Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Attorney General Nominee: Public May Never See Mueller's Report; Interview with Republican Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana; Government Shutdown Continues over Border Wall Funding; House Republicans Remove Congressman Steve King from Committee Assignments over Comments on White Nationalism; Attorney General Nominee Williams Barr Testifies before Senate. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 16, 2019 - 8:00   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: -- the president's pick for attorney general, he will return to Capitol Hill for day two of the confirmation hearing. William Barr assured senators that he will protect Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, but he said suggested that he may not allow the findings to be seen by the public, at least not all of them. This happening as the House overwhelmingly condemned Republican congressmen -- well, the words of Iowa Republican Steve King. They condemned his remarks about white supremacy, but not him directly. This is not King's first racist transgression by any means, so why is the Republican Party choosing not to punish him directly now, at least not yet?

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now is John Kasich, former governor of Ohio and CNN's new senior political commentator. Welcome.

JOHN KASICH, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good to be with you.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you, governor.

KASICH: Thank you

BERMAN: He walked in and said, so what are we talking about? No one told me. And we said, welcome to the team!

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Get used to it.

KASICH: It's like politics. You don't much. You've had a five- minute briefing, and then you're an expert.

CAMEROTA: Then you'll be perfect here. This is a flying by the seat of your pants news cycle, as you know.

OK, so we are in a government shutdown, as you know day 26. No end in sight. Who can solve this with a magic wand.

KASICH: Well, what they need to do is to give the president some more money. Call it whatever they want. And then the president lets the Dreamers, the DACA people be able to stay in the United States. CAMEROTA: Should they do that right now while the government is shut

down? Because you know Democrats --

KASICH: Just do it. Do it all at once.

CAMEROTA: Reopen the government and do it all at once?

KASICH: I went through a shutdown. I was there through a number of them. But the one that I was most directly involved in was the budget. And we ended up coming out of it, balancing the budget. But we weren't there to make any political statement. We weren't there to say, OK, what is our base, or anything like that. Our purpose was to get the job done. And we were anxious to open the government, get a negotiation and get a real agreement done. And that's exactly what we did.

So both sides have to have an interest in settling this. And look what's happening. Now, it's starting to set in on people. I think for the first few weeks they weren't paying that much attention. But now it's like, what is going on down there? Can't they just serve the country? And it seems like a number of them are afraid to step off of the curb onto the street and say, let's do this. And that's not good. Both sides are going to have to give something, get it done, move on, because it's hurting these people.

CAMEROTA: It is.

BERMAN: A couple points. One, you were involved with shutdowns that involved the entire budget. This is over a relatively small amount of money in terms of the overall budget here.

KASICH: Yes, right.

BERMAN: And then we are getting a report from the White House today, it's twice as bad, twice as big of an impact on GDP.

KASICH: I saw that.

BERMAN: As if to say who knew that a government shutdown --

KASICH: That might put the pressure on the administration to move. My sense is, I was never the president, and as a governor we never had a shutdown. But I think it's incumbent on the leader to be able to try to bring people together and get something done. And I don't just see it. It takes both sides, however. You can't just have one side and not the other. So they both have to give.

I wonder a little bit if the Democrats are kind of enjoying this because the numbers are all going against the president. They don't seem to be very engaged in this. I was talking to a Republican senator who I trust the other day, and he was telling me that they are not really participating. He was going to have a meeting with Joe Manchin. I said what about Tom Carper, what about some of the moderates. He said they just don't seem to be showing up. However, it takes both sides, and you can't deal with somebody who every time you say we've got an agreement, he changes the agreement. You can't do that.

CAMEROTA: That's their problem.

KASICH: I agree.

CAMEROTA: That's what Democrats have promised is that they have come halfway, they claim --

KASICH: We pay them to do their job.

CAMEROTA: Listen, though, what Democrats say is that if they now do offer something up, then this tactic worked. Then you can just shut down the government whenever you want to prove a point.

KASICH: Shutting the government down is not a good thing. It rattles financial markets. And the real question here I think as you both note is that if this becomes a habit, like every time we have a problem we just shut down the government because it really doesn't matter, that really rattles financial markets, which means that it hurts people on main street. And when you think about these folks on main street, they have to pay mortgages, they have to pay their kids' bills. It's got to end.

BERMAN: How much of a political problem is it for Republicans that the president went into all of this and said, I will own this shutdown?

KASICH: I don't know that most people really remember that. And the other thing I think you have to remember is that right now because this is going on so early, just soon after an election, these things get forgotten. The Republican Party challenge, though, is in a country that is becoming increasingly diverse, do they have ideas where they can relate to the folks, because they took a whooping here in the midterm election because their issues were taking health care away and not creating a better health care plan. In other words, Republicans have to become more idea-oriented. The Democrats are not going to win by going hard left. This country is not hard left. This country is center right.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Bill Barr and the confirmation hearing. Should Bill Barr have to release the Mueller report at the end of it?

[08:05:03] KASICH: Of course, he should. Of course, we all think he should. I don't know how he doesn't. He's probably trying to preserve himself some space. But you can't have this thing go on for a couple of years and then go, OK, we'll give you a paragraph here that tells you what the conclusion is. I think people will demand it.

And one way or another it's going to get out. It's Washington. Everything leaks out. So of course, it has to be released. That's for credibility. That's for moving forward. And I hope it comes out soon. I hope there is no problem for the president in it, I really do. I'm worried about our country.

BERMAN: There was one other -- KASICH: I'm worried about the economics, I'm worried about the trust

and institutions. But that calls up one other thing. Instead of relying on all the politicians to solve problems, this is a call now to action for people to fix things where they live.

BERMAN: Let me ask you, because you say you don't want to trust the politicians here. One other curious thing he did say in his testimony is that if the ethics professionals inside the Justice Department recommend recusal from oversight of the Mueller investigation, he wouldn't guarantee that it would accept their recommendation. Do you think he should take that recommendation?

KASICH: He has got to use his own judgment. You get a lot of opinions. When you're a decision-maker, you get a lot of opinions. And his most important decision now in this job is how does he release a report and how is their credibility established for the office of the president and the whole administration.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Congressman Steve King. Why this week are Republicans so distressed by his comments? He's said a lot of racist comments.

KASICH: It just rises to the level where they say enough is enough. Members are really reluctant -- they have been on both sides of the aisle. They are very reluctant to point their finger at anybody. But these kinds of comments, it just went over the top. And they said enough is enough.

BERMAN: So far what they said enough to is the comments. They haven't said enough to him. Republicans have kicked him off committees, he's not on committees, but he's still in Congress. Some, but not all, are saying he should resign.

KASICH: He should leave. This is really not -- this is a terrible situation. Plus, he's not going to get help from the campaign. If he doesn't resign, he might enjoy these last couple of years because he's not going to be back.

CAMEROTA: Do you think that this is a tipping point somehow for other things? For instance, so many people say the president says offensive things routinely. The president says racially tinged things.

KASICH: You remember Charlottesville. A lot of us spoke out.

CAMEROTA: Of course. But is somehow Steve King a proxy for the frustration that so many people feel about what the president is saying but they can't take it out on the president?

KASICH: I think that King's comments are so blatant they they really -- there's a number of them that feel it's just terrible. Others say politically this is just crazy. But some deep down inside, and I think most, say this kind of hate speech is terrible. In terms of the president, look, we can criticize him for what he did in Charlottesville, but he didn't rise to that level, I don't think he rose to the level, nowhere close to where Steve King is.

CAMEROTA: He said there's good people on both sides.

KASICH: I thought it was outrageous, what he said. I didn't vote for him, OK? The division that he's created in our country is what has concerned me. And now even take the shutdown. It seems as though it's all about the base. I've got to have my base supporting me. That's not the way a president, in my opinion, should lead. You want to expand your base. You want to have more people supporting you. When I was governor, I just didn't want Republicans. I wanted everybody to like me.

BERMAN: Who did you vote for?

KASICH: I voted for McCain. I told everybody that.

BERMAN: I want to ask you about the president again and Steve King, because the president claims that he hasn't paid any attention to the Steve King situation.

KASICH: He should say something about it, period, end of story.

BERMAN: What should he say?

KASICH: He should condemn it, say this is wrong. That's what he should do. But I don't know what he's going to do. If we try to figure out what Donald Trump is going to do, OK, then we could actually prepare news like it used to be -- three hours earlier. Now we prepare the news five minutes before --

CAMEROTA: We didn't even give you that amount of time. We didn't even tell you what we'd been talking about five minutes before. Is the government shutdown going to end this week?

KASICH: Some people are saying that he's going to declare a national emergency, put it in the courts, lose in the courts, and say I did my best. And there's the courts for you. That's what I hear. But I don't know that. That's just another wild rumor.

CAMEROTA: I'm glad you're --

BERMAN: All right. Governor John Kasich, welcome to the team.

KASICH: Thank you. Good to be with you this morning.

BERMAN: We're glad to have you here. Good to have you up early. Remember, this is the most important show at the network.

KASICH: I have been told that.

CAMEROTA: But hold on on second. You don't like getting up early. I know this.

KASICH: I don't like getting up real early. But I do get up.

CAMEROTA: But then you have a whole, you work out. I know this.

KASICH: I'm just an energetic guy. CAMEROTA: I know. You have a system.

KASICH: I need my sleep. Look how good I look.

CAMEROTA: You're fantastic, I know. Why aren't we following your lead? Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Governor, great to have you here. Thanks so much.

KASICH: Thank you.

BERMAN: Sources in the White House tell the "New York Times'" Maggie Haberman there is a power shift going on.

[08:10:02] The adviser reportedly now running the West Wing at least unofficially, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: The president's nominee for attorney general, while vowing to protect Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, says the American people may not see Mueller's final report. Instead William Barr will write a summary report to Congress on the conclusions from Robert Mueller. Joining us now is Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for "The New York Times." Maggie, among the other things that William Barr said is that he's really good friends with Robert Mueller, thinks that Robert Mueller is a stand-up guy, and really could not say enough things.

CAMEROTA: Not a witch hunt.

BERMAN: Not a witch hunt at all. So we were wondering, particularly Alisyn was wondering, what the president made of all that.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, I think the president was well aware of all of this. As Bill Barr made clear in his hearing, and I have to say that there were certainly moments that I think the Democrats felt that he had been caught on, but of all of the nominees that we have seen President Trump send to the Senate, he did fairly well, and his confirmation is I think all but assured.

That said, he didn't say anything -- you have to assume he didn't say anything that he has not said directly to President Trump about either about his relationship with Robert Mueller or how this ultimate report to the Justice Department is going to be handled in terms of Congress.

Look, the reality of how President Trump deals with people as opposed to the perception of how it could be ahead of time, there is open a wide gap there.

[08:15:04] Things that don't sound problematic to President Trump in the abstract can be problematic in real time. So, we don't know what this ultimately looks like when there is a final report what Bill Barr will do with it. But if you are President Trump and you're concerned about that report becoming public, I think he heard things that he was happy about from Bill Barr.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So, when Bill Barr said he may synthesize and filter the results and release them, that is something that the president has wanted?

HABERMAN: Absolutely. There's been a lot of assumptions made about what will happen with the report. It's been widely described as a report to Congress. It is really a report to the Justice Department. It was never a sure thing it wouldn't have heavy redactions, if ever did become public.

Bill Barr said he probably won't make it public. It's a definite, but he certainly did not lean in to the idea of a full open disclosure. He leaned into the idea of him or whatever the A.G. is giving a report of their own to Congress and summarizing the findings. That's probably Donald Trump's best hope.

I think it is very unlikely the full report doesn't ultimately leak. I just think that that's the nature of these things. If it leaks as opposed to being released publicly, then it becomes a fraught document where we know what the president does with these things. We have to assume he'll have the same practice where he'll call it fake or it's twisted and so forth. I think that just allows everybody to settle into pre-existing conclusions.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: The longest government shutdown in U.S. history, now day 26. The White House team of economists says it is twice as bad for the economy as they had predicted. Does that mean -- what are you hearing about whether or not this White House and this president feels the sting and it may cause movement?

HABERMAN: I think there is a divide between the president and this White House. A lot of people in the White House have been privately urging him to move on, get this done with, bend in some way. Do something that can be characterized as a win or come up with a third way where maybe the Senate opens and we have had various proposals on this.

The Senate finds a way -- the Republican-held Senate finds a way to re-open the government so that Nancy Pelosi doesn't claim a victory. But the president is very dug in still. He's getting very agitated. He's not happy with the headlines or the reviews of his speech which polls have shown didn't move any public perception about the wall or about this fight. And the headlines are getting worse and worse.

That said, I still think we are in for a while longer.

CAMEROTA: So, does the economic damage report assessment get his attention the way other things have not?

HABERMAN: Definitely gets his attention. It's not as if he wasn't aware of it. Although as you know, he tends to see things as if they are more real when they are on TV or in print than when he is told by his own advisers. So, we'll see how that plays out over the next couple of days. But that's what he's staked his re-election on is the idea that there will be a good economy. I think that will catch his eye more than most things.

BERMAN: So, Maggie, over the last two days I understand you have heard from sources as to whom they think is running the White House as the de facto chief of staff. Who might that be?

HABERMAN: That would be one relative, Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law. And look, what you will hear from people around Jared Kushner is that's silly, he's focused on what he wants to do. He's got his own discrete pieces of work.

And those things are true, but as it was true during the campaign that whoever was actually in charge especially in the later stages of the general election campaign, Jared Kushner was really behind the scenes managing most of it, taking credit when things went well and sort of distancing himself from things when they didn't. That's true now more than ever. Mick Mulvaney is not seen as a strong chief of staff because he's not providing much of a buffer between the staff and the president.

Jared Kushner has been rising internally. We have seen him part of the negotiations on the Hill even though he doesn't really have a ton of relationships beyond his work on criminal justice reform. He is feeling ascendant.

CAMEROTA: Here is an excerpt of Chris Christie's new book soon to be published called "Let Me Finish" in which he's apparently spilling some secrets and palace intrigue. He talks about Jared Kushner. There is this is through "The Guardian." So, this hasn't been officially released yet. But here it is.

Christie says that Steve Bannon made clear to me one person and one person only was responsible for the faceless execution that Steve was now attempting to carry out. Jared Kushner, still apparently seething over events that occurred a decade ago. He's talking about why he was ousted from the transition team that he put Jared Kushner's father in jail a decade ago and Jared Kushner has, of course, never forgotten that and holds a grudge and had knives sharpened for Chris Christie.

HABERMAN: I think that there is no question that there is no love lost between Kushner and Chris Christie. And there is certainly no doubt that Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon ultimately took over the transition along with Mike Pence who often doesn't get mentioned over that period when Chris Christie was fired almost immediately after the election.

[08:20:12] Look, I think those two found a way to work together. Chris Christie and Jared Kushner, they certainly did during the campaign. But we know that during the campaign, Jared Kushner tried to block Christie coming to lead the transition in the first place. There is no reason to doubt that account.

And while Kushner and Bannon are obviously not pals anymore, that was a period of time after the election when they were close, and they were working in tandem.

BERMAN: It doesn't appear as if Chris Christie is over it at this point as his book is coming out.

CAMEROTA: It's called "Let Me Finish". I think you're right about.

BERMAN: Let me read you another excerpt. This time it's from "Axios". This is what Chris Christie says about the White House personnel, presumably now including the de facto chief of staff that you're naming Jared Kushner here. He calls it a revolving door of deeply flawed individuals, amateurs, grifters, weaklings, convicted and unconvicted felons who are hustled into jobs they were never suited for, sometimes without so much as a background check via Google or Wikipedia.

HABERMAN: I don't think everything comes down to a personal slugfest, right? I mean, if you're Christie, I think there is a valid claim and there was a book written about how much of the root of Trump's problems go back to the dysfunctional transition that took place when they took the work Chris Christie had done and threw it into the garbage and he had done that work with Jeff Sessions, by the way, and then they went about Mike Flynn putting himself in position as the national security adviser, something Chris Christie opposed and I think Jeff Sessions had opposed as well.

Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump taking over assigning people to different billets in the government, I think that it is much -- you have to remember Chris Christie spent a lot of time working for the Department of Justice as a prosecutor. If you are somebody who cares about government, you are going to look at how this has gone and it would be hard to argue that this has gone swimmingly.

So, I think you can understand somebody being defensive of their work. I don't know that it all comes down to a personal shouting match.

CAMEROTA: Maggie Haberman, thank you very much for the reporting and insights.

HABERMAN: Thanks.

BERMAN: So, senators grill the man who could run the Mueller probe, oversee the Mueller probe. What else do they want to know from William Barr? We're going to talk to a senator who asked some of the most intriguing questions yesterday. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:26:19] BERMAN: President Trump's attorney general nominee told senators that the American people may never see Mueller's final report, at least not all of it. Instead, he said they would instead see a report he would write to Congress that summarizes the conclusions of the Russia investigation. In an hour, William Barr will face more questions in his confirmation hearing.

Joining us is Republican Senator John Kennedy. He's on the committee questioning Barr.

And, Senator, in some ways, you had the most interesting questions to the former attorney general on the subject of the report itself. Do you know -- can you explain to me exactly at this point your understanding of what the American people will see?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R), LOUISIANA: I'll try. First, let me say I was proud of our committee yesterday. I thought everybody did a good job. I think if you gave everybody truth serum, they would tell you that Mr. Barr did a good job yesterday. That doesn't mean everybody will vote for him.

The most interesting part, maybe the most disturbing part, it's not Mr. Barr's fault. I have been afraid of this, is that whether the report will be made public is very uncertain. I have been worried about this, because Justice, FBI as well, has a longstanding rule that they don't issue reports based on investigations. They let the indictments, if any, speak for themselves. That's one of the reasons that former Director Comey was criticized by some is because he called a press conference.

And what I heard Mr. Barr say yesterday, he hasn't talked with Mr. Rosenstein or Mr. Mueller. But his understanding the Justice and FBI rules say Mr. Mueller will make a report to Mr. Barr and Mr. Barr will make some kind of report to Congress. But he was even uncertain on that. And he said that's one of the first things I'm going to look into.

I think it is really important that this report be made public. People are smart enough to figure it out. And they heard so much about it and they have listened to the spin on both sides. This is an unusual circumstance and the American people need to see this report.

BERMAN: So, just to be clear, the idea that he would provide a filtered report not really good enough for you?

KENNEDY: Well, I would rather have the original report. I don't know how -- I don't know whether it's a statute. Mr. Barr was unclear on that. I think he doesn't really know.

But I don't know whether it's a statute or a protocol or a rule. But to me, this is an unusual circumstance and I think Mr. Mueller ought to write his report knowing that it's going to be released to the American people and then everybody can make up their own mind.

BERMAN: So, yesterday, you bucked Republican senator leadership and the will of the administration and voted to proceed on a bill that would keep sanctions in place on companies owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Why?

KENNEDY: I think Mr. Deripaska is a gangster. I think what he does to the Russian people every day is an abomination. I want to give Secretary Mnuchin credit. He worked very hard on this rule and he truly believes that Mr. Deripaska no longer has control of this company.

But Mr. Deripaska still is a shareholder in the company with respect to which Secretary Mnuchin wants to remove sanctions. And these oligarchs in Russia control companies different than others. They don't necessarily have to have all the stock to control the company. And I just think it is a closed case and I can't in good conscience vote to lift sanctions.