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New Day

Soon: Justice Department to Release Redacted Mueller Report. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired April 18, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Barr is giving a press conference. And he's been fantastic. He's grabbed it by the horn.

[05:59:20] REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): The attorney general is trying to bake in the narrative to the benefit of the White House. This is wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There should be as little redaction as possible. I suspect that if it is, he has very good legal reason to do so.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a big question about whether Barr's conduct entitled him to the benefit of the doubt.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The president is not worried. There's a sense of dread from people who have spoken to the Mueller team.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Thursday, April 18, 6 a.m. here in New York.

Don't adjust your sets. John Berman is off this week, and Chris Cuomo is making a homecoming, back here with me. Great to have you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Not enough steroids and plastic surgery in the world to change him overnight to look like this gorilla.

CAMEROTA: I thought you got out of this morning racket.

CUOMO: No, no, I came back.

CAMEROTA: That's so great.

Well, it's very great to have you today. It is an historic day. It is two years in the making. This morning, Attorney General William Barr's redacted version of the Mueller report will be finally released to the public. But before that happens, Attorney General Barr will hold a press

conference at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time. A senior Justice Department official says the report will be delivered to Congress sometime after that, and then it will be posted on the special counsel's website. Barr's rollout plan is already igniting a firestorm. Several House

chairs are calling on the A.G. to cancel that press conference, accusing Barr of trying to shield the president and color Mueller's findings for the public.

CUOMO: And that's because he is. First with a reportedly stilted summary of the 400-page report. Then delaying the release for close to a month. And now this presser, where he may take questions about something that no one has had a chance to digest except the White House, reportedly. That's right. We've learned -- not from Barr, who refused to answer Congress about it -- but the reporting is the Justice Department briefed the White House on the Mueller report ahead of its release today to you.

According to "The New York Times," the talks helped the president's legal team as it works to rebut the report.

No, here's the good news for transparency. Supposedly, the public version of the report will only be lightly redacted. I'm speaking carefully, because we don't really know what that means. It's going to be on the -- the section of obstruction of justice.

But let's begin our discussion, we try to get some depth of understanding about what will happen today. Jessica Schneider live at the Justice Department with our top story. A lot of guessing.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a lot of guessing, Chris, and good morning.

A lot has transpired in the past 22 months: 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants, 500 witness interviews. And most of this has been out of public view. But all of that should change in the next few hours, when the American public finally sees that redacted report from the special counsel.

But already there has been a lot of criticism and charges of spin as to the attorney general and the administration. And Democrats now are calling for the attorney general to call off this 9:30 press conference that's scheduled right here at the Department of Justice.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Attorney General William Barr set to hold a press conference at 9:30 this morning before making a redacted version of Special Counsel Mueller's report public. A source tells CNN the presser will offer an overview of the report, address process questions and explain Barr's thinking. A spokesman for the special counsel confirming that Mueller will not attend.

Sometime after 11 a.m., Justice Department officials say they'll turn over the nearly 400-page document to Congress before posting the report on the special counsel's website. Democrats accusing Mr. Trump's hand-picked attorney general of trying

to protect the president with an orchestrated rollout.

NADLER: The central concern here is that the Attorney General Barr is not allowing the facts of the Mueller report to speak for themselves but is trying to bake in the narrative about the report to the benefit of the White House. And of course, he's doing this just before the holiday weekend so it's extraordinarily difficult for anybody to react. This is wrong.

SCHNEIDER: Five Democratic chairs of House committees are demanding that Barr cancel the press conference, calling it "unnecessary" and "inappropriate."

President Trump suggesting he may also give a press conference, although there's nothing on his schedule so far and he's praising the attorney general.

TRUMP: You'll see a lot of very strong things come out tomorrow. He's been a fantastic attorney general. He's grabbed it by the horn.

SCHNEIDER: Democrats also raising the alarm about a new report from "The New York Times" that Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about Mueller's conclusions, writing that these talks have "aided the president's legal team as it prepares a rebuttal to the report and strategizes for the coming public war over its findings."

Last week Barr refused to answer when asked about whether the Justice Department had given the White House a preview of Mueller's findings.

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Has anyone in the White House seen any of the report?

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I'm not going to -- I'm not going to -- as I say, I'm landing the plane right now. And I'm just not going to get into the details of the process until the plane is on the ground.

SCHNEIDER: A source familiar with the report tells CNN it's expected to have minimal redactions in the section on obstruction of justice.

Last month, Barr's brief memo about Mueller's report suggested that the special counsel was unable to establish that President Trump acted with what Barr called "corrupt intent" in obstructing justice, but Mueller did not exonerate him.

Notably, the president's lawyers refused to agree to an interview between Mueller's investigators and Mr. Trump.

RUDY GIULIANI, DONALD TRUMP'S ATTORNEY: Over my dead body, but you know, I could be dead.

SCHNEIDER: Federal prosecutors revealing in a court filing in the case against Trump confidant Roger Stone that they will provide some key members of Congress with additional information that's expected to be redacted in today's report.

[06:05:10] Stone has pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to Congress about his efforts to contact WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: And the attorney general has previously said that this report will use color-coded redactions to correspond to the four categories that will be blacked out. Those categories include grand jury information, classified information, information related to those ongoing investigations and also information that could potentially be derogatory to third parties.

But of course, Democrats continue to call for the full release of this report without redactions. We do know from that court filing that there will be two reports released: one to the public and one to those select members of Congress. But then, of course, you have the House Judiciary Committee. They have already voted to authorize a subpoena to the Department of Justice for this full report. Of course, Chris and Alisyn, now it remains the question whether or not they'll actually issue that subpoena -- guys.

CAMEROTA: All right. We shall see. Jessica, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

Let's bring in our CNN White House correspondent Abby Phillip; CNN senior political analyst John Avlon; CNN political analyst David Gregory; and Laura Coates, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. Great to have all of you.

This is the day that the public has been waiting for for two years. And already, Laura, there are surprises. Namely, that "The New York Times" has reported that the attorney general has been working hand in glove with the White House, having numerous conversations, apparently briefing them already before Congress, before the public about the findings in the Mueller report.

Is there anything legally wrong with that? And if not, why didn't the attorney general mention that to Congress?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, what I'm seeing here, Alisyn, is really a preemptive strike, kind of like what is happening with the team behind President Trump. Not White House counsel but Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow. The idea of trying to get ahead of it and craft a narrative to be a preemptive strike.

I think it's highly inappropriate to have done so, because the whole purpose of having a special counsel was to have -- not having an intermediary between the American people, per se, and what the report actually says.

What we're seeing is a go-between that allows a filter to go on and on and on, and to have perhaps misleading information out there or even just not to capture the full picture. The fact is, this person is serving at the pleasure of the president.

That is true. But Mueller did not serve at the pleasure of the president, and it is his report we're trying to see.

CUOMO: Important. So, David Gregory, when we're framing what today is about, you're going to have this press conference before anybody gets to read what he wants to take questions on. I mean, how can we see the process as not manipulated for the benefit of the president?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I don't think you can see it as anything other than that. Because the race that we're all engaged in today is to define what this report is about. What we're to make of it, what we're to conclude.

And there's so much information that we already know. We've already seen so much of the president's behavior with regard to this question about collusion, about coordination, about the interference that the Russians were responsible for.

We've seen all of the public efforts to end the investigation that was part of the Mueller probe. So now it's what is it that we don't know and what are we supposed to make of all of these facts?

I don't think it's unusual that the president's Justice Department and his attorney general is reporting to the White House what they have found in the report. I actually don't think that that is untoward.

But I think what raises questions is why, then, they didn't brief in a similar fashion the key members of Congress at the same time. I think that's what's questionable here.

Because there's no question there's an attempt to manipulate what you're going to see. We have known now for two years that this president and his team, a president who effectively runs his own communications shop out of his office, is going to try to define what we see, what we hear and what to interpret from all this.

CAMEROTA: Do you think there's anything untoward, John?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Absolutely. I mean, take a step back. In the last three weeks, Bill Barr has released a summary version of the report of the special counsel. He has redacted it. He has -- is going to be holding a press --

CAMEROTA: We don't know how much redaction.

AVLON: We don't know, and it may end up being good. And it's appropriate to redact some things but there's always the danger that some of it is protected for the president. He's holding a press conference before the report is released. And coordinated with the White House on the contents before Congress and the American people have seen it.

Imagine if Janet Reno had done the same thing with the Starr report. I mean, people would have been screaming bloody murder. But that's one of the key differences between the special counsel and independent counsel.

I think to Laura's point, this is blurring the lines of the assumptions of the special counsel's independence, though. And that's something that we're all going to need to deal with.

CUOMO: You know, Abby, we're all so comfortable with the word "redact" now in our new vocabulary. You know, it originally was used to mean to frame an argument. And that's what's been going on here. The redactions may be light, but it's what's redacted in it. And even if the product is good and people can be satisfied with it, it's the process in which it came out.

[06:10:15] Because we all know time kills in a story like this. The longer it takes, the less impact it makes. And look when it's being released. It's Holy Week for us. It's Passover for the Jews.

CAMEROTA: Spring break for the kids.

CUOMO: Come on. I mean, there's nothing subtle about this.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It could not have been timed better for the president, frankly. I mean, almost every year he goes to Florida for Easter. So it was basically on his calendar that he would not be in town for the brunt of the unpacking of this report over the next several days. He's leaving this afternoon at 4 p.m.

And so this is timed, whether it's intentional or coincidentally, for the president to not be around, for members of Congress to not be around.

And I find it really fascinating, this press conference happening at 9:30. The report not being transmitted until more than than hour and a half later. What is Bill Barr going to say in this press conference?

I mean, there are some options. He could talk about the process by which he redacted, the process by which he determined what information was staying and what information was going. But it can't -- it doesn't seem possible that he could be discussing anything substantive about the report.

And when we had this conversation about what Jim Comey did with Hillary Clinton and his famous press conference back in 2016, it was about whether or not it was appropriate for him to share derogatory information about someone who was not being charged.

I think now we're going to have the converse discussion about whether or not it's appropriate to sort of clear someone without the evidence being laid out there. You know, if that's, in fact, what's going to happen today.

I mean, I think there is a possibility that this could be framed in a way that's very favorable to the president, but without any of the supporting information being available to people to evaluate for themselves. And so I think now we're in the -- we're possibly having just the

opposite argument and debate that we had about the Comey situation. And I think it was also a red flag, I think, for a lot of people when President Trump said he's really happy with what Bill Barr is doing. He's thrilled with how his attorney general is acting.

CUOMO: Took it by the horns.

PHILLIP: When the president is thrilled, yes, when he's thrilled with his attorney general, that's a red flag. The last time he fired his attorney general, because he wasn't doing enough to protect him.

CUOMO: Right.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Laura.

COATES: You know, one thing that I really have to say, as an alumnae of the Department of Justice, for me, a lot of the damage has been done. Because as much as the Mueller report was about the findings of the 22-month investigation, the rollout is -- it shows that the credibility of the Department of Justice is also at stake.

Because you have the head of the Department of Justice, the attorney general, who is rolling out in such a way that it makes people question not whether the president is above the law, but whether the DOJ disregards the law and another coequal branch of government's right to see the information and the public's right, as well.

So in many way, this is a really missed opportunity, I think, for the redemption, in many ways, of the Department of Justice. I wonder why Bill Barr would roll it out in this way, have that press conference as Abby is talking about before, manipulate in a way to try to frame the argument, delay the actual -- actual disclosure of the report, knowing full well that, for the better part of 22 months, the American people, based on the president's statements, have already questioned the FBI, the intelligence community, the DOJ's independence of a lot of things.

That's part of the issue here for me. And I think that Barr is really compromising the future credibility of the Department of Justice. Just be transparent. It wasn't meant to be the floor -- the ceiling. It was meant to be the floor.

CAMEROTA: David, who looked at what James Comey did and then thinks, "Yes, I want to follow that model." I mean, that's what we're getting today.

GREGORY: Do you mean the model of how Comey talked about Hillary Clinton and the e-mails?

CAMEROTA: Yes. The press conference. Announcing it.

GREGORY: Yes, yes. Right.

CUOMO: And Rosenstein in his letter cited about why Comey should be fired.

AVLON: It's why Comey was fired, right? I was pretty sure that was originally -- oh, wait.

CAMEROTA: It was so roundly criticized, plus all of those repercussions. So why is Bill Barr following that model?

GREGORY: Well, but the problem is that, if you follow that logic, then you get a lot less rather than more today. Right?

Because the question is did he -- did they, right? Did they collude? Was there coordination? We know the Russians tried to interfere with the 2016 election. Did the president, did his campaign advisers, others close to him, were they part of that collusion and coordination?

The answer appears to be no. If you're in a hurry, that's the big takeaway still.

Now, we're going to talk a lot about process. We're going to talk a lot about fairness. We're going to talk a lot about, you know, stacking the deck for rebuttals. But that is going to be the bottom line, unless it's not.

And so the question this morning is, is it not? And are we not getting the full shake, the real look at what's going on here?

The reality is that if the answer is no, that there wasn't collusion, there wasn't coordination, then prejudicing the president or his advisers with information that looks bad, that's damaging but falls short of obstruction of justice can be seen as unfair. Except that there is a public interest here, since the president can't be indicted.

[06:15:14] CUOMO: Yes. And it's also about your standing.

AVLON: Big time.

GREGORY: There's still a public interest.

CUOMO: David -- David is right on point, obviously.

You know, the sticky part of this is what's the standard for good behavior? Is it if it's not a felony, then it's fine? Because that's what the political right has adopted. They're OK. There are no criminals amongst them. That's what they celebrated: not being felons.

But when you look at this today, you have to know, John, that there was a sufficiency of proof of potential obstruction that made him incapable of making a decision about this. It was their only job, as to say whether or not they could prosecute. They couldn't do their job. It had to be a close call.

AVLON: Well, you have -- yes, this falls under "you had one job." But the fact they didn't make a decision is interesting. And, you know, it will be interesting to see, when we get the full report, whether they couldn't divine the president's intent. And if that's the issue, then, isn't it a mistake not to have issued a

subpoena to interview him in person, as opposed to going through the proxy of his lawyers? One of the many questions.

CUOMO: And he didn't answer any questions about obstruction.

AVLON: Right. So these are -- these are significant details, which is why it's important to get as much of the report out as possible for the American people and Congress to see.

Questions about WikiLeaks, Cambridge Analytica, the cyber hacking. And obstruction may be at the heart of a lot of this. But it's also the fact that a foreign power tried to interfere in our elections on behalf of the person who's now the president of the United States.

It's very difficult to dismiss that as a nothing burger unless you're in the tank for one side of the equation.

So all of this matters enormously. This is a big day in American history to dig through the report and to not simply buy the partisan spin. On either side.

CAMEROTA: Coming up, we're going to talk about how Bill Barr said that he did see spying here. And now you're starting to hear that word. It's starting to become a talking point. You're starting to see it in headlines. And we'll talk about whether all of that is intentional.

CUOMO: I'll be here for that.

CAMEROTA: Fantastic.

CUOMO: That's good.

CAMEROTA: I sold it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:20:35] CUOMO: Once again, we're living history together. In a few hours, following a press conference by Attorney General William Barr. The Democrats asked him to cancel it. Seems like it's going forward.

Congress is expected to get a "lightly" redacted version of the Mueller report. Got to put it in quotes. I don't know what that means.

The report will be through Barr's lens, who told Congress a week ago he believed the government spied on the Trump campaign. "Spying" is now a big buzz word. You're going to hear it again and again like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARR: I think there was a spying did occur, yes. I think spying did occur. TRUMP: I think what he said was absolutely true. There was

absolutely spying into my campaign. I'll go a step further. In my opinion, it was illegal spying, unprecedented spying.

This should never happen to a president or to this country again what took place. And you'll see a lot of very strong things come out tomorrow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: It won't happen if you don't have a lot of your people talking to and meeting with the wrong kinds of people.

Let's bring back Abby Phillip, John Avlon, David Gregory, Laura Coates.

Laura Coates, educate the masses. Surveillance ain't spying. And A.G. Barr knows that, and Mr. By-the-Book says he started an investigation and gave us a conclusion to it, in that hearing, without even providing any proof of why it was spying and not legal surveillance.

COATES: I mean, it was unbelievable for him to be so imprecise, and to use a pejorative term and to somehow suggest the very motif that President Trump used as early as February and March of 2017 when he accused a former president of bugging his successor, of bugging Trump Tower, of trying to wiretap his phones.

Devin Nunes, Paul Ryan, James Clapper, a spokesperson for Obama, everyone came out and said there's no evidence to actually support that allegation that there was any such thing. There was no court order about a FISA warrant to do so.

And yet, two years later nearly, you have the attorney general of the United States floating this out there, putting it out into the ether with no substantiation, knowing full well that what he was doing was trying to sideline the discussion about the results of the report.

And they talk about the genesis of it, which is a favorite talking point of Donald Trump throughout the course of the last 22 months. Because the genesis, Chris, gets us talking about the FISA warrant and Carter Page; gets us talking about Roger Stone; gets us talking about George Papadopoulos.

CUOMO: The dossier.

AVLON: Yes.

COATES: Talking about the dossier. And so this was, to me, a really shocking thing for Barr to do. Because it was unnecessary if he wasn't going to talk about what he chose to mention. And it was inappropriate, because it was unsubstantiated and still is.

AVLON: Look, It's more than inappropriate. Because it actually -- this slip of the tongue, this imprecise language from the attorney general, who ought to know better, dovetails exactly with Donald Trump and the White House's talking points, which is investigate the investigators, to try to flip the script, as it were, after the report is out and to say it's the Democrats who are guilty of collusion. It's the deep state that was trying to get the president, and ride that into 2020.

And that's one of the real dangers here. Is that we're heading into sort of a bizarre world. That's the game plan and the A.G. seems to be pumping up the president's worst instincts about that at the same time that he's been sitting on the Mueller report, which has actually been vetted through an investigatory process about something we know happened.

I mean, Hillary Clinton's investigations were all out in public during the course of the 2016 elections. We didn't know about the FBI looking into George Papadopoulos and Carter Page and other people until after the fact.

So this is -- this is a sign that Barr, who's got a good reputation as a good lawyer, you know, he's got some talking points going on that are dovetailing with the president's interests. Again, the A.G. is not the president's lawyer. And he seems to be acting that way.

GREGORY: Let's talk about -- the other thing to talk about today is who is the key player to watch? We're talking so much about the attorney general. What about Rod Rosenstein? He's the one I want to hear from today.

If I'm going to that 9:30 press conference, I haven't had the opportunity to read the report yet. But I'd certainly like to ask Rod Rosenstein about whether he thinks there was spying going on; whether there was anything that was inappropriate about the surveillance, given the circumstances, given the facts as the government knew them at the time, as the campaign was unfolding and the Russians were seeking to interfere.

Because he's the one who wrote the memo saying Jim Comey should be fired. He certainly didn't mention, "Oh, and he should also be fired because he led a coup against, you know, the incoming administration," which nobody knew even had a shot to win the election, let alone Donald Trump, who never thought he was going to win.

CUOMO: Right.

[06:25:11] GREGORY: So what's striking about this day and about all the days leading up to it, for two years we've been talking about. This president of the United States have never stood up and said, "You know what the core crime here is? What the Russians tried to do to America; what Russians tried to do to our democracy." That's what's going to be detailed also in this Mueller report.

AVLON: He doesn't believe that.

GREGORY: Why doesn't the president hold that up and say, "That's what we need to set our sights on">

AVLON: Because he doesn't believe that. CAMEROTA: And because -- and because he thinks that the United States

is to blame, as he said in Helsinki. The United States was just as much to blame for the -- what happened, as he said.

Abby, what is the mood at the White House, now that they've been briefed, now that they know what's coming more than the rest of us?

CUOMO: Feeling pretty good.

CAMEROTA: Has the mood lightened?

CUOMO: Less on edge than the rest of us.

PHILLIP: As you can see, the president is pretty happy or pretty comfortable with where things stand now. And you know, I mean, I think there are still some questions about exactly how much they know of the nitty-gritty details.

We still, despite the fact that they have been reportedly briefed on elements of the findings of the report, that's not to say necessarily that they've read the entire thing. And there are a lot of White House aides who are concerned, in a very, you know, self-centered way about what they said that might be in the report.

The president, on the other hand, is not really one for the details. He is thinking about the big picture and how he can spin this when he does react to it. And I think he feels very comfortable with where he is. He is comfortable with his attorney general. I cannot emphasize that enough. Because that is so critical to -- of a window into where the president is.

He was at war with his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for two years over this Russia investigation; for two years over the fact that Sessions wouldn't investigate the investigators, wouldn't step in and reign in this Mueller probe.

And now the president is happy with Bill Barr. He thinks Barr is doing a great job. He is comfortable with all -- with all of how this has really been rolled out. And I think it tells you that the president doesn't feel like he is about to get blindsided.

Now, I don't know what's going to happen at 9:30 today. But that's -- based on everything that we know, I think President Trump feels like he has a good handle on the facts as it pertains to how he can talk to the American public about it. And I don't think he's going to change his tune of no collusion and no obstruction no matter what the report actually says.

CUOMO: Well, and also, you don't need the nitty-gritty details.

GREGORY: Actually, imaging the specter today --

CUOMO: Go ahead, buddy.

GREGORY: No, imagine the specter today, first time we've ever seen it. You could have a president live-tweeting while he's reading this report. All day long saying, "Oh, go to page 325. This is great for me. This just shows you what a hoax this whole thing was."

AVLON: David, let's adjust expectations downward. The president's probably not going to read the report.

PHILLIP: We know he's going to -- we know he's going to be briefed by his lawyers.

AVLON: Yes, he will be briefed on it.

PHILLIP: The thing is, he's going to be watching television.

CUOMO: Sure, he will. Yes.

PHILLIP: He's going to be watching the coverage of this.

AVLON: Yes.

PHILLIP: And he's going to be taking what his surrogates are saying on television and blasting it out to his supporters. It is going to be actually in real time.

But it's going to be slightly different. I don't think he's going to be paging through this report. But he's going to be amplifying the talking points of people who are out there trying to defend him on this.

CUOMO: Look, I think this was another opportunity where the president -- You don't need the nitty-gritty. You just need his -- the people who come in and say, "look, here are the high points." Because they're preparing a rebuttal, right?

CAMEROTA: We've already gotten that.

CUOMO: Yes. So they have it. So they're feeling pretty good about these things, because it's going to be a messaging battle.

What I think the president doesn't understand is this was another opportunity to have people give him the benefit of the doubt, give him some closure, and the process has corrupted that.

AVLON: Of course it has. And this is a president who doesn't have the impulse to unite. His impulse is to divide, unfortunately.

But the fact that Rudy's -- the team led by Rudy Giuliani and the Trump team is preparing a rebuttal. Right? For an investigation that, apparently, largely vindicates the president.

And their No. 1 focus is to investigate the investigators and to play this forward in a way that will be even more divisive to the American public tells you everything to know about the politics and the spin around the substance of the report.

CUOMO: They did him right, though. Not having him go in there and face the music, not having him answer any questions.

AVLON: They served their client well; maybe not the republic. But we'll see.

CAMEROTA: Abby, Laura, David, John, thank you very much.

Now to this. A major setback in U.S. nuclear talks with North Korea. A new demand from Kim Jong-un's regime. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:00]