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Transcripts Detail How FBI Debated Whether Trump Was Following Instructions from Russia; CNN Poll: Most Americans Blame Trump for Government Shutdown. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 14, 2019 - 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: He has become a pawn of the Russians. Mueller is looking at whether the obstruction itself has furthered Putin's aims.

[05:59:37] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn't care less.

MIKE POMPEO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: The notion that President Trump is a threat to American national security is absolutely ludicrous.

TRUMP: They don't come to their senses, I'll do a national emergency.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's going to go to court, and the wall won't get build.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: History will look back and say this was the most inept negotiation. He boxed himself in a corner.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's time to stop using us as pawns.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to your viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Monday, January 14, 6 a.m. in New York. What a weekend, and now we have more.

Breaking news this morning. CNN has obtained transcripts, transcripts that explain why the FBI opened an investigation into whether the president of the United States was working on behalf of Russia against American interests.

These are transcripts of closed-door congressional interviews with two FBI officials who testified that officials were looking into whether President Trump was, quote, "acting at the behest of and somehow following directions, somehow executing their will." "They" here is Russia.

This follows a weekend of just huge headlines. "The New York Times" revealing this FBI counterintelligence investigation of the president and "The Washington Post" report that the president went to extraordinary lengths to hide details of his meetings with Vladimir Putin even from his own administration. The paper reports that, after one meeting, the president even took his interpreter's notes. As far as we know, that's unprecedented.

Now, back to "The New York Times." They have an extraordinary couple of sentences that put this weekend in perspective. Quote, "The president of the United States was asked over the weekend whether he is a Russian agent, and he refused to directly answer."

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: If that's not enough drama, we are in day 24 of the government shutdown. It is now the longest in American history. A new CNN poll finds that most Americans blame President Trump for the shutdown, and a majority oppose his border wall. And even though 800,000 federal workers did not collect a paycheck on Friday, President Trump's economic advisor compares the shutdown to a vacation, saying that furloughed workers are, quote, "better off."

Meanwhile, more signs that Republicans are concerned that the standoff over the president's border wall is hurting their party politically.

But let's begin with CNN's crime and justice reporter, Shimon Prokupecz, live in Washington with all of the breaking news this morning -- Shimon.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Alisyn, these transcripts really give us a window into some of what was going on in the FBI, some of their thinking.

Now, these two transcripts of the two FBI officials, closed-door congressional interviews, reveal on one end, that there was the idea that Trump fired Comey at the behest of Russia, and then on the other was the possibility that Trump was completely innocent and was acting within the bounds of his executive authority.

Now, James Baker, the then-top FBI lawyer, described the FBI's thinking about Russia saying, quote, "That was one extreme. The other extreme was the president is completely innocent, and we discussed that, too," he said. "There's a range of things this could possibly be. We need to investigate, because we don't know whether, you know, the worst-case scenario is possibly true or the president is totally innocent, and we need to get this thing over with. And so he can move forward with his agenda."

Now this is what James Baker told members of Congress in his closed- door interview with him.

And then in another interview from another FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, who, as you will recall, came under fire for her anti-Trump texts with Peter Strzok, she told members the FBI considered investigating Trump for some time, saying, quote, "It's not that it could not have been done. This case had been a topic of discussion for some time. The 'waiting on' was an indecision and was a cautiousness on the part of the bureau to what to do and whether there was sufficient predication to open," she said. And that means open the investigation.

Now, as we know, they did wind up opening an investigation, and all that now lives with the special counsel and his team -- John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Shimon, thank you very much for all of that fascinating reporting.

Joining us now, CNN political analyst David Gregory; former director of communications for U.S. national intelligence, Shawn Turner; and former senior advisor to the national security advisor, Samantha Vinograd.

Sam, just fascinating to see the transcripts now of what was going on, the conversations with these half-dozen FBI officials, who were trying to figure out why all of this strange behavior, right, that had gotten their attention -- was this a pattern? Was this something that they needed to investigate? And they concluded that it was. I mean that just -- I think it bears repeating what Shimon just reported. They -- they were having to consider whether the president of the United States had become a stooge for Russia, OK?

And as the legal counsel for the FBI said, that one was extreme, OK? They were looking at the worst-case scenario. "That one was extreme," he admits. "The other extreme was that the president is completely innocent and we discussed that, too. There's a range of things that it could possibly be. We need to investigate, because we don't know whether the worst-case scenario is possibly true or if the president is totally innocent." Your thoughts?

SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: My thoughts are that that's what an investigation is, obviously, to figure out whether someone is guilty of a crime and, in this case, whether the president was, knowingly or unknowingly, a Russian asset.

The key question coming out of these transcripts is for me, is what the FBI actually thinks the president is up to today. Several months ago during the campaign, right after the election, the president could make the argument that he was just being Donald Trump. He was saying things that fit with his platform and just being himself.

At this point, he has to have been briefed that what he is saying and what he is doing is parroting Russia propaganda and actively helping Putin's own operation against the United States. Yet, he continues to keep doing exactly the same thing.

And so you just have to wonder, if the FBI was looking at him several months ago, a year ago, are they looking at him today, based upon the fact that, despite knowing that he's helping Russia, he continues to do exactly the same thing?

BERMAN: I think it's a really interesting question. What this put in perspective for me is the reminder that what this is about was an attack, a Russian attack on the U.S. electoral system and trying to find out the extent of that attack and trying to stop future attacks.

And David Gregory, this jumped out to me in this text, in this transcript that James Baker -- this is P-106 so our control room knows. "Not only would it be an issue of obstructing an investigation, but the obstruction itself would hurt our ability to figure out what the Russians had done, and that is what would be the threat to national security."

In other words, David, and Benjamin Wittes has written extensively this weekend about this: the obstruction that they were looking into, the president, perhaps, firing James Comey and some of the other events, the obstruction, in and of itself, was a type of collusion: trying to work with Russia to keep the extent of their attacks secret.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. And the president was pretty clear about why he was firing Comey. In his interview for NBC with Lester Holt, he said because he didn't like the Russia investigation.

Now, part of why he didn't right it is also in these transcripts: the people involved. Lisa Page, Peter Strzok. They had expressed animus toward the president and a political view. They argued in testimony that that didn't keep them from doing their jobs professionally. But that certainly raises real questions.

But even if you muck all of that up with those agendas, as the president would try to do, you step back. John and I, you were on the air -- you and I were on the air the day the president, the Democratic convention, called on Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's e-mails, find missing e-mails.

So he was doing this. He was not only directly working, you know, in rhetorically, you know, with the Russians, calling on them to -- to hack her e-mails, but was parroting aspects of their propaganda at a time when they were working surreptitiously at the time to destabilize the election with an online campaign.

And then you bring it up to now, as Sam was just saying. And you wonder what is this relationship with Putin? Why isn't the president being more forthcoming about it? It's beyond kind of manic and unprofessional. It raises very serious questions about what he's doing, given his history, given his penchant for authoritarian leaders and his expressed support for Putin and his style in the past.

CAMEROTA: Shawn, over on FOX, the president was actually asked about this, this weekend. He called in to Jeanine Pirro's show FOX, and she asked him directly. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEANINE PIRRO, FOX NEWS HOST: Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (via phone): I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked. I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written. And if you read the article, you'd see that they found absolutely nothing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Not a "no."

SHAWN TURNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, you don't -- I watched that.

CAMEROTA: I doubt that he would have said something like that on -- on the air. But what do you think of all of this, even hearing his response?

TURNER: Yes, you know, I watched that segment, and I sat there thinking, "Mr. President, the right answer is 'no'."

Look, you know, I think what the president has done here is he's created an optic here where it's clear that there are aspects of this relationship with Vladimir Putin that neither his senior advisers and, certainly, not the public are aware of.

And as a result of that, considering everything that's going on with people in the president's orbit who have been in touch with Russians and with this investigation going on, the president has created this -- this sense that he and Vladimir Putin have something that the rest of us need to know about.

I -- look, I don't -- I don't think that the president -- I'm of the mind the president probably has never been in a position to directly take orders and direction from Vladimir Putin.

However, that doesn't matter, because if we go back and look at what happened on the campaign trail, and we look at what's happened up until now, as Sam was pointing out, the president has engaged in a series of actions that are not easily explained with regard to dealing with Vladimir Putin.

And so we're in a situation where we hope that Bob Mueller will shed some light onto the nature of this relationship situation, but we really don't know what it is the president and Vladimir Putin have between each other.

GREGORY: And there is a difference between when you're president and when you're a candidate, especially when you have no political background.

[06:10:04] But in -- as a candidate, what did Trump do? He said, "Look, anybody who comes forward with opposition research on my opponent, why wouldn't you open the door? So it's Russians."

Nobody around him is saying, "You don't do that," because he's hired a campaign manager who had extensive ties with Russia and Ukraine in Paul Manafort, who's now in prison.

And then, as president, you know, there's this obvious petulance of the president, who has decided that he, you know, is so tough on Russia he's not going to give any quarter. And I mean, he apparently doesn't mind looking suspicious about all of this.

BERMAN: And that gets -- Sam, I'm going to come to you with this lesson, because I think it's so interesting. Shawn brought up the idea that his administration doesn't know the extent of the relationship between -- CAMEROTA: We don't know that.

BERMAN: -- President Trump and Vladimir Putin. Why don't they know? Because he's keeping it from them. He's hiding from his own administration what he talks about with Vladimir Putin.

This story in "The Washington Post," let me read this for you, P-114. "Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes" -- taking possession of the notes -- "of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials."

VINOGRAD: Every step that the president has made going into these meetings with Vladimir Putin has been a misstep from a counterintelligence perspective.

The president's decision, for example, not to take an actual note taker into the summit with Putin in Helsinki means that he literally did not bring any human witness into his meeting to document what happened, absent Vladimir Putin himself. He was unwilling to trust his own national security adviser, John Bolton, more than he was willing to trust Vladimir Putin to set the tone on this actual meeting.

At this point, he has ceded the narrative to the Russia propaganda machine about what happened, what was said and why. There is nothing, whether in the form of a memorandum for the record, notes from the meeting or again, a human witness that was present that can put forward his side of the story.

In my experience, President Obama brought a note taker into meetings, gave a read-out to appropriately-cleared members of the team, because he wanted people to know what happened so that they could actually use it to implement policy that helped the United States and not Russia. And then filed a memo for the record so that there was incontrovertible evidence for future presidents and for his own team about what happened.

Everything that President Trump did going into these meetings really just advantages the Russian government. And I just want to add really quickly, President Trump knows a heck of a lot more now about Russian's operations against the United States than when he was a candidate, when he was on the campaign trail. And yet, he continues to make exactly the same decisions.

CAMEROTA: Shawn, I'm sorry. Of all of the head-scratching, suspicious behavior, OK, that we've heard about over the past two years, this one is the most mind-blowing.

He confiscated the notes from the sole note taker, so that people in his administration would not know what he said between Vladimir Putin -- to Vladimir Putin and vice-versa.

And by the way, Shawn, if Helsinki is any indication of what was said, we know publicly when he sold out the U.S., publicly when he blamed America for Russian's interference. If that's what he said publicly, heaven knows what he said privately, and we'll never know.

GREGORY: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Because he didn't have people in with them, and then he took the notes.

TURNER: Yes. And I think that Helsinki moment is one that we will all remember for a long time.

Look, taking the notes away from the -- the translator, from the interpreter, that rises a new level. And I think what -- there's another aspect of this with respect to this meeting that we're not talk about here, and Sam touched on it.

You know, there is an immense amount of intelligence value in understanding what Vladimir Putin said to President Trump. Because what that does is it allows the intelligence community, it allows the national security community to understand Vladimir's -- Vladimir Putin's intentions and allows us to compare what he says to the president to what we're seeing in our own intelligence collection activities.

And so when the president does not share that information, when he takes deliberate action to prevent that information from being shared with his own director of national intelligence, with his own national security community, what he's done is essentially trusting himself to determine whether or not Vladimir Putin is trustworthy. And anyone who knows anything about the criminal will tell you that that is, at best, naive.

BERMAN: Well, we do know what the president thinks about that subject, and this is in "The Washington Post" story also. Let me just read you, as we part here, exactly what is in this story.

"Though the interpreter refused to discussion the meeting, officials said, he conceded that Putin had denied any Russian involvement in the U.S. election and that Trump responded by saying, 'I believe you'."

GREGORY: Yes.

BERMAN: So there you have it. And there's where the president is on this, according to the very, very scant sourcing we have from inside that meeting.

CAMEROTA: All right, panel. Thank you all very much. Obviously, we'll contribute to dissect this throughout the program.

[06:14:55] It is now day 24 of the American shutdown. Who do Americans blame for this? And has President Trump gained more support for his wall after talking about it so much and making his case? So we have in our new poll numbers to show you have next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) BERMAN: It is now day 24 of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. A new CNN poll finds that most Americans blame the president. Fifty-five percent think the president is responsible for the shutdown, compared to 32 percent who blame Democrats in Congress.

This as 56 percent of Americans polled say they oppose the president's border wall, versus 39 percent who approve of it.

CAMEROTA: All this is having an impact on the president's approval numbers. Thirty-seven percent approve how he's handling his job, while 57 percent at the moment disapprove. And that disapproval number has gone higher, five points higher since last month.

So let's discuss with David Gregory and John Avlon; and congressional reporter for Politico, Rachael Bade.

So John Avlon, when you've been looking at these numbers all morning, what does this mean about the messaging? What does this mean about who is -- Americans are listening to?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: First of all, Donald Trump is spectacularly unpopular, given the state of the economy, unemployment, in particular, at this point in his term.

Disapproval number going up is significant. That's people who are really saying, "I don't like this guy." Not "I think he's doing a great job."

hat really struck me isn't just in the shutdown fight. That Democrats are getting off pretty easy. I mean, this is basically a third of Americans -- a majority saying Donald Trump's to blame. So the attempt to shift that blame after the Oval Office not working so well.

[06:20:05] Final thing that really struck me is support for the wall at 39 percent. Now, that's slightly upticked over recent months, but compared to support for a border wall in 2015, when it was at 52 percent, or even ten years ago when it was up 45 percent. Donald Trump, his signature issue has gotten less popular with the American people since he took office.

BERMAN: It's not surprising, in some ways, that Americans blame the president for a shutdown when it was the president who promised to own it at the very beginning. He was the one who told them "This is my shutdown." Maybe this time they just listened to him.

And Rachael, Republicans in Congress -- and you've been working your sources all weekend long -- Republicans think they are losing the messaging war here.

RACHAEL BADE, POLITICO: Yes, that's exactly right. And I mean, we heard this even before the shutdown happened. This was why Republican leadership in the Senate and also in the House, they wanted to do a continuing resolution or just extend government funding for a while without having this shutdown fight for the border wall.

They didn't feel like there was any leverage for Republicans and that there was any way they could force Democrats to come to the negotiating table. And this is why they didn't want to do it.

But Trump, you know, he listens to the far-right corners of his base. I mean, we saw conservatives calling him. He was getting hit on talk radio. And he just couldn't take the criticism, and so that's why we're here.

And going back to his poll numbers, it's interesting, because even as the popularity for the wall has decreased and Americans are blaming the president for this shutdown fight, and they don't like it, Republicans, by and large, are actually -- the support is growing for the wall.

And so right now, the president is listening to his base and, obviously, he needs more than his base to win re-election in 2020. So he's doing that -- this at his own risk. He doesn't want to hear the criticism right now from conservatives for caving or for making some sort of bipartisan deal. But listen, in the long run, this is going to hurt him in 2020.

CAMEROTA: So David Gregory, give us the big picture. What -- what is the solution for breaking this impasse, given all of this?

GREGORY: Well, I think it's striking that Trump ally Newt Gingrich, former speaker, has said really, he has no choice but to go to the mat and fight this, that he simply cannot lose. And that's where the president is. You've heard it all here.

I mean, he's so painted himself into this corner where he can't lose, he can't disappoint those who -- who got him into office in the first place, and he's going to come through on this wall.

He's up against an opposition in Democratic leaders who have pressure of their own within their own caucus and who are meeting him with a sense of that same strength. And he is owning this.

He seems singularly uninterested in expanding his political appeal. We see that in so many areas. And I think that is the big picture here, which is that he will not relent on this. There's some signs of softening that he won't immediately declare a national emergency, but the key is still going to be Republicans on the Hill, how much pressure they put on Senate -- the Senate majority leader, McConnell, to say, "No, we've got to get the shutdown over with, and then we can keep pressure up on the wall." Which seems like only way out here, is continue this protracted fight but do it outside of a government shutdown.

BERMAN: Well, that's the Lindsey Graham. That's the Lindsey Graham path, Lindsey Graham who has been meeting with the president periodically, and it is sometimes his, you know, whisper buddy floated this weekend.

AVLON: That's the thing.

BERMAN: Well, no, they have these meetings.

CAMEROTA: His golf buddy, but go on. BERMAN: Lindsey Graham tries to whisper ideas to the president. He buys them or he doesn't. Then he goes public over here. Lindsey Graham says, "Open the government for three weeks. If it doesn't work, declare an emergency."

AVLON: Right. Which is a very rational suggestion. Right? There's an off-ramp. There's face saving. There's a deadline. And that Lindsey was saying, "Look, let's do some kind of deal where we maybe combine the DREAMers and DACA, with the border wall funding," the deal that they could have had a year ago on an elevated level.

And the president this weekend, or on Friday, blew that out of the water. BERMAN: He rejected it.

AVLON: And what Mick Mulvaney, his chief of staff, floated a middle path on the money, this weekend, he dressed him down in front of --

BERMAN: Can I read that? Can I read you a dramatic reading of exactly what the president said to Mick Mulvaney? When Mick Mulvaney floated a deal, right? The president says, "Stop, stop, just stop, what are you doing? You're f'ing it all up, Mick." Scene.

AVLON: Worst job in Washington.

CAMEROTA: Yes. No question. We'll just leave it there.

BERMAN: I'm doing a dramatic reading.

CAMEROTA: I know that. That stands on its own.

GREGORY: But my question is whether Democrats come to a point, and you -- in some of the polling I saw over the weekend, there was a little bit more give for Democrats to compromise here.

And I wonder if they try to occupy some space here in days to come to say, "Look, we will own the end of the shutdown. We will own the solution. We're going to give some on this, maybe enough to end the shutdown and keep these negotiations going." I mean, I don't know whether they'd have to give the whole 5.7 billion, but --

BADE: And just -- just to piggyback on that, though, you know, I was talking to some White House officials yesterday. And even though the president just on Friday said he was not interested in doing this whole Lindsey Graham DACA/wall idea, people in the White House think that, all of a sudden, he is interested in it again.

[06:25:16] This is a problem, again, he keeps flip-flopping. Does he want to do a deal? Does he not want to do a deal? And this is why Democrats don't trust him.

But going back to those polls that you're talking about, yes, Democrats, some of them are feeling some heat back home and do want to do some sort of compromise.

And yesterday I was hearing from the White House that this week there's a talk about bringing a bunch of rank-and-file House Democrats who are more moderate or from Republican-leaning districts to the White House to see if they will sort of do some sort of compromise with him. But, again, I don't know why they would trust him, because he keeps changing his mind.

CAMEROTA: Listen, I hear you, Rachael. I mean, you're so right. Ad I think the point that you are making or the next point is that, if Democrats can't seize on this waffling, shame on them, John. To think that, in public, everybody sees that the president has been all over the map literally with this wall.

If Democrats can't say, as Rachael and David are saying, of "OK, folks, we're going to own the end this to this. Here's our solution; here's what we're going to do," then shame on them. This is their moment.

AVLON: And look, the thing is, he's flipflopped on everything. Declaring a state of emergency.

The problem is if Democrats get brought into the White House, as Rachael just described, to try to negotiate with Donald Trump, why do they think they will have a better, more solid, stable deal than what Lindsey Graham was able to negotiate?

President is going to flip, president's going to flop, it's not -- he's not a steady negotiator. It's almost like he's not good at the art of the deal.

BERMAN: He said no to a DACA deal on Friday, tweeting this weekend that he's open to it. They don't know who the person is negotiating from.

And I just want to say one last thing here. Because we're in day 24 of the shutdown, 800,000 federal workers not being paid. They have missed their paychecks here, and we don't hear enough about them. And the administration doesn't talk about them specifically very much. Why not?

Well, listen to what Kevin Hassett had to say about these folks not receiving paychecks over the weekend. Kevin Hassett, of course, is -- what's his title?

CAMEROTA: Council of -- economic council --

BERMAN: Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEVIN HASSETT, CHAIRMAN, COUNCIL OF ECONOMIC ADVISORS: A huge share of government workers were going to take vacation days, say, between Christmas and New Year's. And then we have a shutdown, and so they can't go to work, and so then they have the vacation. But they don't have to use their vacation days.

And then they come back, and then they get their back pay. Then they're -- in some sense, they're better off. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, Queen Victoria.

BERMAN: They're better off? They're better off? David Gregory, that's the message from the administration: they're better off?

GREGORY: No, right. I mean, I think that's -- that is a really unfortunate message.

I mean, how about these workers, including TSA workers, who have -- who are essential and are not getting paid and who have to think about whether they just need to leave their job and get a different job in order to pay their bills? I mean, that just shows how out of touch some people can be with what the struggles are for workers and the government and what they face. And there are real consequences to all of this.

And the president, on this issue, could have had a big deal and much more funding than he's talking about now months ago. And that's where we are.

BERMAN: All right David Gregory, Rachael Bade, John Avlon, you quoted Queen Victoria there. I'll just note you're a supporter of the royal family, right? I'd just like to leave it there.

CAMEROTA: I love love, John. Remember that. Keep that in mind. I love the love between Harry and Meghan.

BERMAN: You are a royal --

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: Not the just eating of the cake.

BERMAN: All right. An incredible story we've been following. A bus driver rescues a toddler wandering close to traffic on a freeway overpass. It was all captured on video. We're going to speak to the heroic driver ahead.

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