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Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker Holds Press Conference; Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker States Mueller Investigation Coming to a Close; Top Intelligence and Law Enforcement Officials to Testify before Senate Panel on Worldwide Threats. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 29, 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] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She comes across as tough, but at the same time, she's likable.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nobody wants to see Donald Trump fired more than me. I am in this because I love the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolute gift to Donald Trump. This would reduce the ceiling he would need to win.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota on John Berman.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, and welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, January 29th, 8:00 in the east. Listen to this, quote, I have seen actual deer in headlights that expressed themselves more clearly than the acting attorney general. That is how one of our sharpest legal minds whom you will hear from shortly describes the controversial performance of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker yesterday.

Ultimately, this isn't about verbiage or sweat, for that matter. It's about the fact that the man overseeing the Mueller investigation blurted out that it is almost over. And what's more, he said that Mueller's decisions will somehow be reviewed by the Justice Department. So what does all this mean? We're going to try to figure this out.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And in just hours, Roger Stone will be blocks away from the White House appearing before a federal judge. The longtime Trump confidante is expected to plead not guilty to charges that he lied to lawmakers, engaged in witness tampering, and obstructed a Congressional investigation into coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

So joining us now to discuss all of these developments, we have CNN Justice Reporter Laura Jarrett, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers, and Jeffrey Toobin. Laura, I want to get to you because it's your reporting that I think drove some of this yesterday with Matt Whitaker. So tell us what happened in the room, how surprised people were when Matt Whitaker, the acting attorney general, said this. Let's play it for a moment of what he said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT WHITAKER, ACTIVE U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Right now, the investigation is, I think, close to being completed. And I hope that we can get the report from Director Mueller as soon as we -- as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: "Close to being completed" got a lot of people's attention, Laura.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: To say the least. But to set the stage a little bit, Whitaker never talks about the Mueller investigation. In fact, this was his first press conference ever in front of reporters since he became the acting attorney general on November 7th, the day that Jeff Sessions was ousted. So this is the first we have heard from him. And just to set the stage even further, he wasn't asked to weigh in on the timing of the Mueller investigation or anything like that. He was asked about his prior comments being so critical of Mueller and whether he had seen anything that made him change his view. And with that prompting he then offered this rare exposition on the timing of the investigation, how he looks forward to seeing the report shortly.

Now, obviously this prompted a whole bunch of quizzical looks from all of the reporters in the room and a whole host of questions now raised about what this means about the status of the investigation given that all of the loose ends we still have -- indictments possibly coming the pipe. We have seen Roger Stone only arrested just last week. And of course, there is also the question of what happens to the interview with the president as our reporting was that Mueller still had some follow up questions. So all of this now all in the air given what Whitaker said.

BERMAN: You said it was his first press conference. It may turn out to be his first based on the reception from that performance. Jeffrey Toobin, legal analyst and deer enthusiast, there was another sentence that Whitaker said that you are most concerned about. He says, I am comfortable that the decisions that were made by Mueller are going to be reviewed, either through the various means we have.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Now, in Whitaker's defense, he may just be babbling incoherently. It may mean actually nothing. But if it means something of substance, the idea that the Justice Department is reviewing Mueller's decisions is something that is not provided for in the regulation. It's unclear what he was talking about. So if I had to vote, I think that was simply babbling. It has no significance. But again, it raises questions about what he's doing with regard to the Mueller investigation.

BERMAN: And not appropriate.

TOOBIN: Not appropriate. And let me just explain why it's not appropriate to say that an investigation is wrapping up, because investigators deal with lawyers and subjects. And if the lawyers and subjects know that the whole thing is going to end in a few weeks or a few months they just run out the clock. They say, well, we'll get back to you. We're thinking about it, or reviewing documents. There are lots of ways to delay. And if you know it's going to end, that's what you do.

CAMEROTA: Jennifer, how do you see his comments yesterday?

JENNIFER RODGERS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: I agree. I agree, I do think he probably just got caught out and didn't know what to say. And so we saw this --

CAMEROTA: I think it's interesting that Laura says this was apropos of nothing. He wasn't asked this question.

RODGERS: Yes, but he didn't want to answer the question he was asked, which is has your view changed about the Mueller investigation. So he's pivoting to something else. But to Jeff's point just there, it's interesting because we are seeing that exact running out of the clock with the Roger Stone, Andrew Miller situation, which was other news for today.

[08:05:03] Andrew Miller, who is an associate of Roger Stone's lawyer, comes out and out of the blue says, by the way, I called the special counsel to see if they still need my guy now that they've indicted Roger Stone, and they said that they did. So here's another person who is in court trying to run out the clock, which is why you don't want to tell folks that, hey, we're almost done. Don't worry about it.

BERMAN: It's interesting, Laura Jarrett, the Mueller probe seems to have gone back to the old policy of not commenting at all about anything, right, because you went and asked Peter Carr what's going on here.

JARRETT: Yes, they're not touching it with a 10-foot pole. We may never hear from Peter Carr again after that "Buzzfeed" story. That was a rare statement, one time only. My guess is that will be the last we hear from him on this issue.

But the Justice Department didn't have any follow up on Whitaker's statements either. They could have tried to soften it or explain it away even on background in some sort of way, and there is silence about what he said. So I think we can assume he meant it. Whether he should have said it, whether anyone else in the department knew he was going to say it, all of those are fair questions. But I think we should take him seriously that this is wrapping up.

CAMEROTA: OK, so let's do that. So Jennifer, if he meant it and if he is serious and if he has some sort of special information that the rest of us don't have, does it make sense to you that maybe Roger Stone was the last piece of the puzzle? So he was arrested on Friday, and maybe that is what Mueller was waiting for.

RODGERS: It's certainly the last piece of the puzzle we, the public, knew was out there that needed to be resolved. So it certainly is possible. On the other hand, Mueller is going to charge everyone that he's going to charge before we see a report. So if there are more indictments coming, they are going to come before the report. But I don't know and I don't think we know publicly of any other big pieces of the investigation that are still outstanding after Roger Stone.

BERMAN: That's a good point. Jerome Corsi, but that seems ancillary too the Roger Stone thing, Jeffrey. And there are people who will look at this, if Matt Whitaker was telling the truth, and by all accounts he's been briefed on this, so maybe he knows, there will be no charges this means of collusion or conspiracy. Is that possible or increasingly possible?

TOOBIN: Yes, it is increasingly possible, because whatever else you can say about Whitaker is he has access to information that none of us in the press do. He is the supervisor of the Mueller investigation. So the fact that he says it's wrapping up is deeply significant. That's why we are putting so much focus on it.

There have been questions about Donald Trump, Jr., questions about actual charges of some sort of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian interests. None of those charges have come to fruition. And they may not. And I would say the chances of their not coming to fruition increased with Whitaker's announcement today.

CAMEROTA: Laura, is that how you see it, Laura? We had always heard from other investigators that there were these concentric circles, and the way Mueller would operate was get closer and closer and closer into a big target, and so maybe Roger Stone is the end? Or maybe this is just one more step towards that?

JARRETT: I think we should at least entertain the possibility that this is the end and that we won't see another indictment either for any other major target that has swirled in speculation, whoever that person may be for the last couple of months that we have mused about, or we may never see any other superseding charges against Roger Stone. So additional charges either related to a conspiracy or hacking the DNC. There is nothing in the current indictment about that. It's all about lying to Congress, something that he and his lawyers and certainly the president's allies have pointed out time and time again.

But again, I think that the one question I still have is what happens to that interview with the president? And whether that's an issue that gets left up to Bill Barr, the president's permanent nominee to become attorney general, if he's confirmed, that might be an issue that gets punted for a little bit. And maybe Whitaker has nothing to do with that.

TOOBIN: And there is also that the issue before the Supreme Court of this mysterious company that is owned by some foreign government not wanting to cooperate. That's unresolved.

CAMEROTA: Does it have to be resolved before Mueller releases a report?

TOOBIN: Mueller can release a report whenever he wants. Presumably the fact that it's gone all the way to the Supreme Court must be pretty important to Mueller.

CAMEROTA: Good point.

TOOBIN: But I certainly don't have enough information to say that it's indispensable to his filing a report. But he obviously wants the information.

BERMAN: Jeffrey, Jennifer, Laura, great to have you this morning. Thanks very much.

CAMEROTA: In about an hour the nation's top intelligence and law enforcement officials will testify before a Senate panel on worldwide threats. CNN's Lauren Fox is live on Capitol Hill with a preview. What do we expect, Lauren?

[08:10:00] LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Good morning, Alisyn. Up here on Capitol Hill what we expect is intelligence leaders will come before the Senate Intelligence Committee for what is a rare open setting in this hearing. We'll hear from CIA Director Gina Haspel, Dan Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, and FBI Director Christopher Wray among others.

And what we do expect from this hearing is that Democrats especially are going to be looking for any daylight between the intel officials and the Trump Administration on policies in Afghanistan and Syria, North Korea and Russia. Those are the big four that a lot of the Democrats are going to be asking about, especially related to Afghanistan and Syria. Those have been the top topics up here on Capitol Hill.

We also expect that there are going to be questions about what the fallout was from the shutdown. Thirty-five days is a long time for the intelligence community to be hampered by a government shutdown. And there is of course a threat of another government shutdown in just three weeks. So expect members of Congress to be asking all of those questions. In addition, of course, election meddling could come up. Questions just about security threats to the United States and to troops around the world. It's an important hearing because, again, it's a rare opportunity for the public and members of Congress to see the work of the intelligence officials.

BERMAN: And over the last couple of years it is these hearings where some of the biggest news has come out in the different investigations that have been going on, because it's the only access you get to some of these intelligence chiefs. I think that's the key here. Lauren Fox, great to have you with us. Thanks very much.

U.S. economy lost $11 billion during the longest shutdown in U.S. history. We're going to get reaction from a Senate Democrat, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: The government shutdown not only hurt federal workers, it also hurt the U.S. economy. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the U.S. economy lost $11 billion during the 35-day government shutdown, $8 billion of that will be recovered but the other $3 billion gone forever. Joining us now is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota. Thank you so much for being with us, Senator.

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR, DEMOCRAT, MINNESOTA: Thank you. Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Larry Kudlow who is an Economic Advisor in the White House looked at those numbers from the CBO including the $3 billion that will be permanently lost to the economy and he says, "There's no long- term damage to the economy." Do you see it that way?

KLOBUCHAR: No. I think if you ask your average American, what would they do with $3 billion, think about what it could do, it could help them pay for their mortgages, it could help them pay for their prescription drugs. It could do something about our nation's crumbling infrastructure, fix some potholes in the roads. It's outrageous to say things. In hope to reduce our debt, you just don't lose $3 billion like that in the economy and say that's nothing. And actually as you pointed out, the total right now is $11 billion, they just think we may be able to recover the $8 billion.

BERMAN: The shutdown was over the President's desire to build a border wall or as he now calls it a border barrier. He was told last night by his pollsters that he does have support for that argument in key swing districts around the country including some districts in States like Minnesota where you are a senator right now. The President got very close in Minnesota and there are some districts even the Democrats represented Minnesota that did vote for Donald Trump. What will you tell your constituents in Minnesota that you will support or will not support in terms of a new border barrier?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, my constituents in Minnesota first of all are right now very focused on the weather. I hope you know that it is going to be 60 below zero wind chill. So that's the number one thing that we're talking about at home. The number two thing is they hated this shutdown and didn't like the fact that the President was playing politics with it. And when I look at a solution here, it is what I have been saying to them, into the country, since the very beginning, let's do smart border protection. Let's do things like a listen to the experts and what they have told me for years is that you want a combination of things.

Yes, you want some fence. There's fencing there right now and there is improved fencing and fencing that needs to be repaired. Then, you also have technology that we can use and certainly at our ports of entry as I hear that story about the Houston police officers being shot during a drug raid, that is where you should be focused on some of the technology and new things you can do at the points of entry which is very different than a concrete wall across the entire border.

BERMAN: He's no longer talking about a concrete wall across the entire border sea to shining sea. He's now saying in selective places new barriers that could include steel slats or other things and you may get a chance to vote on that depending on what these appropriators come back with and we will come back to you and ask you exactly how you will vote then. You're very concerned about the effects of the shutdown on cyber defenses and cybersecurity, explain. KLOBUCHAR: Well, during the shutdown, it turns out that 45% of those

doing cybersecurity and homeland security were furloughed, if you can imagine this. And during that time, 80 websites had warnings on them or we're taken down websites that said things like you would see on sleazy websites, it said things, "Proceed at your own risk." These were U.S. government websites. And what we know from the 2013 shutdown is that Chinese actually successfully got in to the federal election website.

So our concern is that may have happened and not only that I've asked with a bunch of senators, I led a letter asking them exactly what happened, how are you going to stop it from happening again and how many breaches or attempts to breach did we see.

BERMAN: So going back to another issue here, I remember a CNN Town Hall on healthcare that you did and you sat on the stage with some other senators and you suggested that you were not fully supportive of the idea of Medicare for all insofar as it would do away with private insurance. That's the Senator Bernie Sanders' bill. You did not say you would support that bill. Last night, Senator Kamala Harris within Iowa at a CNN Town Hall and she did say that she supports the notion of Medicare for all even if it means an end to private insurance, why do you think that's not a good idea?

KLOBUCHAR: I believe that we need to provide universal coverage to every American and we have gotten closer and closer to that, but certainly we are not there. There are many ways you could get there. One of them is expanding Medicare and I would suggest you start with - to age 55 by the way, instead of doing it so drastically in just a few years and changing our entire insurance system where over half of Americans get private insurance.

[08:20:05]

But then the second thing is it doesn't mean you couldn't get there eventually. I just suggest you do it in that way. But another way to do it that might be easier to fit into our system right now is having a public option and that would bring the prices down. We were denied the opportunity to do that before one would be a buy-in with Medicaid, in fact Senator Sanders and I are both on that bill. And then, the second one would be to do it through Medicare.

So the goal is to have universal coverage, in addition, bringing down pharma prices, my bills to negotiate under Medicare, that's a bill I've led for a decade. You look at bringing prices down. My bipartisan bills with Senator Grassley to stop big pharma from paying off generics to keep their products off the market, bring in less expensive drugs from Canada. There is so much we've been blocked from doing and American people in this election spoke out and said, "We want to see our premiums come down and we want to see pharmaceutical prices go down."

BERMAN: The Washington Post, one of their data analysts put out an article that said, "Want to know which Democrats can actually beat Donald Trump? We don't have to guess." Look who's in that picture, it's you Senator Klobuchar. KLOBUCHAR: Oh, here we go.

BERMAN: Do you agree with that? Do you think you are the best positioned or one of the best position possible candidates to beat Donald Trump?

KLOBUCHAR: I think there are many people that could win in this election, but the key for the American people is going to be to look at the candidates and say who can win always paramount in an election and in a primary, but also who captures our imagination and is going to have some ideas to bring us forward on positive optimistic agenda for this country. It is not about spending your whole day going down the rabbit holes with Donald Trump. It is also about talking about things that matter to people and being willing to reach out to people to find common ground because that's the only way you get to higher ground.

BERMAN: Do you check those boxes?

KLOBUCHAR: And that is what I've done in the last elections.

BERMAN: So you're saying you do check those boxes in theory.

KLOBUCHAR: I think there are a number of people that do and one of the things that's great about this coming year is there's going to be a lot of competition and I think people should view that as a chance to really sit back and think about the America that we want to be. For me I come from the heartland and we need to get that back into our politics.

BERMAN: How much time do you have to decide at this point?

KLOBUCHAR: I think that you've seen that people are moving quickly and that is because there's so many people running and I will be making a decision shortly.

BERMAN: Please tell us as soon as you know.

KLOBUCHAR: I will. I promise I will.

BERMAN: Before it goes public anywhere else. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, thanks for being with us, I appreciate it.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Do you want to give her your phone number right now over the air? Thank you, Senator. All right, meanwhile, a former aide to President Trump claims he was surrounded by a team of vipers at the White House. He says he was actually one of them. Cliff Sims on his tell all book that is just out this morning. He's going to join us with all of the tidbits inside, next.

[08:25:00]

Chaos in fighting and struggles for power over policy. That's how a former aide to President Trump describes the west wing. Cliff Sims admits that he caused some of that mayhem himself. He lays it out in a new tell all book, it's called Team of Vipers, my 500 extraordinary days in the Trump White House which is out today and joining us now is Cliff Sims. He was a former special assistant to the President in charge of the White House message strategy. That's interesting.

CLIFF SIMS, AUTHOR, TEAM OF VIPERS: Yes, it's a fun job.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you. It's a fascinating book, obviously, it's getting so much attention because you name names in there. And you talk about the general vibe in the White House and you call it a team of vipers. So here's what you write, so many people I think particularly critics of President Trump would say, "Why would anybody work there knowing all of this? Why would anybody want to work there?"

So here's what you start the book by saying, "Most of us came to Washington convinced of the Justice of our cause and the righteousness of our principles, certain our moral compasses were true. But proximity to power changes that. Donald Trump changes that. The once clear lines between right and wrong, good and evil, light and darkness were eroded." How does Donald Trump change that?

SIMS: Well, I think one of the things I try to do in this book is walk through not only all of these scenes that we get from the White House, but also kind of my personal journey and what it all meant for me. And one of the things that I realized is when you're around Donald Trump there's something about him - the best way I could describe it is similar to people talk about Steve Jobs when they called it - there was like a reality distortion field around Steve Jobs.

And when you're around the President, everything seems bigger, everything seems grander, and there could be good things about that, but there's also kind of this atmosphere that gets created. It's extremely cutthroat. I think every White House is probably tough, but I think especially the atmosphere that has been created there that encourages a lot of the infighting.

CAMEROTA: Well, look there's competition and there's an atmosphere of infighting, but then there's not knowing right from wrong. I mean not knowing your own moral compass, that's different.

SIMS: Yes. What I realized was the closer that you get to the poll of absolute power, the more distorted your moral compass becomes and what I found is it revealed a lot about myself that I wasn't ready for what I was walking into there. And a lot of the scenes in the book are about me kind of losing myself. I mean, one of the scenes that's gotten the most pickup is when the President and I are sitting just off the Oval Office in the private study and we're creating what kind of amounts to an enemies list of people in the White House who I felt were basically disloyal to him.

CAMEROTA: And who was on that hit list?

SIMS: Well, I mean, there are a number of them I named in the book, Sean Spicer and Reince Priebus. And I got a lot of the people that kind of abandon him during the campaign that he was trying to figure out who are these people who were going on background saying negative things about me on my own staff and so I kind of walked through those names.

CAMEROTA: But was anybody still there that you put together on that hit list?

SIMS: I think so. I mean most of them are gone. Most of them are gone like the so called Trump loyalist are gone, but really the point of that story when I walk out of there is I sit back down at my desk and I realize like, "Oh," like I've kind of lost myself in this a little bit, because there's nothing honorable about slamming your colleagues to our boss and that kind of things.

[08:30:03]

CAMEROTA: One of the interesting scenarios that you write about that I think is a real peeling back of the curtain for people is the night that Donald Trump won.