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London Police Arrest Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange; Barr Raises Prospect of Spying on Trump Campaign; Bernie Sanders Rolls Out New 'Medicare for All' Plan. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 11, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[07:00:36] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. We do begin with breaking news for you, because London police have arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Here you can see him being dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy by British police. You can hear him shouting a little bit. But we don't know exactly what he's saying. We are told that Assange is now in a central London police station, and he could appear in court in the next hour or two, which of course, we will bring it to you live.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This is such a fascinating picture. An amazing picture to see. So much history here.

Julian Assange obviously a central figure in so much of the drama in the United States over the last eight or nine years. Of course, WikiLeaks, a central player in the release of the hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign. Part of the Russian attack on the U.S. election. WikiLeaks also posted classified military information on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Assange spent seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy avoiding extradition over a sexual assault case, but that case has been dropped.

I want to go now to CNN's Nina Dos Santos, live at the Ecuadoran embassy in London with all the breaking details of this dramatic morning -- Nina.

NINA DOS SANTOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, John.

Yes, Julian Assange was dragged out to the embassy, as you mentioned, and showed the video footage, which has since emerged online a couple of hours ago by members of the British Metropolitan Police.

The British police were seemingly invited into this very small embassy in west London at the invitation of the ambassador of Ecuador after Julian Assange's long-running asylum claim was finally brought to an end by the Ecuadorian government. His relationship with his host country had been becoming increasingly

strained over the last couple of years, especially, as you mentioned, with the revelation that his organization, WikiLeaks, referred to in that indictment that emerged over the summer as Organization One, appeared to allegedly have been implicated in the dissemination of that hacked material from the DNC servers.

And so the question of his potential involvement in the events that led up to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election, which he's always denied, by the way, has become increasingly uncomfortable for both the Ecuadorians but also for the British, as well, who have been spending millions of pounds trying to police this embassy, because of course, they've always made it clear that the moment he was to step out of the embassy, he would be arrested by British authorities.

The first charge that he would face, technically, would be a charge for having skipped bail when he entered this embassy. Skipping bail on the -- obviously, when he was wanted for questioning in Sweden and there was that extradition request there.

What we don't know at this point is whether or not there is an extradition request that it has been issued by the United States. What I can tell you that's significant is that we've just learned that the home secretary of the U.K. is likely to make a statement to the House of Commons in a couple of hours from now. That is highly unusual in these kind of cases.

And it's being viewed as potentially something that might have to do with an outstanding extradition request for the United States. I spoke to Assange's lawyers yesterday. They said that he always feared an extradition request and would have stepped out, had he had any assurance that there wasn't going to be one. But obviously, things did not end in the fashion that they had planned.

CAMEROTA: That is for sure. Nina Dos Santos, thank you very much. Please bring us any updates from the scene there.

Joining us now is Evan Perez. He's our CNN senior justice correspondent who's obviously been following this case for a long time. Jeffrey Toobin, CNN chief legal analyst; and Phil Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst.

Evan, why today? And what is Julian Assange charged with or do we not know that?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: We don't know yet what the charges that the United States has under seal. If you remember back in November, prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, you know, accidentally posted a document that revealed that there were existing charges against Julian Assange.

And so that's the -- that's all we know at this point. But we expect that the Justice Department is going to seek extradition. Obviously, Alisyn, you know -- you guys know that he's played a role and WikiLeaks has played a role in a lot of things, including diplomatic cables that were leaked back in 2010. Obviously, the 2016 election. There were charges filed against some

Russians, and at least one of those Russians was allegedly in touch with WikiLeaks, according to court documents that have been filed by the Mueller investigators.

[07:05:05] And of course, in 2017, there was the -- there was a release of some hacked CIA hacking tools. And so that, I think, the CIA hacking tools would be very, very important to this case forward. Because that investigation has been very, very, very active and that prosecutors believe that WikiLeaks played a role, not just as a publisher of information that they were getting.

In other words, being more than just a journalistic organization, they had become, essentially, a conspirator, trying to encourage people to steal stuff.

BERMAN: Let me read a statement that Mike Pompeo made when he was head of the CIA. He said, "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."

Now, keep that statement in mind when I read you the official statement from Russia this morning, the ministry of foreign affairs on this arrest, they say the hand of democracy squeezes the throat of freedom."

The throat of freedom here, the anatomy here, is Julian Assange's throat, according to Russia. I thought that was very significant that Russia is upset, Phil, about this man being taken into custody in London this morning.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: I mean, if you look at -- Let's put it in context for a moment, it's not only Julian Assange. It's not only the publication of those e-mails, including DNC e-mails. Going back to Helsinki, we have Vladimir Putin saying, "Yes, despite what President Trump says, of course we favored his election."

I think if you're looking at this from the Russian optic, you wanted Trump to be elected. Putin told us that. And now you have one of the people, one of the elements involved in supporting President Trump come to trial.

If I'm Trump, I'm looking at this saying, "Tis is a problem." If -- if Assange gets out there and starts talking about how they willingly released information pro-Trump during the campaign, coupled with what Vladimir Putin says, it's kind of embarrassing.

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, it is so fascinating to watch how this chapter has ended for the moment. I mean, to watch that, you know, colloquial perp walk, he's actually a perp carry here, and he's, you know, shouting something. We don't know what he's saying.

He is 47 years old, but he looks like his time in the embassy has -- he's aged in double time, basically. I mean, what do you think as you watch Julian Assange being hauled to justice by police there? JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the WikiLeaks case, as

far as the United States is concerned, has really raised very profound issues about press freedom and spying and what the difference is between the two.

You know, one of the difficulties that the government has always had with WikiLeaks is how to define it. Because, you know, what journalists do frequently is receive classified information from sources and then publish it.

In one view of what WikiLeaks has done, is that's it. He has received information that the government doesn't want published and put it out on the Internet.

How do you define what he is doing as different from what Bob Woodward at "The Washington Post" does or "The New York Times" does or CNN does?

Now, we all sort of understand intuitively the difference, but defining the difference in a principle legal sense is not easy. So if, in fact, he's extradited to the United States, and we're going to have to see what the charges are against him and whether Great Britain agrees to -- to extradite him.

But once he gets to the United States, this is not a simple legal proceeding involving Assange. And you know, it is complex, and it will take a while.

BERMAN: One of the questions people have been asking -- hang on one second. One of the questions people have been asking is what is Julian Assange yelling when he's being dragged to the van? WikiLeaks says this morning what they think Assange is yelling is that the U.K. must resist this attempt by the Trump administration --

CAMEROTA: What? To what?

BERMAN: To get him, to extradite him. Because there is an extradition request there. I don't know what the Trump administration wants from him.

And I do want you to speak on all this. But let me play this, just so people know where Donald Trump, when he was a candidate, was on the notion of WikiLeaks. I just want to play some sound here so people can remember.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This just came out. WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks.

This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable.

Another one came in today. This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove.

Getting off the plane, they were just announcing new WikiLeaks. And I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to keep you waiting Boy, I love reading the WikiLeaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Sounds like he's won a lottery.

BERMAN: And now WikiLeaks's head is in British custody, and maybe at some point soon in U.S. custody.

Sorry, Evan. I cut you off.

PEREZ: No, no, listen, I think that's why it's so complicated. I think -- that's candidate Trump, obviously, who has talked about WikiLeaks and, obviously, very giddy about the help that he was getting from -- from those documents that were stolen from the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

[07:10:04] But as Jeffrey pointed out, this is a complicated case. Under the Obama administration, under Eric Holder, they looked at charging Julian Assange. And that's where this investigation began. And they arrived at exactly what Jeffrey said. Essentially, WikiLeaks is no different from "The New York Times," receiving classified information and publishing them. They're a publisher, right?

That changed after Jeff Sessions became attorney general. We reported previously that they were looking to file charges in early 2017. And partly what happened was this 2017 -- this stolen -- publishing of the CIA hacking tools.

And that's one of the things that happened in the intervening years that prosecutors of the Justice Department decided and the lawyers there decided that WikiLeaks had transformed, in their view, from being just a publisher to being an active participant in trying to encourage people to steal stuff. That's where they believe the line lies.

Jeffrey pointed out this is a -- this is a theory that's going to be tested, probably by the British courts first and then here. I don't think it's a very clear shot here at bringing these charges or, rather, succeeding in these charges. But I think it's what makes it so fascinating.

CAMEROTA: OK. Let's move on to Attorney General Bill Barr appearing in front of a Senate committee yesterday. And speaking of President Trump's talking points, you heard those come up a few times, even from the attorney general.

He used the words, Jeffrey, that he does believe that spying occurred. He later tried to clarify that he -- that could mean surveillance. But spying is a different connotation. And he also was asked directly if he thought that the Mueller investigation was a witch hunt, and he had a hard time answering that.

So let me play for you that moment of witch hunt. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) SEN. JACK REED (D-RI): Do you believe that the investigation that Director Mueller undertook was a witch hunt or was illegal, as has been asserted by the president?

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: As I said during my confirmation, it really depends on where you're sitting. If you are somebody who's being falsely accused of something, you would tend to view the investigation --

REED: Well, you're sitting as the attorney general of the United States with a constitutional responsibility. So if you could answer in that regard?

BARR: I'm not going to characterize it. It is what it is. You know, Mueller and his team conducted an investigation and are issuing a report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, what does any of that mean?

TOOBIN: Well, it means that FOX News is in charge of the Justice Department. I mean, this really is an extraordinary adoption of the conspiratorial language that the president and his supporters in the news media used to describe the Mueller investigation, the Justice Department.

And to hear the attorney general talk this way, you know, Bill Barr may have been attorney general in the old days of the Republican Party under George Herbert Walker Bush. But he's obviously been watching a lot of FOX, since -- since he became a private citizen. And he's adopting their language and their characterization of the department he now heads.

BERMAN: Phil Mudd, he is a lawyer, an accomplished lawyer who chooses his language very carefully. I don't believe it was an accident. He's also an individual who worked at the CIA for four years at the beginning of his career. He knows -- he knows what he's doing here.

MUDD: He has to. I mean, I think the distinction we have to be clear about is between what he said. What he said is OK.

Of course the Department of Justice and the attorney general should look at one of the most sensitive investigations the FBI has conducted. That is an investigation of American political presidential campaign.

If he had just said, "Of course I have to review that. That was a sensitive time in America," I think everybody would have said that's your duty. As soon as he drops that word "spying," as you say, lawyers are supposed to be precise in language. Everybody across America, everybody who comes up to me in a bar, John, thinks spying is homeland. They think spying is secret. They think spying is illegal. They think spying means stealing stuff without a court authorization.

So the use of that word, I think, has to be purposeful. If he had just said, "I'm looking into the investigation the FBI conducted," I think everybody including me would have said, "Fine, you should do that."

TOOBIN: I wouldn't have said -- I wouldn't have said that was fine. I mean, there is a process for reviewing Department of Justice policies. There's an inspector-general.

But to say that you personally are so concerned about the procedures that were used in this investigation that you're going to investigate it, that's -- that's right-wing conspiracy talk. That's not respect for the people of the FBI.

PEREZ: I will say, though, Jeffrey, I mean, I will say, though, that he actually didn't actually use the word "witch hunt." What he did is simply refuse to endorse any language.

TOOBIN: Right.

PEREZ: And so here's what he's trying to do. Here is what he was trying to do. He is simply not -- he's very media savvy. He knows how this is going to play. And he doesn't want -- he did not want to -- for there to be video of him saying this is not a witch hunt and then that sort of spliced next to Donald Trump calling it a witch hunt.

[07:15:13] He's trying to get the Justice Department a little bit out of the heat. Here, look, I think he created, perhaps, more heat than he intended. He intended to use the words that he did, perhaps not realizing how much it was going to -- the pejorative sense of the word "spying."

But look, this is an attorney general who knows exactly what he means, and he knows what he's saying.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

PEREZ: He is bothered by certain aspects of the beginnings of this investigation. And I think that's what you heard from him.

CAMEROTA: But you think the use of "spy" was just a synonym for surveillance?

PEREZ: That's --

CAMEROTA: Or you think he used that intentionally?

PEREZ: Yes. No, he used the word "spy," because that's his -- that's a word that he uses.

But I don't think, from our understanding, certainly from people we talked to yesterday afterwards, he doesn't view the word in a pejorative way and now understands that that's the way it was taken. He didn't intend it -- intend for it to be -- to be said that way.

You can even see that in the hearing, where he was given a chance to clean it up, and he sort of said, you know, "I just mean unauthorized surveillance." And so --

CAMEROTA: Are you buying that, Phil?

MUDD: Heck no. I served four and a half years -- I served four and a half years at the FBI. If you're at the CIA, what you do is spy for a living. He served before at the Department of Justice, under which is the FBI.

When I served there if you said to my peers, the people I joined when I was at the bureau, were spying on Americans, they'd say, "No, we're not. We're conducting legally-authorized, court-authorized investigations."

Spying has a certain meaning at the FBI and the Department of Justice. It's not subtle. And for him to suggest he doesn't know the difference, no how, no way.

TOOBIN: And if I could just -- you know, I think Evan is exactly right that he was trying to get the -- you know, get out from under the president on the -- you know, he didn't want to be seen as contradicting the president on the issue of witch -- of a witch hunt.

But I think if he had principles and if he wanted to defend the FBI --

PEREZ: Yes.

TOOBIN: -- he should have disagreed with the president.

PEREZ: No, I agree.

TOOBIN: He chose not to do that.

PEREZ: I totally agree with that. I agree with that. And by the way, Chris Wray, the director of the FBI who everyone thinks highly of, including Bill Barr, he has been -- has been willing to say that, to oppose the president on that.

BERMAN: All right. Evan, Jeffrey, Phil, thank you all very much for being with us. Much more on this discussion to come.

Also this morning, Bernie Sanders has introduced his new version of the Medicare-for-all plan. He had some of his fellow Democratic candidates by his side. One important question, though, that the senators aren't answering yet. That's next.

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[07:21:47] BERMAN: 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is proposing a new Medicare-for-all plan, and several other of the 2020 candidates are cosponsoring the bill. This plan would fundamentally change health care in America, but how exactly and for how much?

Joining us now is Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News and host of the "What the Health" podcast.

Thanks so much for being with us, Julie. JULIE ROVNER, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, KAISER HEALTH NEWS:

Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: I think people hear the term "Medicare for all," and I just want to make it as simple as can be. At its basic level, what does this mean? It means that everyone is getting health care or would get health care in America, just like seniors get Medicare, correct?

ROVNER: Yes. And even more so, seniors have a lot of extra costs that they have to pay. There are premiums and co-pays and coinsurance. All of that would go away under Senator Sanders's version of Medicare for all. People wouldn't pay premiums. They would get, basically, all medically necessary health care with no payment at the time of service.

BERMAN: So the question is about cost. And it sounds like a simple question, but it's not. Because when you say, "Oh, my gosh. Medicare for all is going to be super expensive, it will cost the government 'X' amount of money," it might. But it might also save taxpayers a lot of money. How does that work?

ROVNER: Well, it might save the entire health system money. If you take a lot of the for-profit out of for-profit health care, you'll spend less.

But it will definitely cost the federal government more money, and that will mean higher taxes. So the question is, are people willing to make that trade-off? They wouldn't have to pay some of the things they're paying now, but they're going to have to pay more in taxes. For some people, that will be a big savings. For some people, that might be a wash and for some people, they might actually end up paying more.

BERMAN: Let me just tell people "The New York Times" looked at this and asked all of these different kinds of analysts about whether it would cost the U.S. health system more or less.

And they broke it down, and they asked five different groups. Three said it would cost more, that healthcare expenditures would be more. Two said that it would cost less. So it's up for debate in terms of whether it costs more or not.

Bernie Sanders, when presented with facts and figures saying that it might cost the government $32 trillion, will say, "Well, it might cost more in terms of health -- in taxes, but health care spending would go down, so it might be a wash." Correct?

ROVNER: Yes, well, you know, how much it will cost will depend on, you know, what we call these economic assumptions, which sound a little obtuse until you say it's how much we're going to pay doctors and hospitals, how much we're going to pay nursing homes, how much we're going to pay for -- for prescription drugs.

So they're making estimates about how much that might cost. And when they put them all together, they can figure out a total cost. But those are decisions that will have to be made way down the road. BERMAN: Critics say this would mean that private insurance goes away.

Bernie Sanders says, "Well, maybe not goes away completely." Different Medicare for all proposals have it exist in different ways after the fact. But under Sanders's proposal, it wouldn't go away but would only be available for side things: cosmetic surgery, for instance.

ROVNER: That's right. Basically, for things that the basic Medicare, the federally-run Medicare plan, wouldn't cover. That's not the case today. And that's not the case in a lot of other industrialized countries who have single-payer plans. They also have a fairly substantial role for supplemental insurance.

Again, that's one of the big fights that will have to be sort of sorted out, what role for the private insurance industry, if any?

[07:25:11] BERMAN: And critics also say that this is tantamount to government national insurance. And there are critics who say that is a bad thing.

I just want to point out -- and they'll make the case, and there are a lot of people who feel that way. There's a big chunk of the government, healthcare system right now that is already government health care.

If you look at it, 21 percent of the people in the United States get their health care through Medicaid, 14 percent through Medicare. So 36 percent of Americans already get their health care through the government.

ROVNER: Yes. And the government is paying government -- if you take all governments, more than half of the nation's health care bill. The question is, do we want to go that much further and have the government basically take over the healthcare system?

It might be more efficient. It might be less expensive. There's a lot of disagreement. The country seems pretty divided. But at least we're having a fairly robust debate on what that would mean.

BERMAN: Yes, and in ten seconds or less, your experience, which is vast here, when giant changes are sought in the healthcare system -- and this would be the biggest of all -- that's where you face the biggest resistance. Correct?

ROVNER: Yes. There will be a lot of resistance. But at least it's worth it to go through all of the possibilities one by one.

BERMAN: And have the discussion going forward. Julie Rovner, thanks so much for being with us --

ROVNER: Thanks.

BERMAN: -- and helping us understand this process.

The college admissions scandal is getting hotter. Actress Lori Loughlin and some co-defendants are facing new charges. So what's their strategy? Why no plea deal yet for Lori Loughlin? Where is she headed here? Our legal experts weigh in, next.

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