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Analysts Examine Sentencing Memo for Michael Flynn from Special Counsel Mueller; Prosecutors to Release Information on Reasons Paul Manafort Plea Deal Violated; Interview with Democratic Whip, Senator Dick Durbin. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired December 06, 2018 - 08:00   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: -- his plea deal with the special counsel. What more will we learn about his cooperation? And also tomorrow prosecutors tell us exactly what they say Paul Manafort lied about, lied so much that it torpedoed his plea deal with the counsel's office.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Also this morning it is a final farewell for George H. W. Bush. A second funeral soon for the 41st president before he is buried at his presidential library later today. The late president's son, George W. Bush, delivering an emotional eulogy at his state funeral in Washington. And all eyes also on that front pew and the awkward interaction, or lack of interaction, between President Trump and his predecessors who he repeatedly attacked.

We are also keeping a very close eye on the stock market at this hour. U.S. stock futures in the red. The Dow down about 400 points, targeted to open down about 400 points. The overseas markets, as you can see there, also falling. We're going to take a closer look, show you what is fueling this selloff around the world.

BERMAN: So joining us now, political anchor for Spectrum News Errol Louis, CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official Phil Mudd, and impeachment attorney Ross Garber. Don't let the title fool you. We don't necessarily think his services will be need, at least not today.

Phil Mudd, I'm going to start with you because I forgot to introduce you yesterday, and, as I've said before, you scare me.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: So we have been trying to assess this morning what the unanswered questions are that we might get some answers to soon. You look at Paul Manafort. Tomorrow we're going to be told some, at least, of what he has been lying about. And you think Manafort is a key player here and there might be some key information.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Sure. Just one question I'd focus on. When you look at what Manafort was involved with before when he got the guilty plea in Alexander courthouse, that was about money. A lot of the conversation about Michael Cohen is about money. The question I want to know is the question everybody asks from day one. Manafort was at the center of the campaign when there are allegations that maybe there was some sort of contact and maybe cooperation with WikiLeaks. A, is that correct? And, b, the most significant question, is he lying, not about money, which he's already been convicted on, but lying to protect any inappropriate interaction with not Russians but maybe people like WikiLeaks who had data that was of value to the campaign.

HILL: And it will be interesting to see how much of that we could get out of this memo, too, based on what we saw, how much was redacted obviously in the Flynn filings. In terms of what we did learn, though, from the Flynn filings, you said if you were Donald Trump's attorney that this would cause you great concern, Ross.

ROSS GARBER, IMPEACHMENT ATTORNEY: Yes. I spent a couple of decades as a defense lawyer, and one of the things I don't like is surprises. I try to know what's going on. I try to know the facts. That's what good defense lawyers try to do. And when I looked at the Flynn filing, one of the things that would concern me if I was the president's lawyers is how much is still unknown, how much is clear they don't know and how potentially significant it all is.

BERMAN: That's fascinating. And specifically speaking, when you hear there are three investigations going on at once, is that something that jumps out to you?

GARBER: Yes. Three investigations going on at once, including one -- you showed all the redactions, including one where we don't even know where the investigation is happening. We don't know who it's targeting, and we don't even know what it's about. And I think there is a fair chance the president's lawyers don't know either.

BERMAN: Errol, you look at all of this, and you note, I think correctly, Michael Flynn was a key player here. He was the national security adviser, and there were a whole lot of warnings about Michael Flynn from a lot of people to President Trump.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's right, including the sitting president of the United States at the time. President Obama says, don't hire him. Don't do this. I have already sort of removed him from responsibility. It turns out fairly early on you learned that there are these probes of his activities.

For Trump to have gone ahead and placed him in, these are just guesses and these are clues, but the reality is if he sort of -- one of the first things he did that in fact triggered the Mueller investigation was to go to the FBI director and say, hey, can you let him go? Can you leave him alone? Of all of the things that Donald Trump has tweeted about and expressed opinions about -- he talks about Manafort, and he talks about Cohen, and he talks about Roger Stone, he talks about everybody involved in this, he talks about Mueller, he has said nothing about Michael Flynn. And that also, I think, is really very telling.

Against the direct advice, publicized advice of the president, he elevates him to a very high security position. He then tries to really sort of skirt the law, walking right up to the edge of obstruction by telling James Comey, hey, can you let him go? And then after that, the president who wants to talk about everything says nothing about Michael Flynn. It is really, really sort of telling, I think.

HILL: It is fascinating. It is one of those moments where you think about all the stuff that isn't being said that really tells you so much. And I see you smiling about it, Phil.

[08:05:00] And then that's not the only point, either. There is so much here that is not said. And we do know a fair amount at this point, right? We know about Flynn. We know a little bit about Manafort. We are obviously waiting to see what the detail are, how much of that we'll get tomorrow. We know about Cohen. It's interesting, though, to look at who now is playing along. And if you look at Cohen and you look at Flynn, and then you look at Manafort, there is a distinctive difference.

MUDD: There is. And I think you're talking about we know a lot. I actually don't think we do know a lot. If you look at the number of times that Flynn spoke with the special counsel, my recollection is 19 times, if you look at Don McGahn's interviews, if you look at the interviews with Steve Bannon, if you look at the fact that we still don't know the nature of interactions on the core issue of Russia and whether the campaign received something of value from WikiLeaks, we know these people are cooperating. We know there are documents potentially related to Russia in the documents that were taken from Michael Cohen. We're missing more than 50 percent of the story. What happened with Russia? And I suspect the special counsel knows already.

GARBER: And that's just on the Russia front. If you think about how sprawling this has become, we're looking at Russian interference, we're looking at transition team issues, we're looking at campaign finance issues with Michael Cohen, we're looking at potential obstruction issues, and now the special counsel with Michael Cohen has his sort of nose under the tent of the Trump businesses. This thing has gotten very sprawling, and Phil is right. There is so much we don't know.

BERMAN: So on Paul Manafort specifically, and you can provide us unique insight here, what is unusual tomorrow -- I understand what a sentencing memo is, but tomorrow it is this unique thing where they're going to tell a judge what Paul Manafort has been lying about as part of his cooperation from a plea deal.

GARBER: Well, it is what the government thinks that Paul Manafort is lying about. Paul Manafort's lawyers say he has not been lying, and it's going to be up to the judge to decide. And I think that's going to be an important point. And we don't know why Paul Manafort's lawyers say he's not lying. Sometimes that argument is made because the lawyers believe that it was just an honest lapse of recollection, a memory issue. Sometimes they believe that some other witness that is lying and the prosecutors believe them instead. There could be a whole range of things.

BERMAN: Can I ask you one mock up question while we have you here. We don't often have an impeachment lawyer on the set with us.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: On the Paul Manafort issue, people noted how unusual it was for someone who had already pleaded guilty to be sharing information with someone else's team who may be a subject in this investigation. How unusual is that? Did that set off alarm bells for you?

GARBER: To be clear, I have handled a lot of impeachments. But day- to-day, I represent public officials and government officials and campaigns and lots of these things.

BERMAN: We're not calling you the grim reaper or anything.

(LAUGHTER)

GARBER: So the answer is, it is relatively unusual, but it is not unprecedented. And I think what happened here was Paul Manafort and his lawyers probably believed that they were not cooperating against the president. And the president's lawyers believed that Paul Manafort was not cooperating against the president because there was nothing to cooperate on. So, in other words, their interests were aligned. And so on that basis, they had a common interest or a joint defense agreement.

HILL: Just what we're talking about -- oh, sorry.

GARBER: I was just going to say, even at that, everybody going into that knows that prosecutors will hate that. And so normally you don't do that because in cooperation situations you're all in. You're all in with the prosecutors.

HILL: To that point, too, it is also rare, extremely rare, for the government to try to pull a plea agreement.

GARBER: Yes. I was trying to think back to whether that had ever happened to me, and I can't. I can't recall an instance. And normally, there is so much interest on both sides in making sure that situation doesn't happen that a lot is done in advance. Remember, Paul Manafort met with the government and his lawyers talked to the government repeatedly and extensively before they entered into that agreement to make sure something like this didn't happen. And so it will be interesting to see, whether something new came up that nobody expected. But it is unusual.

BERMAN: Where are we politically? It's hard for me to tell because the Senate has decided or blocked every opportunity to pass any measures to protect Robert Mueller. Still, some of the complaints about the investigation from some of the Republican allies of the president, to me, they have started to quiet down since we've started to see things on paper.

LOUIS: That's right. Look, I think everything is going to change when the new Democratic House is seated. They have subpoena power. They can go back over so much of this stuff. They can publicize it if they wish. They can televise it if they wish. They can make this a very different kind of investigation as far as the tone, the information, the sense in which some sort of a crisis is real, that the president's tweets don't mean anything, that there really is something here, that there is some fire behind the smoke. I don't know what that means for the Mueller investigation, whether or not they then sort of hand it off to the House.

[08:10:05] But clearly we've seen, Jerry Nadler, the incoming chair of the Judiciary Committee from here in New York, he has already said the first person he's going to call is the sitting attorney general and he's going to go from there. They have talked about what they called a cover-up caucus, making light of Republican efforts to sort of shield the president or downplay a lot of this investigation. All of that changes in January.

And I think if you go back to 1973, 74, this is the point, this is the kind of point in which Watergate became -- it broke through the national consciousness and became the central story. People realized that there was a problem. The polls began to change. The politics began to change. I think we could see something like that happen the first of this year.

HILL: It will be interesting to see. When you look at the parallels, right, between 40 years ago and what's happening today and how toxic an environment it is and the messaging that's been put out consistently for so long, specifically on the part of the president and his team, which has been in some circles very effective, Phil.

MUDD: It has been. But let me tell you, it's going to get worse. And I think that messaging is going to be challenged. Let me give you one reason why. We mentioned earlier Michael Flynn talking 19 times to the special counsel. This is the former national security adviser who gets off the hook for information that's redacted by the page. My bottom line is he's getting off the hook because he's talking about people who are even further up the chain, bigger fish. He's not giving up smaller fish. When those indictments come down, and I suspect they will, that's when the White House is really on the hook with a new Congress to say, what are you going to do about it? And this question of are you going to start pardoning people, especially if they are directly connected with the family or the White House.

BERMAN: Great discussion. Ross, you have a last point?

GARBER: My only point was, number one, I think Trump has actually played it very well by keeping his base on board. And second, we can't rely too much on Congressional subpoena power because Congressional subpoenas can be released and opposed, and there is not that much Congress can do to enforce them.

BERMAN: Great discussion. Ross Garber, Phil Mudd, Errol Louis, thank you for being it was. Appreciate it.

A group of senators briefed by the CIA director say her message is clear. Saudi Arabia's crown prince is behind the murder of a journalist. A senator who was in that briefing joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:16:05] BERMAN: A group of bipartisan senators is introducing a resolution throwing the Senate support behind the CIA's assessment that the Saudi crown prince was complicit in the murder of "Washington Post" journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This is an extraordinary rebuke of President Trump, who still sides with the crown prince over his own intelligence community. It also flies in the face of what the secretary of defense and the secretary of state have said happened in Turkey at the consulate there.

Joining us now is the Democratic whip, Senator Dick Durbin. He attended the briefing with the CIA director.

Senator Durbin, thanks so much for being with us.

As we said, you were inside that briefing. So you can give us insight as to why it is that senators, the ones who were there, seem so upset by this.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: Well, of course, we just had a briefing the week or two before from Secretary Mike Pompeo and Secretary Mattis in which they said, quote, no smoking gun. In fact, Secretary Pompeo went on to publish an article in "The Wall Street Journal" accusing those who are raising this issue of so-called caterwauling over this assassination.

I couldn't understand the PR effort by the Trump administration and Secretary Pompeo we sat down with the very same intelligence analysts and the conclusion was obvious. This was an orchestrated decision by some 15 members of the Saudi forces to go into Istanbul to lure Khashoggi into the consulate to kill him. Once he was in the consulate, dismember his body and dispose of it. That's a simple fact.

And MBS, the crown prince who now leads Saudi Arabia, must have been part of this as it reached the highest levels of his security force.

BERMAN: So when the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said there's no smoking gun and when Secretary James Mattis, who is largely seen as apolitical, the secretary of defense, says there is no smoking gun, are you in a position to say this morning that they were lying?

DURBIN: No, I'm not. Their interpretation of what a smoking gun means is up to them. But I will tell you, we were disappointed that the CIA did not make that presentation that we saw, a dozen of us saw, this last week, when they didn't make that presentation to the remainder of the senators. We were disappointed when the administration spokesman at this meeting used this term, smoking gun.

If you sat down with the evidence, with the analysts, in a matter of minutes, the conclusion is obvious.

BERMAN: And again, to be clear, Gina Haspel, who was also considered apolitical by most people, her job is not to go in there and say smoking gun or not smoking gun. Her job is to show you the data, is to show you want the CIA has found, to present the evidence usually without conclusion about that evidence but just to give you the evidence.

And you're saying the evidence there speaks differently than no smoking gun.

DURBIN: Absolutely. And if we're looking for an actual communication by the crown prince where he admits complicity in this -- no, that does not exist. But all roads lead to the conclusion that when his security force launched this attack involving so many people in the highest levels of his administration and this calculated murder of Khashoggi, it could not have happened without his knowledge or at least approval, maybe with his own planning.

BERMAN: So, what are you going to do about? I know there is this Senate resolution, which is going to basically agree with the CIA assessment as we know it. Is that it?

DURBIN: No, it isn't. This resolution also, the one that we're considering on the floor currently pending, addresses the United States involvement in the war in Yemen. Consider the fact that we have been supportive of the Saudis who invaded Yemen. We have given them targeting in terms of their bombing raids. At one point, we were fuelling their bombers.

That's going to come to an end, absolutely. Not a single taxpayers dollar, not a single American military life should be at risk on behalf of the Saudis in Yemen. It is a tragedy of epic proportions. Some 14 million people facing a famine, not to mention the thousands of children and hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died.

[08:20:01] We want the United States -- those of us in this position want the United States completely removed from that conflict.

BERMAN: Do you have any reaction to a story that appeared in "The Washington Post" overnight? And it gets to the connection between the Saudis and perhaps the Trump family.

And the story in "The Washington Post" says that a Saudi-funded lobbyist paid for 500 rooms at the Trump Hotel in Washington after the 2016 election. It's more complicated than that. It had to do with sending U.S. veterans to Washington for these spells (ph). But the bottom line is, is that Saudi money paying for 500 rooms inside a Trump Hotel.

What do you make of that?

DURBIN: It's obvious to me. I can't think of a parallel in American history where a United States president or his family has profited from his office the way this administration appears to be when it comes to things like the Trump International Hotel.

The fact of the matter is the Constitution includes a clause which most people didn't notice called the Emolument Clause, which prohibits this sort of conduct in anticipation that someone might abuse it in our history. There is a lawsuit pending which I support, raising that constitutional issue. I think a president who will not disclose his income tax returns, who

has not divested himself of his own personal business dealings, leading this country and being subject to this kind of conduct is unacceptable in America.

BERMAN: Senator, you have been a big part of a bipartisan effort on criminal justice reform, the first step act, which the president has said he supported. This is something that would change some sentencing issues, would address recidivism, among other things, help the prison population, the federal prison population.

What is the status now of this measure, which does have bipartisan support? Do you think it will get a vote on the Senate floor this Congress?

DURBIN: Well, let me say at the outset -- this is exactly what the American people have been asking for over and over, solve problems facing America on a bipartisan basis, be willing to compromise and work out something that is acceptable, and we have done it. Senator Chuck Grassley, conservative Republican of Iowa, Senator Mike Lee, conservative Republican of Utah, have joined me and Senator Corey Booker in a bipartisan effort supported not only by the Fraternal Order of Police, but also by the American Civil Liberties Union.

We have the endorsement of the president and the vice president. It has been stopped on the Senate floor by one person -- Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader.

BERMAN: If it doesn't get a vote before the end of this Congress, before the New Year, will it come up next year?

DURBIN: Well, I can tell you, I have been working on it for five years, and I'm not quitting. We are close to achieving something significant so that we at least have some sanity in criminal sentencing, so we don't oversentence those who are involved in nonviolent drug offenses, people who are willing to cooperate with our government.

Let's use this money to make sure that recidivism is reduced and repeat criminals don't get released on the street.

BERMAN: Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, thanks so much for being with us this morning, sir. I appreciate it.

DURBIN: Good to be with you, John.

BERMAN: Erica?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: New information about an Alabama man shot and killed by police inside a shopping mall on Thanksgiving. The man's family is with us with those details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:05] HILL: An independent autopsy of a black man mistakenly killed by an off duty police officer at an Alabama mall shows he was shot three times from behind. You may recall, police originally said Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Jr. was the gunman that opened fire in the mall on Thanksgiving night. They later retracted that accusation just one day later, in fact.

Joining us now is E.J.'s father, Emantic Bradford Sr., and the family's attorney, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump.

Gentlemen, good to have you both with us.

Mr. Bradford, I know that through your attorney this autopsy was commissioned. I imagine it is difficult to read the details of it. When you discovered what that autopsy found happened, what was your reaction?

EMANTIC BRADFORD, SR., FATHER OF MALL SHOOTING VICTIM EMANTIC "EJ" BRADFORD, JR.: That my son was murdered. And the officer that shot him was a coward. And it hurts me because my son was moving away from gunfire. He was running like everybody else. And he shot my son. I mean, three times in the back.

You know, that's murder any way you look at it and the facts speak for themselves when you look at independent autopsy reports.

HILL: I know --

BRADFORD: It's dishonesty.

HILL: And, Mr. Crump, I know that you have been asked actually to present this independent medical review to the Alabama law enforcement agency. Do they have a copy of it now?

BENJAMIN CRUMP, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: They do have a copy of it, Erica. And it shows, based on forensic science, that he was shot in the back of his head, beneath his ear and the bullet exited out of his left forehead right above his eye. The other bullet went into the base of his neck, lodged in his throat in his tonsils and the other bullet went into his back right above his buttocks, went to his small intestines and lodged into his abdomen.

For whatever reason, the police shot him as he was running away like everybody else. And it's just inexplicable to E.J.'s parents and family that their son, who is a good kid with no criminal history whatsoever, was a caretaker for his father, was helping people at the mall based on witness statements, why this officer would recklessly shoot him in the back.

HILL: There are so many questions at this point. And Mr. Bradford, I know the last time you were here with us on NEW DAY, you wanted a number of those questions answered and you wanted to speak directly with officials. You wanted an apology. You wanted some sort of recognition and a conversation.

You have since met with officials. What did you learn in that conversation?

BRADFORD: Yes. HILL: Do you believe they were transparent with you? Were you satisfied?

BRADFORD: I'm still disappointed. I was disappointed because no parent wants to find out --