Trump's Allies Attacking His Enemies Behind
LEMON: Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee taking the first steps today to try to get President Trump's tax returns. Can you believe that? The committee hearing from experts on how an obscure provision in the tax code could potentially give the chairman access to Trump's returns. Let's discuss now, Michael D'Antonio here, Michael is the author of "The Truth About Trump," and Andrea Bernstein, the co-host of the podcast "Trump, Inc." from WNYC and ProPublica. You won for this podcast what?</s>ANDREA BERNSTEIN, CO-HOST, TRUMP, INC. PODCAST: A duPont.</s>LEMON: Congratulations.</s>BERNSTEIN: Thank you.</s>LEMON: And welcome. Michael, you covered Trump for years. He has been adamant about not releasing his personal financial details. What is he trying to hide?</s>MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: First of all, he lies a lot. So, no matter what is in these tax returns, we're going to discover that he has lied about something. He has either lied about how wealthy he is and how much money he makes, and this claim to being a billionaire is not quite proven, or perhaps he has lied about his connections to foreign interests, maybe he's lied about how he acquired his wealth, the inheritances from his father. There are so many possibilities here for deception. And I think also, he could wind up being exhibit 1-A for what is wrong with the tax system. We may discover that he hasn't paid much in taxes at all for a very long time. And the public is going to see this and think well, wait a minute, how is this person who is ostensibly so rich not paying taxes the way that I'm paying taxes? So, there's nothing good in this for him.</s>LEMON: And you have said and others that there's absolutely no evidence that he's presented -- actual evidence that has been presented that he's a billionaire.</s>D'ANTONIO: I'm not sure that he is. You know, he's one of these people who hectored the various lists, insisting that he be put on them as a billionaire. You know, I think during the campaign, it was $10 or $12 billion he was worth. But when he and Tim O'Brien were in court over this, he had trouble proving that he even possessed $1 billion in wealth.</s>LEMON: Interesting. So, Andrea, when he hosted "The Apprentice," he was able to present himself, right, as a businessman, consummate businessman, who has it all together. Do you think that, you know, was that accurate as to what was happening behind the scenes at the Trump Organization?</s>BERNSTEIN: Well, from what we know now just from the reporting that we've done, that others have done, there were a lot of problems. There was -- I mean, for example, look at the Michael Cohen guilty plea. Well, that involved the Trump Organization participating in making elicit payments, or there's an investigation of the Trump Foundation, whether there was appropriate walls between the campaign, the foundation, and the Trump Organization. So, from what we have learned already, there are -- there has been a tremendous amount of problematic behavior. So, we don't know why the president is so upset. We don't know what there is left to find. It's unknowable until we actually find it. But we do know when we examine deals, when we examine financial transaction, when we examine business partners, we find a lot of problematic people and some of the people he was working with are now, we know, outright crooks.</s>D'ANTONIO: Well --</s>LEMON: Wow.</s>D'ANTONIO: You know, what do you think we would think if it were shown that Donald Trump's business tax returns indicated payments to AMI? So, how is it that he's gotten such great publicity from the National Enquirer for so many years? Was he buying the publicity? His assumptions about everybody being corrupt, the way that he attacks Bezos, for example, are based on his own experience.</s>LEMON: And projection.</s>D'ANTONIO: Right. So we know that these returns and if they dig deep enough, get into his business activities, could reveal all kinds of cross currents that no one has imagined.</s>BERNSTEIN: In fact, "The New York Times" did get some of his father's tax returns.</s>LEMON: Right.</s>BERNSTEIN: They concluded that there was outright fraud, that was their language, in the way that the Trump family business had not declared taxes, not made clear the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next, $413 dollars, they say, Trump's father gave him that he has not declared. He said, oh, no, it was a million. So, I think obviously what all this is building to is the sort of question is what was he doing in Moscow?</s>LEMON: It was amazing to many people that that story in "The New York Times" that you referenced was kind of a big shrug, and that's a huge story.</s>BERNSTEIN: Right. I mean, it's hard to know because these things have a way of coming back around with Trump, but it does show that when you start looking even at something that people thought was old and long ago, a lot of questions are raised about possible criminal behavior.</s>LEMON: When it comes to doing business in Russia, he has always maintained that he has nothing to hide. Listen to this.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (voice-over): By the way, I would say, I don't -- I don't -- I mean, it's possible there's a condo or something, so, you know, I sell a lot of condo units, and somebody from Russia buys a condo, who knows? I don't make money from Russia. I don't have buildings in Russia. They said I own buildings in Russia. I don't. They said I made money from Russia. I don't. It's not my thing. I don't, I don't do that. Over the years, I've looked at maybe doing a deal in Russia, but I never did one.</s>LEMON: You think that that debt could also be something that he's trying to hide?</s>BERNSTEIN: Well, I mean, what we know from Michael Cohen's guilty plea before the special counsel was that the Trump Organization was trying to get a Trump Tower building built up until the time practically that president -- now President Trump accepted the nomination of his party, even though he denied it. So, again, this question is, if it's all fine and if it's something as he now says, oh, this was just something any businessperson would do, I was running a business, I might not have won, I was entitled to make money, the question is, why did he say all this time that he wasn't when he was if it wasn't problematic? There is a question here about how things add up and fit together. I think what we're having now with the House various oversight committees looking into that is the possibility of actually getting some answers to these questions.</s>LEMON: I got to run. That's got to be the last word. Thank you, both. I appreciate -- boy, oh, boy, appreciate your time. A Republican congressman tried to have the fathers of two Parkland victims kicked out of a gun violence hearing when they interrupted him. Congressman Gaetz told Chris Cuomo his side of the story tonight. And one of the fathers tells me his side, next.