blow up that system, to drain the swamp, to give you more leverage. what has he done? he has ensured the system continues and has even bigger loopholes in it, not for people like you, people like him.

>> because of our tax cuts, you can keep more of your hard-earned money. >> it's not true. he has helped mostly people like him. if you work for a living, you've likely seen your tax bill go up. these are the numbers. and i know they can slice it a million different walys. it was specific. it was called a middle class tax cut. but it wasn't. 17 cents on every dollar, it varies on where you live. his policies make it harder for you to buy a house, but better for people like him to build them. the most powerful man on the planet urgently needs to make money. his push to lift lifesaving restrictions in the spring look a whole lot different when you realize his revenue is tied to things like golf courses, hotels, real estate, everything that's suffering in the pandemic. so what we don't know may be the

biggest threat, absolutely one to our national security. who lent him the money? because it's personally guaranteed. he is on the hook. there is zero chance that he cannot care about it and it is a tremendous sum of money. $421 million, all right. that's real money. you don't pay a percentage. that's money they're looking for. now, remember, before the political need for silence, his son told a reporter something in 2014. quote, we have all the funding we need out of russia. this level of outstanding debt would be reason enough to deny security clearances to any government worker, okay. you would not get one. if you had personal loan guarantees on the hook, let alone coming from abroad. now, what irony. how sickening is it that it doesn't apply to the person we

should care about this most, the commander in chief. that much power placed in the hands of one man is why another republican president said this. >> people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. well, i'm not a crook. >> infamous words, right? nothing to do with watergate. rather than that nixon was dramatically under paying his income taxes. so here's where we are. i'm telling you, the people around this president did not know what came out in his taxes. i've been scrubbing it. a lot of other pros have been scrubbing it. they didn't know. the people keeping us safe have no idea who he owes and how much. now let's get three men in here who are intimately familiar with why trump does his taxes this way, right, a former attorney of his, mitchell zackery, okay. someone who i have been working on this for 15 years for this

moment to come out. tim o'brien, with "the new york times," bloomberg, you remember him from the bloomberg campaign. he's been on msnbc and he's here with me tonight. he literally was a mentor of mine in understanding the structures we were trying to identify. and we bring in the professor david k. johnston to help understand what this means and what it should mean. thank you each and all. tim, i start with you. for a long time -- now, you had some access, david, also, but you always wanted more to come out so people could understand what you understand without you violating any of the rules of litigation that reveal the tax records to you during your litigation against then citizen donald trump with "the new york times." what jumps out for you in this chunk of stuff that "the new york times" processed? >> i think two broad issues, chris. the first one is that donald trump embodies a national security threat.

he's heavily indebted. he owns business in the most vulnerable sectors of the economy right now that are getting ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. real estate, both commercial and residential, travel and leisure. and he has debts coming due. and donald trump, when he's corner with debts usually acts like a caged animal. he only has two approaches to this. he either sells his assets to get a handle on the debt, and i think he has significantly more debt than "the new york times" has disclosed. i think he's got north of a billion. he either sells assets or he goes for a loan -- >> why do you think he has that much, tim? >> i know, it's publicly documented. it's public records on mortgages he's got, chris. it's not speculation. i think there's a certain portion of that that comes due sooner that is probably putting more pressure on him. it's certainly north of a billion dollars. i think that's indisputable. >> hold on, let's bring in mitch a second. thanks, tim.

we'll keep rolling it around. don't worry. we have a lot to talk about and we have a lot of time. mitch, you did his taxes, you started out back in the '80s. so nobody is going to tell you anything about his practices and his predilections. but $421 million personally guaranteed after all the money he's had come in and the different businesses he's been able to put together, are you surprised by that number? >> of course, not. when i worked on it, he was going through terrible times. divorce with ivana, the taj mahal debacle. he actually took down some major banks -- i don't know if anybody remembers bankers trust, but he had $100 million unsecured line of credit with them. he paid three quarters of a point as a fee, and the guys at bankers trust were thrilled, except he paid one interest and defaulted. lo and behold, deutsche bank had to take over bankers trust.

so it doesn't surprise me one bit. this is how he lived in the past. i'm sure it's the same way now. >> he'll say, i owe $400 million. that's how you do business, you borrow money, and then you pay it back. i'm worth billions and billions in assets. i can pay this. they don't know what they're talking about. >> well, listen, first of all i want to comment on what was said before. personal tax returns do not reveal the amount of personal debt, okay. so i'm not sure how "the new york times" came up with that number, but i agree that it's probably much higher. >> explain that to me. assume i know nothing about taxes. >> well, on an individual tax return, all it talks about is income and expenses, not assets and liabilities. on a corporate return you would have that. if this debt is personal, then it won't be reflected in any way on his tax return. so i'm not sure how "the new york times" came up with that number. >> where would it be?

go ahead, tim, jump in. >> it's in his personal financial disclosure. these are government filings, at least $300 million disclosed in there. we've known that for 2 1/2 years. >> all right. let's bring the professor in here on this. i've got to tell you, you guys are going to hear from john bolton later in the show. i had to tape him before the show because of time constraints, and i really wanted him. david, can you believe that no one in our national security apparatus allegedly knew that he had this kind of money that he owed personally to lenders that may include foreign lenders? >> well, i'm not sure why they necessarily would ask, but i do want to emphasize that tim is exactly right here, that we have other records on donald's debt, and it's much more likely in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. if donald was solid, he wouldn't be signing personal notes to secure that debt. he would be pledging the assets. and we shouldn't make the

assumption that donald trump's [ inaudible ] reporting are actual losses. donald has a history of fabricating tax deductions. if some of the losses he took are fabricated, it raises another national security question. where did the money go? >> and now just to be clear, mitchell zackery has said before that this is something that can happen and he knows new york is looking at it. he was never a part of it, he says, but if that's what he was doing, he could be in real trouble. so, all right. we have what this means. so, the biggest question that we're left after with this is not a fishing expedition. how, tim, does the president get around disclosing who he owes the money to? >> well, again, chris, i think some of this has been disclosed. a large portion of it is to deutsche bank. we know from court filings that lots of money came into his organization from eastern europe in the mid 2000s when he went on a shopping spree.

the trump soho hotel was built with a lot of money from eastern europe. i do think there's stuff we don't -- that isn't in those tax returns about precise countries of origin. we know that some money came -- comes from turkey. we know some comes from the philippines. i think russia is the big mystery in all of this. whatever the country is, the unifying tether in all of these is that you have a president in the oval office who either is indebted to foreign powers or is going to go with his handout to foreign powers and it's going to taint every public policy decision he makes, particularly anything involving national security or foreign policy. >> mitch, let's go to break on this idea. so, what are we worried about? we're worried about the president doing something desperate to accommodate his own financial situation and forget about his fiduciary responsibility to the rest of the american people. what do you know about the president in a situation like that that the people should know? >> well, i don't want to get too political because i don't want to make enemies. however, right now it appears that the president's only concern is getting re-elected.

and now we can see why. more importantly, chris, we can see why he did not want these returns revealed, why he fought it so hard, all the way up to the supreme court, and going back up the courts again, because this shows he is not who he pretends to be and never was. >> and it's not just about puffery, you know. that's fine. he wants to say he's really rich, he's not quite as rich. it's what does it mean in terms of how vulnerable he is and how much he needs cash flow and how much he needs to do that to secure. let's talk about that, all right. we're going to talk about what that means in terms of understanding what has to happen here. hey, mitchell zackery, timothy o'brien, david k. johnson, i couldn't ask for better guys than you on this. so, we're going to keep talking about what matters because there are a lot of questions now that are going to have to be asked. let's get after that. i'm a conservative, want conservative judges on the court. this may make you feel better, but i really don't care. if an opening comes in the last year of president trump's term

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i believe in trump because he's made so much money. well, if you define your wealth by assets minus liabilities, you don't know much about donald trump in terms of how rich he is. and if you say, well, i trust him because i know he's looking out for me. he gets how that game is played. and he's going to help me, he's going to drain the swamp. why doesn't he pay taxes and make sure guys like him benefit more than the rest of us on his watch? because that's what he's doing. he's helping people like him not pay taxes and not people like you. now, we go from politics to

real problems. $400 million personally guaranteed with his cash flow sucking wind because of the pandemic, so much so that he's showing losses and not even paying taxes because he's losing so much money. the question every one of you should be asking is, whom does he owe uh thall this money? some of it is in public and not all of it. some of it is in corporate institutions. it doesn't mean there aren't people behind those businesses that he owes. it's the question that makes him a target for foreign adversaries around the world. what do they know about what our president needs to make happen that we don't? we discuss this and the implications with the author of "the room where it happened: a white house memoir," trump's former national security advisor ambassador john bolton. mr. ambassador, thank you for joining us on such an important night. >> glad to be with you. thanks for having me.

>> so, sir, what is your general reaction to this news of the significant debt that our president owes that is personally guaranteed? were you aware of this before now? >> no, i was not. i mean, i've seen reporting on it and it certainly leads to a lot more questions than we've got answers at this point. obviously "the new york times" has a lot of information, but it's also incomplete. i think the prosecutors around the country are trying to get some of that information. they may have it more complete. but the nature of the complexity of the trump organization, finances, trump's personal finances, lead to a lot of questions about how many of the transactions we know about are legitimate, and how many are sham to avoid taxation or other obje obligations. >> for those at home, the ambassador has another tighting, he's a lawyer. not just national security expertise. he worked with the justice department. he understands the law generally

enough to understand this. who lent him the money? because personal guarantees are different. it's than they're going to come after his business. it's that this is something that puts a tremendous amount of pressure on him, obviously personally. from that perspective, what do you want to know about those loans? forget about the tax burden. >> sure, you need to know the sources of the loans and you need to know the circumstances under which they were negotiated. you need to know more about the terms of the loan. you need to know whether they could be rolled over. so, as i said, the times, "the new york times" has a lot of information -- >> not that. >> -- you can see from what they've written. whether or not they have enough to make a convincing case, the jury is still out on that honestly. >> i don't think they do. we don't know who he owes the money to and what that means. we do know that in the first two years in the white house, his revenue from abroad totaled $73 million. so now you have a conflation here. you have two things coming together.

$73 million is a lot of money. just like with the loans, do you think a president of the united states should disclose the source of that kind of income from outside america? >> well, i'm personally opposed to a lot of obligations put on all candidates to disclose things like their tax returns, their medical history. if candidates weren't to do it, if they think it's in their interest, that's fine. i'd certainly like to know. you know, you have to be careful here on this business of money coming from overseas. maybe it comes from turnberry in scotland. maybe it comes from dune berry in ireland. maybe it comes from other sources that are not so benign. but these are the sorts of things that somebody with trump's business skills and experience, i would think would be eager to tell the american public to show what a great businessman he is. >> we're not talking economics here. i would push back a little gently on that by saying if he were such a great businessman,

he wouldn't have to personally guarantee so many of these loans. we both understand that world. it is very rare for somebody who says they have the kind of money and access and leverage that the president does to be personally guaranteeing these types of situations. the reason i'm asking, though, is about you say you don't like a lot of these disclosures. okay. but you also said that the president doesn't like to pay attention to intelligence assessments and doesn't like to read any reports. so what is framing his disposition towards foreign countries where he has interests? you know, if he's not reading the intel, he's not listening to you, where does he get his opinions on these people and places? >> well, look, a lot of people have drawn the conclusion that he's making decisions based on potential personal or corporate economic gain in some of these countries. in moscow where he wants the trump tower. in turkey where they already

have a building in istanbul, that sort of thing. i think that's entirely possible, but i don't think we have evidence there that proves it, and i just think -- i've not been shy about criticizing donald trump at all. just think when you make the criticism, you better have the evidence to back it up. and right now i think we're in agreement on this, there's not enough there. >> yeah, i'm only talking about the debt. so, i agree with you. if we want to talk about his tax burden and what he said before about what he pays, and now -- that's all fair game. we're dealing with that elsewhere in the show. my biggest concern is what we don't know, and not because i like to do a fishing expedition. i disagree with you about the disclosure requirements from candidates, especially for president, especially this sophisticated of somebody with financial transactions because from a national security perspective, how can you keep the country safe if you don't know where the president may have potential conflicts? >> well, i think that's why each

candidate should make the decision whether it's in their interest to put it out there. and if people don't care where the money comes from, that's a choice they can make, too. i just think from donald trump's perspective, his holdings are so varied and his success has been so great, why wouldn't he want to tell people -- >> why hide the taxes? think about it, john. if you had personally guaranteed loans, okay, of a significant amount, you'd have a hard time with the government in your clearance process, would you not? especially in terms of confidentiality and what level of classification they give you. >> sure. look, they would ask a lot of questions. >> right. >> to find out the answers to whether you would be compromised because of the sources of the debt. and i think that's perfectly legitimate. and i think when trump refuses to give the answer to those questions, people would be perfectly entitled to hold that against him because if he has nothing to hide, he shouldn't hide it. >> right. if you were trying to hire some big-shot hedge fund guy to help

you when you were on the inside of government, and you found out he had personally guaranteed loans, he says, none of your business, i'm going to work this job for free for you, i'm good, would you give him a job? >> of course not. and that, i think, is why it's legitimate. we'll see, and perhaps in the debate tomorrow night if biden calls him on this. i don't think "the new york times'" timing of the publication is accidental. so it's up for grabs tomorrow night in the first debate. >> true. it is right here on the eve of the big debate. and, to be honest as you know, ambassador, we've been asking for this information for years. ambassador john bolton, thank you for your perspective. >> thanks for having me. >> so there you have john bolton saying, you wouldn't be able to hire somebody in the kind of situation that donald trump is. but he could be your commander in chief and not tell us about any of these things. yes, some of them are in public. yes, some of them have been in filings. but who -- what are the connections? who are the people? you need to know. how could we not know?

he just told you you couldn't hire somebody like that. we did. let's bring in the former fbi counter espionage chief and author of "compromised, counter intelligence and the threat of donald j. trump." perfect title for a book tonight, pete strzok. thank you for joining us. >> chris, it's good to be here. >> we don't have to do high finance 101, about leverage. if you have a great business, you've got plenty of collateral for people to lend against. you don't wind up personally guaranteeing it. that is the case with donald trump, though, because what he says about what he owns and all that. but that guys around him, the men and women keeping us safe, don't know the extent of who he owes money to and what it is, and didn't ask him about it in all likelihood or it seems that way talking to bolton. what does that lead us to understand? >> chris, what it leads us to understand is that donald trump applied for a job in the u.s. intelligence community, he would

never get a clearance. he wouldn't make it in the front door. countless times in my career i either turned down people for clearances or recommended they be removed for two reasons. one is income from foreign sources, and two is indebtedness. not just indebtedness to foreign nations, but any large debt period. so when you look at trump, when you look at the figure you just threw out, $73 million in foreign income, almost half a billion dollars of debt coming due in the next four, five years, no one would ever get a clearance based on that. and there's no way the president of our nation should be allowed to have that sort of undisclosed financial indebtedness or connections. >> do you agree with what bolton was saying? >> look, i think -- i disagree a lot with what the ambassador was saying. i don't think it is so much an issue of whether or not it is up to trump to decide whether or not to disclose this information. the problem is the president is actively concealing this infochoice. it is the fact that time and

time again he is saying things not only concealing the truth, but he's lying about it. when you hear all this money that's coming out of russia, the $13 million that's coming out of turkey, the money coming out of the philippines, the money nation after nation after nation, it's not so much that oh, it's there and he chose not to disclose it. it's the fact that it's there, he's actively hiding it, and he's fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from becoming public. and all of that is known to all of those foreign nations. >> why do you think the fbi or mueller and his team didn't pull his taxes? >> well, i don't know what the fbi ultimately did. with mueller i think it's because it was outside of the scope of what he was mandated to do. the special counsel regulations say that he reported to the attorney general, and also his activities are bound by the special counsel regulations. that's inherently limited. he's answering to somebody in d.o.j. rather than doing his own independent look. i do think this is absolutely something the fbi should have done. maybe they did it, but i suspect they didn't. because i would have expected to hear about it if they had.

but it absolutely is clear now that we have to get to the bottom of his financial picture. >> what jumps out at you from the taxes and that we haven't discussed, if anything? and what do you think the main questions are posed by what you've learned from the times reporting? >> the biggest thing that worries me right now is what is coming due in the years ahead. i think back to erik trump's statement in 2014, we don't rely on american banks. we have all the funding we need out of russia. think about that. he said that in 2014. so, if you don't need to rely on american banks, if you have nearly half a billion dollars of debt coming due, who is going to backup that debt? who are you going to turn to? and who are you going to do that in the context of everything that you have refused to say and make known to the american public? we have to get to the bottom of understanding this only because we need to understand what foreign adversaries are doing to attack america and to help shore up our national security. >> you know who should want to tell us the most?

donald john trump. >> the president. >> absolutely. >> that's absolutely right. >> okay, this is not fair. it's deutsche bank, all right. and who is giving them their money to loan to me? i don't know. that's their business. he should want us to know because if this is unfair, if these questions are easily satisfied because the suggestion of the question is not a good one for the president, so he can answer it. and he should want to do it most just to shut it up. we'll see if he does. peter strzok, thank you very much. >> chris, great to be here. thank you. >> all right. now, something breaking on our watch that we have to deal with. bombshell report again from "the new york times." trump officials are accused of trying to pressure the cdc to downplay the risk of sending our kids back to school. i know the president just said, we're going to ramp up testing, yeah, he's doing that right before the first debate and as we're winding down to the election, 50 million tests. that would help. would have helped a hell of a lot more six weeks ago and you and i in different pocketed

areas may not be dealing with the stuff we're dealing with our kids when it comes to our schooling. up next we're going to talk to the former white house staffer who says she played a key role in this effort and now regrets it. the one and only olivia troy, former top aide to mike pence. that back bencher stuff is b.s. she was the top aide to mike pence on these issues next. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ "hmm's and ahh's" heard in-call. ♪

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we have new reporting from "the new york times" tonight. no, not about trump's taxes. that's a different "times" report. this one just came out and it details how top white house officials pressured the cdc over the summer to downplay the risk of sending kids back to school. that effort included dr. deborah

birx. also she's the white house's covid response coordinator. but also officials working for the vp, mike pence, including his chief of staff marc short. now, one of the sources for this reporting is former staff member olivia troy. short dispatched, she says, junior members of the vice president's staff to circumvent the cdc in search of data he thought might better support the white house's position. the report notes one instance in late june in which white house officials, including troy, spoke to top cdc officers asking for data that could show the low risk of infection and death for school-age children. a snazzy easy to read document. olivia troy resigned last month as pence's homeland security adviser. not a back bencher. they're lying about that. after months working with the coronavirus task force, she left. they say she was fired. they put out no proof that

that's true. she has been publicly speaking out since then and has endorsed joe biden. but i'm not here to talk politics, i'm here to talk policy. welcome to "primetime." olivia, can you hear me? >> i can. hi, chris, how are you? >> thank you for taking the opportunity. now, all this goes away is wrong if marc short, people like you and anybody else involved all were in good faith in saying, well, scrub the data. maybe it's not as bad as people say it is. the suggestion in the piece is, no, they knew damn well it wasn't asking for the truth. it was asking for some way to get around the truth. what's your take? >> i think that's an accurate statement, chris. here i saw this firsthand, i lived it. it's my nightmare to tell, unfortunately. this was an effort at times i would get blind sided where

there would be junior staffers being tasked to find different data for charts that would show that the virus wasn't as bad for certain populations, ages or demographics. and it was heartening. i was seeing what dr. birx was briefing in the early morning briefings on a daily basis. i was seeing what the cdc was writing. they were doing the work. they were the scientists. i mean, far be it from me to spin it -- i don't know where i'd even begin to get the data. i'm not a scientists. i'm a homeland security specialist working on an invisible enemy. so it was -- it was what was going on behind the scenes. >> what was the motivation to deceive people about the risks our kids would face if we went back to school, especially the way we were being forced to go back to school without the kind of tests that we need, the number of tests we need, the kind of guidance for how to trace cases and to staff it and fund all that? what was the rationale for why

you needed to do this anyway? >> well, i think you've seen from the beginning the president's narrative has been everything's fine. everything's okay. time to go back to normal. let's get the economy going again. that's what he ran on, that was his platform. you know, he wanted states to show that they were opening back up. he told the governors, you need to open the schools. you need to, you know, try to make it seem like everything's okay when in reality it's not. i think it's because his response has been so broken along the way that it was anything to tell anything but the truth. and fact of the matter is these are children and teachers we're talking about. >> and their families. >> our future generation. >> and everybody who they come into contact with. you're right, everybody always loves to say we have to take care of the kids, got to do the right thing by kids. now, on the cdc side, what

was the response as far as you were aware, of birx and the other ones in terms of being asked to kind of hedge on the reality? >> i think it put the task force members and the doctors in a challenging position. i saw them struggle on a daily basis. i have spoken about the fact that i've not been critical of the task force because i've seen it -- how hard it has been for them on a daily basis. i have seen -- i've seen dr. redfield try to figure out how he's going to navigate this political landscape while representing the true evidence of what the scientists and the experts back at cdc and all the doctors were telling them. >> redfield is reporting out that he was heard on a plane saying dr. atlas who is now in favor with the president, that everything he says, atlas, isn't true. were you aware of that animosity when you were there? >> i didn't see scott atlas.

he got there shortly after my departure. i certainly know that this is in keeping with the president wanting to hear from experts or people who are in line with what his truth and his own personal reality is. i am sure that it's got to be very challenging for people like dr. redfield, including dr. birx and others, and dr. fauci who has been talking about this, who are trying to actually tell the president the facts of the reality of the situation. and you have one voice in the room who has specifically brought in to push the other voices out and be the loudest, and that's the one that he will hear and repeat. and you saw that dr. atlas was the one at the briefings. you haven't seen the others who have been working on this from day one. >> the vp, was he aware of the effort to pull a fast one on all the families that were going to be sending their kids back to school, give them a false sense of security? >> chris, i'm going to be honest

with you. i struggle with that morally on a daily basis, but the vice president's wife is a school teacher and i know that he had very strong feelings about making sure that we were looking out for their safety and looking out for the good of children. i don't know what kind of information mark shared about what he was tasking behind the scenes. that was part i my decision on why i left, to be honest with you. it was a difficult dynamic that i was navigating. >> did you tell the vp it was going on when you decided to leave or at any point? >> i think i'd rather not address personal conversations with the vice president. >> okay. >> that's just a conversation between me and him. >> listen, that's fine. why am i asking? because if he was concerned about giving the straight deal to families about their kids because his wife is a teacher, he certainly never said it. he's never come out in public and said, hey, going to school has to be done the right way. we have to do better than we're doing right now.

we need more money, more resources. this is dangerous stuff. it seems like if that was something he really cared about he could speak to it. he certainly hasn't it is it one more example of how the message is controlled in-house? >> absolutely. everyone has a bought, and unfortunately for vice president pence, his boss is donald trump. >> olivia troy, i appreciate you coming on, especially with the timing of this report. thank you for giving us a look inside our government and what's being done supposedly in our name and in our service. thank you very much. >> thank you, chris, for having me on. and i've been praying for you and i hope you're feeling so much better. >> thank you. hey, listen, the more we learn about the reality, the better i feel. so thank you very much. all right, thank you. i mean that, by the way. why? because we knew this stuff has to be going on. it doesn't make any sense. how can you send kids back to school when you know you can't

test them? and you know they don't have the resources and you know we're in all these crazy -- listen to my kids' schedule. my senior is going to go one out of every four weeks in person, the other three weeks at home. my freshman in high school, these great private schools, right, lots of resources, lots of big brains, innovation, he's going two days a week. every tuesday and thursday. my little one, who is not that little any more, but she's in fifth grade, big year, she's at the big shot school. one son goes to one school, the other goes to the other one. she's in every other week. win every four weeks, one two days a week. are you kidding me? and i'm lucky, right? i got the money, i got people who can help me, my wife and i, full family to be able to do things. this is the best we can do for our kids? it makes perfect sense that they have been jazzing us about what the reality is about the risk. because they don't want to control it. because they don't want to own it, because the more they own

it, the more real it is. the more this president is exposed to the reality he ignored the pandemic. now the taxes, he has absolutely no personal interest in owning this because every day it goes on where he gets his money is closed down. where is the incentive to do the right thing by us in this administration? the kids tell the story. we couldn't do better for schools in the united states of america. come on. now, look, that's about our leadership and our politics, and there is an election coming up. but there are bigger questions raised by these taxes, okay. law, criminality, okay. what, what? where would that lead? why is that real to look at after what we've now learned? no one knows better than a former irs commissioner and a former state attorney general and prosecutor. and they are here next to tell you the real deal. i love audible because it's changed my life for the better.

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[horns honking] ms. robinson: we're ready! ms. zamora: ¡estamos listos! ms. duncan: we're ready! ms. williams: we have missed you so much. ms. zamora: we're with you every step of the way. narrator: making our school buildings safer. ms. williams: no one wants to be back in the classroom more than teachers. mr. hardesty: but we all have to be safe. ms. robinson: we take great pride in making sure all of our students achieve. ms. duncan: remember to wear your mask. ms. robinson: wash your hands. ms. zamora: and stay safe. narrator: because the california teachers association knows quality public schools make a better california for all of us. all right. we know, now, that the president has problems with the irs. and we know that those problems have nothing to do with his

faith in the almighty. after what you, now, know about his taxes, can you believe that when i asked him why he gets audited, back in 2016, he told me this? >> i'm always audited by the irs, which i think is very unfair. i don't know. maybe, because of religion. maybe because of something else. maybe, because i'm doing this, although this is just recently. >> what do you mean religion? >> well, maybe, because of the fact that i'm a strong christian and i feel strongly about it, and maybe there's a bias. >> he thinks he gets audited because of his strong, christian faith? maybe, he gets audited because his faith and his ability to cheat or subvert the system, doesn't mean it's illegal, but maybe, that's why they look. because he says, to the entire world, that he's worth a gazillion dollars, and that he doesn't pay any taxes. maybe, that's why he gets flagged. let's dive into the peril our president is facing, with two people who know the world of tax law. former irs commissioner, john

cosconan, and former new jersey ag, anne milgram. good to see you both. >> good to be here. >> all right. let's do this for-dummies version. professor milgram, what's the difference -- when does evasion, you know, when does not paying taxing because you could find a way to work it or fudge it, become a problem, legally? >> yeah. so that's -- that, i think, is one of the key questions here and one of the sort of dividing lines is often act whbout what someone intends and what their conduct encompasses. people make mistakes on their taxes all the time. but there is a real difference between calculated, intentional, fraudulent conduct. and the question here and, you know, remember, we only have the tax returns, right now. and we don't have -- there's a lot of other, behind-the-scenes information about the president's net worth, about who he owes this money to. there are a ton of pieces here

that we would want more, if we're thinking about a tax fraud case. but on its face, it raises a lot of questions about the president's intent to circumvent the tax laws of our country. >> tax avoidance is an action taken to lessen tax liability and maximize after-tax income. tax evasion. the failure to pay or deliberate und underpayment of taxes. obviously, the second one gets you in trouble. the first one is what all of us are trying to do. now, commissioner, what we learned in here was that he finds a lot of ways to say that he doesn't make any money, so he doesn't pay tax. the problem is if you are -- at what point, commissioner, does giving a bank one set of qualifications for lending to you, but a different one to the irs, in terms of your tax burden. when does that become a problem? you got to be lying to somebody there, no? >> well, let me start by saying

that no commissioner ever sees an individual's tax returns. so i haven't seen anybody's tax returns, including the president's. but it's clear, there are legal ramifications of misrepresenting your financial information to a bank. there are laws that surround the need to be forthcoming and fair. and then, there are obvious, clear rules about misrepresenting your assets, your income, and your expenses on your tax return to the irs. and if there are conflicts between those, as you say, you would expect that they would be, more or less, similar. and if there are conflicting misrepresenting in one place or another, whoever is -- whomever you've been providing information to has legal recourse against you. >> commissioner, what did you see in the reporting from "the new york times" that pops your eyebrows? >> well, what's interesting is i have always told people is there is a limited amount of learn

from somebody's tax return. as you think of your own tax return, you have income. you take deductions. you see what the charitable contributions are. it doesn't tell you anything, as earlier on the program, people noted, about your assets and your liabilities. doesn't tell you who you're in business with. so you need to know a lot more. for instance, you wouldn't know how much you owe and when it's due on just a straightforward tax return. but the article talks about tax records. so it leads you to conclude that the writers at "the new york times" have more than just the tax returns. they have tax records, that would give them information, such as how much money is owed and when it's coming due. >> and when you take a look at how the tax return shows the president and the company treating the kids. that ivanka is, it seems, in some way, kind of double dipping. one is double dipping. not to use it as a nefarious term. but when is being paid, as a project manager and, also, a consultant, when does that get

sticky? when does, you know, don jr., using those kinds of funds to pay money to be defended. you know, when do those things become more than a tax event? >> yeah. it's a great question, chris, because there are a lot of red flags when you look at this. there's what you first started talking about were that the kids seem to have been listed as business -- as business consultants. and so, there's over $20 million that appears to have been paid out to, particularly ivanka, "the new york times" did some work to link up her assets with -- with the payment as a business consultant. while she was working at the trump organization. so, if you are an employee of an organization, you're an employee of the organization. and you can be paid, whether you're paid as an employee or as a consultant but all of that is subject to payroll taxes and other things and it looks like that's not what the intent was here. it looks like the intent was to just have a bunch of money that they could use to write off. and so, you are talking, again,

about $20 million in business expenses being written, in consultant expenses, that are being written off. and so, we need to see more to know whether an actual crime was committed there. but it certainly looks like -- it looks like there's a potential effort there to avoid paying taxes. and there are a couple other areas where i think the kids, also, come into play with the seven springs. the residence where the kids refer to it as a compound. president trump has taken it as an investment property. so there are a number of things like that, that just -- they really don't look right. and prosecutors, i am certain, will want to look further and dig deeper into this. >> now, look. first of all, john, and thank you very much for your insight into this. i appreciate it. and we will probably have to rely on one or both of you again, and soon, as we learn more about the context of this. so thank you. and again, in the reporting of this, it's not about accusing the president of anything or doing anything wrong. lots of ways to work the system. we see that, all the time. but it's about the questions and we definitely have an answer to

one of them, if to nothing else, which is you now know why he didn't want you to see his taxes. the biden-trump debate, tomorrow night, you can watch it right here on cnn. special coverage begins at 7:00 p. that's all for me. time for the best part of my night. "cnn tonight" with d lemon right now. we will be on the real deal shift, tomorrow night. >> cnn after dark. >> yes. >> so, you're ready. i -- i have -- stay tuned. i have some reporting about the biden debate preps that i'm going to give to our viewers. but there you go. >> tapt lintalizing. >> are you ready? are you ready for our thing? because you know it's just us talking. they just turn the cameras on and we go. that's a lot of trouble that we can get in -- into. >> no way. it's insight, baby. it's insight. we break it down for people. >> it's the real deal. >> we give them the real deal. the hours are easy. we love working from 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. all