left. do they have the sense they're looking at things differently than before? >> absolutely. and they're going back to buildings they've already re-inspected to do it again now in the wake of this. >> really interesting to be part of this inspection, this new phase for the condos that line the coast in florida. really appreciate it, john. the news continues now. let's head it to chris for let's head it to chris for "cuomo prime time." -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com i'm chris cuomo and this is "cuomo prime time." this is the fifth day and it is agonizing and very difficult for those doing the search. the death toll has climbed to 11. we know that number is going to change. we know it's going to be difficult and the dread is looming around the number of 150. that's how many people they're still looking for. old, young, parents, grandparents. so, we went down to florida. cnn has had a presence there all throughout. and on friday i got to see the devastation up close. i was given the access to the

site and i was able to show you things that we hadn't seen before. and yes, there was that eerie reminiscence of when the world trade center towers fell, not because of the source. that was terrorism. and not because of the scale. there's no comparison in terms of the loss. but tell that to the families in surfside. and once again, you had first responders risking their lives, and they still are, with toxic fires then -- on friday -- burning all around them. but also equal and greater to what is outside is the fire burning inside them to bring victims back to their families. now, with each day when we don't find the miracles -- and god willing, we do -- each day we don't, the idea of why becomes more pressing. now, we have to have a word of caution here. there's a lot of scatter shot speculation going on. that's not unusual in the media. and sometimes you need it, especially with legal issues. you have to understand what the law is, the various analyses

are. but this is going to be a fact-based investigation. and having a bunch of different experts tell you what they think, they know, they built, they saw, they this -- i don't know how useful it is and i know it's not helpful to the families because i've been hearing from them. so, let's sort out what we know and what we need to know. we have help. we have brand-new pictures surfacing from "the miami herald" of areas of concern. you can't inspect this building anymore, not the part that fell. two days before the condo collapse, a pool contractor photographed this damage in the champlain tower's south garage. now, he claims to the herald that he saw a lot of standing water and claims to have found cracks in the concrete in a pool equipment room. he reportedly was struck by the lack of maintenance in a lower level. now, take a look at this. this is the building alone, okay? the building is obviously hyalined for you. there are going to be three areas that have to be focused on. obviously the building itself. the ground underneath and

outside stresses. you keep hearing the term spalling, rusting, cracking. cracks -- there are two types of concrete. cracked and concrete that is about to crack, okay? not all spalling, not all cracks are the same. not every picture you see is instructing. so, again, let's start with the best information we have. this 2018 report that found, quote, major structural damage to the concrete below the pool deck. that sounds bad. major structural damage. but is that the kind of language that is often found in these reports? and the answer is, yes. cracking and spalling like this in the parking garage. who knows, if a car hit that column or whether or not it's just corrosion, we don't know. but it matters because the parking garage is underneath, right? this was yellow before, now this is yellow. it's holding all the weight is what that means. obviously it was designed to odo so. let's keep going. the 2018 report gave no indication the building was at

risk of collapse, which means that language that would scare you or me didn't scare the people who were doing the appraising. and we know that town officials reviewed the report and told the board, quote, it appears the building is in very good shape. so, two possibilities. one, they don't know what the hell they're talking about and didn't read the report, or two, they do. and this doesn't mean what is as incendiary as how it's feeling. so, you have to think about that. there are a lot of people digging up information, including this 2015 lawsuit filed by a resident of the building. the suit was about an exterior wall. we see echos of the 2018 report. balconies in need of repair. is that unusual? listen to this engineer. >> i saw cracks in the stucco facade. i saw deterioration of the concrete balconies. i saw cracks and deterioration of the garage and plaza level, but those are all things we're

accustomed to seeing. it's why our job exists, to maintain and repair the buildings. >> john went on to say you didn't think anything by it, no, that's what they mean. these are the kind of things they see. he's not some random expert. he's the guy that did the analysis that was in the report. another thing. keep in mind it's an ocean-facing building, all right? what does that mean? storms, right? ten have passed through the area in the life of the building. the most serious being andrew and katrina, those two hurricanes. there's a lot of strain on a building. now, what helps our understanding? they have a strain wall on the ocean-facing side. in other words, they're built to handle force from the wind. so, where are they most vulnerable? inside. the interior, all right? let's take a look. what does this tell us? what was going on deeper than the parking garage?

specifically, i want to show you something here. put up the full screen that shows us this. this is highlighted. why? it's the only one on this building on the eastern side out of this study out of the florida international university institute of environment, this tower that had signs of sinking. wrong word. why? these guys -- these engineers say things only sink into water. this is called subsiding. who cares? it's about whether or not it's moving down or not, right? and champlain towers, according to this professor, said it was moving down. he says he was focusing on dangers like flooding. he told "usa today," listen to this, he doesn't believe anybody in the city or state government would have reason to be aware of the findings. i have to tell you something. i've seen him interviewed a lot. there was a lot about him before this. he never said that before. and there was a lot of concern about this. and i asked the lawyer for the condo, did you know about this

report? they had never heard about it. nobody had ever heard of it. but it was given a lot of weight. now the professor who did the research was like, oh, yeah, i don't think it's that big of a deal. it's certainly not why it's collapsed. why are we talking about this? talked to a lot of people who had concerns about that and something that i think is an acute issue that you'll hear about in this investigation, recent construction next door, okay? again, common sense. these are big buildings, there's a lot of noise. it's not just about the habitability, how it sounds and the nuisance. but structurally, could it have made a difference, this construction project that took place right next door, a building named 87 park. the building put in an underground garage, unusual for the area. literally shakes the foundation. when people describe the shaking that comes with it, you can say it's common or not uncommon, but that's what construction sound can sound like and feel like.

miami beach is in the middle of a major construction boom. it is far outpacing the rest of the country. and if you just go down there, there's big buildings all the way up. they're all being built. they're all being worked on. so, what does that really tell us? well, for all the talk about naval tests and contractor shortages, we've only had one building like this fall. and that means two things. one, we shouldn't be in a panic or trying to spread panic that this could be in all these other buildings. that's why you need an answer, so people can feel safe where they live. the flip side of it only being one is we've never had this happen before and we need to know why. so, let's be focused on what we need to know here and how it will be brought about most quickly. let's bring in a better mind. rick is a miami-based engineer who performs forensic investigations of building component failures, meaning

exactly what happened here. thank you for joining us on "prime time." >> thank you for having me, chris. >> before we get to the what and the how, let's start with the who. in your mind, we heard the governor say we need answers. we heard members of congress say the biden administration is going to help. who needs to figure this out, and what kind of team needs to be assembled? and as far as we know nothing's happened, but what needs to happen here? who needs to do it? >> i think the state has to lead, and we have to have a radical change in the 40-year certification process because i believe there's many flaws in it. this was a preventable collapse if proper maintenance and proper oversight was given to the design professionals that are tasked with performing these. and not only the design profess nals of the 40-year certification but education of the process. a lot of the engineers that are doing it don't even have a

standardized idea of what to check for. and the city municipalities don't enforce that. they just leave it up to the engineer. and by the way, i do want to -- before i go further, offer by condolences to the families of those that are lost and missing and also my appreciation to the first responders. >> well, of course. absolutely understood and respected. but, you know, when them in mind, let's be careful about what we say because, you know -- look, you know they're listening. there are so many people who are waiting for word about their loved ones. i want to be sure about what you're saying. you are a forensic collapse expert. you look at things that fall down and fail and figure it out. it's a specialization within engineering and it comes with a lot of time. you're saying that you think a lot of engineers don't know what they're doing who are involved with buildings like this? >> in my opinion the condo association boards have the power to hire the engineer that they want for a 40-year recertification, yes. the engineer ultimately has the

power to approve it, but if a board does not like the fees or does not have a budgetary -- has budgetary constraints, they're just going to go with another engineer that's cheaper that may not be as qualified. unfortunately i don't think we have a properly vetted group of engineers that have the standardized process for exactly what to look for and maybe not let the associations have too much power deciding who. if i don't like you, your fees or you're going to make me make too much corrections, i'm going to go with somebody else who's going to be willing to meet my budgetary constraints. >> i hear you. you know more about this than i do obviously. a couple points to push back would be one, we don't know that happened here. >> we don't. >> and two, i don't know why if i were sitting on the condo board, hyphaeigh fees, sure i c

about that, but if somebody says the building might fall down, i think i care about that more than the fees. these pictures of the underground garage near the pool, the report of this guy seeing water, we haven't seen that seconded by anybody. but the types of spalling or cracks that you've seen, does any of this really raise your eyebrows, or is this what we're used to seeing and it just continues to be a mystery until you can get deeper down below the wreckage? >> in my opinion, the engineer who performed the 2018 investigation, he did a very good job in expressing that the building was in poor shape, that the building needed immediate action. however, that's, in my opinion, a typical condition for a building 40 years that's been unmaintained. so, it's not unusual to meet those levels of spaul, those levels of disrepair for a building that has not been kept up for 40 years. so, i'm not -- i don't think that was a -- i think you said it correctly. i don't think that was a red

flag. some people are making it out to be. certainly the board should have taken actions to make corrections for what he observed, but in my opinion, i really don't think he thought this was an imminent -- the building was in imminent danger. if not, he probably would have stressed showing the locations that are in questions, having further investigation and really highlighting and stressing what he found. so, i feel that this report, unfortunately, is common for a building that has not been properly maintained for 40 years. >> last thing for you for now. by the way, rick, i really appreciate you coming back when i have more for you to go on. as you heard me say at the top of the show, i wouldn't put you in a situation of asking how this happened. you don't know. you haven't been able to do the things you would need to do if you were on the site. i don't want to put you in a bad position and i don't want to do that to the families. in terms of the waves of fear and anxiety that are spreading up and down this community of

south florida, is my building next, is my building -- is there any reason to believe that we've had this one off -- we've never had a collapse of buildings -- that this is proof a cascade could happen, that there are a lot of buildings in bad of shape of worse? >> no, i would reassure people living on the coast in high-rise building that this, in my opinion, was an ano, mmaly, something that may have occurred with successive events occurring that was uncommon. in my opinion, there was catastrophic column failure. you're right, i'm not going to speculate as to the cause of that. but i wouldn't be so fearful in the conditions of similar buildings. my own condo is experiencing a 40-year recertification currently. and if i showed some people pictures of what i see, they may fear as well too. but i've reassured my wife that

this is common. i think what happened at those towers is unfortunate, but the experts will tell. but it was an anomaly, i believe. >> we know it was an anomaly because it's the only time it's ever happened. but you're making good points about perspective. here's the good news. i guarantee you buildings are going to get inspected and people are going to be paying attention to what's being said. and there's going to be a lot of work for people making sure buildings are absolutely as good as they can be. rick, the more relearn, i'll bring you back so you can help us make sense of it. thank you very much. >> you're welcome. thank you for having me. so, these new images matter, right? damage in the garage area, what does that mean? should they have known? should they have done more? i want to turn to the lawyer of champlain tower condo association. we spoke before. these new wave of allegations raise new questions and we will get answers next.

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all right. we have new pictures from inside champlain towers south. once again we see cracks and concrete, exposed rebar, standing water. question is what do they mean? is this about aesthetics, how it looks, is it structural, did they know, is this maintenance they should have taken more seriously? let's ask the lawyer for the condo association, donna demagio burger. >> thank you for having me here. i was appreciating you saying you want to conduct a fact-based investigation because what we've heard so far since this tragedy occurred is a lot of speculation. >> i hear you. and look, i don't like it because i had so many of the families down there. you were there with us. and dealing with the board and listening to the broadcast and they were so worried and there were so many other residents

from different buildings in the area who were worried who say, are we next. i don't want to contribute to that. let's deal with what we know. first, what do you make of the last guest who was a forensic expert, he looks at failures and said a lot of engineers who do these reviews basically are not up to snuff and that condo boards are looking for cheap as much as they're looking for good. is there a chance that your board went cheap on who they had do the 40-year revertifications and other maintenance appraisals. >> i'm so glad you asked that question because i jotted down a note when rick was speaking. first of all i want to address a bit of misinformation that's out there that rick actually reinforced. he consistently referred to the board as he. he said it several times. people need to understand this board was composed of seven-unit owner, people who live in the building with their families,

actually invited other family members to join them, invited friends to come live in the community. this is not a he. it's also not a faceless, nameless corporation that ran this board. these are unit owners. they're unit owners who are now homeless, one of whom is missing along with her adult children. and they're grieving as well. but to answer your question with regard to rick's comment about cheaping out, it almost seemed like he was going towards the state should mandate that they hire certain types of engineers at certain pricing points. i don't know. that might be something lawyers look at too. i don't think the issue here was whether or not a board was cheaping out. i think if there are ineffective engineers out there, chris, that speaks more to the licensing requirements in florida and potentially the continuing legal education requirements. >> do you believe that there is a fair basis for saying that this complex, the champlain tower building, was not well-maintained, that these were things that should have been

repaired and weren't? >> no, i think those statements reflect probably infamiliarity with what it means to have a 40-year-old building on a coastal barrier island that's subject on a daily basis to corrosive effects. you've got the -- that building was butted on the one side by the atlantic ocean, on the other side by the intercoastal. i think, chris, you said it at the outset of your program, this building was also hit by ten different hurricanes and three tropical storms during its life span. >> but it's the only one that fell, and that's why it's maintenance records and the pictures from "the miami herald" and the reporting from the guy who saw the water and the thing and he was surprised by the level of disrepair. what do you make of those? >> i think that is exactly why we have to find out what happened to this particular building. there is other building out there with engineering reports as they near their 40-year

certification that reveal more drastic spalling and pitting, delapidation, rebar corrosion. we need to figure out what were all the factors that went into making this building fall, and we need to figure out exactly what happened. there's time to do that. right now, my board, we've been focusing -- the board of directors is focusing -- we still have an active rescue mission going on. the board hasn't lost hope that some of these people might be found. we have lots of years to dig into what happened and we're going to. the board is already in the process of hiring an engineer to also try to figure out what happened, and they will be evaluating who's responsible. >> yeah. look, i don't nona the building is the right one to do it. i do think it should be a government oversight. i think that the communeity is concerned. i think you have to take it out of the buildings' hands. i don't mean that in any way as

a condemnation. i am aware that the board represents part of the victim base here as well. as you well know, i'm not asking these questions just for me. these are what the families of those who are still in that pile that they're going through, they're going to want to know. and the idea of $15 million in repairs, help me understand that is something not as shocking as the price tag, that they got letters in april saying we need a lot of heavy repairs, it's going to be $15 million. that's a major assessment. why isn't that proof you had major problems with the building? >> first of all, let me go back to what you said. the board hiring an engineer is certainly not in lieu of having local state and federal resources brought to bear to figure out what happened here. that's only in addition to. i don't think we can have too many experts looking at what went wrong here. but to answer your question, the scope of the work -- again, a building like this, a 12-story building on a barrier island

that's 40 years old is going to need a lot of work. it wasn't very large special assessment. perhaps if there had been reserves over the years, that assessment would have been lower. but guess who waives reserves, chris. it is not the board. under florida law the board has to create a schedule, a reserve with operating budget with reserves. but it's up to the members. and a majority of members can vote to waive reserves each year. and far too many communities we have voters voting to remove reserves each year so much so that the florida legislature mandated there be material so owners understand if they continue to fail it's going to subject them to large assessments like the ones we saw here. >> i understand. i think things are going to change. i don't know about the cash collateral you need versus any

kind of expected expenditures. but in term of inspections, frequency and reporting requirements of what are in them, i think things are going to change and probably not a bad idea. but let's do this. i'm also not doing this for sport. so, donna, as i find out more things that are relevant for our consideration and response from the board, i'll come bah to you. and i appreciate you giving us the answers. and i know, as you can imagine, the families appreciate it. >> happy to do so, and our hearts go out to everybody, chris. >> donna burger, thank you very much. >> thank you. it's a nightmare scenario. we've only had one happen, okay? but we turn to another one ahead, all right? we have to look at how government handles things in these situations. that's going to be an issue in florida. i guarantee it. and it was a huge issue on what we just lived through collectively with this pandemic. you cannot tell the story of what we're living through right now without the deep denial that started at the governmental

level. and it's not about speculation. it's about fact. i have two authors who just wrote a whole book about it. they have a lot of new information. did trump think about sending americans with covid to gitmo? i bet you can imagine the answer. what's the proof of it. next. oh! don't burn down the duplex. terminix.

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you know, the story of the pandemic, the shame of it, is in the legacy of more. the more people who got tested, the better we would have been. the more who wore masks, the better we would have been? the more who socially distanced, the better we would have been. the more who get vaccinated now, the better we will be. that is experience and fact analysis. so, why is gop senator ron johnson pushing fear, questioning the safety of the

vaccine, not on the basis of science but on the basis of his feelings? it is not logical based on the facts, but that's not what this is about. remember, this guy when i first started interviewing johnson, i'm just a businessman here to try to keep our costs down. now he is a cook culture warrior. but considering how often he takes cues from trump, it's a different way of doing business. dismiss the science. politics before people. good for you. keep you in power. it was the hallmark of the last administration. take trump's response in the early days of the pandemic when americans aboard cruise ships were infected with covid. he reportedly remarked, we import goods. we're not going to import a virus. no, why don't we send it somewhere? don't we have an island we own? what about guantanamo?

stunning? not really. is there any depth to the depravity that he would enlist when his own interests are on balance. this is one of the things our next guest uncovered, "nightmare scenario: inside trump's response to the pandemic that changed history." both good, welcome on the show. good for you doing this book. >> thank you so much. >> thanks for having us. >> yasmin, the answer is, yes, trump wanted to send infected americans aboard cruise ships to guantanamo to keep case numbers low. what did that mean to you in the course of the reporting about what was going on at that level? >> for this book we really wanted to document from start to finish or at least through about the election and provide the first comprehensive narrative of what happened last year because so much was happening at once that it was hard to process. and we knew that after the election and even after trump left office that more people might be willing to share their

experiences more kandedly, including the guantanamo incident. i think the take away for us, outside of any one individual crazy anecdote was the totality of all of this, from the government's response from the white house to the health agencies was far more devastating than any single outburst or crazy proposal that came from the president or one of his aides. >> to me you do a good job of this. it's not just what is said. it's what is allowed to be said and what is enabled with silence. and you did a good job about -- we're seeing it now on a different level with barr and mcconnell, that we'll get to later in the show, about election fraud. but it happened with the pandemic too. people shut their mouths so they could stay where they were. officials scrapped a plan in march to send masks to every american household mocking how it looked. we can't send these out, he told azar.

it looks like you have a pair of underwear on your face. pete gainer joked the mask looked like a jock strap. another official said it looked like a training bra. significance? >> i mean, can you imagine if an inflection point like that they had decided, you know what? let's just send two masks to everybody. the president is going to model it and it's going to normalize the whole thing, imagine what would have happened in march. our book is full of all these inflection points. if a decision had been made in a split second, the bleach comment, for example, if they decided to reign in the president, not let him say things like that, the country could have rallied behind him. instead there were all these decisions that broke in the wrong direction. it was catastrophic what happened to. the virus picked up more steam and it was just devastation after that. >> yasmin, what did you learn about just how sick trump was? at the time we heard reporting we had to back off because he kept denying it and he got

better relatively so quickly that it took the steam out of the idea that he had been in any kind of distress. what did you find out? >> we learned that the president was much sicker than his doctors and officials were reporting at the time. he -- his oxygen level fell dramatically. it fell into the 80s at one point. his doctors feared he would have to be put on a ventilator. they convinced him to go to walter reed because they told him you can walk to marine one right now but if you wait much longer you might need to be taken out on a wheelchair or a gurney. what we're learning about the fast recover is the president was given access to monoclonal antibodies, which is now authorized but wasn't at the time. one of his advisers called the fda and asked him to make this available under a special kind of use. and one of the people briefed on trump's medical condition that weekend said they believe the monoclonal antibody was responsible for his rapid turn

around. >> i want people to read the books. i don't want to give too much. it's part of business. if you want it, get it and read it. got to pay their bills too. in terms of 180 different interviews, a lot of them are insiders, people as yasmin suggested. they want to be on record because they do not want to be tied to the trump tripe about this pandemic, which is some of the most embarrassing lying at that level because it had a deadly price tag. what do you believe was the big eyebrow archer for you in just what you learned in these interviews and why people should know what you've written? >> yasmin and i have talked about this a lot. we interviewed, as you said, more than 180 people. not a single person, chris, defended the response. not a single person said, we did the right thing. everyone knows it was a failure. these are people that made the decisions every day. some of the people feel terrible about it, but often they blame other. it was so and so's fault, it wasn't my fault, i did the best i could or there was a fog of war or that kind of thing. not a single person defends the

response. and in the moment the people needed the government most, the government failed them and they're going to live with that legacy. >> one more excerpt -- i don't want to give away too much. i'll let you go on this. birx with pence, those people only listen to you, mr. vp, and the president. they don't listen to me. in two sentences she captured the whole mess, the whole tragedy. the country had broken in two. there were these people and those people. that is spot on. and i am happy, damian and yasmin that you did this work as real journalists, cobbling it together. and do you know who it will be helpful to? me. because with the covid brain with the log haul, we've got to remember it so we don't repeat it. "nightmare scenario" on sell tomorrow, getting the job done. and thank you. the disgraced ex-president, and that's why he's disgraced.

and that is the right term. but he's consumed with revenge on his own people, and he's going to get it. bill barr, he did everything he could. he weaponized the justice department for him, protected him like a human shield, but he did something worse than that. and it's the same thing that that book is about. it's what he allowed to happen and be said when he knew it was bs. and that's what he's doing now. he didn't mean to. it's part of reporting, and i'm sure he's going to get hurt for it. but you reap what you sow. and we are learning what the reality was about the people around trump and what they didn't tell you then but they want you to know now. next.

. you know the poem, oh, what a tangled web they weave when first -- and last, in this case -- they start to deceive. walter scott. had nothing to do and nothing on trump enablers. now the former attorney general says he always suspected trump's election fraud farce was just that, quote, bullshit.

so, why did he enable it? don't allow the media or these men and women themselves to re-define their dastardedly deeds. bill barr was no good guy and he wasn't your agent of any kind of truth. here's what he said when it mattered. >> -- concerned about foreign influence, and if we use a ballot system with the system that states are just now trying to adopt, it does leave open the possibility of counterfeiting, counterfeiting ballots either by someone here -- >> so, you think a foreign country. >> look, wolf was right. he was pressing him because he was being hypothetical on a situation that was practical. either you had proof or you didn't. and he knew there was none. but he played lawyer games because he was trying to protect trump, and that's not his damn job. it was bs and he knew it. and it turns out barr wasn't the only one faking the facts. mcconnell two weeks ago in high

dujion over the possibility that democrats would dare go after barr. >> attorney general barr served our nation with honor and with integrity. these latest attempts to tarnish his name bear the telltale sign of a witch hunt in the making. >> that guy calls everything a witch hunt that is about finding the truth. it turns out mcconnell was urging barr to blow up the lies of the election. it's also telling what mcconnell wasn't saying the in front of the cameras. he too clearly thought trump was dangerous, but mcconnell was doing what he does best. he was playing the game. proof? jonathan carl, abc news, senior washington correspondent, reporting that mcconnell believed if he spoke the truth, trump would sabotage the senate races in georgia. so, there it is. to keep power, mcconnell plays the game and says things he reportedly doesn't believe.

is this another one? >> there is no effort in any state in america to suppress votes based upon suppression of minority participation. >> he knows that there are 22 states doing that to one degree or another. so, should anyone can read -- if you can read, you should know that's what these laws are about. the question is not whether or not they were lying to you. you know they were. they were either doing it outright or they were being silent, and that makes them complicit. the only question is how many of you care enough to demand better than the damn game? we'll be right back. 100% online car buying. car vending machines. and now, putting you in control of your financing. at carvana, get personalized terms, browse for cars that fit your budget, then customize your down payment and monthly payment. and these aren't made-up numbers.

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given to top executives like rent free apartments and cars and whether the company paid taxes on them and it may sound petty to you but if you think about it, they have been cracked from a tax perspective. allen weisselberg asked by cnn here is what we got from weisselberg. >> is there any information you would like to give us regarding the case? >> no comment. >> do you currently pay taxes on the apartment or car that you own? >> no comment. >> okay. >> cnn's legal analyst and former white house norm eisen is here. it was not obstructive but different than how most trump people deal with lawsuits and pretend there will be an outcome that never happens but in terms of what we'll see here, i don't know if it happens this week.

i don't know why the media is buzzing about it. do you think it imminent and what are the likely charges about? >> chris, thanks for having me back. it does seem charges are imminent. we've talked about this before. the storm clouds have been gathering a number of signs and now with this last chance meeting for the trump organization lawyers to plead their case to talk about the harm to the company, i think we can expect something whether it's this week or next week, it's coming. >> right. but one thing, norm. tell the audience about this. you know about these meetings. the reason i believe it wouldn't be imminent, imminent right after you meet with them, it gives prosecutors to chance to go to school on the defense and think about their charges and how they word things and think about their pleadings and talk more so the meeting is sug suggestive of a little more in the process, no? >> there is no doubt about that,

chris. i have a new brookings report out that goes through the kinds of arguments that the defense lawyers are undoubtedly making about why this case is going to be so difficult, how the statutes of limitations have run. in company has ever been criminally charged for these kinds of fringe benefits before and the harm to the company but from all appearances, it looks like there is a tax fraud case here. they gave these cars, apartments, as private school tuition, those are supposed to be treated as compensation. it appears, we don't know for sure, we'll see later but it appears they weren't. they defrauded the state of new york of payroll tax. that is what the allegation seems to be. >> is there anything suggestive to you of an ability to get weasew

wie weisselberg, the golden goose to tell the truth? >> he is a different creature than the usual in trump world because he's disciplined. no comment, no comment. when did you ever hear president trump say that? so, you know, i think they are putting the screws on him, not just him but potentially family members, we'll see if that works or not. at times, it has worked. manafort and gaetz held tough for awhile and gaetz broke. we'll have to see what happens. >> quickly, norm, do you still believe that this could mean anything significant for the former president? >> i do and in our brookings report, we layout the massive evidence pulling it together for the first time about the significant risk that the president may face from prosecutors for falsification of business records, tax fraud, bank, insurance fraud, enterprise fraud so there is a

substantial case there, still looking. we don't know how it will turn out substantial risk for president trump ahead. not unusual that the big fish is not charged in the first case. >> norm eisen, thank you very much, as always. we'll be right back. of here mou. ahhh! ♪ don't flex your pecs. terminix.

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all right. thank you for the opportunity tonight. it is now time for the big show "don lemon tonight" and the star d. lemon. >> thank you, sir. man, down in florida, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. they're dealing with a mess, and it's hard not to think about them right now and all these new -- i saw the report about the pool and, you know, the maintenance under the pool and we'll talk about it. >> it's a mess. it's a mess. >> the worst part is there is this looming agony of the unknown. we're all holding up hope for miracles and they do happen. looking for 150 million people introduces realities to these