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Giuliani: Trump Didn't Collude, But Campaign Might Have; Interview with Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL). Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 17, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

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

[07:00:07] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. While you were sleeping, at least while I was sleeping --

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And me.

BERMAN: -- a jaw-dropping development in the president's legal defense. It seemed to go from "no collusion" to, "OK, maybe some collusion." This all happened in an interview here on CNN between Rudy Giuliani and Chris Cuomo.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUDY GIULIANI, LAWYER FOR DONALD TRUMP: I never said there was collusion between the campaign and or between people in the campaign, I have no idea if -- I have not. I said the president of the United States. There is not a single bit of evidence the president of the United States committed the only crime you could commit here: conspired with the Russians to hack the DNC.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: "I never said there was no collusion --"

CAMEROTA: Yes, he did.

BERMAN: "-- with the campaign."

CAMEROTA: And we have the tape to prove it.

BERMAN: We'll get to that. But why would he make that claim last night? Why now? What is he foreshadowing? What does Rudy Giuliani know?

CAMEROTA: President Trump has repeatedly denied that he or anyone in his campaign, of course, cooperated with Russia.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There has been no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians, or Trump and Russians. No collusion. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: And Rudy Giuliani has defended that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIULIANI: The president did not --

CUOMO: He said nobody had any contact. Tons of people had contact.

GIULIANI: -- collude with the Russians.

CUOMO: Nobody colluded? The guy running his campaign --

GIULIANI: He didn't say nobody. He said --

CUOMO: -- was working on an issue at the same time as the convention.

GIULIANI: He said he didn't. He didn't say nobody. How would you know that nobody in your campaign --

CUOMO: He actually did say that, Rudy. He said, "Nobody," and then he said, "as far as I know."

GIULIANI: Well, I never said that, and if he read it in a -- well, as far as he knows, that's true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: We have the videotape. It's really sometimes inconvenient when the videotape pops back up.

Joining us now is David Gregory, CNN political analyst; Nia-Malika Henderson, CNN senior political reporter; Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary; and David Sanger, national security correspondent for "The New York Times."

We have an extra big panel to try to tackle what is happening. David Gregory, I want to start with you. What is Rudy Giuliani doing?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It is always a mystery with Rudy Giuliani, because we don't know what he knows. He's in this role of this fighter for the president on TV, his TV lawyer.

But as we've been discussing this morning, so often he says something that raises eyebrows, that makes you go, "What? Are you moving the goal posts here?" And it's because something is about to come out.

Does he snow does he know something about what's coming from the Mueller investigation? Evidence that has been shared with them. Or is he relying on the one thing that he thinks he has to do, which is to insulate the president from potential criminal behavior; a bad decision-making even if it falls short of criminal behavior; and that is that there were these contacts with Russians by Trump figures close to the president, close to the candidate. And what's going to be so difficult, no matter what the outcome is, is

for anyone to believe that -- that candidate Trump didn't know what was going on. And if he didn't, why didn't he? If there was -- if there were people who were colluding with Russians who were trying to destabilize the campaign.

BERMAN: David says it's always a mystery. What's not a mystery, though, is that we have seen Rudy Giuliani do this before: lay the groundwork, plant the seeds suggesting that maybe a bad thing happened, but the president's not responsible for it, and it's not as bad as you think.

Stormy Daniels, let's just go back and remember what Rudy Giuliani did with the Stormy Daniels information. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GIULIANI: Having something do with paying some Stormy Daniels woman 130,000, I mean, which is going to turn out to be perfectly legal. That money was not campaign money. Sorry, I'm giving you a fact now that you don't know. It's not campaign money. No campaign finance violation. So --

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST: They funneled it through a law firm.

GIULIANI: Funneled through a law firm and the president repaid it.

HANNITY: Oh, I didn't know -- he did?

GIULIANI: Yes.

HANNITY: There's no campaign finance law?

GIULIANI: Zero.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So we didn't know that, because the president had lied about it beforehand. So had the White House and people associated with the Trump campaign. We didn't know it till Giuliani said it. Then we found out much more about it.

Now, Nia, we have the president saying no collusion between the campaign, no collusion between anyone. Rudy Giuliani comes on our network and says, "Well, never said no collusion between people in the campaign." What are we going to find out?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, something we've already found out, obviously, is that Paul Manafort shared some polling data with someone with ties to the Kremlin. That, of course, was something that was accidentally revealed. There's not a sense of why did he that, if there were any more engagements with folks over in Russia in terms of data and information from the Trump campaign. So at this point, you know, if you're Rudy Giuliani, you can't

credibly get on TV and say that there was no collusion, that there was no one working for the Trump campaign that had any dealings with Russia in terms of something that might look like collusion. And of course, he had maintained that all along.

[07:05:13] And you also saw Trump and his aides just try to distance completely Manafort from the campaign and say, "Oh, he was only there a little while." And that's something that never, you know, passed the smell test then and certainly doesn't now.

But you're right. You do have Rudy Giuliani in this very public role often telegraphing, often foreshadowing. What he's foreshadowing, who knows? We obviously know about that Trump Tower meeting, the folks who were there. Paul Manafort was one of them. Jared Kushner was one of them. Donald Trump Jr. was one of them, as well.

Rudy Giuliani, at some point, said that he had checked with the top folks in the campaign and found that none of them had concluded, had any sort of contacts with Russia that would raise any suspicions. And we now find out that, at least with Paul Manafort, that's not true.

We don't know much of what's going on in terms of what Manafort has. Maybe Giuliani knows much more than we do and is trying to sort of foreshadow some -- some news. We just don't know.

CAMEROTA: That's it, Nia. That's the question. Is he cleaning up?

HENDERSON: Right.

CAMEROTA: What was -- what we now know about Paul Manafort, or is he foreshadowing something else to come? Because, Joe, it often seems that Rudy Giuliani comes on TV and says something half baked. It's fully baked, we then realize afterwards when more evidence comes out.

But to the Paul Manafort thing, Chris Cuomo asked him about that last night, and I just want to play for everybody how Rudy Giuliani explains why Paul -- why Paul Manafort would have given this internal polling data, which is proprietary to the, you know, campaign, to a Kremlin-linked source. Here you go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: He's viable at the head of the campaign giving polling data that winds up having the same faces and places targeted by the campaign that are targeted by Russian trolls. How is that not collusion?

GIULIANI: It's not collusion.

CUOMO: How is it not?

GIULIANI: Because polling data is given to everybody. I mean, he shouldn't have given it to them. It's wrong to give it to them.

CUOMO: It's not given to everybody.

GIULIANI: And I can't speak for Paul Manafort. Of course it is.

First of all, the most inappropriate, the most inaccurate stuff is internal polling data.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Your thoughts?

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Rudy Giuliani's No. 1 job is to confuse people. He wants everyone to just think this is an entire mess, no one can quite figure it out, and to walk away.

The second thing he's done here, though, and you've seen him do it a couple times, is textbook communications. Which is if you know something bad is coming, you condition the ground for it so when people hear it they think, "Oh, I've heard about that. It's not -- it's not so bad." It's prebutting, you know, prebuttal to the news.

Mueller's been really effective here by keeping it close to the vest so that when he speaks, everyone listens, because we learn something.

And on that last point, you know, Giuliani is confusing -- trying to confuse people on the polling and minimize. The internal polling is very different than what you see on CNN or what you see, what you read in the newspaper. It tells you where to spend your money. It tells you what to target, who, and with what message.

CAMEROTA: That's what the Russians wanted to know.

LOCKHART: It is the single most valuable data that any campaign can have. It is protected. Very few people in the campaign see it. And the fact that the Russians had it kind of makes the case.

BERMAN: And even if and when it's shared, it's not shared with people connected to Russian intelligence.

LOCKHART: Yes. I mean, it's -- it's fought over within a campaign. And it's the -- again, you could, by reading the newspaper, have some sense that Wisconsin or Michigan are in play.

But if you'd read the newspaper, you know, during that time, you'd think, "Oh, Hillary's going to win those places." The Trump people knew they had a chance in those states. They knew what voters to target, where, and with what message. And that is incredibly valuable to any outside party that's trying to disrupt the race or influence the race.

BERMAN: All right. David Sanger, we brought you back for an encore here, because you are, this morning, a central character in a way in the president's ongoing explanation about what went on in his relationship with Russia.

Let me just read you this paragraph that was in a "New York Times" story yesterday. Peter Baker, your friend wrote it. He goes, "The day after the two meetings --" This is the day after the president's two meetings with Vladimir Putin in Hamburg in the summer of 2017 -- "as Mr. Trump was on Air Force One taking off from Germany headed back to Washington, he telephoned a 'Times' reporter and argued that the Russians were falsely accused of election interference."

DAVID SANGER, POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's right.

BERMAN: That reporter was you.

SANGER: That's right.

BERMAN: Tell me about that conversation.

SANGER: So he called most of the conversation was off the record, but a piece of it and the most -- interestingly, the most important and relevant piece of it, he then immediately said in public soon after he landed.

And the essence of it was this. "Vladimir Putin told me," he said, "that it couldn't have been the Russians who hacked into the DNC, because they're so good at cyber that they wouldn't have been caught." And he said he was really impressed by that argument.

I said to him, "Well, you know, you've seen the intelligence reports. The intelligence reports all indicate that not only was Putin aware of it, Putin ordered it. That's what U.S. intelligence concluded."

He said, "How could I possibly believe it? That came from Comey. That came from Brennan. That came from Clapper. They're all political hacks," he said.

And so he essentially sided with a Putin explanation that would cast into doubt whether or not the Russians actually did this. Something he had been doing during the campaign. Remember, "Could have been a 400-pound guy sitting on his bed."

CAMEROTA: And whatever it was, whatever the rest of the conversation was between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin that day in Hamburg, there was, as you point out, Rex Tillerson was involved in one of the conversations.

SANGER: That's right.

CAMEROTA: And in the next conversation, there were no Americans, no aides, no interpreter. It was only Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Putin's interpreter when they spoke a second time at night.

Whatever was said, we either don't know, because nobody else was there, or he took the interpreter's notes. Whatever it was, President Trump thought it was so embarrassing or so sensitive or so damning that the interpreter could not hold onto his own notes; and he made the interpreter, basically score swore him to secrecy.

SANGER: That's right. So what you -- the pattern you have here is where a president who has consistently wanted to cast doubt about whether the Russians were responsible. He hasn't said that much lately. Why not? Because Mueller did an

indictment against the GRU, the Russian intelligence agencies, that took you deep inside the conversations between the Russians about what they were doing. That had to make an impression on the people on the president's defense team, including Rudy Giuliani.

Because what they don't know is if Mueller was that deep into the conversations from the Russian side, which he -- I don't believe he got from U.S. intelligence -- I think he was able to pick this up through what's called a 702 process, a different investigative process -- they don't know what conversations he may have between the Russians and the campaign.

BERMAN: And just -- just one more thing, so people know. We're going to move on to a different subject. That same flight, while he was on Air Force One, calling you saying that Vladimir Putin told him he wasn't involved, Donald Trump was dictating the response about the meeting in Trump Tower that he knew that his son had taken when his son was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton from the Russians.

CAMEROTA: And he had concocted the adoptions cover at that point.

BERMAN: It's really -- the conflation of all of this into one moment in time is fascinating.

SANGER: Doesn't anybody watch movies anymore?

BERMAN: I know.

All right. David Gregory, another development overnight, this one from the "Wall Street Journal." A report about Michael Cohen. Let me read you this opening graph.

"In early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump's personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss's favor before the presidential campaign. In the Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gager [SIC] -- Gauger by giving him a blue Wal-Mart bag" -- this is the part that Alisyn likes -- "containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed martial arts fighter."

CAMEROTA: That probably just fell in there.

BERMAN: Let's leave out MMA for a second. The blue Wal-Mart bag containing cash to rig online polls inside Trump Tower, David. Pretty interesting.

GREGORY: That's bad, right?

BERMAN: I think -- I think it might be bad.

GREGORY: Just checking. You know, the -- all of these pieces and these strands about alleged corrupt activity on the part of the campaign is what blows your mind. And here Michael Cohen, who's going to have another star turn, now

that we know that he's using Wal-Mart bags and he's writing checks to Stormy Daniels to keep that quiet, and dealing with "The National Enquirer," gives you this picture inside the Trump campaign: no rules, anything goes, any information is shared, or it's rigged.

And let's add one other piece of the iceberg that sticks out from the waterline, and that is what did Trump say about that Trump Tower meeting in defense of that meeting, where -- is that "Who wouldn't open the doors to somebody who had opposition research on your opponent?" I mean, I think that is still so telling.

And all of this put together is the idea that there's no rules; there's no judgment; there's no guardrails on the campaign. And this -- this Cohen development is another striking example of that. And he's going to go out in front of Congress and lay all of this out as we're waiting for this final act on Mueller to arrive, as well.

[07:15:03] CAMEROTA: Nia, I'm not done with this "Wall Street Journal" story. I have so much more to say, which is, so the man was promised $50,000, OK, to rig the polls that then-Donald Trump the candidate cited, OK, at his rallies: "Look at the polls I'm winning. Look at this. Have you seen this latest poll?"

So they were rigged, according to the guy who was going to collect 50,000. He never got that 50,000. All he got was the 12,000 to 13,000 in cash.

GREGORY: And a glove.

CAMEROTA: A glove, thank you. In a blue Wal-Mart bag.

However, according to the "Wall Street Journal," Michael Cohen charged the campaign for the $50,000.

GREGORY: Right.

CAMEROTA: So he was getting a kickback.

HENDERSON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: He was bilking the campaign for the money. So it was a campaign expenditure somehow. And -- am I right?

BERMAN: I don't know if he charged the campaign or the Trump Organization. I think that's an open question.

CAMEROTA: The reimbursement, made on the sole basis of the hand- written note from Mr. Cohen, paid largely out of Mr. Trump's personal account." Thank you.

Donald Trump paid Michael Cohen the 50,000 to rig the online polls, though he only gave the other guy 12,000 in a blue bag. The corruption, I mean, this is like an -- the anatomy.

HENDERSON: Yes. CAMEROTA: Of a corruption here.

HENDERSON: And the sort of pettiness of it, right? I mean, rigging an online poll? I think one was, like, a CNBC poll where they wanted to get him on, Donald Trump among the top business leaders. Another, I think, was a Drudge poll.

And, yes, I mean the $50,000, and then you've got Cohen basically stiff-arming Trump for more money. If you're the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization, you're going to point that out, and you're going to say, "See, Michael Cohen was a liar and a thief, and this is what he's doing. He shouldn't be trusted. His words shouldn't be trusted. And whatever he says before Congress shouldn't be trusted."

But it also goes to the level which Michael Cohen operated. You know, in sort of petty ways large and small with Stormy Daniels and then with this silly online poll, he is very informed about all of the things that were going on in that Trump campaign and in Trump Organization. And I think this is just a real detail that speaks to that.

BERMAN: And February 7, he appears before Congress. One of the questions will be, "Mr. Cohen, what did candidate Trump know about the $50,000 in cash that was being expected by this guy to rig the online polls?" That's a preview of coming attractions.

All right, friends, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

CAMEROTA: I'm so glad we supersized our panel.

BERMAN: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: That worked well.

BERMAN: Absolutely.

All right. Should the United States rethink its strategy in Syria after a suicide attack that killed four Americans? A decorated Green Beret who now serves in Congress joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:21:38] BERMAN: ISIS is claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed four Americans and many others in Northern Syria. One hour after the attack, Vice President Mike Pence said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we are bringing our troops home. The caliphate has crumbled, and ISIS has been defeated.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now is Republican Congressman Michael Waltz. He serves on the Armed Services Committee and is a combat-decorated Green Beret who served in Afghanistan.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us. Good morning to you.

REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R), FLORIDA: Sure, John.

BERMAN: With your experience in combat and your history and your connections, when you first heard of this attack in Manbij in northern Syria, what was your reaction?

WALTZ: Well, first and foremost, you know, my heart and prayer and thoughts go to the families. They're getting that knock on the door that, as a -- as a commander, as a soldier, that we all dread. That family's life is being turned absolutely upside-down right now. And we should remember, you know, thank your veteran, but take an extra step and thank mom, sister, brother, kids, spouses. This is a team effort, 17 years into this war on terror.

BERMAN: You just heard the vice president of the United States. And I don't think he knew the severity or the details of the attack when he said it.

WALTZ: Yes.

BERMAN: But he gave that speech, and he said ISIS has been defeated. Has ISIS been defeated in Syria?

WALTZ: Well, I think ISIS has been defeated as a caliphate, and I think the president and the administration, the Pentagon, deserve a lot of credit for that, for really taking the handcuffs, so to speak, off the military and going after what, at one point, was you know, about the size of Austria.

But it is not defeated as a movement at all, and it's not defeated completely in Syria and in Iraq. They're going to go to ground and wage guerilla warfare. And my fear is, if we pull out too soon, ISIS can reconstitute. We have to stay on offense. We have to keep our foot on their neck. And, frankly, you know, if these leaders, terrorist leaders are more worried about where they're sleeping at night, they can't plot and plan to attack the United States and Europe and wreak havoc on the region.

But you know, John, there's a lot of other reasons to stay engaged. I don't think Turkey, at the end of the day, sees ISIS as a priority. They see the Kurds as a priority. Iran is dominating the region.

We have to keep in mind Israel, our ally. Of course, there's Russia and the Assad regime, which is an absolutely murderous regime.

Look, this is an investment. This is worth noting. This is an investment of a few thousand troops to keep a lid on all of that and for the United States to have leverage. We have 25,000 troops in Japan. We have 30,000 in Korea. There are a lot of American troops around the world. And I want, again -- I want us to fight these wars over there. There is a fundamentally flawed premise that, if we just leave things alone, locals can take care of it; and it won't follow us home. And I think that's where, you know, I disagree. BERMAN: You disagree with the president, again, who in December said

he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria now. And then it became 30 days and then four months. And now there are some conditions here.

Senator Lindsey Graham --

WALTZ: Right.

BERMAN: -- said yesterday, he said, "My concern by the statements made by President Trump" -- these statements that I just outlined -- "is that you 've set in motion enthusiasm by the enemy we're fighting.

Do you think that the enemy, ISIS in this case, has been emboldened by the president's statements?

[07:25:00] WALTZ: Well, I think you cannot -- it is very difficult, and we should avoid when we can, announcing a withdrawal in advance of that actual withdrawal. President Obama did that in Iraq. He did it in Afghanistan years ahead of time. I was on the ground when that happened. And the enemy was certainly emboldened there. And if they're emboldened tactically, strategically, they now know they can just wait us out.

So those -- those are all concerns that I have and things I plan to look into and ask a lot of questions about from Congress.

BERMAN: So it's a yes? You believe the enemy could be emboldened now by the president's statements?

WALTZ: Well, I think they can certainly be emboldened rhetorically, and they can be emboldened from a propaganda standpoint that, you know, hold fast, you know, to its leaders, which are now on their back foot. We've done a great job of defeat, again, of downsizing and defeating that caliphate. And now, essentially, they can say, "Let's just wait out the Americans and start cutting deals with others in the region."

So, again, this is -- we all want the soldiers to come home, but we also want to have a sustainable long-term victory in the region. And I would encourage administration to stay on offense.

BERMAN: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested to President Trump that they discuss moving the date of the State of the Union address to Congress at the Capitol or the president deliver it in writing. Your reaction?

WALTZ: Well, you know, and her justification was that DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Secret Service can't protect the Capitol. I -- I have full confidence in Secretary Nielsen and DHS that they can protect it just fine. I think this is just theater politics.

Look, at the end of the day, John, we need to cut a deal. I am willing to -- personally willing to accept less than what the president's asked for. But if we need to put DACA on the table, whatever. BERMAN: So --

WALTZ: Let's come together. Let's cut a deal. Let's move -- reopen the government, and let's move forward.

BERMAN: You're in the House, but there's a letter in the Senate being circulated that has some bipartisan support from senators that says, "You know what? Reopen the government now."

WALTZ: Yes.

BERMAN: "Reopen the government for three weeks, and we'll talk. We'll negotiate. So reopen first, then negotiate more." Do you support that?

WALTZ: Yes, that's -- that's really the sticking point. There's a lot of folks, I think, willing to sit down and talk. I don't know that Speaker Pelosi is one of those. But there are a lot of members on both sides that want to cut a deal and want to get this done. It's the timing that's the issue.

There is zero confidence, I can tell you, on my side that, if we reopen the government, that the Democratic leadership will get this done. And that's where that lack of trust, that lack of confidence is the real sticking point.

You know, whether you cut a deal now or you cut a deal later, I think we need to cut a deal soon and get the government reopened. That's what the American people expect.

BERMAN: Very quickly, last question here.

WALTZ: Sure.

BERMAN: Rudy Giuliani, who's the president's lawyer, went on TV last night and said he never said that people in the president's campaign didn't collude with the Russians; he just said not the president.

Now, you're not involved in the president's legal defense.

WALTZ: yes.

BERMAN: You're a Republican in Congress. Do you have concerns about what may follow? Do you think that, perhaps, Giuliani was foreshadowing something he knows that we might find out that someone in the campaign did, in fact, collude more?

WALTZ: John -- you know, John, I'm not going to get in the business of kind of trying to, you know, predict what Rudy Giuliani is maybe signaling. I don't know.

At the end of the day, the president has been very clear there's been no collusion. My understanding is there's been no collusion. I've seen no evidence of collusion. Yet, I think the investigation needs to play out, and I need -- think we need to let that investigation play out. BERMAN: You're right, the president has been clear there's no

collusion, but Giuliani just moved the goal post on that, suggesting that he never said no collusion between the campaign, just him.

Congressman Michael Waltz --

WALTZ: All right.

BERMAN: -- thank you for being with us this morning, a serious discussion. Appreciate it.

WALTZ: Thanks, John.

CAMEROTA: OK, John.

Federal workers are still not getting paid because of the shutdown, so we have some of their dire situations, next.

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