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Manafort is Sentenced by a Virginia Judge to 47 Months; Interview with Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) on Anti-Semitism Resolution, Family Separations. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 08, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Harry Enten, have a great weekend.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You, too.

[07:00:04] BERMAN: Get some rest.

ENTEN: I'm going to try.

BERMAN: All right.

Thank you to our international viewers for watching. For you, CNN TALK is next. For our U.S. viewers, NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D), CONNECTICUT: This sentence failed to do justice to the very serious crimes that Manafort has committed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would not wish a special counsel investigation on my worst enemy. It is a terrible place to be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Harry Ellis has shown a bias since before the trial began. It's very clear that that bias has come through.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Judge Ellis made it harder for the president to pardon Paul Manafort.

REP. LOUIE GOHMERT (R), TEXAS: We came here to condemn anti-Semitism. but this resolution now condemns just about everything.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: It's not about her. It's about these forms of hatred.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nancy Pelosi brokered a fair deal.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a president who's never apologized for Charlottesville.

REP. TED DEUTCH (D), FLORIDA: Why can't we call it anti-Semitism and show that we've learned the lessons of history?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman. BERMAN: It is NEW DAY. Good morning and welcome to it, your NEW DAY.

Up first, President Trump's former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, has been sentenced to less than four years in prison for tax evasion and bank fraud. This is well below the sentencing guidelines, the federal sentencing guidelines of 19 to 24 years.

A jury in Virginia convicted Manafort of defrauding banks and the government for not paying taxes on millions of dollars of income he had earned from Ukrainian political consulting.

Now, Democratic lawmakers, a lot of legal analysts, are blasting this light sentence, calling it inadequate and an example of the disparities between street crimes and white-collar crimes.

CAMEROTA: Manafort spoke in court, but he did not express regret for the crimes he committed. His attorney and the judge both noted that this sentence was not connected to any collusion with Russia. Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, who is spearheading a probe into the president called yesterday's events a deliberate appeal for a pardon.

So what will President Trump say today about Manafort's sentence?

Let's bring in Laura Coates, former federal prosecutor. We have Susan Glasser, staff writer for "The New Yorker"; and Michael Smerconish, host of CNN's "SMERCONISH."

Good to see all of you this morning.

Laura, just explain what the debate is. I mean, four years in prison is nothing to sneeze at, and some people believe that the idea that prosecutors had asked for something like 14 years to 25 was overreach given, you know, how much other criminals -- as I've pointed out, rape, the standard sentence for rape in this country is 11 years. So your thoughts?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, there is a huge sentencing disparity among criminals who are considered white-collar and those who are considered street-level crimes.

There's a whole racial and socioeconomic dynamic to why there are those distinctions. And people are talking about this issue, because it points out, one, that yes, mandatory minimum sentences do remove the discretion from the judge to be able to say, "Look, this person should have some leniency. I should show compassion." Or this person, to the reverse, should have a much higher sentence.

Judges often don't like to have the mandatory minimums, because it takes away their actual prerogative. Judge Ellis is one of those judges who has been notorious in the last couple years saying, "I don't like the fact that I have zero discretion of where I want to move the needle."

On the other hand, white-collar criminals, as compared to street crime criminal are treated very differently. And most people think there should be kid gloves that are used for them, because they're nonviolent offenders. The whole era and the term "white-collar crime" denotes some form of respectability that should be given to these criminals as opposed to others.

And that sort of caste system has been to detriment of people of color in this country for a long time. Also to non-people of color, as well.

But the bigger issue here is why this particular judge decided to divert from the sentencing guidelines by 15 years, Alisyn, particularly given the fact that it was a jury that convicted Manafort of eight out of 18 crimes. They did not acquit on the remaining ten crimes and said that they hung.

And as part of a plea agreement, the prosecutors in this case said, "If you hold up your end of the bargain and continue to scratch our back, we won't try you on those remaining ten."

So now he gets the benefit of the bargain and now at sentencing, too, when a jury of his peers has said, "I don't care if it's not collusion or not. The crimes you were charged with were proven beyond a reasonable doubt." And now that has had their noses thumbed at them.

BERMAN: Michael, you look at this disparity in sentencing, and you see the same numbers, and you have a different opinion about that.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think he didn't get too little. I think others have gotten too much. He's about to turn 70. He just got four years. He faces up to ten next week. Look at the actuarial tables. It's doubtful that he ever gets out of prison.

And I would caution those who are incensed about the perceived leniency of Manafort's sentence, because the blowback to other perceived leniency in the past is what gave us mandatory minimums. And the next person to get sentenced probably won't look like Paul Manafort and might really be the one to have the book thrown at them.

[07:05:13] So to overreact to this, I think, would be a mistake.

CAMEROTA: Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted to that very effect. Susan, she said, "Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, commits bank and tax fraud and gets 47 months. A homeless man, Fate Winslow, helped sell $20 worth of pot and got life in prison. The words above the Supreme Court say, 'Equal Justice Under the Law.' When will we start acting like it?"

So obviously, this has prompted a conversation about these discrepancies that we see before street crime and white-collar crime. Where are you?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: You know, first of all, the examples are incredibly powerful of people who have been sent away essentially destroyed their entire lives for what we would consider to be relatively minor offenses. Whereas you would certainly argue, looking at the facts in the Paul

Manafort case that he has led a life -- not only a criminal life, in part that he's admitted to, in part that he's been convicted by a jury from, but you know, that goes to the heart of our system.

And I was struck in the accounts of yesterday of the lack of remorse, the complete lack of remorse on the part of this man who is not only, you know, helped to corrupt the American political system, but also other countries taking, essentially, the good name of the United States and really perverting democracy in places like Ukraine and places liking Angola around the world.

And I think that's just something that, again, it goes to the heart of why we have a legal system.

So to me, I was really struck by his lack of remorse. Whether they're still playing for a pardon from Trump or not, I don't know. But the prosecutors made a strong point of saying that, in his cooperation deal, before it fell apart, he never cooperated. He never provided them any useful information. And he lied to prosecutors as well as not being sorry for the crimes for which he was convicted.

BERMAN: The lack of remorse was notable, and you're right. There could be two different reasons for that. One, he's not sorry. And, two, because is he playing for a pardon.

And his lawyer, Kevin Downing, went out of his way to say there was no collusion here, something that the judge notably went out his way to say, as well.

Laura, do you think this is a public plea to President Trump, who has not yet commented this morning, by the way?

COATES: Yes. I do think it is. Precisely because -- well, first of all, I do believe that people have every right go to trial and to profess their innocence even after conviction. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't believe in the appellate process, as well. So I do believe he has the absolute right to do that.

However, I think his decision not to express remorse is because he has been praised by the president of the United States -- in direct contrast to somebody who has been called a rat and a snitch, like Michael Cohen -- as being stoic, as having an unbreakable spine that says he will not be -- be manhandled in this way to say, "Look, I have to actually cooperate and I have to lie."

So I think he was saying, "Look, I still remain strong. I'm still the person that even Rudy Giuliani has said has been treated very unfairly," and he's hoping for that.

Now, of course, the sentence of the judge does put Donald Trump in a particularly precarious position, because one could foresee a more likely pardon if it had been the quote, unquote, "excessive sentence" of the upwards of 25 years or less.

But now you have a four-year where he'll only serve 85 percent, meaning he'll probably get out in 2022 if it all goes well for him. Well, then, the president is in a situation to say, "Well, do I excuse a crime like this, eight criminal charges, felony offensives and stealing millions from the government and people of the United States for four years?" Maybe not.

CAMEROTA: Michael, the bigger issue is, if we look at the amount of people now close to President Trump in and around the campaign and around his organization, I mean, let's just pull up the graphic.

These are Trump associates charged in investigations. Cohen sentenced to three years. Papadopoulos sentenced to 14 days. Michael Flynn pleaded guilty. Roger Stone has been charged, and Manafort now 47 months.

You know, this is, if you play the "What would we have done if President Obama's campaign chairman was sentenced to 47 months," what would the answer be?

SMERCONISH: Should I say it for him? No collusion, Alisyn. No collusion, because you know that's what his response will be after he sees this.

Look, he clearly has surrounded himself with some very nefarious individuals who were up to a lot of wrongdoing. I think we're getting close now to the Watergate level in terms of how many people have been implicated, convicted, or otherwise pled guilty to charges related to this investigation.

The biggest piece still remains uncertain, and hopefully, soon we're going to see the conclusion of the Mueller report.

BERMAN: Again, I'm very interested to see how the president plays this both rhetorically and with his actions over the next few days and minutes.

We do have a new statement from Rudy Giuliani. I don't think we have a graph for this yet. Our Dana Bash got this from Giuliani. "The sentence was a lot less than the out-of-control angry Democrat prosecutors wanted. They should be ashamed of their horrendous treatment of Paul Manafort, who" -- it should be whom -- "they pressured relentlessly, because unlike Michael Cohen, he wouldn't lie for them."

So, Susan, first of all, I just want to point this out. Paul Manafort did lie.

CAMEROTA: That's why he's going to jail.

BERMAN: Well, this next case that will be sentenced, he lied to the grand jury, and he lied to federal prosecutors after he pleaded guilty. So Paul Manafort absolutely lied.

And I think it's fascinating that the president's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, his statement is comparing Manafort to Paul [SIC] Cohen the minute after this sentencing. GLASSER: Well, right. He also lied to the United States government

on his taxes. He lied to banks. He -- his whole career was based on lies and fraudulent acquisition of millions and millions of dollars at the expense, by the way, of fledgling democracies around the world, as well as our own democracy here in the United States.

To hear Rudy Giuliani, a former elected mayor of New York City -- you know, I grew up in New York City, the greatest city in the world -- this is shameful. I'm sorry, come on. This is just embarrassing, to talk about this way and a convicted criminal whose crimes go to the heart of our democracy.

I mean, it just -- it shows you the degradation of our politics that this is the statement of the lawyer of the president of the United States on this morning, really. It's just embarrassing.

CAMEROTA: Laura, I mean, he wasn't prosecuted for some of the other crimes. You know, I think that we've already talked about what happened in Angola. He was part of an arms deal that helped this murderous Angolan leader maim, you know, 15,000 of the poorest people there. So he's not prosecuted for that, but it is interesting that the judge decided to use the term "an otherwise blameless life." He didn't have to say that.

COATES: No, he didn't. He didn't have to point that at all; and he could have simply said, "Look, the jury has found that this person is blameless."

Here's a dirty little secret in the criminal justice system. Our prisons are not full of monsters exclusively. They're full of people who have actually committed mistakes and been caught by their mistakes. Their idea of them being soulless or in some way, in some shape or form never having standing in their communities is actually a complete fallacy. Everyone who's in prison today has been caught, in some shape or form, by doing what's usually an aberration of their own character.

So the judge pointing this out is actually quite odd.

But it also does speak to the way in which the criminal justice system and in sentencing in particular takes into account the entire person. It's the reason you allow people to write letters in support of that person, to make statements to show why this person need not have or should have compassion.

Because, remember, it's about deterrence, rehabilitation, and another part of that is punishment. So perhaps he was pointing it out for that reason.

BERMAN: Michael, you want to weigh in with the last word maybe on Rudy Giuliani's --

SMERCONISH: I do, yes. I absolutely do, yes.

BERMAN: Go ahead. SMERCONISH: It's such a shame that the Manafort sentence now becomes

a Rorschach test and that Rudy's comment, when he references angry Democrats, further politicizes this.

The partisanship used to end at the water's edge. The partisanship used to end when we were talking about criminal conduct, and yet everything today seems subject to this tribalism. And people will wake up today and weigh in on the Manafort sentence, based on whether they're an "R" or a "D," a red state or a blue state person, instead of just looking at the underlying criminal conduct.

BERMAN: And course, Manafort up again for sentencing next week. Judge Amy Berman Jackson, so relation. He could get ten more years in prison, so stay tuned there.

Laura Coates, Michael Smerconish, Susan Glasser, thank you very much.

Be sure to watch Michael's show tomorrow, 9 a.m. Eastern. Former Starbucks CEO and 2020 presidential candidate Howard Schultz will be Michael's guest. Michael has got some strong opinions about Howard Schultz.

CAMEROTA: All right. A Democratic congresswoman took on the head of homeland security over the family separations at the border. Was she satisfied with the answers? We talk to her next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:18:22] CAMEROTA: The House overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and other bigotry following controversial comments made by freshman Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar that some found anti-Semitic. But some Democrats felt this resolution did not go far enough.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ELIOT ENGEL (D-NY), CHAIRMAN, FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: The words spoken by our colleaguing from Minnesota last week touched a very real, very raw place for me.

DEUTCH: Why are we unable to singularly condemn anti-Semitism? Why can't we call it anti-Semitism and show that we've learned the lessons of history?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin.

Thanks so much for being here this morning, Congresswoman. What did you think about that resolution yesterday? Did the rebuke go far enough?

REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D), MICHIGAN: Yes. I mean, I think the resolution was good. It was talking about being against discrimination generally. I think that's a positive thing. I think that any time anyone raises the issue of dual loyalty, it's going to raise a lot of eyebrows and a lot of concerns. It does for me. But I think the resolution yesterday was at least a good first step.

CAMEROTA: Well, what about what Congressman Deutch said there, which is why was it so hard to singularly condemn what actually sparked all of this? Singularly condemn anti-Semitism and perhaps even name Congresswoman Omar?

SLOTKIN: Sure. I mean, I think anyone is able to condemn it at any time. I think what happens when you brought it into the caucus is people, you know, pointed out that there were issues of discrimination going on across the country even just last week, and so people wanted to do something more general. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it doesn't preclude other people from unilaterally condemning anti-Semitism, as do we all.

CAMEROTA: Do you feel that the -- because of the way it was handled -- it was described as messy -- do you feel that it gave Republicans ammunition?

[07:20:04] SLOTKIN: I think they -- you know, this is -- they're trying to split us and make this a partisan issue. I'm not that worried about it. They've been trying to do this now for a while, so it just kind of adds to the pile of things where they're trying to split us.

CAMEROTA: All right. I want to ask you about the exchange that you had with Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen about the family separation policy at the border. So let me just play how you challenged her and what her response was. Listen to this.

SLOTKIN: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SLOTKIN: When you saw those pictures of babies in cages, what did you do? What did you do, to just scream bloody murder up the chain to the president to say, "I cannot represent an agency that is forcing its Border Patrol to do is this"? What did you do?

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, HHS SECRETARY: I went to the border. I spoke to the men and women there. I looked at the facilities myself. I talked to HHS to understand and visited their facilities, as well, to understand the care that they provide to the children once they're in their custody.

And then I spent a tremendous amount of time working with the northern triangle in Mexico to stop the phenomena closer to the source, to help stabilize those areas. So that the children and families are not traveling here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: What did you think her response?

SLOTKIN: So I thought it sort of avoided the subject, right? I mean, she's the secretary of homeland security. She has an enormous voice on this issue. So she talked about everything that she saw but not what she did and

her actions.

And I've been in national security my entire life. I'm a former CIA officer and Pentagon official. I'm a deep believer in border security, but we have to be a nation of moral -- of morals and, like, a moral core.

And to me when her -- she sort of just avoided the subject of her specific actions, to say something about what we were doing as a country, that, to me, just -- just missed the mark completely.

CAMEROTA: You remember that in June she tweeted this: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period." Did that come up yesterday? That was not true.

SLOTKIN: It did come up, but of course, there's been some -- some documents that leaked. A number of my colleagues asked her about that. We have evidence now that it was specifically to deter people from coming up to the border. We asked her about that. And she, again, sort of deflected and said, you know, "Our policy is to increase prosecutions so that families don't come up to the border." And so she just -- just avoided it completely.

CAMEROTA: I mean, Jeff Sessions admitted as much when he was attorney general. He said it was a deterrent. So it's -- I just don't know how you in Congress necessarily trust what she says after such an unequivocal false statement.

SLOTKIN: Yes, I think -- I think it was a rather difficult hearing for her. It was the first time that she's come up here, I think, in 11 months, and I can't imagine it was easy for her. And we're all big believers in border security, but the -- on the issue of family separation, we just have to be a nation of morals.

CAMEROTA: I want to ask you what you have been spearheading, what you'll be talking about today in Congress, and that is HR-1. For the People Act it's called. It promotes automatic voter registration, Internet registration, early voting. It prohibits state from restricting mail-in ballots. It makes election day a federal holiday. It requires presidential candidates to release 10 years of their tax returns.

And you want to add an amendment to it. What is important to you here?

SLOTKIN: Sure. So again, as a national security professional, one of the things that really, really boggled my mind was how it is still legal for foreign governments, foreign people, foreign entities to buy ads on TV or in social media to affect our elections. It's a loophole that exists right now.

We obviously -- I'm from Michigan, so we saw a disproportionate number of these social media ads targeting us, targeting our population. So I want to close that loophole. That's my amendment, so that no foreign entity can buy an ad for or against a candidate in our democracy.

CAMEROTA: I'm just not sure that many people know that. People think that foreign dollars into a campaign is illegal. And you are screaming, you're trying to, say that, in fact, it was -- the 2016 election was rife with that sort of thing.

Here's what Mitch McConnell -- Mitch McConnell doesn't like this idea. He is objecting to your legislation. He says, "HR-1 is a blatant power grab to give Washington bureaucrats control over what American citizens can say about politics, how we stay and how we cast our ballots."

Do you understand his reasoning?

SLOTKIN: Listen, HR-1 is a large bill, and I'm not surprised that this is something he doesn't intend to take up. I presented my amendment yesterday on the floor of the House; and my Republican colleagues stood up and agreed with it and said, "I don't support HR-1 generally, but I support your amendment."

So my hope -- I'm a pragmatist. Right? My hope is we'll pass this bill through the House. If Mitch McConnell doesn't take it up, then we'll start breaking off pieces of it so that things like my amendment can actually get bipartisan support and move forward and become law.

[07:25:00] I just don't think it's a partisan issue to say that Russians or Chinese or non-state actors abroad can buy ads in our electoral system.

CAMEROTA: Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, thank you very much for explaining all of this to us on NEW DAY.

BERMAN: That was a great discussion.

We have something very special, in fact, something that has never happened before. They were on opposing sides of one of the biggest political scandals in history. Right now, for the first time, former Clinton White House press secretary Joe Lockhart meets former independent counsel, Ken Starr. This was the first time they have ever been face-to-face.

CAMEROTA: I think it went well.

BERMAN: So far so good. I don't know what's going to happen after the break. You better come back to see what happens, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right. Moments ago, there was --

CAMEROTA: History.

BERMAN: -- a meeting that made history.

CAMEROTA: Look at how comfortable Joe looks. BERMAN: On the left is Joe Lockhart, former White House press

secretary under President Bill Clinton. On the right, former independent counsel Kenneth Starr, the men meeting for the very first time.

And they join us now on live television to talk about, oh, what happened 20 years ago, oh, what's happening today. But first, let me just start with that moment, Joe.