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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Michael Cohen Testifies to Congress in Public Today; U.S.-North Korea Summit Begins Today; Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired February 27, 2019 - 04:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[04:00:19] MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: I'm going to let the American people decide exactly who's telling the truth.

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CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Michael Cohen's jaw-dropping prepared testimony is out just hours before he'll be under oath in public.

DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump in Vietnam right now about to meet with North Korean's Kim Jong-un. Two pivotal events of this presidency set to play out in real time over the coming hours.

Folks, it will be a stunning split screen today. Good morning, and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Dave Briggs.

ROMANS: I'm Christine Romans. You are absolutely right. A big day today. It is Wednesday, February 27th, 4:00 a.m. in the East, 4:00 p.m. in Hanoi where the president is preparing to meet North Korea's Kim Jong-un.

We welcome all of our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world.

In just hours, President Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen goes before Congress to deliver bombshell testimony. CNN has obtained a copy of his prepared public testimony. And it is stunning.

Within the first few minutes, Cohen will say, "I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist, he is a con man, he is a cheat."

BRIGGS: His 20-page testimony includes a series of new and at times astonishing claims. Cohen will testify that then candidate Trump was aware longtime adviser Roger Stone was in direct contact with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about Hillary Clinton's hacked e- mailed. So in July 2016 just days before the Democratic convention, Cohen was in Trump's office, when on the speaker phone, Roger Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that within a couple of days there would be a massive dump of e-mails that would damage Hillary Clinton's campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of "wouldn't that be great." ROMANS: Despite advance word, Michael Cohen would not talk about

Russia in today's public testimony. It features heavily in his prepared remarks. Cohen claims the president pushed hard for the Trump Tower Moscow project all during the presidential campaign, while saying publicly he had no business in Russia. Cohen offers his explanation for why.

BRIGGS: He will say, "To be clear, Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project."

ROMANS: Cohen is also set to testify extensively about hush payments to Stormy Daniels when the president was directly asked about the money last year on Air Force One, he denied knowing anything about its source.

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UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. President, did you know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, no, what else?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Then why do Michael Cohen make this if there was no truth to the allegations?

TRUMP: Well, you have to ask Michael Cohen. Michael's my attorney and you'll have to ask Michael Cohen.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you know where he got the money to pay those women?

TRUMP: I don't know. No.

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ROMANS: But Cohen will tell the House Committee on Oversight he paid, and that Trump wrote him a series of illegal reimbursement checks, quote, "He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair and to lie to the first lady which I did. Lying to the first lady is one of my biggest regrets. She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly and she did not deserve that."

BRIGGS: Michael Cohen is also prepared to call President Trump a racist under oath on national television. According to his testimony, Cohen will inform lawmakers Mr. Trump once told him that black people would never vote for him because they were, quote, "too stupid." He's going to testify Trump once asked him if he could name a country run by a black person that wasn't a, quote, "shithole."

According to Cohen, Trump posed that question when Barack Obama was president.

ROMANS: President Trump finally making it to Vietnam. He never thought in the war there of course receiving a medical deferment, several. And Michael Cohen plans to share a conversation he had with Mr. Trump about that deferment when he testifies. He's set to tell lawmakers, quote, "Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur. When I asked for records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment."

He finished the conversation with the following comment, "Do you think I'm stupid? I wasn't going to Vietnam." Cohen adds, "I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now."

BRIGGS: Yesterday Cohen was grilled by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee behind closed doors for nine hours. Multiple sources familiar with the interview telling CNN he apologized for lying during his 2017 testimony.

Here's what Cohen told reporters as he left that meeting.

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[04:05:04] COHEN: I really appreciate the opportunity that was given to me to clear the record and to tell the truth. And I look forward to tomorrow to being able to -- in my voice, to tell the American people, my story, and I'm going to let the American people decide exactly who is telling the truth.

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BRIGGS: The committee's ranking Democrat, Virginia's Senator Mark Warner would not discuss details of Cohen's testimony but did suggest the stakes are sky high.

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SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA), RANKING MEMBER, SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE: Two years ago when this investigation started, I said it may be the most important thing I'm involved in in my public life in the Senate. And nothing I've heard today dissuades me from that view.

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ROMANS: And then there's this. A high profile Trump ally in Congress evidently threatening Michael Cohen on the eve of his public testimony. Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida, who's been called the Trumpiest congressman in Washington, tweeting, "Hey, Michael Cohen, do your wife and father-in-law know about your girlfriends? Maybe tonight would be a good time for that chat. I wonder if she'll remain faithful when you're in prison. She's about to learn a lot."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeming to reprimand Gaetz insisting comments like this make it harder for committee's to get truthful information. Gaetz then issued an apology of sorts, deleting the first tweet and posting a new one. "While it is important to create context around the testimony of liars like Michael Cohen, it was not my intent to threaten as some believe I did." BRIGGS: Michael Cohen's testimony before the House begins at 10:00

a.m. Join CNN for live complete coverage and analysis all morning.

ROMANS: All right. A new round of high-stakes diplomacy begins today when President Trump meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Their second summit focused on denuclearizing the Korean peninsula. It begins in just hours in Hanoi. In the meantime, the president has been meeting with Vietnamese officials and highlighting Vietnam as a thriving nation that could be a model for Pyongyang.

Senior diplomatic correspondent Michelle Kosinski joins us live now in Hanoi, with a look at the day ahead.

Good afternoon, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Christine, so we know that Trump and Kim are going to sit down first one-on-one with just their translators. They'll talk for maybe 20 minutes or so, then there's this social dinner as the White House put it. That's going to be three people on each side. On the U.S. side, it's going to be President Trump, his chief of staff, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Leading up to this, though, this is a classic Trumpian cliffhanger. The White House has given out very little detail as to what has been prepared ahead of time, what are all the possibilities, what is on the table. So it's extremely unclear. I mean, nobody knows, it seems, nobody we've talked to, none of our sources, nobody is saying from the administration what could come out of this.

Here's what Trump said about it this morning.

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TRUMP: We have a very big dinner tonight, as you know, and meetings with North Korea and Chairman Kim. And we both felt very good about having this very important summit in Vietnam because you really are an example as to what can happen with good thinking.

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KOSINSKI: Very little detail there, but the president has been tweeting. First criticizing Democrats, saying, you know, they shouldn't talk about what he should do in North Korea. Why didn't they do something in eight years of the Obama administration? Saying that what could happen here could be, quote, "awesome," in all capital letters, referring to his friend Kim Jong-un, and saying we'll know pretty soon, very interesting.

But he's also criticizing Senator Richard Blumenthal. Trump saying that he's now spent more time in Vietnam than he did. Saying that the senator's time in Vietnam was all a fraud. And we know that Trump's own avoidance of serving in Vietnam could come up during the Michael Cohen testimony today. One sign that the president could already be rattled by what we're about to hear in this strange surreal split screen of a day. ROMANS: It sure is, Michelle. All right. Thank you so much for

that. We'll talk to you again very, very soon. Big day ahead. Big evening ahead for you.

Thanks so much, Michelle Kosinski in Hanoi.

BRIGGS: All right. Donald Trump is on board tweeting about Michael Cohen. We'll get to that, ahead.

There's a lot riding on the meeting that's about to take place between President Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Can the president turn personal chemistry into successful nuclear diplomacy? We have live coverage from Hanoi, next.

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[04:13:45] BRIGGS: All right. So we're just hours away from one of the most pivotal meetings of President Trump's presidency. That meeting with Kim Jong-un, and yet the president is on Twitter, on the board, firing back at his former fixer and attorney Michael Cohen, quote, "Cohen was one of many lawyers who represented me unfortunately. He had other clients also. He was just disbarred by the state Supreme Court for lying and fraud. He did bad things unrelated to Trump. He is lying in order to reduce his prison time. Using Crooked's lawyer." Referring there to Lanny Davis.

He also tweeted some nasty remarks about Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, we'll discuss those shortly.

ROMANS: All right. President Trump right now is in Vietnam where he is tweeting. Preparing for his second nuclear summit with Kim Jong- un. The two leaders coming face-to-face in just about two hours from now for two days of talks. Officials in the U.S. and across Asia hoping Mr. Trump can turn personal chemistry into real progress.

ROMANS: All right. Let's go live to Hanoi and bring in CNN military and diplomatic analyst Admiral John Kirby.

Great to have you here with us this morning, Sir. What do you think is the best case scenario? What's the worst case scenario of what unfolds over the next couple of days?

[04:15:01] REAR ADM. JOHN KIRBY, CNN MILITARY AND DIPLOMATIC ANALYST: It's a great question. I think the best case and I think the most realistic case is that we'll get some sort of a framework for future negotiations and future discussions. Some sort of plan by which both teams can actually move the ball forward over the next couple of years. This might -- you know, like sort of a sequencing, I guess, of negotiations going forward.

I think the worst case is, you know, that we end up with just sort of nothing and we end up just as vague as we were after Singapore.

I think for Donald Trump, he knows he has to deliver something coming out of the summit. And I think for him, it really is about detail and specifics, at least for his team as well, to get common definitions of things like denuclearization.

ROMANS: Right.

KIRBY: And a common sense of understandings of what give and take is possible.

BRIGGS: John, let me go back to before the first summit when I spoke with Gordon Chang and several experts on that region who said, the best case scenario you just laid out for us should have been done before a first summit had ever been planned.

Are we even at a point that we should be meeting yet?

KIRBY: Right.

BRIGGS: Without a clear definition of denuclearization, without a full accounting of their nukes and their sites?

KIRBY: Yes. You know, I honestly think to some degree, President Trump had no choice but to do a second summit because the first one didn't produce any results and because nobody in North Korea can really speak for the country other than Kim Jong-un. It's a very top- down hierarchical society. So I think to some degree Trump really had to come back here.

And don't fault him for that. I'm actually in favor of the second summit. I hope that what comes out of it, though, is more specificity and again a plant that they can actually sort of execute going forward which is something we just haven't had yet.

ROMANS: President Trump's one clear demand, I think, this week has been that he wants to know more testing. And he -- you know, I mean, after the last summit, he said, you know, their nuclear capabilities are gone. They're no longer a nuclear threat. Now he's saying, they're not testing. I don't want them to be testing.

What have the North Koreans given up in exchange for all of this air time on the international stage with the leader of the free world?

KIRBY: Essentially they've given up nothing, to be honest with you. I mean, the testing freeze, well, I won't deny that tensions are much de-escalated than they were before. You know, we've gotten some remains backs. They haven't done any missile launches or tests. But again the intelligence community says that they were 90 percent to 95 percent already where they needed to be in order to mount a nuclear weapon on to an ICBM. So testing is not quite the same priority as it is for Kim Jong-un.

And the intelligence community has also said they continue to enrich uranium, they continue to enrich their capabilities, so even though he's not testing, it doesn't mean he's not trying. And that's something that President Trump needs to understand. A freeze, while it's useful to get us to this point, is not going to be productive long term.

ROMANS: All right. Admiral John Kirby, we're going to talk to you next hour. Thank you so much for being there for us. Eyes and ears on the ground at this Trump-Kim summit number two.

KIRBY: Thank you.

ROMANS: Thank you, Admiral.

All right, 18 minutes past the hour, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell had a message for the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday. Patience when it comes to interest rates.

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JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: With our policy rate in the range of neutral with muted inflation pressures and with some of the downside risks that we've talked about, this is a good time to be patient and watch and wait and see how the situation evolves.

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ROMANS: Central bankers agreed to keep interest rates on hold after four rate hikes last year, now expects to raise rates maybe two times in 2019. During his testimony, the Fed chief was asked about his relationship with the White House in setting interest rate policy.

President Trump of course has repeatedly attacked the Fed and called it the biggest threat to the American economy. Here's how Powell responded.

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POWELL: It's probably not appropriate to discuss our -- my private conversations with other government officials.

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ROMANS: Also called into question was the Fed's bank merger review process. Senator Elizabeth Warren accused the Fed of working for big rich banks.

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SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: You and the banks get together in the back room and grease the wheels before the merger is announced. Your approval process itself appears to be a rubber stamp. That everything is happening behind closed doors.

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ROMANS: Those comments come as the Fed awaits the biggest bank merger application in years. Earlier this month BB&T and SunTrust announced a $66 billion merger that would create the nation's six largest bank. Powell is back on the Hill today to meet with the House Financial Services Committee.

It was so interesting because it was a -- you know, it was the Fed chief basically getting hit by Elizabeth Warren from the left and from the president of the United States as well in recent months. So he's --

BRIGGS: Perilous position.

ROMANS: That's right. All right. If you're just waking up, Michael Cohen's prepared testimony is out and he does not plan to hold back under oath. Full coverage, ahead.

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[04:24:14] ROMANS: All right. President Trump finally making it to Vietnam. He never fought in the war there, receiving a medical deferment. And Michael Cohen plans to share a conversation he had with Mr. Trump about that deferment when he testifies.

He is set to tell lawmakers, quote, "Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur. But when I asked him for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment, you think I'm stupid? I wasn't going to Vietnam." Cohen adds, "I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now."

A lot from these 20 pages of prepared testimony that has been released. He begins his testimony to the public today at 10:00 a.m.

BRIGGS: Yes.

[04:25:00] And when you talk about Vietnam, you have to talk about the latest tweet from the president which was just over an hour ago when the president said, "I have now spent more time in Vietnam than Da Nang Dick Blumenthal, the third rate senator from Connecticut. How is Connecticut doing? His war stories of heroism in Vietnam were a total fraud. He was never even there. We talked about it today with Vietnamese leaders."

So here is the president of the United States ridiculing and mocking a U.S. senator who did serve in the military but did lie about his service in Vietnam. Context here, it is Tammy Duckworth, the war hero, and --

ROMANS: From Illinois.

BRIGGS: From Illinois who calls the president "Cadet Bone Spurs" so --

ROMANS: For his deferrals.

BRIGGS: This will all be brought back up because the president is in Vietnam and of course because of the split screen happening, Michael Cohen's testimony at 10:00 a.m. this morning. He's going to hit the president from all angles but how much will be believed, Christine?

ROMANS: You know, it's unclear. He has a credibility problem. A real credibility problem.

BRIGGS: A massive credibility problem.

ROMANS: But yesterday some of the people who were in that room with him when he gave his private testimony said he is a different person today than he was from the last time they talked to him.

BRIGGS: And you bring up a good point. Yesterday was behind closed doors. Today is in public so the American people get to decide. They get to see this man and feel whether he is being honest, whether he's being trustworthy, or whether they are seeing a liar on television. That's why public testimony is helpful here. And documents, what documents, what evidence, what proof does Michael Cohen bring to the Hill today?

ROMANS: And we know he's bringing some --

BRIGGS: This is a pivotal day for the president.

ROMANS: He's bringing bank records, he's giving Deutsche Bank -- he's being records today so there will be some --

BRIGGS: A signed check.

ROMANS: There will be some props.

BRIGGS: Expected as well.

ROMANS: All right. Happening live in the coming hours, Michael Cohen under oath testifying about the president. This will be in public. We already know some of those details. We're going to give you more of that, right after this.

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