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Attorney General William Barr to Testify before Congress; Reporting Indicates President Trump Ordered Immigration Officials to Ignore Judges regarding Migrants Appling for Asylum; Soon: Attorney General to Testify Before Congress; Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL) is Interviewed About Trump's Push to Reinstate Family Separations. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 09, 2019 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: -- Bill Barr will testify soon, and much of all of this could come up today, Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's absolutely right, Alisyn, such a big moment for the attorney general today. Right behind me this desk here is where he will be sitting where he no doubt will be facing so many tough questions. This is actually an appropriations committee hearing room, this is a previously scheduled committee hearing where he was slated to testify about Department of Justices' budget of all things, but this comes right smack dab in the middle of this very tough and fierce battle between Capitol Hill and himself over the battle for information over the Mueller report. Democrats going to this hearing today have made it very clear that they not only want the full unredacted report, but they also want the underlying evidence. And they've made clear that they are going to make this essentially a focal point of their questioning today.

House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey according to her prepared remarks, she will call Barr's handling of Mueller's report unacceptable, saying it seems to cherry pick to draw the most favorable conclusion possible for the president.

And of course, many other Democrats making it clear that they are also going to bring up and address reports of discrepancies between what the Mueller team concluded, what Bill Barr concluded, lots to get in here today. John and Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Sunlen, thank you very much. We will be watching very closely. As you said, the sexiest Appropriations Committee hearing ever.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Ever. Ever.

CAMEROTA: Yes. All right, meanwhile, let's bring in Jeffrey Toobin, former federal prosecutor and CNN chief legal analyst, Alex Burns, "New York Times" national political correspondent and CNN political analyst, and M.J. Lee, CNN political correspondent. OK, Counselor, Bill Barr, if you were in Congress today, if you were one of the lawmakers on the very sexy appropriations committee, what is your first question to him? JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Did Robert Mueller ask you

to decide whether the president committed obstruction of justice? And on what basis do you conclude that there was no obstruction of justice since he did the investigation and you didn't?

BERMAN: I think that's such a crucial question here.

TOOBIN: Well, thank you, John Berman.

BERMAN: And also one that I think at least the first part that we should be able to get an answer to today. I think it will be harder for him to dodge a very specific yes or no question, did Mueller ask you to reach a conclusion?

TOOBIN: He's going to duck questions about the report itself.

BERMAN: Right.

TOOBIN: But this is about the letter he's already written and in the past, the March 24th letter, so I think it will be harder to duck. But the ability to duck questions is such an accomplished art in Washington.

BERMAN: It is. But I do want to say the significance of saying no, if he says no, Mueller did not ask me to do this, why would that be significant?

TOOBIN: Because it would suggest or even prove that the attorney general went out of his way to exculpate, to help, to support the president in this situation where he didn't have to do that.

CAMEROTA: None of this is what Bill Barr signed up for when he thought he was going to talk about the budget at the Appropriations Committee weeks ago when he agreed to this schedule, and now given everything that's happens at DHS, et cetera, so much can come up today.

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: But in a larger sense that's exactly what Bill Barr signed up for, right? Maybe not this exact hearing, this exact subject, but he kind of knew what he was walking into when he took this job.

And to Jeffrey's point, I think if the Democrats are clever, and in Congressional hearings many times they are not, and that's a bipartisan issue, they will also think of ways to sort of stack up a bunch of evasive or nonresponsive answers, right? What we've seen when administration officials or Trump associates or people like James Comey have gone before the House or the Senate in the past, is that as a political matter the spectacle of somebody who clearly knows a lot simply refusing to answer questions can be sort of a damaging spectacle on its own.

M.J. LEE, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And in terms of the political theater that we are going to see later today, Democrats are going to use this as the stage to put forth and make clear what it is they want so that if in the near future they do not get exactly what they want, they can make clear that they are not satisfied. And in terms of the Mueller report it is that they want to see a fully unredacted, unrevised report. And we have no idea if they are going to get that, but I think it is going to be an important moment today for Democrats to go out and say we want nothing more than the full Mueller report.

TOOBIN: Can I just put in a request for a deeply nerdy question that is plaguing me, which is that we all know the Mueller report is like 400 pages, give or take. Is that single spaced or double spaced?

BERMAN: There you go.

TOOBIN: Can we get an answer to that question? I want to know.

BERMAN: What about the spacing after the period, which is the thing the kids care about today more than anything.

CAMEROTA: I say two.

BERMAN: All right, Jeffrey, thank you for that. We're going to talk to Preet Bharara who I think some more important questions about that in just a second.

[08:05:00] So I want to move on to the immigration issue if I can, and the really stunning reporting overnight by Jake Tapper and others, which has found that the president was asking border agents to break the law. He went to California last week and said to border agents don't listen to the judges. No matter what the judges say, you do what I'm telling you to do. That's on top of reporting that Jake and others had that the president just wants to separate families at the border here. And that's on top of reporting that the president ordered the closure of the border at El Paso last week and basically his administration said, no, no, no, don't do this. There is a lot going on, Jeffrey.

TOOBIN: There is a lot going on, and I think it's important to try to parse out the legalities of it. The president has the legal right to close the border, I think. He has the legal right to separate families. Now, that's putting aside whether it's a good, appropriate, or moral idea.

CAMEROTA: I thought there were court challenges about whether or not you can separate families.

TOOBIN: My understanding is that he can do it, he just can't -- he can't do it forever.

CAMEROTA: Do it indefinitely. OK.

TOOBIN: But what he can't do is tell asylum seekers you have to do it in Mexico, you can't do it in this country. And that, that's against the law, and that the courts have held several times. But the question of is the president is asking people, asking his subordinates to break the law, it's an abuse of power. I don't think it's a crime, but it is certainly an abuse of power. CAMEROTA: But, telling your border agents, just to be clear, telling

your border agents ignore the judges, tell the judges we're full, sorry, we can't let any more people in, that's not telling them to break the law?

TOOBIN: Well, it's telling them to break the law. I don't know that it is a criminal violation by the president. I think one of the things the house Judiciary Committee is looking at now are issues about abuse of power that are separate and distinct from criminal offenses.

CAMEROTA: Understood. But it's telling them to break the law.

ROBERTS: Correct.

BERMAN: One of the notable things that has happened in the last 24 hours amidst this reporting is that Republican senators are starting to push back to a certain extent. Chuck Grassley did an interview with the "Washington Post" and was giving quotes on to the "New York Times" here that are really strange and unusual for Republicans on Capitol Hill. He was asked what is Stephen Miller, who is now taking over immigration at the White House, what has he accomplished? He told the "Post," "I think it would be hard to demonstrate he has accomplished anything for the president. It's pretty hard to elaborate on it when there hasn't been any accomplishments." M.J., so Republican senators are sort of beginning to say this is going too far.

LEE: Yes, and really sounding the alarm in an unusual way, as you put it. I think what we are seeing over the last couple of days is the full transformation of President Trump to candidate Trump. He is looking ahead at 2020, he wants a big win, and he is looking back at 2016 to sort of remind himself of the topics and the issues that he felt like worked really well for him and worked from his core supporters.

And when he looks back on 2016, the issue that he's going to think about the most clearly is that he was a hardliner on immigration and that he wanted to be tough on border security. I think what has been stunning in all of our reporting over the last 24-48 hours is at how many points in the discussions that the president had with some of his top officials about the issue of closing the border or reinstating the family separation policy is how many officials try to tell him in so many ways this is either not possible, not legally advisable, or simply reckless, and his reaction simply was, I do not care. I think you couple that with what happened with the president lurching back and forth over the last couple years on repealing Obamacare, and I think you get a picture of a candidate Trump who is not going to be open to advice or political advice or counsel from anyone around him.

BURNS: I think that's dead on. And I think on top of that you're seeing a picture of somebody who feels really kind of hemmed in by his 2016 campaign promises. That this is a guy who is looking back at the things he said he would do, his advisers have said very consistently he wants to run on a theme of promises made, promises kept. He has clearly not overhauled the immigration system as he said he would. He has clearly not repealed Obamacare. And a more three-dimensional politician might say at this point that I'll get into some new spaces, and I'll show voters a side of me or an agenda that they haven't seen yet because elections are also about the future.

But this is a president who is focused on the past, his past campaign. What he's not focused on and what Republican senators are focused on is the damage that this message did to them in the midterm elections, that virtually every Republican analysis of why they lost the House, why they suffered so badly across the country involved the president sort of grabbing the steering wheel at the last second and turning the whole party into an anti-immigrant, anti-migrant caravan alarmism party, as opposed to running on the economy, which is what his advisers have said he would do in 2020.

TOOBIN: And as we think about the political implications of this, which are very important, I hope we also remember that these are actual human beings at the border, and these are children who, according to the president's apparent new policy are going to now be ripped away from their parents again.

[08:10:13] And more are going to be forced to return to danger and perhaps death in their countries where they came from. So the politics are important, but these are actual people, too, and I think that's important.

CAMEROTA: If he does this, we will have our cameras there, and we will report again on the little kids who can't speak English who are crying hysterically, and the guards aren't communicating with them, and they watch their parents being taken away. We have those stories, and the idea that the president wants to go back to that, even just for politics sake, is very strange.

TOOBIN: Even Melania Trump, who is not usually a political player in this administration, spoke out against that policy.

BERMAN: We will see where she is now.

TOOBIN: We will.

BERMAN: And with Ivanka who in different writings has said it was a low point in the administration. They're quiet this week. They are quiet. It's notable.

Thank you, one and all.

So what will Attorney General William Barr reveal today about the Mueller report? What should he be asked? We're going to speak to a damn good lawyer coming up, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, we have some pictures I think we want to show you right now of the hearing room where Attorney General will testify.

CAMEROTA: This is going to be exciting. [08:15:00]

CAMEROTA: That is exciting. Whoa. Wait a minute. Is that water?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: That water bottle is waiting. Soon that water will be drunk.

CAMEROTA: Hold on a second. I feel like that's a half-drunk water bottle right there. Who is that?

BERMAN: It's not William Barr. But soon, William Barr and apparently Lee Loftus, the assistant attorney general --

CAMEROTA: He needs new water.

BERMAN: -- they will be there testifying before the House Appropriations Committee. This is the first time that William Barr will testify since the Mueller report was given to him and the first time since he wrote his four-page summary and notably the first time since people on the Mueller team are saying that they don't necessarily approve of how Barr portrayed their work.

Joining us now to discuss this, Preet Bharara, 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."

I saw it on the charts.

PREET BHARARA, AUTHOR, "DOING JUSTICE": Yes, it came in at number four.

CAMEROTA: Congratulations.

BERMAN: Congratulations.

CAMEROTA: That's fantastic.

BHARARA: Thanks very much.

BERMAN: So, we had Jeffrey Toobin, a lesser lawyer, here a moment ago.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: And we were asking Toobin if he could ask the Attorney General one question or two questions what would be the first questions you would ask William Barr about the Mueller report if you could today?

BHARARA: Well, now I feel worried because I didn't see what Mr. Toobin had to say.

CAMEROTA: We will tell you what he said.

BHARARA: Maybe I will have a different answer. By the way, I'm still shell-shocked by that photograph of the water at the hearing.

I think the question on a lot of people's mind is because we don't have the report yet and obviously it would be nicer to have the report and ask intelligent, thoughtful, probing questions from the report. Based on your reading of the report, what did Bob Mueller intend for who should decide the question of obstruction? Was that what he said?

BERMAN: That's exactly what Jeffrey said.

BHARARA: See?

CAMEROTA: Great minds.

BHARARA: Brilliant minds.

BERMAN: Why is that so important to you?

BHARARA: Well, because, do you know what, Bob Mueller spent a lot of time, 22 months, with his team of folks looking at a lot of issues including the issue of obstruction and a lot of people expected him to make the decision, is it a crime, is it not a crime. It's a binary choice that people think prosecutors make.

He chose not to do that. I have been curious since the summary came out and since the report was delivered to the A.G. on the issue of whether or not Bob Mueller had language in the report saying, look, the stakes are high, the issue is fraught, there are reasons to think both ways about obstruction, I don't think it's for me to decide and, therefore, we're laying it all out and we would like the other co- equal branch of government, Congress, to take a look at it and do what it decides that it's appropriate to do and bypass the attorney general and the attorney general sort of ran in and took the ball as we've been talking about for a couple of weeks.

I'd like to know what Bob Mueller's intent was.

CAMEROTA: If there were not instructions to Attorney General Barr in there from Robert Mueller, then that means what? If he took the ball and ran with it?

BHARARA: Yes, and I think that's not a great look. Look, I understand why he did it and understand there was a vacuum in which I had to rush. I don't think it solves the problem for the president, I don't think it solves the problem for the country and I don't think it settles the question given that he did it on a fairly fast basis and given that he seemed to have been, you know, sort of predisposed to a particular position on it because he wrote that unsolicited memo to the Justice Department sometime earlier when he was a private citizen and had no idea what the evidence was.

So, he is not in the best position. I'm not denigrating his intelligent or legal ability in any way, although I might have a difference of opinion with him on how he views executive power, but he is not the best person in this position to make that call. The call should be made by someone else.

BERMAN: Do you expect he will be expansive in his answers today or do you think he will --

BHARARA: I do not. I do not expect ex pan since. I do expect that water to be drunk, but I don't expect expansiveness at this point.

Also it's a little bit difficult, right? He will have the ability to say -- to the extent he is asked questions about the report, whether you like it or not, he will be able to say we are in the process of declassifying things, redacting things, removing grand jury material I really can't address that question and he will probably get away with it.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about your book.

BHARARA: Please?

CAMEROTA: Doing justice.

BERMAN: Number four.

CAMEROTA: But after this.

BHARARA: Actually, number five.

CAMEROTA: After this, it will shoot up the charts.

BHARARA: Yes, that's why I'm here.

CAMEROTA: Here is one excerpt I thought was really interesting and I want to read. It seems preferred these days to demonize one's opponents rather than engage them, to bludgeon critics rather than win them over. There is a creeping contempt for truth, expertise and the concept of justice seems turned on its head holding different meaning on whether you are a political adversary or ally.

Obviously, we deal with this every day. I mean, we deal with it every day. The guests come on and they see everything from a partisan lens. It's no more about numbers. It's no more about facts, it's just through the partisan lens.

And I don't know if you give a prescription for how to stop that.

BHARARA: Well, I think you have to be thoughtful.

Look, I try really hard. I say things that upset folks who want Trump gone or who want charges to be brought.

[08:20:03] You know, there are all sorts of people who are perfectly prepared to be in love with Bob Mueller when they thought he was going to make a charge of conspiracy. Now he did not and a lot of those same people think there's something wrong with him because they're focusing their attention on the outcome, on the result.

Part of the reason the book is called "Doing Justice" is to signify that, you know, justice and fairness, it's a process. It's not about the result. It can't be the case that if you like someone you don't want them to be charged with a crime and if you don't like someone politically, then you want them to be charged with a crime. So, lock him up or lock her up wherever it comes from I think is wrong and undermines faith in the rule of law and I think is a problem.

BERMAN: You also talk about something not particularly in vogue these days, which is humility and human fallibility. You say every element of the law is dependent on the fateful choices of unpredictable and imperfect human beings from the cops to the lawyers to the judges to the cooperators, it is the human factor that makes the attempt to deliver justice uncertain.

BHARARA: Yes, people forget that, you know, the law is not robotically applied. There are no algorithms. The judge is a person. The defendant is a person. The defense lawyer is a person.

You know, reporters are people. You folks in particular are very human.

BERMAN: You've gone too far there.

BHARARA: I'm sitting here looking at both of you.

And, you forget, you know, most of the book is about cases and stories that I'm personally familiar with and I oversaw, but I do have a two or three-page section about Paul Manafort's trial where I talk about -- I'm mildly critical of the judge in that case, Judge Ellis in that case, who did a bunch much things that the prosecutors didn't like and made fun of the prosecutors and was a bit obnoxious to the prosecutors and on one or two occasions in front of the jury and he made a mistake and he said something that I actually give him credit for. He said, you know, this robe doesn't make me anything other than a human being and a person.

And so, I think if you think about justice and you think about fairness in the workplace, in your school, in your community, in your church, in the justice system, they will do a better job of getting the fairness -- just remembering that people have flaws, people have peccadilloes, people have biases.

You yourself might have a bias, there are a lot of stories about making sure you don't let the bias that you might have, whether it's known or not known, color your decision-making.

CAMEROTA: One last thing that we want to read. This is about the kind of discourse, I guess, that you're hoping for. You say you can't call your adversary a low IQ person, you can't argue the prosecution is political and you can't make sweeping biased statements. Are you directing that at anyone in particular?

BHARARA: I don't know who it might be referring to.

Look, it is very common and very sort of en vogue for decades now, maybe hundreds of years, to make fun of lawyers and lawyers deserve a lot of the contempt that they get. But the one thing that I think we should be celebrating about lawyers and trials and courtrooms is unlike society these days and the public square where people sort of hide among their own kind, they don't engage people who disagree with them, they follow the people who agree with them on Twitter, they watch the television shows that reinforce their preconceptions about things and they don't have arguments with people and when they have them they don't have them respectively.

In a court of law, you can't do any of that. And the job of a trial lawyer, particularly prosecutor or defense lawyer, is you have to listen to the other side and you have to engage them and you have to meet their arguments with reason and logic and facts. If we had more of that, if you got to have more of that on this show and other shows, I think we would be in a better place.

BERMAN: And Judge Amy Berman Jackson made that point basically, this is still a place where facts matter.

BHARARA: Yes.

BERMAN: A courtroom is still a place where facts matter.

BHARARA: Yes, we need more of that.

BERMAN: All right, Preet. "Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment and the Rule of Law," number four and climbing on the best seller list -- thanks so much for being here.

BHARARA: Thanks for having me.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you here.

BHARARA: Thanks, folks.

CAMEROTA: All right. President Trump is purging top officials in his homeland security team. What do lawmakers think of the shakeup? We ask a Democratic congresswoman, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:27:46] CAMEROTA: CNN has learned that President Trump is pushing in recent weeks to reinstate his controversial family separation policy at the border, and even forcing some to choose between him and the law.

The president's purge of top homeland security officials is causing concern among Democrats and Republicans alike.

So, joining us now to talk about this and more, we have Democratic Congresswoman Cheri Bustos. She's the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Good morning, Congresswoman.

REP. CHERI BUSTOS (D-IL): Good morning, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: How concerned are you about Secretary Nielsen's departure and what it portends for that department?

BUSTOS: Well, the fact that she resigned over the fact that the president didn't think she was tough enough on yanking babies away from their mothers I think tells the whole story. There is utter chaos that's going on in the Department of Homeland Security and, you know, just all kinds of chaos at every turn from the resignations to -- who knows what is going to happen next?

CAMEROTA: What happens if the president gets his wish and brings back the family separation policy?

BUSTOS: Well, look at the damage it's already done to literally thousands of children, now we are in the process of figuring out where these children are, trying to figure out apparently over the next two years how they're even going to be reunited with their families. And anybody who has had a child, who has grandchildren knows that the fact that just taking a child away from his or her mother and father, there's damage that's being done just by that fact, let alone that they are with strangers, they don't know where their parents are.

It's just really this whole thing is just so -- I'm going to use the word un-American. This is not who we are as a nation. I will acknowledge and I think it is important to say let's get to the root of the problem of why families are fleeing rape and murders and gang violence and having to leave their home country to find a better life. I wish that the narrative would switch to solving that problem as to always focusing on the president's tweet of the day and outrage of the day.

CAMEROTA: I want to talk about what the strategy of Democrats is for 2020, including, of course, the DCCC which you head.

So, is it true that you are going to be focused or at least have a concentration in what was recently the ruby red state of Texas, and what makes you think that that's a good place for Democrats?

END