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Nielsen Forced to Resign as DHS Head; Mulvaney: Dems Will Never See Trump's Tax Returns; Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is Interviewed about Upcoming Barr Testimony. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 08, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Thank you to our international viewers for watching. For you, "CNN TALK" is next. For our U.S. viewers, the revolving door at the Trump White House continues to spin. NEW DAY continues right now.

[07:00:12] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: King Berman.

BERMAN: Yes.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nielsen did not resign willingly. She was under pressure to do so by Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Nielsen did everything to be the secretary Trump demanded. It is proven that you can't out-Trump Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have acting secretaries. Is Trump going to cycle them out if they're not willing to implement his policies?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything he's tried to do hasn't worked. He's extremely frustrated. He wants to change direction.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a real question as to whether the president's financial interests impact his decision-making.

JAY SEKULOW, ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: We should not be in a situation where private tax returns are used for political purposes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It raises the obvious question of is the president hiding something?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He has made it this far. It will come, heck or high water, before these are released.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

BERMAN: All right. Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY.

Unhinged and impossible. That's the president's mindset and what is behind the overnight cabinet shake-up, according to new CNN reporting. Homeland security chief Kirstjen Nielsen, the face of the president's hardline immigration push, she is out, pushed out by all accounts.

A senior administration official tells our Jake Tapper that Nielsen "believed the situation was becoming untenable, with the president becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and impossible requests."

Nielsen will be replaced, at least for now, by the current head of Customs and Border Protection.

CAMEROTA: Also new this morning, an escalation in the fight over President Trump's taxes. White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney vows the Democrats will never see the president's returns, though it's legal to ask for them. This will likely lead to a legal showdown.

So joining us now to talk about all this, we have Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent from Bloomberg News. We have David Cay Johnston, author of "It's Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration is Doing to America"; and Jeffrey Toobin, CNN chief legal analyst. Great to see all of you this morning.

OK, so let's start with Kirstjen Nielsen, Jeffrey. It seems that President Trump has long been frustrated. He had promised to solve the immigration problem as a candidate. That has not happened. In fact, asylum claims have spiked on his watch. This seems to be really frustrating him. I mean, Kirstjen Nielsen describes him as, quote, "unhinged," our reporting, according to a senior administration official.

But what did he expect from her? What could she have done differently?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: You know what? I don't know. And I think the problem is that, you know, the laws allow people to seek asylum in the United States across the border; and they're seeking it in great numbers.

But Kirstjen Nielsen, I think, is a great example of what happens when you go to work for Donald Trump. He is the great reputation killer. I mean, here's this woman who, you know, was a reasonably admired bureaucrat. And for the rest of her life -- for the rest of her life -- people will look at her and think, "Oh, that's the woman who put children in cages. That's the woman who broke up families across the border."

And you know what? They'll be right. Because she implemented that policy. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, sort of created it, but she implemented it. And, you know, she's going to get what she deserves.

BERMAN: The infamous statement was a tweet that she sent out on June 17, 2018, where she said, "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border, period." When the truth was, they did --

CAMEROTA: That's exactly what they were doing that summer.

BERMAN: -- have a policy about separating families at the border, period.

And Margaret, following up on Jeffrey's point there, it's interesting. She wrote a resignation letter. The president tweeted out her departure before she was able to send the resignation letter, and the resignation letter, like the letter from Secretary Mattis several months ago, does not thank the president for the opportunity to serve in his cabinet. Doesn't even mention the president of the United States. I think that tells us something about how she feels this departure went down.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, John, she goes into this meeting knowing that it could end, effectively, how it ended, although the details to be determined. But she goes into this meeting, all the reporting suggests, to try to kind of reset the way things have been going. The president wanted to ramp up and be more aggressive about, you know, border controls.

And the backdrop to all of this is that, in the last few weeks, the has president empowered Stephen Miller, who everybody knows as kind of a chief domestic adviser and speech writer for the president or the president's voice, has empowered Stephen Miller to increase his role, take more of a leadership role overseeing immigration policy.

And what we've seen in the weeks since then is the president removing his own ICE guy, Immigrations and Customs guy, pulling that nomination. Do you remember, mysteriously, where nobody knew what was going on for many hours. And now following up with this move on Kirstjen Nielsen.

[07:05:11] So the president really ramping up sort of the 2020 imperative to show his toughness on, you know, stopping the flow of undocumented immigrants to the border," the country's full," this kind of stuff. And that's the backdrop under which this confrontation yesterday took place.

CAMEROTA: David, it is so interesting to hear the president say, "Go home. Turn around." I mean, I don't have it with me right now. I don't have my fingers on it right now, but it was something to the effect of he said, "No more. Go away."

BERMAN: Country's full.

CAMEROTA: Country's full.

BERMAN: And these people asking for asylum are like ultimate fighters, UFC fighters, not babies. Not children, not families.

CAMEROTA: I mean, despite what the video suggests. He's saying no more room at the inn. You have been to Honduras several times. So share with us, what could be the answer here?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON, AUTHOR: Well, Donald is taking a problem and making it vastly worse.

Honduras is a criminalized society. Cab drivers and bus drivers get shot if they don't have some lempiras in their pockets to give over as ransom for their lives.

One of the local newspapers once ran a chart on the front page of which drug gang ran which part of the city.

And by saying he's going to close the border, the message that people get down there is, if you've got little children, who the gangs are going to turn into prostitutes or drug runners, leave now.

So Donald exacerbates a problem and then gets rid of his secretary, who isn't able to address the problem he created. This is classic Donald Trump.

BERMAN: She's not able to give him the answers he wants, because the law will not permit anyone to give him the exact answers he wants, which is to stop accepting asylum seekers. He doesn't want anyone else in the country. He says it's full.

And Jeffrey, we were talking before. This now, we will have an acting homeland security secretary, on top of an acting secretary of defense, on top of an acting secretary of the interior, on top of an acting ambassador to the United Nations, and then an acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. We call this the master thespian cabinet, acting.

CAMEROTA: Genius.

BERMAN: Thank you.

It's interesting. I mean, the president will not get or has not bothered to get some of his secretaries confirmed.

TOOBIN: Well, if you had a United States Senate that cared about its role instead of just a Republican Senate that was enabling the president of the United States in doing whatever he wanted, they'd be out of their minds angry.

The whole point of the confirmation role of the United States Senate is to have some check on the operations of the United -- of the cabinet departments. They have no check if no one is nominated to fill these roles. I mean, the whole point of having secretaries subject to the advice and consent of the Senate is so that the Senate can have a voice in how these cabinet departments are run. But they have no voice if no one is nominated for months or even years at a time.

CAMEROTA: Margaret, I want to move on to the president's taxes. Because yesterday the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, said it will never happen. Democrats will never get to see them. He says, "Oh, no, never, nor should they."

Keep in mind that this was an issue that was already litigated during the election. I'm not sure that his memory is as sound as some of our videotape where the president said, "Oh, yes, I would like to -- I plan to release them. I would like to release them." So it's also legal for the House Ways and Means Committee to ask for them. So now what? TALEV: Well, so the very short answer to the question is now we're

looking at a court battle. But the longer answer to this question is that the committee chair has the right to ask for them.

The administration seems to be saying that doesn't mean you have the right to get them. Even if he does have the right to get them, that doesn't mean he has the right to distribute them. So you're looking at a scenario where what if the Democrats got the tax returns but really only the community chairman did, couldn't share it with a lot of the members, couldn't share it with the press, couldn't make the disclosures public. That's one scenario.

The other scenario is a fight that goes potentially all the way to the Supreme court, where the president has had a couple of nominees that may or may not tip the balance. If he were to be re-elected to a second term, this very well might play out with a conclusion that, in theory, might yield the release of these returns. If he is not, it's not entirely likely that we'll never see his tax returns.

BERMAN: David Cay Johnston, it's great to have you here. Because you've got unique perspective on this, having seen more than any of us and really more than anyone in America of what does exist from the public returns, even the private returns. Why does the president care so much about this? What's he hiding? Why is he willing to stage this fight?

JOHNSTON: Well, because Donald Trump knows that his tax returns will take away the public image he has created. They will show he has far less wealth than he has told the public.

[07:10:09] He's already reduced his claims of wealth by almost 90 percent in his Office of Government Ethics filings. It's highly likely that the books and records, if they have not been destroyed, of his business, line up with his tax returns.

Remember, Donald Trump was tried twice for income tax fraud and lost both cases, which is recounted with links to court decisions in my book, "The Making of Donald Trump." He just makes stuff up.

The law here is very clear. It says that the IRS or the treasury secretary, technically, shall turn these over. Congress has been doing this for 80 years.

There's never been a case where they didn't turn it over. And it is not for public consumption. It is turned over to the chairman for the use of the committee in closed-door session. So this argument that Mick Mulvaney has put forward boils down to one thing. This is the first step toward a Trump dictatorship by asserting that the president is above the law and does not have to comply with the language "shall," which is mandatory.

TOOBIN: Can I ask a question? What is -- you said the president has been tried twice for income tax evasion? I'm not aware of that. What --

JOHNSTON: Yes. TOOBIN: What does this mean?

JOHNSTON: Yes. Please read my book, Jeff.

TOOBIN: Can you give me --

JOHNSTON: The state of New York and the city of New York -- sure. The state of New York and the city of New York both polled -- audited Donald Trump's 1984 tax return. That was his biggest year by far. His first casino opened and Trump Tower. Most of the units in it were sold that year. So he had an enormous income.

He filed a tax return showing a consulting business with no income but $600,000 plus of deductions. He had no receipts, no records, no checks of any kind. And his own witness, Jack Mitnick, who was his CPA and his tax lawyer for both he and his father, when asked under oath about the tax return, looked at it and said, "That's my signature. But neither I nor my firm prepared that tax return." That's as good a badge of fraud, Jeffrey, as you can imagine when you are a prosecutor.

CAMEROTA: And then what happened, David?

JOHNSTON: In one case, Donald was ordered to pay all the taxes, plus all the fines. In the other, because the only copy, the apparently filed copy was a federal copy, which is how, I think, Jack Mitnick's signature was put on it, the judge waived the fines out of an abundance of caution but excoriated Trump for claiming double taxation when he said this was a case of no taxation.

BERMAN: It's interesting. Because the tax returns now in question are for the last six years. It doesn't go back as far as this time period, David is talking about.

And Jeffrey, when we're talking about time periods, that might be the biggest weapon that the White House and the president has on his side now. They can drag this out.

TOOBIN: Well, and that's not just true for the tax returns. It's true for all the congressional investigations of White House documents.

When you think about how Congress works, it's not quick to try to find the president in contempt. You have to have a vote of the entire House. I mean, it takes time. Then you have to go to the district court. Then the court of appeals. Potentially even the Supreme court.

Here we are in April of 2019. This could easily go into 2020. And at that point, Congress starts to break down into pre-election frenzy. The odds that most of these legal fights get resolved one way or the other before the 2020 election, I think, are pretty low.

CAMEROTA: We have to go, but isn't it also possible that the head of the IRS will release the taxes to the Ways and Means Committee? Isn't it possible that it won't be a big legal brouhaha? TOOBIN: No, I don't. Because Mnuchin, the secretary of the Treasury,

who was the boss of the IRS, has said this will not happen. This is going to be run out of the White House, not out of the IRS.

BERMAN: Jeffrey, David, Margaret, thank you very much.

Attorney General William Barr, he has yet to release the redacted Mueller report. He is going to Capitol Hill tomorrow. What will happen when he faces questions before lawmakers? We will be joined by a Democratic Senator who will get a stab at that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:18:19] BERMAN: The redacted Mueller report could be made public any day now. The attorney general, William Barr, who will be the one to release it, will also be on Capitol Hill tomorrow and Wednesday -- interesting timing -- to testify. And of course, he'll face tough questions about all of that.

Joining us no is Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware. He is a member of the Judiciary and Appropriations Committee. Normally, we talk to you about matters before the Judiciary. But now it's the Appropriations Committee. You sit on that. William Barr will be up on Capitol Hill, talking about justice appropriations. I have to believe he might have some questions for him about the report.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): It's important we question Attorney General Barr about the report, about his timing, about the thoroughness of his redaction and about how soon he's going to release it to Congress.

Look, the reality is, if this is a 400-page report, including lots of tables and charts and additional classified annexes, to send us a four-page summary that just talks about the high level of conclusions is potentially misleading. So I think it's important in our oversight role that we press Attorney General Barr to release the full report to Congress.

BERMAN: The full report. And by that, you mean no redactions on anything, grand jury material, ongoing investigations, perhaps concerning intelligence issues, nothing?

COONS: Well, Congress handles classified material all the time. I think it's completely appropriate for the national security and counter-intelligence aspects of the report to be shared with the intelligence committees.

And in the past, we have previous examples where judges have directed the release of grand jury information in the interest of transparency.

What we don't know here -- and this will probably be Barr's fallback argument -- is how it might interfere with ongoing investigations. As you all know, there's continuing investigations that Mueller referred to the southern district and to other jurisdictions.

[07:20:08] So probably Barr's strongest argument on redaction is going to be, "I can't share this with you. There's an ongoing investigation."

BERMAN: So some words may be justifiable to redact.

COONS: Yes.

BERMAN: OK. Because some Democrats say, "We want to see the whole thing, no matter what. Every single word."

COONS: We do want the whole thing, every single word, but I recognize there are legal arguments and traditions that would say, "Here's the argument I'm making about ongoing investigation."

It's been clear from press reporting now that there are folks who are members of the Mueller team who felt that what Barr did was completely inappropriate, in that he didn't share summaries that they prepared, that they prepared for public release without any relevant grand jury information.

BERMAN: All right. We had a major shake-up in the cabinet overnight. The homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, pushed out, apparently involuntarily. We have a new acting secretary as soon as Wednesday. What's your view on all this?

COONS: First, it's striking how many of the secretaries of the largest departments are acting at this point. Kirstjen Nielsen will be known for implementing a cruel policy of forcibly separating parents and children rather than strengthening our border or strengthening our security as a country.

She had a background in cyber security. But I think that's not what she's going to be known for. And it, frankly, has to raise the question for anyone who's offered a cabinet opportunity with President Trump, whether their reputation will survive.

BERMAN: She, according to our sourcing, believes that the president is becoming unhinged on the issue of immigration and asking for impossible things.

COONS: Well, he's asking for the department to do things that violate the law. He's more and more pressing for actions at the border that don't respect our treaty obligations, our domestic statutes on how we treat people seeking asylum. She was very frustrated by that. Reporting of her last meeting with President Trump, she went in saying, you know, "Mr. President, here's the law. Here's the limit on what I can do."

He didn't accept those limitations, and she was fired as a result. If she wasn't extreme enough, it gives me real pause to think about who the president will be looking for to succeed her as secretary of homeland security.

BERMAN: In her resignation letter, she didn't thank the president. That's notable. But she did say that she's not getting any cooperation from Congress, that Congress did not help pass laws that might help on the border. Doesn't Congress need to address the issue surrounding asylum now? The numbers of people seeking asylum unquestionably have gone way up. Unquestionably --

COONS: Right.

BERMAN: -- systems in place can't process all the people seeking asylum now. Don't you have to do something legislatively?

COONS: As someone who worked hard to put together bipartisan bills last year, I'll say Congress has tried hard to find pathways to work with this administration that still respects our humanitarian commitments, our international legal commitments.

I do think there's a pathway here, but frankly, the very last bill that Senator McCain and I did was a bill that would have strengthened border enforcement and provided a pathway to staying here safely and securely for DREAMers and made some important changes in terms of personnel at the border.

A group of us have continued to negotiate and to talk regularly about it. But frankly, as long as Stephen Miller, who is a real hardliner on immigration, is advising the president, and that's who he's listening to, I think he's going to keep moving the goal posts, rather than working with us on a reasonable compromise.

I'll remind you, the president was willing to shut down large parts of the government for 35 days in what ended up being a fight, really, over the word "border wall" versus "border fence."

BERMAN: That's the wall. That's not even the asylum issue. He has threatened to shut down the border again last night, after saying he wouldn't do it.

I do want to ask you about a different subject. You are one of the most prominent supporters of former vice president Joe Biden. I think one of the people who wants to see him run for president more than anyone else. And you told me a few weeks ago that he told you he was running, you know --

COONS: All but in.

BERMAN: All but in. I imagine it's even more so today. How do you think he has handled, how would you assess he has handled and his not yet campaign staff has handled the women coming forward, saying that he has made them uncomfortable by the way that he has touched them?

COONS: Well, I think it was important for Joe to say directly to the American people directly that he gets that social standards have changed. He is someone who's been encouraging and engaged, who loves to connect with people.

I've never seen a better retail politician, someone who can, you know, whether it's a coffee shop, or union hall or fire hall, he really connects with people. But he said in a video released, I think, a week ago now that he understands that, although it was never his intention to make people uncomfortable, he may have on some occasions invaded people's personal space; and he will take a different approach going forward. I think that was appropriate, and I think he'll be able to move forward at this point.

BERMAN: So he did that. He released that video, and then he gave a speech. And during that speech, he joked about it, A, with the union leader he was with, and then with children. Let's just play that part.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And you guys can sit on the edge if you -- I don't want you to have to stand. But it's up to -- by the way, he gave me permission to touch him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So that was the second time he made a similar joke in that speech. Lucy Flores, who was one of the women who has come forward and said she was uncomfortable, by the way, that Joe Biden treated her, saying, "It's clear that Joe Biden hasn't reflected at all on how this inappropriate and unsolicited touching made women feel uncomfortable. To make light of something as serious as consent degrades the conversation women everywhere are courageously trying to have."

COONS: Well, I think what I'm excited about in a Joe Biden candidacy for the presidency is the way in which he will speak to the real challenges facing working Americans; whether or not, in speaking to a union rally, he was sufficiently serious or he demonstrated that it's top of his mind in the fact that every time he's, you know, hugging an adult male union leader or putting his arm around a child, he's still thinking about it, he's processing it. I think that was, frankly, progress.

And I frankly think, at the end of the day, what matters here is his record, his very real record of making progress on LGBT rights, on fighting climate change, on improving wages for working people, and on fighting for better infrastructure and apprenticeship programs.

There's a reason that America's labor unions, that the working families of this country are looking for a Joe Biden candidacy. And I frankly don't think those jokes at that particularly union event detracts from that at all.

BERMAN: Does it matter what Lucy Flores thinks and the women who are in the middle of this?

COONS: It matters what America's women think and what their view is of Joe Biden. I hope he'll get into the race so we get a broader measure of that. There are folks who, I think, are coming forward and speaking up about this, because they support other candidates, and there are folks who are coming forward out of a genuine sense of feeling disrespected or unappreciated. At the end of the day, the best way to measure this is to see how former vice president does on the campaign trail. And I'm eager to see him out there.

BERMAN: By the end of the month?

COONS: I don't have an exact date I can give you, but soon.

BERMAN: All right. Senator Chris Coons from Delaware. Thanks for being with us. I appreciate it.

This week, catch three CNN presidential town halls. First up, tomorrow night at 10 p.m., Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, followed by Governor Jay Inslee on Wednesday and former HUD secretary Julian Castro. That is on Thursday -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, John. How will Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen's sudden departure affect the policy now at the southern border? A former top ICE official shares his thoughts on this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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