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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
Trump-Kim Summit Ends With No Agreement; Michael Cohen Testifies in Public; Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired February 28, 2019 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:32] CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
DAVE BRIGGS, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Dave Briggs. It is Thursday, February 28th. It's 4:00 a.m. in the East. It is 4:00 p.m. in Hanoi, Vietnam. We welcome all of our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world.
As we speak, Air Force One is already wheels up. The high stakes nuclear summit between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un cut short overnight with the White House saying no deal was reached. The two leaders canceling a planned working lunch and there was no formal agreement. President Trump talked to reporters a short time ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We thought and I thought and Secretary Pompeo felt that it wasn't a good thing to be signing anything. Quite a guy and quite a character. And I think our relationship is very strong. But at this time we had some options and at this time we decided not to do any of the options. And we'll see where that goes. But it was a very interesting two days. And I think actually it was a very productive two days. But sometimes you have to walk. And this was just one of those times.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Standing by live in Hanoi, CNN's chief international anchor, Christiane Amanpour, and chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto.
You've been following all of these twists and turns all night long. Welcome. Listen to the president talk about how it was a friendly walkaway. Not a walkout, a walkaway, seeming to leave the door open. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I think it was very good, very friendly. This wasn't a walkaway like you get up and walk out. No, this was very friendly. We shook hands. We -- you know, there is a warmth that we have and I hope that stays. I think it will.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Christiane, was this summit a success or a failure?
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Look, I think it's not helpful to talk about success or failure. I think it's a process. I think the last time everybody, you know, portrayed this is a historic unprecedented thing and remember they came away with just sort of a foundational relationship. They didn't even sign anything absolutely concrete. And then of course stakes are raised and everybody wants something to happen here. But actually expectations were being lowered the whole way through to this summit.
But you're right, nothing, nothing was even managed to be signed off on, not even opening a liaison office. We thought that might happen. Not maybe even sort of moving towards not a formal peace treaty, but declaring some kind of end as a preamble to a formal peace treaty. And President Trump basically saying that look, we wanted to do something, but they demanded the entirety of nuclear sanctions be lifted and we couldn't accept that.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: And I think you could see and hear the disappointment to some degree in the president's voice there.
Listen, we're in a spin zone now. The president saying it was a friendly walkaway, but it was a walkaway. A working lunch, a signing ceremony plan for today. They were canceled last minute because they couldn't reach agreement. And as Christiane said, the key was sanctions. That the North Koreans wanted it all now, all the sanctions lifted. But in exchange only for shutting down it seems one nuclear facility. And the president saying in effect that's not good enough.
And we should note, Christine and Dave, that there was some concern from inside the president's own administration leading up to these talks that the president would be tempted to give too much, to come away with something, something of a headline, when in fact the president said no, not good enough and was willing to walk away.
AMANPOUR: I mean, the one good bit of information that the president gave us is that he said Kim Jong-un maintains his pledge to keep the halt on nuclear or ballistic missile testing.
BRIGGS: So on the down side, a murderous dictator has been legitimized on a global scale. But, Christiane, is the world a better, a safer place as a result of these two summits?
AMANPOUR: OK. That is a good question because we just don't know what might happen in the aftermath of a summit that didn't actually produce even what the first one did. They talk a good game about how this continues to lay the foundations but the first one was the foundational one. If people were criticizing the sort of top down process, I mean, it's really unusual for summits to start with the principals meeting rather than that being the culmination of a process whereby all the working groups have got all the pieces in place and then the two leaders meet to sign off, they have a treaty and we go from there.
[04:05:01] This was completely reversed and everybody sort of said well, look, nonetheless it's really important to build trust in this massive decades long wall of distrust that has been built between the United States and North Korea. You can't keep saying that at every summit that fails. So at some point something has to -- tangible has to actually happen. And at the moment, nothing tangible has actually happened beyond Singapore.
SCIUTTO: And you know, to your point, Dave, the president was asked about U.S. intelligence assessments that North Korea during this time in between these summits has not -- granted it hasn't tested or has sent up missiles, but it has continued to manufacture fissile materials. Of course the building blocks of a nuclear device and continued its missile programs. That's U.S. intelligence assessment.
But we had, when confronted with that, something of a Helsinki moment because the president said well, some people are saying that and some people are denying that, in effect the president denying his own intelligence community's assessment that that activity continues there. So that is a concern, that as North Korea stretches out these talks, that how much does it really give up. It pauses the nuclear tests and the missile tests, but if it's continued to expand its nuclear capabilities, what is the U.S. losing in the process?
ROMANS: You mentioned --
SCIUTTO: It's a question. The president was not willing to acknowledge it.
(CROSSTALK)
ROMANS: You mentioned that Helsinki moment --
AMANPOUR: I mean, you know, on the other hand, though -- yes, go ahead. We got a delay. No, I'll just say, on the other hand sometimes Americans believe that negotiations, success is total surrender and that is not going to happen in this case. Success is a compromise that makes absolute national security sense and security sense for all sides. And this is a long game particularly with North Korea.
We have had deals between North Korea and the United States in the past that have advanced the courses of peace. We had it under President Clinton with the agreed framework, we had it a little bit under President George W. Bush after dismissing the Clinton process, then started his own, and there was a moment where it looked like this Kim Jong-un's father, Kim Jong-il, would, you know, continue denuclearizing and that was a process.
That came a cropper, for many reasons including he died. I mean, that was a big reason why it came a cropper. And now we're going to wait to see if Kim Jong-un as he says wants to turn his sights to the economic development of his country.
ROMANS: Right. SCIUTTO: Right.
AMANPOUR: Rather than --
ROMANS: I think --
(CROSSTALK)
SCIUTTO: Well, we know he is not willing to fully -- or at least to fully denuclearize at this point.
ROMANS: I think that there is something concrete that they walked away from and I think that is the relationship between -- the personal relationship between these two men. I mean, the president took pains, Jim, to really make sure that, you know, we know that the personal relationship is strong. Even on the subject of Otto Warmbier, the American who was mishandled in the North Korean custody and came home in a vegetative state and died. The president said that he believes Kim Jong-un that he didn't know that treatment was happening to him. Did that surprise you?
SCIUTTO: Absolutely. No question. I mean, the president's words that he takes his word -- and this was something of a Helsinki moment, too.
ROMANS: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Because he said he denies -- Trump said of Kim that he denies knowing about it. And the president said that he takes him at his word. Similarly to taking Vladimir Putin at his word that he did not interfere in the 2016 election if you remember that press conference in Helsinki. That is a remarkable thing to say about a young American, a 20-something American who left North Korea. He was taken hostage in effect by North Korea for specious reasons and left there brain dead and then died when he arrived home.
It's a remarkable thing for an American president to say, well, you know, I give the North Korean leader a pass because he denies knowing anything about it and is blaming it on underlings in a country that is by its very nature top heavy where it is extremely unlikely that the North Korean leader did not know the circumstances. Was he in the room when he died? No. Or put in this condition. But the president to give him a pass there was quite a remarkable moment.
AMANPOUR: And I think, you know, just to build on that, Joseph Yun, who was at the time the special negotiator for North Korean affairs, a special representative, he was tasked with bringing Otto Warmbier out. And he also says that perhaps Kim Jong-un didn't know about this at the beginning when he was arrested but after he was convicted, sent back to jail, and then, you know, developed into this, you know, beaten up, vegetative state. He must have known what was going on.
SCIUTTO: And what does it remind you of with the Khashoggi murder, with the president saying did Mohammed bin Salman --
ROMANS: Yes. SCIUTTO: Again even when his intelligence community has assessed that
he ordered or directed or at least had knowledge of that murder, the president said well, many people are saying maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I mean a parallel there as well.
[04:10:09] BRIGGS: Among the many things covered up in the last few days, or not covered up, but at least brushed over, is that Jared Kushner met with MBS during all of this.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
BRIGGS: Jim Sciutto, Christiane Amanpour, thanks so much. We'll check back with you in Vietnam in about 20 minutes.
ROMANS: All right. President Trump also talking on camera for the first time about Michael Cohen's stunning Capitol Hill testimony. Hear what he said, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BRIGGS: Breaking overnight at his news conference before departing his Hanoi summit with Kim Jong-un, President Trump made his first on- camera remarks about Michael Cohen's congressional testimony yesterday. That is where Cohen accused the president of committing crimes while in office.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I tried to watch as much as I could. I wasn't able to watch too much because I've been a little bit busy. But I think having a fake hearing like that and having it in the middle of this very important summit is really a terrible thing.
[04:15:08] He lied a lot, but it was very interesting because he didn't lie about one thing. He said no collusion with the Russian hoax. And I said, I wonder why he didn't just lie about that too like he did about everything else. I mean, he lied about so many different things and I was actually impressed that he didn't say well, I think there was collusion for this reason or that. He didn't say that. He said no collusion. And I was a little impressed by that frankly. He could have gone all out. He only went about 95 percent instead of 100 percent.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Michael Cohen's third appearance this week before a congressional committee starts at 9:30 this morning. President Trump's former fixer and attorney testifies behind closed doors to the House Intelligence Committee. He has already appeared before the Senate Intel Committee. And yesterday Cohen testified in public for 7 1/2 hours to the House Oversight Committee. It was his first public testimony since pleading guilty to lying to Congress back in November 2017.
His answers included a host of revelations and clues, giving investigators leads to follow for months to come. Most explosive was his claim that Mr. Trump violated campaign finance laws after he took office, reimbursing Cohen for a $130,000 hush payment to Stormy Daniels while in office, a claim backed up with physical evidence, a personal check signed by the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: A copy of the check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account after he became president to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and to prevent damage to his campaign.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you believe that the president committed a crime while in office?
REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), HOUSE OVERSIGHT CHAIRMAN: Based on what -- looking at the text and listening to Mr. Cohen, it appears that he did.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Michael Cohen also implied President Trump has committed other crimes, crimes we apparently don't already know about. Crimes under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. Cohen told the panel he last spoke to Mr. Trump a couple of months after the FBI executed search warrants on his home, hotel room and office. But he said he couldn't say anymore about that interaction because it was the subject of a criminal investigation. Then there was this follow-up question.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D), ILLINOIS: Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?
COHEN: Yes, and again, those are part of the investigation that is currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: Cohen also claiming the president did know ahead of time about Roger Stone's efforts to communicate with WikiLeaks. He describes being in a room with the president in 2016 when Stone interrupted them with a phone call. He says the president put the call on speaker phone.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COHEN: It was a short conversation and he said, Mr. Trump, I just want to let you know that I just got off the phone with Julian Assange and in a couple of days there's going to be a massive dump of e-mails that is going to severely hurt the Clinton campaign.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ROMANS: That drew this response from WikiLeaks publisher, "Julian Assange has never had a telephone call with Roger Stone. WikiLeaks publicly teased its pending publications on Hillary Clinton and published over 30,000 of her e-mail on March 16th, 2016."
BRIGGS: Michael Cohen also offering up new details about that Trump Tower Moscow project. He told lawmakers the president made clear he wanted Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations for the project stretching well into the 2016 campaign, and he claims the president's children were regularly briefed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. STEPHEN LYNCH (R), MASSACHUSETTS: Who were the family members that you briefed on the Trump Tower Moscow project?
COHEN: Don Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump.
LYNCH: Do you recall -- there's a question on the number of briefings. Do you recall how many there might have been?
COHEN: I'm sorry, sir?
LYNCH: Do you recall how many of these briefings there might have been?
COHEN: Approximately 10.
LYNCH: OK.
COHEN: In total.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Cohen also claims his testimony to Congress about the Trump Tower project in 2017 was changed by White House lawyers at the last minute.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D), MARYLAND: Which specific lawyers reviewed and edited your statement to Congress on the Moscow Tower negotiations and did they make any changes to your statement?
COHEN: There were changes made, additions. Jay Sekulow for one.
RASKIN: Were there changes about the timing?
COHEN: There were several changes that were made including how we were going to handle that message.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRIGGS: Jay Sekulow denies the claim. He says, quote, "Today's testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false."
[04:20:07] ROMANS: All right. We're expecting a very important report on the American economy this morning, that's next.
BRIGGS: Plus Beto O'Rourke making a critical decision about his political future. We'll have that for you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: We will get a critical picture this morning of just how the economy ended last year. The government finally released its 4th quarter GDP, Gross Domestic Product, in about four hours and the picture looks increasingly gloomy. The Atlanta Fed forecast is just 1.8 percent for the fourth quarter. The New York Fed's 2.3 percent. A deceleration from the 4.2 percent or 3.4 percent growth in the previous two quarters.
[04:25:06] Now the government shutdown delayed this report so we're getting a look at this late. Just what happened at the end of the year. And until the holidays, the economy appeared strong, strong job creation, too. But then something started to happen. Large sectors of the economy including housing and manufacturing started to decline toward the end of last year. And most forecasts expect growth to slow down further toward the end of 2019 as the economy maxes out on available workers and the effects of last year's tax cuts and government spending wear off.
Remember the president has promised 4 percent plus growth quarter by quarter. So 1.8 percent. If it comes in that low would be a real disappointment.
BRIGGS: All right. We'll be watching that number.
Back here, former Texas Congressman Beto O'Rourke says he has made a decision after months of deliberations about his political future. A source telling CNN O'Rourke has ruled out a run for the Senate in 2020 which leaves open the possibility of launching a presidential bid. At an event in El Paso last night, O'Rourke was asked about that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BETO O'ROURKE, FORMER TEXAS CONGRESSMAN: I'm going to be making an announcement soon. I'm going to be making the same announcement to everyone at the same time. That's all I can say at this time.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Are you running for president?
O'ROURKE: That's all I'm going to say.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: When will you make that announcement?
O'ROURKE: Soon.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Why are you waiting?
O'ROURKE: Because I want to make the announcement to everyone at the same time. I want to do it the right way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: So is that a yes or a no, Dave?
(LAUGHTER)
BRIGGS: That's a --
ROMANS: Cliffhanger.
BRIGGS: Stay tuned.
ROMANS: Cliffhanger.
BRIGGS: O'Rourke's comment comes just ahead of his self-imposed deadline at the end of February to reveal what he will do next. Same goes for Joe Biden.
ROMANS: Yes.
BRIGGS: We await word from both.
ROMANS: All right. No deal at the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi. President Trump saying sometimes you have to walk. Breaking details next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
