Rep. On Trump And Russia:  Some People Will "End Up In Jail"; Investigators Focus On Timing Of Trump Camp/Russia Meetings; Source:  Trump Donor Held Secret Meeting With Putin Ally; Scores Killed In Russia, Chemical Gas Attacks Suspected
BURNETT: Breaking news. A source confirming a secret meeting between a Russian businessman with close tie to Vladimir Putin and a man claiming to have access to the Trump Administration, a massive donor. The secret sit down taking place on secluded island. Story first reported by The Washington Post which involves the person connected to Vladimir Putin and the founder of the controversial security firm Blackwater. Erik Prince is the name. And as you are about to see, Prince has -- have a connections to Trump is pretty tight. Tom Foreman is out front.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Watch out, watch out. Let me get a shot.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In the middle of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was the controversial firm Blackwater. And in the middle of that private security force, its founder, former NAVY Seal Erik Prince.</s>PRINCE: I disagree with the assertion that they acted like cowboys.</s>FOREMAN: He burst into the public eye after one of this team opened fire on Iraqi civilians while escorting a state department convoy in 2007. Prince said they were under attack. A court disagreed and four Blackwater contractors were convicted of violent crimes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Their personnel engage in reckless use of weapons.</s>FOREMAN: The incident largely soured Blackwater's deal with the U.S. government and Prince's feelings, too.</s>PRINCE: I regret of working for the state department because they were just not worth it for the men that were killed or injured doing that job.</s>FOREMAN: Yet his ties to the new administration run deep. Prince donated at least $250,000 in support of President Donald Trump's president bid. His sister is Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. He's also appeared on Steve Bannon's radio show on the ultra- conservative website Breitbart.</s>PRINCE: Is everyone looking to United States, unfortunately I think they're going to have to wait until January and hopefully Mr. Trump is elected because clearly our generals don't have the stomach for a fight.</s>FOREMAN: Prince often seems ready for any fight suggesting for example the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi, Libya, could have been prevented.</s>PRINCE: I mean, amongst the hundred thousand mission between Iraq and Afghanistan no one under our care ever kill or injured. I think we could have kept him alive as well.</s>FOREMAN: According to the Washington Post, officials from the United Arab Emirates arranged the meeting in the Seychelles between Prince and the Russians a week before President Trump took office. Allegedly to set a back channel communications with Moscow although a spokesman for Prince ahd denied it. He continues to consult on military power for clients what critics call mercenary work but Prince --</s>BURNETT: So what does the word patriot it mean to you now?</s>PRINCE: Someone that answers the call of their country when they're needed.</s>FOREMAN: None of this proves that Erik Prince in any way was involved in setting up a pipeline from the White House to the Kremlin. But what it does prove is that once again, someone with ties to the Trump Administration was at least in a position where they could have done such a thing. Erin?</s>BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Tom. And OutFront now, Adam Entous, he helped break the story about the secret meeting for The Washington Post, Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary for Department of Homeland Securty, and our Jim Sciutto, national security correspondent. Adam, let me start with you. You first broke this story. What more are you learning tonight about the secret meeting in the Seychelles?</s>ADAM ENTOUS: Yes. At this point, what we're trying to determine is sort of, you know, you know, did anybody in the Trump world give a green light for Prince to approach the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and present himself as the envoy to meet with the Russian? You know, the crown prince Abu Dhabi is not known to be someone who takes meetings like this willy-nilly. Usually there would be some communication beforehand to ensure that both Trump and Putin intended for the crown prince to bring these two people together. So that's one of the questions we're still trying to get the answer to.</s>BURNETT: And of course, Erik Prince spends most of his time in the United Arab Emirates, training people there militarily. Juliette, here's more of what we know about Erik Prince, right? Which Tom mentioned us, he donated at least a quarter of a million dollars to the presidential campaign. That's significant. He appeared on Breitbart Radio which of course Steve Bannon ran before, becoming the chief strategist for Trump. He is the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary for Donald Trump. A lot of roads from Prince do lead directly to Donald Trump.</s>JULIETTE KAYYEM, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY, HOMDLAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT: That's exactly right. And let's just remember how Erik made all of his money and that's Blackwater, a very controversial firm, one would even say, you know, sort of subjected to accusations of Human Rights abuses and other things in Iraq. So he is a man who's background -- I sort of describe him as, you know, when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. You know, sort of a military type aggressive person, and so the amazing thing about The Washington Post story is not only that the meeting happened, Erik had to have known his contacts with the Trump Administration, even if they -- even if these meetings were benign, but also this whole notion of the back channel. I don't get it. It keeps coming up with the Trump administration. These back channels, we wanted to reach out to the Russians. They were about to be president. I mean, it was about to be in administration, you don't need back channels. You have a transition, lawfully recognized transition that gives you access to the Russians.</s>BURNETT: Right. Obviously unless there's some sort of a smoke there. I mean, Jim, here's the thing. Erik Prince had a point of view of Russia. He went on Steve Bannon's Breitbart Radio, he talked about Russia just before the election. Last fall on October 12. And he defended loudly the Russians against accusations of hacking the Clinton Campaign Chairman. Here he is.</s>PRINCE: John Podesta's e-mails, I can assure you did not come from the Russians, so this idea that the left and even the administration, even from the intelligence community are now claiming it's all the Russians is entirely too cute and very, very thin on any kind of fact or legitimacy.</s>BURNETT: Jim?</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF NATIOANL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, let's listen to the people who disagree with him, the intelligence community as he cites there. Department of Homeland Security. Democrats certainly but the republican speaker of the house, the republican senate majority leader, the republican chairman of the -- both the senate and House Intelligence Committees who are now investigating Russian interference in the election. So that assessment just does not measure up to the facts and for him to characterize as his opinion or an assessment of confine to the left is just not accurate. But what is -- what is interesting is that point of view is one that the president himself held and publicly expressed many times during the campaign, even during the transition, although he has moderated that somewhat but on that point, for some time here the president were aligned.</s>BURNETT: So Erik Prince actually lives in the United Arab Emirates, as I mentioned most of the time. The meeting took place in the Seychelles, Adam, as you reported. Remote islands that the Emirates have bank rolled. I've been there, I've seen the ruler of the Emirates compound, it's sort of dominates and entire mountain top. You can -- you can see the influence physically in that house. The islands pride themselves in operating in secret. Their secretary of state for foreign affairs commented by telling you, Adam, this and I quote, "the Seychelles is the kind of place where you can have a good time away from the eyes of the media. That's even printed in our tourism marketing." And Adam ,the question is, if there's nothing to hide, why the secrecy here?</s>ENTOUS: Yes. I know, I think that's the central question here. And it's a question that we, you know, are asking ourselves time and time again. You know, why did Flynn not just come clean about his communications with the Russian Ambassador. Why didn't Sessions decide to err on the side of transparency? You know, you can sort of understand in the context here leading up to this meeting in the Seychelles, why there was concern about having official contacts, because official contacts were under tremendous scrutiny, both from law enforcement and the press. So, you can understand why you'd want to go with something that was not going to attract attention. And it's called the cut-out. You know, picking somebody who is -- who is not officially connected to you and then after you have that meeting you can just disown it and pretend like it never happened, which is basically what we see, I think what we're seeing here now from the White House.</s>BURNETT: And Jim, the timing again of this -- of this meeting raising red flags right before the inauguration.</s>ACOSTA: And that's right. And because it's not isolated. Because the Prince meeting is in early January, in December you had Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, then president-elect's son-in-law meeting with a Russian bank official of a bank that was been under U.S. -- still is under U.S. economic sanctions. So, is that -- the proximity of those meetings, the timing of those meetings, a number of them that is drawing the attention of the hill congressional -- the congressional committee is now investigating Russian interference.</s>BURNETT: All right. Thanks to you all. I appreciate it. And next, a horrific chemical attack in Syria. At least 70 dead, nearly a dozen children among them. It is a stunning attack. A huge challenge to President Trump. Will he do anything about it? And advertisers dropping Bill O'Rielley 16 in a day after new sexual harassment claim circus. Is Bill O'Reilly done? (</s>COMMERCIAL BREAK BURNETT: Breaking news. Tonight the Trump administration condemning the suspected chemical weapons attack that killed scores of innocent women and children in Syria. The image is emerging from the overnight are horrific. They are difficult to look at. What you see are children stunned. Others unresponsive, burns on their bodies. They're crying, causing, wheezing, rescue workers there racing as you can see to try to hose them down. In another video, you see the chaos inside a crowded hospital. Children covered in blankets are hooked up to respirators and you can see their tiny bodies twisting and convulsing. It's horrific to see. At this time we don't know what kind of chemical, kind of gas was used. We do know how the victims died. Those who died suffocated. And tonight, the White House sending mixed messages as to who was responsible. Our senior White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny is OUTFRONT. What is the message? They see those pictures. President is now the president of the United States. What's the message?</s>JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Erin, we did not hear the president himself talk about this today. The White House certainly saw these, you know, gruesome, grisly images. The president, we're told, was briefed by his national security advisers earlier this morning and then indeed throughout the day. And, you know, they essentially placed blame on the Obama administration for crossing that red line. Let's take a look at the president's statement here and then dissect it just a little bit. This is what he said. He said, "Today's chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world." He goes on to say, "These heinous actions by Bashar al-Assad regime are consequence of the past administration's weakness and irresolution." So, basically, right there, that is this Trump administration passing the buck here, saying that this is the Obama administration's fault. And, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, today was asked in a small briefing with reporters, at what point does this become the Trump administration's challenge, problem, issue here? And Spicer punted on that, but he did say that, look, they are deciding a response to this, but this president does not intend to sort of show or prove or telegraph, in Spicer's words, you know, the next actions going forward here. But, Erin, if you look at the full history of President Trump, then candidate Trump on Syria, it is very mixed. And we found a tweet today which is very interesting, since the president likes to communicate that way. We went back and saw this tweet. Take a look at this. He said this. Trump -- this is in 2013, Mr. Trump said, "President Obama, do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside. Save your powder for another and more important day." So, Erin, we're left here at the end of the day here with some mixed messages, not a clear strategy here. But blame the Obama administration or not, this is this administration's challenge and problem -- Erin.</s>BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Jeff. And OUTFRONT now, Mark Preston, our senior political analyst, Arwa Damon, our senior international correspondent, and Jamie Gangel, special correspondent. Arwa, you've been in Syria. You've been covering this war for years. You have seen the aftermath of attacks. This is one of the worst we have seen in years.</s>ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is. And I think the tragedy of it all is in the challenge of trying to find words to articulate exactly what it is that the Syrian population is going through, and what is it going to take to actually galvanize action. Syrians don't know what to do anymore. This is not happening in the vacuum. Everybody is watching and there's going to reach a certain point in time when we are going to have to create new words to define what has happened at this stage. Yes, there is a lot of responsibility on the shoulders of the Obama administration. But if the Trump administration wants to uphold the so-called mores and principles of the civilized world, then there is an onus of them to take action, because a moral compass has been broken when it comes to Syria. There are powers that can begin to put it back together, if the will is there, and the will right now is not there to do that.</s>BURNETT: And, Mark, you know, Trump, as you heard the statement, blaming this on Obama's weakness and resolution, he noted in the statement that President Obama had drawn the red line. Of course, we all remember that, that August and then did nothing. This was something in fact that Trump called out repeatedly on the campaign trail. Here he is.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Another humiliation came when President Obama drew a red line in Syria and the whole world knew it meant absolutely nothing. This was started by Obama when he didn't go in and do the job when he should have, when he drew the line in the sand which turned out to be a very artificial line. Obama draws the line in the sand. It was laughed at all over the world what happened.</s>BURNETT: OK, that's what he said, Mark. Yet, in the past few days, the secretary of state, Trump's U.N. ambassador, have said the Syrian people should decide the fate of Bashar al Assad, the same person who just launched this chemical attack against his own people. That's even less action than Barack Obama who at least said that Bashar al- Assad need to go. At least he said that.</s>MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, and, you know, we also heard from Nikki Haley, who's the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., say recently as well that it's not going to be the top priority anymore to try to end the Syrian war. Backlash, though, is coming to the Trump administration for these comments and for their decision not to focus on trying to end the Syrian conflict and remove Bashar al Assad. We saw John McCain just this morning on CNN say a couple of things that really stick out to me that were jarring. One is, he said that the Trump administration has no clear foreign policy doctrine. He said that he is -- this is John McCain saying this about Donald Trump, that he has no confidence in his security team. That is -- that is damning in a big way and is sending a message throughout the world. And, you know, he also goes on to say it's another disgraceful chapter in American history which I think is what Arwa is saying. She's been over there and has seen these atrocities. And at some point, it's on us as the United States to take the moral high ground and try to end it.</s>BURNETT: It's pretty shocking for John McCain to say that, the security team.</s>BURNETT: Yes. But I mean, you know, the national security adviser, defense secretary, both very respected people within and, of course, the military community. Jamie, this is a test for this White House. This is a test. And so far, at least according to that statement today, it seems they failed if your response is, blame the other guy.</s>JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Especially if you go to the two words Arwa just said, moral compass, right? What are they going to do? And it's -- I don't think they know. They thought that they were going to be taking on ISIS. They did not want to have to be dealing with this. Now, how do you square those pictures -- I know you've been watching this for six years and we all have. But now, it's President Trump who has to look at those pictures and make a decision. And I also wonder with what Tillerson said recently and Nikki Haley said recently, and our general concern about national security. Does Assad feel even more emboldened right now to do something like that? And the White House may say that they're not saying what they're going to do next because they don't want to tip their hand. I don't think they know what they're going to do next and they have to --</s>BURNETT: And you're going to get tests like this. I mean, Arwa, this begs the question, though, you know, this was always the issue with Syria, that saying you're going to draw a red line then begs the question of what you would do if it were crossed. That answer is no easier for Trump. I mean, he can't just go in and do something, can he?</s>DAMON: It's not easier. It's a more complex situation right now. But there's also a very important point to be picked up on. And that is that when the 2013 chemical attack happened and that was President Obama's red line, that resulted in absolutely no accountability. That really served as one of the key radicalization factors of the revolution. That allowed for the extremist groups, the Nusra Front, ISIS, to come in and use those images of dead women and children and say to the more moderate that were in the majority at the time, look, you want to be like the West? You want freedom and democracy, well, the West isn't even standing up for you when you're getting gassed by your own government. And that is this rallying point for entities like ISIS. There are such serious consequences to inaction to allow this population to be slaughtered like this.</s>BURNETT: When you mentioned John McCain criticizing President Trump, which, of course, he has done on other issues, although he took his side yesterday when it came to Susan Rice. The president also getting criticism tonight from the former President George W. Bush. This actually related to a program near and dear to the former president's heart that is going to be cut in the Trump budget. He almost never speaks out about a current president but he did today. Here's what he said.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT: I hope our government when they analyze what works around the world will understand that PEPFAR has saved over 11 million lives, and that while progress is being made, we've got to continue to stay in this battle in order to save lives. Every human life matters.</s>BURNETT: PEPFAR, of course, was his signature aid program. What he said there are very interesting, though. Every human life matters. Not what's more consistent with the Trump's doctrine of every American life matters.</s>GANGEL: So, President Bush and the former first lady are in Botswana and Namibia, this time about cancer. But this is something they believe in. The U.S. foreign aid can save lives. The HIV program, more than 11 million lives have been saved. You will notice he did not say Donald Trump's name.</s>BURNETT: No.</s>GANGEL: He said, "Our government." Trump has said he wants to -- the White House has said they want to cut the State Department 28 percent. No one thinks it's going to be that high but the Hill won't allow it. But this program is not something that is near and dear to Donald Trump's heart and this was George Bush's way of pushing back, saying something, and even making the trip. This is his seventh trip. He did not have to go right now. I think just making that trip was a message, this is important, this counts.</s>BURNETT: And criticizing. All right. Thank you all. And next, scandal fallout. Eighteen advertisers pulling commercials from Bill O'Reilly show on FOX. It was just a couple in the morning. And building the border wall. Hispanic contractors who want to work on it are being called traitors.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The truth is, if you can't beat them, bill 'em.