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Cheney Confronts Pence on Foreign Policy; Gillibrand Defends Handling of Sexual Harassment Claim; New York Attorney General Opens Probe into Trump Projects; Former Stormy Daniels Attorney on Hush Payments; Storms Take Aim at Southern Plains. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired March 12, 2019 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00] BAKARI SELLERS, CNN COMMENTATOR: This all ties in together when you have a White House, a president, a vice president that lacks any moral clarity, that lacks any honesty. I think that that -- that that's pervasive even throughout our foreign policy. And so, yes, when -- when our national leaders, our worldwide leaders and partners and allies have no reason to trust President Donald Trump, they do not. And so when you're going -- when you're -- when you're going out, you're stepping out to war, you had these international conflicts, I think that the last place they look for security and safety is the United States of America. That is a sad day.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I just want to remind people before Scott speaks, he work in the Bush-Cheney White House. So, go ahead.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. One of my great regrets is that I never worked on the Dick Cheney for president campaign. He's one of my favorite Republican leaders of the last half century and I think the vice president has provided tremendous service to his party and to his country.

This is one of the greatest, I think, push and pulls in the modern Republican Party. After many, many years of sort of doing it the way that Vice President Cheney would prefer that we do it, and Donald Trump certainly ran on and has operated foreign policy in a much different way.

Now, he did, in his budget request this week, ask for a big increase in military spending. In fact, even more than the Pentagon had asked for. So on some of these issues, I'm sure Vice President Cheney would say, well, that's -- that's right on. But this whole idea of interventionism and our role in the world and our relationship with other countries, this idea maybe that the United States has been taken advantage of and some of our arrangements, this has been a sentiment that has sort of bubbled under the surface of the Republican Party for a long time. Trump sort of picked up on it and really ran on it. And there are a lot of people out there who would prefer to see a pullback.

Now, I happen to be more hawkish and stick with Cheney on this stuff, but this is one of the biggest departures from traditional Republican orthodoxy of the Trump years, right here what Cheney pointed out to Pence on that stage. BERMAN: The I'm with Cheney bumper sticker on Scott Jennings car.

JENNINGS: Yes, please.

BERMAN: It's a tell. It's a tell.

All right, Bakari Sellers, Scott Jennings, thank you for being with us. Appreciate it.

JENNINGS: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a champion of the Me Too movement, really running on it, is now finding herself defending her handling of a sexual harassment claim against a former aide. How will this affect her presidential ambitions?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:21] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, is fighting back against claims that she mishandle sexual harassment allegations against a former aide. Gillibrand's role as a champion of the Me Too movement is now under scrutiny.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is live in Washington with more.

So what happened, Arlette?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has really been a leading voice in the Me Too movement on Capitol Hill and it's become a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. But she is now pushing back against claims she mishandle sexual harassment allegations in her own office.

So, here's what happened. Last year a female staffer accused a senior Gillibrand aide, Abbas Malik, of sexual harassment. Forty-two minutes after learning of the allegations, the senator's office launched an investigation and concluded seven interviews and it determines that the specific behavior didn't meet the standard for sexual harassment. And aide says those interviews did filed Malik engaged in other unprofessional behavior, including making derogatory remarks about women's appearance. He continued to work in the office and was punished by having a promotion and salary increase taken away.

But the process wasn't enough for the accuser, who ultimately resigned, saying the investigation and post-investigation were handled poorly.

Here's how Gillibrand responded when she was asked if she regrets how the allegations were handled.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No. As we do in all cases, we take these kinds of allegations very seriously.

REPORTER: The accuser says that she felt belittled by your office and treated like an inconvenience. What's your message to her?

GILLIBRAND: I told this employee at the time that she was loved. That we loved her. I deeply valued her, which is why we took her allegations immediately, investigated them immediately and -- and did a professional and thorough investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, Gillibrand's office recently launched another investigation into the accused aide after it learned of never before reported and deeply troubling comments allegedly made by Malik. And last week he was fired from the Senate office.

Now, CNN's efforts to reach Malik have not been successful and he didn't respond to "Politico's" requests for comment.

As for Gillibrand, she's likely to continue facing questions about this incident.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Arlette Saenz. Thank you very much, Arlette.

The New York attorney general is now investigating several Trump Organization projects. We learned overnight of some new developments here. New filings that the New York AG wants in relations to investments that the president has made. What that AG wants from Deutsche Bank, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:43:03] BERMAN: New this morning, "The New York Times" is reporting that the New York attorney general has issued subpoenas to two banks for records related to Trump Organization projects, as well as Donald Trump's failed bid to buy the Buffalo Bills before he became president.

Joining us now, Jennifer Rodgers and Elie Honig. They're both former prosecutors and CNN legal analysts.

This is the New York attorney general. This isn't part of the Mueller investigation. It's not part of the Southern District investigation. This is a state investigation, and they want the financials.

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, they do. But here's why it's not all that exciting, right? Not only do we have SDNY looking into this, we already had the New York State Department of Financial Services interested in Deutsche Bank. So this all comes out of Michael Cohen's testimony. There's no reason that the attorney general can't look at this and open up a civil proceeding, which she's done, but I don't think we're going to learn a lot from this that we're not going to learn from other sources as well.

And the other thing is, I just have to say, I think prosecutors have to be careful to appear to be unfair. And the way that Tish James spoke about this issue about going after Trump during her campaign and afterwards gives the impression that she's targeting on one person. And prosecutors really have to be careful about that because it plays right into Trump's victim analysis, right, that everyone's going after him.

So, she and her shop can look into this. I don't think we'll learn all that much. And I think she ought to be careful about kind of targeting him in the way that she promised she would because it looks a little questionable.

CAMEROTA: Interesting. OK, so, just to remind people that Michael Cohen's testimony in front of Congress, he said that Donald Trump inflated his assets on his financial statements. So are you more excited about it than Jennifer or no?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: No, I share Jen's view. If this is going to come to fruition, it's going to be from the Southern District. Presumably they -- they have debriefed -- we know they've debriefed Michael Cohen extensively, well before his congressional testimony. So I would assume that the Southern District has had this and they're working this up for a while. If there's going to be a meaningful, criminal hit, it will come from the Southern District.

But the conduct as described is really textbook bank fraud. This is what people do. They inflate their assets so they can get a loan, or a bigger loan, than they would otherwise be entitled to. It's the kind of case I would have been given in my second or third year there that's not that complicated.

[06:45:07] So I think one of the big question though is, did the bank sustain any loss. If the loan was defaulted on or not repaid, that makes it a more serious case than if it was paid back anyway.

BERMAN: All right, for the first time we are hearing from a key witness in one of the crimes that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, and this is the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, which was a -- a campaign -- a felony campaign finance violation and the president was implicated in it. Keith Davidson was the lawyer for Stormy Daniels who helped facilitate this payment and he spoke with Chris Cuomo last night and said the way that he saw this was this was political, this was for the purpose of influencing the campaign. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEITH DAVIDSON, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR STORMY DANIELS: They knew about it in 2011, '12, '13, '14, '15, '16. They knew about it when he announced to be -- to be president in -- to his campaign in 2016. They knew about it when he became the Republican nominee. They did nothing to settle the case. They knew about it, you know, well into September.

And it wasn't until immediately after the "Access Hollywood" tape that the -- there was a rush and -- to settle this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So you have this person who was involved with it, along with AMI, by the way, which saying it was political, saying, this was for campaign purposes. You have the president tweeting in the last few days, no, no, no, it wasn't. But this witness says yes.

HONIG: Yes, so that's a key political question, was one of the primary reasons for these payments political to protect the president in connection with the campaign.

Look at the timing. I mean as Mr. Davidson said, these affairs had gone on years before and then all of a sudden the payments have to be made just weeks before.

And the other question is were these -- were Trump's checks that we've now seen to Cohen, were they reimbursement for these payments or were they retainers, right? And this was sort of -- been the subject of some debate.

But the retainer argument, to me, is absurd. It doesn't even get out of the gate. I mean there's no retainer agreement. The timing is right after the hush money payments were made. Rudy Giuliani, at one point, even said that Trump reimbursed Cohen for it. So that argument, to me, is going nowhere.

CAMEROTA: Your thoughts?

RODGERS: I agree. I agree. I mean you do have to realize that some of this depends on when Stormy Daniels came forward to say, I want some money, right? Like, yes, she wasn't -- it wasn't settled in 2011, '12 and so on, but maybe she wasn't asking for money at those times. So some of it is going to depend on that. But the point is, witnesses saying that in their discussions with Trump and his people the reason was clear that it was the election, that's going to be very key evidence.

BERMAN: All right, I want to ask you about this week, because it's a big week in Mueller world. Paul Manafort gets sentenced by a just, Amy Berman Jackson, no relation, tomorrow. That will be very interesting to see --

CAMEROTA: You're not even saying the Berman part anymore. Amy Jackson, we know is no relation.

BERMAN: Well, my name is Jackson.

CAMEROTA: No, it's not.

BERMAN: The Manafort sentencing. Roger Stone gets a hearing. And also Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, their status reports, and that might be the most telling because if in their status reports we find out that the prosecutors are done with them completely, it really does tell us this is very close to being over.

RODGERS: For Rick Gates, yes, not so much Michael Flynn, who they were ready to sentence before and he got derailed because he couldn't make himself show some contrition at sentencing.

But Rick Gates, yes, he's their key operator. If there are still things going on for, let's say the inauguration investigation commission, Rick Gates is a key player there. So if they push him off again, I think we can safely say that it's because he's not done with his cooperation. We may expect more charges.

CAMEROTA: Is Paul Manafort going to get a pardon?

HONIG: Yes, but after the 2020 election. It doesn't make sense before that, because he can't hurt Trump anymore, right? He can't cooperate anymore. He's totally burned. He's lied so many times. And pardoning carries a political cost. But I think on November 4, 2020, win or lose for Trump, that calculous changes.

BERMAN: Sarah Sanders language was remarkable on that yesterday. She said, we'll let you know when he makes a decision on that, roughly. That's leaving the door wide open.

HONIG: Yes, it is. It is. I think -- I think he's wrestling -- I think the president's wrestling with how to use this pardon power. It's very broad. It's a -- it's a heavy hammer to have. And I think he's probably tempted to use it. But I would guess his political advisors are telling him, be careful here because there's a real risk. People do not like pardons. I get viewer questions, people hate the idea of pardons because it's undoes convictions. It's unjust inherently.

BERMAN: She gets viewer questions too. You did a whole Instagram yesterday with viewer questions.

CAMEROTA: I do. And it's constantly on pardons. If I'm -- who I'm interested in pardoning.

BERMAN: And clothes (ph).

CAMEROTA: Yes, and my clothes.

BERMAN: I watched it.

CAMEROTA: You are a follower of my Instagram. This is a revelation.

BERMAN: Jennifer, Elie, than you very much. This is uncomfortable for all of us.

All right, severe storms taking aim at a large parson of the -- part of the United States. Chad Myers with the forecast, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:53:18] BERMAN: So, lost an hour of executive time? President Trump is all in for Daylight Saving Time all the time. Here are your "Late Night Laughs."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CORDEN, HOST, "THE LATE LATE SHOW WITH JAMES CORDEN": One person, I tell you, who is a big fan of Daylight Saving Time is President Trump because this morning he tweeted this, making Daylight Saving Time permanent is OK with me. Someone woke up this morning and realized he was one hour closer to playing golf.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JIMMY FALLON": Speaking of the president, last month Congress refused to give him $5.7 billion for his wall and now he's asking for $8.6. It's like asking a girl out and then after she says no proposing. You know.

STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": The president finally released his 2020 spending plan, which he's calling a budget for a better America, promises kept, taxpayers first. OK. First of all, pick a slogan. Just one. That titles got a little junk in the trunk. But he overdose everything. It's always too much. Originally, Trump wanted to call it a budget for a better America, finger lick'in good. We are farmers, bah, da, bah, bah, bah. I'm loving it

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's a budget everyone could vote for.

CAMEROTA: And there's a lot -- you know, that tells you how good the branding is because everybody knows exactly what he was saying there.

All right, more news ahead. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:58:45] CAMEROTA: All right, severe thunderstorms are taking aim at Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas over the next few days.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has our the forecast.

How's it looking, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: It looks stormy. More tornadoes on the ground, I think, coming this week as a storm comes over Mexico into Texas today and then eastward from there.

This weather's brought to you by Zantac, eat your way, treat your way.

Here it comes, out of the southwest, and Mother Nature got the Crayola box out today. From flood watches to blizzard warnings to tornados in the south, the west is covered up with warnings. Big-time storms out there. Lots of snow. Blizzard conditions beginning tonight, almost to Denver, Cheyenne, up into the Dakotas. Two feet of snow, but the wind's going to blow 60 and then storms along the cold front itself off here to the east, where the warmer air is.

Cold air all the way up into Minnesota. That's where the snow goes for tomorrow. This is a big event for a lot of people. The dark spots, that's 2 feet. You'll never know it with that wind blowing like that. The rain right there in Memphis, that's 3 inches. More flooding there. That means warm weather, though, across the East Coast. Cold in the west, warm in the east.

John.

BERMAN: All right, Chad Myers for us. Chad, thank you very much.

Thank you to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN "TALK" is next.

[07:00:00] For our U.S. viewers, a growing crisis for Boeing after the Ethiopia Airlines crash.

END