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NYT: Trump Demanded Kushner Get Top-Secret Clearance; Michael Cohen to Give More Testimony on Capitol Hill. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 01, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MAGGIE HABERMAN, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Jared Kushner's background check has been a problem. The president ordered John Kelly to give one.

[05:59:20] IVANKA TRUMP, DAUGHTER AND SENIOR ADVISOR OF DONALD TRUMP: The president had no involvement pertaining to my husband's clearance.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no way to defend "The New York Times" story. Those are things that should be very disturbing to people.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New information was developed that really could be game-changing. He's coming back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was new material that took me a little bit by surprise, enough so that one day of testimony was not enough.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He lied so much, and yet he said when it came to collusion, he said no collusion.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Friday.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: You say that with a lot of excitement.

BERMAN: I think the louder I say it, the more convincing I am; they'll actually believe it. It's Friday, March 1, 6 a.m. here in New York.

New this morning, blood is thicker than intelligence. A report that broke in the "New York Times" says the president personally his then- chief of staff John Kelly to give Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, a top-secret security clearance, and he did it over the objections of his own intelligence officials and despite the recommendations of White House lawyers.

General Kelly was said to be so disturbed by what was going on he wrote a contemporaneous memo, which is Washington speak for "I need cover." The report, confirmed by "The Washington Post," directly Contradicts

the president's public denials that he had any role in Kushner's security clearance.

So this morning, you can bet that Congress has new questions about what, according to these reports, are a new round of lies from the president to the American people.

CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, North Korea and President Trump are offering differing accounts of why talks broke down in Vietnam. So we'll bring you those new details about the collapsed nuclear talks and why President Trump left empty-handed.

Also, we're learning that Michael Cohen will be back on Capitol Hill next week to give more testimony as Cohen's bombshell allegations of alleged criminal activity by President Trump is giving Democrats a roadmap to open new lines of investigation. House Democrats are now seeking interviews with other Trump associates and even members of the president's family.

So we have it all covered for you. First, let's go to CNN's Joe Johns. He has all the background story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump back at the White House, under fire for once again defying the advice of his top intelligence officials.

"The New York Times" reports that the president demanded his son-in- law and top adviser, Jared Kushner, be granted a top-secret security clearance last year, despite objections of intel officials and even his White House lawyer.

Kushner's clearance had been revoked during a review of procedures and later restored in May. "The Times" reports that then-chief of staff John Kelly wrote an internal memo, saying he was "ordered" to grant Kushner top-secret clearance. Just a month ago, the president insisted that wasn't the case.

HABERMAN: Did you tell General Kelly or anyone else in the White House to overrule security officials? The career veterans?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No. I don't think I have the authority to do that. I'm not sure I do. But I wouldn't -- I wouldn't do it.

JOHNS: "The Washington Post" also reports the president's daughter, Ivanka, pressured her father to restore her husband's clearance. She, too, denied that a few weeks ago.

I. TRUMP: The president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance.

JOHNS: The White House says it does not comment on security clearances. Kushner's legal team telling CNN, "Mr. Kushner's security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone."

Two House committees are already investigating the White House security clearance process. House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings now threatening to subpoena documents regarding Kushner's clearance.

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER LAWYER FOR DONALD TRUMP: There's not much I can say, other than it was very productive.

JOHNS: Adding to the president's troubles, three days of explosive testimony from his long-time attorney, Michael Cohen.

COHEN: I will be back on March 6 to finish up. There's more to discuss.

JOHNS: Cohen alleging in public that the president committed crimes while in office.

COHEN: 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.

JOHNS: Cohen also alluding to other investigations by federal prosecutors in New York that could spell more legal trouble for Mr. Trump.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D), NEW YORK: Do you think we need to view his financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them?

COHEN: Yes, and you'd find it at the Trump Org.

JOHNS: Cohen even suggesting who Democrats should summon for testimony --

REP. ELIJAH CUMMINGS (D), CHAIRMAN, OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: If there were names that were mentioned, we'll figure out who we want to talk to and we'll bring them in.

JOHNS: -- including Mr. Trump's money man Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump family business; and members of the Trump family, including Ivanka and Don Jr.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: All right. Want to bring in Samantha Vinograd, former senior advisor to the national security advisor under President Obama; Phil Mudd, former FBI senior intelligence advisor; and John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst, who is intelligent. So there is that connection between all three of them.

I think there are three things, three major questions raised by this "New York Times" story. No. 1, why was Jared Kushner consistently denied the security clearance? No. 2, what was the president doing and why did he overrule all his intelligence officials and his lawyers inside the White House? And No. 3, the issue of once again, based on these reports, the president is once again lying to the American people about this.

So let's just start with the intelligence matter. What and why is someone denied a top-secret security clearance?

SAMANTHA VINOGRAD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Jared Kushner was, like, the No. 1 draft pick for foreign intelligence services from the day that he walked into the White House. Right?

He had access to President Trump, influence over policy, and the inexperience or the hubris to lead him to really make himself vulnerable to foreign manipulation.

We then found out that he had a series of manipulation points. He lied on his security clearance form. He has relatively suspicious financial dealings. And he may have been susceptible to undue influence by foreign intelligence services.

What that means is that investigators took a step back and said, "We cannot say that Jared Kushner can be trusted with classified information." He was originally denied a top-secret clearance which means that, again, investigators couldn't say Jared Kushner is solely representing the interests of the United States and can't be manipulated.

And this is a guy who's not only walking into the West Wing and seeing the most sensitive intelligence in the world every day, he's going around the Middle East; he's meeting with foreign diplomats. And we really don't know, John, if he is solely representing the interests of the United States or, again, if he's being manipulated, wittingly or unwittingly, by a foreign intelligence service.

CAMEROTA: Phil Mudd, as of last night, you still had a security clearance. I'm not sure about this morning. But what is your -- when you find out that President Trump overruled the assessment and the advice of the CIA, the FBI, the White House counsel, and the chief of staff, what do you think?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Well, I mean, a couple reactions. One, as a professional you look at it and ask a simple question, as Samantha is talking about: why?

Typically, if you have a security clearance that you can't get through, there's some fundamental questions. You don't fully declare who you knew in the past. You don't declare financial obligations. There are more basic things that I witnessed at the CIA. People involved, for example, in shoplifting or spousal abuse. I'm not suggesting that happened. But there's a whole variety of things that come up in background investigations.

At a personal level, I'll tell you, this is pretty frustrating. John Brennan, who I knew when I was at the CIA, had his security clearance revoked by the president, because of what he said. I was attacked by the president, and he threatened my security clearance in August because of what I said.

The reason Jared Kushner had questions about what his security clearance is not what he said, which is my First Amendment right. It's about what he did, evidently. Who did you invest in, who did you talk to and why didn't you declare it on your form?

So I want to know what the heck is the problem here and more significantly why was that so serious that the chief of staff, a four- star general, had to put his objections down on a paper? What are we missing here? What's going on?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And let's not just ignore the most obvious point. This is why nepotism is a bad idea. This is why we don't traditionally do this in this country, as opposed to banana republics.

The president's son-in-law getting pressure to have a security clearance over the advice of the professionals is a loud sign of why this is a bad idea from the giddy-up.

And don't forget: "The Washington Post" reported that four separate countries had been looking -- caught chattering about how he was susceptible --

VINOGRAD: Right.

AVLON: -- to manipulation because of the things Sam laid out: his inexperience, his business ties, bad debt.

And right now, you know, opposite the Michael Cohen hearings just this week, where was Jared Kushner? The princeling was visiting MBS, you know, the ruler of Saudi Arabia, the modernizer whose been accused -- the administration has bent over backwards to defend, despite his implication in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

So everything's bad about this; and the president lied, and the administration then lied in return. And as -- to quote George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband, in a tweet, "Trump lied? Knock me over with a feather."

The difference is that this has real national security implications. This is why lies matter.

VINOGRAD: And can I just add on that? Because I went to work every day for four years and sat down in the room and never thought to myself, "Wow, the guy sitting across the table could have something else on his mind other than U.S. national security."

The entire staff going to the White House this morning is looking at Jared Kushner and really wondering why he's there in the first place and who he's representing.

Our intelligence community is delivering intelligence to the White House this morning, the presidential daily briefing and other assessments, wondering what Jared Kushner is doing with it, because he shouldn't be trusted with it.

And finally, our intelligence partners are asked to share intelligence with the U.S. government every day. President Trump disclosed intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in the Oval Office; and now those intelligence partners are being asked to share intelligence that's going to end up in front of Jared Kushner?

I wonder how much people are going to keep sharing with the U.S. government and how comfortable everybody in the government is going to be, just having basic conversations in front of Kushner at this point.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Clearly, President Trump knows that something that he did -- something he didn't want to disclose, because he is lying about it. So he's not owning the fact that he overruled his White House counsel and chief of staff, and CIA and FBI.

So on January 31, less than a month ago, Maggie Haberman sat down with the president and asked him about this. Listen to this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HABERMAN: Did you tell John Kelly or anyone else in the White House to overrule security officials? The career veterans?

D. TRUMP: No, I don't think I have the authority do that. I'm not sure I do.

HABERMAN: You do have the authority to do it.

D. TRUMP: But I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it.

HABERMAN: OK. You never --

D. TRUMP: Jared's a good -- I was -- I was never involved with his security. I know -- just from reading, I know that there was issues back and forth about security for numerous people, actually. But I don't want to get involved in that stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: "I was never involved with his security." We now know that not to be true.

AVLON: Fundamentally false. But let's do a close reading of that. That is the art of the lie. Look how he lies on so many levels with such facility. "I'm not even sure if I've got that kind of power. But if I did, I definitely wouldn't use it. And I would never get involved with the security of my children."

And then tweeting also, using the fake news, "It's a false reporting," you know, doubling down on the lie.

It is stunning that a president, his instinct is to lie on that many levels, with frankly, that degree of shading and subtlety. It's frankly sick.

BERMAN: Yes, and it's to the American people. He is lying to the American people about this.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: According to General Kelly in this memo. And Phil Mudd, the contemporaneous memo. You know, John Kelly, the chief of staff there, was so concerned. He thought like his situation and position was so precarious he felt like he had to write it down, because perhaps projecting, he knew a moment would come, when the president would tell Maggie Haberman it never happened.

MUDD: John, you're too much of a lawyer. "Perhaps projecting"? He was projecting. That's a Comey moment.

I mean, what's happening here is people aren't just putting down on a piece of paper for a history book what they saw. They know this will be judged in the future.

Comey knew there would be questions about the president obstructing investigation. I guarantee you Kelly knew at some point some journalist or congressional committee could determine what happened with Kushner.

Now let's reverse this. Let's say Kelly never wrote anything down, and it became a he said, she said. The president said, "General Kelly never told me anything." Kelly, being someone who's been around the business for decades is realizing, "Unless I put it on a piece of paper, the president's going to lie about what I said."

Everybody here is projecting about when they get their time in the barrel. That's what's going on.

CAMEROTA: But Don McGahn did, too.

BERMAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Don McGahn also wrote a contemporaneous note about this, because he, too, was troubled that he was being -- knew about this and being asked about it after the advice of the CIA and the FBI.

It's not just John -- John Berman told me that he's writing contemporaneous notes about me every day since we've been working together, which I think is wise, actually, at this point, given all of this.

BERMAN: If there's one good thing.

CAMEROTA: But, I mean, Sam, isn't the answer that he had lied about his meeting with Sergey Kislyak, as well as the head of that Russia bank? So isn't that why they had concerns? I mean, don't we know the answer to this about Jared Kushner?

VINOGRAD: I think there are innumerable number of reasons why they had concerns about Jared Kushner, continuing by the way, through the present day.

Jared Kushner was WhatsApp-ing with Jamal Khashoggi [SIC] in the middle of an investigation. Excuse me. What's happening with MBS in the middle of an investigation into Jamal Khashoggi's death. He has made every counterintelligence misstep in the book. And yet

for some reason -- and this is the million-dollar question here -- President Trump still wanted him in the White House. President Trump is probably the one person who doesn't think he should be fired, aside from the foreign intelligence communities that get benefit from Jared Kushner being there, because they think they can manipulate him.

And we have to just wonder how much counterintelligence hygiene is Jared Kushner engaging in today. If he made all these mistakes before, and now he's running around the Middle East, right?

AVLON: Intelligence hygiene.

VINOGRAD: Meeting with people that may be manipulating him. Is he doing any better than he did when he lied on his security clearance forms or didn't disclose meetings? We don't know.

AVLON: This gets back to the fundamental problem: you can't fire your family. And this is why you get --

VINOGRAD: You shouldn't hire your family.

AVLON: Of course, but once you're in that barrel, you're in that barrel.

And the other counter -- the other major trend we see is the president's predilection to lying. "The Washington Post" estimating that through mid-February, over 8,700 lies by the president, up to 11 a day.

CAMEROTA: And he's accelerating, they say.

AVLON: That's right. So this is a -- this is a culture of lies, and tone comes from the top.

BERMAN: And I got to say, I mean, there are lies and there are lies here. I mean, the president's lying about security clearances. He's lying about what his intelligence community has told him, according to this report. I mean, these are big, and these matter.

All right Sam, Phil, John, thank you.

Lawmakers not done with Michael Cohen. He was behind closed doors yesterday. The House Intelligence Committee wants to hear even more. Michael Cohen's lawyer says what he had to tell them behind closed doors was a game changer. We'll discuss next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:19:13] CAMEROTA: President Trump's former longtime attorney, Michael Cohen, will return to Capitol Hill next week for more testimony. This is after three days of testimony this week. Yesterday it was behind closed doors for eight hours with the House Intelligence Committee. Here's what Cohen's lawyer says about why he needs to come back.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LANNY DAVIS, ATTORNEY FOR MICHAEL COHEN: Today new information was developed that really could be game-changing. And Chairman Schiff and everybody in the room who wasn't a partisan Republican praised him for his honesty and forthrightness; and the development of this new information is the reason that he's coming back next Wednesday.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Oh, boy. House Democrats are now eyeing more investigations, even considering summoning more witnesses, including the president's family.

So let's talk about all of this. We have Elie Honig and Jennifer Rodgers, both former federal prosecutors; and Jackie Kucinich, the Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast."

[06:20:09] Jennifer, more -- new information that has opened a new avenue? How can it be that we are this far into these investigations, and he drops some sort of new bomb that they think that he needs to be called back for?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, well, sadly, because we don't know what the prosecutors know. I mean, the prosecutors at the Southern District of New York and probably Mueller's team know all of this information that he's divulging to Congress now. We're hearing dribs and drabs of it, but they've known all along.

So any investigative avenues that are worth pursuing are already under pursuit by the prosecutors. It's just that we, the people, don't know about it.

CAMEROTA: And lawmakers don't know.

RODGERS: Right.

CAMEROTA: I mean, apparently, if you believe Lanny Davis, they didn't know.

RODGERS: I think that's right. I think that's right. They are not privy to what the Southern District and Mueller's team are doing kind of on a daily basis. And, you know, they have oversight responsibilities that go beyond what prosecutors are doing. So there is reason for them to delve into some things, like for example, what Trump and his business are doing with some of the countries where he's setting policy, perhaps based on things other than the best interests of our country.

So there definitely are different reasons that they need to dig into some of these things, and I think that's what we're seeing now.

BERMAN: And one of the key phrases you just threw out there was if you believe Lanny Davis. And I do want to say Davis is often out there as much as a political advocate as a -- than as a legal advocate.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: So we have to wait to see. We have to hear what the members of Congress say.

They did say yesterday -- I was listening to all of them come out on our shows last night, saying they heard new things. They did hear new things. And Jackie, now we know they want new hearings.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BERMAN: I mean, not just Cohen back next week, but Allen Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization. A couple committees are fighting over him. Felix Sater is coming in. And then there's the talk of should we or should we not have the president's family come in?

KUCINICH: Well, right, and they want to stretch this out. They -- they want to be talking about this as long as they possibly can and to have new information.

And one of the things I think it's important to stress, these lawmakers aren't just taking Michael Cohen's word for it. He is bringing documentation. That's one of the reasons he's coming back, because they're digging through more documentation from Michael Cohen.

So it's not just -- not just saying, "Oh, wow, that's great. Let's use that as gospel."

One of the things that's going to be tough for them, though, is how far can they go without getting themselves into an impeachment discussion? Because, as you pointed out during the break, they're talking a lot about crimes. At what point do you need to kind of pull the Band-Aid off?

Right now, what you're hearing leaders say is "We're waiting for the Mueller report. We're waiting for the Mueller report. We're waiting for the Mueller report." Well, once that report comes out, and once there's a fight over how much of it is actually made public, what then?

CAMEROTA: But I think that this is why it's complicated. Because if the Mueller report is focused on Russian collusion and doesn't connect the dots and can't connect the dots, but Michael Cohen has laid out all of these various crimes, from tax fraud to defrauding a charity, to bank fraud, these are crimes. So then what does Congress do about that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, well, I think up until now, it's been Robert Mueller. Right. For the last two years, the person leading the investigative charge has been Robert Mueller and only Robert Mueller. And I think we're in the process of a changing of the guard right now.

And I think moving forward it's going to be Congress, the House in particular, and the Southern District of New York. As we saw this week; I think it was a perfect preview. We thought Michael Cohen's testimony was going to be sort of the

capstone, this dramatic climax. But I think the twist was it ended up sort of feeling more like chapter one of the story, because so many new doors have now opened up. And that's where we'll see Congress and the Southern District going over the next few years.

BERMAN: You know, Chris Cuomo had Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, on last night, who has this notion of what the Southern District is doing. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), FORMER NEW JERSEY GOVERNOR: What they're doing, I'm confident, is building a case for two things. One, to go after those around the president who may have committed crimes. And, two, to build a case, if they have one -- I don't think they have one at the moment -- but if they were try -- they're trying to build one, against the president for when he leaves office.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Jennifer, trying to build a case to get the president once he leaves office. And Maggie Haberman last night was noting that there are a lot of people within Trump world who think that's the case.

RODGERS: Well, I agree on most of it. I disagree that they don't have a case yet. I mean, they have the campaign finance case. That is wrapped up with a bow. They could charge that tomorrow, if not for the DOJ guidance.

I also think that, you know, they are working to build a case. We may see some charges against other people in the Trump orbit, including maybe some of the kids, depending on the evidence. And, you know, they may not wait, in the sense that they may lobby DOJ to see if they're allowed to bring an indictment.

I think the answer is going to be no, but saying the Southern District is just sitting back and they're happy to wait to see what the outcome of the election is and whether he's elected again and when they can bring a case, I'm not sure that's right.

CAMEROTA: The name Allen Weisselberg has come up quite a few times this week. And he seems like the lynchpin in terms of having been at the Trump Organization since Fred Donald Trump, Donald Trump's father. He knows, I mean, people -- he knows where the bodies are buried. I mean, that's the expression that people keep using. He knows about every signed check.

[06:25:00] And so of course they're going to call him. But he has limited immunity. What does that mean?

HONIG: So he's an obvious person to call. Right? Michael Cohen invoked his name over and over again the other day. He's the financial gatekeeper.

So he has immunity, limited immunity. And that's when a prosecutor says, "I need your testimony. I can't have you invoking the Fifth, so we're not going to use your testimony on this limited subject to prosecute you later."

OK, so now if he's going to testify more broadly, and it seems clear that he is. He knows pretty much everything. I think one of the quotes was he knew every dime that ever left the Trump Org. He's going to need either broader immunity or he's going to need to be a cooperator. But the limited immunity that he has right now will not carry him through.

CAMEROTA: So without the broader immunity, he goes in and he pleads the Fifth?

HONIG: He'll take the Fifth. Yes, we can see the person sitting at the congressional table, "I take the Fifth." And the countermove is to get him blanket immunity for everything he says or to have him cooperate and plead guilty.

BERMAN: But Jennifer, quickly, the last point on this, you note the Southern District may not want him to get congressional immunity, because in their -- in their investigation.

RODGERS: That's right. I mean, we have to hope that there will be consultation there. It's not that they don't want him to have immunity necessarily, but they would certainly want to be in on those talks to make sure that, whatever Congress gives him is OK with them and their investigation.

BERMAN: That's been a problem in the past. It was in the '80s, and it was during the whole Iran-Contra investigation. Congress gave immunity before prosecutors, the independent counsel wanted to, and that created some tension there.

Politically speaking again, Jackie, I'm just so interested in listening to Nancy Pelosi push off impeachment. She keeps on pushing off this notion: "I don't want to talk about that. We're not there yet. There's got to be a different thing for that."

And you have other people sort of pushing the ball forward every day.

KUCINICH: And they're running out of runway. There's an election coming up. I mean, not coming up -- I mean, it feels like it's coming up tomorrow, but it's not. You have 2020 less than two years away. Impeachment does take time.

And the voters will actually be able to decide, at that point, whether or not they want to give President Trump a second term with all of this evidence out there.

So -- and not to mention, you have a set of Democrats, the less liberal Democrats who don't want to talk about any of this, who just want to talk about the agenda that they campaigned on, healthcare and whatnot, through the 2018 elections.

So she really is walking a fine line, trying to balance all of the needs of her caucus and not only that, the Democratic Party at large. CAMEROTA: You can understand it's a very tough one, because the

energy suck that would be impeachment that the country has already lived through and the damage that everybody says that it does to the country, yet nobody's above the law. And so obviously, Congress, if they think that crimes have been committed, needs to do something so they don't send the message that somebody's above the law.

HONIG: And in particular, in some ways, the president actually is a little bit above the law, right? We have this DOJ policy, which I agree, the Southern District may well push back on.

But that is the policy. It's been in place for in many years now. So if you can't indict the president, it can't be that you can't do anything. We can't be in this catch-22 of can't indict him, can't say anything negative about him, because we can't indict him. And so I think it will fall to Congress. Congress has to do its job.

And there's a political calculation that Jackie's more expert in than I am, but at what point does Congress just say, "Maybe this won't be politically popular for us as Democrats," but somebody has to demand accountability here.

KUCINICH: But then there's the political reality that you have a Republican-held Senate. So are you going to push the envelope, push that through, perhaps put some of your members in jeopardy, speaking just politically, only to have it run into a brick wall in the United States Senate?

BERMAN: For all the theater that we're seeing from Michael Cohen testifying, for all the people we will see in the next few weeks and months, is there anything they will say before Congress, or much they will say that prosecutors, whether it be for Robert Mueller's team or the Southern District and don't know already or on their own?

RODGERS: Well, certainly not from Michael Cohen. I think they know everything that Michael Cohen is saying this week and next week. But some of the witnesses that they haven't talked to yet.

If we do see, for example, Ivanka Trump show up in Congress, I don't think she shows up, you know, doesn't invoke the Fifth, tells us a lot of stuff. But if she did -- you know, they haven't spoken to her yet. There are people who have not spoken to prosecutors who, in theory, if they appeared, would give us new information.

CAMEROTA: That would be a remarkable moment, let's just say right here and now.

Thank you very much for all of the expertise, guys.

So this story now: Israeli Benjamin Netanyahu facing corruption charges. Netanyahu calls the investigation a political witch-hunt. That sounds familiar. We have a live report from Jerusalem next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END