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Julian Assange Expelled from Ecuadorian Embassy in London and Arrested on Extradition Warrant from U.S.; Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is Interviewed Regarding Assange's Arrest and Barr's Comments; Current WikiLeaks Editor Discusses Assange's Arrest. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 11, 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: We have more of our breaking news coverage of Julian Assange's arrest right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Thursday, April 11th, 8:00 in the east. And we do begin with the breaking news. Just a short time ago police in London arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. And in a huge development we just learned moments ago that he was arrested over an extradition warrant on behalf of the United States.

Now, we will hear much more from officials there very shortly. Assange, as you just saw, he was dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy. According to WikiLeaks, one of the things you can see him shouting there, you can see his lips moving and hear some words. What he is shouting, according to WikiLeaks, is the U.K. must resist this attempt by the Trump administration.

CAMEROTA: Very interesting. Assange could appear in a London courtroom any minute. Of course, we would bring you that. He was a key player in the release of those hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign. Wikileaks also posted classified military information on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Assange has spent seven years in that building, the Ecuadorian embassy, avoiding extradition over a sexual assault case that Sweden says it could reopen. CNN's Nina Dos Santos is live at the embassy in London with all of the breaking details. What have you learned in the past hour, Nina?

NINA DOS SANTOS, CNN EUROPE EDITOR: Good morning, Alisyn. Over the last hour what we've heard is that the metropolitan police, the British police who went into the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest him a couple of hours ago, have confirmed that he was arrested, indeed, in relation to an extradition request issued by the United States.

His lawyers have been tweeting just now, and I'm just digesting these tweets as we speak, they're saying that he has been arrested not just for breach of bail conditions relating to that historic rape allegation in a Sweden, the charges of which have now been dropped, but instead he has been arrested in relation to that U.S. extradition request, and the U.S. warrant was issued in December, 2017, and is, according to Jennifer Robinson, Julian Assange's barrister, in relation to conspiracy with Chelsea Manning. So that would appear to be an arrest related to what Julian Assange did back in 2010, which is when WikiLeaks burst on to the world stage by releasing those thousands of cables of soldiers in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.

But whether or not there are any indictments that also bear his name relating to further activity that has caused the spotlight to be shined upon this embassy over the last few years, that again will remain a mystery. You will remember that WikiLeaks was famously referred to as, quote, Organization One, in an indictment that the Special Counsel unveiled over the course of the summer when they indicted 12 GRU agents. We also know that Assange was mentioned in an inadvertently unsealed indictment towards the end of last year in a wholly unrelated case to that.

So there will be many questions between now and in the next two hours when he is set to appear before Westminster's Magistrate Court. If of course there is now the possibility of this U.S. extradition warrant that has been issued, obviously you could expect that presumably from the U.K. side we will see some very significant lawyers, very significant legal people who will be representing the U.K. in the court later on today. He's currently being held in a British police station nearby in London, and we are expecting to see him charged in a couple of hours, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Thank you very much for that. We want to bring in now Jim Sciutto. He is CNN's chief national security correspondent and Newsroom co-anchor, Susan Glasser, staff writer at "The New Yorker" and a CNN global affairs analyst, and Jeffrey Toobin, former federal prosecutor and CNN chief legal analyst. Jim, I want to start with you. You have covered this story for years, you interviewed Julian Assange. What is it like to watch him carried out of the embassy there this morning muttering things about the Trump administration?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: The first thing you notice is he looks very different. After seven years in that embassy where he has basically confined himself there, he looks a different person.

Big picture here, though, this is important, because, remember, he is central to several cases. He's central to Russian interference in the election, U.S. intelligence views him as a middleman, a cutout, that he was in effect part of this interference. He's central, too, to questions about what the Trump administration, or Trump campaign, I should say, knew prior to the release of those materials, right? What were the communications between Roger Stone, et cetera.

Robert Mueller may have already closed that case, but now you have a central witness in that case being extradited to the U.S. with the ability to question him on those topics.

We should also remember, though, he is central to a case that preceded all of this, and this being the Chelsea Manning case. One of the big releases prior to the 2016 election campaign from WikiLeaks and his lawyers now, Jennifer Robinson, I've been in touch with her for years, she's now saying that the extradition request from the U.S. relates to the Chelsea Manning case. What is not clear is, is it confined to the Chelsea Manning case, or is that one of the issues the U.S. wants to extradite him to the U.S. for questioning?

[08:05:09] I should also mention, this is not his only legal problem, right, because he has been accused by two women in Sweden of sexual assault. And while those charges were dropped, I was in the courtroom when they went through all the evidence against him, while those charges have been set aside, Sweden made clear this morning they could reopen that case.

CAMEROTA: And those women said they were shocked. One of them has put out a statement saying she's been waiting for this for years.

SCIUTTO: Absolutely. And by the way, the British also have a case against him because he jumped bail, and that's another reason. So you've got three governments in effect that are pursuing him.

BERMAN: Let me just remind people what the U.S. government thinks that WikiLeaks is. Mike Pompeo when he was CIA director called WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. And the one statement we do have from Russia so far today is lamenting the arrest of Julian Assange, calling him the throat of freedom, which is very different, Jeffrey, than what Donald Trump has said in the past about WikiLeaks. I just want to play this to frame how our president has viewed this organization in the past. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, 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.

I love reading those WikiLeaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I don't think the feeling is mutual anymore.

BERMAN: I have just got to say, Jeffrey, it's so odd now that this man was arrested because of an extradition order in the United States on behalf of the United States, and the president of the United States, we just played it, has celebrated this organization and, by connection, this man for so long.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: That's true, John, but it is also indicative of the incredible complexity of the WikiLeaks legal situation. The status of WikiLeaks has been a subject of contention within and outside the U.S. government for years. Is WikiLeaks a publisher like "The New York Times" or the "Washington Post," which receives classified information and has a First Amendment right to distribute it? Or is it, as Mike Pompeo said when he was CIA director, a co-conspirator in anti-government activities? That question has never been addressed yet by the courts. But if, in fact, Assange is extradited to the United States, and if the charges relate to the Chelsea Manning documents or later hacks that WikiLeaks received, that issue will finally be aired out. And anyone who tells you it's a simple or easy issue is really not telling the truth.

CAMEROTA: Susan, there is a lot of mysterious things. Given that President Trump is sympathetic to WikiLeaks and Assange, as we just heard there, why now? Why today? Why is Julian Assange arrested under the Trump administration when for seven years people have been wanting to get him back and wondering when he would be arrested?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, look, these are all really good questions that we don't yet know the answers to. Remember also that Ecuador is a key player here, and it seems to me that there has been a behind the scenes effort, we've received some public indicators of it, really intensifying over the last year or two, to get Ecuador essentially to change its policy. That was only possible with a change of leadership in Ecuador. And I do think you will see this resounding in the country's politics today.

In fact, the first thing that I thought of when I saw Assange being sort of dragged out this morning of the embassy was how relieved those Ecuadorian officials must be to have something like this over. I remember the United States had a situation like this after Tiananmen Square, we had a Chinese dissident who took refuge inside the U.S. embassy in Beijing, that became a sticking point, of course, in relations with the Chinese. There was a negotiated resolution to that case, much shorter than seven years.

And so I think, this is a major diplomatic problem lifted from Ecuador's shoulders right now, and I think there was a lot of behind the scenes diplomacy that almost certainly went into this arrest today. It's a major change of policy for them.

SCIUTTO: It's been going on for some time, this pressure. We reported last year that Assange's lawyers were worried that they were going to be kicked out. And the Ecuadorians have been squeezing him, somewhat. They cut off his Internet access, which for him is like a lifeline, a number of months ago. So the pressure has been applied by the U.S. for some time, and it appears it has come through.

It's possible that this is something President Trump himself is not particularly excited about, but his Justice Department, which has a whole host of reasons to speak to and charge him, is pursuing this, and they got the extradition request and they are following through.

BERMAN: It really is, again, we don't know how the president feels versus the Justice Department. We do know that WikiLeaks was referenced in the indictments last summer against 12 Russians and organizations and Organization One, as the conduit for the stolen emails from Podesta and the DNC. That's fascinating. [08:10:05] CAMEROTA: All of this is fascinating.

SCIUTTO: We should also note just how laughable it is for Russia today to lament this champion of press freedom. Russia pushes journalists out of windows and poisons people on the streets of London. It's a joke. And by the way, Julian Assange focuses all his attention on the U.S. government. What has he exposed about Russian government misbehavior? That's to his motivation.

BERMAN: Just two other points on WikiLeaks. Number one, Michael Cohen claims that Donald Trump knew about the WikiLeaks release before it happened. He testified that Roger Stone indicated that -- had told the president about it beforehand. Whether that's true or not we don't know. And, yes, I just think it's very interesting the continuing role this all has in this. And we also learned in the last week that the Mueller team never reached out to Julian Assange to get him to testify in their investigation.

CAMEROTA: But I find it also peculiar, Jeffrey, because -- so Mueller is done, so Mueller doesn't need to be talking to him. Donald Trump is a fan of Assange and WikiLeaks. He won't want -- he won't want Julian Assange coming back and spilling everything that he knows, and if he actually, in fact, ever did talk to Roger Stone, and if he, in fact, was trying to be helpful to the Trump campaign. This is not good timing for President Trump, and that's why I'm just curious that his Department of Justice wanted him extradited today.

TOOBIN: Well, it's a can of worms in many respects. One thing Donald Trump has learned over the past two years as president is that the federal bureaucracy has its own momentum here, and in this issue and many others. And as we've been discussing, the legal issues involving Assange go back well before Trump became president. It was in Barack Obama's first term that the Chelsea Manning documents were released, stolen State Department documents that made their way to WikiLeaks.

And the question of whether WikiLeaks was a journalistic enterprise in distributing those documents or a co-conspirator in the theft of classified information is one of the profound issues that's going to have to be addressed if that's at the heart of the case against him here, and if he's extradited here.

CAMEROTA: Guys, stand by for a second.

BERMAN: Stand by for a second, because on the phone -- what's the name of the person we have on the phone right now? Kristinn Hrafnsson who is, I believe -- Kristinn Hrafnsson, now the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks who took over for Julian Assange going into the courtroom right now. Let me just get your reaction, Kristinn, to this arrest.

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: I think this is an outrageous thing, but we have been warning this would happen for years now. We knew that there was a secret sealed indictment that now has come forth, an indictment for basically doing what journalists should be doing, that is publishing truthful information. This pertains, it seems, to documents that were published by WikiLeaks and "The New York Times," may I point out, in 2010. And it has to be resisted. The U.K. authorities must make a clear statement that they will never extradite a journalist, publisher, editor for practicing journalism.

CAMEROTA: And how do you know this isn't connected to the 2016 Russian hack of the DNC computers?

HRAFNSSON: According to the information from Julian's lawyers who have talked to him, this is pertaining to the publications of WikiLeaks in 2010 which exposed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is not a crime. That is journalism.

BERMAN: Let me ask you this, the United States says that Russia gave WikiLeaks, gave Julian Assange stolen documents. Is that true?

HRAFNSSON: No.

BERMAN: Did Russian cutouts -- did Russian cutouts -- did Russian cutouts give, did Russian intelligence services --

HRAFNSSON: -- in 2010.

BERMAN: I'm talking about now. But I'm talking about now. But I'm talking about now. I'm talking about --

HRAFNSSON: Iraq and Afghanistan.

BERMAN: I'm talk about in the 2016 election, the United States, Robert Mueller's investigators, the federal government says that WikiLeaks was given stolen documents by Russian intelligence, essentially. If you didn't get those documents from them, where did you get them from?

HRAFNSSON: We are discussing here the indictment as being presented this afternoon in a court in London, which is -- pertains to a publication in 2010.

BERMAN: I understand they are two different things. I asked you a question about 2016, though. Are you going to answer that question?

HRAFNSSON: Julian Assange has answered that question. He said the source of the documents that were published in 2016 were not from a state actor and was not from a Russian. But as far as we know, that is basically what he has stated and what is known.

[08:15:03]

CAMEROTA: Did he communicate with Roger Stone or anyone in the Trump campaign about those?

HRAFNSSON: I mean, it has been published and it has been widely noted that -- that Roger Stone exaggerated the connection he had with Julian Assange.

BERMAN: What changed for Julian Assange? He had been in the Ecuadorian embassy for so long. Why now?

HRAFNSSON: Well, we are seeing the escalation of the pressure in the Trump administration to have him extradited and the pressure has been mounted on Ecuador to push him outside the embassy. We don't know how far this has gone in terms of relations between the U.S. administration and the U.K. administration, but this has been escalating in the last few weeks and even days and we knew that this was imminent.

What we now have is out, what we've wanted all along, that a publisher and a journalist is now being indicted for publishing truthful information about war crimes and other issues pertaining to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that is of serious concern. This is a serious attack on the freedom of the press and should be noted as such.

CAMEROTA: We're watching the moment that Julian Assange was taken from the Ecuadorian embassy. He's saying something, he's trying to yell something, but do you know what he was saying?

HRAFNSSON: No.

BERMAN: All right. Thank you very, very much.

That is Kristinn Hrafnsson, I'm sure I'm not saying that name correctly, but the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. I do thank you for being with us this morning and giving us your perspective on the arrest and we're watching the arrest right now of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Jim Sciutto, you've been here listening to this, very helpful because this is a story you've been covering for so long. What we had was, again, sort of a circuitous denial.

SCIUTTO: Listen to his answer on that question, though, did not receive it from a state actor. OK. The U.S. position is Cozy Bear, Fancy Bear, these hacking groups are hacking groups that are an extension of the Russian government, working for the Russian government, don't actually wear a uniform of the Russian government.

So, his answer has some wiggle room in there. He did then go on to say we didn't receive them from a Russian. OK, that's someone else out of Russia. There is a clear answer he could have given which is that WikiLeaks got this information through its own hard work and research and so on. It doesn't actually clear up.

And the U.S. wouldn't make a public statement that WikiLeaks was a middleman on this if they didn't have the intelligence to back that up. So he could have been clear on that, he was not.

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, what did you hear him say there? I mean, he also said in terms of his connection with Roger Stone or anybody else, he said it's been widely reported that Roger Stone's account is exaggerated, whatever that means.

TOOBIN: Exaggerated, that jumped out at me. But another phrase he used jumped out at me which was publishing truthful information. He said, you know, we are being prosecuted or Assange is being prosecuted for WikiLeaks publishing truthful information. And that's going to be a key legal issue if he comes to trial in the

United States because what WikiLeaks has done in the Chelsea Manning case and certainly in the 2016 campaign case is publish newsworthy information that was truthful. Now, it was improperly obtained by someone, perhaps WikiLeaks itself, but perhaps WikiLeaks was just an intermediary, and the legal status of a publisher who publishes truthful information is something that traditionally has been protected in the United States under the First Amendment.

So, I think, you know, the legal question of what -- whether anything that WikiLeaks has done and Assange personally has done is protected by the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and the press is one that courts are really going to have to struggle with.

BERMAN: We're watching that very closely. There are statements expected very shortly in London. We should expect, I think, to hear from U.S. officials on this very shortly as well.

There could be a lot of developments in the next few minutes, stick around, we are on top of all of them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:23:15] BERMAN: All right. The breaking news, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is under arrest. He was taken into custody in London, and U.K. authorities say he was arrested on behalf of the United States.

His lawyer says the arrest is connected to an extradition order having to do with the Chelsea Manning case which is the dump of information in 2010 concerning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Joining me now is Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

Senator, thanks so much for being with us.

You've got a lot of concern, you've got a lot of concern --

SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): Good to be with you, John.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: Yes, there certainly is. And you've had been on the Julian Assange issue for sometime --

MANCHIN: Yes.

BERMAN: -- writing letters of concerned about this, specifically having to do with his rule, announced role by Robert Mueller and others in releasing the hacked emails in the 2016 election.

MANCHIN: I think it's extremely important and I think it's very good for us to finally get him on U.S. soil, so we can investigate, we can basically cross-examine, we can find out the facts that only he knows and his connections and how he basically distributed his information. This is something they can extract from Julian Assange, I think it

would be great for the American people, it would be great for us as lawmakers making sure that we protect the system, John, and the system is basically how do we protect against foreign -- you know, foreign invasion type, if you will, as far as our political process.

BERMAN: Just to remind people what Robert Mueller and his investigators found last summer is that Russian intelligence agents hacked the DNC and Podesta's emails and gave them -- and gave them to WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks released them. Correct?

MANCHIN: John, there is not one person that sits on the intelligence committee with me last year that ever had any doubt at all, not one word of doubt or not one concern of doubt that Russia was not directly intentionally involved.

[08:25:03] All the other stuff, fine, but I'm telling you there was not one Democrat or Republican that spoke out saying I don't think the dots connect here. I don't think with all 17 intelligence agencies that we have clarity that Russia really was involved. We had absolutely clarity and we had proof that Russia was involved. I think this will help even more see how intertwined it was.

BERMAN: All right. Senator, since I have you, the reason we invited you in today to talk about things was you were part of this committee hearing yesterday --

MANCHIN: Yes.

BERMAN: -- with the attorney general of the United States, William Barr, where he said -- announced before your committee he thinks that the Trump campaign was spied on and that's the word he used, he said there was spying by U.S. intelligence services.

Your reaction to his deliberate choice of language?

MANCHIN: I think that was a horrible choice of language and it was a horrible statement to come from our attorney general. I know he tried to backtrack that and walk that back, the only spying that I saw was Russia spying and Russia was trying to spy on anybody and everybody they could to get more involved in our process to have some influence of what direction it would go. There is no doubt.

Now, whoever they're talking about the spying, I can assure you we didn't see the political parties spying on each other from that standpoint to where it was detrimental. We saw basically this whole Julian Assange, we saw all of that, we saw Russia with no -- all the evidence we had and no doubt that Russia was doing everything they could on social media and every other avenue that they could take in order to be involved. There was no doubt about that at all. So it was a horrible choice.

What I would say to Mr. Mueller, you are the attorney general for the American people, all of us, 300 and almost 30 million of us and we expect you to be our watchdog, if you will. What we're seeing is, release the report, Mr. Mueller, please release that report. I believe that would help tremendously put him back in light that he is looking out for all of us and not just some of us.

BERMAN: You made that plea with him yesterday in person.

MANCHIN: I did, yes. I did.

BERMAN: To release the full report.

MANCHIN: I did. I told him it was the best thing that could ever happen to this country for us to start a healing process.

We're growing further and further apart, we're dividing on tribal lines, are you a Democrat or Republican, are you for or against the president, are you for or against the Democratic Party or Republican Party? You should be for the country, you should be for the United States of America and whatever we can do to make it better and stronger.

But you have to have confidence and belief in the information you're getting from those elected officials that they are being direct and forthright and being honest. And by trying to pick and track, extraction -- we the Congress should at least be able to see it. We represent the people and we should at least have that opportunity and I think the more that he does, the quicker he does it, the better he will be and the better we will all be.

BERMAN: His word choice yesterday with the spying accusation, does that color your view of him?

MANCHIN: Well, it makes me -- it gives me pause. It surely does. You know, I know he's well qualified and I said that he was very well- qualified in his background and his dedication to the agency and to the law. He has family members there. It's in his blood and body and I appreciate all of that. I just hope he doesn't get caught up in all this other.

I just hope he doesn't get caught up in the political and basically be our representative, our attorney general.

BERMAN: Senator, let me just tell you -- let me just tell you what we're looking at right now, we were just showing you pictures from outside the courthouse where Julian Assange, we believe, just arrived there. There was some movement, it was hard to make him out because the British press is all over this. This is a major international story needless to say.

MANCHIN: John, I understand they intervened on our behalf, we are going to extradite him. It will be really good to get him back on United States soil. So, now, he is our property and we can get the facts and truth from him.

BERMAN: And that is what we've been told as well, that he was arrested on behalf of the U.S. --

MANCHIN: We were, too.

BERMAN: -- on an extradition order to bring him back here. We're waiting to see if we learn more about what those exact charges might be.

Senator, I'm going to lose you shortly. I also want to get you on healthcare right now. You are very upset that the administration has signed on to this court case to invalidate Obamacare to throw it out in a courthouse, correct?

MANCHIN: Totally. I think they're totally wrong. I think they're going to lose.

The only thing I asked Attorney General Barr, when you do lose this case will you go back to defending the laws of the Affordable Care Act? We have 180,000 West Virginians that have wealth fair for the first time. We've got preexisting conditions, 800,000 West Virginians that are able to have affordable healthcare they have never had before.

We're treating mental illness. We're treating opioid addiction. Come on, we can fix what we know is wrong. John, that's the thing that gets me.

And that's why John McCain voted not to repeal. John didn't vote because he loved the bill, he voted because there was a process they weren't letting basically take place that we could fix things, work in a bipartisan way. That's what John McCain did for the American people.

[08:30:00]