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Analysts Examine President Trump's Comments and Tweets about Mueller Probe; President Trump Heads to Buenos Aires for G20 Summit; Washington Post: Mueller Looking into Trump's Late Night Calls to Stone. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 29, 2018 - 8:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: -- of legal and political norm.

JOSHUA GREEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. It looks to all outward appearances like witness tampering. It looks like by floating the possibility of a pardon that he is attempting to get Manafort not to cooperate with prosecutors and therefore to protect the president.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So Jeffrey, you're the legal mind here. Presidents can pardon whomever they choose. But the difference is the time, that this is before the sentencing, this is before the jail time, and that makes it highly inappropriate.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Correct. And there is this mythology that the pardon power of the president is absolute and no one can question that in any way. Not true. The articles of impeachment that the House Judiciary Committee voted against Richard Nixon included an accusation that he abused the pardon process by talking about, and these are on the White House tapes, the possibility of using pardons to forestall the Watergate investigation.

CAMEROTA: Beforehand.

TOOBIN: Beforehand, not as egregious, frankly, as this. So, yes, the pardon power can be abused, and it can be an impeachable offense if the House of Representatives decides that. We are certainly not at that stage now. Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to get involved in impeachment. Jerry Nadler, the new incoming chairman of the Judiciary Committee doesn't want to get involved in it. But this is the kind of abuse of power that could lead to impeachment.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So what does it all mean, then, when you take a step back? Jonathan Martin, you say it appears that we are stumbling towards some sort of a showdown.

JONATHAN MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I think we are. I think if this president pardons Paul Manafort, if he pardons Roger Stone, he pardons his son, who could be at some point indicted here, I think that is going to force the hand of House Democrats next year when they have the majority, I think because their own base is going to demand it and most members are going to want to pursue this. And it just seems like if this president does intervene in these investigations by using his pardon power, that's going to create a show down with this new Democratic House and it's going to put the Senate Republicans on the spot.

CAMEROTA: Josh, I agree we're stumbling. We just don't know towards what. We get these nuggets, and they certainly seem to be coming more rapid fire this week. And so some of them are that we know that thanks to CNN's reporting that President Trump did have multiple late night calls with Roger Stone, one of his sort of unofficial advisers when he was a candidate, and that Roger Stone seemed to know a lot about WikiLeaks and seemed to be obsessed, as you've said, about WikiLeaks. We don't know what they talked about in these multiple calls during the time that WikiLeaks was doing these document dumps, and we say never know that.

GREEN: That's right. And Roger Stone has stated again and again that he and Trump did not discuss WikiLeaks. That may or may not be true. We just don't know. I think what all this does is give us a glimpse into what line of questioning or what line of investigation Mueller and his investigators are pursuing. And we also know from CNN's reporting that Trump has said he never discussed WikiLeaks with Stone and that he wasn't aware of the June 26th Trump Tower meeting. If Mueller has evidence to contradict that, that would be a big, big problem for President Trump. Of course, we're not going to know until Mueller shows his cards.

BERMAN: Well, to an extent he has shown some of his cards. And I think that is what is so different about this week. That is why it is more than just nuggets. Alisyn and I have been discussing this on and off camera for more than a day, and we differ slightly here. But Jeffrey, the Mueller team has told us they have evidence about this discussion between Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi about the e-mails and about contacts with WikiLeaks. We have seen in the document that the Mueller team has connected Roger Stone in writing to the president of the United States, then candidate Donald Trump. And we know from our reporting that that so unnerved the president and his legal team that they delayed their homework assignment, the take-home written examine of the questions he was supposed to respond to.

TOOBIN: I think people at home are probably having trouble keeping track of the cast of characters.

CAMEROTA: That makes three of us.

TOOBIN: And the game of telephone that went on between WikiLeaks and ultimately the future president of the United States. The point is Mueller is investigating collusion. I mean, this is the core of this investigation. Did the Russians through WikiLeaks help Donald Trump get elected president of the United States? And did Trump and his campaign facilitate or encourage that? That's the core of this investigation. Mueller seems to have made some progress at least in connecting those dots. How much progress we don't yet know.

[08:05:00] CAMEROTA: There it is. So J. Mart, that's what John and I are debating, which is, is something big going to happen this week? That's what all the punditry, every week, they say, this is it. Mueller is closing in, and then nothing happens.

MARTIN: I think for a period before the election, I think there was some intentional restraint to not put someone in the scale of the election. Now that that's over, I think there is this kind of baited breath anticipation about what's going to happen and when it's going to happen.

But he has now for over a year worked on his own schedule. He's not said anything at all really in public. And so I think it's hard to know what is going to happen. What we do know is that there is a changing of power on Capitol Hill, and the period of deference to this president and his conduct on all things, not just Mueller, but on all things, is coming to an end. So whatever Mueller does and whenever he does it, it's going to be met in a very different context on Capitol Hill next year than it would have last year. And I think that could create a real serious challenge for this president.

TOOBIN: And if I could just add a much narrower point. Tomorrow morning at 9:30, there is a court hearing in the Manafort case in the District of Columbia federal court. That will be at least one chance for Mueller's office to talk about where things stand with regard to Mueller and perhaps others.

CAMEROTA: What is supposed to be happening tomorrow?

TOOBIN: It's basically a status conference about sentencing, where the cooperation agreement is gone, and both sides have said it is time to proceed to sentencing. But the Mueller office has said nothing publicly, but they have often in court said --

CAMEROTA: Laid their cards out.

TOOBIN: Laid their cards on the table. So that is actually a moment where we will learn at least something of what's going on with the Mueller investigation.

BERMAN: Josh, you were looking like you were trying to jump in there.

GREEN: No. I'm just curious to know what Mueller's investigators reveal tomorrow morning as Jeff and everybody else is.

BERMAN: Then let me ask you this, because we haven't gotten to this yet. The president, we see what his state of mind is on Twitter to an extent.

CAMEROTA: That's our window, yes.

BERMAN: When he goes to bed he's tweeting about the investigation, one of the first things he's writing about in the morning. And the he retweets this image yesterday, which includes a bunch of Democrats but also includes the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, asking when do the trials for treason begin. This is a remarkable image.

GREEN: It is incredible. He is tweeting this own image of his attorney general. I believe he was asked about it by the "New York Post" afterward and essentially justified that retweet by saying he was upset that Rosenstein had appointed a special prosecutor, blames him for the Mueller investigation. So as appalling as the behavior is, it is pretty much in keeping with what we know about Donald Trump. The only thing I would point out or add to your point is that Trump's Twitter feed functions as a kind of Richter scale for whatever is going on in his psyche. And the growing number of alarming sounding tweets about Mueller and the investigation and the witch hunt and so on and so forth I think add to the evidence that we have, the circumstantial evidence, that something big is coming down the pike. Often we've seen int eh past Trump will tweet and be very upset, and then a bit of news will break later on and we'll look back and think, OK, that was why. So who knows what's coming? But maybe this indicates that something really is coming big and it's coming soon, and that Trump knows about it and that it's upset him.

CAMEROTA: Or maybe not.

TOOBIN: Or maybe not. Those are sort of the possibilities. Maybe. Maybe not. I think that sort of covers it.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Can I quote you on that? Wow. That's interesting. To Jonathan Martin's point, Adam Schiff who we had on yesterday, who will become the chair, we believe, after January of the House intel, the House intel, as we know, some have thought has not had a muscular approach under Devin Nunes. And Adam Schiff said that one of his top priorities, one of the first things that he's interested in, is finding out what that blocked number was that Don Jr. called after that Trump Tower meeting with Russians, and that he will have the power to do that, to actually find that out. And so that's interesting. Things might break free come January. But I don't know if before that they will.

TOOBIN: Certainly nothing is going to come out of the House of Representatives before January. And also, it's going to take time for them to gear up, staff up, do investigations. But the Mueller investigation is obviously very active right now. Tomorrow morning we'll start to learn something perhaps from --

(LAUGHTER)

TOOBIN: But as you point out, Alisyn, maybe, and maybe not.

BERMAN: Jeffrey, Josh, Jonathan, thank you all very much.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

All right, President Trump leaves for the G20 in about two hours. The Kremlin says that Vladimir Putin will meet with Mr. Trump on Saturday on the sidelines of the summit. We don't know anything from the White House yet. So will President Trump confront Vladimir Putin about Russian aggression? CNN's Michelle Kosinski is live in Buenos Aires with more. Hi, Michelle.

[08:10:09] MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Hi. Good morning. Yes, so we knew that this was a possibility. This seems to be the plan, at least coming from the Russian side. This is not going to be the one-on-one, closed-door meeting that we saw between Trump and Putin in Helsinki. So it is likely that others in the room, namely, the secretary of state, will raise this with Putin, will bring up this issue. It could be in a tough way. Remember, it was only this week that President Trump himself was saying that this meeting might not happen because of the Russian seizure of those Ukrainian ships.

So this is likely to be another topic, another point of contention between the U.S. and Russia, even though the president repeatedly stresses that he would like that relationship to be better. In Helsinki he seemed to be taking Putin's side on a number of points. So the world's eyes are going to be watching to see how Trump handles this meeting and what comes out of it.

He is going to have a number of tough meetings, including with the Chinese leader, President Xi. Just this morning the president is tweeting about trade. And we're also hearing that even leading up to the communique that comes out of the G20, this big document that all the nations get together and write and choose the language, these talks have been extremely difficult, and much of this pushback has been coming from the U.S. side.

First of all, on trade, the U.S. doesn't like references to just free trade. They insist that it be free and fair trade. And on climate change, another big topic here at the G20. The U.S. doesn't like references to the Paris climate deal, which this administration left. It also doesn't like any linkage between human, auto and industrial emissions and climate change. Other U.S. allies are pushing back on that. So it remains to be seen what that ultimately becomes once this gets started. Back to you guys.

BERMAN: All right, Michelle, thank you very, very much. A lot of big things to discussed and very important meetings for the president over the next few days.

CAMEROTA: And certainly a beautiful backdrop there in Buenos Airies. Oh, my goodness.

BERMAN: President Trump feeling the squeeze from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A close friend of Roger Stone, someone who has spoken to Mueller's team, joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:16:03] BERMAN: "The Washington Post" is picking up on CNN reporting that the special counsel has been looking at phone logs of conversations between President Trump when he was a candidate and conversations he had with Roger Stone, long-time friend and political operative.

Joining us now is Michael Caputo. He is a former aide to the Trump campaign, and he has been friends with Roger Stone for more than three decades.

Michael, thank you very much for being with us. You called roger stone a big brother, and you note while you don't have a joint agreement it is only because you haven't written it down. I just want our audience to know that. So you have known Stone for a long time. You worked on the campaign for a short time. Roger Stone and the president talked a lot. What kinds of thing that they talk about?

MICHAEL CAPUTO, FORMER ADVISER TO TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Well, I don't know. I wasn't a part of those conversations between Roger and the president. But Roger introduced me to the president in 1988. He consulted him on and off for a long, long time, started talking to him about running for president in 1988.

During the presidential campaign I was appointed in November as state director and the primary in New York. And I didn't participate in any calls between Roger and the president. He was already off the campaign at that time, and Roger didn't make a habit of sharing his conversations with the president with anybody.

BERMAN: So, Corey Lewandowski, who was the campaign manager for a long time told me yesterday that used to make him crazy when Roger would speak to the president because he would talk about wild, crazy things.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: When you would hear that then candidate Donald Trump was speaking to Roger Stone, what would your reaction be?

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: Well, it would drive me crazy. Roger Stone is a conspiracy theorist who makes up these crazy ideas, says crazy things only to recant them or say he didn't actually do what he said he did. And so, people like that I didn't think for helpful on the campaign, and so I didn't enjoy when Roger was calling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Is that an accurate description of the type of things that Roger Stone talks about?

CAPUTO: Well, Corey and Roger had a rivalry that went back to the first days that Corey Lewandowski walked into Trump Tower. Roger didn't like that Corey was hired as the campaign manager. Corey didn't like that Roger far predated him.

So, Corey has also said some nasty things recently about Sean Spicer and even myself. I wouldn't really rely upon Corey Lewandowski's opinion of Roger Stone.

BERMAN: Is it possible that Roger Stone discussed WikiLeaks with then candidate Donald Trump?

CAPUTO: If Roger Stone says he didn't, and that Trump says he never did, I believe the both of them. Roger Stone never spoke about WikiLeaks with me. So I don't believe he spoke about it with candidate Trump. BERMAN: Well, the problem with that if Roger Stone said it, I believe

him is this. You know, in April of 2017, Stone told "The Washington Post" he never met with the Russians. In June of '17, Stone told "The Washington Post" he did in fact meet with the Russians on May of 2016, and was offered dirt on Hillary Clinton or from someone who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton for $2 million.

Of course, in the fall, Roger Stone said he never spoke to Steve Bannon about WikiLeaks. And then it turned out days later he had spoken to Steve Bannon about WikiLeaks. Roger Stone, also Jerome Corsi asked him to write a memo describing something that didn't happen.

So, can Roger Stone be taken at his word?

CAPUTO: I understand what you are saying. In fact, I didn't remember that meeting between Roger and that Russian scam artist in May either. I had to refresh my memory and supplement my testimony before the House of Representatives on that meeting.

You know, these investigators are asking and, by the way, you as journalists are asking all of us to remember things that are two years ago. And Corsi himself has got himself in touch with the Mueller investigation because he couldn't remember an e-mail that he forwarded, you know, that probably took him, you know, seven seconds to forward to a friend in England.

[08:20:00] You know, it is interesting now that we appear to be approaching the conclusion of the Mueller investigation and we're all the way down to whether Jerry Corsi, who believes that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States and that, you know, 9/11 is an inside job, et cetera, whether or not he remembers an e-mail and whether or not he ever was in touch with Julian Assange.

I don't think the Mueller investigation with decades of Yale Law School experience among them ever believed at the end of their investigation, they would be there looking at folks like Corsi and Randy Credico.

BERMAN: Well, look, Roger Stone is also one of these people who has been near the president. What does it say about the president, he surrounds himself with these people who surround themselves with Randy Credico and whatnot?

But I do want to ask you about Corsi because you are saying how do you remember all of these things? Well, one of these issues isn't about memory at all. Jerome Corsi testified to the grand jury that Roger Stone asked him to lie. What am I talking about? Well, it has to do with the Podesta e-mails.

We have seen it in an e-mail exchange between Corsi and Roger Stone. They discussed the fact that WikiLeaks might have something on John Podesta. Roger Stone then put out that tweet, where he said it would be the Podestas time in the barrel. Then after that, Corsi says Podesta -- that Stone went to him and said we want to create an alternative explanation for what happened here. This is what Corsi says he did and told the grand jury about this.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME CORSI, CONSERVATIVE AUTHOR: In front of the grand jury, Aaron Zelinsky said, Dr. Corsi, was that a lie? I said yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK.

CORSI: Was this a lie? I said yes. Was this a lie? Yes. So I openly admitted to them that in their terms, this was a lie.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Corsi told a grand jury that Roger Stone asked him to lie. How do you explain that?

CAPUTO: Well, I have to look. Roger has said that he doesn't agree with Corsi's characterization here.

Roger actually on, I think it was, August 15th tweeted out that John Podesta makes Paul Manafort look like Saint Francis of Assisi. He was already tweeting about John Podesta weeks before that. And, of course, we all know that the Panama Papers came out long before that talking about the Podestas work in Russia. And on July 31st, Peter Schweizer's book "From Russia with Money" came out detailing Podesta's work with Russians.

So, I don't think Corsi was the origination of any of this information on the Podesta's or Roger or anyone else.

BERMAN: That doesn't explain why he said he lied. He testified that he lied to the grand jury. That's under penalty of perjury, as you know.

CAPUTO: Of course. It also doesn't explain why Corsi in his interviews with the Mueller investigation discussed his disbelief in the theory on who killed JFK or where Barack Obama was born. I mean, this is going to be a very difficult witness if that's where they're relying on. They're relying upon Corsi and Randy Credico, a drug addled former comedian who wears women's underwear. This is really not going anywhere.

BERMAN: I understand what you're saying, but these are people I will again remind you were connected to Roger Stone who was connected to the president, be that as it may.

CAPUTO: Roger is a colorful character.

BERMAN: Michael, thank you for being with us. I appreciate your time and your insight here.

CAPUTO: You got it, John. Thank you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: There are a lot of colorful details there.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: All right. Some senators are angry after this briefing on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi because it did not include the CIA director who has a lot of information. Why wasn't the CIA director there? Two former members of the House Intelligence Committee will be here on that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:46] CAMEROTA: The U.S. Senate has rebuked President Trump's handling of Jamal Khashoggi's murder by advancing a bill that would end U.S. support of the Saudi-led war in Yemen, something Senator Lindsey Graham only decided to do because he was angry.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: I changed my mind because I'm pissed to the way the administration has handled the Saudi Arabia event is just not acceptable. The briefing today did not help me at all better understand the role that MBS played in the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now to discuss this, we have former House Intelligence ranking member, Jane Harman. She's the director, president and CEO of the Wilson Center. And Mike Rogers, the former House Intel chairman, and now, a CNN national security commentator.

Great to see both of you this morning.

JANE HARMAN, DIRECTOR, PRESIDENT, & CEO, WILSON CENTER: Thank you.

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Good to be here.

CAMEROTA: Jane, should the CIA Director Gina Haspel have been part of this briefing?

HARMAN: You bet. I can't recall a briefing like this where the head of the intelligent community, whoever it was, wasn't present. And I think she wasn't there because I know that's where you're going because her agency has expressed high confidence. And in CIA speak, that means -- certainty would be a little far, but assurance that MBS directed -- Mohammed bin Salman directed the killing.

And it put the other two, our secretary of state who used to be CIA director, and our secretary of defense in an awkward position. Mike Pompeo, when asked about this, just said I was directed to be here. Never answered the question about why she wasn't there.

CAMEROTA: That is exactly right. I mean, Mike, we have not been able to get any answers -- any real answers about why Gina Haspel wouldn't be included. What does that tell you? ROGERS: Well, clearly, I don't think they wanted her there. They

didn't want to open her up to all the Senate. This wasn't an intelligence briefing, it was all the Senate. They didn't want people asking questions that she would under truthfully that might not be consistent with where the administration was.

I agree with Jane. The CIA director should have been there. The whole purpose and controversy around support, continuing this, the administration's support for the Saudis in Yemen was based on the Senate's frustration with Khashoggi. So, to walk into this and not have that thought through I thought was not very good.

And on top of that, by the way, the finger-wagging by the secretary of state of members who would dare to, you know, ask questions about the Yemen policy --