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New Day

NYT: Shutdown Inflicting Greater Danger on U.S. Economy; Democratic Presidential Field Taking Shape; A.G. Nominee: Public May Never See Mueller Report. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 16, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: I don't believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt.

[05:59:24] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was very cagey about what he would release and when.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: You see in Mr. Barr, a highly-qualified man; will be a good steward of the law.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People might go hungry. There's families that are really being hurt by this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Democrats clearly don't want to give the president a victory on this issue.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY), MINORITY LEADER: I have three words to President Trump and our Republican senators: open the government.

(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 Wednesday, January 16, 6 a.m. here in New York. And we do have a major new development in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. It turns out it's really bad for the economy.

So maybe that's not a shock to the 800,000 people not being paid this morning, but it seems to be new information for the White House. Overnight, "The New York Times" reported that White House economists now believe the shutdown will be twice as bad for the economy as initially projected. That's half a point off of GDP already and getting worse by the day.

New signs this morning that congressional Republicans are getting uncomfortable with all of this and maybe the White House, too. The administration is ordering tens of thousands of furloughed government workers back on the job: Get back to work, but we still won't pay you.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And, this story. The American people may never see Robert Mueller's report on the Russia investigation. Trump's nominee for attorney general, William Barr, revealing at his confirmation hearing that the public will get a filtered report that he will write to Congress with his conclusions from Mueller's probe.

Barr will be back on Capitol Hill today to answer more questions. If confirmed, he will oversee Mueller's investigation.

Meanwhile, in a new court filing by Mueller's team, which is heavily redacted, as you can see on your screen, prosecutors reveal -- I will read to you the two words that are not redacted, "and" and "the." President -- the president's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, lied about his contacts the man the FBI says is linked to Russia intelligence.

So we have a lot to cover this morning. Joining us now, we have Rachael Bade. She's a congressional reporter at "Politico" and CNN political analyst. Frank Bruni, he's a "New York Times" opinion columnist and CNN contributor. And John Avlon, he's our CNN senior political analyst.

I was told there would be no math in this show, but the general gist of it, Frank, is here's what the lead of the "New York Times" is the partial government shutdown is inflicting far greater damage on the U.S. economy than previously estimated. The White House acknowledged this on Tuesday, as President Trump's economists, his own economists doubled their projections of how much economic growth is being lose each week the standoff continues.

FRANK BRUNI, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes. I mean, this shutdown is a serious matter, but the question is who budges with this information? I mean, I don't see -- clearly, the toll of this is enormous, not just on the workers who are not going to work, the workers who are going to work and not getting paid, but on all of us, on the entire economy. But where does this -- where does this get us?

I don't see Democrats moving, because they feel very confident in their position; and they have every reason to. Public opinion is on their side. They've got the best talking point, which is, "If you want to stick to your campaign promises, Donald Trump, what about having Mexico pay for the wall? Why do you need $5.7 billion from us?"

On the other side, for the president, every day this goes on, it becomes an ever more fierce point of pride. So we're getting this information about the toll of this, and it's real and it's disturbing, but I don't see an end in the next couple of days. Does anyone else?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The problem is you just laid it out, is on the one hand you've got the practical implications of shutdown on real people and the president's pride. These are not actually equivalent positions.

And the president, who's hitched his star on the economy, is going to maybe get -- pay attention to this report, because this is twice as bad as they expected. At the same time, they're trying to do sort of an a la carte shutdown

and bring workers back to make sure no one gets their tax refunds delayed, because that might really offend aspects of their base. That's a really B.S. end run around the attempt to obscure the real impact of the shutdown, and it's affecting real people in real time. It's going to get worse, and the president's going to have to get over himself for this to end.

BERMAN: Let me just read you a letter from the commandant of the Coast Guard here, writing to all the Coast Guard members: "Today, you will not be receiving your regularly-scheduled mid-month paycheck. To the best of my knowledge, this marks the first time in our nation's history that service members in a U.S. armed force have not been paid during a lapse in government appropriations."

Now we're saying this is having an impact on the economy. Who's responsible for all this? I have two sources for who's responsible.

No. 1, the president of the United States, because he told us that he would own this shutdown back in January. And the second is the American people. Because all the polling -- and this is P-601 here -- shows that voters find the president is more responsible for this shutdown, 55 to 32 percent, than Democrats.

Rachael, you cover Congress. You've been talking to people there. You know, Frank and John were just asking any sign anyone will budge here? There were bipartisan groups of senators meeting last night. Any movement there?

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: TBD at this point. I mean, look, there's a group of senators, bipartisan, including Lindsey Graham, who's a top ally of the president and remember, just a couple of weeks ago said to the president, "If you don't get your wall in this shutdown fight, your presidency might as well be over."

Well, Graham's singing a very different tune. On Monday night, these senators, bipartisan, agreed that they needed to end this shutdown first and then continue negotiating some sort of border fix, which obviously, the president has totally rejected.

Part of me thinks that is why he's focusing on the House so much and on House Democrats, because they are easier him to scapegoat; and he's not seeing so much his own party, including some of his top allies like Graham in the Senate, joining with Democrats. And so I think he's focusing on the House.

[06:05:05] Look, yesterday he tried bring a bunch of House moderates over to the White House to negotiate with them to go around Nancy Pelosi, who is not budging; and a lot of them didn't show up. But there was an alert last night, saying that they're bringing, again, Problem Solvers Caucus bipartisan members to the House to the situation room today to continue talks.

I don't yet know if Democrats are going to show up, but I do know I was hearing a lot of angst on the part of some moderate Democrats in the House yesterday, because they wanted to show; but they were worried he was just going to use them as a pawn.

CAMEROTA: Yes, well, I mean, who could blame them? They feel hoodwinked, because, Frank, they say they've offered money even for the wall in the past. And invariably he then rebuffs them somehow.

But don't you think that, by the Democrats not showing up at all, does that give the Republicans a talking point, "Aha, see? Democrats aren't even serious about negotiating. The president invited them to the White House."

BRUNI: It's hard to say. That is exactly what the White House wants. And the White House is being very careful about which Democrats it's targeting. So it's looking at freshman members who campaigned in districts where they said to voters, you know, "We're going to go to Washington, and we're going to work in a more bipartisan manner than you've seen to date." They're targeting Democrats who are from districts that Donald Trump won.

That's a very smart strategy. But again, unless the president and the White House offer them anything real, unless they come way down from 5.7 billion and, let's say, they put the DREAMers on table, I don't think this is going to get anywhere.

AVLON: Yes. And look, it's great the Problem Solvers Caucus were taking this step, but it's late for -- it's also really late the president and the White House to find religion on swing voters in swing districts.

His entire strategy and his impulse is to play to the base. We know how this actually ends. We've talked -- we've known it for months. There's some kind of deal. When the government gets open, there's a deadline to do an actually balanced package that probably looks a lot like what they could have passed last year, which is border security for DREAMers and maybe even something bigger. It's a question of whether the president will embrace that. Because that's what Graham's pushing. And he's not wrong; in fact, he's right.

CAMEROTA: So what's -- why aren't they doing that today?

AVLON: Because the president instinctively rejects that.

BERMAN: Well, let me tell you why they're not doing it today. I have a sign, a word from up above about what's going on here. Ann Coulter.

CAMEROTA: That's two words. That's two words.

AVLON: Directionally off, by the way.

BERMAN: Ann Coulter. Ann Coulter, whom the president likes to listen to on the wall, she did an HBO interview in which she explained why the president is not budging. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANN COULTER, AUTHOR/COLUMNIST: But recently, in the last couple of weeks, we've reeled him back. I mean, the one thing I think, not only with Trump -- I think especially with Trump -- but with anyone is self-preservation and self-esteem. He doesn't --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So why is he digging his heels in on immigration?

COULTER: That's why. That's why.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But why now?

COULTER: It is self-preservation. Because he is dead in the water if he doesn't build that wall. Dead, dead, dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: First of all, Frank, everything sounds more dramatic with the background.

AVLON: Yes, the tom-toms behind her table are very good.

BERMAN: Second of all, the "Dead, dead, dead" there at the end from Ann Coulter doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

BRUNI: No, no. I mean, she is the big threat that he's worried about. And she also said a key phrase there, a keyword, hyphenated, "self-esteem." We talked about this before. His self-esteem is on the line. And it's on the line, in part, because people like Coulter have said, "If you do this, if you don't deliver on your promise, you are nothing. You are impotent." And he's heard that, and it hurts.

I want to say one other thing, though. You mentioned Senator Lindsey Graham, who one minute is saying one thing, the next minute another, is the president's friend, is the president's foe. Where is Mitch McConnell in all this? It is time for him to get involved, to step up. This a national crisis, and the Senate majority leader --

AVLON: Yes.

BRUNI: -- is utterly absent.

AVLON: The alternative, Prime Minister Coulter, doesn't seem to be working out terribly well.

BERMAN: Yes. Rachael Bade, where is Mitch McConnell on all this?

BADE: He's hiding right now under his desk. No, the reason he's not out there leading and trying to pass legislation to reopen the government is because he got burned by Trump a couple of weeks ago.

I mean, remember before this shutdown, he specifically talked to the president on the phone and laid out his strategy. McConnell is no fan of shutdowns. He's an appropriator at heart. He used to serve on the Appropriations Committee. And he thought he got the president on board with this plan to kick things out into 2019 and just, you know, extend the government for a while and not shut it down, without border-wall money. And they were -- they passed a bill doing just that.

It wasn't until after he did that and after he stuck his neck out that the president changed his mind because of people like Ann Coulter, Mark Meadows and other conservatives in the House, who got him to totally walk that back and got him to say, "No, we're going to shut the government down."

So McConnell, he's up for reelection next cycle, and he's got a base that loves the president. And he can't be out there punching back against the president, so that's why he's super cautious.

BERMAN: I will say, finally, no one loves when the economy gets dragged down. If we're losing, you know, a half a point of GDP every month, it could send -- completely halt growth if this continues much longer.

CAMEROTA: And get the president's attention --

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- in a way that other things haven't.

OK. Let's talk about the 2020 Democratic field. It's getting more crowded. So last night on Stephen Colbert, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced her developments [SIC]. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), NEW YORK: I'm filing an exploratory committee for president of the United States tonight.

I'm going to run for president of the United States, because as a young mom, I'm going to fight for other people's kids as hard as I would fight for my own, which is why I believe that healthcare should be a right and not a privilege.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:10:13] CAMEROTA: Really interesting, frank, to see how they're doing it, how people are rolling out their announcements and how many people are doing it and what they say about their motivation.

BRUNI: How they're doing, I'm so glad you mentioned that. You know, I remember, we all do, the day when you would sort of arrange flags and family members just so and do it in a very formal way. She's doing it on Colbert. Right? Elizabeth Warren sort of rolled it out with a series of things, including a video where she's getting a beer from her fridge and seemingly surprised that her husband's in the kitchen.

AVLON: "What are you doing here?"

O'ROURKE: "Thanks for stopping by."

In the run-up he hasn't announced yet, but we've recently seen Beto O'Rourke at the dentist. Right? Kamala Harris on Colbert Monday night releases this mood mix tape where she's singing and sort of dancing in her chair and laughing. This is a campaign 2020 where you're going to see candidates making

whole new efforts to seem real, relatable, hip, et cetera, and that's part of Senator Gillibrand's advance --

BERMAN: Who's going to do mime?

BRUNI: -- announcing on a late show with --

CAMEROTA: That's a great point. These are getting interesting.

AVLON: And if George Washington announced at his dentist, it would have been a whole different history and trajectory of the United States.

Look, everybody's in the pool on this one. You've got a bunch of freshmen congressmen who are running, and this is going to be an incredibly crowded field, trying to communicate in any way they can. And this is Donald Trump, to some extent, breaking the mold and a bunch of people saying, "Great, let's see what happens."

BRUNI: And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, you're --

AVLON: Sure.

BRUNI: You're actually seeing her imprint in the way people are running.

CAMEROTA: Because there's a lot of dancing, I think.

BERMAN: Exactly. She can't run. She's too young. But it will be very interesting to see, as people to go to her and try to get her, at least, tacit support in some ways.

Rachael, in Washington, in the Senate, in Congress, with so many of them running, what's the dynamic down there?

BADE: So far friendly, but you've got to wonder how long that is going to, you know, remain. Look, there's at least half a dozen. If not, there's going to be more. Obviously, people are more focused on the Senate than a lot of these House members. A lot of the House members who are looking at running are, let's face it, kind of back benchers in the lower chamber.

But no, the thing I want to point out specifically on Gillibrand there is that she's made for a moment candidate, right? Right after the #MeToo movement, this -- she's a New York Democrat. She has -- sort of has this long history of advocating for women's issues before #MeToo, including sexual assault in the military. So it will be interesting to see how she sort of latches onto that to sort of build her campaign going forward.

BERMAN: Yes. Each carving out a slice there. Elizabeth Warren, economic inequality; you know, Kirsten Gillibrand that. On and on we go.

All right. Frank, Rachael, John, thank you. President Trump's attorney general nominee told senators that the

American people may never see the final report from Robert Mueller and that they would see a report -- instead they would see a report from him that would summarize the conclusions from the Mueller report in Russia. In just hours, William Barr faces more questions in his confirmation hearing.

CNN's Lauren Fox is live on Capitol Hill in the hearing room with more -- Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

This is the site of that eight-hour hearing yesterday, where William Barr faced tough questions from Democrats on everything from mass incarceration to immigration, how he would implement the president's policy on immigration, and, of course, the Mueller investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL NOMINEE: I am not going to do anything that I think is wrong.

FOX (voice-over): President Trump's nominee for attorney general, William Barr, reassuring lawmakers that he will resist any effort to politicize the Justice Department and promising to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

BARR: Bob Mueller could only be terminated for good cause, and frankly, it's unimaginable to me that Bob would ever do anything that gave rise to good cause. I believe right now the overarching public interest is to allow him to finish.

It's been a privilege to serve you --

FOX: But Barr, who previously served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush, signaling that Mueller's final report may not be made public or shown in full to Congress.

BARR: Under the current regulations, the special counsel report is confidential.

But the report -- the report that goes public would be a report by the attorney general.

FOX: That answer prompting bipartisan concern.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D), CALIFORNIA: We should be able to see the informed information that comes out.

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R), LOUISIANA: I would strongly encourage you to put this all to rest. To make a report, a final report public, to let everybody draw their own conclusions so we can move on.

FOX: Democrats, grilling Barr over this lengthy unsolicited memo he sent to Department of Justice officials last year, calling the legal premise of an obstruction of justice case against the president "fatally misconceived."

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D), VERMONT: Some have said, on both sides, that it looked like a job application.

BARR: That's ludicrous.

[06:15:05] FOX: Barr recounting a conversation he had with President Trump in June 2017, when he was briefly considered for a job with the president's legal team, telling senators he declined the position and was transparent about his 30-year friendship with Mueller.

BARR: Wanted to know what I thought about, you know, Mueller's integrity and so forth and so on. And I said, "Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as such.

FOX: Over hours of testimony, Barr repeatedly breaking from some of President Trump's key talking points.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lock her up! Lock her up! UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lock her up! Lock her up!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lock her up! Lock her up!

BARR: I don't subscribe to this "Lock her up" stuff.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The witch hunt, as they call it, should never have taken place.

GRAHAM: Do you believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt against anybody?

BARR: I don't -- I don't believe Mr. Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt.

FOX: Telling senators he agrees with former attorney general Jeff Sessions' decision from recuse himself from oversight of the Mueller probe but also calling it an abdication of his own responsibility and refusing to commit to doing the same.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D), CALIFORNIA: Under what scenario would you not follow their recommendation?

BARR: If I disagreed with it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOX: Now, Democrats, of course, had tough questions, but also halfway through the hearing Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the committee, said she thought that Barr could easily be confirmed. And Chris Coons, a Democrat on the committee, said he was seriously considering voting for William Barr.

CAMEROTA: That is interesting. Lauren, thank you very much. So will the likely new attorney general withhold incriminating information about President Trump in Mueller's report? We discuss all that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:20:12] BERMAN: The president's nominee for attorney general vowed to protect the Robert Mueller investigation, but he says the American people may not see Robert Mueller's final report. Instead, William Barr will write a summary report to Congress on the conclusions from Robert Mueller.

Joining us now, Laura Jarrett, CNN justice reporter; Josh Campbell, a former FBI supervisory special agent; and Jennifer Rogers, a former federal prosecutor.

Laura, I think there are two clear things that emerge from these hearings yesterday. No. 1, William Barr is going to let the Mueller investigation continue till its conclusion. He will not fire Robert Mueller. He does not think it's a witch hunt. Yet -- yet -- the final product from the Mueller investigation, the American people might not know exactly what it is.

Listen to how William Barr explained why not yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARR: Well, under the current rules, that report is supposed to be confidential. The attorney general, as I understand the rules, would -- would report to Congress about the conclusion of the investigation. And I believe there may be discretion there about what the attorney general can put in that report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: How much might he keep out of the report that the people ultimately see?

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: I think this is why his confirmation is so important and why everyone is so zeroed in on what exactly he's going to do here.

Because to be honest, at the end of the day, it is in his sole discretion under the regulations. Mueller has to submit a confidential report to Barr, if he is confirmed as attorney general. But it just lays out his prosecution decisions and also what he's decided to not prosecute. So there could be confidential information in there. There could be classified information. There could be issues that raise executive privilege, as we've already seen from President Trump's legal team asserting that.

One thing did he make clear, however, is that Trump's legal team will not have an opportunity to correct the report, as his lawyer Rudy Giuliani has thrown out there before. Barr said that will not happen.

But absolutely, the issue of discretion and how he sort of laid out this sort of bifurcated process, where Mueller would submit his report to Barr, and then Barr would provide some sort of public summary, was really the first time we had heard of that scenario.

But it's certainly going to be totally up to him. He is in the driver's seat if he's confirmed on this issue.

CAMEROTA: So that was a disappointing development for people who like transparency. I mean, for people who have been following all of the threads of this, to know that they may never see the full picture of everything that transpired was disappointing.

How do you think, Jennifer, he did in terms of allaying the fears of people, primarily Democrats who thought that he would be a stooge for the president or wouldn't be independent?

JENNIFER ROGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think did he well in some ways. Certainly, saying that Mueller can continue and finish his work is a huge positive.

I think in this area, though, that we've been discussing, it's a real problem. You know, people are going to want to see not just that Mueller, say, decided not to indict the president. They're going to want to know what the evidence was. They're going to want to know what the legal analysis was when put up against the law and see a conclusion that says, "Yes, we believe that the president committed crimes, but we won't indict him because of the DOJ guidance," for example.

So people are going to want to see more than just the actual results and conclusion; and I think he's reading the regs too narrowly. It is within his discretion, but he is also fully able to come back today and tell the Senate, "I will be transparent. I will let the people now, obviously, with redacting classified information, what the evidence was and what the analysis was and not just what the ultimate conclusion was." And I think he should do that.

BERMAN: Bottom line, though, he did sit before the Senate. He answered all their questions. I think Chris Coons and others looked at him and said, "Here is a responsible adult who has done the job before."

CAMEROTA: And also, he didn't have the answers to all the questions. You know, he said --

BERMAN: He said, "I don't now."

CAMEROTA: Like, "I haven't read that for a long time. I will be reading up on that."

BERMAN: But he's not going to fire Robert Mueller. He's going to let the investigation continue, and that's not nothing, Josh.

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: It's not nothing. But there are two aspects here that a lot of people fear. One being that he would come in and totally disband the special counsel, which you know, obviously with House Democrats now there to provide that check, that's not going to happen.

But then the other thing that many of us feared was that he would somehow constrain Mueller or constrain the information that we ultimately learn. That's what we risk right now. I got a text message yesterday from someone inside DOJ, who I think

kind of summed it up nicely; said, "Look, I think we could have done a lot worse." Right? If you're inside DOJ, you don't know what's coming your way. Sessions is gone. We know the president has been on all-out campaign attacking Justice Department leadership. Is he going to put a stooge in there? I think most people in the Justice Department look at the performance yesterday from Mr. Barr, admirable job. They -- you know, they're not getting someone that maybe they could have gotten.

I remember when I was inside the FBI after Comey was fired. You know, the joke was, "Are they going to put Sheriff Joe in as FBI director? Is this going to be a stooge?" We're not going to get that, obviously, with Mr. Barr.

[06:25:05] The problem is, it all circles back to this issue of transparency and what information is going to be made public.

The American people have been shell-shocked by lies from this administration. Right? Every single day, big and small, we're lied to. So through no fault of his own, Mr. Barr is asking to us to look at him and trust him that he will release information and not hold something back.

Again, we're right to be skeptical, because the administration has -- we've run out of the benefit of the doubt, right? So I think what the best thing to do moving forward would be that assurance that, look, we're going to make the report public. There is intense public interest here.

And the last thing I'll say on that is that I was harkening back to the Hillary Clinton case. I was inside the FBI working for Jim Comey. I remember the decisions, you know, do we make this public, even if there's no "there" there? Is there such intense public interest? Obviously, we know that he came out and did so, which was -- you know, got fired from both sides.

But that's where we are now. Even though if they don't find something, you know, terrible about the president, is there enough public interest where the public still has a right to know what happened?

BERMAN: Well, it was interesting, because Bill Barr criticized that specific decision from James Comey. In fact, people look at his criticism of James Comey in that situation and think that Barr is sending some kind of signal, that he's not going to tell us more in this case. I think we have that sound bite. We might as well play it here, because it may be illustrative of what we're looking at here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARR: Jim Comey, as I -- as I've said, is an extremely gifted man who's served the country with distinction in many roles. But I thought that, to the extent he -- he actually announced a decision was wrong. And the other thing is, if you're not going to indict someone, then

you don't stand up there and unload negative information about the person. That's not the way the Department of Justice does business.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That seemed to be the signal.

ROGERS: Yes. We're just in a different situation here, though. I mean, you had a situation with the Clinton investigation where it had been closed. They got new information. Were they going to open? Weren't they going to open? You're right in front of an election. Very different considerations now.

We have Mueller going, you know, for a year and a half plus. Everybody knows he's investigating. Right? There's no secret here. It hasn't been closed. You're not considering reopening. The public wants to know what Mueller has been doing for these 18 months plus, you know, two years, probably, by the time that we're done. And they should know that. Because whether it vindicates the president or whether it inculpates (ph) the president, people want to know that. And it will benefit the president if it lets him off the hook.

CAMEROTA: One interesting thing, Laura, of many, was that he also was asked if he thought that the Mueller probe was a witch hunt, which we've heard time and again from President Trump; and he said no.

And he went further. He talked about his long relationship and friendship with Robert Mueller and how much he respects Robert Mueller. And I thought that that was really good to hear, because if you were just catering to a constituency of one, the president, you wouldn't say how long you've been friends with Robert Mueller and how -- in what high regard you hold him.

JARRETT: I think that's right. And I noted that, too. Listen, he went out of his way, especially with some of the Democratic senators who said, you know, "You've criticized Mueller."

And he said, "Wait a minute. I haven't criticized Mueller. I raised two issues." He mentioned the issue of sort of more balance on the team, because he thought he'd said to "The Washington Post" previously that he had noted that Mueller's team had a number of Democrats, and he wished to see more balance.

But he was very careful to say, "I respect Bob Mueller. This man is a marine. I've known him for years."

I mean, frankly he's -- Bob Mueller has been to his daughter's weddings. These two know each other very, very well. The president likes to talk a lot of times about James Comey being Bob Mueller's best friend. We all know that's not true.

His real friend appears to be Bob Mueller. And this is something that Barr seemed really proud of. I think he went out of his way to try to reassure everyone, "This is someone I know. This is someone I respect. This is not a witch hunt." He even said he thought it would be unimaginable to think of a scenario in which he would be fired. And it would have to be so grave it would go beyond the good cause that's allowed for in the regulations.

BERMAN: On the subject of transparency here, I want to put that up photo again of this filing from the Mueller team in regards to Paul Manafort here. Josh, where are the words there? It's one big redaction.

CAMPBELL: Well, so my favorite page is it starts with redaction, redaction, redaction. After lunch Manafort "redaction, redaction, redaction." So I think they're just messing with us.

But looking through this filing, which is obviously very lengthy, we did learn a lot yesterday as far as Paul Manafort and these lies that, you know, were alleged ,as far as even after cooperating with the government, still going through lengths to deceive Mueller and his team. And obviously, they weren't having any of it.

It will be interesting to see what additional information comes out. One particular thing I really keyed on was, you know, the contacts that Manafort was trying to make with the administration after he found himself in legal jeopardy. Was he seeking the pardon? What was happening? There was a footnote that said that what's in that file isn't all they know, so we'll wait and see what that happens to be.

BERMAN: Behind that black there --