Giuliani Incorrectly States That Department Of Justice Report Found That Mueller's Office Erased Texts; Report: Giuliani Claims Trump Might Still Sit Down With Mueller
BOLDUAN: Tonight, another explosive and uncorroborated claim from President Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani telling The Hill publication that Robert Mueller should be the one investigated. Now for destroying FBI evidence. Listen to this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you seen conduct by the Mueller team or are you aware of actions they've taken that you think should be independently investigated by the DOJ?</s>GIULIANI: Absolutely. Destroying the 19,000 texts of Strzok and Page, I told you at the beginning, this thing began illegitimately. Please, if you sell me that you're not going to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge. That should be investigated, damn it. I mean, that should be investigated fully. You want another special counsel? Get one for that.</s>BOLDUAN: Evan Perez is OUTFRONT now. So Evan, is any of this true and what's the Justice Department saying?</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, no, it's not true. The Justice Department's inspector general, Kate, looked into this, and found that what essentially what happened was Peter Strzok and Lisa Page left the Special Counsel's team and they turned in their telephones. And then the phones were reassigned. And so the messages weren't necessarily erased, did not necessarily missing. The FBI was able to basically reconstruct some of these by going to the phone carriers and so the messages weren't exactly lost. They might have been -- when the phones were reassigned, they perhaps weren't on those phones, themselves. But the messages weren't lost forever as matter of fact. The inspector general has been producing additional information about that and that's the reason why Members of Congress have been so outraged about what they found.</s>BOLDUAN: Bigger picture, looking ahead toward the New Year, Evan, do you have any sense of what lies ahead in the Mueller probe? Are you getting a sense?</s>PEREZ: Well, look, Robert Mueller was back at work today. So we don't know if he saw his shadow or not, but look, we're looking ahead at least up another couple months of this investigation. There are, you know, indications, Kate, that this is soon to be wrapped up. But then, of course, that's only the beginning of the next phase. And you can tell from the President's legal team that they have some concerns about what they believe Robert Mueller will find in his report. And that is they believe that there's going to be some very tough things for the President to deal with politically which is why you're seeing some of this P.R. strategy from Rudy Giuliani. And, of course, Kate, no matter what Mueller finds in his report, there's going to be a legal battle between the President's team and the Democrats on Capitol Hill because the President's team believes that the report necessarily doesn't get to become public immediately, that they have to have a litigation over this. So, I think we're going to have a few months of some fighting and some legal fighting over whether -- what exactly Robert Mueller's findings are and whether we get to see them.</s>BOLDUAN: And Robert Mueller has now become the Punxsutawney Phil of Washington. Great to see you -- Thanks, Evan, great to see you, man. OUTFRONT with me now, two Former Assistant U.S. Attorneys for the Southern District of New York Elie Honig and Harry Sandick. It's great to see you guys. Thanks for being here. Elie, with what we heard from Rudy Giuliani there, is there any legal strategy in that at all?</s>ELIE HONIG, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHER DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Always a good question to ask with Rudy Giuliani. There is. This is a well-worn defense strategy of desperation. Harry and I have seen it a bunch of times which is when you've got nothing, put the prosecution on trial, right. We used to talk about it in the Southern District, would be talking about a trial you had coming up. Evidence was strong, someone would go, what's the defense? You know, there is none, they're just going to try put us on trial. And that's what Rudy is doing here. Normally, look, it's a desperate tactic and it usually doesn't get anywhere but this is not just any case. And I think Rudy is trying to play a P.R. strategy here as well and he's just trying to put something out there that the ardent supporters of the President can cling on to. And so they can say, look at Strzok's texts, look at the dossier. These are just sort of buzzwords that are out there so they have something to say.</s>BOLDUAN: On the issue of the -- well, let me ask you this. What he's calling for, you've got Giuliani calling for an investigation into Mueller now, at the same time he told the Daily Beast today that talks are still open regarding the always discussed possible Mueller/Trump interview. The much-discussed, never decided, always will be debated issue. How do these two things work together, I do wonder? On one hand, you're accusing them of essentially doing something illegal and then on the other hand you're still saying, but we might still talk to them.</s>HARRY SANDICK, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: I mean, I think that there are sort of parallel tracks as Elie said, that you have the one track that's really designed more as maybe a media strategy to try to convince your supporters the 40 percent or so of Americans that are supportive of the President that this investigation is illegitimate. So that whatever report or whatever indictment or whatever findings it comes out with, you can immediately cast doubt on. And then in terms of the discussion, you know, this is something that Mueller still has up his sleeve, so to speak, and it really depends on whether he wants to fight this legal battle which could take all the way to the Supreme Court to resolve, or whether he has enough now, he has some written answers, to some extent in public corruption investigations, it's also often the target or the subject of the investigation who wants to come in and tell their side of the story. This is why I didn't do it. And so, perhaps, Giuliani's keeping the door open for that.</s>BOLDUAN: On the issue of this possible interview and more questions to Trump by Mueller's team, Giuliani now says two things. He says what he said to the Daily Beast, which was still open too, but he also then said to The Hill the following. "President Trump's not answering any more questions from these people. They are outrageous activity. We did enough." Despite the obvious contradiction there, would they still be negotiating this?</s>HONIG: They could be but I don't think Rudy's negotiating in good faith here. I think Rudy gave away his real strategy a couple quotes ago and they keep changing what he said over my dead body will the President ever speak to Mueller. I think that's going to be were. Can you imagine as a defense lawyer walking to Donald Trump in to be interviewed by Robert Mueller and how horribly that would go? Rudy is posturing here. Look, he doesn't hold the cards. The way this works when a prosecutor wants to talk to a subject that there's an easy way and a hard way. The easy way is we'll work out an interview, we'll meet in the conference room, there won't be a grand jury. But if that doesn't work, then it's the hard way, and Robert Mueller can issue the subpoena. Now there's questions whether Matt Whitaker or William Barr will approve his subpoena. And as Harry said, if he does, we're going to end up in the Supreme Court.</s>BOLDUAN: Kind of, I think what Elie is getting to a little bit, maybe I am in every question I'm asking, is that Giuliani is getting a little hard to believe recently. You've got the thing about destroying evidence that we've discussed. And other contradictions not only what he just said about an interview, but also Trump's knowledge of campaign -- there's Trump's knowledge of campaign finance. Rudy Giuliani said that he -- Giuliani told the Journal he didn't know much about campaign finance laws and then there of course there's the old interview that Trump had saying this. Let me play it.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think nobody knows more about campaign finance than I do because I'm the biggest contributor.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What about reform? Does it need --</s>TRUMP: Well, it's a very complex -- you know what, it's a very complex thing. As an example, I'm allowed to give $1,000 to every senator, right? This was 20 years ago, $1,000. Now, I love it because, you know, I'm capped out at $1,000 per senator and they all love me for it. You know, I give them $1,000 --</s>BOLDUAN: More than anybody else. And that's not all. Then you've got Giuliani saying that Trump didn't sign a letter -- the letter of intent with the Trump/Moscow project when that was being discussed and then CNN got a copy of it and Donald Trump's signature is on it. My whole point here is, do you think the Mueller team takes Rudy Giuliani seriously? He is one of Trump's attorneys that is, I mean, talking to the Mueller team.</s>SANDICK: I find it hard to believe that he is the person who they go to when they have a serious inquiry about something in the investigation. That they recognize in this day and age, a person like the President who's a public figure will often have a lawyer who does more sort of speech-making and TV appearances but the real legal work is presumably being done either by the lawyers in Florida or by the person in the White House counsel's office who left a prestigious partnership in Washington at a law firm to respond to issues relating to this investigation. And so it's probably some combination of those other people who are doing the heavy duty legal work and leaving the speechmaking to the former mayor.</s>BOLDUAN: And quite the many speeches he does make. Great to see you guys. Thank you so much.</s>HONIG: OK.</s>BOLDUAN: OUTFRONT for us next, the definition of a wild ride on Wall Street today. Stocks plummeted more than 600 points then a furious last-minute rally. Is the market chaos here to stay? And who's to blame for this migrant child's death while in U.S. custody? It's a disturbing question that is now confronting the Homeland Security chief who's going to the border tomorrow.