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White House Doesn't Respond to Congressional Requests for Documents; White House May Claim Executive Privilege to Redact Mueller Report; President Trump Continues Twitter Feud with Kellyanne Conway's Husband George Conway. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 20, 2019 - 8:00   ET

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


[08:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Sources tell CNN that the White House expects to see the Mueller report before Congress, perhaps with a plan to scrub it down with executive privilege, so they may get a lot less than they want in that process as well. And this is all in focus because the special counsel's office just dropped what could be a huge clue, a clue bomb, if you will. In a new legal filing, Robert Mueller's lawyer said they face a press of work this week. So could that press be the actual report this week? Even if it is, there are signs we might never actually get to see it.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: New this morning, another prominent Republican ready to publicly call out President Trump after he again attacked the late Senator John McCain, saying he never was and never will be a fan. Senator Johnny Isakson, chairman of the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee, telling A.B. Stoddard in an exclusive interview that he plans to take to the Senate floor today, going on to tell A.B., "I just want to lay it on the line that the company 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."

BERMAN: Want to bring in Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for the "New York Times" and a CNN political analyst. Maggie, you always bring something which seems to be in juxtaposition to what the White House is offering Congress. The White House seems to be telling Congress, you get nothing. Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings says they haven't seen a single piece of paper yet in the face of all those documented information requests. Is this a concerted White House strategy, stonewalling?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It is. And I think, John, we have talked repeatedly on this show over the last two-to-four years about how Donald Trump will try to test the limits of any scenario, any institution for as long as possible. And so this is what they are going to try in the White House and the White House counsel's office for as long as possible. They're going to be unresponsive.

There will be some things that I think they will answer, so it cannot be they're completely stonewalling, they're completely unresponsive. I think there will be discreet issues where they will respond, but in general, things that are hotter issues, things that are potentially more troublesome, I think you are going to see delay, delay, delay. I think similarly, you are going to see the White House have a similar approach once the Mueller report is in the Justice Department. I think they are trying to exert executive privilege, and I expect that will take them a long time.

BERMAN: I think that's exactly right. And that's why I think this is a very important issue. This morning all of a sudden, in light of what Chairman Cummings said, they haven't seen a piece of paper, this seems to be a two-fold strategy, one with Congress and one with Mueller. CNN reporting the other night that executive privilege is something the White House expects to be able to exert over maybe much of the Mueller report. They will push this.

HABERMAN: That's right. Listen, Donald Trump tends to operate with what's in front of him, and he does what he has to do to survive very short increments of time. And he is looking at a number of short increments of time in the lead up to his reelection bid. And I think that is how they're going to play this. He is going to try to delay as long as possible to try to use these investigations to his favor, to suggest that there is -- we have seen him say "witch hunt" over and over again. But I think you are going to see him press that point repeatedly while not responding to what Oversight members are asking for.

BERMAN: Do you think they see any risk in delaying to the point, well, where you make it an issue that comes up or news breaks during the heat of the campaign rather than spring of 2019?

HABERMAN: I think they're certainly aware of that risk, but they tend to take it. I think there's two issues there. One is they tend to take the short-term view in general. Number two, it's not clear to me that everybody has visibility into what the possible risks are, right? They might not know all of the information. So it's harder to make that assessment when you are going on limited knowledge. I think they are operating based on what's in front of them, and what's in front of them, they think they can buy some time.

BERMAN: Just a dose of reality for me and the American people, Maggie, based on all this reporting this morning and what you know, if you are expecting to get actual revelations and information, if they exist in either the Mueller report or the documents, how long do you think we need to be willing to wait?

HABERMAN: To be clear, I gave up a long time ago trying to speculate on what is going to be in the Mueller report.

BERMAN: I'm not saying --

HABERMAN: No, no, no. I just want to lay that out very clearly. I know you are not saying it. But I just think to be clear to the American people and to you, I think that we have no idea what could be in there. It could be not particularly revelatory, given all of the real time reporting that's taken place, or it could have a lot in there that we just do not have visibility into. And so we will see. It depends on how long it's going to be. It depends on how detailed it is going to be. So we don't know. I think there could be a lot of revelations in there. But to your point and your question, when the American public, if the American public ever gets to see that is right now an open question.

[08:05:01] BERMAN: I want to ask you, yesterday, we heard once again from the president on late Senator John McCain, who I remind people, passed away in August. And we talked to you a lot during that time, and it was clear the president was uncomfortable with how McCain's passing was received. In some ways he thought it was receiving too much attention and McCain was being treated with too many laudatory phrases and what not. The president said other things yesterday. Johnny Isakson, who is not often a contentious or a showboat Senator for from Georgia, we learned intends to make a speech on the Senate floor today. And the A.B. Stoddard writes that Isakson is really upset with what the president has said about John McCain and intends to make a statement about it. Do you think this will be a lone wolf thing? Do you think that other Republicans feel the same way, and even if they do, are willing to do something about it?

HABERMAN: I think other Republicans have been cringing at the things that President Trump says about John McCain for very a long time. But I think it's really worth remembering that a key moment in the 2016 presidential race was when Donald Trump made his comment on a stage in Iowa with Frank Luntz about how he liked heroes who weren't captured or shot down or whatever that comment was. And he paid no price because John McCain was not a favorite of base Republican voters at that point.

And so I think that you have senators who are more afraid that it will cost them in their own states if they speak out against this, they don't know how it will play out. My guess is, and again, we don't know. Maybe this will be the start of something else. But in the past, people who have spoken out against the president on these kinds of things, these have been one-offs. And there's no reason to think this won't be the same thing just based on the silence over the last two day with the president.

BERMAN: Maggie Haberman, always great to speak to you, thanks so much for coming on. Erica?

HILL: The Twitter feud between President Trump and Kellyanne Conway's husband is like here to stay. The president just moments ago calling Mr. Conway a, quote, "stone cold loser and husband from hell." George Conway spoke out yesterday in a new interview with the "Washington Post." Joining me now, CNN political analyst Josh Dawsey. He's the White House reporter for the "Washington Post" who spoke with George Conway.

And you know what's fascinating is in the tweet that the president put out just before the top of the hour, he actually hits on a couple different threads in your reporting here. This idea that George Conway is somehow jealous of his wife Kellyanne Conway, and also the president one again going to lengths to try to make the case that he doesn't know George Conway. And yet, George Conway, himself, actually gave you some documentation and a timeline of their relationship. JOSH DAWSEY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. The president does know

George Conway. He has known him for more than a decade. To be clear, the two were never close personal friends by any stretch of the imagination, but they consulted on legal matters, on real estate matters in New York, on hiring decisions. The president was going to appoint him to a senior DOJ job. He obviously was around a good bit with his wife who was campaign manager and obviously now holds a prominent position in the administration. So the argument that he doesn't know George Conway was just not true.

Now, what was interesting today was he calls the spouse of one of your top aides a total loser and a husband from hell. The president clearly wants to ratchet up his public feud. Yesterday he called him loser, it dominated obviously a good bit of the news yesterday, and the president obviously does not seem to be winning as a strategy here. So the second day gets sharper and a more vociferous attack. And we'll be curious to see what George has to say today.

HILL: I'm interested to see his response. I know the control room is watching in case it comes up while we are talking, we can analyze it in real time. The president obviously is not going to give up on this. But it was very clear in your interview, too, in you piece, that George Conway isn't either. He says last year, in speaking with the "Washington Post" and Ben Terris, he said this is sort of my outlet. Now he's saying, he is tweeting, and he does this, the puts it out there because it keeps him from screaming at his wife.

DAWSEY: Right. George Conway described his Twitter feed to me as a bit of stress release, saying he gets tired of the mendacity and the incompetence, in his words, and they way he gets it out there is via Twitter. Obviously, he has procured hundreds of thousands of followers and he seems to also like the spotlight of having his views out there for world to see.

You have to remember, George Conway was a key player even back in the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair. You go back and read. And he has been a provocateur for 20 years. George Conway, he's lesser known than his wife to be sure, but in conservative circles has been a prominent player for a long time. And now he is probably at the apex of his fame talking about the president and writing prominently and being in the middle of it all.

HILL: He is certainly getting a lot of attention. Just the number of Twitter followers has increased exponentially even since that feature on the Conways as a couple back in August in the "Post." This idea of George Conway being jealous, you have a nugget in your piece too about Kellyanne Conway talking about this?

DAWSEY: Right. Well, Kellyanne Conway at a recent part at the British embassy espoused that view to a number of prominent journalists and folks in the room, it was a party for members of Congress.

[08:10:05] And what she said both she thinks that and the president thinks he is jealous. I asked George about that yesterday when we spoke. And George said that he wasn't jealous of her. But then he also later said in the interview I got her to where she was, so there's that. And that comment was taken by folks as maybe a bit of a mixed sign.

HILL: Did you get the sense from him that his increased -- his increase in the number of tweets and perhaps his increased notoriety on that front is leading to any friction between the two of them?

DAWSEY: Well, you know, I don't want to comment on anyone's marriage. But Erica, I think it's pretty clear if have you someone who is a high, most prominent defender of the president, probably, versus one of the most prominent critics, you're living under the same roof, the president is clearly mad at you. Other White House colleagues, mad at you, I mean George, otherwise White House colleagues are looking at his tweets. The whole world is scrutinizing your marriage. It doesn't seem to be the petri dish of happiness. But again, I don't want to speak for anyone's marriage. It's just a very unusual scenario. It's really almost unparalleled.

Back in the 1970s, there was Martha Mitchell, the wife of a prominent Nixon appointee, who talked to the press a lot, was very critical. And Nixon later said he thought she was partially responsible for his demise. But other than that, we really haven't seen much like this. We have a spouse of a top aide is just a vociferous public and frequent critic of the president, and the president is weighing in in real time.

HILL: George Conway also weighing in in real time, because just as you were speaking, Josh, here's what he responded to the president. "You seemed to turn to prove my point. Good for you!" This is the list of shocking, not shocking. The hashtag he put on there, narcissistic personality disorder, of course he got some flak for that, too, for questioning the president's state. He is not a licensed psychologist. He is not a psychiatrist. He does not have a degree of any sort that we know of in mental health.

DAWSEY: Correct. George Conway, I think, is doing an armchair diagnosis when he says that. It's interesting, that's what George told me yesterday when the president attacked him and called him a total loser, says he is proving my point. Here he again is saying that, George said he shrugged off the attack from the president.

What George has been trying to do is get increasing numbers the of people to see the issue at hand his way, and honestly attention from the president probably draws him more attention. It's something we've seen the president do time and time again with books that are critical of him inside the White House, he attacks them, attacks the author, and then all of a sudden they're bestsellers. So for George, I'm imagining he is going to get a lot of hate mail from Trump supporters and probably a lot of nasty tweets, but I am guessing his Twitter following goes up again today, so we shall see.

HILL: We will watch for that. Always good to talk to you, Josh, thanks.

DAWSEY: Thank you so much.

BERMAN: He's at 414,000 and counting.

HILL: It is going up, because I think the other day it was 397. Back in August, it was something like 90.

BERMAN: There you go, George Conway.

Could the Trump team scrub the Mueller report and stonewall Congress until the clock runs out? In other words, if the White House is saying to the country, you get nothing when it comes to investigation, will it work? The legal strategy next.

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[08:17:07] BERMAN: The chair of the House Oversight Committee says that he has not received a single piece of paper from the White House despite a dozen document requests and requests for other information. So is this a winning strategy for the Trump administration?

Joining me is Jeffrey Toobin, former federal prosecutor and CNN's legal chief analyst and Ken Cuccinelli, former attorney general of Virginia and a CNN legal and political commentator. Ken I want to start with you, not a single piece of paper, zero. How was that for transparency?

KEN CUCCINELLI, CNN LEGAL AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, you know, I've advocated for a long time transparency as it relates to the Mueller investigation. But I don't know that this isn't a bad at least tactic for the White House. I think that the overkill that's happened already in the first two-and-a-half months of the Democrat's control of the House, for instance, Nadler's 81 subpoenas and so forth with no specification of what they're about, what's the legislative or oversight purpose.

BERMAN: They weren't subpoenas. I think there are 81 requests for information.

CUCCINELLI: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you are right. You're right. You're right.

BERMAN: To which a response but not a single piece of paper.

CUCCINELLI: But -- right. And I think that when this White House looks back on how things went for the last one even with Republicans in control of the House, in particular, they see reasons to undertake this strategy.

I really don't know how it will play with the public. I think that's hard to say, I think that measuring President Trump and the public reaction against President Obama and the public reaction for instance when they won't turn over fast and furious documents and things like that, is probably not an apples-to-apples type comparison. So we're going to see in the next couple of weeks how that unfolds in polling of all things.

BERMAN: Jeffrey, it may be a good tactic but it certainly it's not forthcoming. JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, it's not forthcoming at all. But, you know, I am long past predicting anything changes the polls. The polls haven't changed on Donald Trump for two years. And I don't think his responses to document respects -- requests from Congress are going to change that.

But, you know, it is worth noting that, you know, every White House receives document requests from the opposition party when it controls the House of Rep -- you know, the one body or another in Congress.

And historically, they always respond to at least something, even if it's just to say no but a compete stonewall is without precedent in my experience. But it's very much consistent with the transition that went on when Ty Cobb who left the White House who had a fairly cooperative attitude towards Mueller replaced by Emmet Flood who, you know, comes from Williams & Connolly, the law firm that is, you know, all about confrontation.

[08:20:02] I think, you know, the response for the next two years is going to be a gesture that you're not supposed to make on television. I mean that's just what they're going to do for about everything.

CUCCINELLI: I think you're going to see a bleed out of material over time. I don't disagree with Jeffrey's, you know, characterization of the response so far. But I think what I would expect to see is that they'll provide dribs and drabs and so forth. So there'll be something there. But they're going to continue to resist the overwhelming requests. And they're going to defend publicly by saying this is ridiculous, it's overkill. It's, you know, we'll hear witch hunt again. But this time it will be from Congress, right?

BERMAN: And Ken, did I hear it correctly, you seem to suggest --

CUCCINELLI: But I do think we'll see some material.

BERMAN: You seem to suggest that one of the reasons they may do that is because they learned their lesson that Democrats turned over too much in the past?

CUCCINELLI: No, no, no, no, no. I went -- remember the coverage that we all had and you all participated in of where the Republican House deciding how to respond to not getting answers, to not getting materials for long, long, long periods of time.

And that was not -- that happened under the Obama presidency. And there was no real legal result. The House did certain things like held the attorney general in contempt, for instance. But they didn't have the ability to do anything beyond that because it is the Department of Justice that goes and act on those contempt findings when they occur. That's traditionally the way that happens.

TOOBIN: No, but I think --

CUCCINELLI: -- when you find it against the Department of Justice.

TOOBIN: But I think Ken is making a very good point here, which is that there is nothing Congress can do if the White House does not produce these documents except make a fuss legally and politically. They cannot force the White House to surrender these documents. There is no mechanism in place --

CUCCINELLI: Right.

TOOBIN: -- even if they go to court. That was something that was determined. I mean the attitude of the Obama administration was very different. You know, Eric Holder and the Justice Department did turn over a lot of material about fast and furious and other investigations. They didn't turn over everything the House of Representatives wanted. And they found Holder in contempt. But, the result was the same there. You can not compel the administration to turn over documents.

BERMAN: Very quickly, Jeffrey, what's your expectation at this point? Again, we don't know what will be in the Mueller report. We don't know how much information is there. But what's your expectation about how much we will ever find out from it? Given the fact that we know Barr is going to give it a scrub down and then the White House will?

TOOBIN: You know, Berman, I just, you know, the three words you're never allowed to say on cable news, I don't know. I mean, you know, the discretion that Mueller has. I saw that Fareed our colleague and pal said, he expects a detailed report from Mueller. You know, if you read the regulation, Mueller could write five pages, he could write 500 pages. I mean --

CUCCINELLI: Yes.

TOOBIN: -- I just don't know, and if it's five pages, we'll probably see a lot of it. If it's 500, I expect the White House will fight it a lot. So I mean, I just -- I don't want to give the impression I know more than I do.

BERMAN: And Ken let me ask you this because yesterday --

CUCCINELLI: Well, and also one other -- can I add one comment to that?

BERMAN: Very quickly. Then I have to ask a very --

CUCCINELLI: Just one quick comment. Remember this whole thing essentially started as a counterintelligence effort with respect to the Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

So let's all step back from politics for a moment. It's easy to foresee things in the report if it's detailed. A lot more closer to the 500 page example Jeffrey gave that really should remain confidential. Sources and methods type of information. So let's not forget that could very well happen. And it wouldn't be surprising at all at least from special counsel to the attorney general. Then the attorney general makes his own report, which was that material I expect to be scrubbed.

BERMAN: All right, Ken Cuccinelli, Jeffrey Toobin, thank you both very much. Erica?

[08:24:37] HILL: Some new issues becoming top priorities for Democratic candidates, things like expanding the Supreme Court, doing a way with the Electoral College. Do voters care? We'll ask one of the candidates next.

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HILL: A new CNN poll of Democrats and Democratic leaning voters has Joe Biden on top followed by Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Beto O'Rourke now in fourth. The poll we should point out was before O'Rourke's 2020 announcement. The Democratic Party's new criteria for qualifying for the first debates, has at least one candidate changing his approach. The rules required candidates earn at least 1 percent in support of a series of public polls of Democratic voters or attract 65,000 individual donors.

Joining me now, 2020 Democratic candidate, former Maryland congressman, John Delaney, good to have you with us.

JOHN DELANEY (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nice to be here.

HILL: You were heavily focused on that or there.

DELANEY: Well, we want to make both of them. So we're, you know--

HILL: Working on a polling too.

DELANEY: That's right.

HILL: But at the same time, so you've put out the Washington Post actually likened this video that you put out the Delaney debate challenge. They likened it to an infomercial for Ginsu Knives. But you are trying to get to that magic number of 65,000 individual donors, and you have an interesting proposition. They donate a dollar, you donate to the charity. We reached out to the DNC for comment. They did not respond to our request for comment, what are you hearing from them about your strategy?

DELANEY: We haven't heard anything from the DNC about it. What we have heard from people is they really like it. People can donate a dollar to my campaign, become involved in my campaign and will donate $2 to one of 11 charities that they choose from.

[08:30:03] HILL: And that's all to get to you there to the big stage?

DELANEY: Well, to make sure that we meet, you know, both each of the criteria that's --