Giuliani: North Korea to Release U.S. Prisoners, White House Can't Confirm; Sources: Trump Legal Team, White House Blindsided By Giuliani Bombshells; Sanders Learned About Trump Repaying Hush Money Last Night.
PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- surprise if it were going to happen, because obviously the North Koreans want to have something like this before that crucial summit. Brianna?</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Paula Hancocks, thank you so much. I'm Brianna Keilar, and thank you for watching. Erin Burnett OUTFRONT starts now.</s>ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: OUTFRONT next, Trump and Giuliani going it alone, blindsiding the White House staff and legal team. Plus, Sarah Sanders unable to answer basic questions, admitting she's in the dark. Does the White House press secretary have any credibility left? Plus, Giuliani touting the release of three Americans held by North Korea. Except for they weren't released. Why is the president's personal attorney breaking national security news? Let's go OUTFRONT. And good evening, I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT tonight, blindsided. That's how President Trump's legal team says they're feeling tonight. Thanks to Rudy Giuliani's 24-hour media blitz starting with the bombshell that President Trump paid Michael Cohen back the Stormy Daniels hush money.</s>RUDY GIULIANI, TRUMP PERSONAL LAWYER: Funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it.</s>SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Oh, I didn't know that. He did? He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn't a target of the investigation. We got Kim Jong-un impressed enough to be releasing three prisoners today. Jared is a fine man. You know that. But men are, you know, disposable. But a fine woman like Ivanka? Come on.</s>BURNETT: Each one of those statements leaving a trail of chaos on the president's own team. For example, the president, of course, said not even one month ago that he did not know about the Stormy Daniels' payment. And those American hostages? The White House says it can't confirm they're being freed today. CNN is learning members of Trump's legal team are angry tonight, saying Giuliani was not prepared, winging it was the word they used. In fact, the president's press secretary was even at a loss. The best she could do, refer questions back to Giuliani.</s>SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I'm not part of the legal team and wouldn't be part of those discussions. I would refer you back to the statements, pretty lengthy statements, made by Giuliani, both last night and this morning.</s>BURNETT: OK. Well, Giuliani's explosive comments made front page headlines across this country and across the globe. And Sanders was actually being diplomatic. One White House aide said Giuliani's interview stunned and shocked Trump's communications staff too of which of course she is the leader. Imagine how you'd feel if you were the president's spokesperson, and you had to go on camera, in front of the world, and admit this.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When did you specifically know that the president repaid Mr. Cohen for the $130,000? You personally?</s>SANDERS: The first awareness I had was during the interview last night.</s>BURNETT: OK. I mean, just think about that for a second. It certainly seems like her boss, President Donald Trump, has not been telling her or the American public the full story. But let's just play the president's own words on Air Force One. This is April 5th.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Then why did Michael Cohen make those if there was no truth to her allegations?</s>TRUMP: You'll have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael is my attorney. And you'll have to ask Michael.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know where he got the money to make that payment?</s>TRUMP: No. I don't know.</s>BURNETT: So, is Giuliani saying Trump repaid his lawyer, a $130,000 to pay off a porn star, and didn't know about it? No wonder there's chaos and anger at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue tonight. Jeff Zeleny is OUTFRONT live at the White House. And Jeff, people inside the White House had no heads-up at all on what Giuliani was about to do. I mean, the president's own press secretary having to admit today she had no clue any of this even happened until Rudy Giuliani said it on Fox News last night.</s>JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Erin, that was shocking. But I will tell you, not surprising. After what is this, 15 months or so of covering this administration, this White House, a pattern has emerged. The president sets the tone here, he tells his staff what he wants to tell them. So the press secretary has come out before us many, many times saying things she says are true at the moment, they turn out not to be true. But there is little question, based on a day long of conversations here with people, they were legitimately shocked by what Rudy Giuliani was doing last night. And if there's a credibility crisis, which one could argue there certainly is, that is rooted in the Oval Office. It's not a problem of the press secretary, it's certainly hers to deal with. But the reality here, Erin, is this. There were two things going on today. There was the political fight going on, that's what Rudy Giuliani was leading. That is the arena he is sharp and good in. The legal fight, it seems to me, will have to sort of be on the back burner for a touch. But the question is, as we leave, did the legal fight get complicated by pushing for the political fight here? But one thing is clear --</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>ZELENY: -- the White House press shop, the people we see as the face of this White House, they knew nothing about what was going to happen last night, Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right, thank you very much, Jeff Zeleny. I mean, it's just -- I'm sorry, I can't get over this. I mean, just to have at least the respect for your own press secretary, who's in charge of convincing the rest of the world that they believe in you, so everyone else should. The first I found out about it was last night during the interview. I can't get over it. OUTFRONT now, Paul Ryan, vice president for policy and litigation at the watchdog group Common Cause, which filed the complaint with the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, and the Justice Department about Cohen's payment to Stormy Daniels. Gloria Borger, our chief political analyst, and Harry Sandick, former assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York. Gloria, I want to start with your reporting, blindsided. The brand- new White House legal team, let's just emphasize this, brand-new, all these new heavy hitters, you got all these people in there were ready to go and they're blindsided and angry.</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, they are. And, you know, my colleagues, Pamela Brown, Evan Perez, and I have been reporting this all day. And what we're hearing is words like, blindsided. The president threw a grenade into all of this. That Giuliani was winging it. And that, you know, Giuliani has said that he spoke with the president about this, and as we've said all along, the president is his chief legal strategist --</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>BORGER: -- so maybe they concocted this together. But it might have been nice for them to talk to the rest of the legal team about whether he ought to be doing this. Because their sense of Giuliani, from speaking to them today is that, he's the guy who ought to be out there delivering the message they need to deliver. Which is, the president's being treated unfairly --</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>BORGER: -- Comey doesn't tell the truth, the Department of Justice needs to start dealing with Congress, and needs to start cooperating, and the president won't testify unless these questions are fair, et cetera. All of that. Instead, what he did was he started talking about Stormy Daniels. He raises an issue nobody wanted to talk about. And oh, by the way, in doing that, he contradicted what the president himself has said. So he created more headaches for this new legal team, not less.</s>BURNETT: And, you know, Harry, you're a lawyer, so let's just talk about this, right.</s>HARRY SANDICK, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Yes.</s>BURNETT: You've got these legal advisers in there, they're blindsided, they're angry. You heard Gloria saying grenade was the word that one of them used. Emmet Flood, powerhouse attorney who represented Clinton on impeachment joined this team yesterday.</s>SANDICK: Right.</s>BURNETT: And everybody said this is a game changer, you've got this guy on here. Are people like that going to want to stay on this team? I mean, how damaging is this for this new team?</s>SANDICK: I think it's damaging, and I think it's something that has to be worked out quickly. The lawyers have to get into a room together, and they have to make clear that no one's going to throw any grenades until there's a decision that a grenade needs to be thrown. The president intro -- the president's lawyer, Giuliani, introduced all sorts of doubt about what happened with Cohen, about what the real reason for firing Jim Comey was. There was no need to talk about any of that.</s>BURNETT: Right. All of those things, which we played several of them, you know, were completely unnecessary in the context of what at least the legal team thought they wanted out there, Paul. And I want to turn to more of what Giuliani said. Of course we remember Trump denied knowing about the payment made to Stormy Daniels. Let me just play that again because it wasn't even one month ago. Here's the operative question.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?</s>TRUMP: No, no.</s>BURNETT: OK, that's the two-word answer, "no, no." So, here's what Giuliani said last night, Paul, about the payment.</s>GIULIANI: The president repaid it.</s>HANNITY: Oh, I didn't know that. He did?</s>GIULIANI: Yes.</s>HANNITY: There's no campaign finance law.</s>GIULIANI: Zero.</s>HANNITY: So the president --</s>GIULIANI: Just like every -- Sean --</s>HANNITY: So this decision was made by --</s>GIULIANI: Everybody was nervous about this from the very beginning. I wasn't. I knew how much money Donald Trump put into that campaign, and I said, $130,000? He could do a couple of checks for $130,000. When I heard of Cohen's retainer of $135,000, when he was doing no work for the president. I said, well, that's how he's repaying -- that's how he's repaying it with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes.</s>BURNETT: All right, so Paul, Giuliani seems to be saying, right, and you got to read between the lines. But what it seems he's saying is, yes, Trump paid him back but Trump did might not have even known he was repaying Cohen, right. He's paying this retainer, it's going to nothing, I have this great idea, let's apply it towards that porn star, we're done with this. Does it matter if the president did not know that he was repaying Cohen?</s>PAUL RYAN, VICE PRESIDENT FOR POLICY AND LITIGATION, COMMON CAUSE: It matters. It doesn't change common cause's allegations that there was an illegal contribution from Cohen to the Trump campaign, and that the Trump campaign violated campaign finance law by failing to disclose this. But I'm going to back up a step.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>P. RYAN: I cannot believe that Donald Trump at some point didn't become aware, didn't know about this payment to Stormy Daniels. And it was at that point that he had a legal obligation to have his political campaign amend their disclosure reports and report this political expenditure. You know, Rudy Giuliani gave America evidence that the president committed a crime. We don't know the timing of the crime, but I cannot imagine he didn't know at some point that Michael Cohen had made this payment on his behalf.</s>BURNETT: Now, of course, Harry, he's saying he didn't know, right? He went on Twitter today and said this sort of thing happens all the time with celebrities, they're wrongly accused, you paid -- you know, have this happens, so it's a -- don't worry about it, there's nothing to see here. He also tweeted, "Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign, and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into through reimbursement a private contract between two parties known as a nondisclosure agreement or NDA. "By the way, I just want to make it clear, it's obvious Mr. Trump did not write this tweet, a lawyer did.</s>SANDICK: It doesn't sound like him.</s>BURNETT: OK. But Trump -- Trump on his Twitter account is saying the repayment had nothing to do with the campaign. Is it possible? Do you accept that?</s>SANDICK: The timing of it makes it very hard to accept that. And in fact, one of the other things that Rudy Giuliani said last night was he stressed that this payment was made, thank goodness Michael made it, it was right during the heat of the campaign, he did the right thing to make the payment, drawing the connection between the payment and the campaign that would make it a FEC violation and against the law.</s>BURNETT: Now Gloria, Michael Cohen, of course, said in a statement, this was back in February, "I used my own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Ms. Stephanie Clifford", that's Stormy Daniels. "Neither the Trump Org or the Trump campaign was a party to the transaction, and neither reimbursed me for the payment directly or indirectly." Now this would appear to be very confusing, right? Because obviously now they're saying he got -- he was repaid. So, you know, the Washington Post -- then Giuliani goes to the Washington Post today as part of his 24-hour media blitz, Gloria, and he says -- when asked when the president was told about the payments, Giuliani says, he wasn't, since it was somewhere 10 and five days before the election. "He wasn't told. Even if he was told, he wouldn't have remembered it, like I wouldn't have remembered it." I mean, there's so much in here, Gloria but could we start this.</s>BORGER: Well --</s>BURNETT: Is it serious? He couldn't have remembered that someone's like, hey, I just paid $130,000 to this porn star --</s>BORGER: No!</s>BURNETT: -- for you?</s>BORGER: Of course. Of course he -- it's hard for me to believe that he wouldn't have remembered it. Donald Trump has a pretty good memory, as we know --</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>BORGER: -- and as he tells us. And, you know, I think Michael Cohen has made the case that he paid this out of his own funds, that he had to take out a loan --</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>BORGER: -- to repay this. And what Rudy Giuliani is saying is that, no, this was part of some retainer that Michael Cohen was on, and that's how this got paid. So in a way, you know, Rudy Giuliani, if I were on Cohen's legal team, I'd be calling Rudy Giuliani today and saying, what are you talking about here? Because they have a client who's been very specific about how he repaid this. And it seems to me, like Rudy Giuliani, who by the way just joined the legal team, maybe he's not up to speed on everything that's been going on the last month or six weeks.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>BORGER: But these two legal teams ought to be singing from the same song book, I would think.</s>BURNETT: Right. And of course -- I mean, it would seem to me that you're going to have an issue with Michael Cohen being like, what do you mean, I deserve my retainer. That's separate. You owe me a $135,000 on top of it.</s>BORGER: Of course, you know.</s>BURNETT: I mean, that's a shock if that is the case.</s>BORGER: Of course.</s>BURNETT: Paul, you know, the point though when he says -- Rudy Giuliani says, even if the president was told, he wouldn't have remembered it. The only way this makes sense is if this was the sort of thing, and the sort of person, description of a person, to whom the president regularly would have heard that payments were being made to, hush payments, right? Would that change things though? You know, if this happened all the time, maybe the fact that it happened a few days before the election was just, you know, coincidence or circumstance if it happened all the time?</s>P. RYAN: It wasn't coincidence or circumstance. The timing matters. Also the motive matters. We know that Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, she was talking to major national media outlets about going public with her story, and Rudy Giuliani said on Fox and Friends this morning, imagine if this story came out on October 15th. This was all about the election. It's obvious. And that the real problem here is the cover-up. Donald Trump could have made this payment without violating any campaign finance laws. It's permissible for him to have spent --</s>BURNETT: Right.</s>P. RYAN: -- as much of his own money as he wanted to, to influence the election. He just had to do it transparently. Because Americans have a right to know who's spending money to influence their vote on election day.</s>BURNETT: Yes. And of course, who knows how all this would played out. But, you know, if no one cared about the "Access Hollywood" tape, maybe they wouldn't have cared about this and made to do all of the</s>SANDERS: We give the very best information that we have at the time. Again, we give the best information possible at the time.</s>BURNETT: But look, she didn't know about the payment until last night, well, we all knew about it so maybe she doesn't have any information. Plus, Giuliani warning Bob Mueller tonight, don't go after Ivanka. But her husband? Disposable. And confusion tonight, over the fate of three Americans being held by North Korea. Giuliani says they were released today. But where are they? Former CIA director Michael Hayden is my guest.