Source: President Trump's Medical Exam Was Unscheduled.
BLACKWELL: Thirteen minutes after the hour now. The White House is brushing off questions about unannounced visit by President Trump to a military hospital yesterday. A source tells CNN that the president's medical exam was unscheduled, but the White House denies the president has any health issues.</s>PAUL: Kristen Holmes is following the story from the White House. What are you hearing there, Kristen?</s>KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christi and Victor. Well, this is certainly an unusual set of events. President Trump, yesterday, going to Walter Reed, which is where he receives his annual physical and he was there for about two hours. Now, according to the White House, he was having some quick tests and labs that were all part of a routine annual physical. But there are some very unusual circumstances surrounding this trip. Now, remember, we have two other annual physicals while he has been in office to go off of and they were very routine. They followed the exact same pattern which were they were announced ahead of time. They were noted on his daily schedule and on top of that, he took Marine One to Walter Reed. Yesterday was a completely different kind of trip. First of all, not only was it not announced but we heard from sources who say it wasn't on his schedule as of Friday. So, last minute trip and he took the motorcade which, of course, means less exposure to reporters, less exposure to cameras there. Now, President Trump late last night tweeting in defense of himself, and this is what he had to say. Also began phase one of my yearly physical. Everything very good, great. Will complete next year. So I want to note something here. His last annual physical was in February. So this would be incredibly early for him to have this physical. Now, but Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary, defended this timeline. Listen to what she had to say.</s>STEPHANIE GRISHAM, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We've got a really busy year ahead, as you can imagine. And so, the president decided to go to Walter Reed and kind of get a head-start with some routine checkups as part of his annual exam. That's all it was. It was very routine. We had a down day today. So, he made the decision to head there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And there's no truth to the rumors that it was something else? Because the rumors are flying.</s>GRISHAM: Oh, the rumors are always flying. Absolutely not. He is healthy as can be. I put a statement out about that. He's got more energy than anybody in the White House. That man works from 6:00 a.m. until, you know, very, very late at night. He is doing just fine.</s>HOLMES: So, you obviously heard the press secretary there, routine, routine, routine. I think she said that word at least twice in that interview and that is what they are going to continue to say here. And there have always been questions when it comes to the release of President Trump's medical records, when it comes to these annual physicals, what exact information they are going to give out. But Stephanie Grisham said they are not giving out anything after this physical. They're going to wait until the entire physical is done, which as President Trump said, will be next year.</s>PAUL: All righty. Kristen Holmes, thank you so much.</s>BLACKWELL: New details in just released transcripts from the impeachment inquiry could mean some trouble for Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the E.U., excuse me. The former official with the National Security Council said that Ambassador Sondland had been given a mandate from the president to go make deals. The witness also said that the ambassador was a problem and operated irregularly. Plus, we learned that the transcript of the July phone call with President Trump and Ukrainian leader, President Zelensky, ended up on a highly classified server potentially by mistake. Let's bring in CNN legal analyst and former special assistant to Robert Mueller, Michael Zeldin. Michael, good morning to you.</s>MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning.</s>BLACKWELL: OK. Tim Morrison, who is the White House national security official we were discussing, testified that he was told that the records of the call were placed on this higher security code word classified server by mistake. Give us the credibility of that for us.</s>ZELDIN: Well, you know, it seemed to me at the time that there was concern about what the contents of the call contained and that they were concerned about it leaking out. And that it seems that Eisenberg, the lawyer that was alerted to this, tried to make sure that it was protected and so what the transcript says is that his, you know, instruction that it be protected was interpreted to mean move it to another secure, more secure server. So I'm not sure, Victor, we make much of this thing. The more important when everyone heard that call, they were all alarmed by its contents. Not so much where it was -- where it ended up but what was the content of the call that is more alarming.</s>BLACKWELL: Yes. Morrison goes on to say he says that Ambassador Sondland also told him that he was discussing the matters involving Ukraine with the president. Does that cause any more trouble for the president now that we have this weekend that the president was in or that the Democrats proposed at the end of last week? Like does this move anything significantly?</s>ZELDIN: So we have another witness who was saying that the president was personally involved in asking for some sort of quid pro quo or some sort of public statement as a condition to get the White House meeting and/or the security assistance. If Sondland is to be believed or all of those people who heard Sondland are to believe believed and Sondland, himself, when he testifies on Wednesday, confirms all this, then you've got direct evidence linking the president through Sondland and others to what, you know, some call the bribery extortion shakedown scheme. So, Sondland becomes, in some sense, like the John Dean of this investigation. If he is forthright, consistent with what the people said he said, then it's not going to be a good day for the president.</s>BLACKWELL: There's also the question the credibility of testimony, initially saying he doesn't recall being in any conversations with the White House about investigating the Bidens and then there was the correction and then the revelation of that phone call on July 26th that we heard from David Holmes in which Holmes said he overheard Sondland conversing with the president and see where that comes this week. Let me move to Mark Sandy. He's the career employee at the office of budget and management, or Management and Budget, I should say, OMB. The profile of someone sign off on the documents related take the military aid to Ukraine, he said that a political employee, a political appointee was brought in to sign some of the documents. White House OMB spokesperson said the idea that administration officials would not be involved in budget execution is absolutely ludicrous. What do we learn from the addition of this political appointee to this process?</s>ZELDIN: So, if you believe the allegations that this was some conspiracy to get Ukraine to do personal political investigations for the benefit of the president and that in order to accomplish that, they, one, had to move the ambassador out of Ukraine so that she was not a road block. And then, two, they had to sort of decrease the value of the career people in OMB to put a political person in there to do the bidding of the president. So, you have potentially this consistency between the removable of the ambassador, a career person who was not about to do their bidding, the removal from the front line of the OMB people to a political person could do the bidding, and, you know, it creates that appearance. Now, whether it's fact or appearance remains to be seen but that is the appearance it's creating.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. We'll wait to get the fuller testimony of Mark Sandy. Michael Zeldin, thanks for being with us this morning.</s>ZELDIN: My pleasure, Victor. Thank you.</s>PAUL: Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick abruptly cancelled an NFL workout and decided he was going to hold his own. We're going to talk about what it means for Kaepernick's future. That's next.