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Mueller to Reveal New Details on Manafort & Cohen Tomorrow; Bush Lies in Repose at Family Church in Houston; Eulogies Highlight Contrast Between Bush & Trump. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 06, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Smoke is starting to generate on what happened in the team around the president.

[05:59:22] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Paul Manafort is going to get the book thrown at him.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: If there was collusion, it would be hard for me to think that Flynn didn't know about it. I don't know there's anything there.

BRIAN MULRONEY, FORMER CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: When George Bush was president, every single head of government knew that they were dealing with a gentleman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An imperfect man, he left us a more perfect union.

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES/SON OF GEORGE H.W. BUSH: And in our grief, I smile knowing that Dad is hugging Robin and holding Mom's hand again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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, December 6, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill joins me, which is a good thing, because you have X-ray vision and can see through redactions.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: I do. Yes.

BERMAN: We brought you in here.

HILL: I've been looking through these redactions all morning. I don't know what you've been missing for the last, you know, 36 hours.

BERMAN: Thank goodness, because we need to know what is underneath them.

This morning we are at a clear pivot point in the Mueller investigation, at least as clear as anything is in this matter, which frankly, is not very. The special counsel's office is starting to release actual information in court documents that provide bread crumbs, road map maps, and in some cases, loud alarm bells about what they're looking at and what they have determined.

Of course, sometimes they just raise new questions like with those pages of blacked-out redactions in the sentencing memo for former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn. If only Erica Hill had X-ray vision.

Tomorrow prosecutors will release the sentencing memo from Michael Cohen and his plea deal with the special counsel, where he had been lying to Congress about a Russia deal he was working on for then- candidate Trump well into the election. What more will we learn about his cooperation?

What more will we learn about Paul Manafort's lies? Also tomorrow, prosecutors tell us exactly what Manafort has been lying so much about, so much that it torpedoed his plea deal with the special counsel's office.

So what we want to do this morning is lay out the big questions that remain that might -- might be answered very shortly.

HILL: As we prepare to also this morning, the final farewell for President George H.W. Bush. There are live pictures for you from St. Martin's Episcopal Church, where the 41st president is lying in repose. The Houston church, of course, where he was a member more than 50 years.

There will be a second funeral service this morning before he is buried at his presidential library later today. The late president's son, George W. Bush, fighting back the tears as he eulogized his father at the state funeral in Washington.

In the pews, the first meeting of the presidents' club, and the awkward dynamics tough to ignore. President Trump joining the other living presidents as the odd man out.

And right now, we are also keeping a close watch as U.S. stock futures are down sharply. Look at the red arrows. This is the Asian markets, the European markets opening lower. We're going to have live reports for you on just what's causing the turmoil. That's coming up in just a few moments.

BERMAN: The Dow down 400 points in the pre-market open. That's on top of the 800 points the other day. So we are going to watch this very carefully, because something is clearly going on here, and you may want to know in terms of your 401(k)s. We'll get to that in a minute.

We're going to talk now about the Mueller investigation. Joining us, CNN political analyst David Gregory; CNN contributor and author of "The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the Global War on Terror," Garrett Graff; and CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero. So we promise want to layout the big questions that might be answered

soon in the Mueller investigation, and we brought in a ringer, and that ringer is Garrett Graff, who's been writing about these questions. Garrett wrote about the 14 questions. We're only a three- hour show, so we asked Garrett to narrow it down to the five big ones. Garrett, and quickly, if we could run through these, we'll put them up on the screen. Run through these questions that you have.

GARRETT GRAFF, AUTHOR, "THE THREAT MATRIX": So the -- one of the first ones is why Michael Cohen is being prosecuted about lying to Congress by Robert Mueller? Mueller didn't handle the earlier case against the campaign finance violations, tax fraud, bank fraud. And this is presumably part of some legal strategy that Mueller is laying down that we don't understand, either about what Michael Cohen is saying about lying to Congress, or about targeting other people who are lying to Congress.

The second big question here is why has there been no Cozy Bear indictment? Remember, there were two separate Russian hacking attacks on the Democratic Party and the U.S. voting system in 2016. One led by Russian military intelligence, the GRU, which we have seen an indictment about; the other being the Russian state security service, the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who also hacked the DNC. But we haven't seen any knowledge of that hack come out even though we know from European reporting that Dutch intelligence knows exactly who penetrated the DNC and perpetrated that attack.

Then we get into this question about why Bob Mueller hasn't indicted one of the three Internet Research Agency employees who travelled to the United States in the summer of 2016. So this is -- he indicted two of the three. He obviously knows who this third person is, because he knows who this person filed their expenses to at the Internet Research Agency.

But this points to, possibly, does Bob Mueller have a cooperator inside the Internet Research Agency? Sort of why is this person's fingerprints on the attack but not in the indictment?

Then we have this bombshell report that "The Guardian" put out last week that has not actually been backed up by any other independent reporting or news agency that Paul Manafort may have met with Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, over -- perhaps even multiple times during the campaign and before the campaign.

[06:05:23] And then, you know, there are just all sorts of breadcrumbs and unanswered questions in this investigation that we still have to get to.

BERMAN: Garrett, thank you for laying that out.

HILL: And they are such important questions. I want to start with, actually, the first one that you brought up, because this is fascinating to so many people.

And Carrie, I'm going to through this one to you. The fact that this -- that Cohen is being handled by Robert Mueller, when of course, initially, certain things that were found were passed on to the Southern District because it made a lot more sense. What's your take?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So actually, Senator Burr gave us some insights to this, I think, last week when he gave some remarks at an academic conference, and he, of course, is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

And he made reference to the Michael Cohen plea and the fact that committee had referred several matters to the special counsel's office, and he made a point of saying that if individuals lie to the Senate Intelligence Committee, that that committee was not afraid to make criminal referrals.

So I think that, perhaps, a reasonable interpretation is that that is what happened and that Michael Cohen lied in his, as the documents say, he lied in written documentation that was provided to the committee. The committee then, through their investigation, knew that it was false, made referrals to the special counsel's office, and that's how it fell under that umbrella.

BERMAN: Interesting. You know, and so David, Garrett so well laid out what we don't know and what we hope to know. You've done a great job over the last few days of reminding us what we do know and how significant it actually is.

We know the president's national security advisor, Michael Flynn, has pleaded guilty to lying, lying about matters that had directly to do with Russia. We know his campaign chair pleaded guilty and was in a plea deal and has been lying behind the scenes, so much so that that deal got blown up. And we also know that his lawyer, Michael Cohen, is involved in this deal, too. That's a lot. That's heavy in this season for President Trump and has to be weighing on him.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And that, in the Flynn documents, he talks about knowledge of contacts between those in the Trump orbit and Russian officials. That's what, I think, was so potentially problematic if you look at those documents.

And one of the things that Garrett does is layout all of the -- the spokes in the wheel here that have to do with the financial relationship between the Trump Organization and Russia, whether they're oligarchs or government officials that is such a tangled web and may be such an area of interest and so fruitful for the special prosecutor that is very difficult to understand.

But it gets to why there might have been a relationship to begin with, why there might have been coordination when it came to interference for digging up opposition on Hillary Clinton and why there might have been a willingness to work together on these financial matters.

And then, of course, the after election piece of this, which is how the president has conducted himself and whether or not he's obstructed justice. I keep going back to figures like Don McGahn, the White House counsel, now departed from the White House, who spent so much time with the special prosecutor who can connect so much about what was said, what was planned, and then what was actually done. HILL: It is -- it is fascinating at some point, as you said, to have

David remind us what we know, which is a lot, and yet, there's still so much that we don't know it can make your head spin.

As we are looking forward to Friday, though, and we're going through what we do know, what we don't know, we could learn, potentially, so much by Friday.

Garrett, I mean, as you're waiting for all of this information to come, is there one more than the other that you think will really start to dig into some of these five questions and even some of the broader 14 questions you laid out?

GRAFF: Yes, so we're presumably going to learn a lot more about Paul Manafort over the next 24 hours or 36 hours. At this point it's early in the day.

And one of the big questions, or actually two of the big questions that I'm looking for in what we learn in Paul Manafort's sentencing memorandum, is first, he's only been charged with behavior effectively predating the campaign.

Some of this money laundering scheme that we have seen him involved in, that he's been convicted of did stretch into the period of the campaign, but so far seems unrelated to the campaign.

So was there behavior that Paul Manafort was engaging on during the campaign or after that relates to the crimes that Bob Mueller is pursuing, potentially even up to the transition or beyond.

[06:10:04] And then the second big thing with Paul Manafort is this overarching question that, during this period of the plea agreement over the last couple of months, Bob Mueller says he lied, and this is an interesting phrasing, and committed new crimes.

So what are the new crimes that Paul Manafort has evidently been committing over the last couple of months according to the special counsel? Do those deal with, potentially, witness tampering, obstruction of justice? Is he involved in new schemes, or is there even potentially -- remember, this is a period where he was talking to the president's lawyer.

Is there a nexus from Paul Manafort to Donald Trump and the White House in the last three months that is alleged to involve criminal behavior. That's an incredibly significant question that we presumably will know the answer to in the next 36 hours.

BERMAN: And the words there that jumped out that you just said to me is the nexus to President Trump, Carrie. And that, in some ways, is the key question here. Is he connected in any way to any of these wrongdoings that put him in legal or serious political peril?

So if you were his attorneys, put yourselves in their shoes or in their legal suspenders right now, as it were, what would you be most concerned with, with what you saw in the Flynn documents in what you might see tomorrow? CORDERO: Well, the question with respect to Manafort, I think Garrett

raises an important point, and it pertains to money.

So one of the big questions that I've had throughout the investigation, which none of the documents or indictments so far have revealed yet, and so there may be no "there" there, or there might be a significant part of the investigation that just hasn't been revealed yet.

But whether -- what Paul Manafort's role was in bringing money into the campaign and whether there are additional campaign-finance- violation-related issues or foreign money that found its way into the campaign. There's one instance throughout this investigation that we've learned of foreign money coming into the Trump inauguration committee.

And so one question I've always had, because Manafort is a money mover. I mean, if there's nothing that we've learned throughout the course of the -- of what's been charged against him is that he knows how to move big sums of money from foreign entities all -- you know, all around the world.

And so I think that's one big question that certainly could -- would go to the heart of Donald Trump and the Trump campaign if there's something there.

Also then, of course, from the president's specific perspective, the issues have to do with obstruction and witness tampering, what he put in those written answers that he provided back to the special counsel's office, and whether they are consistent with what other individuals who have been interviewed or testified in front of the grand jury or the special counsel's investigation, or to Congress, whether there's a lot of inconsistencies between what he has written and what others have testified or provided to investigators.

GREGORY: You know, the other things, guys, that you have that we look at is Mark Whitaker in the future as acting attorney general, is he nominated to be the permanent attorney general? When is the White House going to do that? We don't have those answers.

And we know his views about the Mueller investigation. Well, one of the things that has come out, particularly with the sentencing document related to Michael Flynn is that there are other areas of investigation.

So it would suggest there's -- there's more to do. There's a longer runway ahead of us here, unless Whitaker chokes off funding and support for the investigation. That's a big question we don't have an answer to at this point.

BERMAN: We don't even really know for 100 percent sure, if he's overseeing it, if he's actively involved in the investigation, we don't know what the division of power is between Whitaker and Rod Rosenstein at this moment, and how clearly delineated it is. I don't know if we'll get that answer, but it's a great question.

David.

GRAFF: John, even just to put an even sharper point on it, we don't even know at this point whether Matt Whitaker is legally serving as the acting attorney general. This is a point that is coming up in contention in multiple legal forms. It's a question that's going to be decided, we presume, relatively quickly by the Supreme Court. There is no precedent for Matt Whitaker being appointed.

BERMAN: Gotcha. And that is a big question that does put a fine point on it.

Garrett, David, Corrie [SIC] -- Carrie, thank you very much.

So at this hour, former President George H.W. Bush is lying in repose at the Houston church that his family has attended for decades. America's 41st president will be buried today at his presidential library.

CNN's Jessica Dean is live at St. Martin's Episcopal Church from Houston with the very latest -- Jessica.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to you. Yes, you probably see the people filing out of the church behind me. They have been paying their respect to the former president all throughout the night.

He will continue to lie in repose until 6 a.m. Houston time, at which point they will then reset for the second funeral, the private family funeral that will be happening here today. Let's take you through kind of what the day looks like.

[06:15:07] That funeral getting started at 10 a.m. local time here in Houston. Once the funeral is over, the family, and the casket will then go to the Union Pacific facility where they're going to be boarding a train, and it's the Bush 4141 locomotive that's going to be taking President George H.W. Bush to his final resting place there in College Station.

And then, once they arrive there, that train will depart once they arrive in College Station. Then, they will have the final services and burial there at the library.

So a lot more to come on that front today. This is, essentially, the third part of what has been a three-part state funeral over several days here in Texas. So many people filing through to pay respect to the former president, and many of them coming overnight -- I saw women in line this morning that were here at 4 a.m. to make sure that they could do that. Very important to people to pay their respects.

And then, of course, yesterday back in Washington, D.C., where we really saw the official funeral with the former presidents there, and former President George W. Bush eulogizing his father. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: And we're going to miss you, your decency and sincerity and kind soul will stay with us forever, and so through the tears let us know the blessings of loving you, the best father a son or daughter could have, and in our grief, let us smile knowing that Dad is hugging Robin and holding Mom's hand again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: And again, just a reminder that, even though they're presidents, they are deeply human, as well, a son eulogizing his father yesterday. And we are expecting to see more of that personal side today as family and friends gather here at President Bush's home church, where he worshipped for some 50 years with his wife, Barbara -- Erica.

HILL: All right. Jessica Dean there for us. Jessica, thank you.

That gathering of presidents at President Bush's funeral was uneasy, perhaps to put it best. While it was supposed to be, of course, politics free, the comparisons unavoidable as they were made between the late commander in chief and President Trump. More on that, next.

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[06:21:11] HILL: Former president George H.W. Bush's body lies in repose at his family's church in Houston. The nation's 41st president will be buried today at his presidential library. The eulogies at yesterday's state funeral highlighted the contrasts between Bush and President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MULRONEY: Let me tell you that when George Bush was president of the United States of America, every single head of government in the world knew that they were dealing with a gentleman, a genuine leader, one who was distinguished, resolute and brave.

JON MEACHAM, PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH'S BIOGRAPHER: He governed with virtues that most closely resemble those of Washington and of Adams, of T.R. and of FDR, of Truman and of Eisenhower, of men who believed in causes larger than themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: David Gregory is back with us. Also joining the conversation, Scott Jennings, former special assistant to President George W. Bush; and CNN senior political analyst John Avlon.

And Scott, I want to start with you on this, especially, because of your personal connection there. But as we listened, obviously, yesterday to the eulogy from President George W. Bush for his father, and so much more, we were told this wouldn't be political, that politics was going to stay out of this.

And as much as people want to do that in anything in this day and age, it can be tough. So tough not to make the contrast. And yet, how much do you think it was a truly a conscious highlighting of these differences versus this is the man we're talking about today and the man we're focused on?

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think the eulogy that President Bush gave was written for one person and one person only; and that's George H.W. Bush. I think the Bush family, when they reached out to the Trump White House over the summer, handled this exactly right.

And I think Donald Trump and his White House handled it exactly right, as well. He did everything this week you would expect the president to do. I was talking to a member of Congress this week, and he said, "It almost feels like we're returning to normalcy, normal Washington this week." Everyone is doing what you would expect them to do in this moment, and everyone is rising to meet this occasion and to honor someone who deserves our praise.

So I think the -- I think the eulogy was spot on. I was honored to be part of the, you know, the Bush White House. And what Bush did yesterday in the eulogy reminded us all exactly why we looked up to him so much.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: But you know, as a former speechwriter, you know, the father and son speech is exactly as Scott said. The clips that we just played from Meacham and Mulroney were not an accident. That was an implicit dis on the current president.

And that's just -- and it's because the contrast between the two men. And you know, you make choices when you write speeches. And when you also talk about all the leaders of the world understood they were dealing with a true gentleman, that's one thing this president has rarely been accused of. And also say, you know, I don't think you want to give out too many medals for not screwing up a presidential funeral. The president was on best behavior this week, but that's a fairly low bar.

BERMAN: Look, having read Jon Meacham's book, for instance, Most of what was said out loud was a version of what he had written before.

I felt, as I was watching it, that everything that was said at this funeral would have been of Martin O'Malley for president or Ted Cruz for president, that it was the same funeral that would have happened, no matter who won the 2016 election. We just hear it differently --

HILL: Yes.

BERMAN: -- now. And it says more about us and where we are, us as a country and where we are, perhaps more than the words up there. And Bush insiders were saying beforehand, and they were quoted in "The Washington Post," "We don't want to make comparisons, but the contrasts will present themselves," and they did.

And the one more point I want to make -- and David, you can weigh in on this, too, because you covered Bush even longer than I did. You know, for all the beautiful words that Jon Meacham spoke, and I want him to write my biography. And I want Alan Simpson to be my friend. We should all have friends like, you know, Alan Simpson. It was the one moment with President Bush that spoke everything. One moment where, all of a sudden, this week became about -- to me, because about love.

[06:25:14] GREGORY: Yes. Well, and the moment with President Bush 43 talking about his dad and the love for his dad and him being the best father that a son or daughter could ever have. You know, and Scott knows this. You know this. Being around President Bush and then- Governor Bush when he was campaigning in 2000, he's a very emotional guy, particularly about family.

And unconditional love matters so much. I made the reference yesterday, John, that you remember when he talked about his then teenage daughters. Remember, he wrote a note to Jenna saying, "Look, there's nothing you can do that will make you -- make me stop loving you, so stop trying."

And the unconditional love that he felt from his dad when he said, you know, he tested him when he was young. There was, you know, complications in that relationship, as we all have with our dads.

But when he was president, when they shared something that was, you know, for the country to notice and to take possession of, that this was a father-son that were both presidents, that unconditional love was there.

And that was just a moment that we could all identify with. That was very much about love, very much about a father and a son. And look, I think the contrast between this president and such a -- such a volatile time in our national life, and President George H.W. Bush were there. They do present themselves without necessarily being intentional.

In part, it is this bridge between the politics of that time, the politics of the Republican Party of that time, which are no longer recognizable, and by the way, were no longer recognizable when Bush's son became president. I think those contrasts presented themselves during a more difficult age.

AVLON: But let's not forget, I mean, the reason we're, you know, talking about the awkward presidents' club, the dynamic between the presidents is that George W. Bush, for all we talked about his play- to-the-base politics that Karl Rove was putting forward, was at the end of the day, he campaigned explicitly as the uniter, not a divider; and so did all the other presidents on that stage.

Bill Clinton's New Democrat initiatives. Barack Obama, there are no red states, there are no blue states. That's been the core appeal of every successful presidential candidate except Donald Trump, who has proudly run as a divider and not a uniter.

And that's the seed of the discord and the difference between these people.

GREGORY: But I don't disagree, John, but let's also remember that he's a symptom of the fact that the -- being a uniter, not a divider didn't actually work out, because the country changed, the politics changed. I guess it was about leadership. And I do think we forget -- Scott doesn't -- but we forget how toxic part of the Bush 43 years were over the war. And -- and it's easier to kind of elevate that in his legacy, as we're so focused on Trump now.

BERMAN: All right. And we're going to have a chance to talk about this, over the awkward presidents' club. We all saw it yesterday there, you know, and that will be analyzed. People with "X's" and "O's" and shop talk about who did what when and what it matters.

But I want to talk about policy and what's going on in Washington right now. And Scott, you have unique insight into this. The issue with Khashoggi and the murder in the Senate right now, senators are not happy.

JENNINGS: No.

BERMAN: At all with how they have been treated, not being given the full briefing by Gina Haspel. The senators who were briefed by Haspel say they're getting a different story from the CIA than they're getting from the administration.

And now there's a nonbinding resolution on the floor to basically say, "We believe the CIA, not the secretary of state, not the secretary of defense and not the president of the United States." You worked in the Senate for a while and what are you hearing here?

JENNINGS: Well, the senators, even the ones who support Donald Trump, don't like the idea that they are being told one thing by the administration when all the evidence that we've seen from the beginning of this terrible affair points to something else. They don't want to have to go out and defend a story that they don't think is true. And they don't want the United States to have to sanction, essentially, or put a price tag on a man's life, which is exactly, you know, what the president has done here.

There was always a better way to handle this, and that's to say this was terrible. We cannot allow it. But there are larger geopolitical equities that I have to deal with that. That's the reality of what I have to deal with.

When you couch in economic terms and then you try to say, well, maybe the evidence isn't what it says it is, that -- that casts a shadow over -- over this entire affair that I don't think these senators want to have to defend in Washington or back home.

So I think they're going to do what they've done on Russia, which is to hold Saudi Arabia accountable, even if the administration won't and, hopefully, the Saudi -- the Saudi regime will understand that part of the U.S. government will not put up with this.

AVLON: But I think the president the problem is a little more stark. Obviously, you've got the same continuity: the president versus the administration and the Senate. But the president of the United States outright said that the CIA didn't have an opinion on what happened, and then Gina Haspel came and spoke to senators, and it's very clear, she gave an incredibly detailed presentation about what happened. And the crown prince is implicated. The president is covering for a killer. That's the senators' takeaway.