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Sources: White House Controlling Scope of FBI Probe; U.S., Canada Reach Trade Agreement. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired October 01, 2018 - 07:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The White House is not intervening. We're not micromanaging this process.

[07:00:06] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The American people needs to see this investigation and believe that it's true and legitimate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Democrats are already trashing what they demanded.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D), DELAWARE: He was clearly belligerent, aggressive, angry and made a partisan argument that would have been best left for his defenders.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: My mind is made up about Brett Kavanaugh. I don't see anything new changing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you put us in the majority, no more Gorsuches, no more Kavanaughs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. It's quite a Monday. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY.

The FBI is investigating the claims against Brett Kavanaugh, but is it a real investigation? President Trump says the bureau has free reign to look into sexual misconduct allegations against his Supreme Court nominee. But sources tell CNN the White House is narrowing the focus and controlling the scope with the help of Senate Republicans.

And there are reports this morning that witnesses with stories to tell about Brett Kavanaugh's behavior are trying to reach the FBI, but they are having trouble doing so.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Top Democrats now demanding to see all written orders from the White House to the FBI relating to the Kavanaugh investigation. They suggest that the time and scope limits are turning the probe into a farce.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake tells "60 Minutes" that Kavanaugh's nomination is done if it turns out he lied to the Judiciary Committee. However, is the FBI even trying to find out if he lied to the Judiciary Committee. That is an open question. There is at least one classmate from Yale of Brett Kavanaugh who says the nominee was not truthful about his drinking in college. That's just one aspect of it.

Let's bring in Chris Cillizza, CNN Politics reporter and editor at large and author of "The Point with Chris Cillizza"; CNN chief legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin, a Flake-a-phile, if there ever was one; and CNN legal and national security analyst, Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: How many times do I have to grovel before Jeff Flake?

CAMEROTA: One more.

TOOBIN: No, it's just -- to fill our audience in who doesn't -- a lot of people take notes on what I say, but not everybody does.

I was very critical of Jeff Flake --

CAMEROTA: Oh, we remember.

TOOBIN: -- before last week that he was, like, big talk and no action, and I was wrong. He is the person who got this FBI probe going. It was all his initiative. Hats off to him.

BERMAN: Is it a real probe, though? Did Jeff Flake get what he thinks --

TOOBIN: I think that remains an open question at this point. I mean, we -- there are outright contradictions in the report about it. If you listen to the president, he says they have free reign. If you listen to many news reports, including ours on CNN, this is tightly controlled.

I think by the end of the week we will know the answer to that, because we will know how many people they talked to, what results they got and whether they really did an investigation of the pending allegations. But at this point, I just don't know, and I don't think anybody knows.

CAMEROTA: Well, Asha, you worked as an FBI agent for many years, so let's talk about how this process will work.

Here are the witnesses that we know of that the FBI will speak to this week. So there's Mark Judge, who seems vital, of course, because he was the other person in the room, according to Christine Blasey Ford, and he was attached at the hip, was one explanation of his friendship with Brett Kavanaugh.

Then there was the aforementioned P.J. Smyth, who was another buddy from that era. There's Leland Keyser, who was the other young woman, who was at the gathering of friends that Christine Blasey Ford describes. Then there's Debbie Ramirez, who's a Yale classmate. She's the one who said that Brett Kavanaugh exposed himself to her when she was intoxicated, and that she was forced to actually touch his private parts, because they were in her face.

Now, if any of those people talk about other people, will -- is it -- can this investigation lead to other avenues, or do you think that they have strict instructions to just keep it limited to this?

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I don't know what their instructions are, but if other people were to be referenced in those interviews and those -- those could be potential leads of people who have additional information that could shed light on the underlying allegation, that would absolutely be people that the FBI in the normal course of a background check like this would interview.

Background checks typically are kind of expanding circles. They start with people and often without even -- even if the interviewees don't raise people, they will ask them, "Do you know people who may have information or would know -- would have known Kavanaugh during this particular timeframe?" And then they would actively seek those out.

So that would be the normal course. As Jeffrey said, we will see by the end of the week whether they had the ability and the capacity to follow those leads.

BERMAN: I think it's maddening that we have to wait until the end of the week to find this out. This, to me, is a simple question to answer, yes or no? Are they going to go beyond these four people?

CAMEROTA: Where's the document of the directive?

BERMAN: Just tell us. And then if people want to argue about whether or not it's enough. Let them argue about whether or not it's enough. But at least tell us what's going on here.

And Chris Cillizza, politically speaking, there are new developments that matter to some people. Charles Ludington, who went to Yale with Brett Kavanaugh, says he doesn't think Brett Kavanaugh was telling the truth about his drinking when he testified under oath to the Senate.

Here's part of that statement: "Brett was a frequent drinker and a heavy drinker. I know because especially in our first two college years, I often drank with him. On many occasions, I heard Brett slur his words and saw him staggering from alcohol consumption, not all of which was beer. When Brett got drunk, he was often belligerent or aggressive. On one last occasion I purposely socialized with Brett, I witnessed him respond to a semi-hostile remark not by diffusing the situation, but by throwing beer in the man's face and starting a fight that ended with one of our mutual friends in jail."

So if Charles Ludington, who hasn't been able to talk to FBI investigators yet -- I think he's going to go to a field office today.

CAMEROTA: He's going to go deliver himself, we understand, to an FBI field office, because nobody has contacted him, even after this statement that he gave to the press.

BERMAN: If people like Charles Ludington are not part of this official investigation, Chris, is that enough? Is that enough politically?

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT AND EDITOR AT LARGE: Politically speaking, it doesn't matter what Alisyn Camerota, John Berman, Chris Cillizza, Jeff Toobin, Asha Rangappa, it doesn't matter what any of us think. It matters what Jeff Flake, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Joe Manchin, a handful of others -- Heidi Heitkamp -- think. That's it.

Because this is math. Do they have 50 votes for Kavanaugh? Because there will be a vote. The Republican base -- unless he withdraws or Trump pulls him, the Republican base would go bananas if there was not a vote at the end of this.

So I think there will be a vote. And the question is, do they have it? If Flake does flake -- I said this last night -- does he view -- let's say it's proven that Brett Kavanaugh did not tell the truth about his drinking, which I think is your most likely avenue.

Is that enough for Jeff Flake to say, "Well, that meets my standard of he lied. He didn't tell the truth. I'm not voting for him"? Is it true for Collins? Is it true for Murkowski?"

The thing -- we don't know two things. A lot's being paid to we don't know who the FBI is exactly talking to in the scope of this.

We also don't know what the trigger point is for -- we sort of know for Flake, but Murkowski, Collins, Manchin, at what point do they say, "This is too much"?

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey --

TOOBIN: The irony here is this issue has taken over the whole confirmation hearing. Susan Collins allegedly, Lisa Murkowski -- Murkowski, allegedly, was thinking of voting against him because he was going to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is actually what Supreme Court justices do. Now it has become this very narrow, you know, did he lie in the confirmation hearings.

I mean, it seems to me a more holistic evaluation of his qualifications, including his performance at the hearing, just the way he behaved in the issue of judicial temperament. All of that, seems to me, should figure in, not just did he lie about drinking at Yale.

CAMEROTA: On that note, here's rule 1.2 from the American Bar Association of judicial temperament. "A judge shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the independence, integrity and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety."

And that part about the integrity and impartiality, it -- what about him going after the Democrats and saying that this is a left-wing conspiracy and going after the Clintons? How is that impartial? I mean, isn't that disqualifying, if you listen to the American Bar Association?

TOOBIN: I mean, the American Bar Association, those are guidelines of preference. Those aren't binding rules, but it is the gold standard, as Lindsey Graham said, of judicial -- evaluation of judicial candidates. And, you know, to me, there's that. There's also yelling at Sheldon Whitehouse, yelling at Amy Klobuchar: "How much do you drink? Have you ever blacked out?" I mean, that is something that I am certain has never been seen in a Supreme Court confirmation hearing before.

CAMEROTA: You don't think Ruth Bader Ginsberg did that and said, "How much do you -- do you ever blackout?"

TOOBIN: And, you know, the question that hangs over all of this is that if a woman behaved the way Brett Kavanaugh behaved, you know, they probably would have put a net over her and pulled her out of the hearing room.

CAMEROTA: I think we know the answer to that one.

TOOBIN: So -- but anyway, that's a larger culture --

BERMAN: John Roberts. Can you imagine John Roberts yelling at sitting senators?

TOOBIN: And remember, Sonia Sotomayor was really pressed if her confirmation, you know, was she a racist? You know, really serious, ugly questions, and her response, shall we say, was quite different.

BERMAN: I know you're mad about me for talking about "Saturday Night Live" and not laughing enough at it. And I do apologize. I do, I do, I do.

CAMEROTA: I love the opportunity to point out wet-blanketness.

BERMAN: I know. And I should have done what you wanted me to do, as always is the case.

However, I will note that what cut through on "Saturday Night Live" was the Brett Kavanaugh yelling part.

[07:10:04] What cut through on the soccer fields and the places I was at this weekend are people saying, even if they think that, perhaps, a sexual assault wasn't proved in that hearing, they felt -- people told me, they felt, "I'm not so sure Brett Kavanaugh was telling the truth overall about other things."

So Asha, there really are two separate issues right now, if the FBI is going to investigate the initial claim of sexual assault made against Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford, that's one thing. But I see no evidence -- and we don't have it in front of us -- that they're even going to look into whether or not he was honest about drinking, whether or not he was honest about the yearbook and those other words, devil's triangle, for instance, that he made claims on. I mean, those would be two separate avenues, and we have no evidence the FBI is going to go down that path.

RANGAPPA: There's no evidence they'll go down that path, but it could come up in the course of the interviews by the open-ended way that they're going to ask questions.

Now, remember that drinking is actually one of the nine criteria that the FBI asks about in the course of normal FBI investigations. And I should point out that, probably in Judge Kavanaugh's earliest investigation, I think it was around the time that he joined the Starr team, they would have interviewed people close to college. And that would have been a question that they asked, and it would be interesting to see if any derogatory information came up there.

But to your point, John, you know, the drinking issue is, both by itself, a candor issue in terms of his answers to the court, but they also are relevant to the underlying allegation, in that Dr. Ford did say that the judge was incredibly inebriated. And understanding whether that was a common pattern of behavior, in my opinion, would be a normal question to ask in the course of investigating the allegation itself.

CAMEROTA: There are at least six people, Chris Cillizza, about his -- about the judge's drinking, at least six people who have come forward in the press to say that he's lied. He's lied. He did drink to excess. He did drink with memory lapses. He did drink to the point where he was staggering around, and he became aggressive and belligerent, and he was a mean drunk. How is that not relevant?

CILLIZZA: Well, I mean, I think it is. I think the problem for -- Brett Kavanaugh was in a trap. He couldn't say, "I've never had anything to drink," right? Because there's overwhelming evidence to suggest that he had.

He also couldn't say, "Yes, you know, occasionally -- as many people that I attended college with could say, who weren't Supreme Court nominees, occasionally I had so much to drink that I don't totally remember everything that happened on Saturday night." He can't -- he couldn't say that, because, of course, that then cracks the door open to say, "Well, how could this not potentially be an incident in which you didn't remember?"

So he has to maintain these two things that I think, if you're being honest, anyone who's ever had maybe a little too much to drink knows is probably not true. Yes, I drank to excess. Yes, I remember every single moment of the night in which I drank to excess. Those are two very hard things to hold.

Now, does that mean he shouldn't be a Supreme Court justice? Does that mean he did what Christine Blasey Ford alleges? No, it doesn't.

CAMEROTA: No, but doesn't it mean that he wasn't credible or trustworthy --

BERMAN: Right.

CAMEROTA: -- when he was speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee?

CILLIZZA: And -- and important. And I always hear Jeff Toobin make this point. And I think it's really important, and I'll make it for him. This is not -- TOOBIN: I can't wait.

CILLIZZA: -- a court -- this is not a court of law. I always remind people. It's -- this is not an issue. This is called a job interview, called a political process, call it what you want. But this is not is he innocent or guilty? It's is he worthy of being -- is he worthy of being on the Supreme Court?

So just because the prosecutor, the independent prosecutor said, "Well, I wouldn't -- we wouldn't have enough information to charge him" --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CILLIZZA: -- that is not -- that's irrelevant. That's not what we're talking about here.

TOOBIN: To agree with myself --

CILLIZZA: Yes. Well done.

TOOBIN: The -- the point here is not whether there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The question is if you heard, and you were thinking of hiring a babysitter, who --

CILLIZZA: Yes.

TOOBIN: -- you know, and you heard, well, there are three sexual assault allegations, but they're -- you know, they're in dispute. That's the question. Would you hire the babysitter, not is the babysitter guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? That, I think, is the more appropriate perspective to put -- to look at this.

BERMAN: And since Cillizza quoted you, I'm going to quote Cillizza here.

CILLIZZA: Yes.

BERMAN: It may not matter what your -- initially, I was offended when he said it didn't matter what we thought. But now I understand -- now I understand what he was saying, is what does Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, and Joe Manchin think?

Does whether or not he was telling the truth about drinking and devil's triangle, does that matter to them? And is that disqualifying if it's proven that he was lying, and will the FBI even look into that? That's the question.

CAMEROTA: All right. We will explore all of that. Thank you all very much for your expertise.

BERMAN: All right. Christine Romans is going to save us from all this. Time for CNN Money now, and we have breaking news.

[07:15:03] The U.S. and Canada reaching a last-minute deal to revise NAFTA. This is a big win for the president's trade agenda. The president has written about it already this morning and congratulating Canada and Mexico.

Our chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, has all the details -- Romans.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: All right. So just hours before the midnight deadline Canada said it will join a U.S.-Mexico deal made in August, keeping the 24-year-old trade pact a three-country deal. That was looking unlikely last week. Remember, the U.S. warned Canada it was ready to move ahead with just Mexico, no Canada.

The negotiators worked all weekend to strike this deal. It's a milestone, really, for President Trump, who vowed to renegotiate NAFTA. He blamed it for killing American jobs, called it the worst deal ever signed. But both the U.S. and Canada say this new deal will create good, well-paying jobs for all North Americans.

Now the president also dislikes the name NAFTA, as you know. So it's now the United States Mexico Canada agreement, USMCA. USMCA. It doesn't exactly roll off, but it updates the original 1994 trade pact. It introduces some rules for digital businesses, right, that have emerged since then. Also gives U.S. farmers more access to Canada's dairy market. That was a huge sticking point during talks.

In return, the U.S. will keep a scaled-back mechanism for resolving disputes that Canada had wanted. It also promises higher wages and labor standards for auto workers. But it keeps tariffs on Canada's steel and aluminum. That will raise costs ultimately for auto makers. The U.S. said that those tariffs will be negotiated separately.

Now the deal now faces Congress. Congress has to approve it. Many lawmakers said they would not support a NAFTA without Canada.

A couple of points in here, guys. Cars imported duty-free from NAFTA companies, they need 75 percent North American content and wages, two- fifths of a car, two fifths of a car traded in North America has to have $16-an-hour wages for the workers.

CAMEROTA: I was told there would be no math in this segment.

ROMANS: Sorry. I did the math. You just have --

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BERMAN: I'm stuck with the UMCA [SIC]. You know, it's fun to stay here at the UMCA [SIC]. Who needs NAFTA when you have the Village People?

CAMEROTA: John will do the dance in the next segment.

All right. If you are someone who wonders how Christine Blasey Ford could recall details of an alleged sexual assault three decades ago, you should stick around for our next segment, the science of memory.

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[07:21:56] CAMEROTA: Christine Blasey Ford says she is 100 percent certain that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, but how reliable is a memory from 36 years ago?

Joining us now is Dr. Richard Friedman, professor of clinical psychiatry and director of the Psychopharmacology Clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical Center.

Dr. Friedman, great to have you here.

DR. RICHARD FRIEDMAN, PROFESSOR OF CLINICAL PSYCHIATRY/DIRECTOR OF PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY CLINIC AT WEILL CORNELL MEDICAL CENTER: Thank you for having me.

CAMEROTA: Can somebody remember with clarity a memory from 36 years ago?

FRIEDMAN: Sure, so long as that memory is formed under intense emotion, they won't forget it.

CAMEROTA: And let's talk about that, because there's a stress hormone, as I understand it, norepinephrine, that sort of sears stressful event, like, say a sexual assault, into your memory.

FRIEDMAN: Right. So we have different systems in the brain for different types of memory. If you have an experience which is emotionally upsetting, like an assault or a sexual attack, you're not going to forget it, because what happens is you get a fight-or-flight response.

You get a surge in the stress hormone, norepinephrine and cortisol, and under that influence, the brain retains the memory with a vividness and persistence which is unlike other memories, like everyday memories: what you were wearing; what you had for dinner or what time of the day it was; what happened in the morning; what you did in class that morning. You're not going to remember those things, but you will not forget your attacker.

CAMEROTA: So when you saw Christine Blasey Ford say that she was 100 percent certain during that hearing, it didn't surprise you? You felt that that was legitimate?

FRIEDMAN: I thought it was completely legitimate and credible, because she never forgot it. This was an event that happened to her that she never recalled later; she never forgot it to start with.

And also, Brett Kavanaugh was a social contemporary of hers, and she had plenty of interaction with him outside of that event.

CAMEROTA: That's important, because as you know, some Republicans, even Brett Kavanaugh, say, "I have no doubt that something like this happened to Christine Blasey Ford. I have no doubt that she was sexually assaulted. But it must have been mistaken identity. It wasn't Brett Kavanaugh."

But that's not credible.

FRIEDMAN: Right. It's unlikely, one because she never forgot it. Two, because he was known to her and wasn't a stranger, and three, because this is an intense, vivid, traumatic memory, No. 3.

CAMEROTA: What about all those studies that we see, those research moments that we see in, say, a classroom where a professor stages a stressful event, simulates, say, a burglary in front of, like, 20 students, and somebody comes into the classroom and something happens that's frightening, a fight or yelling or even maybe they're simulating somebody with a gun.

And then the person runs out, and after that they ask the 20 students what they saw. And it turns out they're highly unreliable. This is about sort of witness testimony, how unreliable witnesses can be. Somebody says the red shirt, somebody says the blue shirt. Somebody says it was a gun. No, it was a knife. Which person was yelling? Why are those so faulty sometimes?

FRIEDMAN: Right. So memory is not like, you know, when you say the word document, and you pull it up again and it's exactly the same thing every time. Memories can be strengthened. They can be weakened every time they're recalled.

[07:25:05] The thing which is a little different about this is this is an experience she had early on, and from the moment it happened, his name was attached to the memory. She was not influenced. She was not given extraneous information like these experimental subjects who were coached, who were given information while they were recalling something.

In other words, the memory was implanted and is disrupted. This did not happen to her. She didn't tell anybody except her husband and a therapist.

CAMEROTA: Also, I think that it's true that anybody, any of those 20 students would say somebody ran into the room, and it was quite scary and I remember there was yelling. Nobody forgets that part, sort of the main ingredients of the memory. But red shirt or blue shirt becomes less important.

FRIEDMAN: Right, so events that are non-emotional actually take the backseat, and emotionally salient, important memory has precedence. And there's an evolutionary reason why that's the case. We have to be able to remember things in our environment that threaten us and that are dangerous to us. What color it was, when it happened is less important than the fact that it's a threat.

CAMEROTA: I have been fascinated, obviously, as so many people have over these past couple of weeks because I'm the same age as Christine Blasey Ford. And I remember being 15, and I remember certain parties, vividly. I remember who was there. I could tell you basically what date they were.

Is there something about being a teenager, is there something about that time where our, you know, transmitters are more open and things are indelibly seared in our memory, or is that just me?

FRIEDMAN: I think there's a little of both. I mean, those are the years in which people -- you know, teenagers are notorious experience seekers, and they're likely to have experiences like this. We are at our cognitive height when we're in our late teens. And then everything is downhill cognitively after that. But this can happen at any point. Anyone can be traumatized and have permanent memory at any age.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Richard Friedman, thanks so much for explaining the science of memory. It's really fascinating. Thanks for being here.

FRIEDMAN: Thank you for having me.

CAMEROTA: John.

BERMAN: Fascinating discussion there.

All right, Alisyn.

For 18 months we've heard that no matter what the Russians did in the 2016 election, it did not change the outcome. But now a new academic report says not so fast. Evidence that without the Russians Donald Trump would not be president. Stay with us.

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