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New Day

House Oversight Chair: White House Hasn't Turned Over Any Documents; Rosenstein Staying in Justice Department Longer Than Expected; Trump Attacks Late Senator, Cozies Up with Brazilian Strongman; Report: Off-Duty Pilot Saved Lion Air Flight Day Before Crash; Surveillance Video Shows Panic During New Zealand Attack. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 20, 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: Mueller is continuing to push forward in the court, in parallel to wrapping up this investigation.

[05:59:36] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's possible investigators were monitoring Cohen's transmissions before the raid on his apartment.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were tracking his phone calls. If I was Donald Trump, I would be scared.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John McCain remains a man Trump could never be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This has been the president's approach, and it resonates with many people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, March 20, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill joins me.

Good morning.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning.

BERMAN: I would give you anything, right?

HILL: You are a giver, John.

BERMAN: I'm a giver. So take that into consideration as I'm about to say what I'm about to say.

HILL: OK. BERMAN: All right. You get nothing, all right? It's a wonderful

quote from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "You get nothing." It also seems to be what the White House is saying to Congress this morning in response to requests for all kinds of documents and testimony on sensitive subjects.

Overnight the chair of the House Oversight Committee said he hasn't received a single piece of paper from the White House, despite dozens of requests. You get nothing.

It also seems to be the strategy playing out before our very eyes when it comes to the Mueller report. You get nothing. You is the American people in this case. The attorney general will get the report first. He will decide what Congress gets to see, but before Congress gets even that version, the White House wants to scrub it down with claims of executive privilege. So in the end, you may get nothing.

The process is a new laser-sharp focus this morning, because the special counsel's office just dropped what could be a major clue bomb in a new legal filing. Robert Mueller's lawyer said they face a press of work this week, "a press of work." Could that press be the actual report this week, the one we might never actually get to see?

HILL: Well, with the cloud of the Russia investigation and, frankly, a lot more looming large over his presidency, Mr. Trump is doubling down on his grievances, bringing them off Twitter and into the real world, once again attacking the late Senator John McCain, saying he never was and never will be a fan.

Those come -- coming as the president sat next to his new friend on the global stage, Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called Trump of the tropics. Mr. Trump also taking aim at social media companies, accusing them, without proof, of colluding against him and smiling as Brazil's president attacked the free press.

Let's begin with CNN's Sara Murray, who is live in Washington with our top story. Sara, good morning.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Well, look, prosecutors on Mueller's team were facing a deadline to unseal some documents in a case involving Paul Manafort, and they are asking a judge for a delay due to a press of other work. No surprise, they do not tell us what that other work is. Could there be another investigation we don't know about? Could this just be them trying to get their ducks in a row for their final report? This filing doesn't give us any additional details.

But we are getting some other signals coming from the Justice Department. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is due to depart, essentially, any day now, is now staying on a little bit longer. Sources say he still wants to be there when the Mueller report is finalized, and he wants to act as something of a heat shield.

You know, he's been the guy who's been overseeing this investigation and he wants to be there, sources say, to absorb any punches that might come along with the Mueller report.

We also got a lot more detail just yesterday on the lengths that investigators went to to uncover the criminal activity of the president's former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen. Hundreds and hundreds of pages of unsealed search warrants show that it was very soon after Mueller was appointed in May 2017 that they started looking into Michael Cohen and essentially monitoring his activity, digging back years into his Gmail accounts, into his online activity, even tracing who he was making calls to and who he was receiving phone calls from.

But the real dirt that we want to know in these search warrants is, of course, redacted. Nearly 20 pages about that illegal campaign contribution that Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to making, the one he implicated President Trump in, saying that Donald Trump directed him to make these hush-money payments to women to hide his alleged affairs; and of course, President Trump denies these affairs.

Back to you, Erica.

HILL: Sara Murray with the latest for us. Sara, thank you.

Joining us now, CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, former federal prosecutor.

Elie, I do want to start with what we heard this morning from Chairman Cummings, who said not a single piece of paper has been turned over by the White House. Perhaps not entirely surprising that the White House isn't cooperating, but not a single sheet of paper?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, I think they're making a statement here, which is "We're not going to be playing ball with you, Congress." And they're sort of throwing down a gauntlet here for Congress.

And so the ball is now back in Representative Cummings's court. And what is he going to do? The only real move now is to issue subpoenas. And if he issues subpoenas, that's going to tee this up for a legal battle in the courts.

And I think the response, the counter response here could be executive privilege: "We're the White House. Our internal communications are privileged. You don't get it." So that could be a big battle heading to the courts.

HILL: We have got a big battling between two branches of government. That is for sure.

Also, in terms of this Mueller filing that Sara just told us about, the press of other work, translate that for us.

HONIG: So when I was raised as a prosecutor, we were raised with the mantra, the government is always ready. So even if a judge said to you, "You're starting trial Monday," and you knew in your head "There's no way I can do it," you would always say, "The government is always ready." So it is very rare to say, "We can't get it done in time," which is

essentially what Mueller's team said, which makes me think they must be actually incredibly busy in order to say that.

[06:05:07] HILL: Does that mean a report?

HONIG: It could be a report. It could be they're working on more charges. I still think there's other people who -- where the shoe's yet to drop. So they could be getting ready for that. I'm speculating here. But it is really rare for a prosecutor's office to say, "We're not ready to do this. We need -- we're too busy with other business. We'll get to it later."

HILL: Lastly, before we let you go, what to you is the biggest headline from these unsealed Cohen documents?

HONIG: Just -- first of all, how much information they had before the April 2018 search warrant. Right? That was sort of the moment when Michael Cohen came into our -- all of our attention as a potential criminal target.

But they've been up on Michael Cohen for nine months, and that's 269 pages of that search warrant. That's all information they had beforehand.

But the other thing is just that everything was done here by the book. All this conspiracy theory garbage about storm troopers, and they broke into Michael Cohen's office, that search warrant is how things are done. Prosecutors laid out their case. They took it to a judge who found probable cause. Everything was done absolutely by the book.

HILL: I should have asked you about this in relationship to Mueller's team, but what about Rod Rosenstein saying --

HONIG: Heat shield? Yes. I mean, they say he's staying as a heat shield.

HILL: Right.

HONIG: My take is you only need a heat shield if you expect to generate heat. So that's how I take it.

HILL: All right. We'll be looking for more. Elie, appreciate it, as always -- John.

HILL: All right. Breaking overnight, the daughter of late Senator John McCain is responding to still new attacks on her father by the president of the United States.

In a new post on Twitter, Meghan McCain writes, "As my father always used to say to me, Illegitimi non carborundum." Translated from the Latin, as you know, that means roughly "Don't let the bastards grind you down."

The president's new attacks on the senator came along with the conspiracy theory about social media and approval of an attack on the media by the so-called Trump of the Tropics.

Our Joe Johns is live at the White House with the very latest -- Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, you know, when you think about it, it's kind of amazing. This is a country that pays so much attention to its fallen war fighters. We've got Veterans Day. We've got Arlington Cemetery. And we've got a president who never served in the military, got deferments to keep from going to Vietnam, going after the memory of a fallen American war hero.

The president has gone after John McCain before, but never quite like this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be.

JOHNS (voice-over): President Trump doubling down on his criticism of Senator John McCain more than six months after his death, blaming him for the failure of his effort to repeal Obamacare, after disparaging him repeatedly over the weekend.

TRUMP: He told us hours before that he was going to repeal and replace. And then for some reason -- I think I understand the reason -- he ended up going thumbs up [SIC]. I think that's disgraceful.

JOHNS: A former McCain aide telling CNN that conversation never happened.

The president's criticism coming the same day as this hateful message shared by Senator McCain's wife, Cindy, the sender telling Cindy that she's glad her husband is dead before attacking her daughter Meghan, who has staunchly defended her father.

MEGHAN MCCAIN, CO-HOST, ABC'S "THE VIEW": 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.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

MCCAIN: That tells you everything you need to know about his pathetic life right now.

JOHNS: Meghan tweeting overnight, quoting her father with a Latin phrase that means "Don't let the bastards grind you down."

President Trump once again peddling a growing conspiracy theory about social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, alleging without proof that they're colluding to silence conservatives.

TRUMP: It seems to be if they're conservative, if they're Republicans, if they're in a certain group, there's discrimination and big discrimination.

JOHNS: This week, the president's loyal ally, Congressman Devin Nunes, sued Twitter for more than $250 million, claiming the platform allowed its users to spread "false and defamatory" statements about him.

REP. DEVIN NUNES (R), CALIFORNIA: Every American should care about this if they care about the First Amendment.

JOHNS: The president pushing this unfounded claim alongside the controversial president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, who touted both leaders' efforts to ensure traditional and family lifestyles and efforts against gender ideology and fake news. A seemingly pleased President Trump applauding Bolsonaro's remarks.

TRUMP: I'm very proud to hear the president use the term "fake news."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: And there was even more of the grievance fest. The president also went after George Conway, the husband of presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway, calling him a loser after George Conway questioned the president's mental fitness and tweets.

John, back to you.

BERMAN: All right. Joe, thank you very much.

Joining us now is Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News and a CNN political analyst. She is traveling with the president to Ohio today.

Margaret, thanks so much for being with us. It's obvious, listening to the new leader in Brazil, that Jair Bolsonaro knows that the way to President Trump's heart is through his ego.

[06:10:03] MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, they don't call him Trump of the Tropics for no reason. And what you saw on display yesterday was absolutely both leaders signaling very clearly to one another and to their own domestic constituencies that they both see the merits of being on the same page when it comes to a lot of things, including the way they talk about legitimate critics in the news business.

But I thought what you then saw in return from President Trump, when the Brazilian leader talked about there are a lot -- there was a push in his administration now for anti-LGBT policies in Brazil.

And you did see President Trump stand by and, rather than say anything like, "Well, we have our differences, and this is one of them; but I'm glad you're here," the president just sort of left that alone. And then you saw Bolsonaro meeting with evangelical leaders at Blair House across the street from the White House and so on and so forth.

And so you see both men working on their sort of mutual desires, whether it's Venezuela or trade, or whatnot, and President Trump decidedly being very uncritical of any of Bolsonaro's policies.

BERMAN: As a former president of the White House Correspondents' Association, I'm wondering what your view was of President Trump praising Jair Bolsonaro for using the term "fake news." Of course, Bolsonaro leads the country where dissenters in the past have been killed.

TALEV: Yes, this has consistently been a very troubling issue if you're a journalist, not just in terms of covering the White House, but in terms of its impact on journalists abroad and journalists covering local news all over this country. The president sees this as a political loyalty test or a rhetorical way to rally his base.

But for journalists, the idea of trying to discredit legitimate news coverage is troublesome not just because of the journalism business, but because of the impact that it has on the public.

The press is just an extension of the public whose job it is to ask tough questions of people, to hold truth to power, and to inform the citizenry. And so these efforts in the United States are troubling, and they're very troubling when they happen around the world, as well.

BERMAN: It was interesting to see the president stand up again yesterday against John McCain, who passed away in August. He's just not going to let this go.

TALEV: No. He's not going to let it go, and because of the way Senator McCain sort of had that maverick personality and would sometimes vote against the party, even though President Trump has changed kind of the base and the core of the Republican Party, there are people inside Trump's base who also felt that way about Senator McCain.

And so the president kind of sees it as a win on both ends. And we're talking about it. He likes it that we're talking about it, because it's repeating the message that he wants to get out. And so, no, I don't think that's going anywhere anytime soon.

BERMAN: Yes. The people who lose are the McCains. Cindy McCain's been getting vile, vile messages on social media.

TALEV: Devin Nunes isn't the only one, and neither is the American press corps. Twitter's mean to everyone.

BERMAN: Good point. Margaret Talev, great to have you. We'll talk to you again in a second.

TALEV: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Erica.

HILL: Stunning new revelations about last October's Lion Air flight. Breaking overnight, Bloomberg reporting an off-duty pilot kept that doomed plane from crashing just one day before the 737 Max 8 went down. CNN's Melissa Bell is live in Paris with these breaking details -- Melissa.

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Erica, what we're hearing, then, is that the very day before that Lion Air crashed off Indonesia, into the Java Sea, killing 189 people, it had flown from Bali to Jakarta, according to this Bloomberg report; and it was thanks to the presence in the cockpit of a man who shouldn't even have been there. An off- duty pilot who managed to show the pilots who were in charge of that flight, essentially, how to disable this bit of software that we now know was at the heart of the crash of the plane the very next day. A system that essentially forces the nose of the plane down that some pilots, apparently, are managing to disable and other pilots, tragically, not.

And the reason that's so interesting right now is that this latest crash of that very same type of Boeing, a Boeing 737 Max 8, that took place on March the tenth in Ethiopia. That's now the subject of an investigation.

Here in Paris, the black boxes from that flight are being looked into. But what we know, crucially, from a number of different sources, Erica, is that the trajectories of those two doomed flights was --were very similar.

So once again, a great deal of attention to this particular bit of software that proved so troubling that is also the subject of an investigation from the Transportation Department in the United States that is now looking into why or how the FAA went through its certification process with a lot of questions about whether too much of that process was left in the hands of Boeing itself -- Erica.

BERMAN: All right. I'll take it, Melissa. Melissa Bell for us in Paris. We're watching this very closely.

Also we have a CNN exclusive this morning. A new perspective on the terror attack in New Zealand. Surveillance video that was recorded at a property close to the first targeted mosque, it shows the shooter as he drove to the second mosque; and it comes as police say he was planning to carry out yet a third shooting before he was stopped. We do want to warn you that the video and sound here is disturbing.

Our Ivan Watson is in Christchurch, New Zealand, with this CNN exclusive. Ivan, what have you seen?

IVAN WATSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Well, New Zealand police say the death toll could have been much, much worse if not for the swift work of law enforcement here. And this exclusive video obtained by CNN shows that the suspect was shooting at pedestrians while driving between two mosques that were targeted during this terrorist attack.

Security camera footage from what was soon to become New Zealand's darkest day. This video from March 15 shows people casually strolling past at 1:42 in the afternoon. It's filmed from a camera on a hotel located around 300 meters from the al-Noor Mosque.

Seconds later, a series of gunshots ring out from what appear to be two different types of firearms. And even though this is the start of a deadly terrorist attack, passersby still have no idea what is unfolding nearby.

It isn't until nearly four minutes later that pedestrians show signs of alarm. And then, this car appears. The driver honks his horn to get pedestrians' attention and then shoots through the passenger side window at a man on the sidewalk.

The hotel owners say they shared this security camera footage with the New Zealand police. Police won't comment on the video during the ongoing investigation.

(on camera): The camera films this stretch of sidewalk, and the footage reveals two important details about the deadliest terrorist attack in New Zealand's modern history.

First, within moments of the first recorded gunshot, you can hear sirens backing up police statements that they were rushing to the scene within minutes of the first emergency call.

But second, the gunman was so desperate to kill that he stopped right here and shot through the window of his own car at victims while en route from the first mosque down the road to a second mosque.

And the ground here is still littered with glass from his vehicle.

(voice-over): Police say these were the actions of a lone gunman whose rampage began with the attack on the al-Noor Mosque and subsequently the Linwood Mosque.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We strongly believe we stopped him on the way to a further attack. So lives were saved.

WATSON: Police are now revealing additional details about the suspect's plan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're not going to go into those details, you know, I don't wish to traumatize others. So that will form part of the court case. But we absolutely believe we know where he was going, and we intervened on the way.

WATSON: The security camera footage shows the suspect racing away from the roadside shooting.

Roughly 15 minutes later, police detained the suspect. His rampage lasted less than half an hour, cut short by a swift police response. Yet it wasn't enough to stop this determined killer from claiming at least 50 innocent lives.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: John and Erica, if this suspect, who was a self-described white supremacist, if he wanted to divide New Zealand society, he failed. The prime minister says that on Friday, there will be two minutes of silence for the victims of this terror attack all across the country; and the Muslim call to prayer will also be played on New Zealand's national television and radio, again to honor this tiny Muslim minority of just 1 percent of the population so viciously targeted last Friday here in Christchurch -- John and Erica.

BERMAN: Ivan Watson, a nation truly comes together. Thank you for giving us that report. HILL: The Mueller report could be coming soon. Congressional

investigations heating up. And new signs this morning the president may be the one winning. We'll discuss next.

BERMAN: You get nothing. You get nothing.

HILL: John Berman not winning.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:22:52] HILL: The White House not playing. The chairman of the House Oversight Committee voicing his frustration with the Trump White House in a "Washington Post" op-ed this morning.

Congressman Elijah Cummings writes, "I have sent 12 letters to the White House on a half dozen topics, some routine, some relating to our core national security interests. In response, the White House has refused to hand over any documents or produce any witnesses for interviews."

Joining us now, John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst; and Anne Milgram, former New Jersey attorney general and CNN legal analyst. Elijah Cummings noting not a single piece of paper has been turned over. And there's a part of me that reads this and says #ShockingNotShocking. I mean, it's not that surprising.

But, Anne, you said the fact that the White House hasn't even said, "Oh, by the way, we're not giving this to you" on one piece of paper, that is something.

ANNE MILGRAM, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right. To me, what's extraordinary about this is we do know they're going to fight. They're definitely going to fight. They've hired a ton of lawyers in the White House counsel's office, and so they're gearing up for it.

But to not even respond. To not even write a letter back saying, "By the way, you know, we think you've overreached," or "Let's have a discussion about the scope of what you've asked for." They haven't said anything. And so they're really sort of -- they've made a decision that they're just going to stonewall all of it, to try to block it.

BERMAN: They're taking -- they're taking the legal, and they're putting in the political. And they're making this a political fight, John, that is well into it.

I think I woke up to that revelation this morning, that this is actually happening now; and we haven't been paying enough attention. The White House is saying, "You'll get nothing and like it."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: To quote Judge Smails.

AVLON: To quote Judge -- yes, I appreciate it.

BERMAN: So to quote the judge to the Democrats in Congress. And the Democrats have to decide what they're going to do about it.

AVLON: Right. And I think what will happen is there will be subpoenas, and you're going to have a legal fight. Look, they're normal fights between the coequal branches that happen over executive privilege.

And then there's this, which is basically -- it's a combination of we're just going to do total obstruction, talk to the hand, because that's all you're going to get; and probably unitary executive theory, you know, so they can feel they've got the fig leaf of being able to do whatever they want.

But they run into basic problems about precedent. This is not normal. The Bush administration fought with Democrats, and they controlled Congress all the time. They still turned over plenty of documents.

Same, God knows, with Obama and Republicans in the House at the time.

So this is something that is yet another total departure from democratic norms, and it's going to end up going to the courts. But this is -- don't be fooled into thinking this is -- this is something the president can do. It's something the president wants to be able to do, and we'll see how it plays out.

[06:25:13] BERMAN: But what I don't know, and I wasn't trying to make light of it at all, quoting Judge Smails -- I think it's very significant --

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: -- that it's playing out before our very eyes. And I don't think that it's normal; and I do think that Republicans on Capitol Hill are giving the president cover, as far as I can see.

AVLON: First time around, they basically gave -- they had a -- they took their spine out. They stopped acting like a coequal branch of government designed to keep the executive in check. They rolled over for the president from the Intelligence Committee down, and now they're providing defense for him.

There's a certain amount of partisanship that's normal. This is not normal.

MILGRAM: I agree with John. And I also think, having worked on the Hill, that it sets a terrible precedent for future administrations when the political parties will change.

And the thing to remember is that they are going to fight this. The Democrats in Congress now have to fight it. And it's going to go to the court, and the court's literally going to look at the fact that they wouldn't even have a conversation or negotiate on this. And my view is the court will not be happy with that.

There's a -- it's reasonable to say, "It's too broad. Let's have a conversation to narrow it." It's not reasonable, in my view, to say, "There's no conversation." AVLON: Yes. And look, the president can talk presidential

harassment. There are some things that may be kind of narrow. There are other things that are objectively national security, and that's no joking around. And the American people deserve to have insight to see whether, for example, nuclear technology was passed to Saudi Arabia on an expedited track. You know, that's not about individual personalities and politics. That's about national security.

HILL: There are the politics angles. There are the legal angles, and there are the court of public opinion angles, which we know the White House really likes to play into, too. You can see Chairman Cummings almost setting up with that, saying in this piece, to your point, John, look at what happened with the Bush 43 White House. Look at what happened with the Obama White House and Benghazi and all the documents that were turned over. And oh, by the way, if you claim presidential harassment, it's not. What it is, is an absolute overreach, they're saying.

And bringing back the president's words, "I'm just going to blame them," is any of that going to work?

MILGRAM: Well, I think if you look at what they've done, they started with the least aggressive means. They basically sent letters, and they could have just issued subpoenas and said, "We want these documents from everyone." But they started with letters.

And so they're clearly trying to show the American public, "Look, we're going to start as calmly and as sort of, like, collegial -- with collegiality as we can." It's obviously not going to work. So now when they rachet up to subpoenas, it will be clear that they didn't have a choice and any other way to get that -- that information, and then it goes to the court fight. And I think we should expect it absolutely to go to the courts.

BERMAN: What's the time frame here? If it does go down that full path here?

MILGRAM: This is the problem, right? This is the problem, is that we've seen this. We saw it under Bush. We saw it under Obama, that one of the reasons they hire so many lawyers is that they can have these really lengthy court fights. And they really can stop in some ways in a way that I think is problematic information from going to Congress that has rightful oversight.

So what the Democrats will have to do is push as fast as they can for the courts to rule and make decisions. And the question is will the courts comply?

AVLON: And to your point, J.B., is that you know, partly what the president and the administration may be doing is seeing if they can run out the clock to the election.

BERMAN: Sure.

AVLON: And that could be their plan. So you just do total obstruction under the cover of executive privilege to see if you can get past the election so the information isn't out for the American people to judge.

BERMAN: My offer is nothing.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: That's Michael Corleone. So you have Judge Smails, Willy Wonka and Michael Corleone.

AVLON: What's the link from "Willy Wonka" again?

BERMAN: You get nothing.

AVLON: I like it. Oh, that's Smails.

BERMAN: No, Willy Wonka and Smails are like this. I posted it on Twitter. You can take a look there.

And I am curious about the intersection with the Mueller investigation here, as well. Because, as we know, William Barr, Bill Barr, the attorney general, will get the report first, maybe soon, like this week soon. And then the White House wants to make claims of executive privilege.

So it seems to me the White House wants to delay any part of that becoming public just as much as any of the congressional requests.

MILGRAM: Completely. And I would assume there's going to be litigation there, too. The challenge with executive privilege is that the president gets to assert it, and then a court gets to decide.

And so it's not as simple as just saying does the report get turned over or not? They'll exert, you know, it could be hundreds of places where they think executive privilege should be -- should basically mean that parts of the report get blocked out or don't get turned over. And then they're going to litigate whether or not it is privileged.

And you know, it's not -- everything is not privileged. There's a lot of things that will have been part of this that are not going to be privileged.

HILL: But then we run out another clock.

MILGRAM: Yes. And that could take a long time.

AVLON: One of the things I think is very clear is the Starr report model we saw with the independent counsel, that train has sailed. That's not happening.

So -- but the big question will be what information is out there? What's necessary for questions of impeachment? And the fight that's going to come down is epic. But we're not going to see that kind of really great detail out of the gate we saw.

MILGRAM: And one way this comes back is that the House will subpoena all of the Mueller evidence. And so remember that the president can say, "We're not turning over anything to you," but other people and institutions will provide that information. So I think, you know, it's going to be a fight sort of on two fronts.

BERMAN: No soup for you. That's one more to add to the list there.

All right. Anne, John, thank you very much.

Anne, thank you for bearing with us, putting up with us.

A quick programming note. CNN will host a presidential town hall tonight with former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper.