Tonight on 360, breaking news on that free gift plane from Qatar turns out it may cost three quarters of a billion dollars or more to retrofit it for the president. Also tonight with President Trump and Saudi Arabia, look at the growing Trump family business in the Middle East. And later, day two, when he's done a testimony in the trial of Sean Diddy Combs as his one-time girlfriend takes a stand about what she says he did turn. Good evening, thanks for joining us.
We begin tonight, keeping him honest with breaking news about that 747 that Qatari royal family is giving to President Trump, which he will keep, he says, for his library after leaving office. We learned today that it could take two years and three quarters of a billion dollars or more to bring the plane up to Air Force One standards. Now that's according to a person familiar with the matter. One hundred and fifty million dollars or more to take it apart, check for surveillance devices, then refit it with the defense's communications gear and all the rest of Commander-in-Chief needs.
In short, all the gear already on the 747, he flew to Saudi Arabia for day of pomp and ceremony, fighter escort included, and which he'll fly in just a few hours to Qatar for more of the same. His current 747, though, aging already has all of that. And so will the new 747 Boeing is building, which is years behind schedule, as the president has pointed out, but which the company now says it could deliver in the next two years. In other words, about the same delivery time as the one the president says he'd be stupid not to take.
I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer. I mean, I could be a stupid person saying, no, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane. But I thought it was a great gesture. Well, that notwithstanding, the gift, which Mr.
Trump actually took a tour of back in February, raises ethical, constitutional foreign policy and national security concerns, some are all of which a number of Republican lawmakers and other Trump loyalists are speaking about. Here's Senator Mike Rounds, who sits on the intelligence committee comparing the plane to a Trojan horse. It seems to me that the Greeks actually had something like that happened one time, a long, long time ago, and somebody happened to have brought a golden horse inside of a community. It's a aircraft beautiful and it would be great if we could accept it, but security concerns are also there.
Well, Senator John Cornyn also on the intelligence committee said off camera, I just know that our adversaries are pretty creative at planting all sorts of listening devices and other sensors, so I'd be very concerned about that. Senator Lisa Murkowski also off camera said, when you get something of that value from a country, one typically thinks that there's something in it for the country that is offering it. So I think there's certainly a lot of questions. Senator Rand Paul is opposed on ethical grounds.
There is a provision in the Constitution that you can't do this. I think it's not worth the appearance of impropriety, whether it's improper or not. I don't think it's worth it. Senator GOP lawmakers though are showing less firmness in their views on the matter.
Senator Josh Hawley says he'd prefer a made in America plain, which other than the interior done by a French design firm, it is. Senator Tom Tillis seems to be approaching the question as the management consultant he once was. And then you got to work through the cost benefit of it, right? I mean, we're in a world of doughs, so we got to figure out whether it's worth upfitting or writing a check to the Treasury and help us with our debt reduction.
Well, Majority Leader John Thune on the other hand would not weigh in at all because it seems it's just not real to him yet. I don't think there's anything official out there. This is hypothetical. And I'm sure that if and when there is, it's no longer hypothetical.
I can assure you there will be plenty of scrutiny of whatever that arrangement might look like. Senator Joni Ernst tried a version of the old I haven't seen the tweet answer telling CNN's Monorajo. I haven't heard specifics about the plain. I don't know anything about it.
As for Democrats, there's widespread criticism, of course, with Senate Majority Leader Schumer saying he is placing a blanket hold on all Justice Department political nominees until he receives answers on the plain. However, that hold can be overcome by a simple majority, which Republicans now hold. And some Republican lawmakers such as Montana Congressman, former Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinki, he's apparently not worried. Do you have any ethics concerns or cost-free concerns?
I'm glad Pam Bond, he stepped in and looked at it from a legal point of view, which is helpful. I'll go back. This must be one heck of a complaint. Because he was on Air Force One.
I've been on Air Force One to be at the nice point. But, evidently, remember who President Trump is. He's a billionaire businessman from New York. He doesn't sleep in a sleep mega overnight.
He's making deals. I think it's transactional to him. He looks at it and says, hey, it's a better airplane. His common was, he'd be stupid not to take it.
I think that's from a business point of view, because he is a business guy. He goes out and he's making deals everywhere. And he's Mr. Dealmaker.
Keep it in mind as you may remember that as Interior Secretary, he was found to have broken ethics rules while in office by the Department of Inspector General. The Congressman's seal of approval or not, there is criticism as well from some of the President's biggest backers in the right-wing media world. Taking sacks of goodies from people who support Hamas and Brotherhood, Al Jazeera, all the rest, that's not America First. Like, please define America First in a way that says you should take sacks of cash from the Qatari Royals, who are behind Al Jazeera.
It just isn't America First in any conceivable way. So, back to the original question. Is this good for President Trump? Is it good for his agenda?
Is it good for draining the swamp and getting things on? The answer is, no, it isn't. It isn't. If you want President Trump to succeed, this kind of sleazy stuff needs to stop.
Laura Loomer, another fierce Trump loyalist, says she cannot support the President on this, but his conscious critic might just come out of the past, namely from Donald Trump, writing about President Obama in 2012. His tweet reads, Did the White House fully grasp how much controversy over this jet would follow the President on this trip? No, Anderson, it's not clear that they did. Because ever since we started reporting on this over the weekend, as we were talking to officials, getting ready to come here to re-eyed, they were defending this move and saying that they'd been looking around for a plane, the President had been frustrated by delays by Boeing.
And then obviously once the reporting was public that he did plan to accept this plane after touring it earlier this year, that's really when the scrutiny started to come in. But I should note, it's about 3am here in Riyadh. The President just posted on Truth Social, defending taking this plane from the Qataris, saying that only a fool would not take a free plane from them, suggesting that in the end it will actually end up saving American taxpayers money by not paying for the plane. Of course, we do know our reporting has shown that this even though it will go from the Ministry of Defense here, or the Ministry of Defense and Qatar to the Pentagon, it's still going to be modified to be usable by a President.
There's a lot of security modifications that have to go to that, including state-of-the-art communication systems, air-to-air missiles to protect the President and those who are traveling with him. I mean, the list goes on and on, I understand, of just how much has to go into that. But what we have been hearing from officials behind the scenes is just really simply defending this. None of them that I've been speaking to have backed off this notion of taking this plane or questioned whether or not they should.
They seem very intent that this isn't still the plan that they are going to do. And I think being on the ground here today, and I was at that Saudi investment forum earlier today for about 10 hours where the President was, where he came in with the Saudi Crown Prince, they were looking at all the investment that the Crown Prince is making here in Saudi Arabia, what that's going to look like, down to models that he had displayed around the room showing what this was going to look like, part of it's called Vision 2030, that the Saudi Crown Prince is trying to implement here to the tune of a lot of money. You can see why this is what appeals to President Trump. I mean, these are Gulf leaders who know how to speak his language.
There's a lot of opulence here. They are flying around in their own massive planes. I mean, we were just looking around in the conference room as it was described earlier today. It doesn't look like your average conference room.
There's these massive chandeliers. It is all an incredibly opulent affair. And you can hear in the President's voice and the way he talks about the Saudi Crown Prince and their relationship, just how much he appreciates of what he thinks of him. And it's just such a stark contrast to when we were here four or five years ago, Anderson, and President Biden's aides were worried whether or not he should even shake the Crown Prince's hand after that US intelligence found that he ordered the death of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
It really just speaks to how the President views this overall. And I think the plane is just part of the lens to that really, Anderson. Yeah, Caitlin, thanks very much. Erm, you can join Caitlin at the top of the hour for the source.
We're now from Capitol Hill, Democratic Congress, Massachusetts, Easton House, Armed Services, Committee Congress. When you see the plane, the President is accepted from Qatar. The business deals, his family is made overseas, the crypto ventures, all against this backdrop and the media strip. Is this the purest version of him that we are seeing lately?
It is. And this is just President Trump who thinks he's above the law. It doesn't mind violating the law, even the US Constitution. And frankly, I'm sure we're going to see a lot more corruption as this administration takes its course.
The President's pitch, this is a free airplane. He doesn't talk about the hundreds of millions that will cost taxpayers to retrofit it. If he chooses to do that, there really, I mean, is there really any such thing as a free gift when it comes to presidents and royal families in jumbo jets? No, I mean, there's no free gift.
It's hard to imagine that the cutteries aren't asking for something in return. And as you pointed out earlier, it's going to take a couple years to tear this plane apart because the cutteries would be crazy not to try to bug every nook and cranny of this thing. So the entire thing will have to be taken apart, reconstructed. That's going to cost a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort.
It frankly should be just directed to fixing the problems at Boeing and getting the plane to the President ordered back on track. Tonight, the House Speaker Mike Johnson, who used to be a constitutional lawyer, said that accepting the plane does not his decision, but he doesn't think would violate the monument's clause of the Constitution. Does he give Republican lawmakers some political coverage to shrug it off then as not a big deal? I've never heard Speaker Johnson agree with anything that Trump does or says.
So that doesn't really tell us anything. But I think that most people can see that this clearly violates the Constitution, especially if Trump intends to take it for his own personal use after he leaves the presidency. I mean, France gave us the Statue of Liberty, but Grover Cleveland didn't take it home with him or put it in his library when he was not president anymore. And yet that's what Trump plans to do with his plane.
Can Congress do anything other than complain about it? Well, that's a good question. I mean, under Republican leadership, it doesn't look like much is going to happen. Although it is significant how many Republicans already, not just in Congress, but in the commentary world.
People like Ben Shapiro, that lunatic lawyer that you mentioned have already spoken out against this. What Congress should be doing is actually focusing some effort on fixing the problems at Boeing, because those are legitimate problems. I mean, I don't want the door flying off my plane anymore than the next guy when I'm on a flight. Those are things that need to be fixed.
And when United Airlines or American Airlines or Delta can't get its planes delivered on time, they're not just going to borrow jets from the Middle East. Any more than an F-18 fighter pilot, F-18s are made by Boeing, can just borrow a Middle East jet. So rather than just take this gift, let's focus our efforts on actually fixing the problem and get these American-made plans produced on time. Even if one accepts that, okay, it's fine for the president to have this plane or accept this gift, does it make any sense that he would take it after he leaves office?
And it would, I mean, allegedly, he's saying it would go to the library, you know, take that for what it's worth. I mean, this is just one of many ways, Anderson, that Trump and his family plan to profit off the presidency. You heard Ryan Zinkie praise Trump as a businessman. You know, I think that if he had just taken the money his father gave him and invested it in an old mutual fund, he would actually be wealthier today than he is now after all his failed ventures.
So he's not a very successful businessman, but he does see the world in those very transactional terms. That's why he started this cryptocurrency. That's why he's going around, you know, hosting dinners at the White House for people who buy his cryptocurrency. This is just, this administration is corrupt, full and through, because that's just the way Trump has always operated his entire life.
Congressman Sept-Molten, I appreciate your time. Thank you. With me here is a senior political and global affairs commentator, Ron Manuel. He served as White House Chief of Staff and President Obama and Ambassador to Japan in the Biden administration.
If President Obama had accepted a plane like this, I mean, people's heads would have exploded. That's yes, and everything else, and there'd also be hearings about it rather than a Congress basically that does a three-month routine. See no evil here, no evil, speak, no evil. And this is just one long litany of things from an ethical standpoint.
David, I forgot to call it a backlash. I don't know. I mean, I think it's whether it's a cryptocurrency, whether it's a real estate deals, and I'll take one side note, since you brought David up. President Obama's first trip overseas was also Saudi Arabia.
We went to the King's Ranch First Horses. I walked into my room, I had my own cabin, sitting there on the bed, ostrich briefcase. You opened it up, massive amount of diamond earrings and sapphire necklaces and rings and bracelets. Wait, wait, there was an ostrich briefcase on the bed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and it was right there. Full of jewels. Yeah, and I walked in. It was my room.
There it is. I said, not happening. And I walked it over to the state department and had a room. And you had to present it, you had to open it up so nothing was missing.
And that was it. Did other people get the same? Yeah, there'd be a chief of staff got one ranking. I don't know if that's where I got, I don't guarantee I did not get the same thing.
But they did it by title in the position. That's what they did. And you had it turn it in. Now, I slightly, very much, I'm not.
Do you feel like a loser? Because it's a free gift. Let me say that I have three kids, I'm a loser every day. Okay, I have the hour of the day.
Okay. That was not the reason I'm only a loser. But here's the thing, the idea that you work on Boeing, that should be done. But there's a piece of legislation, bipartisan support, congressman cannot trade stocks, etc.
Take that legislation, create a universal standard both for the executive branch and the Supreme Court justice and the rest of the justices, an ethics standard that cleans the swamp in Washington and deals not just with this plane, the plane is what's caught people's attention. The moniker of this White House is cash and carry. That's what's going on here. When you give a donation, you get a break out of tariff.
You got Bitcoin, you got fundraisers. I've never seen anything like this. And I have a very high standard, not for Chicago. I mean, an older one would be embarrassed by this.
So my whole thing is you have problems in Congress, the senator from New Jersey, Menendez, Democrat. You're saying across the board. You have Supreme Court justices taking planes from people presenting cases in front of them. You have a president of the United States.
So I would have a single piece of legislation, doesn't narrow just on a plane from a foreign leader, clean the whole thing up, make a standard that's universal. We have higher ethical standards. I'll give you an example. When I was ambassador in Japan, you get a gift for 25 bucks.
You get a lot of ethics for them. You get a sign, you get a corrosion sparking line, cookies or whatever. Anything that went above 25 bucks. This is three quarters of a billion dollars.
Now it's caught people's attention. Use it to the public good. Washington has no confidence. Both parties have been involved.
All three branches of government. Just be honest with the public. Take the bipartisan legislation that exists. Add pieces on the executive.
Add judicial. One standard for everybody that works the public. From a national security standpoint, I mean not just on the plane, but the crypto part of this, the highest bidder gets access to the president at a dinner. The really high bidder is getting to the White House.
And you also had small-time investors who lost money. So you have the majority, you're talking 700,000 of them. When people wrote corrupt, crony capitalism, this puts that to shame. It was hundreds of thousands lost about 50 some odd people.
People walked up. Yeah, they were all friends of his. And they're all close investors of him. They're wealthy, made off like boatloads and the retail investors of Mom and Pop.
And that's why the Republicans, they are in a bad place. They don't want to point the finger at the president. Yeah, the Republicans get more angry. Now in 2006, when I ran the Democratic congressional campaign for me, we did a monitor the first time on a webpage, the House that Tom delayed built.
And it was about all the corruption that was going on, Bob Cunningham, or the Duke Cunningham, Bob Nay, et cetera. And it didn't hit at first, but it built as a crescendo in 2006. The president refusing to give in is a gift from a political standpoint. And he's not going to give in.
He's going to want to take this plane. And it should be the use to finally, fully, during the swamp and force the Republicans to pick between their constituents anger or their loyalty to Donald Trump. And put them on the spot and put the entire Congress on the spot because it's a bipartisan problem. Yeah, you're talking Democrats and Republicans.
No doubt. And I want to remind everyone, Clarence Thomas and other members of the Supreme Court have flotted the rules as it relates to Supreme Court and people presenting and they're taking gifts. So clean up the whole place. All three branches.
They're co-equal in corruption. Oh, Manuel, thanks so much. I appreciate it. I'm having an excellent close look at the Trump family's growing business interests in the region the president is visiting right now.
On behalf of my family, we love Dubai. We love the Gulf. We love the people. We have so many incredible friends here.
Later, new reporting on a company with ties to China that just announced it is spending nearly a third of a billion dollars on Trump meme coins. More on that. AI is moving fast across the enterprise. But without visibility, it's just chaos.
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Craig Ferguson, American on purpose. New episodes now streaming on the CNN app. Go to CNN.com slash watch to subscribe or log in with your TV provider. With President Trump on a four day visit this week for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates, his family's expanding business interests in Middle East are facing fresh scrutiny.
The Trump Organization has planned for luxury skyscrapers, golf courses and a deal involving cryptocurrency in the region. A close look at the Trump Organization portfolio. Finds a Trump family's business ties to the Middle East have more than tripled since his first term in office, according to a CNN tally. Even after Trump retook office, the Trump brand has been out promoting flashy new construction projects in countries President Trump is visiting this week.
On behalf of my family, we love Dubai. We love the golf in Dubai, a new Trump International Hotel and Tower in Saudi Arabia, a new Trump tower in Jeddah and two projects in Riyadh. We are going to redefine luxury anywhere in the world. His sons ceiling deals for projects around the Middle East.
In Oman, Don Jr., an Eric Trump met with a Crown Prince last summer about a Trump branded resort being developed with a nation's tourism arm. In Qatar, a Trump branded golf club announced just last month involves a firm that's headed by a Qatari official and backed by Qatar's sovereign wealth fund. A Trump Organization spokesperson says the company does not conduct business with any government entity. Adding the Trump branding agreement on the Qatar project is with a builder, a separate company.
Eric Trump is currently in charge of Trump or decisions and has promised to keep them separate from his father. But the president still owns the company. So he stands to make money on any successful deal whether he's involved or not. The Trump Organization has said Trump would put his assets in a trust managed by his children.
We'll make sure that there's no conflicts and we'll have those signed off by the best legal teams in the world. During his first term, Trump's company pledged to make no new deals overseas. But not this time around. And it's not just Trump's real estate deals.
And Abu Dhabi back fund is using a cryptocurrency from the Trump family crypto firm, World Liberty Financial for a $2 billion investment. Critics say the result, the public can't separate Trump, the president, from Trump, the businessman. Is he making the decision from the basis of what's in the United States interest, what's in the American people's interest? Or is he looking to benefit his business partners, his own business, his own bottom line?
The White House rejects those questions. It's frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit. Trump says his business relationships aren't just for the billionaires, but for Americans. It's an honor to have such a great investor investing in our country.
One publicized early win came from this Emirati billionaire, Hussein Sichuan. He built a Trump-branded golf course and bill isn't Dubai years ago and spent New Year's Eve at Mar-a-Lago. It's promising to invest $20 billion in US data centers. I sat down with Sichuan earlier this year.
The election of Mr. Trump impacted the decision to invest. Yes. In fact, from the point of view that we think it's going to be more pro-business and if that happens, of course we will invest.
How important is the Trump name to your business, to your brand? It's very important. Those of you that we have done, we made money out of them and customers are happy and we are happy and he's happy. And Kim Ilog joins me now.
Can you remind people of the claims that President Trump made heading into this trip? Well, he's summing it into one word, Anderson. Jobs. Now, President Trump says that he will bring in more investment into the United States by traveling into the Middle East as Donald Trump because he is so well known because of those relationships.
He is estimating that just based on the meetings that he is having this week that he will be able to create two million jobs without getting specific as to how he's coming up with that number, Anderson. All right. Now, thanks very much. Now, some breaking news.
According to a new report in The New York Times, there's a new connection to the President's cryptocurrency plans. Here's the headline, Tiny Company with China Ties, announced his big purchase of Trump's cryptocurrency. It's a fascinating story. The Times reports that, quote, the firm, which produces content for TikTok, recorded no revenue last year, but it announced this week that a mysterious stock sale would allow it to invest heavily in the Trump or the Trump meme coin.
David, Yappie Bell, shares the byline on the story he joins me. Now, the story is amazing to me. Just lay it out. This company ties to China announcing this purchase of Trump cryptocurrency.
So this is a tiny company called GD Cultural Group. That's something a company I certainly hadn't heard of until the last couple of days, but it announced completely out of nowhere that it has raised up to $300 million and it's going to spend it on Bitcoin and on the Trump meme coin. And how exactly it's raising this money isn't totally clear. It's brokered some sort of deal with a business entity in the British Virgin Islands, which is buying stock from this, again, this tiny technology firm and it's going to use those proceeds to buy the Trump meme coin.
And is it clear why they're doing this? I mean, how they said why they're? I mean, what they publicly said is that they just want to kind of embrace innovation and be part of the crypto industry. But you know, you're looking for the details of how this company operates and it looks like it has a clear incentive to curry favor with the administration, like many of the other kind of foreign-based players who've got involved in the Trump crypto ventures.
Its business is pretty much entirely built on TikTok and of course, the fate of TikTok in the US rests largely with the president. And has this organization, this company, the White House or the Trump Organization, had they responded to reporting? They didn't respond today when we approached them about this particular story. But as we've covered this topic over the last few weeks, the Trump administration and the Trump Organization have said to us repeatedly that there are no conflicts of interests and that there's nothing improper about what the president's doing in the crypto world.
And did this company put this out there that they had bought, these meme coins? Yeah, this was a public announcement that the company made on Monday. So they wanted attention on. They wanted somebody who paid attention to it.
And this fits a pattern. I mean, a lot of companies, a lot of really small companies have seen an opportunity here to kind of latch themselves to the Trump business and, you know, promote themselves that way. And so the stock of this company went up something like 12% on Monday after this announcement. It later went back down, but you can see a kind of concrete sort of benefit to the company just from announcing this.
And this company has no revenue. This company has no revenue. It only has eight employees. It has no real public footprint.
Honestly, our conversation about it tonight is probably the most publicity it's ever gotten. Wow. It's just a fascinating story. It's the New York Times, David F.
Bellany. Thank you so much. Thanks. I really appreciate it.
New reporting on a wholesale change of focus at the FBI, the crimes they'll now prioritize and the ones they no longer will. And later, Sean Diddy comes as ex-girlfriend, takes a stand in his racketeering and sex trafficking trial. A new focus reportedly for the FBI across America ordered by the Trump administration, according to Reuters, FBI agents have been told to scale back investigating white-collar cases and prioritize immigration enforcement. Now, it's important to note that the FBI is typically not focused on that issue and largely leaves that to the Department of Homeland Security.
Joining me with his perspective from FBI Deputy Director, Anna McCabe, who's now seen in senior law enforcement analysts. What is your reaction to this? What do you think the reaction of white-collar criminals is? Well, my reaction to the white-collar criminals' reaction are going to be quite different.
Mine, my first reaction to Anderson is this is really bad news because there is no one else who does this work. It's unrealistic to expect that your state and local police and local prosecutors will be able to pick up this wealth of knowledge and activity that the FBI focuses on white-collar crime every year. You've got hundreds of agents around the country who do this work. They are very large, very complicated investigations that require intensive search warrants based on federal law.
They're document-intensive cases. They're data-intensive cases. And if the FBI is not doing it, neither is anyone else. That is going to provoke a very different reaction among white-collar criminals who will think, Greenlight, GameOn, the Fox is no longer watching the hen house.
It's time to get back to stealing people's savings, taking advantage of our seniors or things like telemarketing fraud, wire fraud, mail fraud, perpetuating crimes of all sorts against Americans in every community. And apparently that activity will now go unpoliced. And we've also seen regulations against or any kind of regulation regarding crypto stuff. We've seen that in terms of that being lessened, stuff going on at the IRS as well.
This is part of a piece. It absolutely is. We've had an executive order signed by President Trump, basically telling the Justice Department to no longer prosecute the people investigated for businesses, investigated for bribing foreign companies. So what sort of message does that send to all of our American businesses that are trying to compete in foreign markets?
Again, GameOn. It's okay to start bribing. It's okay to start engaging in the sort of disreputable practices that other countries, that businesses and other countries have done for years, and that we have always held ourselves up as better, fairer, more even-handed competitors in the marketplace. That's something that I believe makes our economy stronger, makes our reputation around the world stronger.
But this administration has walked away from enforcing those laws in a very concerning way, but one that sends a very clear message to our business community. Yeah, Andrew McKeon, thanks very much. Up next, more breaking news. What a California judge has now ruled just moments ago.
In the case of Eric and Lyle Menendez, who were doing life without parole and seeking their freedom decades after they were convicted of murdering their parents in 1989. And day two of testimony in Sean Diddy Combs' criminal trial, the prosecution star witness, the ex-girlfriend, Casey Ventura, takes the stand. She is the one in that hotel surveillance video obtained by CNN. Our Laura Coates joins us.
She was in the courtroom. When she passed, Sean Diddy Combs, the man she says was her controller, her abuser. And the prosecution says a racketeer and sex trafficker, they did not even look at each other, like ships passing in the night. Breaking news tonight in a notorious murder for more than three decades ago, Lyle and Eric Menendez are serving life without parole for killing their parents in 1989.
Today, after seven months of hearings, court filings and publicity, they were in a court for a resensing hearing just moments ago. The judge made a ruling, seen as Nick Watt in Los Angeles joins us now with more. So the brothers' lawyers calling this a great day. What happened?
Well, Lyle and Eric Menendez are now eligible for parole. And their lawyer, Mark Garroegos, just said over here that he hopes they will be released from prison sometime within 2025. They have been behind bars for 35 years. Now, this resentencing hearing we heard from their family members, a cousin said the family has universally forgiven the brothers.
We heard from a fellow inmate who was counseled, he said, by the brothers behind bars. We heard a lot about the work that they have done behind bars to rehabilitate themselves and to try to help others. And the judge at the end, before he made his ruling, he said a couple of things. He said, one, I have never received letters like this from correctional officers.
Petitioning for prisoners to be released. That was huge. He said that he is going to resentance them to 50 years to life. So it's now up to the parole board and the governor as to whether they actually get out.
Now, there's a clemency hearing scheduled for June 13th to address this matter. So their lawyers hope that they'll be out by the end of the year is not an impossible one. And we also heard from the brothers themselves speaking via video link from where they're being held down near San Diego. Lyle spoke for us.
The older brother was very emotional. Both of them talked about how what they did was unforgivable. They apologized against their family for their trauma that they put them through. They said that they made terrible choices.
They make no excuses for those choices. And they apologized for lying to investigators throughout the years. The DA's office said, listen, they're not ready for parole. They're not ready to be let out because they haven't fully accepted insight into their crime.
But the judge disagreed. Now, the judge could have said, you are sentenced to time already served. They could have walked out of jail today. That did not happen.
The judge has now pushed us to the parole board and to the governor because the judge said, listen, I cannot say that they will commit another crime. I don't think that there's a danger that they're going to commit another crime. So I am going to resentance them to life with the possibility of parole. And now it's up to the governor and the parole board to decide if and when they get out.
Yeah. So, Nick, thank you, joining us to talk about it and the testimony that Sean Diddy comes to trial here in New York. He's an anchor to legal strategist, Laura Coates, also criminal defense attorney Arthur Idala. Are there surprised you?
A little bit, but I mean, it's a huge, huge event. I mean, it really is. Mark Garroegos is not minimizing it. Basically, what happened though is the last district attorney was the one who put in this motion when he was running for a reelection.
And then he lost and the new district attorney came in and tried to pull back the motion. He put in the DA's office originally putting the motion for resentancing. And then when they had the new DA's, they said, no, no, they should be resentance. They should stay in jail.
The judge said, no, too late. The judge is still going to fight it. But I know what Mr. Garroegos said.
They're really hoping the governor just gives them clemency at this point after this judge is ruling. And they can be out in, I think when he said June 3, I mean, he could be out in six weeks. And obviously the judge took this tremendous consideration, heard from a lot of witnesses. And he's confident that they've been in 35 years.
You know, different life is going to be for them when they get out? Like the world they left 1989 to the world they're going to come in to. Laura, you made the point. A lot of people don't get this kind of attention.
It's kind of legal help. They do not. And that's not to take away from an injustice if it has occurred in this matter. They should not get the benefit of having that reviewed.
But this could open in many ways. That's why the DDA was a little bit skeptical because if the idea behind it in part was that they failed to introduce evidence of support that they had been abused. And that was not consistently led or raised in the testimony of the trial. There's a lot of people in prison right now who talk about a trauma that they experienced that may have contributed to their action in the real world.
And so that's going to be an interesting how they address it. I remember you had Kim Kardashian was supporting them. You had movies made about them. These are very well known figures.
And I wonder how will translate for the average person who was behind bars as well. You were in the courtroom today at the Chondé de Comme's trial in New York. What was that like? That was unbelievable.
To finally see the person. Cassie Ventura who we've all been waiting to hear from. The woman who was the lynch pain of the prosecution's case. What would she say?
She's the one who beaten on the video. She is that one on the video who was beaten in the surveillance video that she had obtained. She was in a more than decade long relationship with them. And the prosecution needs her testimony to bridge the gap between the Chondé de Comme's the public new and the one the prosecutors want you to see.
A racketeer, somebody who's sex trafficker involved in prostitution. Hearing her speak after so many years of watching her as almost a fixture besides Chondé de Comme speaking almost in a very calm voice, very matter of fact describing violence. And also her love for him and her sense of being a people pleaser to allow this to continue even when she said she did not want to and drunk you. I just want to play that video because people should see this because it's the backstory for her testimony.
Today this was in the hotel. This is her being assaulted by Mr. Comme's. And for the first time today she explained what happened in her own words.
She did and then when we're in the defense opening statement they suggested that he was not dragging her back to that woman beating her violently for any other reason than he wanted to retain and get her phone, his phone back from her. Well today, till the very first story she said actually there was essentially a freakoff that was happening these days long hours long drug fueled sexual non-consensual events. And he was taking her back to that room that he had struck her before this video occurred and she was trying to get away. So you're seeing finally what she has to say about what happened in that event.
This will be a part of the conversation. They have to prove racketeering. They have to prove sex trafficking and also prostitution. This is no cakewalk for the prosecution.
But this is going to start the ball rolling. Arthur, during the opening statement, you have to defend the hotel security video indefensible. Which what else are they going to do? Exactly.
You have to own it and you have to own the domestic violence but you have to make clear and they did in the opening statement. We're just talking about Mark Garrogo. This was his daughter who did the opening statement. She said that he's not charged with domestic violence.
He's clearly guilty of domestic violence but that's another courthouse down the street. It's incredible that her father has the menendez in Los Angeles. That's right. That's what I'm saying.
And I was texting with Mark congratulating him. That's a wonderful situation for a father and a daughter in the same legal field. Just to give you some insight into the drama of the courtroom and the way the defense attorneys think. The defense attorneys ask that she be put on the stand before the jury comes in because she's very pregnant.
And you know, there's already so much prejudice against him because of that video. I mean that video is horrible. It's all hard to get over. And now you have a pregnant woman talking about being beaten and talking about men abusing her.
The flip side, what you're going to see across examination Anderson is, so you're with him for 10 years, correct? And one of the times you said he beat you was in January of 2015, correct? I want to show you this photograph. Who's in that photograph?
I am. Who else is in that photograph? Sean is. And where are you on that date?
Or on the top of the empire's steep building? What day was that? The empire's steep building is right. It's Valentine's Day.
And isn't it true that Sean paid $250,000 to close the empire's steep building so the two of you can make love on the top of the empire's steep building and then go for dinner? Yes. And you did that voluntarily, correct? And you did that lovingly, correct?
They didn't, did they make eye contact in the courtroom? They did not. I was waiting to see whether these two people who had not been in touch for over six years, ever since the death of the mother of four of Sean Diddy Combs' children, Kim Porter died tragically of pneumonia. They were like ships passing in the night.
She did not look towards him. He was staring in her direction. But as she passed by him, there was no eye contact made. I will say that he was much more fidgety this time around.
He was leaning away from the desk. He was passing notes to his attorney. This was the witness that is going to strike the biggest cord with him. The jurors are going to be watching.
But you know, in terms of what you're going to say in the cross, they're going to go after. They're going to go after everything they have because they know how significant this witness is. The prosecution saw us make their case. It suggests that she was by force, by fraud, or intimidation, not given consent.
Yeah, or other quotes are there a dollar? Thanks so much. Reminder not to miss special edition or coach live at 11 PM Eastern, more developments from today in court. And I'll look what's expected when testimony resumes tomorrow.
Next on 360 News on a familiar note, President Trump's speech today, concluding with a surprising tune for an event in Saudi Arabia. We'll explain ahead. Before we go, an interesting moment in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia after President Trump was finished with his Middle East policy speech, which we covered at the top of the broadcast. What he might have missed, however, is what happened after the music that someone there chose to play as the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made his way to the stage to shake hands with the president.
That is, of course, YMCA by the Village People, which was from their third studio album, Cruisin. It was for many years thought to be something of a gay anthem, but of course, President Trump has it on his playlist at rallies, and Victor Willis, who sang and co-wrote the song, has in recent years, made it clear it has nothing to do with gay people staying in the YMCA, which is good because in Saudi Arabia, according to Human Dignity Trust, same-sex sexual activity is criminalized, and the maximum penalty under Sharia law is death. But again, this was not a gay song. I remember finally when I first heard YMCA, I was 13, and the Village People appeared in the movie Can't Stop the Music with Bruce Jenner and Valerie Perrine.
If you've never seen it, here's a scene I remember well as a teenager. I don't know why I found that scene so compelling as a teenager, but it's good to know it's not at all gay. That's it for us. The news continues the source with Kaitlyn Collins.
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