Transcripts For CNNW CNN Special Report 20190322 : vimarsana

Braces for the report thats been a dark cloud over this administration for almost two years now, sources are telling cnn that team trump is taking a, what me worry approach to this. A source familiar with whats going on inside the white house saying theres growing optimism that the report will not accuse the president of committing any crimes, but that hasnt stopped the white house special counsel emmitt flood and his team from gaming out possible responses to mueller, based on scenarios ranging from a report damaging to the president to one that clears him. Another source admitting, quote, were tea leaf reading like everyone else. Ask lets not forget this word sla salad from the president just yesterday. No collusion. I have no idea when its going to be released. Its interesting that a man gets appointed by a deputy, he writes a report. You know, never figured that one out. Man gets appointed by a deputy. He writes a report. I had the greatest electoral victory in the history of our country, tremendous success, tens of millions of voters, and now somebodys going to write a report who never got a vote. Well see what the report says. Lets see if its fair. I have no idea when its going to be released. But there is a lot we do know tonight. We know that mueller has already brought criminal charges against 34 people and three companies, including half a dozen members of team trump, michael cohen, michael flynn, rick gates, Paul Manafort, george papadopoulos, and roger stone. We know that five people have been sentenced to prison, including manafort, and cohen and papadopoulos, plus richard pa nato and alex van der swan, we know that at least 16 Trump Associates had contacts russians during the campaign or transition. But there are still plenty of questions about team trump and russia. Just listen to what happened when cbss Norah Odonnell asked them Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort about russia. This was back in 2016. So to be clear, mr. Trump has no Financial Relationships with any russian oligarchs . If thats what he said thats obviously what the our position is. Well, that is about as awkward as it gets. But theres Something Else that we do know. We know that the president s strategy in all of this has been to call the investigation a witch hunt, tweeting more than 170 times and saying it out loud over and over and over. The witch hunt continues. Its a total witch hunt. Ive been saying it for a long time. Its a witch hunt. Thats all it is. Witch hunt. Witch hunt. Its just a terrible witch hunt. Witch hunt. So far this thing has been a total witch hunt, and it doesnt implicate me in any way. But in the face of all of that, theres this tonight from a New York Times oped by james comey, the man whose firing led to muellers appointment on may 17th of 2017. Heres a quote, it says i have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that mr. Trump knowingly conspired with the russians in connection with the 2016 election or that he obstructed justice. I also dont care. I care only that the work be done well and completely. If it is, justice will have prevailed and core American Values been protected at a time when so much of our National Leadership has abandoned its commitment to truth and the rule of law. But this is far from the only investigation looming from this president , for this president i should say. Remember when President Trump stood next to Vladimir Putin and said he didnt see any reason russia would interfere in our election . Taking the russian president s word over his own intelligence chiefs. My people came to me, dan coats came to me and some others. They said they think its russia. I have president putin, he just said its not russia. I will say this, i dont see any reason why it would be. Now House Democrats attempting to investigate the president s contacts with putin charge the white house is stone walling them. The white house today rejecting congresss request for do you means insisting president ial communications with foreign leaders are protected and confidential. And House Oversight chairman Elijah Cummings said today his committee has new information, new information alleging that Jared Kushner has been using whatsapp to communicate with foreign leaders and alleging that ivanka trump may be in violation of the president ial records act with her use of personal emails. Hmm, personal emails. Seems to me i recall someone else complaining about that. Russia, if youre listening, i hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. Lots to discuss now. Laura coats and garrett graph, garrett is the author of the threat matrix, inbound Robert Muellers fbi. I cannot believe that were talking about emails after all of this. It is unbelievable. Well get to that. Thank you for joining us. I want to start with mueller first. Like i said, he has been on the job for 674 days. Hes expected to hand over his findings to the attorney general any moment now. So walk us through what the next step and steps are and how this unfolds. Right, so once this is all done and mueller is ready to submit the report, he will notify the attorney general that theyre done, that the report has been completed, and then the report will get delivered to the attorney general. They will then let the public know there will be a theres a process in place where theyre going to let the public know that this is this is done, and at the same time members of congress will be notified that the reports been submit sked a that muellers work is complete. I assume in that process the white house will be notified. In the initial stages, whether this is tomorrow or whenever this happens, we are not going to learn anything thats contained in this report. At some point and the attorney general is likely to set a date, could be ten days from when the report is submitted he will say i will submit the my report to members of congress, that is the dumbed down version, the info s information that he can openly discuss, make public from the Mueller Report, which is going to contain lots of classified and other secret information, hes going to say, okay, well, in ten days i will submit a report to members of congress and then we go from there. You know, its going to be another waiting game, right . Were going to have the we have this initial waiting game to say hey, mueller is done. The reports been submitted, and then were going to have a second waiting game of members of congress receiving whatever it is the attorney general decides he wants to let them see. So this is the next phase of a new phase . Weve been waiting for two years, and now we move on to the new phase. Garrett, i want to look at the special counsels mandate, right . It hasnt been clear to many people, or they try to misrepresent it. Heres what it said, any lengths and or coordination between the russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of president donald trump, but then it goes on to say and anything Something Like and anything that arises after that. Can we expect a clear answer to this . Not necessarily because one of the big challenges that bob mueller faces in this is the question of what does he do with information that doesnt rise to the level of a chargeable crime. You know, laura sort of understands this from the prosecutors standpoint. You know, the prosecutors standard is not quite sort of beyond a reasonable doubt, but its effectively you need to be 85 sure that you can convict this person in federal court of the charges that you are bringing against them. Thats a high bar for a reason, and bob mueller presumably has found all sorts of information that might be shady. It might be suspicious, might be sketchy, might not be the type of thing that we want circling around american politics. It might not be the type of thing we want a president s family to be engaged in, but isnt an identifiable federal felony that he feels that he can bring charges against. And so what does he do with that information in the report that he turns over, and what does that what does bill bar then do with that investigation in turning it over to congress or making it public. Remember, everyone here involved in this process is going to have looming over them the shadow of jim comey really screwing up the situation in the summer and the fall of 2016 when he sort of went further than anyone really thinks he probably should have gone to talk about Hillary Clinton and all of the things that she did wrong but that werent criminal. Yeah, and its interesting. If there are things that he did wrong and then they redact them, i guess thats justice for you. Laura, i want you to weigh in. Youre the legal expert here, similar question. Are we going to have a clear answer . Not initially, no, were not going to have any clarity. Were going to have a waiting game again. The waiting game actually is good in the way of justice. You absolutely have the comey factor weighing in here. You do not want people to be tarred and feathered in the Public Square if there actually is no basis to prosecute them. Having said that, however, there may also be a basis to prosecute someone but there also may be a doj policy that says that were not going to put light on this issue and let the public know. Im talking about the president of the United States. If he is in fact, implicated, remember one of the very important things that the attorney general will weigh is this notion of the guidance thats been issued internally in the department of justice not to indict a sitting president. If that is the case, it would be more than simply the comey effect of trying to say somebody was did erroneous things but not yet criminal, they were highly careless, but it wasnt actually felonious, it may be that given the guidance you cant do anything about it at this point. But laura, what about the question of whether theres a the president obstructed justice because congress will have to hear muellers view on that . Absolutely, and of course think about the two parallel tracks here, don. Youve got the criminal implications if hes implicated in an actual crime. You have the Political Considerations that dont have to follow and track the definitions that we have in the code of criminal law about whats a high crime and misdemeanor, for example, so on the impeach ment side, remember the guideline, thats the important thing, the guidance thats been issued has not been set in stone, and certainly the balancing test that would go in favor of figuring out whether that should actually be the case, whether or not to indict a sitting president would also have to include the notion of are we going to allow and would you allow somebody to evade justice as the head of the executive branch in their pursuit of trying to find out information . Ive been consistent about this, don. Obstruction of justice while it has been the basis to at least try to bring down a former president , obstruction of justice is never the end game of a prudent prosecutor. It would be akin to saying rather than pursue the crime you were fleeing, im going to give you a speeding ticket along the way, and im going to end my inquiry there. You were speeding from something. Thats all i need to know. They are going to be and they should be over the last two years now looking at whatever thing you do not want them to see. I think thats the crux of the Mueller Probe related to his mandate. Mmhmm. Will there be more indictments . Hold that thought right after the break. Ich is doing its best to make you everybody else. Means to fight the hardest battle, which any human being can fight and never stop. Does this sound dismal . It isnt. Its the most wonderful life on earth. Yeah, i thought doing some hibachi grilling would help take my mind off it all. Maybe you could relieve some stress by calling geico for help with our Homeowners Insurance. Geico helps with Homeowners Insurance . They sure do. And they could save us a bundle of money too. 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This meter shows how much stuff, or dissolved solids, gets left behind. Our tap water is 220. Brita . 110. Seriously . But zerowater let me guess. Zero . Yup, thats how i know it is the puresttasting water. I need to find the receipt for that. Oh yeah, you do. And were back now. Laura coates, garrett graff, the question i asked just before the break, shimone, are we going to learn of more indictments . I dont see there being any more indictments coming from the mueller team. Weve not seen the mueller grand jury really in weeks, don, weeks if not months and weve not seen any activity, normally our folks who are at the courthouse and obviously staking out the mueller team, when we see activity, when things are coming, we would have indications just by the activity. We would see people leaving and coming. So i dont believe theres going to be anything else from the mueller team. I think some of whats going on here just quickly is that this report is probably going through many different hands at the fbi Intelligence Community, and i think perhaps that could be where the holdup is now. They keep scrubbing it perhaps. And the other thing i think to keep in mind is that this report, i think, most people on the mueller team and at the department of justice do think that eventually its all going to be made public, somehow, some way, whether its through court battles, through congress, this stuff is going to get out. They need to consider that because of whatever they put in there the public is going to eventually know, and there are certain things as they have to deal with russians and investigations of russians and intelligence that they have to be sensitive, and i think that in part is whats holding a lot of this up. So, garrett, two questions here, the first one if you can answer quickly. Do you disagree with what shimone said . Do you think there will be more . Well see more indictments . Shimone might be right that there arent new indictments, but i think there are too many loose ends at this point for mueller not to have any further indictments at all, and that its entirely possible that there are sealed indictments waiting waiting for some future moment to be unveiled. Okay. So the other question i have for you, garrett, 87 of americans say that they want a public report on muellers findings. Do you think theyre going to be disappointed . Its just its too hard to know because we you know, mueller has had lots of time to think through his strategy for what was going to be in this final report and how thats going to sort of what hes going to say to the Justice Department, but he doesnt necessarily have any control over what bill barr turns over to congress, and so i think that there is a chance that barr will try to bottle up some part of this. The white house might try to assert executive privilege. We might be settling into something that could take months to unfold before we really understand the totality of what bob mueller is reporting. But at the same time, i dont think bob mueller has put as you were saying earlier more than 600 days into this investigation and isnt going to leave confident that hes told the public everything that they need to know, that hes had all the time he needs to work out whatever the Creative Strategy is he needs to make what should be public public. Okay. Laura, stick around, im going to have you follow up with the legal ramifications of this. I want to talk about the House Oversight chairman, Elijah Cummings, he is saying that he has information alleging that Jared Kushner has been using whatsapp to talk to foreign leaders and ivanka trump using private emails. Jared kushners attorney abbe lowell didnt deny that kushner shared classified information through the encrypted messaging service. He said that question is above his pay grade. So what is going on . What are you learning here . Look, this is a problem for Jared Kushner, and then, you know, the white house wonders why the Intelligence Community doesnt want Jared Kushner having a security clearance. Its because of activity like this. The fact that hes having these conversations over whatsapp with foreign leaders is extremely dangerous. You know, his attorney abbe lowell has tried to walk this back saying no, i dont think there was classified information. Then he says its something you need to take up with the white house is what he told Elijah Cummings. The problem here is there are secret ways to do this. Jared kushner should be going through secure channels, their phones, plenty of other ways for them to communicate. It is a problem, specifically because a, we dont know whats being discussed and b, any conversations with foreign leaders could be susceptible to people intercepting them. A lot of people think whatsapp is safe. Shimon its just shady and its hypocrisy because this is exactly what trump railed against Hillary Clinton