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Reality Check on Trump and Obstruction; Barr to Release Mueller Report; Democrats Want Mueller to Testify. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired April 18, 2019 - 08:30   ET

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


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[08:30:00] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Is a made up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.

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JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Number two, the day after Comey's firing, Trump immediately welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Kislyak into the Oval Office with no American press present. Trump told the pair he'd faced, quote, great pressure over the Russia investigation and since he'd fired that, quote, nut job Comey, the pressure had been, quote, taken off. That's according to "The New York Times."

Number three, as reporting broke about the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting when Don Junior was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton by the Russians, his dad, now president, drafted a statement aboard Air Force One saying the meeting was actually about a Russian adoption program. The tall tale revealed to be misleading at best and an outright lie at worst.

Number four, Trump has consistently tried to conceal details of personal meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, including outright confiscating his own interpreter's notes. That's according to "The Washington Post."

Number five, President Trump's dangled the pardon power in front of witness in the Russian probe, praising former campaign chair Paul Manafort for not flipping, while former Trump fixer, Michael Cohen, was told by a Trump lawyer, quote, sleep well tonight, you've got friends in high places.

Now, this surreal fact pattern certainly could look like obstruction to casual observers and obstruction is just one central question that we still need answers on. Others include the role of WikiLeaks, Cambridge Analytica, the Russians, and, of course, the money trail. So, don't believe the hype that there's nothing to see here. Put your partisan blinders aside. Read the redacted report. Follow the facts first and decide for yourself.

And that's your "Reality Check."

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good advice, John Avlon. Thank you very much for reminding us of all of that.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Important stuff.

CAMEROTA: OK. People are on the move in Washington, D.C. The attorney general has just arrived. This is his motorcade. This is him arriving at the Justice Department because less than an hour from now he will address the American people. He will have a press conference. And we have just learned what he will talk about, next.

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[08:35:48] CAMEROTA: All right, we are less than an hour away from hearing the attorney general before he releases the redacted Mueller report. "The New York Times" today is reporting that the Justice Department officials have had numerous conversations with White House lawyers about all of the conclusions made by Mueller's team in just the recent days. However, here is what William Barr told Congress just last week.

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

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: You know, I'm not going to -- I'm not going -- you know, as I say, I'm landing the plane right now and, you know, I've been willing to discuss my -- my letters and the process going forward, but the report is going to be out next week and I'm just not going to get into the details of the process until the plane's on the ground.

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CAMEROTA: All right. Joining us now we have David Gregory, CNN political analyst, Josh Campbell, CNN law enforcement analyst and former FBI agent who worked with both Robert Mueller and James Comey, Anne Milgram, CNN legal analyst and former New Jersey attorney general, and David Chalian, CNN political detector.

OK, guys, I know everyone's on tenterhooks waiting to see what Bill Barr says at this press conference as well as, of course, what the Mueller report says.

Anne, why didn't Attorney General Barr, why wasn't he honest? Why didn't he just say, yes, we have been coordinating with the White House? Where's the shame in that? Is that not right to do?

ANNE MILGRAM, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I mean I think he knew that he shouldn't be doing what he was doing. And essentially he answered the question in many ways by not being willing to answer it.

CAMEROTA: But it is wrong to coordinate with the White House lawyers?

MILGRAM: So the -- the idea that he would have given the White House some heads up that the report was coming makes complete sense to me. The idea that he would give them the actual report or walk them through with detail the specific arguments before it's been released to Congress, before it's been released to the public, he's essentially giving the president, who is the subject of the investigation, a heads up in a way that allows him to craft his argument and his response. And that's problematic.

You know, if you want it to be fair, you want -- you know, we want to see Mueller's report and then we want to have a conversation about that and he's giving it to the president on the side, I have a problem with that.

CUOMO: Look, the toxic part is not admitting it. He's landing the plane. He's making it look like it's one of those 737 Max 8s that we're all so worried about because of the way he's landing it and the lack of sophistication and the danger in tainting the product with the process.

You worked with Mueller. You worked with Comey. You know what the regulations and the normal practices are within.

How much would you tell the White House about something like this?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, look, what's being sacrificed here is public confidence at the end of the day, that the Justice Department is operating independently, that it's operating fairly. And, you know, if you're sitting in that seat at DOJ, and main justice, you have to understand that the public is looking to you and, again, this toxic political climate and historically the DOJ has been that independent arbiter, that we're not Republican, we're not Democrat, we don't choose sides. It's not a good look to now hear that the Department of Justice was coordinating with the White House, just as it wasn't a good look during the Hillary Clinton case when you had the attorney general meeting on an airplane with President Clinton. It's the same thing.

And, again, they have to know that. And the fact that they did it anyway causes a lot of questions.

CAMEROTA: David Gregory --

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I actually have --

CAMEROTA: Go ahead.

GREGORY: You know, I just have a slightly different view. I actually don't have a problem with the idea that they're giving -- this is the president's Justice Department and attorney general giving his counsel's office a heads up about key findings in the report. We don't know the extent of that briefing.

My problem is that if you're going to do this with integrity, then bring in key members of the congressional leadership at the same time to walk them through. Don't play yourself as attorney general in a role where you're going to be the gatekeeper of information and you're going to be the one to frame how the world sees the findings of Robert Mueller. That's my issue. CAMPBELL: I would just refute -- rebut that by saying that it's not

the president's Justice Department, it's the American people's Justice Department. And particularly when the president is a central player in this and people in his orbit, again, I think they have to be hypersensitive to the notion that the American people are expecting fairness. And any deviation from that, again, is going to cause a lot of questions.

CUOMO: Hey, David Chalian, you're the perfect person to ask this. Like, in terms of how this has been handled, it's about what the political optics are of it. And this was Barr saying, I'm going to go by the book. And the Democrats, three of them voted for him, but that confirmation was relatively gentle. Did they just forget what he did as OLC, what he did as AG under Bush?

[08:40:11] DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, they didn't forget because they did press him on that during the confirmation hearing. But you are right, some of that stuff came up, Chris, but it was rather gentle. And I think there was a hopefulness on the part of Democrats because of his previous tenure in that job that there would be some fealty to the tradition of independence.

Here's -- here's what I just look at optically. Bill Barr had a choice, right, he could have bent over backwards to make every public statement and appearance and move on this matter seem completely across the board without concern to the president's feelings about it. He chose not to do that. So it may not be improper or completely out of the realm of his job as attorney general and a member of the president's cabinet to brief them, but it is a choice that Barr has made to not bend over backwards to have that layer of independence. He chose a different path, which is at every turn it seems he wanted to ensure in some way that he didn't get out of step the way Jeff Sessions did with the president.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, Josh, you know -- I just want to go back to what we're about to see less than an hour from now, and that's the press conference. Having lived through the James Comey backlash, where so much grief was heaped on him because he decided to speak about this and talk about his process. We know from Jessica Schneider, our reporter, that Bill Barr is going to come out in less than an hour and talk about his process. Are you surprised he's making that decision?

CAMPBELL: So I think the difference here is what we're not going to see is editorializing on the part of the attorney general. So as you -- we go back to James Comey, there were two issues there, not only deviating from the Justice Department, but also, you know, characterizing her behavior, Hillary Clinton's, as improper and sloppy. And, again, he got a lot of heat for that.

We're not going to see that today. The problem with what we're going so see today is that it's completely backwards. We don't know what is in the report, yet we're going to be hearing from officials. And the only way that I would accept what's going to happen today is if the attorney general comes back to the microphone tonight or tomorrow morning after we've had time to read the report and then answer questions. MILGRAM: Can I take issue with just one piece about the editorial

piece.

We've already seen Barr editorialize. And so, to that point, I think we are going to see him do exactly what he did in that four-page summary, which is to put his frame and it, his spin on it, that the president didn't do anything wrong, and he'll couch it in language of, he's not exonerated but, as though he is -- he's not guilty of anything. And so I think we have to be careful about seeing Barr for what he is, which he is not calling it straight down the middle. He's calling it (INAUDIBLE) way.

CUOMO: Here's the -- here's a look at the room. In the room where it will happen.

CAMEROTA: Well, wait a second, does it get any more exciting than that?

CUOMO: Well, look -- who was that?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. That meant something.

CUOMO: Why is that flag moving? Which flag is it? Is it relevant? Are two of those the same?

David, what was your point?

GREGORY: Let's just remember that Bill Barr is not the only major player here. He is a major player in terms of how -- I agree, in terms of how he has cast what we're going to see. The fact that he has been the gatekeeper of the report and his initial letter and now we're going so see redactions.

But do have Rod Rosenstein, who brought in the special prosecutor, who approved everything Mueller did all along the way. And we're going to actually have a report. And there will be Mueller presumably on Capitol Hill at some point. The attorney general will be answering questions on Capitol Hill. So this is more than a -- than a one-day extravaganza. This is going to play out over plenty of time.

And we should also remember when Jeff Sessions was fired, the initial reaction, which I think was a correct one, was to start to ask, is this the beginning of the end of the Mueller probe? Here's a new attorney general who said it would be illegitimate to charge the president with obstruction, coming in and getting the job. Was all of a sudden this going to be derailed, and it was not.

And so, you know, Mueller is going to have the last word here with a 400 plus page report. And I think all the admonitions to actually read it, to digest it are important and well taken.

And let's remember the contrast to the Starr report. We all remember that was actually read word-for-word live on the air, or major portions of it certainly were. That may -- it's a striking difference from how the ability for this attorney general and certainly the White House to immediately try to spin what this is, what the conclusions are, which is what's going to happen today.

CUOMO: It's an important distinction. The Starr report was a different animal because it came as a creature of statute that doesn't exist anymore.

GREGORY: Right.

CUOMO: And the irony is, they couldn't wait for that law to expire. They wanted to curtail the special counsel more. They wanted less power, less purview, less potential political possibilities. They're going to get all of that now and it's frustrating.

CAMEROTA: And less transparency.

CUOMO: Right.

GREGORY: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: Yes.

[08:44:53] CAMEROTA: Guys, we have many more questions for you. Stick around. Obviously things actually are happening in that room and we are preparing for this press conference. So, stick around. We're going to take a very quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: We're just minutes away. You see that? That's not Bill Barr.

CAMEROTA: No.

CUOMO: Could be his stand in.

We're just minutes away from the AG, William Barr, giving a press conference before the release of Robert Mueller's report.

With us right now, David Gregory, Josh Campbell, Anne Milgram, David Chalian.

David, let me come to you because this is all about politics. Unfortunately now the AG is part of a political process. This is a pageant that's going on. We know he wants to talk about why he did what he did in terms of forming what we're going to get later this morning.

What's the plus/minus on the political play here?

CHALIAN: Well, we have a little bit of history, recent history, right, about how the politics played out here with his four-page summary of the -- or principled conclusions that he came to from going through the Mueller report. And we saw how sort of the battle lines were formed.

[08:50:00] I remember a lot of us said at that time, clear political victory for President Trump, obviously, that he wasn't indicted and that there was -- that this was out of the criminal realm now. That was a huge cloud lifted, but that that was going to be the best day for him in this process. And so what's going to happen today as we see this, 400 pages, Chris, minus the redactions, and each one of those pages is likely to have something that chips away at total complete exoneration, nothing to see here, the way the president would want it.

So, again, the battle lines are going to get formed in politics. The Democrats are going to demand for full transparency, none of these redactions should be there, they want to see the full report. You already heard that they want Mueller to come up and testify, as I'm sure he will. But you're seeing where the president is, where he just saying this is pure harassment.

I think, as we've seen over the last couple of weeks, it is very possible that the politics of this is something we already know, which is that it is not likely to necessarily move the American public one way or the other very much.

CAMEROTA: And here's an interesting development, the Washington --

GREGORY: I --

CAMEROTA: Hold on -- hold that thought, David.

"The Washington Post" has just gotten -- exchanged texts with Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer. Here's a quote, Rudy Giuliani says, quote, we are ready to rumble. The rebuttal -- their rebuttal that they have prepared is 30 pages long. How do they know what they're rebutting? We don't.

MILGRAM: Right.

CAMEROTA: So, in other words, because they've been having conversations with Bill Barr, they already have their rebuttal prepared before we know what's in the report.

MILGRAM: Completely. And it sounds like what they've set up is just -- they're trying to frame the issues. And so you'll have Barr first. Then we'll have the report. Then you'll have the rebuttal. It's like a Trump sandwich.

CUOMO: Look, but even this, David Gregory, this is part of it. We're ready to rumble. What is this? This is a street fight that --

GREGORY: Yes.

CUOMO: That, you know, this is about who can, you know, get the most cuts on the other one. This was always the plan for Rudy Giuliani.

Do you remember early on when people used to criticize him and say, he doesn't sound like a lawyer. He doesn't seem to be serving his interests. This was the interests. And the Raskins (ph), the couple who have been doing the lawyering, getting Mueller's team to not insist on any questions written even about obstruction, that was the win. Everything after that was going to be optics. GREGORY: Exactly right. And this was a television investigation that

required a television lawyer to defend the president who was on television constantly going after the investigation. And I agree with David, I don't think minds are going to be changed here because unless Barr has totally misrepresented what the conclusions are, if the conclusions are that they looked at collusion and coordination with Russian interference, didn't find any, looked at obstruction of justice, decided it was, you know, a jump ball and wouldn't bring the charges, that's the result. The rest will be politics.

Now, there could be plenty of information in this report that is damaging to the president, but we know a lot of what the president has done that is damaging, we've been reporting on it, talking about it for two years and that didn't change the conclusion by Mueller, certainly with regard to any potential criminal conspiracy by those in the Trump campaign.

So what about the behavior? What about conversations? What about actions that the president may have taken that we don't know about, do those potentially hurt him? Do those lead to democrats saying this is so serious that we have to initiate an impeachment proceeding against him. Regardless, this is going to get back to the hardened politics around Donald Trump and around this investigation. I think it's going to be enormously difficult to move people off of that and Mueller is certainly trying to steer a very centrist course here and presumably will stick to that even if he testifies on The Hill.

CAMEROTA: But in terms of the politics, David Chalian, it also doesn't help that what Bill Barr effectively did was start the narrative, get the headline out there, three to four weeks ago, and let that bake in. That is now baked in people's minds and people's opinions. And so now there will be new stuff that is released today and people who are really interested will pour over it and learn new things. But in terms of the headlines of people's opinions, that already might have congealed.

CHALIAN: Yes, that's why I think the way they did this was politically advantageous to the president and the way Barr released that letter for exactly what you're saying, Alisyn.

I do think they are -- they are going to be in a bit of a spot, the White House, because, again, I think on each page of this there's going to be something to go back and say, this is not total and complete exoneration. You know, especially as we're talking about the obstruction of justice stuff. But that is not -- the president is prepared for that. That's why Rudy Giuliani is saying he's ready to rumble. That's why -- they're ready to go toe for toe. As David was just saying, we've seen this for two years, the obstruction case and the data points have been in plain sight. I'm eager to see if there's some surprise in here that Mueller's been holding on to that we just didn't know about at all. But barring that, the data points on obstruction have been out there and it's why the president has been so aggressive in trying to damage Mueller's reputation and damage the reputation of the investigation.

[08:55:24] CAMEROTA: Josh, you've got ten seconds. Your final thoughts.

CAMPBELL: No, I was just going to say that, you know, the American people have been shoveled political talking points for the last two years. Today it's going to come at them like verbal suppression fire. I think everyone should be on guard, read the report itself, don't believe talking points by those who are trying to manipulate you. It's as simple as that.

CUOMO: They're firing at you. Take cover with the truth and read the report when it comes out.

CAMEROTA: Thank you all very much for helping us preview it and understand what we are about to see in less than an hour.

Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer will continue our CNN coverage next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to what will be a historic day. I'm Wolf Blitzer here in Washington, where just -- in a little while from now the long anticipated Mueller report, at least a redacted version of it, will be released.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Or at least part of it. I'm Jake Tapper.

[08:59:57] This day has been 23 months in the making, May 17, 2017, that's when the redacted former FBI Director Robert Mueller was given his marching orders to investigate.