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Special Counsel Robert Mueller Makes Sentencing Recommendations for Michael Flynn; Mueller Filing: Michael Flynn Gave "Substantial Assistance"; Funeral to be Held for Former President George H. W. Bush. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 05, 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: Also, just today, it is a national day of mourning, and there will be a state funeral for former president George H. W. Bush. I just want to get your moment of reflection on the former president.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R) FLORIDA: He was the first person I ever voted for back in 1992. And I've always had an interest in foreign policy. Living in Florida, living in Miami in particular, foreign policy often is our domestic policy, too. And I just look back at the first Gulf War, and it was a masterpiece of foreign policy. You look at the coalition that George H. W. Bush put together to oust Saddam Hussein, the way it was done, the use of international entities to rally international support. I don't know if that's possible given the world today, but what he did back then combined with managing the end of the cold war, I remember, I was in college at the time, it looked like the world had just been transformed overnight. I grew up in an era where we were worried we were going to get bombed by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was gone, and then the U.S. carried out this coalition that ousted him quickly. It was just a masterpiece of foreign policy. And it was -- you could see all the accumulated years of experience at the CIA, as vice president, all these things come together to allow him to lead us in a way that few, if any, could.

BERMAN: And you've also noted his humility and dignity are a strength, not a weakness. Senator Marco Rubio, we do appreciate you being with us this morning, thanks so much.

RUBIO: Thank you.

BERMAN: Alisyn?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right, John. Obviously, big day here.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Wednesday, December 5th, 8:00 in the east. It is a national day of mourning, and John and I have special coverage obviously for you from Washington, D.C. There's also other big news. There is this court filing by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in which he spells out for the first time that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had given what he calls substantial assistance in the Russia investigation. So much so that Mueller recommends that Flynn serve no prison time. Flynn has been interviewed, we've learned, 19 times by federal investigators, providing them with firsthand information about interactions between the Trump transition team and Russian officials. Mueller also says that Flynn has helped with at least three investigations, two of which we don't know what he's referring to.

BERMAN: The other big story here in Washington of course is the national day of mourning. The state funeral for President George H. W. Bush begins soon at the National Cathedral here in Washington. All the living presidents, several world leaders will join the Bush family for this memorial service. Our Chris Cuomo is there to cover it for us. We're going to get to him in just a moment.

We want to begin, though, on the Mueller revelations. Joining us now, David Gregory, Laura Coates, Chris Cillizza, and Josh Campbell. Josh Campbell, I want to start with you here, because we've been having metaphors all morning. Yours is my favorite that I have seen in the last 24 hours. You say this sentencing memo with all of its redactions and key points was like being on a cell phone driving into a tunnel about to be told the most important part of the conversation but then losing service.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHN CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: That's right. It's like you're driving through the Holland Tunnel, you're talking to someone. They're just getting to the good part and then it stops. That's how this seemed to have read. If you look at the pages, they said this person was involved in, and then a series of black redactions. So I think what that tells us is that there is a lot of work that's yet to be done. And I don't have any good news because the public obviously wants this thing to be wrapped up. They want to know what is there, if anything. But I think this signifies that there is still more work to be done.

We talk about the Mueller investigation, and we see his work through prosecutions, but we can't forget that it is an investigation. We see the prosecutor filings. We see their names. Behind the scenes are a host of prosecutors, FBI agents, analysts, forensic accountants that are continuing to pour through the evidence here, and again, I still think they have a lot of work to do.

CAMEROTA: OK, so, Chris Cillizza, Josh feels that he has been left dangling. What did you see when you read this?

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: So you know that famous "Seinfeld" episode where Elaine is talking about a tryst she has, and she says yada, yada, yada, and it was over. They say, what you skipped the best part. And she says no, I mentioned the bisque.

(LAUGHTER)

CILLIZZA: In some ways that's what it was, but -- thank you, Laura. All of my early '90s references are coming home to roost. I think that what you here is exactly what you mentioned, substantial cooperation, 19 interviews. It made me think of Don McGahn where Donald Trump was stunned that the former White House Counsel had sat for more than 30 hours with the Special Counsel. I think what you're seeing here is the depth and breadth of where

Mueller and his team have reached and to whom. I feel like in some ways it's like an iceberg, right? We see a tiny little bit every time it pops up with the truth of the matters. Every time we see anything below the surface, we realize it is way bigger than we might think.

[08:05:02] Michael Flynn, one other note on Flynn that I think is really important to remember, one of the few people in this that bridges the Donald Trump candidate, Donald Trump president gap. Obviously he was national security adviser for 23 days, but he was involved throughout the transition. So I think his substantial cooperation matters a lot.

BERMAN: To the campaign and the presidency, but also that transition, which we know this White House has fought legally to keep protected as best they can. And Laura, it was interesting to see in the sentencing memo pointed out repeatedly that Michael Flynn helped us early, we're very pleased with that. Michael Flynn gave us key information about how the contacts worked between people close to President Trump or then candidate Trump or then president-elect Trump and the Russians, laid out exactly how in some ways Michael was helping.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: He was for them, especially the notion of it's been over a year since he pled guilty. So the fact that he is being heralded as somebody who cooperated very early and was of extreme assistance to try to compel other people through the aura of anxiety of what did he say, what did he know. People were willing to come forward and perhaps testify and cooperate because there was an uncertainty about what somebody so critical as this bridge would have known.

So it is interesting about the timing then. If he cooperated so early, if he was so forthcoming and providing of such assistance, why were there four delays in sentencing? Was it a strategic move by Mueller to say, listen, I'm waiting for a particular lynchpin here? There is no coincidence in my mind that the president less than a week ago, maybe 10 days ago has provided his written answers, and all of a sudden, the flurry has started. Michael Flynn comes out of obscurity. Michael Cohen is pleading guilty to lying to Congress. You've got Paul Manafort being called a liar. And you have got the president locked in on his testimony.

And you have this notion of, I see the dangling pardon, Mr. President, that you may be putting out there, but I have given the equivalent of a pardon to somebody who they write should have known better. You get no jail time per our recommendation. Isn't that the equivalent of a pardon? And he's now raised the stakes for the president.

BERMAN: He's got a criminal record, so it's not fully the extent of a pardon.

CAMEROTA: Interestingly, David, President Trump has not responded yet, so I don't think you can check Twitter for me, John. Sometimes John is my intern.

BERMAN: This just in, nothing. CAMEROTA: OK, thank you. What's interesting is that he had a lot to

say about Michael Cohen cooperating, and in the past he had a lot to say about his respect for Michael Flynn. What will he say about what we now know?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. Interpreting him is so hard other than the consistency about going after people. It is the spin. People who flip -- the suggestion has been, and you hear this from Rudy Giuliani, that I think is ridiculous, that people are flipping and they're not telling the truth. What we know, what Rudy Giuliani knows from his time as U.S. attorney, you apply pressure to get people to tell the truth when they don't otherwise want to do that.

And I think the power of narrative is what's becoming clear here, both as a legal matter and as a political matter. The idea of putting this all together in ways we couldn't know, that the president spent time trying to slice and dice by saying bit players, they don't know anything, it's a hoax. Mueller is working methodically with people who are cooperating who can corroborate each other in a way that could be a powerful narrative about what happened, interference in the election, why it might have happened, financial relationships or otherwise, and what was done as a result of the attempted interference by the president and those around him.

Things that we know about publicly, firing Jim Comey because he didn't like the investigation, firing Michael Flynn for lying about contacts to the vice president. And the president saying, hey, go easy on Michael Flynn. All of these things become fodder, of course, legally. We can only speculate. But the political piece of it is where Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are going to get together and say does this amount to something that should put us down a path of impeachment.

BERMAN: Josh, I want to ask you, because all the armchair legal analysts and all the armchair investigators hearsay, look, no jail time is the recommendation for Michael Flynn, so he must have given them something that he wanted. He must be providing something of value in order to get that trade. Is it that simple?

CAMPBELL: It is that simple in the sense they used the word "substantial." This is someone who is providing substantial cooperation to the government. And one thing that's interesting, and what Chris was saying about bridging this divide between the transition and the actual presidency I think is so key because if you look at this court filing, one point that is made is that Michael Flynn was only someone who bridged the gap, but he was the only person of great import that was able to provide information to the prosecutors in their investigation.

And the reason why that's important is because in any case if you are an FBI agent, if you're a prosecutor, you're trying to make that calculus, when do I treat someone as a witness, when do I treat them as a subject? And this tells me that Michael Flynn was one of the few people that was in this Trump orbit that prosecutors looked to and said this is someone who can provide this information that we're not treating like a full subject because he's cooperating.

[08:10:03] I think that that's bad news for the president and for his family and people in his orbit because that says that prosecutors didn't look at them as worthy enough to bring on board and to treat as witnesses. They may be treated as subjects. Again, a lot of work that is going on here, a lot that we don't know, but I think there is some signaling, there are some patterns that we can pick up based on the unredacted portion that we're reading.

CAMEROTA: Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer, has a different take on all of this. He talked to Hallie Jackson of NBC. She put it out on Twitter. He says, quote, according to her. "There is a yiddish word that fits. They don't have bupkis." So what he saw was nothing in all of this, and what some of our analysts and legal minds see a lot.

CILLIZZA: Well, OK. It's a heavily redacted document. That said, what do we know? We know that a guy who was part of the campaign, the transition, and briefly the administration, has met 19 times with the special counsel, presumably that once it -- if you get everything you need in the first visit, the special counsel's office is probably not like, hey, what are you doing on Tuesday? You want to come back and get a coffee? So presumably all those things are meaningful meetings.

And we know that there are three ongoing investigations. So it's not nothing. This is what I think. David touches on this. Spin is spin. Donald Trump can say it is a hoax. Donald Trump -- Rudy Giuliani can say it is bupkis. But 192 criminal counts have been brought against 36 entities and people, seven people have pled guilty. And three have been sentenced. One has been convicted, Paul Manafort, in court. That's not a witch hunt. There is a lot of there there, whether or not Rudy Giuliani wants to admit it. The spin is for political reasons, understandably. But legally speaking, this document, while it doesn't tell us exactly what's going on, the outlines suggest there is something real there.

GREGORY: I do think the note of caution from Giuliani should be well taken. It is spin. But we still don't know. There is an expectation, and there has been throughout, that somehow this will have all these arrows pointed at the president of the United States. We don't know if he's got any of that. And it is going to be a high bar politically, as well as legally. You could do a lot of legal work that has nothing to do ultimately with the president. Politically could be different. And that note of caution is well taken.

BERMAN: I will note, though, there is a difference between bupkis and oy vey, which you could also say when looking at the redacted parts there if you're the president's legal team and say, hey, there's investigations going on here that Michael Flynn is helping with.

GREGORY: That, my friend, is a separate segment. All of it, that continuum, right there.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: We'll excuse our guests here. GREGORY: We'll be online.

CILLIZZA: Put it in the fourth hour.

BERMAN: All right, guys. Thank you all for joining us this morning.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, all.

Now to, of course, our other big story, the reason John and I are here, President Trump and all living presidents will soon join the Bush family and world leaders to honor President George H. W. Bush at his state funeral. Our Chris Cuomo is live at the National Cathedral with more. Good morning, Chris. What are you expecting there?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Just to stay with the theme a little bit of what vernacular to use, we're going to shift from the world where things are fakakta and there's a lot of tsuris, to here where they're hoping that today is somewhat of a mitzvah for people. They're going to celebrate the passing of a president. But I was just talking to somebody who is close to the president. And they said to me his timing of his passing may be his last act of service to this country, because it gives the country, all of us, an ability to reflect and remember things that can be right with a life of service, and that decency and disagreement have its place, and that George Herbert Walker Bush was a paragon. He was an example of that in its highest form.

And that doesn't mean -- you'll find nobody around him or even in the family who want to hear the president lionized today or have his virtues exaggerated or his legacy in service exaggerated. You're going to hear President George W. Bush give his eulogy. That will come last in the mass. You're also going to hear from Senator Alan Simpson. You're going to hear from Jon Meacham, obviously the brilliant writer and journalist, and you're going to hear lots of musical selections and hymns that all reflect the essence of what they believe about this man, which was simplicity, decency, and service.

And that's what the family wants to come out today. You saw this morning the U.S. capital, the viewing of the president finished at about 7:00 in the morning. Family goes back there to gather. They bring him back here to the National Cathedral. You're going to have all of the living presidents here. You'll have world leaders. You're going to have a lot of friends and family. The Bush clan is mighty and many.

[08:15:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, "CUOMO PRIME TIME": They loved how big the family was, how purposeful the family was, and that's how they want to celebrate this. And after today, they will go from here down to Texas. They're going to have a private funeral. Again, family, private.

And then they will take the president's body by train to Texas A&M where he will be laid to rest with his wife and their daughter they lost at a young age. That experience is something you will hear about in the days to come, that was formative for this president. You have to remember, what an amazing life. I was talking to John and

you earlier about the moment with Senator Dole, because of what it galvanized. Two guys who gave their youth to this country, who saw the most dangerous days in our country's history.

Senator Dole still mustering the strength to stand and salute, of course, with his left arm, because his right is too far gone from taking Nazi shrapnel during the war, dragging someone, saving their life, lying in a battlefield, saluting a man who volunteered at 18, who, you know, took fire in his plane, was the only member of his crew to survive. Just 19 years old. A life of service. Losing a child early on and dedicating himself to this country.

And the way he did it, Alisyn and John, that's the gift to the country today to remember. Forget about what's wrong, forget about points of contrast and political intrigue. We have more than enough of that on a daily basis.

Today will be a day of remembering how to do it right and what that virtue is and how it was distilled in this one man and what it means to the country. And I think you're going to hear in a lot of different ways in this service here.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You talk about how to do it right. That's what we saw with Senator Dole there, because on top of everything else you just mentioned, Chris, they were political rivals, heated political rivals for two decades. That's not what today is about. Today is about the respect and coming together.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, absolutely. We're already seeing that with the Bush family and their welcome of President Trump, despite that they were all so, you know, vitriolic rivals. It will just be, look, it is a beautiful day, as you point out, Chris, and it will be a fascinating day to watch all this unfold.

BERMAN: All right, Chris. Great to have you on with us.

Coming up on NEW DAY, we're going to talk about President Bush with his former secretary -- well, no. We will talk about the late George H.W. Bush with Condoleezza Rice who actually works for both Presidents Bush, worked inside the White House for H.W. Bush and then as secretary of state for George W. Bush.

CAMEROTA: OK. Look forward to that.

But, meanwhile, before this week, as we know, President Trump had not spoken to President Clinton or President Obama since his inauguration. So what will we see today when they're all together?

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[08:21:24] CAMEROTA: Special counsel Robert Mueller recommending former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn get no jail time after giving what Mueller called substantial assistance in the Russian probe. Mueller says Flynn is cooperating with at least three ongoing investigations, two of which we don't know much about. Let's bring in CNN political analyst and White House reporter for "The New York Times", Maggie Haberman.

Maggie, great to talk to you. So, how is the White -- how did the White House -- how did this go over at the White House last night when this came out at about 8:30 Eastern Time?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It was not a warm bath. It was not stepping into a sea of relaxation. They had been anxious about what this might show, the way that some senior administration officials described to me as, look, it's not good, but we don't really know how bad it is either.

And I think there is something to that. To your point, there are two investigations that we have no idea what this is. These are heavily redacted documents. We knew that that was likely to be the case. We always knew we would be getting something and it was going to feel like tea leaf reading to figure it out.

But that is also true for the Trump legal team. They have no idea what Michael Flynn has been doing over the last 13 months because when he entered his guilty plea around -- or made his decision to make a guilty plea, around Thanksgiving 2017, he broke off from the joint defense agreement. That is contrary to what we have seen from Paul Manafort, who stay in one with the president's team, in an arrangement that didn't make the special counsel's office very happy.

Flynn has a lot of visibility into a number of issues, not just the president. Also, the president's children. Remember, he worked very closely with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump during the transition. He worked very closely with Mike Pence, the vice president, during the transition.

So, what he could talk about, such as a great number of people, and the president's reaction is as you might expect it would be not happy.

BERMAN: Substantial cooperation. Would those be the words that most disturbed him?

HABERMAN: Those are the words that mostly disturbed him. People around him, including his lawyers, are trying to say this does not mean what you in the media think it means. This is what you have to put in the documents in order to suggest a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines that are federally required.

And, sure, that is true. Nineteen separate interviews with the special counsel's office is not small. Add that to Michael Cohen, who has spent more than 70 hours with investigators of varying offices, not just the special counsel, plus Rick Gates, who is another plea deal in this situation, who we have heard extremely little about. There is a wide array of cooperation taking place.

And the Trump folks have wanted to suggest this is wrapping up. This would be over soon. Again a reminder, we just don't know what Robert Mueller knows. CAMEROTA: That's right. But particularly since they gave the written

answers from President Trump, there was a feeling at least in their spin that this would be wrapping up soon. That was the last piece of the puzzle.

HABERMAN: That's right.

CAMEROTA: And this sentencing memo makes it seems like, no, that's not --

HABERMAN: No, there are -- there are open issues that clearly even if they with trying up loose ends, that does not mean they are looking to put some papers in the drawer and turn the lights off. They had dragged this process out for a year. They were asked to give answers to certain questions last December, 2017.

They had made this process go very long. They thought that was going to buy them a more favorable disposition potentially. I'm not sure that's the case because it's given Mueller a year to collect all sorts of other pieces of information and other statements from other witnesses that he can then compare against the president.

BERMAN: I want to move on because we will have more chances to talk about this, I suspect, tomorrow, Friday and beyond.

(CROSSTALK)

[08:25:00] I want to talk about China because the president just tweeted on it. Let's read what he just wrote to set the stage here.

He goes: Very strong signals being sent from China once they returned home from their long trip, including stops from Argentina. Not to sound naive or anything, but I believe President Xi meant everything he said at our long and hopefully historic meeting. All subjects discussed.

Now, we know why the president is saying this. The stock market dropped nearly 800 points yesterday because the investors don't know what the heck happened at that dinner.

HABERMAN: Right. They don't know what happened and they don't know what the president is hoping to communicate because he came out and he said all kinds of things that were at odds with what his own White House is suggesting.

The president has a very long history of conflating a legal policy problem with a PR problem. So he is running out trying to skim this with different statements as if that is the only thing that has meaning. Markets like consistency. Markets do not like when things are all over the place.

He is very fortunate that the markets are closed today because I cannot imagine what that would be like again for another series of hours.

CAMEROTA: But I think this is so interesting because we often hear President Trump say one thing and the next day something else, and nothing shakes the base. But the fact that investors say, wait a second, we don't understand what came out of this G20. That was -- there is an actual metric that can measure their confusion now.

HABERMAN: Correct, and actual consequence, right, and we are used to Donald Trump living a fairly consequence free existence, to your point, he has changed the rules in terms of what -- at least for himself, whether we go back for future presidents is another question.

But he has known no consequences to his actions. This is a real one. And the economy is going to impact his re-election. It just is.

BERMAN: I think there is more to an extent saying that we don't know what we're saying, is we don't believe what you're saying.

HABERMAN: That's another consequence of when you frequently say things that are not true. When you say two things that are diametrically opposed sometimes in the same 60 seconds, it's not as if everybody is not paying attention. For somebody who tried to paint his own version of reality, reality is catching up to him.

BERMAN: And the stock market is something the president talked about extensively last year.

HABERMAN: Thought it was a poll, and he literally was treating like it was poll. Everything is some number that he can measure himself by.

BERMAN: So this stinks. I mean, this stinks.

HABERMAN: Yes. This is a problem. And it is not a problem he's going to get out of with more tweets. Less is more in this case, but he is just, I think, unable to stop talking about it.

CAMEROTA: But it is also bouncing around like a super ball. We just don't know what will happen when it opens again. Today, it's closed for the funeral.

HABERMAN: That's true.

CAMEROTA: And we just don't know.

I mean, people have had to get comfortable with its fluctuations that President Trump --

HABERMAN: Correct. But this is a big percentage drop and a much bigger stock market when we had in 2008 when there was the financial crisis. But adding sort of uncertainty to an already uncertain mix is just not going to help.

BERMAN: Today, you note the markets are closed because of the funeral for President George H.W. Bush. President Trump will be there, but not speaking. We saw him with George W. Bush last night. This seems to be going according to plan, if the plan was to be dignified.

HABERMAN: I think as we discussed I think here yesterday, there is an overcorrection what we saw them doing around John McCain, I think that they feel this is less about a contrast between H.W. Bush and President Trump. So, therefore, he has been able to keep the peace.

You know, his folks will say, look, he's handling this well. He's doing a great job. You can argue that not interfering with somebody's state funeral is not something for which you deserve high praise, but they have executed this well, and it is going as well as we have seen something involving them do.

BERMAN: It is a low bar, but it is the right thing to do.

Maggie Haberman, great to have you with us. Thank you very much.

HABERMAN: Thanks.

BERMAN: All right. He battles his son in an election that stretched well past November. So, what if President George H.W. Bush tell Al Gore after he conceded the presidential race. The former vice president talks about the surprise phone call. That's next.

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