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Trump Not Cleared of Obstruction in Redacted Mueller Report; Top Dem to Subpoena for Full Mueller Report Today. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 19, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a narrative about a vast, sprawling, insidious cover-up by the president of the United States.

[07:00:28] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If they had anything on him, he'd be indicted today. They don't have the evidence.

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): I have formally requested that Special Counsel Mueller testify so we can get some answers.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: There's a sentence here that is all but an explicit invitation to Congress to impeach the president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Many of us do think the president is unfit, but unless that's bipartisan, an impeachment would be doomed to failure.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm having a good day. This should never happen to another president again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is NEW DAY. John Berman is off. Chris Cuomo joins me.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good to be here.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you. It's a very important day again.

CUOMO: Indeed. Indeed.

CAMEROTA: As we digest all of this and try to analyze what it was that we've seen and read in those 400 pages. It can be dizzying.

The headlines this morning on the Mueller report reveal the gravity of its findings. "Wall Street Journal" says, "Mueller Report Lays Out Trump's Attempts to Curtail Inquiry." "The Washington Post" reads, "Mueller Report Paints a Damning Portrait of the Trump Presidency." And "The New York Times" calls the report "A Portrait of the White House and Its Culture of Dishonesty."

The Mueller report also shows President Trump repeatedly lying to the public and trying to get his aides to lie and to obstruct.

CUOMO: Now, the Mueller team was unable to conclude that criminal conduct occurred on obstruction. But the report does not exonerate the president on that front. In fact, it lays out multiple examples of potential obstruction.

And there was a lot of effort taken to direct Congress to take up the question. What will they do? What do you want them to do? That's going to be a big component here. Impeachment is political. Politics is about your will.

CNN's Jessica Schneider live in Washington with more -- Jessica.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Democrats are calling on Robert Mueller to testify publicly, and they've set a May 23 deadline. They want the special counsel, who of course, has not said a word beyond what's in his report to elaborate on the damaging details revealed in his 448 pages.

This report paints a portrait of a presidency in chaos; and now Democrats have to decide what to do next.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Robert Mueller's 448-page report outlining President Trump's frantic efforts to thwart the special counsel's investigation, noting that these efforts were mostly unsuccessful, "largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders" or accede to his requests.

Upon learning that the special counsel was appointed after he fired FBI Director James Comey, Mueller writing that President Trump declared, "Oh, my God, this is terrible. This is the end of my presidency. I'm Fad."

Mueller writes the president pressed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to give a news conference suggesting firing Comey was his idea. Rosenstein telling the president that a news conference was a bad idea, because if the press asked him, he would tell the truth.

According to the report, President Trump proceeded to take a series of actions to curtail the special counsel's probe, including directing White House counsel Don McGahn to instruct Acting Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein to have Mueller removed. The special counsel writing that McGahn did not, deciding instead that he would resign rather than trigger what he regarded as a potential Saturday Night Massacre.

President Trump saying this when "The New York Times" reported on that story last year.

TRUMP: Fake news, folks. Fake news.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's your message today?

TRUMP: Typical "New York Times" fake stories.

SCHNEIDER: The special counsel also detailing a number of other instances where the president tried to sabotage the investigation, including asking former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to tell then Attorney General Sessions to curtail the investigation; directing the deletion of a line in a press release, acknowledging that the Trump Tower meeting with Russians had to do with information helpful to the campaign; urging Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself; and sending veiled or direct messages, either personally or through intermediaries, to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, encouraging them not to cooperate.

Mueller noting that he ultimately did not bring charges of obstruction of justice against Mr. Trump, due in part to a Justice Department guideline that a sitting president cannot be indicted. The special counsel writing, "If we had confidence, after a thorough investigation of the facts, that the president clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state."

[07:05:05] Mueller suggesting that Congress, not the Justice Department, should decide whether to prosecute the president.

Attorney General Barr defending the president's conduct.

WILLIAM BARR, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL: There is substantial evidence to show that the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency.

SCHNEIDER: Within minutes, House Democrats were calling for Mueller's testimony and slamming Barr.

NADLER: Barr's words and actions suggest he has been disingenuous and misleading in saying the president is clear of wrongdoing.

SCHNEIDER: The report also offering new detail about the extensive efforts by the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election to help elect Trump, including attempting to hack Hillary Clinton's emails five hours after Mr. Trump said this.

TRUMP: Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.

SCHNEIDER: Mueller ultimately determining that, while the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, he could not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.

President Trump remaining defiant.

TRUMP: I'm having a good day, too. It was called, no collusion, no obstruction.

(END VIDEOTAPE) SCHNEIDER: And notably, President Trump's lawyers kept him from sitting down for an interview with the special counsel. Mueller disclosed in the report that his team considered issuing a subpoena for the president's testimony, since they found his written responses inadequate. But ultimately, Mueller's team decided that pursuing that path would lead to lengthy litigation.

Now, curiously, Trump's team has not issued any written rebuttal, despite getting the early access to the Mueller report about a week before it was released to the public yesterday.

CAMEROTA: We'll see if we ever see that rebuttal. Jessica, thank you very much for all the reporting.

CUOMO: Rudy said last night --

CAMEROTA: They're waiting.

CUOMO: -- it's done. They have it. They want to see how this plays out, and then they'll put it out if they need it.

CAMEROTA: It makes sense. That makes perfect sense.

CUOMO: If you were gaming the system, then that's the way you'd do it. If you want full transparency, which is what they promised the people, then you should put it out now.

CAMEROTA: All right. Let's bring in our guests. We have Jeffrey Toobin, CNN chief legal analyst; David Gregory, CNN political analyst; Michael Smerconish, host of CNN's "SMERCONISH"; and Abby Phillip, CNN White House correspondent.

Jeffrey Toobin, I am anxious to hear your thoughts. Now that you've had almost 24 hours to let this all sink in, what in these 400-plus pages surprised you?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the extent and detail of the -- of the evidence of obstruction of justice. It's hard to draw parallel to an ordinary defendant, because an ordinary defendant can't fire the director of the FBI, for example.

But if you had an ordinary defendant with 11 separate examples of obstruction of justice, each one of them pretty persuasive. But together, I cannot imagine that person wouldn't be indicted.

CUOMO: In fact, Mueller said that in the report, right? That if the aides had done what the president asked them to do, they might have been charged.

TOOBIN: Right. And it's important to remember, the crime of obstruction of justice includes the endeavoring. That's the word endeavoring to obstruct justice. So you don't have to succeed. Most people who obstruct justice don't succeed, because they get caught. The -- someone else would have been indicted. You know, the president, for all the reasons we know, was not indicted. But the scale of evidence was clearly enormous. And it just underlined how much good the attorney general did for the president by creating the impression almost a month ago that there was essentially nothing here. False. False impression.

CAMEROTA: I mean, Elie Honig said basically open and shut case. I mean, he agreed with Jeffrey Toobin that the evidence, for any other defendant, would have been an open and shut case.

CUOMO: Right. And -- but that's one of the frustrations here, is there's something in this for everybody. Open and shut case. Yes, except you can't make a case. And the president says there was no case.

Put up the tweet for Michael Smerconish, the president's tweet of game over. Now, the reason I like this is because I think it speaks to the president's truth on a number of levels, Michael Smerconish. The president tweeted out game over, no collusion, no obstruction and then something about for the haters in the media and those on the left or whatever.

They have been playing this as a game. It's been tactical. It was about avoiding any disclosure of realities they didn't like. How did it wind up for them?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN HOST, "SMERCONISH": I hope you don't mind if I disregard your question, because I'm --

CUOMO: Why would I mind that?

SMERCONISH: -- chomping on the bit to say something.

OK. I'm going to try and say simply something that has been referenced by many in the conversation today and yesterday. And it's this.

Stunning as it sounds, the president was never at any risk of a finding by Mueller that he broke the law. In 400 pages, there's one line that tells you everything you need to know: "We determined not to apply an approach that could potentially result in a judgment that the president committed crimes."

[07:10:23] If Robert Mueller thought that he had not committed obstruction of justice, he would have told us so. He believes he did. And there's no way, based on the framework that he utilized, that he was ever going to say so. That's my takeaway.

CAMEROTA: Because of the Department of Justice rules?

SMERCONISH: Correct. And this belief -- and I don't know where he draws upon this -- that there would not have been an adversarial system provided. Therefore, it would have been fundamentally unfair to make those allegations against the president.

That's not the job he was hired to do. He was hired to do a job of determining whether there was criminal conduct and, from the get-go, apparently, for 22 months, he's been operating through a framework where that was never going to even be for consideration. That is mindboggling to me.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I actually -- I view that a little bit differently. I mean, if there was evidence of a criminal conspiracy, he would have charged that in any number of different areas that he would have found. What he couldn't do --

SMERCONISH: Not the president.

GREGORY: Right. But -- right. But that part we knew. If there was evidence, you can't indict a sitting president based on guidelines by the Justice Department.

But that doesn't mean that there isn't a pressure release valve. And that is what is now available to Congress and what the -- what the special -- what Mueller outlines as a case of obstruction.

I want to go back to Chris's question, though, which I think --

CUOMO: Good man.

GREGORY: -- is a good one on here the political front, which is that the president had a sense early on, which was -- the question was, did we collude?

CUOMO: Right.

GREGORY: Was there a conspiracy with Russia to interfere in the election, to throw the election, in effect? And he knew if he could keep the focus on that, that "if it's yes or no to that, that I can win because I didn't do anything wrong. And that everything else, I could explain away."

CUOMO: Right.

GREGORY: And that's what's on the table right now. Because I think what comes out to me, I'm not surprised, because the biggest thing that Trump told us in the last two years is -- was the truth, which is he fired the FBI director, because he didn't like the investigation into Russia.

CUOMO: Right. And the way they defined it was --

GREGORY: But now you've got more detail that Congress can work with.

CUOMO: -- very helpful. You know, Jeffrey -- Jeffrey Toobin and I, we've had a million conversations about collusion and the word, and now here's my new feeling about it, based on where we are right now. Jeffrey, please feel free to bat it aside the way Smerconish did.

The reason they like the word "collusion" is because "no collusion" is actually exactly the opposite of the reality. No conspiracy. "We weren't a Russian agent. We didn't criminally help the interference into the election." Yes, yes, yes. Mueller vindicates all those positions. But they colluded like crazy.

They did sneaky clever things that they lied about, trying to reach out, trying to get benefit. Trying to make contact that they knew they shouldn't be making, and they lied about the same actions. That's collusion. It's not a crime.

TOOBIN: Well, I think that's right. I mean, the -- what -- what the president has done since the very beginning is define the issue.

CUOMO: Yes.

TOOBIN: In such a way that he knew he was going to win.

CUOMO: Yes.

TOOBIN: I mean, their -- but in fairness also to the president, there were lots of suspicions that the president and his allies actively assisted in the hacking and the social media conspiracy; and that was --

CUOMO: But we never saw great proof of it. That's why criminality seemed remote.

TOOBIN: Right. You know, the people who were careful always pointed out that there was never any proof of that precise connection.

CUOMO: Right.

TOOBIN: But was the Trump campaign delighted that WikiLeaks was doing what it was doing?

CUOMO: Yes.

TOOBIN: Was the Russia campaign -- were they happy to take any help they were getting from Russia?

CUOMO: Yes.

TOOBIN: Did they seek it out --

CUOMO: Yes.

TOOBIN: -- at Trump Tower and elsewhere? Absolutely. Now, they didn't succeed in making the full connection, but collusion in the colloquial, not legal sense, you're exactly right. Of course they were colluding.

CAMEROTA: And they went further than we knew. So when -- when President Trump says, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you find Hillary Clinton's emails," you know, he then tries to tell, in his written answers to Robert Mueller, he says, quote, "I made the statement in jest and sarcastically, as was apparent to any objective observer."

Not so fast. Because what we find out in these 400 pages is that inside the White House, he is telling basically anyone who will listen, go find Hillary Clinton's emails. Do whatever you can to find them. Michael Flynn takes it so seriously that he begins hiring people. He

goes to different GOP operatives. He goes to people that he knows on the outside.

[07:15:11] CUOMO: Erik Prince gives money to help find it.

CAMEROTA: Erik Prince, billionaire --

CUOMO: Betsy DeVos's brother.

CAMEROTA: -- gives money to this to try to -- and it goes on for months and months.

TOOBIN: And --

CAMEROTA: They are actively trying to find it. Quickly, Jeff.

TOOBIN: The extraordinary detail, that famous quote, you know, "Russia, if you're listening, go find the 30,000 emails." That day. That very day the Russians begin an effort to find the emails.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

TOOBIN: You know, using their, you know, illegal hacking ability; and that leads to the disclosure of emails. Not those emails but other emails that maybe swung the election.

CAMEROTA: Yes. And so --

TOOBIN: So I mean, the -- the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, while not legally criminal, are pretty extensive.

CAMEROTA: Right. So Abby, it just doesn't paint a flattering picture of what was going on inside the White House. And it gives a lot of details and description of how, you know, corrupt things looked.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes, I mean, I think it definitely paints the picture of a White House, and a campaign, really, populated by people willing to do anything to gain the upper hand, willing to do anything up until the line almost of criminality to -- to basically -- to persevere through this campaign.

And then, when they're faced with the prospect of the public finding out, they lie about it. So I mean, I think that's kind of -- this is the gray line of, I think, where -- where the Mueller report stops being a legal document and starts being a question of what people value, what voters value, whether there's sort of a moral element to all of this. It's about whether or not this matters to the American public.

And I still think that that could very well be a factor as we go into the next phase of this all. That people are going to read this document, and they're going to see lie after lie after lie. And I think that's going to start to have an impact in the overall perception that this is a president who continuously employs people willing to do anything and who encourages his aides to lie for him. CUOMO: Two things.

CAMEROTA: How can Abby be so composed?

CUOMO: That's what I'm saying.

CAMEROTA: It's so impressive.

CUOMO: First, she gets attacked by a lizard. Now she is caught in a -- some type of --

CAMEROTA: Gale winds. Gale-force winds.

CUOMO: -- gale-force wind, and she makes a completely cogent point.

CAMEROTA: I know.

GREGORY: Right.

CAMEROTA: And it's not even fazing her.

GREGORY: And I was going to compare -- I was going to complain about the air conditioning in here. I don't think it's quite right in the studio.

CAMEROTA: Abby Phillip in the -- in the gusty winds of political scrutiny that have descended on Mar-a-Lago.

CAMEROTA: I mean, it's truly the sign of the apocalypse that she's dealing with.

PHILLIP: It's supposed to be beautiful in Florida, but this is the weather I get.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh. Abby, our hats are flying off to you.

Thank you, friends, very much.

CUOMO: Boy, oh, boy.

CAMEROTA: That was miraculous.

CUOMO: So the report is out. But as you will see over the next five to seven days, there's going to be news every day with respect to this investigation. And we have some right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:22:22] CUOMO: All right. We do have breaking news. House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler just announced he is making another move to get the full Mueller report. Listen to what he just said to ABC.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NADLER: In order to make informed decisions, and we will subpoena that entire report today. GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: That subpoena is coming today?

NADLER: That subpoena will come in the next couple --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Including the grand jury?

NADLER: Including the grand jury evidence, yes. Because we have to see the entire report. And by the way, in every --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. So a little choppy there. But he's saying, "I want it all, including grand jury."

We have Jeffrey Toobin, David Gregory somewhere. Maybe he'll come back.

CAMEROTA: The air conditioning was bothering him.

CUOMO: Michael Smerconish.

Jeffrey, now, just to remind people, Mr. Barr said that certain members of Congress would get everything except grand jury testimony. Nadler saying not good enough. Implications?

TOOBIN: Well, there are two ways that this may work. One is they may get it through the subpoena.

The other way is they could go to the district court and get what's called a 6(e) order, which would allow the grand jury material to be turned over to Congress.

I have to say, certainly, on the obstruction of justice part, there was relatively little redacted. I mean, you know, we've belabored Attorney General Barr; and I think he deserves a lot of belaboring. But at least as far as obstruction of justice, there was not much of this report that was covered up. The part dealing with Russia, there was a good deal covered up. And that, I can see why Congress wants -- wants to see more.

CAMEROTA: Well, there you go, I mean, Michael. That's the conundrum, right, for Congress. Which is do they really think that these 36 pages that were redacted, there's going to be a bombshell in there, that there's going to be something that changes the equation? No.

But, of course, it is their job. Oversight is what they're tasked with. That is their job description. And so now I assume, we'll see for the next months, this dance of how far they're going to go, how much they want -- how aggressive they want to be in the investigating. SMERCONISH: I think you're right that there's a balancing act that

Democrats need to employ as they now look at their next step. And I think that they could very easily overplay their hand. In part, because of the conclusions of the report and, in large part, because I think that the president was very successful in inoculating himself in all of the runup to the release of the report.

And I'd like to think that most Americans will invest the time to read the 400 pages, but that's not likely. There's a lot in there that will be fodder for the 2020 campaign.

But let me say it straight out. I think that to pursue an impeachment path based on these facts would, politically speaking, be a terrible mistake for Democrats.

[07:25:09] TOOBIN: Can I just say how much I disagree with a lot of what Michael said there? I mean, the idea -- the idea that the choice here is impeachment or nothing is just wrong.

If you read that report and you are a serious member of Congress doing an investigation, how can you not call Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, as a witness to testify in public? It doesn't have to be an impeachment proceeding.

You know, Democrats are so, like, afraid of seeming too aggressive. They've hardly had any hearings so far. I mean, you know, the idea that the Democrats have to do nothing, because that will somehow offend the electorate seems crazy to me.

There's extreme evidence --

SMERCONISH: I think --

TOOBIN: -- of tremendous misconduct in the White House. And Democrats are supposed to never talk about it, because someone might be offended?

SMERCONISH: I'm not saying never talk about it. But here's the political risk that I see.

The political risk that I see is that Democrats could very easily be perceived the way that Republicans were perceived pertaining to Benghazi. They just pushed it too far. And politically speaking, in the middle of the country, it became one of "Why are they still harping on that?" That's the risk that I think they run here.

TOOBIN: Well, by the way, Hillary Clinton, who was the target of all those hearings, she lost the election. So, you know, the idea that Benghazi was a political failure for the Republicans, I think, is a dubious assertion.

The fact that Democrats are somehow paralyzed by fear of, like, "Oh, maybe we'll push too hard," even if they're not going for impeachment.

SMERCONISH: Jeffrey, I'm making a political point. I'm making a political point, and it's this. TOOBIN: I see that you're making a political point.

SMERCONISH: The election is not going to be determined by this issue. The election's going to be determined by health care, by jobs and by opioids. And every breath that the Democrats spend speaking about this going to 2020 is one less breath about those issues that are more important in the minds of the electorate. That's my point.

TOOBIN: And -- and the idea that, if Jerry Nadler holds hearings about this case, that somehow, they can't talk about opioids and health care? I mean, that's just not --

SMERCONISH: I didn't say that.

TOOBIN: Well, but I mean, obviously they will. And the presidential candidates, at least as far as I'm aware, hardly spend any time at all talking about this.

I saw Elizabeth Warren release a statement, where she said she'd been asked 340 questions at town halls; and three of them had been about Mueller. I mean, you know, it's not a big issue.

SMERCONISH: That's my point. That's exactly my point.

TOOBIN: I see that point. But you know what? Congress has a job to do.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Yes.

TOOBIN: Their job is to be investigators and to do oversight. And it does -- and the idea that somehow, that will paralyze their presidential campaigns, it certainly didn't hurt their congressional campaigns in -- during 2018.

CAMEROTA: They weren't in charge of the hearings (ph). But Jeffrey, listen, I hear you. It's all about what they want to prioritize.

And so obviously, they have to -- and there's only 24 hours in a day.

TOOBIN: Right.

CAMEROTA: And so they have to figure out in Congress if they want to do what people say is most important to them, or if they want to do their job description of oversight. And I mean --

TOOBIN: But there's both. There are 435 members of Congress. I mean, you know, the idea that, you know, you get this report, and you say, "Oh, no no, we can only talk about opioids," I mean it's just -- it makes no sense.

CUOMO: Well, look, but also you guys --

SMERCONISH: That's not what I said, Jeffrey.

CUOMO: You guys are speaking to the same point.

SMERCONISH: That is not what I said. That is not what I said.

CUOMO: But listen, this is what you're both giving a nod to without fully recognizing it. It's not a monolith.

There are Democrats that are going to be pissed off if they don't look down the road of impeachment or some type of accountability. That's why you see the young warriors who just got brought in, signing onto this pledge that they're going to impeach.

But as we learned from that Harvard study the other day, the main Democrats are not the Twitter Democrats. They're center-left people who will be focusing more on what Michael said. You've got to find a way to please them both.

TOOBIN: And Michael and I agree that impeachment is going nowhere. I don't want to give the impression that impeachment is at all on table. It's simply not happening.

My only point is that there is still plenty more to discover --

CUOMO: It's true.

TOOBIN: -- and talk about regarding this whole Mueller investigation.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I get it. But I mean --

SMERCONISH: My final statement is that it might be a bitter -- it might be a bitter pill for Democrats to swallow today. But they didn't get what they were looking for from Robert Mueller.

And the real story here is that, by Mueller's design, they were never going to get it; because he was never going to make a finding of legal wrongdoing by the president. That's what I think is the takeaway.

CAMEROTA: That's a great point. And he suggests that Congress do it. So we're back full circle to where our debate began.

Gentlemen -- Michael Smerconish, Jeffrey Toobin -- thank you very much.

CUOMO: "SMERCONISH" tomorrow at 9 a.m. Eastern, only on CNN.