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Crisis Over Journalist's Apparent Murder Engulfs White House; Robert Mueller's Quiet Period Has Not Been Very Quiet. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 18, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not giving cover at all. Saudi Arabia has been a very important ally.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to send a powerful message here, not one that tries to create spin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pompeo told MBS he has to own this situation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The trip was more about getting stories to coordinate than a fact-finding mission.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Sources believe there could be more criminal indictments.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: They brought in Paul Manafort for at least nine interviews.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People close to the president cannot imagine that he's going to be indicted.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going through the quiet before a storm.

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Thursday, October 18, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill with us this morning.

Great to have you here.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

BERMAN: This morning, the White House officials and their friends in Saudi Arabia, they're trying to get their story straight, literally according to the "Washington Post," trying to explain away a murder. "The Post" reports that the Trump administration and the Saudi royal family are searching for a, quote, "mutually-agreeable explanation" of events that led to the apparent murder and dismemberment of "Washington Post" journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

A mutually-agreeable version that "The Post" says does not implicate the Saudi crown prince, who happens to be friends with Jared Kushner.

So what exactly does that mean? Mutually-agreeable version, especially, given new reporting in "The New York Times" that U.S. and European intelligence agencies are, quote, "increasingly convinced" of the Saudi prince's culpability in Khashoggi's apparent murder. So does this mutually-agreeable version of events mean factual version of events.

Listen to what the secretary of state said overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POMPEO: I don't want to talk about any of the facts. They didn't want to either and that they wanted to have an opportunity to complete this investigation in a thorough way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Leave the facts out of this. In just a few hours, Secretary Pompeo will brief the president about his meetings with Saudi and Turkish leaders. The secretary has been criticized for these warm smiles in the photo op with the Saudi crown prince. Perhaps because of that, sources wanted CNN to know that the secretary was tougher behind closed doors. The source claimed that Pompeo told the Saudi crown prince his future as king is in peril if he does not own this situation. So that tough talk is in contrast not just to the smiley meeting he had there but the consistent, dismissive tone from the president himself.

HILL: And as we count down to that meeting later this morning between the president and Secretary Pompeo, a reminder this morning that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation is still quietly moving ahead.

In just the last month, Mueller's team has had at least nine meetings, we learned, with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his attorneys. White House insiders are expecting more indictments after the midterms, with a report likely to be released by the end of the year.

All of this as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein granted a rare, to put it mildly, interview with "The Wall Street Journal" in which he insists the probe is, quote, "appropriate" and "independent" and "the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted."

BERMAN: All right. Let's discuss all the developments. Joining us this morning, CNN White House correspondent Abby Phillip; CNN senior political analyst John Avlon and "New York Times" op-ed columnist and CNN contributor Frank Bruni.

Abby Phillip, a mutual agreeable look at the events. That's what the White House and the Saudi royal family are trying to come up with, according to "The Washington Post." I'm not sure about this, but another way you could say that is cover story.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It is another way of putting it, and I think that's a huge risk for this administration to be seen as trying to help the Saudis cover up an alleged murder, a dismemberment in their consulate of someone who is a journalist, a columnist who wrote about free speech, wrote about the power of being able to speak freely in that part of the word.

I mean, this could be, I think, a huge blow to the United States's foreign policy, their position in the world. But it is all happening because President Trump is not comfortable with the idea of blowing up this relationship over this one incident.

He's fixated on two things. He's fixated on the fact that Khashoggi was not an American citizen. He's also fixated on this idea that somehow we need the Saudis for financial reasons, that we need them to keep oil prices down, that we need them to buy arms from us and not from other people. And those issues have prevented the president from trying to look at the broader picture here; and that's why we're in this position.

Mike Pompeo is over here. He's a key adviser to the president. But he is a key advisor because he's known to be able to carry out the president's objectives. And I think that's exactly what he did yesterday when he said, "We don't want to talk about the facts. We want the Saudis to essentially investigate themselves," which I think we all know is not a likely scenario for a fair and thorough investigation.

HILL: It's also fascinating, too, that this pushback and this seaming reversal in some ways from the administration came after the blowback, Frank, for those pictures, for the smiling pictures, for the, you know, "Let's leave the facts out of this."

All of a sudden, they're starting to realize that that is probably not the picture that they want out there in terms of how the administration is dealing with this. That in itself is -- it's somewhat head scratching.

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's a pretty late realization. I mean, from -- for days now, from the beginning, we have got the sense that what the president and his aides want to do is help the Saudis launder their representation somehow in the wake of this. Mutually agreeable version, let's call that what it is. It's a lie.

[06:05:03] And what I find sort of confounding here is President Trump wouldn't be the first president to put strategic interests ahead of human rights. Why isn't he denouncing the Saudis in public? And then, if he's concerned about the relationship, picking up the phone and saying in private, "Guys, you know I've got to do this. You know that. But, you know, you're OK."

Instead, he's actually, in a bizarrely transparent way, saying, "I want to help these guys find a reputational way out of this." You know, "I want to say all this ridiculous stuff about guilty until proven innocent" rather than coming out and saying, "This is a sickening situation. This is not something we endorse in this country. This is not something we are willing to turn a blind eye to." He's in public, actually showing us how much he wants to help the crown prince find a way out of this?

BERMAN: It is the most confounding question here. Why? Why? Why is the president doing this?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Because he's not a strategic actor. He's an impulsive actor. And in that, he's incredibly transparent about his transactional relationships.

This is the key to what they thought was going to be the Mideast peace, their big plan. They were going to leverage Saudi and use that relationship. But we don't have an ambassador to Saudi. That's basically been outsourced to the president's son-in-law.

So I raise that question, too. Where is Jared Kushner? When will we hear from him? Will we see the alleged WhatsApp conversations he's had with the crown prince.

When they're hanging out on the yacht, how does that juxtapose with what Khashoggi's last hours and minutes inside the consulate? Because this is a laundering effect. This is -- this is a cover story. And the administration is complicit in a way that is -- would normally be the stuff of pulp fiction.

HILL: Well, as you pointed out, too, in your column -- I'm going to quote you here, Frank -- "Jared Kushner is integral when there's hope of credit, invisible when there's certainty of blame." You call this his usual moral laryngitis, the fact that he is now totally MIA. I mean, who knows if he's still WhatsApp messaging with MBS, which we've learned he may have done, but at this point he is absolutely not in public view.

BRUNI: The Jared-orchestrated whisper network goes into overdrive when he's supposedly doing something good. So when there was hope that the Saudis would be some great partner in some delusional Middle East peace plan, we were hearing all the time about how Jared was managing masterfully this relationship with the crown prince, how close they were. Now we're hearing absolutely nothing.

And this is the classic Jared Kushner having it both ways, right? Wanting to be seen as this incredibly useful resource inside the administration whenever there's not egg on his face, and then running for cover when it's clear that he was acting well beyond his expertise or anything he knew about.

BERMAN: But -- but Frank, Nikki Haley says that Jared is such a hidden genius that no one understands.

BRUNI: Oh, yes, and Nikki Haley has no conflict of interest there. There's no reason she might be saying nice things about Jared other than the truth.

BERMAN: Abby, at the White House right now, our Kaitlan Collins and others on your team have reported that Jared is intentionally sort of drifting back into the drapes when it comes to the situation in Saudi Arabia right now. Why?

PHILLIP: Well, in part because he understands that this carries a huge amount of risk for him personally and also for the administration.

One of the most interesting things that we learned early in this process was that there was a phone call between -- between Jared Kushner and MBS pretty early on in this process. MBS called him to try to -- to pre-spin the situation.

And also on that phone call was John Bolton, the national security adviser. That's, in part, because the administration was aware that they could not be seen as having back channels in this -- in this case. They needed to signal to MBS that this was going to be a problem that needed to be figured out.

And Kushner is stepping back, and perhaps -- I mean, there's another explanation for this. It could also be a sign to MBS that there is not going to necessarily be a get-out-of-jail-free, totally free card here, vis-a-vis Jared Kushner. That could be the way that he sees it, that by stepping back, he's sort of reducing the opportunities for these kinds of back channels.

But it could also just be too little too late. This has been a relationship that has been going on for so long, and it has created this environment in which I think the Saudis believe they could get away with a lot of things, including this, with this administration.

AVLON: This is all happening at a terribly inconvenient time for geopolitical strategy, but that's why, you know, generally, it's a bad idea for countries and crown princes who allegedly sanctioned the murder or journalists. And, you know, you can't just spin away, you know, a dismemberment of an individual. It's tough to put that genie back in the bottle.

And so for -- you know, what Abby is describing is to sort of, you know, make your own wrist-slap arrangement that they hope they could get away with, with the Saudis. That's no longer possible. That's no longer operative.

They are betting big that this will somehow pass, that they can contain the damage. And look, it's a kingdom. He's the crown prince, you know. This is not like he's subject to international law here. But the plans of having this all go away as efficiently as they allegedly disposed of the body of Khashoggi, that's not going to happen anymore.

HILL: It's also -- I do think it's important to remind people of the fact that this is a kingdom, as you point out. And what's fascinating on another level is whether there's a real belief within the administration that, if there was tough talk on the part of Secretary Pompeo, that they would listen in Saudi Arabia.

"OK, so you're telling me, I'm the guy with all of the power who's been allowed to do whatever I want. See Yemen for example. OK, sure, I'm going to listen to you now, and I am going to shape up, because otherwise, I'm going to be shipped out."

I mean, the reality of that, too -- and I'm not trying to be flip about it, but that reality is, you know, I mean, what are the chances?

BERMAN: Yes. And these are the same people who thought they could get away with murder -- allegedly, depending on how the story plays out. Frank, again, your paper, "The New York Times," this morning reports that U.S. and European intelligence increasingly convinced of the crown prince's culpability here, which I don't think is surprising. I don't think that's surprising.

The president yesterday was asked directly if the FBI would go, and he dodged the question in such a dismissive way. He said, "Why would the FBI go? It's not an American here."

Our Josh Campbell, who of course, worked for the FBI, knows that the FBI often goes and helps out in situation like this, because they have expertise in these matters. I mean, they could do it if they wanted to.

BRUNI: Dismissive has been his reaction in all -- there was that moment yesterday when he was saying the recording that Turkish officials have said they had, he said maybe it exists; possibly it exists, probably. I mean, he went through so any iterations.

BERMAN: Let's play that.

BRUNI: It's unbelievable.

BERMAN: We have that. Let's play that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you asked for this audio video intelligence that the Turks --

TRUMP: We've asked for it, if it exists. We asked for it. Yes. We've asked for it, if it exists.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you surprised that they haven't turned it over?

TRUMP: No, I'm not sure yet that it exists. Probably does. Possibly does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: You know.

BRUNI: There's this dismissiveness and this glibness in the context of a journalist who was seemingly tortured, murdered and dismembered, I cannot understand doesn't realize how perverse his behavior looks here.

AVLON: Because this is an irritation and an annoyance for him. this is not a priority from a position of moral principles. This is getting in the way of big deals getting done.

BRUNI: I think he's reading this one really, really wrong. I mean, yes, many Americans are tuned out, but if you're tuned in, there's no way you look at this behavior and you say our president is a strong man. He looks so weak.

PHILLIP: He also doesn't think that this is, in the grand scheme of things, necessarily worth it. I think the president -- every time he's asked about, you know, "What about Vladimir Putin, you know, silencing his critics?" He says, "Well, everybody does that."

The president views this as just one more thing, one more of the dirty tricks that people all over the world play, and he's actually included in the United States in that, and he's not necessarily wrong about that, but he does look at it that way. And I think for him this is one person. He's not even an American. Why should I -- he literally said -- this is not me making this up; he said this in the Oval Office yesterday. He said we -- we would make a mistake to potentially sacrifice U.S. jobs just for this one thing, that it would be -- only be hurting ourselves.

That's why he's reacting this way. And it might be callous or, you know, short-sighted, but I think the president views it, as in his words, putting America first by prioritizing certain things over the lives of one person who was not an American citizen.

BERMAN: Frank, you wanted a last view on this?

BRUNI: I would say Abby mentioned Vladimir Putin and what Trump has said about Putin. It's by saying things like that about Putin, it's by shrugging off the brutality of North Korean dictator, or Vladimir Putin, that he gives a signal to the Saudis that they could do something like this and perhaps get away with it.

AVLON: And Putin's own world view is consistent, by saying, "Everybody is dirty. I'm going to prove to you. And any time America tries to stand up for human rights, they're hypocrites." The president of the United States is now echoing that line.

BERMAN: It's very interesting you're bringing up Russia and Vladimir Putin. Why? Because Special Counsel Robert Mueller has been quite busy in the last few weeks. Could more indictments in the Russia investigation be on the way? We have remarkable new details about the flurry of activity at federal courthouses, coming up.

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[06:18:02] HILL: Robert Mueller's team notoriously tight-lipped, but that does not mean, however, things are actually quiet when it comes to the Russia investigation. A flurry of activity behind the scenes has many expecting action from the special counsel to come soon after the midterm elections.

Let's bring back John Avlon and Frank Bruni. Also joining us former federal prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Laura Coates. And Laura, I want to start with you on this. Just based on the few things that we've learned here. So in just the past month, because this guilty plea was, what, September 14 for Paul Manafort, nine times he and his attorneys have gone to Mueller's office for meetings. Is that high in terms of the number of meetings that they have had, in your view?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It is, because, of course, remember, up to that point they've already been able to build a case against him for at least two trials. They were able to get rid of one, but they had a conviction involving Paul Manafort. So you can imagine all the documentation they had before, all the information they had in their hands about his own culpability in his own separate cases.

Now they need to have nine additional meetings in addition what they already know about him from trials? What do they want to know? It's not about his own personal illegality, of course. It would be about things involving other people. So to have somebody invest that amount of time, nine separate meetings, somebody already had information on, is a very high number, especially in that short amount of time.

BERMAN: And we also know that the Trump legal team has been answering written questions about collusion. You know, and Frank, we don't know what is happening behind the scenes because, unfortunately for us, the Mueller team doesn't leak.

BRUNI: Right.

BERMAN: But we know what we see. And you see this remarkable flurry of activity at the courthouses, and then you see out of the blue, "The Wall Street Journal," if you can get behind the pay wall. Rod Rosenstein, who doesn't talk either --

BRUNI: Right.

BERMAN: -- doesn't sit down for interviews, all of a sudden invites a "Wall Street Journal" reporter into his office for a sort of state of -- state of play and says, "'I committed I would ensure the investigation was appropriate, independent and reached the right result, whatever it might be,' Mr. Rosenstein said, referring to comments he made during his confirmation hearing. 'I believe I've been faithful to that.'"

That's a lot of things happening all at once in plain view.

[06:20:04] BRUNI: Well, I think things have been happening all along, and we all turned away, you know, and spent several weeks focusing on Brett Kavanaugh's, you know, embattled -- embattled nomination to the Supreme Court. We've been focusing on the Saudis over the last week.

Mueller has never stopped working. I mean, while all of -- while we've been looking in other directions, he has continued to chip away at this.

Nine meetings, that's a really high number, as Laura notes. Mueller has managed to get everybody, seemingly, he wanted cooperation from. He's gotten cooperation from everybody singing. And so not only are we getting closer to the moment when he finally releases something, which yes, will be after the midterms, he's going to release something spectacularly thorough. That has become clearer and clearer with each passing week.

And so yes, this flurry of activity is something we're paying attention to now. I think the flurry of activity goes back weeks. We just were looking in other directions.

BERMAN: And I think he has kept things on ice in terms of new convictions, new indictments -- indictments around the midterms. You know, there is this space where he did not want to be accused of influencing the election through new information. But it does raise the prospect that, once election day is over, however that goes down, that you're going to see a flurry of activity with possibly far- reaching consequences.

HILL: And there are also, you know, the other hints that we have, right? So two of the prosecutors working on the team have now gone back to their jobs at the DOJ. We are learning that prosecutors likely, as "The Wall Street Journal" is pointing out, likely are done with Michael Flynn. So perhaps we could see movement on the Michael Flynn front. And then, as you pointed out, too, as John brought up, these negotiations with the White House over the questioning, which all points to we are nearing a finish line.

BRUNI: It won't be later than February. I don't think it will be later than February, and I think it will be sooner.

BERMAN: The question is, is it like November 10?

BRUNI: There's a problem with that.

BERMAN: Why is there a problem with that?

BRUNI: What if Mueller comes out after the -- I mean, he clearly can't release anything now. what if he comes out after the midterms, and what he has to say is extremely damning to Donald Trump?

What if, on November 6, Republicans fare much better than is expected? You are going to have partisan reaction like nothing you've ever seen before, because people are going to say, "Wow, if voters had this information" --

AVLON: Yes.

BRUNI: "-- before November 6, they would not have behaved as they just did." And we think we're seeing partisan acrimony now. If that -- if it goes down that way, whoa.

COATES: But of course, you don't -- you don't want to have the repeat of Jim Comey --

AVLON: Right. COATES: -- who was weighing in and putting his thumb on the scale, purportedly, for trying to ensure the American people had all the information beforehand.

One of the things that's so respectable about the way that Mueller's team have conducted themselves is they acts as if there's no regard to the partisanship and the policy. Although it's a very, very political issue. And so it's a good thing that they're waiting to do so.

Having said that, I completely agree that there certainly are forthcoming indictments. You need only read Rod Rosenstein's comments about there being evidence to support that these were actually meritorious-based investigations. And as each person on the team is dispensed with, you have another box that's checked. And if you're telling me that there is evidence to support that these particular indictments and anything forthcoming are meritorious. And I'm expecting to have forthcoming indictments to suggest that you have evidentiary support.

And it's in direct contrast with what the president has said about this being a witch hunt all along. So perhaps Rod Rosenstein is saying to himself, "Well, if I'm leaving -- if Sessions is leaving after this mid-term election is over, and I'm leaving, I want the American people to know that there should be faith about the forthcoming report and indictments."

BERMAN: There's other things, too. Didn't even bring up Michael Cohen. And there's the A.P. reporting over the last day that he has been meeting with investigators over a range of subjects, including questions about the Trump Organization and finances there. And of course, when Michael Cohen is in the news the president can't help but comment about it.

So listen to what the president told the Associated Press about Michael Cohen. "He wasn't in trouble for what he did for me. He was in trouble for what he did for the other people. He represented me very little. It's a very low level. And what he was is also" -- I'm having a hard time reading this, because it's not complete sentences. "What he was is also a public relations person. And now if he wants to try and get a little bit lighter sentence for what he did, dot, dot, dot, totally uninvolved."

Of course, the problem with that is that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to something he did do for the president: paying off women hundreds of thousands of dollars to stay quiet about their alleged affairs. And he testified in open court that he did it at the behest of the president.

HILL: Oh, but the president also said he's absolutely lying. Don't forget. Also added that.

AVLON: Which time?

HILL: Well, this is in the A.P. interview: "He's absolutely lying," you know, even before he said he was a small time P.R. AVLON: I love the game of containment, right? It was, you know, Paul

Manafort had nothing to do with his campaign, you know, despite being chairman for a critical period. You know, Michael Cohen was sort of ubiquitously the consigliere to the president. Even on Air Force One, "Talk to Michael. Talk to Michael." Now, barely knew the guy.

I understand why this would be irritating to him, but you cannot spin your way out of the facts, especially once the wheels adjust a certain way and there are indictments. And that's just what we're going to be confronting. The president and the country will be confronting of results of these conversations. Because Cohen, to a large extent, had the keys to the kingdom in terms of information about the Trump Organization, as well as one of the people who allegedly spoke to the prosecutors, which is the CFO of the company.

[06:25:15] BERMAN: So Don McGahn, I guess the former White House counsel, last day at the White House without a going away party, as far as we know.

AVLON: No.

BERMAN: Look, Don McGahn got two Supreme Court justices. And I think that there are a lot of people in the Republican world who will look at that as a legacy unmatched by any other.

However, he also testified for some 30 hours maybe about the president and what went on there.

BRUNI: Well, and we're still wondering exactly what was said. That may have something to do with why there was no going-away party, John. Don't know. Maybe.

BERMAN: Laura, Don McGahn's absence as a White House counsel who has been cooperating, or at least testified to the special counsel, will he have a different role? Is he in a different position when he no longer works at the White House?

COATES: Well, he is. Because he won't have to have the same ideas of trying to placate somebody he largely may serve at the pleasure of. Now, he has the opportunity to be completely self-interested, if he wasn't already from the 30 hours of interviews that he did not tell the president about, and caught him kind of flat-footed about this very issue.

But remember, his legacy, albeit the idea of the Supreme Court justices, is also the idea that the White House counsel is not the personal attorney of the president of the United States. Their role is not to placate; their role is not to simply ensure that his particular hide is saved. In many ways, it's about the legacy of the presidency and the office itself.

And so I think he will have far more freedom to be forthcoming, without having to feel like he is being watched by other people, and have to parse what he's saying in different ways.

Having said that, he has not left much of a -- it's not a great job he's leaving behind for the future White House counsel. He has been the liaison for the Robert Mueller investigation up till now. He has been somebody who has advised the president against firing Robert Mueller, against firing or trying to dissuade Jeff Sessions from recusing in this post. Without that person there who may have been a gatekeeper or even a backstop, I wonder what the next person will be facing, if that person will be a marionette of the president of the United States, or will be an ardent supporter and advocate for the office of the presidency?

BERMAN: Laura, Frank, John, thank you very, very much.

COATES: Thank you.

HILL: Texas congressman, Beto O'Rourke trying to unseat Ted Cruz. The stakes are high. Both candidates stepping up their game as we enter into the final days of the campaign. We have a live report on that showdown in Texas. Next.

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