A quick reminder, you can always check out any interviews on this show at cnn. Com brooke. And now wolf blitzer in washington. Hey, wolf. Brooke, thank you very much. Dramatic new developments in the accelerating debate on guns and gun control. Gabrielle giffords and nra are making their voices heard in new ways. Also, egypts new president joins me to talk about Tahrir Square. A onetime symbol of hope is now dirty and oppressive. Plus, a mystery that started with a winning Lottery Ticket and ended with a deadly poisoning. Im wolf blitzer. Youre in the situation room. We begin with this afternoons announcement that the National Rifle association is joining the white house in the discussion of gun violence in america. A representative will meet with Vice President biden this week. What will they be doing . Lisa sylvester is walking into the situation room right now. Youve been doing some reporting, lisa. What is the very latest . Wolf, leaders from both the private and public sectors are
As a campaign contribution. Ill hawk talk to the head of a Watchdog Group targeting trump over this issue. Giuliani claiming it was a personal reimbursement from trump to a lawyer who handled all sorts of dealings for the president. He also gave more details about that repayment, telling the washington post, quote, it took place over a period of time, probably all paid back by the end of 2017. That is probably a few other situations that might have been considered campaign expenses. Well, giuliani also saying trump had no knowledge of the payment to Stormy Daniels until very recently. He didnt know the details of this until we knew the details of it, which was a couple weeks ago. Maybe not even a couple, maybe ten days ago. Thats the giuliani argument, the Stormy Daniels story was a possible embarrassment on a personal level with potential to affect trump and his family and therefore not related to the campaign. But then there was this morning. Giuliani seemed to indicate, no, there we
Statement, too, but he is a great guy. He knows its a witch hunt. Thats what he knows. He has seen a lot of them. He started yesterday. He will get his facts straight. Hes a great guy. Guilianis statements also trying to clarify the timing of the Stormy Daniels payment. He says that it had nothing to do with the president s knowledge or understanding of these matters. Hes basically trying to clean up this mess. Imagine if that came out on october 15th, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with hillary clinton. Cohen made it go away, he did his job. Imagine if it came out at that time. Of course, thats one of the issues thats under investigation. What was the motivation and did the timing of the campaign have something to do with it. Stormy daniels lawyer last night says now that looks like proof that this was potentially about the campaign. The correction, though, does not correct guilianis biggest revelation, whats actually important about all of this, that donald trump despite many
Out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry. Im giving you a fact now that you dont know. Its not campaign money. No Campaign Finance violation. So they funneled it to a law firm. Funneled to a law firm and then the president repaid it. Did you know about the 130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels . No. No. He didnt know the details of this until we knew the details of it which was a couple weeks ago. Maybe not even a couple. Maybe 10 days ago. I remember when Michael Cohen was interviewed about it. It seemed that he was saying he was never reimbursed the 130,000. Now it seems the story is changing. I think he was trying to help the family. For that, if man is being treated like some kind of villian. I think he was just being a good lawyer. I think when cohen heard 130,000, he said, my god, this is cheap. Let me get it signed up and off. I think our case just got better in the last 24 hours. We knew we were going to be able to prove this, but we didnt know Rudy Giuli
Im Natalie Allen and this is cnn newsroom. Our top story, new details about hush money paid by u. S. President Donald Trumps lawyer to silence porn star Stormy Daniels. The New York Times reports the president actually knew about the payment several months before telling reporters aboard air force one he knew nothing about it. And the wall street journal is now reporting in the midst of the 2016 president ial election, trumps personal lawyer Michael Cohen took out lines of credit on two properties totalling some 774,000. Cohen now under criminal investigation because of his business dealings and that could include hush money payments to daniels, possibly others. Cohen said he made the payment to daniels out of his home equity line. Cohen is not the only trump attorney under scrutiny. Many legal analysts say Rudy Giulianis blizzard of statements over the past few days may have done the president more harm than good. For more on that, cnns brian todd is in washington. Dont you think a lo