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White House Refusing to Turn Over Documents to House Oversight Committee; GOP Senator Isakson Stands up for McCain; Report Says Off- Duty Pilot Found Problem on Lion Air Flight Day Before Crash; New Book Details Ivanka Trump & Jared Kushner's Rise to Power. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 20, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Mueller team started looking at Cohen just months after Mueller was appointed.

[07:00:07] PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: The most intrusive tactic is reading somebody's e-mail and listening to their phone calls. They must have had some mud on him.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He didn't repeal and replace Obamacare. That's disgraceful.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: When the president lashes out, you take on a barrage of social media attacks. This is just a taste of what the McCain family has gone through

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's very sincere. He still doesn't care for John McCain. There's an authenticity about that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He is attacking a national hero. That is plain disgusting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY.

Alisyn is off. Erica Hill joins me this morning. And new this morning, you'll get nothing and like it. That seems to be what the White House is saying in response to congressional requests for documents on -- and testimony on a range of subjects.

The chair of the House Oversight Committee says that he has not received a single piece of paper, not one piece of paper from the White House, despite a dozen requests.

The "you get nothing" might also be the strategy when it comes to the release of the Mueller report. The administration seems to be placing as many roadblocks as possible in front of the full public release of the findings. And that process is in sharp focus right now, because the special counsel's office just dropped what could be a massive clue bomb. In a new legal filing Robert Mueller's lawyer said they faced a press of work this week. Could that press be the actual report?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: As we wait and wonder, the cloud of the Russia investigation looms large over the Trump presidency. Mr. Trump now doubling down, though, on his grievances, bringing them off of Twitter and into the real world. Once again going after the late senator John McCain saying, quote, he never was and never will be a fan.

Those comments coming as he sat next to his new friend on the global stage, Brazil's new president, the so-called Trump of the Tropics. Mr. Trump also taking aim at social media companies, accusing them of colluding against him, and smiling as Brazil's president attacked the free press.

BERMAN: Want to bring in Jeffrey Toobin, former federal prosecutor, and a CNN chief legal analyst. Toluse Olorunnipa, he's a White House reporter for "The Washington Post." And Joe Lockhart, he was the White House press secretary under President Clinton and now with CNN political commentator.

And Joe, I want to start with you, because Elijah Cummings, who's chairman of the House Oversight Committee, he says not one single piece of paper; the White House has given them nothing. You get nothing.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.

BERMAN: To quote Willy Wonka, is what I've been saying this morning. What do you make of that strategy?

LOCKHART: Well, it's -- from their perspective, it's a strategy I think they're going to stick with, because their entire -- their campaign, their governing is about undermining institutions.

So when you, you know, thumb your nose at Congress, that works for your strategy. Whether it will work with voters or not isn't clear. Voters generally are somewhat suspicious of oversight, because it does seem political and partisan.

So I'm not surprised at all by this strategy. But the risk they run, if it's, you know, the oversight and the Mueller report and suppressing all of that, is playing into the Democrats' pushing that they're hiding something, that all of these things about Russia collusion must be true. He must be a foreign agent if he won't let us see anything.

No different than his taxes. But what we've seen from Trump is he's willing to ride this out. I mean, he's ridden out taxes since 2015.

HILL: Willing to ride it out, and a lot of these things they're willing to ride it out in the courts, as we know. There's sort of a push to bring this into the courts. Jeff Toobin, though, as we look at this, the lack of even -- we were

talk about this last hour, the lack of even a letter to say, "This is too much, this goes too far," not a single piece of paper to even push back formally. Could that end up hurting the White House, if and when this does end up in the courts?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Not really. I don't think so. I mean, I think, you know, you know, Berman mentioned one movie. My thought was "Godfather II," where Michael Corleone says to the senator: "Here's my offer. Nothing." I mean, that's going to be the White House approach.

And it's a bit -- it's very different from where it was when Ty Cobb was in charge of the initial response to Robert Mueller. They gave documents. They cooperated with interviews.

Now that Emmet Flood is in charge, it's very much a Williams and Conley response. Williams and Conley is famous for -- that's the law firm where Emmet Flood came from. They don't give ground on anything.

And, you know, all these committees are going to have to find the White House in contempt, try to go to court; and the clock is running. And even by the time this stuff gets to court, it could be the summer. We'd be into -- you know, soon we'll be into next year. And I think the White House sees the possibility of just running out the clock on these investigations without cooperating at all.

BERMAN: And I think the "no soup for you," to use yet another analogy here, Jeffrey Toobin, also extends to the Mueller report, which maybe is coming very soon, if you believe "the press of work" comment from lawyers there is significant.

[07:05:12] If they're going to have Barr filter it and then the White House filter it with executive privilege, it could be a long time; and it could be very little that the public ultimately gets to see.

TOOBIN: Exactly. And they do not fear being thought obstructionists. I mean, the president has made crystal-clear he thinks the whole investigation is -- is a witch-hunt. He feels no obligation to cooperate at this point.

And so -- and you know, they can make a high-minded argument that this is about executive privilege, protecting the powers of the presidency for all presidents. They are under no obligation, they feel, to compromise, cooperate at all; and they're going to fight this every step of the way.

HILL: And, Toluse, we know some of the talking points. Obviously, we've heard from the president, from others. This is, in their view, presidential harassment. We know lawmakers and even in this op-ed, Chairman Cummings pushing back on that assessment.

But the fact that they're running with that and focusing on these investigations is actually working for them in some respects with a certain segment of the population, Toluse. TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, they are making the

political argument. They have the legal battle that they're fighting in the courts. But they have the political argument, which the president is driving, and he's doing it mostly on Twitter, saying you know, "The Democrats are just trying to harass me. They don't want to legislate. They just want to investigate my administration."

And that definitely works with a number of the people in the president's base who do believe the Democrats are going too far. But for moderates and, obviously, for Democrats, they realize that, for the first two years of this administration, there was very little oversight. Republicans were running defense for the president instead of trying to hold him accountable.

And there's so many scandals in the administration, in different agencies, not even only in the White House, but in some of the agencies where you had all these ethical scandals that haven't been brought to light.

And now Democrats are trying to go back and go over some of that information and see if they can bring some of that information to the public. And that is an argument that is much more difficult to make to the public.

If it is looks like, you know, top officials were wasting taxpayer dollars, flying on private flights, skirting all the rules that have been put in place by ethics officials; and that the White House looks like they're trying to defend those people, that doesn't necessarily work for the public. It does look like that's something where the White House is trying to defend people who may have been in the wrong.

A lot of these people have already resigned. So that isn't necessarily going to be a strong political argument.

But for the issues where it gets to executive privilege, where it gets to the White House, where it looks like Democrats might just be trying to give the president a headache over his -- his dealings in the White House, that may be a stronger argument.

But just to say, "You get nothing. We're not going to hand over any documents. You're not going to get anything," it does make it look like they're hiding something. And that is a much more difficult political argument for them to make.

BERMAN: All right, friends, if you'll bear with me one second. We have some breaking news on the President Trump versus John McCain, who passed away in August, feud. And before I tell you what this new development is -- and actually it's a big significant shift -- I want to play what the president said once again yesterday about the late senator.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm very unhappy that he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare, as you know. So I think that's disgraceful. Plus, there are other things. I was never a fan of John McCain, and I never will be. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. That was President Trump yesterday. Again, Senator John McCain passed away in August.

And Republicans have been, you know, quiet. They've whispered their unhappiness with the president's statement. Lindsey Graham put out a very Milquetoast-y response to it.

Well, now it seems there is one Republican senator who is willing to say something about it and say something about this more than just this bothers him a little.

Johnny Isakson, a senator from Georgia, did an interview with A.B. Stoddard that was just posted in "The Bulwark." And Senator Isakson is getting ready to make a statement on the Senate floor. This is why.

He says, "I just want to lay it on the line that the country deserves better. The McCain family deserves better. I don't care if he's president of the United States, owns all the real estate in New York, or is building the greatest immigration system in the world. Nothing is more important than the integrity of the country and those who fought and risked their lives for all of us."

So Johnny Isakson, at least, Joe, is saying enough.

LOCKHART: Yes, well, and it's not -- he's not one of the moderates. He's not, you know, the Jeff Flakes. He's a very conservative guy. And the statement goes right at the heart of the problem Republicans in the Senate have had, which is they've basically taken a pass on integrity. And this is too much.

We have finally found, for one member of the Senate, that what -- what the president does and what the president says is so disrespectful of what we all think are the norms of integrity -- and John McCain is just the latest example. There are, you know, dozen, if not hundreds of examples. And he's going to the floor. This is significant, that someone's going to do this, because for two and a half years, they've stood by silently, when this happens day after day after day.

[07:10:08] Will this impact Trump? Probably not. Does it impact the politics that go on in Washington? Maybe.

TOOBIN: How pathetic that we are even talking about one senator out of 53 Republicans. And I guess Mitt Romney actually made a statement. It was --

BERMAN: A tweet.

TOOBIN: A tweet that -- that, you know, that pushed back. But how pathetic that 50 Republican senators have said nothing about this incredibly disgraceful performance by the president about John McCain, about their long-time colleague, John McCain.

The fact that Johnny Isakson, who is on a national level a deeply obscure figure, that that makes news, because they are all such unbelievable cowards; because they're afraid of Republican primaries.

Thom Tillis, who made a principled statement about the emergency declaration, opposing the president's emergency declaration, ran off and hid and changed his vote, the North Carolina senator, because he was afraid of Trump. I mean, that just shows -- that's more relevant than one senator speaking up for John McCain.

HILL: It is remarkable that this is the place where we're at and this is the conversation we're having. It will be also interesting to see whether anyone else follows suit. Right? If we start to hear more, now that Johnny Isakson has spoken up, whether any of those other Republicans will speak up.

Meghan McCain, Cindy McCain have been weighing in. Meghan McCain posting last night, "As my father used to always say to me, Illegitimi non carborundum," which of course, "Don't let the bastards get you down," translated from the Latin.

But what also stuck out to me is just the hateful messages that are being sent not just from the Oval Office, but what this family is enduring, a message that Cindy McCain posted. We're going to put it up on the screen for you. She said, "I want to make sure all of you could see how kind and loving a stranger can be. I'm posting her note for her family and friends to see." Take a look at that. Just vile things being said about the late senator, about her daughter.

And listen, we know that there is a lack of decorum, certainly, on social media. But when it gets to that point, at the same time, Toluse, that we have the president saying, "Social media is against me. They're trying to silence me," it's just remarkable to have these two things juxtaposed.

OLORUNNIPA: Yes. Normally, you expect the president to refrain from sort of targeting people and putting people even in danger with his rhetoric. But this is a president who hasn't taken a lot of responsibility for the information he puts out there on social media. There are all kinds of people that are following his lead, listening to what he says and using that to, you know, make life really dangerous and difficult for people who are not necessarily involved, even in the political sphere.

This is a president who uses his Twitter account to attack individual private Americans. This is a president who is attacking a dead war hero. And it sort of shows how far we've gone from a sense of political decorum, that the president feels safe doing that and he has support from a number of people in his party.

TOOBIN: But isn't the real message not so much that Trump, you know, is engaged in all this racism and bigotry online, you know, defending Jeanine Pirro, who is an anti-Muslim bigot, you know, on the weekend after the massacre in New Zealand, but isn't the real message how many people agree with him? I mean, this is -- you know, this is not a bug; it's a feature.

I mean, the fact that the president attacks Muslims in this vulgar way; the fact that he attacks John McCain, people like that. People like that. It's not -- you know, that's -- that's the, you know, message to me. Not that it's some problem that he's trying to solve.

HILL: You're right, sadly.

LOCKHART: And I think if you look at the weekend, you saw not the president letting off steam, I think you saw his strategy for 2020, which is this sense of grievance against the so-called elites and the people with power is what connects him to a big part of America. And you're going to see a whole lot more of it. And he couldn't care less what anybody says about him except for those people.

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

HILL: We do want to get to some breaking news right now. Two big developments in the Lion Air crash investigation, the flight that went down in Indonesia last October.

Bloomberg reporting an off-duty pilot kept the flight from crashing just one day, kept that particular plane from crashing just one day before the Boeing 737 Max 8 ultimately went down.

Reuters also has new details on what the voice recorder of the doomed flight captures in the cockpit.

CNN's Richard Quest is live in London with more of these breaking details -- Richard.

RICHARD QUEST, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, let's look, first of all, at the Bloomberg report.

Now we know that the previous flight of the same aircraft had similar sort of problems. The nose kept getting pushed down. And we were led to believe that the pilots had worked out to switch the motor off of the machinery doing that.

[07:15:05] Well, now it apparently appears the pilots didn't know that. They were working their way through it, but it was an off-duty pilot riding in the jump seat, as it's known, that actually pointed out to the pilots, who were having difficulty getting control of the aircraft, telling them to turn off the motor. It was the off-duty pilot that pointed out to the actual pilots flying.

And then you've got this Reuters report, which shows that, on the Lion Air flight itself, the pilots were working their way through the checklists. They were doing what they were supposed to be doing. But they just literally ran out of airspace before the plane crashed.

Now, why is this important? Both of these cases, Erica. Both of these cases are important, because they disprove the suggestion that somehow pilots should have known what this new MCAS was doing, because it was similar to previous. This proves that multiple sets of pilots have no idea how to respond, and there was only one that had a vague idea of what to do.

HILL: And it also makes you wonder, if there had been an issue the day before, right, with software on a plane, why that same plane would be used the next day. Maybe this is my own ignorance, because I don't cover aviation, obviously. I'm not a pilot. But as someone who flies fairly often, that's one of the things that sticks out.

And to your point, these arguments about it being software and what we've heard about training, a lot of that really being re-questioned this morning.

QUEST: Absolutely. And, look, the plane was -- went through maintenance, that particular aircraft. They couldn't find anything wrong, so they kept it in service.

What all of these incidents, the previous flight, the Lion Air flight, the Ethiopian flight, you're talking about six different sets of pilots now. Sorry, six different pilots, three different sets. It destroys the argument primarily put forward by Boeing that there was this procedure that pilots should have known about, that if they'd done it, all would have been well.

Well, you now have three sets of qualified pilots, none of whom knew how to respond to the way the MCAS. And that, of course, Erica, is what the fix that Boeing doing at the moment is all about. It is telling pilots, "This is happening. Now you should do this."

HILL: There is a lot there and just the beginning, as we know. Richard Quest, appreciate it. Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. They are two of the president's closest advisers, and they just happen to be his family. A new book breaks down how Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner pushed their way into power at the White House. The author of this controversial and very buzzy book joins us next.

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[07:21:46] BERMAN: All right. In my hands is a copy of the new book that has the White House very upset. Very. And it has all of Washington, and frankly all of New York and the country, talking this morning. The title says it all. "Kushner Inc.: Greed, Ambition, Corruption, The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump."

Joining me now is the author, Vicky Ward.

Vicky, thanks so much for being with us.

VICKY WARD, AUTHOR, "KUSHNER INC.": Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Obviously, you want to sell a lot of books.

WARD: Yes, I do.

BERMAN: You have said you want one person in particular to read this, and that's the president of the United States, Donald Trump. Why?

WARD: Yes. Because I think that you can't underestimate the dangers of these two. And I think that, actually, he knows that. You know, he, after all, I report in the book, asked John Kelly, then the chief of staff, when he was coming in, "Send my children home." You know, he felt that -- he understood that they were a liability to

him. He hated the negative press they garnered, particularly over, you know, Jared's inability to fill out his security clearance forms.

He also really hated it when they got all the negative press about using private e-mail servers. You know, je gets -- then they'll do go and do something helpful, and he drops the subject for a while.

But the interesting thing is that John Kelly did what he was asked. He made life really unpleasant for Jared and Ivanka. They sort of -- they were ready to leave, and it was Trump who couldn't pull the trigger. And I think his supporters actually believed that sort of he needs to fire them to save his presidency.

BERMAN: There are so many things in this book, both big and little, that I'd love to cover. I'll start with the big and then go to a few of the little. But you just said they're dangerous.

WARD: Yes.

BERMAN: Why do you think they're dangerous?

WARD: Well, let's start with the fact that, instead of solving Middle East peace, Jared nearly put us into a war in the region. You know, his -- the taking over control of State Department, basically, taking Rex Tillerson's portfolio out of his hands, particularly in the Middle East. His -- his complete control of the relationship with MBS in Saudi Arabia meant that he kind of got played by MBS.

He pushed for Trump to hold this -- the first official American visit was not to a country with shared democratic values but to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its brutal regime. The theme of the summit was all about cooperation.

Days later, the Saudis made a mockery of the United States by turning around and blockading, with U.S. support, that Rex Tillerson firmly believed was Jared. They blockaded Qatar; they wanted Qatar's money. Qatar has an American airbase. That is our security on the line.

That was when Rex Tillerson and Jim Mattis, the defense secretary, who had no idea about any of this, thought that Jared went from being a really annoying obstacle and meddler to being downright dangerous.

[07:25:04] BERMAN: And you suggest, in regards to this, in particular, to Qatar -- which is Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been at odds; and that almost moved to an all-out shooting war. You suggest, or imply, that Jared Kushner had a financial interest in Qatar and may have been acting out of a sense of revenge, that Qatar wouldn't invest with him? Explain.

WARD: Yes. So that -- so Charles Kushner had just asked the Qataris for a billion dollars to save their -- a building that was a financial catastrophe for the Kushner family. The Qataris, at that point, turned him down. And lo and behold, our foreign policy turns negative towards them.

I will have to say that a year later, when the Qataris are offering money, our policy changes. The U.S. no longer supports the blockade.

BERMAN: Now, you -- in the title of the book, you used the word "corruption" here.

WARD: Yes.

BERMAN: And wrote a lot about Jared Kushner here. Is there proof yet? And when I mean proof, is there legal action that you have seen or heard from in the people you've talked to against Jared Kushner?

Because lord knows he's been under investigation for the last two years. The Mueller investigation seems to have been very broad and dealt exclusively --

WARD: Yard.

BERMAN: -- or extensively, I should say, with foreign interests here. Do you think they found any evidence of foreign influence or corruption over Jared Kushner?

WARD: Well, I say in the book that Mueller has definitely passed a lot of that stuff off to more appropriate avenues, because you know, there's a lot of Middle Eastern money. And -- and Mueller was -- found himself interviewing, for example, the Lebanese businessman George Nader. You know, that's not going to be part of his report, which is all about Russia, right? Though all that business stuff, I think you're going to see sent to -- to New York.

BERMAN: Do you think he's in legal jeopardy, Jared Kushner?

WARD: Well, look, we know Congress is already looking into the 666 deal and what happened with Qatar. I think there is a lot of smoke in my book. The Oversight Committee is reading it.

BERMAN: Let's talk about Ivanka Trump, if we can.

WARD: Yes.

BERMAN: And again, we'll start big here. And there has been this concept for two years that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, too, that they were the moderating influence inside the White House. Democrats had their people inside the White House. Wall Street had their people inside the White House. They were the ones who would keep things sane. Is that what has happened?

WARD: No. I mean, that's really the main theme of the book, that they're absolutely not what they seem.

You know, there are -- I think Democrats are now horrified by their sort of poor ethics. You know, what is Ivanka -- so where do we start? Climate change.

She was, you know -- she was supposed to be the sort of spokesperson for making sure that we did not pull out of the Paris climate change accord. Well, and at the end of the day when Gary Cohn said, "Well, Ivanka,

could you just go and talk to your father about it," she said, "No, I can't."

You know, even the things that I sort of would admire -- the expansion of the child tax care credit, for example -- it smacks of self- interest. It fit with her personal brand. And she still had not sold her fashion line at the time of -- that the child tax care credit went to Congress.

But meanwhile, her own fashion brand was employing these awful labor practices. I mean, the whole thing is hypocritical and lacking in any substance. It's all about show. They are all about show.

Ivanka herself wrote, "Perception is more important than reality." And that really sums up this couple.

BERMAN: Well, Charlottesville.

WARD: Yes.

BERMAN: Charlottesville is a pivotal moment in the book, and in some ways, received the most attention, I think, since you have published this. After Charlottesville, Gary Cohn had a conversation with Ivanka Trump. Explain that.

WARD: Yes, so Gary Cohn was so upset by what the president had said about there being very fine people on both sides. You know, his grandfather was a Jewish immigrant. He couldn't believe it. He was on his way to resign.

He dropped in on Jared and Ivanka. And to his astonishment, because Ivanka had, after all, tweeted that she would not condone neo-Nazism. Ivanka sort of said, "Well, I don't understand what the -- what the problem is." And then, shockingly, she says, "My father didn't say that." Whereas Gary Cohn, who had actually been with Trump, sort of trying to salvage the whole thing, explained to Ivanka that, in fact, her father had very deliberately said what he said. It wasn't a slip of the tongue; it was deliberate.