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Barr to Release Redacted Mueller Report This Morning; Kremlin: Kim Jong-un to Meet with Putin in Russia Soon. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 18, 2019 - 07:00   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. You'll see a lot of strong things come out.

[07:00:15] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He was chosen to protect the president. He's a lackey and a sycophant.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't agree with Democrats savaging Barr before we hear what he has to say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There had been discussions between Justice Department officials and White House lawyers about the substance of the report.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We know this won't exonerate the president. They're obviously nervous about it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mueller is going to stay under the radar.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: It would be a bad look for him to be part of the press conference.

He's going to have a chance to speak.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is throwback Thursday. John Berman is off, and Chris Cuomo joins me.

Did you accidentally set your alarm for a.m. instead of p.m.? I mean, what happened?

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I couldn't sleep. Called J.B. I said, "You want to take one off?"

He's like, "Yes, today's nothing."

CAMEROTA: That is great. It's great to have you here, because anything is possible over the next two hours.

CUOMO: Oh, yes.

CAMEROTA: So it is a landmark day in American political history. There's no other way to say it. In just hours, Attorney General William Barr's redacted version of the Mueller report will be released to the public for the first time in two years.

But before that happens, Attorney General William Barr will hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. Eastern Time.

Now, a senior Justice Department official says the report will then be delivered to Congress, and then it will be posted on the special counsel's website. Of course, anything is possible. And if we get a portion first, we will bring it to you right here.

The rollout plan is already igniting a firestorm. House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer call the plan, quote, "indefensible." They are calling on Robert Mueller himself to testify publicly. They're accusing Bill Barr of trying to shield the president and spin Mueller's findings.

CUOMO: And that's because Barr is doing that. First, with a reportedly stilted summary of the 400-page report. Then by delaying the release for close to a month when that didn't need to happen. Now this presser today, which is fine. Have the presser. But how can we ask you questions about something that no one has had a chance to digest except the White House? And that's another part of the poisoned process.

"The New York Times" reporting the Justice Department did brief the White House on the Mueller report ahead of its release today, adding the talks helped the president's legal team work to rebut the report.

The good news for transparency is that the publicly-released version of Mueller's report will supposedly only be "lightly redacted" in the section on obstruction of justice. I put it in quote, because I don't know what that means. It's all about what they redact, not just how much.

Let's discuss. Abby Phillip, CNN White House correspondent; David Gregory, CNN political analyst; Jeffrey Toobin, CNN chief legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. And we have Mark Mazzetti, CNN national security analyst and Washington investigative correspondent for "The New York Times." He was part of the team who broke the story about the Justice Department's talks with the White House on Mueller's report.

Mazzetti, I start with you. We talked about this last night. Good to see you again. You look better than I do. I don't know how that happened.

Let me ask you this, though. It's not that they were told everything, but they were told something. And this was a question that the A.G. was asked by Congress just last week, and he didn't want to answer it.

MARK MAZZETTI, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Right. They don't appear to be full briefings about the entire contents of the report or the conclusions of the report. But there were discussions, as we said, numerous discussions back and forth between senior Justice Department officials and White House lawyers about the scope of the report, some of what's in the report. And this has given a sort of head start to the team of the president's lawyers to counter the report, to rebut the report.

And as you said, there was a little bit of a tell last week when Barr was asked about this during a congressional hearing, whether there had been any discussions, and he just didn't answer the question. So there were these discussions in recent weeks. And -- and obviously, that created quite a political storm when Democrats heard about this.

CAMEROTA: Mark, why did they do that? I mean, they're supposed to be briefing Congress. Why did they have those discussions with the White House?

MAZZETTI: You know, it's still unclear what the need for the discussions was, who asked for them, at what level they took place. And it's a really good question. And -- and we don't know, you know, whether -- you know, who initiated, whether the Justice Department reached out to the White House to provide some input. Whether there were some demands from the White House to learn more. That's what we're still trying to figure out.

CUOMO: Brother Gregory, you know, look, I get people saying, "Wait for the report to come out. You know, once we read it, then we'll know. You know, don't have so much consternation before."

I don't think that's fair criticism. The process matters. If they had nothing to hide, control and manipulate, why release it the way this is going?

GREGORY: (AUDIO GAP)

[07:05:08] CUOMO: Uh-oh. Do you hear him?

CAMEROTA: He's speechless.

CUOMO: But let him keep going. I always love doing that.

CAMEROTA: It's good TV. I find dead air to be very good TV. Should we pose that question to Jeffrey?

CUOMO: Here it is.

CAMEROTA: Go. Go, David.

GREGORY: Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?

CUOMO: You could have just mouthed it, like they couldn't hear you, and then you bust in. Go ahead, buddy.

GREGORY: Exactly, exactly. You know, I think -- I think the point about the process is important. Obviously, the redactions, how light, how heavy will be important to discern. I don't think it's unusual that the White House gets some heads up

about what's in the report. But they should have been briefing Congress, as well. I think that's what's important.

CUOMO: And he should have admitted it.

GREGORY: And there will be a lot made about --

CUOMO: Barr should have just said it.

GREGORY: Right. Yes. Well, I don't disagree with that. I don't disagree with that. And I think there will be a lot of attention on the press conference, about whether we're going to hear from Bob Mueller down the road.

But I do think we have to stop and remember there's a big report that's coming up that we can read with careful language by the special prosecutor and his team that should shed a lot of light on all the questions we've had for two years.

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, do you think that there's anything strange about Barr's team briefing the White House? Numerous conversations, as Mark just told us, before Congress finds out what's in it?

TOOBIN: I don't think that, in isolation, is improper or illegal.

And you know, I think process is something that people generally are not that interested in. But what's worth remembering is everything that Barr and the Justice Department have done since early March, when Mueller turned in his report, has been spun in the same direction. Everything has been to make the president look as good as possible.

The four-page letter with the conclusion that Mueller didn't ask for, that repeats what the attorney general said in his 18-page audition to become attorney general. The long delay. The statements about spying that the attorney general made. Now the coordination with the White House. And now this preemptive press conference before the attorney general -- before the report is released.

All of this has been in the same direction. Each one of them, in and of itself, may be defensible. But when you take them together, it looks like the Justice Department covering for the president.

CUOMO: And Laura Coates, to get back to a point that you made -- oh, I'm sorry, Abby. What happened to Coates?

CAMEROTA: We replaced her with Jeffrey. Jeffrey needs some air time. He doesn't get enough.

CUOMO: That's fine.

Abby, do you remember what Laura was talking about in the last hour. She said that part of bringing Barr in was supposed to be about restoring integrity to the DOJ, and he was Mr. By-the-Book.

That's, I think, the point of the dismay here, is that he isn't doing anything that's by the book. He's doing it by his book, which is to protect the president.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, I think that a lot of people put that on Bill Barr. That -- the fact that he had been in this job previously made it seem more likely that that's what he would try to do, to reestablish trust in the Justice Department.

But clearly, the events of the last several weeks have called that into question. And frankly, the president has made that really difficult for him. I mean, I think if you're Bill Barr, and President Trump has been basically building you up over the last few days, saying you're doing such a great job, by contrast to the last person he had in the job who wasn't doing a great job, because he wasn't protecting him. It basically makes Bill Barr look like he is Trump's lackey.

We don't even know if that is the case or not. It's -- I don't even think we really have any concrete evidence about what Bill Barr is or isn't doing with this report yet.

But President Trump has clearly made it seem to the public that Bill Barr is out to protect him.

CUOMO: Right.

PHILLIP: And I think that's made it much more difficult for Barr to do his job. And as all this is unfolding, the White House has had some sensitivity to the idea that they might look like they're trying to -- to weigh in on the report and to be sort of, like, tipping the scales behind the scenes.

And that could be one of the reasons why everybody has been trying to conceal the fact that they have been having conversations with the Justice Department.

But at -- but at the same time, you've also heard aides say to -- to us here at CNN that they did not weigh in specifically on executive privilege. They sort of left it to Barr to make those decisions for them.

So there is, in some sense, a lot of trust from the White House's perspective and from the president's perspective that Barr will do what is necessary for it to be done in order to -- for this to not be a complete disaster for the president. That might be an unfounded confidence that they have in Barr, but maybe it is founded. Maybe it is based on something. I guess we'll find out soon when this report is released.

[07:10:05] CAMEROTA: Go ahead, David.

GREGORY: Well, one of the things that we have to remember today that I think is really the way to frame the entire day is that we're not going to be talking much about process once this report is digested.

The question is, is there anything there? Did they find anything or not? And if you're in a hurry, that's the answer [SIC] you want to know the question [SIC] to.

And for two years, we've known this will be a battle to define the findings. The president, Rudy Giuliani, they have been waiting for this moment for a long time. The president has been trying to answer that question for two years by saying there's nothing here, it's a witch hunt, it's a witch hunt, it's a witch hunt. It was not that. And there's going to be damaging information. But to what extent does it actually hurt?

I think there is the real prospect that the lines will just be hardened here on both sides, based on everything that comes in today.

CUOMO: It's been like that from the beginning. It's been a Rorschach test. But, look, Rudy Giuliani, people were saying early on, "He doesn't sound like a lawyer. You know, I don't think he's really representing his client's interest well here. Well, here he's making a lot" -- it was always about this. It's always been a spin game.

The disappointing part about the A.G. is that he's participating in the spin game. And yes, people can dismiss process. You know, David's right. Jeffrey's right. We'll focus on the report. But how we got here matters.

Because all that's going to happen, I'm going to read every damn word of that report.

CAMEROTA: I know you are.

CUOMO: I'm going to go through every word of it. But it's all going to be about the narrative you want to choose. That's what this is going to be about from here on out.

CAMEROTA: Well, of course. But also, there is something else that's going to be happening this morning that I think is important to talk about. And that is there's more spin coming.

Mark, do you have any reporting on why the -- why Bill Barr felt compelled to have a press conference? That took many people by surprise. It felt like, after James Comey came forward and gave his spin, that nobody would want to do that again, since it was roundly criticized.

Do you know why Bill Barr is taking that route?

MAZZETTI: No. It took us by surprise, too. The -- I mean, you can certainly see a reason for him wanting to, you know, talk about his process by which they, you know, got -- did the redactions, et cetera. It's certainly highly unusual, it seems, to have a press conference taking questions without the reporters having seen the report, which appears to be what's going to happen. It's another part of this very odd rollout for this report.

And so we'll have to see why he chose to have this press conference and let him explain it. And if I could go back to something Abby said earlier, which I think is important, the -- you know, it's bizarre, in a way, that -- that we still had this -- that we had this relationship between the White House and the Justice Department where there's not a ritual humiliation of the attorney general, which we've seen, which we saw for two years with Jeff Sessions.

This is sort of a seemingly close relationship between the White House and the Justice Department. And recall the reason why Jeff Sessions got on President Trump's bad side in the beginning was for this kind of original sin of recusing himself from the Russia investigation, and Trump blamed the entire thing on Sessions.

So now you see the end point where, you know, the attorney general is kind of taking charge of this process. And we'll see how much of an impact that had.

CUOMO: Who likes to do press conferences where they promised that things are going to happen, and people don't know the facts yet? But here, this is going to be amazing. I wonder who may have encouraged this press conference.

CAMEROTA: All right. Mark, David, Abby, Jeffrey, please stick around. We're going to need your expertise as more developments happen over the next two hours.

And there is also other breaking news to tell you about. North Korea is demanding Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be replaced in future negotiations. We also have breaking news out of Russia at this hour about Kim Jong-un.

CNN's Will Ripley is in Hong Kong with all of these breaking details. What have you just learned, Will?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A lot happening, Alisyn. Just within the last few minutes, the Kremlin has confirmed what we have suspected for quite some time now: that Kim Jong-un will be traveling to Russia and meeting with President Vladimir Putin. This is according to Russian state media. We've been getting it from sources. But the Kremlin had been denying it up until a short time ago.

But this is significant, because it follows another major diplomatic announcement from North Korean, which is that they no longer want to work with the U.S. secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, when it comes to denuclearization talks with the U.S.

Think of the time that Secretary Pompeo has invested traveling to North Korea several times, meeting with Kim Jong-un, hosting North Korean delegations to the United States. And now they're saying they want somebody who's more mature and careful.

They were watching his testimony in Washington to lawmakers, and they felt that sehe was disrespectful to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un when he spoke to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. And now they want him out.

And that puts President Trump in a very difficult spot after he was just bragging about the excellent relationship he says he has with Kim Jong-un. Now, Kim's people are saying they don't want to work with Pompeo, his secretary of state.

Does Trump acquiesce and appear potentially weak? Or does he keep Pompeo in his position, and then the North Koreans say they don't want to talk to the U.S. anymore?

[07:15:00] Of course, North Korea also, just this week, tested a tactical weapon, they say. And Kim Jong-un oversaw an air force combat readiness drill, hinting that he could move towards a more militaristic posture, Chris, if diplomacy falls apart.

CUOMO: Will Ripley, thank you very much. It reminded us of pre-"the murderous despot is a good man" posture of our president.

CAMEROTA: Back when the president was angry with Kim Jong-un.

CUOMO: Yes. When he had his famous line of "Kim Jong-un best not be messing with me."

That was one of my favorite --

CAMEROTA: I remember.

CUOMO: -- acts of diplomacy of the president so far.

CAMEROTA: I remember your dramatic reading of that tweet.

CUOMO: I was like, "Now, there's a guy from Queens. Now it makes sense."

All right. A little bit of political history there. But we're going to have big history made in Washington today. Look, you will finally get to make your own conclusions about what matters.

This man, Mr. Mueller, used your money and two years of our time to put together the story of what happened during our election. What will it say? Ourmue coverage continues next.

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CUOMO: Tick-tock. Tick-tock. We should have a Mueller clock down there.

CAMEROTA: Right.

[07:20:00] CUOMO: We're just about two hours away from Attorney General William Barr, he's going to give a press conference. This is before he releases the redacted Mueller report. Is that odd? Yes.

Back to discuss, Abby Phillip, David Gregory, Jeffrey Toobin, and joining them is Bianna Golodryga, CNN contributor.

Good to see you.

Look, fair appraisal. Be honest. This is weird. It's weird to have a press conference about something before you've released that thing. So you really can't be asked any questions about it. BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: That's right. It is weird.

You're going to have journalists now knowing what to ask him, especially if you think back to just a week ago, where Bill Barr defiantly said he's not going to be answering any questions -- this was before Congress -- when he was asked about the Barr report, he said -- the Mueller report. He said he wasn't going to be answering any questions until it was out.

So that leads to the question, well, what's changed in the past week? We now know from reporting that there have been communications with the White House. Whose idea was this press conference? What is Rod Rosenstein's role going to be there, given that he played a big part in this investigation, in bringing Mueller onto it.

So journalists will likely be asking some of the same questions that Congress asked Barr last week.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, Abby, a press conference does suggest there will be questions. This won't just be a statement. So journalists will figure out what to ask. Who knows what this is going to look like. This could be a long -- journalists obviously have lots of questions about what this report is going to look like. So it will be fascinating to see how Bill Barr handles this and why he decided to preempt the report with this press conference.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, there are plenty of questions for Bill Barr even before the report comes out. And particularly, I think a lot of the questions at 9:30 will likely be around the process of this. I mean, if I had to guess, I would say that Bill Barr is going to try to tell us what he did in this report. What did he redact and why? And what did he take into consideration when he made those decisions? And there will be a lot of questions about that.

But I also just can't get over the fact that, you know, it's the year 2019. And I think we can figure out how to release a 400-page report simultaneously to Congress and to the public with -- you know, simultaneous with a press conference that's an hour and a half earlier. So that's the part that's really kind of puzzling to me, is that there's no real logistical reason why this can't be done sooner. Because if it's done at 9:30, and Barr can give a press conference, it can certainly be released before then or around that time.

So he's clearly making a choice not to have the substance of the report available to people before he makes his comments. And I think it does raises some legitimate questions about whether he will actually then talk about substance before people have an opportunity to ask him real questions about that.

CUOMO: You know, David, last night, just when the heat was really rising last night about this process and Barr having this pageantry this morning without the product of the report, then came this reporting from "The Washington Post," which was a nice antidote.

And it came out that, well, the report will only be lightly redacted when it comes to obstruction. And there was another tidbit. That the reason that the Mueller team was in such conflict about obstruction was because they couldn't determine the president's intent. What do you make of those morsels?

GREGORY: Well, that's going to be, I think, what so many people will focus on when we actually do get a report and even the opportunity to question the attorney general. Just what Mueller did conclude. What else was missing, and whether there was an invitation to the attorney general to make the determination that they ultimately made, which is not to move forward with any obstruction charge, understanding that there are Justice Department guidelines that a president, sitting president can't be indicted anyhow.

But that's going to be so interesting to Democrats on Capitol Hill. Presumably, even Republicans who would take a look at these actions while the president is in office and whether it would constitute an impeachable offense. Whether -- and why that bar was not met by Mueller, and why Mueller ultimately failed to draw a conclusion.

I mean, I think there's so much about what Mueller has done and hasn't done. How he's conducted himself. Whether he'll testify later on about the report or whether he'll leave the report where it's at. And the ultimate -- the original question, too: Why not subpoena the president to have gotten a little bit closer to the answer of what his intent was or was not?

CAMEROTA: Jeffrey, here's the Republican rebuttal. And maybe this should mollify Democrats a little bit. Let me read it to you. It's from Congressman Doug Collins: "The only person trying to spin the report is Congressman Jerry Nadler. The A.G. has done nothing unilaterally. After partnering with Rod Rosenstein to share principal conclusions, Barr is releasing the report voluntarily, working with Mueller's team step by step."

Does that give any comfort, the idea that Robert Mueller's team has been part of all of this all along the way?

TOOBIN: Can I -- are you asking? Who are you asking?

CAMEROTA: The floor is yours, Jeffrey.

[07:25:03] TOOBIN: OK. I'm -- the -- well, that's a very important point. You know, what was Mueller's involvement in this redaction process?

If Mueller said, "All these redactions are perfectly fine with me. I was on board with all of that," I think that is a very significant point in -- in Barr's favor that he was doing this process as an honest broker. But we don't know that's the case.

The question of whether Mueller adopts all these redactions and agrees with them is one of the many questions that's appropriate for the press conference today and also for Mueller when he -- when he ultimately testifies, as I'm sure he will.

So you know, yes, the congressman makes an interesting point. But it's not clear that it's true. You know, facts matter.

CUOMO: And again, you just wouldn't do it this way if you weren't worried about controlling the narrative. And that's what this has been about from the beginning. Once you don't have criminality, once there's not going to be any change to the indictment, it becomes about how do we tell the story? And Barr promised to be by the book.

By the book, Bianna, you don't have the A.G. kind of then supersede the special counsel and make a key determination and figure out all the redactions. This could have all been done by Mueller and his team, and we wouldn't have been waiting this long.

GOLODRYGA: Right. And a lot of pressure on the A.G., if you figure that it took him less than 48 hours to come up with a four-page letter that he wrote when he initially got the Barr -- the Mueller report, saying that the president -- there was no evidence of collusion, right, and that cleared him of obstruction.

So going through the details now, as we all will be. You said you're going to be reading every word of this report.

CUOMO: Every word.

GOLODRYGA: A lot of pressure and focus will be on him as to what led him so quickly to come up with that four-page conclusion.

Also, the irony is not lost. Remember what happened and why Comey was fired from the get-go. Rod Rosenstein, in his letter, said that it had, in large part, to do with how he treated Hillary Clinton in that investigation, to come out and give that press conference. Well, now it appears that we may be in a very similar position with the attorney general and Rod Rosenstein at his side, giving a press conference, as well.

CAMEROTA: Did you have one more point, David?

GREGORY: That's a key question. And Alisyn brought -- you brought this up earlier, Alisyn, and I think it's important. What was so prejudicial about what Comey did after the e-mail investigation is he said nobody would charge the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, with any crime in all of this. But boy, did she have bad judgment and do a lot of bad things, and she should have known better.

I don't think you're going to get that from Barr.

And here's the other thing. I do think there will be damaging information to the president in this Mueller report. The question is will it have the kind of political impact that I think Comey ultimately had on Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate, in part because of the timing, so close to the election?

This is where narrative matters. This is where the spin matters. And this is the moment that the White House hasn't even been waiting for. President Trump didn't wait for anything. He started on day one and said, "There will be nothing here. This is all about nothing. This is a witch hunt." That's the argument that he'll be saying today in vindication.

TOOBIN: Can I say something about spin? CAMEROTA: Quickly.

TOOBIN: You know, the -- I think, you know, viewers should be aware that the people with the biggest partisan stake on either side are going to be the fastest to declare vindication. It's worth maybe waiting a little bit and reading it for yourselves and let people absorb it a little.

I know you know, we're all going to be on television all day, talking about this. But, you know, the people who are most certain that their pre-existing conclusions are ratified, maybe we shouldn't believe them so much.

CAMEROTA: All right. Thank you for that cautionary note, Jeffrey.

Friends, thank you all very much for weighing in.

So Democrats are calling on Attorney General William Barr to cancel his news conference this morning before he releases the Mueller report. One congresswoman is leading the charge. She joins us live next.

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