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Robert Mueller Submits His Report on Trump Campaign and Russia to Attorney General William Barr; Rep. Katie Hill (D) California is Interviewed about the Barr Summary of the Mueller Report; Analysts Examine Lingering Questions Surrounding Mueller Report. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 25, 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: -- presented to the American people his analysis of what Robert Mueller found in his nearly two- year investigation. Any quotes from the report that the Robert Mueller team found no evidence that anyone in the Trump campaign or connected to the Trump campaign coordinated with or conspired with the Russians.

Now, the Mueller report specifically and explicitly did not exonerate him on the issue of obstruction. Mueller chose not to tell us whether he thought the president committed criminal obstruction, though he laid out evidence, we are told, on both sides. The attorney general William Barr seized that vacuum to tell us he did not think the president obstructed justice.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The White House and President Trump's allies may be declaring victory, but the political fight may be just beginning. Democrats vow to subpoena the full Mueller report. They demand to see the evidence that the Mueller team gathered. And just moments ago on NEW DAY, President Trump's lawyer, Jay Sekulow told us if it were up to him, the public would not get to see the president's written answers to Mueller's questions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY SEKULOW, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: As a lawyer, you don't waive privileges, and you don't waive investigative detail absent either a court order or an agreement between the parties, and you'd have to weigh a lot of factors there in how that affects other presidencies. So I think it's not a simple just wave your hand and we release the document. I think that would be very inappropriate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, coming up in just minutes, we will speak live with the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders about what's happening in the White House today. Joining us now, though, is Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill. She is the vice chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. Good morning, congresswoman.

REP. KATIE HILL, (D) CALIFORNIA: Good morning. Thanks for having me. CAMEROTA: OK, so let's talk about what Democrats' next move is. So

now that the president has been exonerated on collusion, but has not been on obstruction, what do Democrats do?

HILL: I think everyone needs to kind of slow their roll on this whole thing, because right now we have evidence from Mueller, a direct quote from Mueller, that there was direct interference by the Russians in the election. We've known that for a while. But what we have seen since Trump took office is that even before hand he said that he was encouraging Russia to release the e-mails, to find those 30,000 e- mails. And now we have to say, OK, fine. He didn't directly coordinate with Russia moving forward. But now we have evidence over the last two years that the Mueller investigation was not covering that is highly, highly suspicious, both on the influence by foreign entities that have directly -- I don't know -- had part with our foreign policy, but also on so many other things, for example, on oversight. We're not even dealing with that. We're dealing with the security clearances issue. We're dealing with possibly giving nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia. We're dealing with the fact that we've got 30,000 -- I'm sorry, we've got thousands of children that haven't been reunited with their families, and so many issues that we've got to continue our investigations on. And it's just not related to the Mueller report.

CAMEROTA: So let's talk about that. You have your hands full. You've just spelled it out. These are really pressing issues for the country. So --

HILL: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: -- is it time to move on from the question of whether or not the president obstructed justice with this Russia investigation?

HILL: Frankly, each of our committees has been working on our own ends to figure out what we're doing in the meantime. We haven't been waiting on the Mueller report to do our jobs. And we're not going to. We're not going to wait on any of the further things. We've been working on health care. We've been working on reducing the cost of prescription drugs. Look at all of the major pieces of legislation that we've passed. We've passed HR-1. We've passed universal background checks.

And I think the media and many people in the American public have not focused on that because of the entire focus on the Mueller report. And it's time that we continue our focus on the issues that matter, but also continue our investigations of holding the president accountable for what he has done over the past two years since taking office.

CAMEROTA: Some of your Democratic colleagues seem to jump the gun and reach the conclusion that the president did collude with Russia or coordinate, before the Mueller report or the summary of the Mueller report came out. Here are a couple of examples just from our air.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF, (D-CA) CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion.

JERROLD NADLER, (D-NY) HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: It's become very clear that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in trying to subvert the election. The fact that Manafort and Trump Junior met with Russian agents who told them that they wanted to give them dirt on Hillary as part of the Russian government's attempt to help them, and that they said, fine. It's clear that the campaign colluded.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK, today, Rudy Giuliani, I should say yesterday, the president's lawyer, says that those Democrats need to apologize for those conclusions.

[08:05:02] HILL: I wouldn't say they need to apologize. I think that they're still stating things that happened in plain sight. The definition of collusion as a legal term is one that is completely nebulous. So I think that the suspicions that have been had by both Democrats in Congress but also people across the country are completely valid.

And so whether it was intentional or not, Trump and his associates were conducting themselves in a way that was highly, highly suspicious both during the election and after that made it so that this investigation needed to happen. And so -- and frankly, I think that we're kind of missing the fact that we have a four-page summary, written by the person that was handpicked by Donald Trump to write it in a way that it was as favorable as possible by him. So until we get the full report released, and until we get all of the information that surrounds that, I don't think we should be jumping to any conclusions.

CAMEROTA: Are you confident today that that report, the Mueller report, will be released fully and quickly?

HILL: I'm not convinced that it's going to be released quickly. I think that there are a number of forces working to keep that behind the scenes. But I think that we're going to be pushing in every direction to make sure that it is released. We had Congress vote unanimously, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to have it released, both Democrats and Republicans. So we need to continue working on our end and with public pressure to make sure that that's done.

CAMEROTA: It sounds like President Trump, based on what he said yesterday when he went out to the cameras after getting word that the summary was in, it sounds like he's looking for a little bit of political payback. He said I sure hope that somebody is looking into the other side, whatever that means. What do Democrats think? What form do they think that will take?

HILL: It's so hard to predict what Trump is talking about. I think that he's constantly looking for revenge on anything he thinks is a slight against him. Honestly, I can't even imagine what he's talking about. So we're just going to continue doing our jobs, and that includes oversight of the presidency as it stands, and this administration as it stands currently over the past two years, which we have to remember, the Mueller report and Mueller investigation did not at all cover. All it was covering was the interference in the election, which, by the way, there were 34 indictments around. And there was absolute definitive answer on the fact the Russians did influence this election. And I just think that we need to be continuing our work on the administration as it continues now, and at the same time working on the issues that we were elected on -- health care, raising incomes, making sure that we have a transparent and fully accountable government.

CAMEROTA: Congresswoman Katie Hill, we really appreciate you taking time to be on NEW DAY. Thank you.

HILL: Thank you so much, appreciate it.

BERMAN: Joining us now, Jeffrey Toobin, CNN chief legal analyst, and Carl Bernstein, investigative journalist and CNN political analyst. And friends, I do think that the ball has been moved forward ever so slightly this morning based on the massive revelations over the weekend. Jeffrey, we heard from Jay Sekulow, the president's lawyer, an hour although. Alisyn spoke to him. He's in no hurry. He said he would fight the release of the president's answers to the questions, those written answers that the Mueller team asked for. But we've also heard both Democratic and Republican members of Congress tell us they want to see the full Mueller report. They voted 420 to see the full thing. So there is a new pressure already set up this morning.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Absolutely, but let's not move ahead too quickly. The news of yesterday is enormous. We have almost -- you heard the president say over and over again, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. And you know what? Robert Mueller said the same thing, no collusion. That's very significant.

Now, what are the political implications of that, and how does the investigation proceed? It's going to proceed. And the report should be released. I think everybody agrees with that. Even Barr said that yesterday in the letter, that he's going to try to release as much as possible. But the fact that Robert Mueller, the independent investigator respected by everyone, said there was no collusion is enormously significant and a huge victory for the president.

CAMEROTA: Carl, your thoughts this morning?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think what Jeffrey says is right. The American system of justice has delivered to President Trump the greatest gift of his presidency in this finding of no collusion. And just as significant, almost, is the president's response, which is to say he's going to go after his perceived enemies, that he's going to use this as an occasion for retribution.

Meanwhile, we haven't seen the whole report. We need to see the whole report, every word of it that's possible. This is a sprawling investigation. [08:10:00] There was great question, apparently, about whether or not

Mr. Mueller thought there was indictable material involving obstruction of justice. Well, if that's the case, why would there have been an obstruction of justice. What would that obstruction have been about? Why did the president seek to impede and undermine this investigation at so many turns? And why has he and his associates lied at virtually every turn about so many things Russian? The answers may be in that report, and it's imperative to all Americans, and I do hear some Republicans starting to backpedal about whether or not they really want to see that whole report released. Well, it's essential that the report be released. Among other things, in terms of the Democrats, it might have them pull back a little bit from overreaching in some of their investigations.

BERMAN: David Cicilline, Democrat from Rhode Island I spoke to earlier in the show, seemed to indicate to me that he'd rather the new focus of the House Judiciary be on the obstruction issues and other issues and maybe, depending on what he sees in the report, back off the conspiracy and the coordination based on the Mueller findings there.

Jeffrey, let me just read the two -- we don't have a lot from the Mueller report itself. We have the Barr report. We have the Barr four pages of the Mueller report. But two direct quotes that we do have, number one, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." So you have that. No coordination or conspiracy, they didn't have the evidence to establish it, they say. And then the other direct quote is, "While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him." Those are the two direct quotes. Everything else is Barr's interpretation of it.

TOOBIN: That's true. And the issue of obstruction of justice is not resolved at all by the Barr report, the Barr letter from yesterday. And what is even less clear is what did Mueller conclude about obstruction of justice and why he didn't reach a conclusion himself. And did he mean to have the issue of obstruction of justice resolved by the House of Representatives in an impeachment proceeding, just as Richard Nixon was forced from office over the issue of obstruction of justice, just as Bill Clinton was impeached for obstruction of justice, or did Robert Mueller want Attorney General Barr to address the issue of obstruction of justice, which Barr did.

What's unclear from Barr's letter is whether he took it upon himself to simply say there was no obstruction of justice, or did Mueller ask him to resolve that? I think that's an important issue that needs to be addressed, and should be addressed if we get access to the Mueller report.

CAMEROTA: This is why we need to see the full report. There's just still too many questions, Carl. But are you surprised, as someone who has investigated this for so long, are you surprised that -- with the outcome, number one, and that Mueller was tasked with figuring out whether there was obstruction and he punted? BERNSTEIN: I think what I was surprised by, if anything, was the lack

of indictments. But we still have these other cases going to in other jurisdictions. And I think that part I was somewhat surprised by. I was surmising, I didn't know.

But I think we now need to look at the mosaic of what's going on in terms of the other investigations, in terms of the Mueller report, how they fit together. How the obstruction claim fits in with all this. We now have all the materials and all the actions ongoing at our command as citizens, as journalists, to get a much fuller picture in the coming weeks and few months as to how all this fits together. And if the president, and if the Republicans allow it, we might finally get a somewhat clear picture of what happened and why, even as the president is able to claim that, yes, he was exonerated, certainly in terms of legal, quote, collusion, a conspiracy to engage with a foreign power. He was found not to have done that rather definitively if we listen to the quotation that Mr. Barr gave us.

BERMAN: Jeffrey, we've had a lot of conversations on this set about the various questions about collusion. And I'm using that word carefully here because the word "collusion," lower case "c," covers a lot of things, not necessarily legal terminology here. The Trump Tower meeting, various contacts that people had, even sharing polling data. And one of the questions we always came to at the end of this discussion is, even if it did happen, did it break any law? And the answer was often, it's not clear.

TOOBIN: It was not clear. As has been pointed out many, many times, there is no such crime as collusion. There is -- Robert Mueller charged a conspiracy to defraud the United States --

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JEFFREY TOOBIN, CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST, CNN: ... such crime as collusion. There is -- Robert Mueller charged a conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the social media campaign organized by Russia -- that case will never go to trial because the people are in Russia and they're not coming back. But whether the Trump campaign, anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign assisted in committing that crime is resolved now.

JOHN BERMAN, ANCHOR, CNN: Yes, the answer is no according to Robert Mueller.

TOOBIN: And the answer is no, and I think it's important. We're not Fox News here. We're not a propaganda outlet. We are trying to tell the truth. And the fact that the President and his campaign were vindicated on that question is something that's important to say because it's very significant and it's a victory for the President. CARL BERNSTEIN, POLITICAL ANALYST, CNN: There was no conspiracy Mr.

Mueller found to work with the Russians by the President or those in his campaign. That is the finding. Now, let's see the whole picture.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, ANCHOR, CNN: Carl, Jeffrey, thank you both very much.

BERMAN: All right coming up, just minutes from now, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders joins us live.

CAMEROTA: Robert Mueller is done with his investigation, but how worried should the President be about other ongoing Federal investigations? Well, the former U.S. attorney for New York's Southern District is going to join us, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Attorney General William Barr's summary of the Special Counsel's report quotes Mueller on the most consequential headline. Here it is. "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," end quote.

But on the issue of obstruction of justice, Mueller stopped short of drawing any conclusions. Barr writes, quote, "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him," end quote.

Joining us now is Preet Bharara, he is the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the author of the new book "Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts On Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law."

BERMAN: Timely.

CAMEROTA: Preet, great to have you here.

PREET BHARARA, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY FOR SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Nice to be here.

CAMEROTA: Wasn't Robert Mueller tasked with figuring out whether there was obstruction of justice? Why did he punt on that one?

[08:20:02]

BHARARA: That's a good question. I mean, obviously, he was tasked with figuring out whether or not there was interference with the 2016 election, and if anybody in America, namely people on the Trump campaign, had something to do with that and clearly decided there was not enough evidence to show that was the case, along the way, there ended up being evidence of obstruction, obviously, the only reason that we had Bob Mueller in the first place was because he fired Jim Comey and that set off a firestorm and looked like obstruction and then he said to another anchor in a different network at one point that he had Russia on the mind when he fired Jim Comey. So we go back to your question -- I've been dodging your question for

20 seconds now. I think it looks like, we don't know without reading the whole report, that he found it to be a very tough and close question.

On the one, he probably saw there was a number of things that suggested there was obstructive intent and evidence of obstruction which is a very serious matter and maybe he found things on the other side of the coin that mitigated that and he decided, and this is speculation, that given the stakes, given how serious it was, given how close the question was, this maybe is not for the Special Counsel to decide. It's something for Congress to decide and Congress can hold the President accountable in a particular way.

So he sort of punted to Congress and then you had Bill Barr running on to the field grabbing the football and running in for a touchdown for Trump because it did not seem to me in the four-page letter that it was necessary for Bill Barr in the absence of Bob Mueller making a determination for Bill Barr who has already written a memo on the subject, who is a direct appointee of the President, not independent in the same way that Special Counsel Mueller was. He did not need to make that determination. So I think it a little bit puts a thumb on the scale for Congress, too.

BERMAN: Yes, I mean, Bill Barr says in this four-page memo that Mueller's actions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime. The question I've been asking this morning is, says who? Says William Barr.

As far as I can tell, only William Barr. We don't know that Robert Mueller asked him to weigh in like this.

The language of the sentence as you read it is very interesting. It doesn't say that Bob Mueller left it to me or Bob Mueller asked me to weigh in on it. It just says the fact that Bob Mueller left open the question leaves it to me to say something about it. In some ways, I understand why an Attorney General for a particular President wanting this to get -- wanting us to all get passed it decides to opine on it, but I don't think it's dispositive because he's not truly independent in the same way that the Special Counsel is, and he had weighed in on the issue before.

CAMEROTA: But what do people do with that? So the fact that there is all this ambiguity about obstruction, now what are we supposed to do?

BHARARA: We're supposed to get the report. I think it's important to see --

CAMEROTA: And when we get the report, then it's up to Congress, if there was obstruction that Congress sees, it's up to them?

BHARARA: Yes, I think so. That's how it's been in the past. I mean, it is a little interesting that Bob Mueller and his team have not shied away from charging crimes of obstruction or things that are like obstruction like lying to the FBI. In fact, many of the charges have been squarely within the ambit of an obstruction statute. So in this case, it's interesting.

And I think it is important to know how close a question it was, how much evidence there was of obstruction. Look, as a political matter, I'm not a political observer, I'm a former prosecutor, but it seems to me that the congressional folks need to see what the evidence of obstruction was, but given that there was no decision to make a charge or recommend a charge on that ground, it makes the job a little bit harder to make the case.

BERMAN: You know, William Barr and Rosenstein told us, that they base their findings on obstruction on the evidence, not on the fact that DOJ guidelines are that you can't prosecute a sitting President.

But we don't know whether Robert Mueller shared those same views. So it's not impossible that Robert Mueller perhaps based his view of -- I'm just going to provide the evidence here on the fact that he was following the DOJ guidelines and I can't prosecute even if I want to.

BHARARA: Yes, that may be so. My guess is, again, we're all guessing here. I've guessed wrong my fair number of times also that if Bob Mueller was making the determination based on the fact that a sitting president can't be indicted or prosecuted under a DOJ guideline, he probably would have said that in the report.

And if he said that in the report, it probably would have been in the letter, and the reason I say that is there was another line that's not helpful to the President that was in the Mueller report that is quoted, and you had it at the top of the segment where Bill Barr quotes Bob Mueller directly as saying, that on the obstruction matter, his investigation does not exonerate the President. That's something that's detrimental to the President.

Of course, Bill Barr thought necessary to put it in the letter because when it becomes known, he would look terrible for not including it, and I feel the same way about the question you asked.

CAMEROTA: Let's go right to your wheel house and that's the ongoing investigations. So there, we have a graphic. There are many -- the Roger Stone criminal trial, the hush money investigation, the inaugural finances, the Trump organization and whether or not they violated insurance practices, the Trump organization business loans. Do you think that things like this should be more concerning to President Trump or less than what he's just been through?

[08:25:00]

BHARARA: You know, it's hard to say. I mean, a lot of people made predictions that lots and lots of indictments were coming and lots and lots of charges were going to be filed against the President, against people around the President, against members of his family. So I don't know.

What I do know is notwithstanding what has gone on in the past that the career investigators and prosecutors not only in the office that I used to run for seven and a half years, but in other places, to look at the facts and look at the evidence. I mean, look, the one thing that we should be pleased about with

respect to Bob Mueller, and I know some people are dissatisfied because they don't like the President, but Bob Mueller's job was not to get anyone and not to sort of deliver anyone from the President nor is it SDNY's job. His job like everyone else is to look at the facts, look at the evidence and you sometimes bring a case, and as I recite in some detail in a chapter in the book which seems sort of relevant these days, in the chapter called "Walking Away," sometimes the right thing to do, even if it's frustrating and even if people will be mad at you is to walk away.

And sometimes it takes more courage to walk away from the case because the evidence isn't there criminally than it does to bring the case.

BERMAN: Can I ask one more parsing line here. We have a legal mind here to help us understand some of the legal language here and that's the one other quote that we saw from Bill Barr quoting Robert Mueller. "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

Now, there are a lot of people on the left who are looking at that and say, "Oh, did not establish." They had evidence, but not enough evidence to prosecute here. So maybe there is some evidence of collusion out there, they are hanging their hat on that. Is that the right way to interpret that sentence?

BHARARA: You know, I don't know. I guess the question is what is the quantum of evidence? Clearly, in the case of collusion and there's two sections, right, collusion and an obstruction. In the case of collusion, it didn't rise to the level of even being a difficult question for Bob Mueller and so now we know the contrast is interesting, right?

So on obstruction, there was sufficient evidence that he said it's a close enough question that I'm not going to resolve it, and on collusion, that wasn't the case. So I understand why people are wanting to focus on whether or not there was some amount of evidence. I'm not sure that's a useful exercise for people.

Congress should get the report. We should know what happened in connection with the election. We should know if there are some evidence of some people who exercised bad judgment, but for me and I'm not someone who is a fan of a lot of things that went on and the way in which the President openly and notoriously basically asked for help from the Russian government, please release the e-mails, that's terrible.

And I don't think it should have happened, but I think largely, people should move on from the collusion/conspiracy aspect.

CAMEROTA: As we've said, your publisher must be delighted with the timing of your book. It's called "Doing Justice." Tell us about it.

BHARARA: So it's a book about how in this time when people use phrases like "alternate" facts and "truth isn't truth," that sometimes it's useful to take a step back and figure out how we get to justice, truth, use of expertise, how to disagree with people respectfully and get to results that are fair and fair-minded.

And as I said a second ago, if you want to understand why it is that Bob Mueller didn't go as far as people wanted him to go and you want to understand the considerations that people take into account and SDNY or Special Counsel's Office or elsewhere, or you want to understand the best way to keep an open mind, not subject proceedings to bias whether you work in an office or you work in a hospital or in a school or somewhere else, there are a lot of stories in this book that I think will help you understand and make sense of what's going on, not only in the country and all of the things that we're talking about on the news, but also things that happen in people's ordinary lives as well.

BERMAN: Along those lines, you think Mueller is a hero here?

BHARARA: I do because, look, he didn't have to do this job. The guy was over 70 years old. He's a Vietnam vet for which he volunteered. He volunteered to go there. He served multiple times in the Justice Department in different roles. At one point after having had the highest job you can almost have in the Justice Department, he went back and became a homicide prosecutor in Washington, D.C. He didn't speak once for -- we don't even know -- I mean, I happen to know because I know the guy. Nobody knows what his voice sounds like.

And he kept his head down and knowing that whatever his decision was going to be, it's going to upset tens of millions of people and he did it anyway, so I think we should thank him. I think he's a hero and prosecutors are not saviors. They are going to deliver you from something that you want to be delivered from. That happens through a political process. They can sometimes hold people accountable if there's enough evidence but that's not the job.

BERMAN: Preet Bharara, the book is "Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law." Great to have you on.

BHARARA: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: Good reminders for all of us. Thanks Preet.

BHARARA: Thanks so much.

CAMEROTA: All right, the White House declaring victory after the Attorney General's summary of the Mueller report. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is going to join us live ahead on "New Day."

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