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Mueller Accuses Manafort of Lying to FBI After Plea Deal; Trump Campaigns for GOP Senator, Rails Against Mueller Probe; Trump Blasts GM for Plans to Close Plants; Trump Falsely Claims Tear Gas Not Used on Children at Border. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired November 27, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: The fact that Mueller's office drew this agreement up suggests they must have a pretty good reason for thinking that he's lying.

[05:59:29] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Obviously, we have a dispute about whether or not he did that. That's why we have courts, and that's why that matter will proceed.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: If he's lying there's something very big he's trying to hide.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are women and children out there. Using tear gas does not seem justified.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: In some cases, they are not the parents. They grab a child, because they think they're going to have certain advantages.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This whole thing is going out of control unnecessarily.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, November 27, 6 a.m. here in New York. Things are looking very festive.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The poinsettias are year. I've been growing them all year, and now I get to bring them out.

CAMEROTA: That's great.

BERMAN: They're completely real.

CAMEROTA: It is that time of year, and we begin with a development in the Russia investigation.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team says Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman, has breached his plea agreement. They accused Manafort of repeatedly lying to federal prosecutors after he pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate in their investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The special counsel's office claims Manafort's lies relieve them of all promises they made to Manafort. Manafort says he has provided truthful information. Both sides are calling on a judge to resolve this and sentence Manafort immediately.

BERMAN: This raises all kinds of questions about the investigation. Just how much does Robert Mueller know to keep catching people in lies?

And the flip side of that is why would Paul Manafort lie to the special counsel, even after making a deal? Is the truth just so damning it's worth risking more jail time, or is he pardon shopping?

Meanwhile, overnight while the president campaigned for the remaining contestant Senate seat, he lost more ground in the House. A Democrat took the lead over an incumbent in California, putting a net gain of 40 seats for Democrats within reach. That is a lot.

CAMEROTA: OK. We have a lot to talk about, so let's bring in former counsel to the U.S. assistant attorney general, Carrie Cordero; CNN political analyst David Gregory; and former FBI senior intelligence adviser Philip Mudd.

Guys, let's start with this Manafort news. Carrie Cordero, how unusual is this after someone makes a plea deal, which generally is supposed to save their hide from some longer prison term, that they would then lie to investigators in such a flagrant way that investigators would figure it out?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it's not the most common thing in the world in a big major investigation like this, but it isn't so unusual for Paul Manafort.

Remember, earlier in this case, he actually was pulled back from his supervised release, because it turned out that he had violated those terms. He had been writing op-eds. He had been witness-tampering. And so several months ago, he was in somewhat of a similar situation.

Then he went through with the trial in Virginia, was convicted and was facing this next trial in D.C. when he agreed to this plea agreement.

So I think the keyword that you both used in your opening is lying. Paul Manafort was -- was charged originally with crimes that involved lying. Lying to banks, lying to the IRS, lying to federal government agents. And so it's not wholly unsurprising to me that now he was lying to federal investigators and prosecutors again.

BERMAN: Liars lie, seems to be the message you're sending right there.

Phil Mudd, you have worked with Robert Mueller. Another possible message this sends is the special counsel's team has a lot of information, so much information that it can catch a lot of people if they try to veer away from the truth. Is that what you're seeing here?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Well, I see a couple of things. You nailed one of the. You don't want to go in front of a judge and accuse somebody who's got a plea deal of lying unless you really have the goods.

Remember, we've had -- we've had people who have already pled guilty to lying: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos. So I'm going to assume that Mueller has a lot of stuff that -- that Manafort doesn't know about.

But let me echo what Carrie said. Arrogance is like alcohol. It makes you stupid. We have somebody who went in against the special counsel for that trial in Alexandria, Virginia, and lost, somebody who, as Carrie said, went into probation and decided he had to tamper with witnesses. How stupid can you be?

I think people are going to read a lot into this, that Manafort has a lot to -- a lot to hide. I think this story is simpler. He simply is looking in the mirror and saying, "I'm starter than the fed guys," and repeatedly, the answer, John, is he's not.

CAMEROTA: But David, the other option is that he's sly like a fox and that he knows that he can lie, because maybe President Trump is going to pardon him and maybe he knows that.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And the question is what is he lying about? What does he know that might be important?

As has been said, Robert Mueller has a lot of information from a lot of different sources. He's not going to be shy about pinging people for lying. He's making that very clear, which creates a lot of pressure on people who think they can innocently explain something or explain themselves out of some kind of trouble, and that the special prosecutor is making very clear.

But you know, Mueller [SIC] is someone who they had on the hook, they had convicted and that they were still willing in a second case to do a deal with in order to get information that may plug in into some other areas. We're still kind of grabbing in the dark here at at what that something big could be, if anything at all.

But the reality is that the special prosecutor is going to turn up that pressure at the very least or make it clear to everyone else who's involved in talking to the special prosecutor that they will not hesitate to call somebody out for lying and to move forward with a harsher penalty.

BERMAN: And Carrie, something else really interesting just happened here with the fact that the special counsel is now saying Paul Manafort breached the agreement that they had.

The special counsel can now lay out before the judge during sentencing how Paul Manafort lied. So this is a Matt Whitaker-proof way, if the special counsel wants to get information public about his investigation, isn't it? Doesn't he lay out now exactly where these lies were?

CORDERO: He can, but he's not obligated to reveal more than he wants to reveal. So he could reveal specific things that the government agents know that Manafort lied about. He could choose to be more expansive about that, or he could choose to pick several things and explain those.

He doesn't -- I don't think he's necessarily under an obligation to explain everything the government agents know. So I want to be a little bit cautious about thinking that this is, oh, the aha moment where now the country is going to learn every single thing it wants to know about what the special counsel's office knows, through the vehicle of the Manafort documents that are going to come forward.

But it does show that the special counsel's office and the investigators always know when people are lying. I mean, they have so much other evidence that they're not reliant on what an individual tells them.

And that's the lesson, I think, for the broader investigation. Nearly -- I think almost everybody in this case that has been charged has been charged, in some way, with lying to investigators. So that, I think, bodes for the rest of the investigation and for those who are watching the investigation perhaps in the White House, that there's a lot of background information, evidence through other means -- digital evidence, messages, e-mails, all sorts of other things -- that the investigators have in their possession.

CAMEROTA: Phil, a couple things. No. 1, what do you think of the pardon theory, that that's why he can lie with impunity? And also knowing this now, does it taint everything else that Manafort told investigators?

MUDD: I don't buy the pardon theory. I think the theory, as I mentioned earlier, has to do with what I witnessed over the course of years in investigations. That's the human nature theory, somebody saying, "I can beat the feds," despite the fact that he already has lost in court.

I'm sorry, what's the second issue?

CAMEROTA: It doesn't -- now that they're saying that he's a liar, does it taint everything else that he's given them? Can -- can Mueller's investigators go into court and say, "Well, here is what Paul Manafort told us," if they've already established him as a liar?

MUDD: I think it might taint him as a witness, but I don't think it taints him in terms of his value to the special counsel.

Look, if you're the special counsel, you have, for example, a huge volume of financial documents. And Manafort is sitting there, saying this is how to interpret this document. This is who was the player on this decision. This is what was happening during the campaign. And then the Mueller team can triangulate. That is, get other witnesses, other documents in e-mails to confirm what Manafort is saying. I think as a witness a defense attorney obviously is going to go after him. But as an investigator, the kinds of color commentary he can provide on things like documents is really still valuable.

BERMAN: Right. Although I doubt he's going to be providing any more of it going forward, given where things stand right now.

David Gregory, the president has handed in his homework assignment. He answered the questions, the written questions, that were given to him by the special counsel about alleged collusion.

I just wonder if you're the president and his legal team how you're looking at this right now, given that the special counsel just said, "Do you know what? Paul Manafort, we caught you lying again. We catch people lying. It's what we do."

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BERMAN: Do you think they're completely sanguine in the White House this morning?

GREGORY: No, I don't think they've had a totally restful night throughout this whole process, and that's just focused on what the president is saying, at least in written form, to the special prosecutor. There's so much they don't know about.

Think about the former White House counsel, Don McGahn, who has cooperated for hours and hours with the special prosecutor. There's so much they don't know.

I think the only thing that heartens lawyers close to the president himself is the ability for him to separate himself from others who might have been part of the campaign but more tangentially so. The Roger Stones, people like that who he could say, "Well, I don't know what they -- what they were up to."

The real concern has to be where and how the special prosecutor is putting together all the evidence with Trump as president, potentially obstructing justice as a political matter, even if he's not charged with a crime.

CAMEROTA: OK. David, Phil, Carrie, thank you very much.

BERMAN: All right. President Trump back on the campaign trail in the midst of all of this. He was stumping for an embattled Republican senator, Cindy Hyde-Smith, in Mississippi. She faces a tight runoff election today against Mike Espy.

[06:10:00] The president also used last night's rallies to slam the CEO of General Motors, General Motors just announcing big jobs cuts, and he made false claims about migrants at the border.

Our Joe Johns live at the White House with the very latest -- Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. The president throwing his full support behind the Republican in that

Mississippi race, hoping to seal the deal, in fact, in a race that should not have even been close in ruby-red Mississippi. The president traveling there in a racially divisive atmosphere, only underscoring what a bitter and often ugly election season this was, now coming to a close.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: Cindy is so important, so respected. We've got to send her back.

JOHNS (voice-over): President Trump barnstorming Mississippi in support of Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, despite a series of racially-charged controversies plaguing her campaign.

SEN. CINDY HYDE-SMITH (R), MISSISSIPPI: If he invited me to a public hanging, I'd be on the front row.

TRUMP: She certainly didn't mean it. And as I understand it, she's already apologized.

JOHNS: The president defending Hyde-Smith and directly attacking her challenger, the Democrat, Mike Espy.

TRUMP: He's far left. Oh, he's out there. How does he fit in with Mississippi? Just explain -- I mean, I could go over this, but how does he fit in?

JOHNS: The remarks coming hours after a pair of nooses were found at Mississippi's state capitol. Espy supporters hoping to turn anger into turnout.

MIKE ESPY (D), MISSISSIPPI SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: I need Republicans. I need independents. I need those who never voted before all to come out tomorrow to vote for me.

JOHNS: President Trump's push to keep this Senate seat in Republican hands comes after Democrats picked up their 38th seat in the House after Utah's Mia Love conceded her race. Meanwhile, President Trump defending the use of tear gas against migrants on the border.

TRUMP: The tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself. It's very safe.

JOHNS: And threatening to close border crossings for, quote, "a long time" if violence continues. President Trump also denying that women and children were teargassed, despite pictures clearly showing otherwise.

TRUMP: We don't use it on children.

JOHNS: Later in the day, the Trump administration claiming that children were being used as human shields.

TRUMP: In some cases, you know, they're not the parents. These are pieces, they call them grabbers. They grab a child.

JOHNS: The border clash is coming amid troubling signs about the U.S. economy. General Motors announcing they will cut as many as 14,000 jobs in North America and shutter five plants by the end of next year. The news leaving employees and local officials stunned.

MICHELLE RIPPLE, GM LORDSTOWN WORKER: It was quiet. Nobody -- everybody was so shocked they didn't move. They couldn't do nothing.

JOHNS: The president criticizing GM's CEO and downplaying the development.

TRUMP: The previous administration, they said manufacturing is never coming back. It's gone. You'd need a magic wand. Well, we found the magic wand, and that's actually -- that's actually going to be increasing by a lot.

JOHNS: Lawmakers in areas impacted by GM's plant closures pushing back.

REP. TIM RYAN (D), OHIO: You're talking 50,000, 60,000 people; and the president says everything is fine. He's got the magic wand. It's insulting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: Today Republican leaders from Capitol Hill are expected to come here to the White House to meet with the president. Also today the first media briefing in almost a month. That, of course, is eagerly awaited.

Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK, Joe, thank you very much for all of your reporting from the White House.

So as voters head to the polls in Mississippi's Senate runoff today, Democrats in the House continue to pick up seats. So how big is the blue wave now? Hmm? We'll get into that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:17:15] BERMAN: All right. The midterm elections were exactly three weeks ago today, but they're still counting votes in some places.

CAMEROTA: Why is that? How is that?

BERMAN: California is a big state, and a lot of the votes come in late and by mail. And Democrats are continuing to make gains. Look at this. This happened overnight.

In California's 21st Congressional District, the Democrat, T.J. Cox, is pulling ahead of the Republican congressman, David Valadao. This is an incumbent Republican congressman. It's in a district that Hillary Clinton won. Yet, that race was actually called by many folks, including us, frankly --

CAMEROTA: Yes?

BERMAN: -- on election night --

CAMEROTA: But with --

BERMAN: -- for the Republican.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: But as more votes come in, the Democrat has taken the lead there.

CAMEROTA: OK. Hold on a second. This is more votes coming in or they're just still counting?

BERMAN: Still counting.

CAMEROTA: Amazing.

BERMAN: Still counting.

Also, another race in New Mexico, this race the Democrat has been in front for a few weeks now. It is still not officially called. In Utah Republican member of Congress Mia Love, she conceded to Democrat Ben McAdams yesterday; and that gives Democrats a net gain of 38 seats, rock-solid seats so far. If these two other seats go the way they're leaning right now, that would mean 40. Forty is a big round number.

Joining us now White House reporter of Bloomberg News, Toluse Olorunnipa; CNN senior political analyst John Avlon; and David Gregory back with us.

Forty seats, Toluse, that's a lot of seats for the Democrats. It is more than we thought they gave three weeks ago. And it is, in many people's eyes, what constitutes a big blue wave.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Yes, it undercuts what President Trump and the White House have been trying to say about how they won so many seats on the Senate side and how the Democrats weren't able to have a big, blue wave on the House side. It's clear when you get into the number 40, that that's clearly a blue wave. That's clearly a big shift in power.

And it shows how places like California, like parts of New England have been blood baths for the Republicans. They've been completely wiped out. In Orange County, they lost several seats across the state of California. They lost several seats in places like New Jersey.

The suburbs were a really tough place for Republicans, in part because of the president's unpopularity. People have been turned off. A number of Republican and moderate voters have been turned off by the president, despite the fact that we have a pretty strong economy. His rhetoric, his approach to issues being so divisive, has turned off so many people. And that's part of the reason Democrats were able to make huge gains. And now the president is continuing that same type of language, where you saw him at a rally yesterday, talking about immigration, talking about divisive issues, not focusing on the economy. And that's part of the reason Democrats are feeling like they're in a strong position going, not only after 2018 but going into 2020, as well.

CAMEROTA: David, I mean, it is remarkable to watch Democrats continue to pick up seats at this late date. I think the president feels that he kept the Senate. That means he keeps the Supreme Court nominations, that he's all good.

[06:20:00] GREGORY: Well, federal judges, there's no question it's very important and what gave him some room to argue a measure of a split decision, but what's happened in the House is so remarkable, you simply can't ignore it.

What -- what the exit polling shows us, what the conditions in the country show us, is that the president is the incredible shrinking president when it comes to his political support.

Instead of becoming president and doing as so many would try to do, which would be to expand his political following, he's kept it so narrow. He's kept it small. He remains so unpopular. It's a very difficult way to try to capture reelection.

And there's no question that he's thinking about that as he thinks to the future. You can turn out a big base vote, but he's got to be looking at those areas where Democrats won seats in states and in congressional districts that he had won, that are evidence of his core support from 2016 that are slipping away.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Just to put some apples to apples on it to really define the wave we're dealing with in '18, because the Senate seat's its own map.

Eight percent is the gap that Democrats had over Republicans in terms of total votes. That's well over the 2010 wave, the Tea Party wave for Republicans, for example. Despite the fact that Republicans won over 60 seats in that election.

So that's really an indication of the surge you're seeing. And a lot of it came in these pivot counties and pivot districts that Trump had done very well at in flipping in 2016.

Let's talk about Ohio. This is what's called a segue. Trumbull County, which Trump won and flipped, where the Lordstown GM plant just closed, things like that make a real difference. So while the economy is doing well and Trump's unpopularity is its own sign of problems for the president, and his inability to build out the base, which we've seen transparently day after day after day, this election on the House level really crystallized the head winds that Republicans are --

BERMAN: Let me head to that. Two things: No. 1, the Gallup approval poll, which came out yesterday, showing the president's disapproval number at 60 percent, which is as high as it's ever been.

CAMEROTA: Isn't that pretty remarkable? I mean, up 10 percent since last month.

BERMAN: From a few weeks ago, yes.

It's a big deal. I mean, that's a big disapproval. The approval is right around where it's always been, but for some reason after the election more people coming out and saying they disapprove of the president.

It's not because of the GM news. I want to make that clear. But it came out the same day that the GM news did. I think this is incredibly dangerous, potentially, for the president. What's happening in manufacturing, in the auto industry, it's happening for a lot of reasons having to do with electric cars and automation and people not driving small cars anymore, Toluse.

But the president promised Ohio; he promised Michigan; he promised the Rust Belt that he would save manufacturing and bring in new manufacturing. And if this is the beginning of something that we're going to see more of, that will be a very hard argument for him to make.

OLORUNNIPA: Yes. Not only did he promise that he was going to bring these jobs back, he had already started to reclaim victory and say the jobs are already coming back. We are already seeing new jobs. And a lot of times, he has exaggerated gains and invented gains that haven't happened yet. And now we're seeing those chickens come home to roost with these announcements of plant closings.

For the president to have a 60 percent disapproval rating at a time when the economy is actually doing pretty well across the board. There are some pockets here and there of softening and potential warning signs of a recession in the future, but right now our unemployment is very low, and growth is pretty strong. For his disapproval rating to be at 60 percent is remarkable, and it shows how much he has been able to turn off moderate voters and voters who are not only worried about their pocket books but also worried about what's happening in the country: the divisive nature of his presidency; what's happening on immigration; how he's using issues to divide Americans.

I think that's part of what you're seeing in those numbers, and he doesn't seem to be turning the corner or changing his ways. So it's likely that those numbers will probably harden as we get closer to 2020, as well.

GREGORY: But if you look at this GM news, there's a couple things that I think are true at once. You could have auto workers who lose their job who could become big Trump supporters. Just because he hasn't delivered doesn't mean he isn't trying, doesn't mean he's not putting these companies on the defensive, doesn't mean that these folks don't feel he's fighting for them.

But I think the other things that are difficult for him is, yes, he's made promises that he hasn't been able to keep as this protectionist who's going to push people around him, threatening Mary Barra of GM that she's messing with the wrong guy, for a president to be threatening a CEO that way.

The other reality is think of what GM is doing. It's not just because of what's happening in the auto market, which is across -- across the industry. It's also the concern of a potential downturn that she's trying to protect the company against. It's that kind of head wind that is big trouble for the U.S. economy, for the markets and, of course, for any politician trying to run for reelection in that situation.

CAMEROTA: All right. I know you love the segue, so I'm going to give you one, John.

AVLON: Oh, please.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about --

AVLON: Let's hit that pitch.

[06:25:03] CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what's happening at the border, because the president said that there, you know, he once again didn't have facts; and he said that there were Border Patrol agents who were hurt.

BERMAN: Badly hurt.

CAMEROTA: Badly hurt, he said, by the people who are trying to cross the border. We had had the Border Patrol spokesperson on, the chief -- the chief patrol agent, who told us something quite different yesterday. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Were any of your agents hurt?

RODNEY SCOTT, CHIEF PATROL AGENT, SAN DIEGO SECTOR BORDER PATROL: So at least three agents were actually struck by rocks, but they were -- they were in tactical gear, so their helmets and their shields and their bulletproof vests actually protected them from the rocks. We did have a few vehicles that were damaged, some windows and quite a few dents, but none of the agents were seriously injured.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I don't know if that distinction is important, to tell you the truth, John. I think that this could still be a winning issue for the president, because to hear that your Border Patrol agents are being struck by rocks, not good.

All of us see the video of people attempting to storm the border. It doesn't look like it's all families. Yes, there are some mothers holding little kids, but there is a lot of unaccompanied men. And so I think the president will continue to be able to make hay of this, and it will win for him. BERMAN: Is that a line worth telling? Are you suggesting it's a lie

worth telling, then, to say that the agents were badly hurt when we had the chief tell us they weren't?

CAMEROTA: I think people have begun to just metabolize the president's lies and knows that he always uses hyperbole and exaggerates it.

AVLON: Well, I --

CAMEROTA: The heart of the story is that there's a problem at the border, and he's going to be able to run with that.

AVLON: That may be the heart of the story, but let's not buy into truthiness and treat it -- and normalize it. I mean, what we have here is the guy running the border agents yesterday saying something very different than what the president said at a rally. And who are you going to believe? The guy on the ground or the president throwing red meat to a crowd? I'm going to go with the guy on the ground.

Of course, it's not good to have agents have pelted with rocks, but it also gets the backdrop of the president encouraging people at the border to fire on protesters who throw rocks. It's -- it's also against a backdrop of using tear gas against children.

CAMEROTA: He's not encouraging him. He's saying that "I've given them permission. If you're hit by rocks --"

AVLON: I mean, you know, I think the history of leadership would indicate that's not saying don't use lethal force. And tear gas itself is a different -- a different standard than we've seen used against people and children at the border.

CAMEROTA: Is it? Because you know that there's all of this information out there that in 2013 the Obama administration also used tear gas at the border.

AVLON: Look, this -- policing the border is difficult. There are responsibilities in government. But the president has created an entirely different atmosphere that's politically toxic around this intentionally. And he doubled down, tripled down on it last night at the rallies. This is part of his strategy.

And again, the big picture here isn't just the president trying to politicize immigration using fear and anger. We've seen that over and over. It's not about him distorting the facts. We've seen that over and over.

It's also that, you know, there's an election today, folks. We're talking about, you know, three weeks ago today, we're still counting votes. They have a runoff in Mississippi today where, you know, we haven't had an African-American elected since Reconstruction, and it's a fascinating race. So all eyes on Mississippi. If you live down there, no matter who you vote for, go out and vote.

CAMEROTA: On that note, Thank you very much. BERMAN: Thank you all.

Tensions escalating between Ukraine and Russia over a clash at sea. The Kremlin now says Ukraine's latest move could make things worse. Are they on the brink of war? And let me, by the way, add the president has refused to condemn Russia for this.

CAMEROTA: Also terrifying moments caught on video. This one is a nail biter. A man goes hang-gliding and ends up clinging for dear life. We show you his harrowing ordeal ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)