Transcripts For CNNW CNN Newsroom With Brooke Baldwin 201811

CNNW CNN Newsroom With Brooke Baldwin November 9, 2018

I want to bring in senior reporting eric ordin, Gloria Borger and former assistant attorney general of the new Jersey Division of criminal justice. Lets get right to it. This is an extraordinary nine pages of reporting through tth wall street journal that i just blew through a second ago. They said they interviewed three dozen people. They do such a nice piece of just crafting the chronology of following the money and connecting the dots. So lay it out for us, if people havent read it. Sure. The story does a very good job, as you said, at sort of piecing together some activity that was known prior to Michael Cohen being charged in august about, as the journal had previously reported, cohens participation in these schemes to pay off Stormy Daniels and also to orchestrate payments to Karen Mcdougal through American Media, the publisher of the national enquirer. What this new story tells us is a more detailed look at Donald Trumps particular participation in directing these payments, his conversations with Michael Cohen, with david pecker and one of the things that the journal has a lot ofis an element included in the Michael Cohen charges, which was a meeting that occurred in which donald trump and david pecker had a meeting of the minds about what david pecker and American Media would do in service of the trump campaign. Its the whole way the entire piece starts, right . Look, i think there was worry by Michael Cohen and we have to presume that a lot of this information comes from Michael Cohen, who has spent i believe more than 30 hours with sdny, et cetera. I think one of the worries on mr. Cohens part and on Donald Trumps part is what happens if pecker leaves American Media. There were thoughts he was going to buy Time Magazine at the time, if you recall. Theyre thinking, oh my god, he knows all this stuff about us and he has a file this thick and can we buy that, can we own that ourselves so that if he goes, its our property and we get to protect ourselves. All the secrets, all the hush money, all the women, doesnt eventually come out depending who is in charge a. M. I. When mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to Campaign Finance violation, prosecutors filed a 22major document asserting mr. Cohen coordinated with one or more members of the Campaign Including through meetings and phone calls about the fact nature and timing of the paymen payments. How serious is this for the president . Its quite serious. He said i did this at the direction of a candidate for office. The big question coming out of that proceeding was does he have the proof of that, does he have the goods . I think Michael Cohen probably has some credibility issues that the Southern District im sure is working with. Does he have the proof . I think with piece of reporting by the wall street journal does lend a lot of support to what Michael Cohen said. It kind of connects the dots. After this was reported by the journal and a. M. I. Paid them off and out come Stormy Daniels. From what i read in the journal, david pecker was like, nope, i draw the line at paying off porn stars. So it then becomes something that trump and cohen have to deal with. Its where that money comes from. We remember when the journal first broke the story about this payment, now it shows where it came from. Right. In the cohen charges, theres two different elements to what he was charged with. One was the direct payment, fairly direct payment from cohen to Stormy Daniels and one was a more circuitous situation in which a. M. I. Paid Karen Mcdougal and now its a little bit more clear as to why those two things happened in a little bit different had different routes. They were the Bank Accounts. I think they functioned as the Bank Accounts that would be supposedly reimbursed but never were. At the end of the day, whats the proof in order for this to have involved President Trump, you know, Campaign Finance violations at a federal level. Whats the proof . The proof looks pretty good. Assume Michael Cohen will become a cooperating witness. Hes been meating with teting w Southern District, wants to become a cooperator. The use of the shell corporation, theres got to be financial documents that go to the creation of that entity. So you can see the corroboration start to come together under Michael Cohen. I think if donald trump was anyone other than president , hed be looking at a hard time ahead. But theres a separate question of can they indict the president . Stand by, everyone. Let me move on to this here. Now to a white house completely caught off guard and a president on the defense about his new acting attorney general matthew whitaker. It was not widely known among white house staff that before he joined the department of justice in 2017, whitaker repeatedly criticized the special counsels investigation in interviews, on television. He even wrote an opinion piece for cnn. Com, and yet the white house is totally shocked by the shall we say not entirely effusive whitaker coverage. Might i direct the white house to www. Google. Com. The president may be taking a new direction on whitaker. Earlier he tried to distance himself from the man he made the top law enforcer in the land. Well, Matt Whitaker, i dont know Matt Whitaker. He worked for Jeff Sessions and was always extremely highly thought of and still is. But i didnt know Matt Whitaker. He worked for attorney general sessions. He was very, very highly thought of and still is highly thought of. I didnt speak to Matt Whitaker about it. I dont know Matt Whitaker. Matt whitaker has a great reputation and thats what i wanted. I also wanted to do something which, frankly, i could have brought somebody very easily from the outside. I didnt want to do that. When sessions left, what i did very simply is take a man who worked for sessions. You heard the president say several times the president doesnt know Matt Whitaker. So how does he explain this clip from a month ago . I never talk about that but i can tell you Matt Whitakers a great guy. I know Matt Whitaker. But i never talk about conversations that i had. Lets go to kaitlan collins. She is in paris where the president is expected to arrive shortly. Kaitlan, you report several senior officials are concerned whitaker may be in jeopardy of keeping his new job. Reporter thats right, brooke. They seem to be worried if he stays in the headlines and those are neg touative headlines, President Trump could sour on him. That seems to be backed up, the president saying i dont know Matt Whitaker, he was Jeff Sessions guy. He could be there for up to 210 days. You heard him say there i dont know him even though that completely contradicts what he said to fox not that long ago, i do know Matt Whitaker, hes a great guy. We know there is a relationship between President Trump and Matt Whitaker. Hes been in the oval office several times to brief the president , theyve had several phone calls and the president has praised Matt Whitaker to people he knows. He also caught his high by talking about the russia investigation on television, something that has come under intense scrutiny amid questions about whether hes the person to be in charge of this probe. Several senior white house officials werent aware he had made these comments critical of the probe and they were taken aback when there was so much scrutiny on Matt Whitakers past comments and theyre worried about what his future is going to be going forward. Now, brooke, that last statement from the president was key. He said he did not discuss the russia probe with Matt Whitaker before he tapped him to become the acting attorney general. Thats something critics say they do not believe from the president , democratic critics mostly. But thats something thats going to come under intense scrutiny, whether or not the president talked to him and discussed whether or not he would recuse himself before he picked him to take over this job, brooke. Kaitlan, thank you. Kaitlan ahead of the president there in paris. We have much to discuss on matthew whitaker, this acting a. G. , including his view that judges should have a biblical view of justice. And coming up, the one thing Michelle Obama cannot forgive President Trump for. And we are less than an hour away from an emergency hearing on that vote counting in florida. Details on whats holding up a decision on the gubernatorial position and also the senate seat. Youre watching cnn. Ill be right back. Introducing the new Capital One Savor card. 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Clovis encouraged whitaker to get a commentary gig on tv to get trumps attention. Later he expressed his deep skepticism for the mueller probe. Last year he said this about Robert Muellers appointment to special counsel. Whatever reason Rod Rosenstein determined that the department of justice couldnt handle this in their ordinary course of work, which i think is ridiculous, i think it smells a little fishy. Smells a little fishy. Whitaker also said this about whether theres an obstruction of justice case to be made against President Trump. There is no criminal obstruction of justice charge to be had here. The evidence is weak, no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case on what we know right now. It all boils down to what was the president s intent, and we really dont have any evidence of what the president s intent was. But legal watchers are also looking pretty closely at whitakers comments in 2014 when he ran for u. S. Senate in iowa. He said the courts are supposed to be the inferior branch of our three branches of governments. We have unfortunately off loaded many of our tough policy decisions on to the court and they decided them. This is what he looks for in a federal judge. Are they people of faith . Do they have a biblical view of justice, which i think is very important because we all know that our government new testament . Im a new testament. What i know is as long as they have that world view, that theyll be a good judge. Weve got to talk about all of this. Gloria borger is back with me. Also joining us former u. S. Attorney greg brower assistant u. S. Director for internal affairs. Hes are his belief and this is now the top Law Enforcement officer in the nation. How do you feel about that . Well, i know Matt Whitaker to be a smart lawyer and a dedicated Public Servant but he face as significant problem now in terms of the way this whole thing went down with the firing of the attorney general. The problem, in my opinion, has three parts. The first part of the problem is that of Public Perception. Clearly weve seen in the last 48 hours theres this Public Perception that this was a political move by the president himself, which is not the way that the chief Law Enforcement officer of the country is supposed to be chosen. Secondly the second problem is that on capitol hill obviously democrats on capitol hill are they dont just suspect this is a political move, they seem convinced this was in fact a political move. That pose s a problem for matt s well. And also within the department of justice itself, with politically appointed officials and career officials, the way this whole thing has evolved im sure is causing a lot of questions to be asked within the department about who is this guy and can he lead us . So those are the problems that matt, if hes going to be effective as an acting attorney general, is going to have to overcome. Yes. Let me add to that how he feels about marbury versus madison, where he criticized the supreme courts powers which established american constitutional law. So heres what ruth marcus wrote in the Washington Post today, for any lawyer, certainly for one now at the helm of this Justice Department to disagree with marbury is like a physicist denouncing the laws of gravity. This is just one of many, jaime, concerns about this man. This is not credible. The president said over and over again he didnt know him. He has been obsessed with the Mueller Investigation and russia. Thats why Jeff Sessions is gone. He didnt pick the obvious person or anyone, frankly, in the line that would normally go, Rod Rosenstein on down, he plucked Matt Whitaker from chief of staff to make him attorney general. So our reporting and the new york city reporting is that Matt Whitaker has been the eyes and ears of the white house in the Justice Department. He is a loyalist. The question is now that hes in the job and lets see how long hes in the job, will he be telling donald trump things about the Mueller Investigation . Will he be slowing the Mueller Investigation down in any way . These are big concerns . Why would he say and greg, you told our producers that obviously he was lying when he said he didnt know Matt Whitaker and we played the clip of him a month ago. Its donald trump. Hes distancing himself. Whenever be in gets into a little bit of trouble that was fast. Well, Paul Manafort worked on the campaign a couple of days, steve banno

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