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White House Expects to See Mueller Report Before Congress; George Conway Questions Trump's Mental State; Boeing CEO Breaks His Silence after Two Plane Crashes. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 19, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's something unseemly. The very person who might be the subject of derogatory information is in the position to decide what becomes public.

[05:59:20] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This could be a flash point. It sets up a political battle over this hotly-anticipated document.

BILL BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I will commit to providing as much information as I can consistent with the regulations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He spends his weekend obsessing over great men because he knows that he will never be a great man.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: George Conway raises a valid point. This is a very troubled man.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO DONALD TRUMP: No, I don't share those concerns.

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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 Tuesday, March 19, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill back with me for a second go round today.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: I couldn't say no to this. Come on.

BERMAN: Oh, yes.

HILL: We've got a big day.

BERMAN: Right. First on CNN, the White House wants to get the Mueller report before you do. More importantly, the White House wants it before Congress and, perhaps most importantly, the White House wants to filter the report. Maybe keep parts away from Congress and the public forever.

Overnight, CNN learned that White House lawyers expect to have an opportunity to review the version of the Mueller report that Attorney General Bill Barr submits to Congress. They want to review it before it reaches lawmakers. They want a chance to claim executive privilege on information gleaned from interviews and documents provided by White House officials.

This could set up a potential political battle, not to mention a legal battle with the Supreme Court, including two justices nominated by President Trump, deciding the ultimate ultimate rate of the report.

So something the public will see today: a redacted version of the search warrants that led the FBI to raid last year Michael Cohen's home, apartment and office.

HILL: Meantime, while the president's rapid-fire tweeting may have slowed over the past 24 hours, the questions about the dozens of angry posts from the weekend certainly have not.

Bottom line, according to new reporting in "The New York Times," no one in the White House really knows what set the president off, although George Conway, husband, of course, to one of the president's top advisors, Kellyanne Conway, has an idea, calling the president's mental state into question. Kellyanne Conway disagrees with her husband on that point.

A new CNN poll out finds the president's approval numbers are rising. 42 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing; 51 percent disapprove. That is the lowest share to do so since he took office.

Let's begin with CNN's Jessica Schneider, live in Washington with all of the investigations.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Erica.

As we wait and watch for the Mueller report, which could be submitted to Attorney General William Barr any day now, we have learned that the White House expects to review whatever version of the report Barr plans to submit to Congress before it even reaches lawmakers and the public.

And that's, of course, because attorneys want the White House to have that opportunity to claim executive privilege over any of the information that's been drawn from the documents and the interviews with White House officials over the past two years. That's all according to sources.

Now, no doubt this will spark a political battle between Democrats in Congress and the White House over what will ultimately be released. And while the president is, of course, within his legal authority to exert that executive privilege to shield those communications with officials, Democrats will likely allege that the president is just trying to shield information from the public into that investigation that, of course, has consumed the first two years of his presidency.

But one source close to the White House putting it this way, saying there has always been this tension between what looks best politically and what best represents the interests of the institution but overall, preserving that executive privilege, it does offer Trump political optics.

Of course, we expect that battle to wage over the eventual release of the Mueller report.

But later today, we are expecting that we will get a glimpse of the search warrants that led to the FBI raid of Michael Cohen's home, his office, his hotel room, all last April.

A federal judge, he has ordered the release of the search warrants from this case, and that was actually granting a request from CNN and other media outlets. Now, we do expect to get a look at these search warrants, but we also expect a lot of redactions, since this investigation is still going.

But here's what Michael Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis, previewed for us. He said that the release of the search warrant "only furthers Cohen's interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump Organization to law enforcement and Congress."

So we're awaiting those redacted search warrants later today. And of course, Erica, Cohen is set to head to prison for three years. That will be starting in May -- Erica.

HILL: Jess, appreciate it. Thank you.

Joining us now, Jennifer Rodgers, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. As we look at all of this, I couldn't help but remember some -- some words from Rudy Giuliani, where he said, "As a matter of fairness, they should show it to you, so we can correct it if they're wrong. They're not God, after all. They could be wrong."

Talking there in January in an energy with "The Hill," about wanting to see the Mueller report. Of course, the interesting part here is when we talk about exerting executive privilege. Rudy Giuliani should not have any role in that. This is about the White House counsel.

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Exactly right. Rudy Giuliani should not be talking about this. He should not have anything to do with this. I'm personally done listening to Rudy Giuliani about anything.

But the good thing is the White House counsel's office is full of very good lawyers. And the hope is that they, in good faith, will exert the privilege in a very limited fashion. And I hope that they will. And they'll do that by negotiating with the attorney general's office and seeing where they really, really need to protect the institution by asserting that and where they don't need to do that. So my hope is that they can work those things out between those two entities and then release as much as is possible.

HILL: And this is about specific elements in the report, obviously. I mean, just to clear this up, it's not about the report itself. It's certain information and certain documents that they would want to keep out of public view? RODGERS: That's right. It has to do with the advice that the

president gets from his -- his closest circle of advisors. They want to keep that confidential so that the president isn't afraid to ask for advice, as we want all presidents to be willing to do.

HILL: The other thing that Jessica just touched on, of course, is that we'll be getting some of the details when it comes to the warrants that were issued for these raids for Michael Cohen. What are you most interested in seeing there in that document?

RODGERS: Well, the problem is, Erica, that the things I'm most interested in seeing are the things I think are going to be redacted, which is the things that will give us a hint as to where they're heading with this investigation and who they might be preparing to charge.

So they're going to redact out personal information but also things that identify the subjects of their ongoing investigation. So, you know, my hope is you can kind of read between the lines. Because I do think we will see some of the color that will fill in, what evidence they had that led them to execute those search warrants in the first place. So we may get some clues. Unfortunately, what we won't get is a list of who they plan to charge next.

HILL: No, but we'll try to find as much as we can in that. We know that. Jennifer, thank you.

John.

BERMAN: All right. New this morning, the Trump campaign is hitting back against questions over the president's mental state. That was really interesting, is that these questions are coming from George Conway, the husband of one of the president's closest advisors, Kellyanne Conway.

CNN's Brian Todd -- we're thrilled to have you, Brian -- live in Washington with the latest on this. Go ahead.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right, John. This is part of the continuing fall-out from the series of angry tweets from the president released over the weekend, when Mr. Trump lashed out at several people including the late senator, John McCain.

Now, in the midst of all of that, George Conway continued his Twitter barrage against President Trump, against the president's mental health state, Conway now claiming that it has reached a level of urgency.

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TODD (voice-over): President Trump's reelection campaign manager, Brad Parscale, going after the husband of one of Mr. Trump's top advisors, Kellyanne Conway, after Conway's husband questioned the president's mental health following a barrage of angry tweets over the weekend. George Conway writing, quote, "All Americans should be thinking seriously now about Trump's mental condition and psychological state," following an earlier tweet that insisted "His condition is getting worse."

Parscale accusing George Conway of being jealous of his wife's success, a message echoing the president from last year.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You mean Mr. Kellyanne Conway?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He wrote that you were unconstitutionally appointing. Is he wrong?

TRUMP: He's just trying to get publicity for himself.

TODD: Kellyanne Conway distancing herself from her husband's comments.

CONWAY: No, I don't share those concerns. And I was getting -- I have four kids, and I was getting out of the house this morning before I got here. So I didn't talk to the president about substance, so I may not be up to speed on all of them.

TODD: "The New York Times" reports that it remains unclear what provoked the president's Twitter tirade, quote, "and even advisors were searching for the normal cues that set him off."

Among the president's main targets, late Senator John McCain, Mr. Trump attacking McCain for his alleged involvement with the controversial dossier that claims to link the Trump campaign with Russian interference in the 2016 election. The president also falsely claiming McCain was last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy.

MEGHAN MCCAIN, CO-HOST, ABC'S "THE VIEW": My father was his kryptonite in life. He's his kryptonite in death.

TODD: McCain's daughter Meghan criticizing the president for his remarks.

MCCAIN: I just thought your life is spent on your weekends not with your family, not with your friends, but obsessing, obsessing over great men you could never live up to. That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now.

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TODD: Now, we reached out to the White House and to George Conway to see if they would comment further on Conway's tweets about the president's mental health. None of them would offer further comment on that.

Now, will we see anything today, which might fuel this controversy? President Trump scheduled to meet with new Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro. He's been dubbed by some the Trump of the tropics. He stirred controversy in the past for making misogynistic, homophobic and racist comments, but Mr. Bolsonaro has garnered the praise of the Trump administration -- John.

BERMAN: All right, Brian, and it will be a chance for the president to face questions from reporters.

TODD: Right.

BERMAN: Most importantly this afternoon. Brian, great to have you on NEW DAY. Really appreciate it.

Joining us now, John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst.

John, I think the big question we've all been asking about Kellyanne Conway and George Conway, is when does this move from a couple's therapy issue to an issue of national security and national importance?

And my wife was talking to me about this last night, and she was saying, well, should we assume that George Conway knows more about the president's mental state, that George Conway has more of an insight into the workings of the White House, because his wife is a senior advisor, than the rest of us?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The short answer is yes. And you can apply a standard in our own lives. Do you have more insight into the inner workings of your spouse's workplace than the average person on the street? Probably yes.

But of course, there's something called the Goldwater Rule, which has been a standard of American politics for a long time, since 1964, that basically says, you know, diagnosing people from a distance when they're running for office or president of the United States is not something we should do.

But I think Conway's accusations, and he was posting descriptions of narcissistic personality disorder yesterday and other things, carry a little bit more weight because of his wife's proximity over a long period of time with the president.

He is trying to be sort of a Paul Revere. So on the one hand, it does look like a he said-she said, you know, elevator pitch for a new reality TV show once they leave the office.

On the other hand, there's something very serious about his accusations, because he seems deadly serious.

BERMAN: And the change last night was hearing from the Trump campaign, you know, Brad Parscale leading that campaign, and also hearing from Kellyanne Conway herself, uncomfortably in the driveway of the White House.

AVLON: Yes. Yes, I mean, clearly, you know, it's her job to say the party line. It is clearly not his job, and it's some interpersonal risk to be as outspoken as he has been.

BERMAN: All right. We are going to hear from President Trump later today. He will face questions from reporters when he's standing side by side with South American strongman Jairo Bolsonaro. Presumably, he will be forced to answer more questions about whether or not he believes white supremacy is a threat around the world. AVLON: That's a reasonable explanation. He was not full-throated in

his denunciation. His administration has been reluctant, ironically, to call that out in the same way, the same standard that, you know, the president used against President Obama and Hillary Clinton: "Why won't you say the phrase 'radical Islamist terrorism'?"

Will he say the phrase "white supremacist terrorism"? It's not that, you know, he's in any way nodding at this, but the president and the administration seems reluctant to call it what it is, especially against a rising tide of incidents.

BERMAN: Stick around, John. We're going to talk to you more in just a bit -- Erica.

HILL: Boeing's CEO breaking his silence after two deadly plane crashes, ensuring a commitment to safety since the company's 737 Max jets were grounded worldwide.

CNN's Tom Foreman is live in Washington with more this morning. Tom, good morning.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Erica.

Dennis Mullenberg is an aerospace engineer, and since he took over control of the company back in 2015, he's pushed a very aggressive plan to move forward. He's been very successful, and now he's trying to stay out in front of what's been happening most recently. Listen to part of his statement.

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DENNIS MULLENBERG, CEO, BOEING: As the facts from the accident become available and we understand the necessary next steps, we're taking action to fully reassure airlines and their passengers of the safety of the 737 Max. Soon, we'll release a software update for the 737 Max that will address concerns discovered in the aftermath of the Lion Air Flight 610 accident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: The software update, as we understand it, would address both the question of this rear stabilizer on the plane, this rear elevator, as they call it, and its ability to act automatically to bring the nose of the plane down.

It's believed in the Air Lion accident off Indonesia last fall and maybe in the Ethiopian accident, that this is the thing that possibly drove the plane right into the ground. So this would be a software update that would limit the ability of that thing to do, for this tail mechanism to drive the plane down that way, and possibly to give more warning to the pilots if the automatic system is in play, Erica.

HILL: Tom, "The Chicago Tribune" also reporting Boeing's CEO took home $30 million last year. This is also, of course, a major test in this crisis for his leadership, I would imagine. FOREMAN: Absolutely. And he's been with Boeing for a long time. He

started there as an intern. He worked a lot on the defense side of the company.

But yes, the entire investment world knowing that, at a time like this, it's a difficult thing to look at, looking to see what he will do with leadership.

Because remember, Erica, if Boeing is found to have known about a problem in Lion Air and not fixed it before Ethiopian, and if they turn out to be the same mechanism for crashing here, then the company is in tremendous danger, because there are not only lawsuits from, of course, the passengers and families who lost people close to them, but also from airlines around the world that might say, "You sold us a jet that was defective," from people who are connected to those airlines.

There are a lot of potential problems out there. That's why he has to be out front right now and prove that Boeing was acting in good faith, even if things did not work out well, and even if we have suffered this tragic loss -- Erica.

HILL: Tom Foreman, always good to see you, my friend. Thank you.

FOREMAN: Good seeing you.

BERMAN: All right. So just how much will the White House try to scrub the Mueller report before Congress gets to see it? And what are Democrats going to do to try to stop them? That's next.

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[06:18:25] HILL: CNN learning White House lawyers expect to get their -- the version, rather, of the Mueller report that Attorney General William Barr will submit to Congress before lawmakers see it. So is the Mueller report leading to President Trump's outbursts on Twitter, perhaps?

John Avlon is back with us. Also joining us, two CNN political analysts: Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News; and Rachael Bade, congressional reporter for "The Washington Post."

As we look at this, yes, all things could be interconnected, as we know. And as we're learning about these preparations being made for the White House to perhaps invoke executive privilege here, you pointed out in the break, John, we've known this was going to happen from the first time.

BERMAN: Yes.

HILL: They were transparent from the beginning, John Avlon, about "We'll make these White House officials available for you. But just so you know, we may circle back with executive privilege in the end."

AVLON: That was what Cobb and Dowd, Trump's initial lawyers, sort of set out as the insurance policy when people like White House counsel Don McGahn went and go spoke to the Mueller -- you know, counsel with basically open arms and not a lot of coordination with the president's lawyers.

Look, I think this is a question of whether the president and the White House believe they can contain whatever comes up in the report as maybe the president has been told that he can do, versus the political pressure and the reality of this kind of information getting out.

This is going to be a major test. The House of Representatives voted 420 to 0 to make the information public. It was then blocked by Senator Graham in the Senate, non-binding, but clearly, Republicans felt it was important, politically, to do.

This is going to be a major political and legal showdown. Because it's clearly in the president's interest to get as little information out as possible and, I would argue, it's in the American people's interest to get as much out as much information as possible.

[06:20:07] BERMAN: And now we know there will be two filters. There's going to be Bill Barr, the attorney general, who will get the report and decide what he gives to Congress. That's filter No. 1.

Filter 2, Rachael, is the White House wants to come in between Barr and Congress and say, "This is executive privilege. This is executive privilege. This is executive privilege. And this is executive privilege." So what Congress gets to see, not to mention the American public, is a doubly watered-down version, perhaps. I can't imagine Democrats where you work on Capitol Hill are going to be thrilled with this.

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. It also ups the likelihood that this is likely to end up in the courts. I mean, Democrats were already telling the attorney general, William Barr, that, you know, "If you don't release this report" -- Barr had said, "I'm only going to put stuff out there if we find evidence of criminal wrongdoing" and that it would be unjust for him to put this out there if they didn't find any criminal wrongdoing, because it would basically be hindering somebody who they couldn't prove committed a crime.

But remember, Democrats on the Hill, they have a different job. They're not looking at legality. They're looking at the politics of this. And so they had told Barr we need this information because we, as Congress, have to hold the president accountable if he did something ethically untoward of any kind, even if it wasn't legally wrong. That was challenge No. 1.

Now, you have the White House coming in saying that they could hold back some of this information because of executive privilege, which again, is not unusual when it comes to oversight by the legislative branch of the executive branch, but again, it's just the stakes are so high here. And Congress overwhelmingly voting to make that report public, it just sort of increases the desire to see that. And this is going to end up in the courts, for sure.

HILL: Margaret, it's also important to remember what would actually fall under executive privilege. We don't know everything they have, obviously, but things involving the campaign, campaign staffers, for example, can't claim executive privilege on that, Margaret.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think you're right. It will be very interesting to see if and what -- well, let's say what the White House decides to do a privilege claim on.

And one thing that I think we'll all be looking at for -- is whether this sets the president and his, you know, political team inside the White House at odds with Bill Barr in his new role as attorney general. Barr, of course, has a lengthy legal career. I think we have a general understanding of kind of his instincts and boundaries around issues like this.

So whether he and the president end up on the same page and then what Barr will do about it, are interesting to watch.

But I think this gets ultimately, on some level, to kind of a broader or political or cultural phenomenon, which is that even though there is some public fatigue about the Mueller investigation, there's also a tremendous amount of public interest about what's it going to find, and to the extent that less of that may come out, there are a lot of Americans who just have -- for two years have been like, "OK, what's going to happen?"

And some -- you know, the idea that people may not be able to find out has frustrated a lot of Americans.

BERMAN: You were scribbling furiously.

AVLON: Yes. I think there are two things at work here. One, we're seeing the implication of the independent counsel statute sunsetting and the special counsel being in place. Perhaps the people didn't anticipate this kind of an adversarial relationship between the president and a special counsel or Congress. That's one thing.

The second thing is, remember, Justice Department guidelines say the president can't be indicted. Does that create kind of a shield for the president against the political, not legal standard of impeachment? Which is what members of Congress will argue.

They'll say, look, legal standing not aside, impeachment, high crimes and misdemeanors, that's our judgment. We need to see that information. So these are the -- this is as high-stakes as it gets in a democracy.

BERMAN: And I will say this could go all the way to the Supreme Court. We know the Supreme Court under Nixon unanimously decided to release the Nixon tapes. We also know that Brett Kavanaugh, fresh on the Supreme Court, he might have a different view of all of this. He might. We don't know. But it's interesting the president has two nominees on the court who will get to decide the fate of all this.

I want to read a quote from our friend Maggie Haberman and others at "The New York Times," because we were all wondering what the president was doing over the weekend or what, perhaps, instigated the tweet storm.

Maggie and others write, "There was no golf. There were no meetings. There were no activities other than a rare visit to church. So President Trump did what he could do. He tweeted."

So, you know, it's to counter inactivity? It's because he was bored, Rachael?

BADE: Seems to be the working theory right now, right? I mean, there was a clear rebuke of the president in the Senate the day before that. The Senate, 12 Senate Republicans voted against his emergency declaration. So if he was fuming about that, you couldn't tell, because he didn't talk about it very much. He talked about everything else, from "SNL" to John McCain. So that didn't seem to be what set him off.

And the report is really interesting, because the reporters note that people close to the president said he was actually in a pretty good mood. And so nobody really knew what set him off.

And you have to wonder, if he's in a good mood and he's sort of just bored and hunkered down and just sort of tweeting sporadically, what's going to happen when the Mueller report comes out, and when House Democrats actually get into their investigations, and he's really angry, and he's obsessing over those things? You can imagine the number -- I think it was 50 retweets this weekend? Maybe it goes up to 200. I don't know.

[06:25:16] But it's just -- it's a really peculiar weekend for the president.

TALEV: But I do think with the exception of the kind of fall-out over the New Zealand tragedy, over the last few days, we spent a lot of time talking about other people and not President Trump. We spent time talking about the Democratic candidates getting out there for the 2020 race, Beto's fund-raising prowess, all this stuff.

President Trump -- two things are true of President Trump. He likes to be able to control the narrative, and he likes it when people are talking about him. And I think part of the lens through which we can look at the Twitter storm is the idea that he wanted people talking about him, and the things that he was talking about; and now we are. So happy Tuesday.

AVLON: Yes, this is the --

HILL: And there we go.

AVLON: This is the infantilization of the presidency. It's ridiculous. The president's not getting enough attention, I hope it's something more than that.

BERMAN: All right. Margaret, Rachael, John, appreciate it.

HILL: Senator Elizabeth Warren laying out her case for president at a CNN town hall and calling for a big change in the electoral process. We'll tell you what she said that had the crowd cheering. That's next.

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