Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Court Filings Show Trump in Growing Legal & Political Peril; James Comey: Americans Must 'Use Every Breath' to Oust Trump in 2020; Deadly Winter Storm Pummels Southeast U.S. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 10, 2018 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), RANKING MEMBER, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: He may be the first president to face the real prospect of jail time.

[05:59:02] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a miscarriage of justice. We should not have special prosecutors going after one person.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The key phrase is "directed by Individual 1." "Directed by" implicates the president in a felony.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's been a long two years for General Kelly. Perhaps it is time for a rest.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There was internal resistance to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) from senior staffers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump definitely feels comfortable with Meadows but whether the political chemistry is there, it's a little hard to tell right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Monday, December 10, 6 a.m. here in New York. Great to see you so early after our fun night at "CNN Heroes."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're so fresh. We're so fresh. "CNN Heroes" is one of the greatest nights of the year. It's inspiring in every way.

CAMEROTA: It is fabulous, and we'll get into that. But this morning we begin with Donald Trump facing the greatest threat to his presidency.

For the first time since taking office, the president is tied directly to federal crimes in the sentencing memo of his former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen. The top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee calls these, quote, "impeachable offenses." Also revealed, new documents -- in the new documents are about the

lies allegedly told by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, lies that torpedoed his plea deal with the feds.

Here's what we know this morning. Federal prosecutors say Donald Trump instructed Michael Cohen to pay that hush money during the campaign to those two women who claimed they had affairs with Mr. Trump. And we've learned that Cohen also spoke to a Russian offering, quote, "political synergy," end quote, in November of 2015, although he says he did not take the meeting, because he already had another connection to the Russian government.

We now know that Michael Cohen is one of at least 14 Trump associates who interacted with Russians during the campaign. That's -- that's a higher number than we knew. This was also during the presidential transition, according to the analysis by "The Washington Post."

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And 14 is actually also not zero, which is what President Trump said it was the first month of his administration.

We also know that Michael Cohen lied about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, and that he says he discussed the project with then-candidate Trump well into the 2016 campaign.

Prosecutors say Manafort Paul Manafort also lied about his contacts with the White House. They have messages showing Manafort talking to people in the administration earlier this year, even after his 2017 indictment.

And he also lied about his contacts with a Russian operatives who has ties to the military intelligence agencies suspected of hacking the DNC.

All of that, everything we just laid out there, is what we learned on Friday. That's just Friday. That's on top of the Trump Tower meeting where Don Junior was promised Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton and on top of the 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking the DNC. That's on top of Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi trying to connect with WikiLeaks about releasing this information. That's on top of whatever lies former national security advisor Michael Flynn told and whatever President Trump did to derail the investigation into that. In fact, that's on top of whatever investigation there is into obstruction altogether. In other words, it's a lot on top of a lot on top of a lot.

CAMEROTA: With a cherry on top.

As the White House deals with these revelations, there's also a shake- up at the highest levels. The president announcing the chief of staff, John Kelly, will be out by the end of the year, and the frontrunner to replace him, Vice President Pence's chief of staff, Nick Ayers, says he does not want that job. Sources tell CNN there are four people in the running to replace Kelly, but some of them are not interested.

So we have a lot to cover for you this morning. Luckily, we have wonderful guests joining us.

BERMAN: And also David Gregory.

CAMEROTA: And David Gregory is here.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh, come on.

CAMEROTA: David, we're leading with you, our CNN political analyst. We also have former prosecutor and CNN legal analyst Lisa Coates; and former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York and CNN legal analyst, Jennifer Rogers.

Jennifer, great to have you on set with us. Big picture, OK, so we've just spelled out the -- some of the more granular details. Take us up to 30,000 feet. What do you see this morning?

JENNIFER ROGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I see a president that is really in trouble now. Because for the first time, we actually have a prosecutor's office saying that he has committed a federal felony.

The question is what are they going to do about it? Right? And what is Mueller going to do about his piece of it? So I think that ultimately, they're going to have to wait. The OLC opinions, Office of Legal Counsel, says you can't indict a sitting president. So they're going to have to hold onto this. They could indict him after he leaves office. They could turn the evidence over to Congress for whatever they want to do. But they're unlikely to proceed with that criminal case as of now.

CAMEROTA: That's the one -- are you referring to the one where Michael Cohen at the direction of Individual One, who we know to be Donald Trump, made those hush money payments.

ROGERS: Correct. So Cohen had testified to that in his plea proceeding, but we hadn't yet had the prosecutor's office say that they believed its true, which means they just don't have Cohen's statement, because Cohen, of course, is not technically even a cooperator. They can't rely on his testimony. They have other evidence that's consistent with that, and that's what they spelled out in the memo on Friday, meaning that the president could be charged if he weren't the actual sitting president.

BERMAN: And David Gregory, again, it is delightful to have you on this morning. I'm putting this to you, because I couldn't be happier that you're with us.

This is, like, ring number three. That's what's so astounding to me about what we learned on Friday in writing, is that the Southern District of New York thinks that it could prosecute President Trump for a crime, were he not president.

Basically, that's what they say on paper. That's on top of whatever evidence there might be about Russian collusion. That's on top of whatever investigation they might have into obstruction. They could charge the president with breaking a law. That's a big deal. GREGORY: Huge deal. And could force that confrontation while he's

still in office, potentially. If not, there could be the pursuit of an impeachment proceeding against him. So you go get a bigger deal than this.

We've been talking for months about trying to understand how all of the pieces fit together. We've got now an indication of how part of that picture looks and how damning that part alone is without even knowing the rest of it.

So there's the Michael Cohen piece. This other piece that's so big boils down to this, which is the Trump campaign was open for business with the Russians; and apparently, it went all the way up to the candidate himself.

And how do we know that? We know that from what we've learned, but if you connect what the evidence is that the special prosecutor has gathered with the president's own statements, that tells you a lot, as well. What did the president say during the campaign? He said it would be good to have a better relationship with Russia. He's now admitted that, yes, he had business dealings that he then abandoned. But June of 2016, he was still pursuing a Trump Tower there.

He openly called upon the Russian government to jack Hillary Clinton e-mails, to find missing e-mails. And that reporters would reward Russia for that. He talked about how much he loved WikiLeaks, and on and on this thing goes.

Again, this idea that the campaign was open for business because the candidate and others said anybody would go for this kind of opposition research, when we know the Russians didn't like Hillary Clinton, didn't want her to win.

CAMEROTA: Laura, the Russians reached out to more Trump associates than we previously knew. So here's our -- I think we have a graphic of the 14 people that have just been disclosed. There may be more, but there were 14 people, including Ivanka Trump. Did not know that she was one of the people. There was this -- he's the person that supposedly -- this is the Russian who was looking for political synergy with the campaign.

"The Washington Post" says it was this athlete turned entrepreneur named Dmitry Klokov, who all of that -- I mean, basically, Laura, what I see in this is that individually, taken individually, the wife of some Russian entrepreneur calls you. If you're Ivanka Trump, OK, that doesn't sound like a high crime and misdemeanor. But when you put all that together, you see how many in-roads different Russians were trying to make, successfully, to the Trump campaign.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I mean, it's astonishing, Alisyn, to think about. And of the graphic you're showing and of the list of people who are receptive or willing to speak to anyone, I don't see one that actually contacted the FBI, to alert them to the fact that there were people trying to make inroads to influence, in some way, an American presidential election or for any election, for that matter. And when you have people and you have in writing with Mueller's different recommendations, et cetera, you do not have anybody who was reaching out to the FBI or any law enforcement agency to say, "This is happening. This is a problem, and we do not want any part of it."

Instead, we have people reaching back in many respects. Now, it's getting closer and closer to the inner circle and the Oval Office, indeed, for the president of the United States.

But what's so astonishing to me is that, of all the things you all have listed today, that litany of things that we do know, Mueller knows exponentially more. He's redacted portions of his filings to alert people that he doesn't even want you to know yet what you do not know, but it's coming.

And that, I think, is the most foreboding thing of all. And if you're the president of the United States at this point or anyone in his inner circle, you're wondering, "Is my name under that particular black line? I'm certainly on the graphic."

BERMAN: You know what's so interesting? When Laura says Mueller knows more, both David and Jennifer are nodding like this, because if there's one thing we've learned is that Mueller is operating at a different level than we're used to. We just have no idea where he's going.

If you can put that chart of the 14 different people up on the screen for one more time, let it sink in for just one second, and look at that, commit it to memory. And now, I want to play Donald Trump, who had been president for about a month when he said this on February 16, 2017. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: No person except for those 14 people just up on the screen. So leave that there. I want to play Jerry Nadler, because I think this moved beyond the theoretical this weekend when Jerry Nadler, who will be chair of the House Judiciary Committee in less than a month, said this on our air. It was fascinating.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY), RANKING MEMBER, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Well, they would be impeachable offenses. Whether they are important enough to justify an impeachment is a different question. But certainly, they'd be impeachable offenses, because even though they were committed before the president became president, they were committed in the service of fraudulently obtaining the office. That would be the -- that would be an impeachable offense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: David, to you, because this now is a political discussion. Jerry Nadler laid it out perfectly there. Yes, he thinks if he wanted, he could bring this up to discuss as an impeachable offense. He could hold hearings on it. But what he's saying is he's not sure it's political expedient to do so.

GREGORY: Well, it's interesting. If you were on a continuum, you'd see a level of caution that Democrats have had about the "I" word against President Trump. And here is Nadler yesterday who has said, "Yes, well, they'd be impeachable offenses. Whether it warrants that or not is a separate issue." Democrats are going to be so, so cautious about moving down this road.

[06:10:13] But as you just said a moment ago, we now know so much more about what Mueller has. And there's so much more yet to come, by the indications of redacted documents and so forth, that Democrats could become increasingly confident.

And we're not going to know until we actually know the full picture about just how confident Democrats will become. But the political concern is what if all of this is as damning as it appears, and it lands on Capitol Hill in an unbelievable report, and the American people don't care? That's what Democrats have to think about. Because they know that the down side to pursuing this could be very tricky for them politically.

CAMEROTA: Well, it's beyond political, according to Adam Schiff. So Adam Schiff was on CBS this weekend, and he was saying it's not -- I mean, you spelled it out perfectly, David, the way, politically, it could go. But Adam Schiff went further, Jen, and said criminally how he thinks that it could go. So listen to this scenario.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIFF: My takeaway is there's a very real prospect that, on the day Donald Trump leaves office, the Justice Department may indict him, that he may be the first president in quite some time to face the real prospect of jail time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I mean, obviously, we're getting a little ahead of ourselves, but that's how he sees it. So regardless of whatever impeachment might happen with the House or beyond, that he think it's more -- even beyond that.

ROGERS: I think he's right, but the problem is only if Donald Trump does not win a second term. Because the statute of limitations is five years. So there is time through 2021, but not if he won a second term. So that's the other thing that's kind of playing out here. If he does win a second term, he actually will, kind of ironically, skate through, because they won't be able to indict him at that time.

BERMAN: So James Comey was at the 92nd Street Y last night, and he was talking about this. I have a combo platter. What I'm going to give you is James Comey and --

CAMEROTA: Are there nachos?

BERMAN: -- and George Conway. I mean, it's better than nachos.

CAMEROTA: Wow.

BERMAN: Listen to the former FBI director at the 92nd Street Y.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: I can't see that -- what the end of the Mueller effort looks like. I don't know what form it will take. I don't know what they'll conclude. And so I can't say in that respect. I can tell you that all of us should use every breath we have to make sure that the lying stops on January 20, 2021.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So that was James Comey last night, who did not spare any words for the president, by the way.

So someone tweeted out what Comey said: "All of us should use every breath we have to make sure that the lies stop on January 20, 2021." Then George Conway, who is --

CAMEROTA: The husband of Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president.

BERMAN: And also a big-time, heavy-hitting lawyer he tweets out, "I'm increasingly optimistic that we can do better than this."

In other words, he's saying, "I don't think we have to wait," Laura, until January 20, 2021. George Conway is now saying impeachment is more likely than he has ever seen it before.

Look, I don't know whether -- what George Conway is playing at there, but he's a lawyer who sees these things. Do you think the DEFCON level has gone to one for President Trump, Laura?

COATES: I think it has increased. I mean, you think about what is going on right now? The impeachment. Look back to the Clinton era. One of the reasons that Nadler and others are reluctant to say that impeachment is looming or imminent, is because there has to be some incentive on the Republican side of the Senate to actually go forward through the articles of impeachment if they are ever filed by the House.

And when you look at the Clinton years, one of the things that was required to have that happen was there had to be some level of a public distrust or a public popularity contest -- had to be decreased for that person in order to incentivize it for people who were in office.

We know that congressmen and women oftentimes are beholden not only to special interests, but also the American people. So I think, in many ways, we have to have his popularity go down even more. And I think we're at at this level where I think Senate Republicans may be more receptive to say, if all this is true, if it was a hijacked election, we're happy to look into it, not just because we think the Democrats want us to; because the evidence compels us to do so.

CAMEROTA: All right. Laura, Jennifer, David, thank you very much for all of the analysis.

Meanwhile, other news to tell you about. A deadly winter storm is pummeling the Southeast. They're leaving hundred -- it's leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power. It's causing a mess for travel, as you can see on your screen. One person was killed while driving in the storm in North Carolina. More snow is expected today.

So let's check in with CNN meteorologist Chad Myers. He has our forecast. Hi, Chad.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Hi, Alisyn.

And the storm really put down its snow exactly where it was forecast to do so. Not as much for Charlotte. We had some ice and sleet mixing in. But for Asheville and Winston-Salem and all those areas, really picked up almost that foot and a half of snow there.

[06:15:12] Roanoke, you're still cold. Charlotte, 35. Some melting going on here.

If you are flying today, even if you're flying out of Tampa, your plane may be stuck in Raleigh. So this is going to be a dreadful day to fly. Almost 3,000 flights over the weekend were cancelled. Cancelled. Not just delayed. So the planes aren't where they're supposed to be this morning.

So we will still see some light rain mixing with snow this afternoon, but really, this is just about done for, this storm. Now, there's another one on the horizon about five days from now; but temperatures are going to be 38 in New York, 32 D.C.; 39 in Charlotte. So things begin to warmup, but warmup is a relative term, because for the rest of the day, John, you are in the 30s, 40s, and not even to the 50s by Friday. So another cold couple of days in store -- John.

BERMAN: Chad Myers, thank you very much.

Chad told us exactly what would happen with this Southeast storm, and it has happened. Appreciate it, Chad.

So how close are we to the worst-case scenario for President Trump in the Russia investigation? Our next guest says very, very close. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: So as we sit here this morning, just how threatening is the Russia investigation to President Trump and how serious the allegations and possible infractions? Our next guest says bluntly, the Mueller investigation nears the worst-case scenario.

[06:20:15] Joining us now is CNN contributor Garrett Graff. He's the author of "The Threat Matrix: Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror."

And Garrett, you have a terrific article in "WIRED," where you lay out why you why you see this as the most likely worst-case scenario. And you quote Benjamin Wittes in the Lawfare blog, which has this list of seven possibilities for Trump and Russia, and this was, like, from a year ago.

And you know that, among the seven here, and if we could put it up on the screen so people can see what I'm talking about here, that No. 5 is "Russian intelligence actively penetrated the Trump campaign, and Trump knew or should have known."

You think we are squarely into scenario five right now. Why?

GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. So this was -- I think it's really helpful in the Russia investigation to -- to try to come up with sort of frameworks and -- and think about sort of how to make these -- these developments concrete.

So Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic came up with this set of seven different scenarios, from most innocent to most guilty, last year. And once you get above No. 4, like, it's really bad for -- for the United States.

And this, by the way, I think is worst-case scenario for the United States, not for Donald Trump. And that this is, with the revelations that we now know from last week with Michael Flynn, with Michael Cohen, with Paul Manafort and even some of Jim Comey's testimony on Friday that came out over the weekend, we squarely see now that there was an extensive multifaceted multi-pronged Russian intelligence operation to penetrate and make contact with the Trump campaign.

You know, you saw that graphic in the last segment with the 14 different Trump officials who were approached by Russians over the course of the campaign and the transition. That's a lot of Russians. I mean, I think that that really bears some emphasis. That there just aren't that many Russians that you encounter normally in U.S. politics. This isn't a country that is actively involved day-to-day in the swirl of politics in Washington.

And so to have that many people with that many ties to the Kremlin approaching that many different Trump officials. And to have, as Laura and David were saying in the last segment, that much sort of welcomed help from the Trump campaign, I mean, it really is striking how much the Trump campaign opened their arms to these contacts and opened their arms to this help.

And it's clear that Russian intelligence was targeting the campaign, and the question -- the only question remaining is whether Donald Trump and his campaign knew it or not. BERMAN: Right. As far as we know, none of those 14 said no. None of

the 14 points of contact said to the Russians, "You know what? No thank you. This sounds sketchy," or "You know what? This sounds sketchy, and I'm going to call the FBI." It didn't happen.

And we're talking about points of contact. I think I want to play it one more time. This was then-President Trump a month into his administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I have nothing to do with Russia. To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So Garrett, you now say he knew or should have known, just to put a point on it, correct?

GRAFF: Exactly. And what -- the two major things that we saw on Friday come out of the Michael Cohen court filing was, A, that these contacts began earlier than we realized. The court filing on Friday cites at least one in November of 2015, which again, very much changes the timeline, because then, by that point, it changes the way that we think about subsequent contacts and sort of things that we thought might have been an initial approach might have actually been follow-up approaches.

And then the second thing, as you said, that they just didn't turn any of this help down. In fact, the counterpoint to that is striking in and of itself, which is on Friday, we saw sort of the one contact that we know of that Michael Cohen didn't follow up on was an offer of help from someone who was offering political synergy from the Kremlin for the Trump campaign. And the only reason he didn't follow up on that contact was because he felt that he was already dealing with someone with someone who had a sufficient Kremlin connection.

BERMAN: So Garrett, the other thing -- and if we can put that list of five, six and seven up on the Lawfare list of worst-case scenarios. No. 6 is Kompromat, and I think people think that's an intimidating word, A, because it's Russian, but B, because they think spy craft or some kind of intelligence dirt there.

[06:25:11] But if you think about it another way, if you think about it as leverage, then you think again, we are squarely into that scenario. Explain why.

GRAFF: Yes. And this is where we have been very focused on this in the context of the Steele dossier and some of the more salacious possibilities for what kompromat could be, compromising material that the Russians had on the president or his campaign.

But we're already beginning to see signs that the Russians had leverage over the Trump campaign. And we saw -- we know of at least two instances that we were discussing last week, the first being Michael Flynn lying publicly about his contacts with Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, during the transition. And then Michael Cohen and the Trump Organization lying about their contacts with Russia and the Kremlin over the Trump Tower Moscow.

And that that was remember, information that the Trump campaign has been lying about for, effectively, two years now, which means that for two years, the Russian government has known that the Trump administration is lying about something. And that, again, is about the worst-case scenario for the United States from a counter- intelligence perspective, to have the president of the United States be under the thumb potentially, of a foreign adversary who knows that they know things that the American public doesn't.

BERMAN: Great point. You know, we are just learning that Michael Cohen was lying about his contacts with the Russians, but the Russians knew all along, including when President Trump was meeting with Vladimir Putin, even once he was president. That is leverage.

Garrett Graff, thank you for helping us understand this. Appreciate it.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: The U.S. is aligning with Russia and Saudi Arabia instead of the rest of the world at a global climate change summit. We have details on these sharpening battle lines, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)