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Mueller Wrote Letter to Barr Objecting to 4-Page Summary; Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) is Interviewed About Barr's Upcoming Testimony Before the Senate. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 01, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Barr is supposed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

[07:00:07] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The attorney general is going to have to accept our terms. We will control the hearing that we have.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): These guys want to keep digging, fine. Mueller is the last word for me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guaido escalating the tension, calling for a full military uprising.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was ready to leave. The Russians indicated he should stay.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're trying to come to grips with what the aftermath might be.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY.

So has the entire prism with which we view the Mueller report changed this morning? We now know that the special counsel, Robert Mueller, does not like the spin that the attorney general put on this. And overnight, we learned the special counsel sent a letter to William Barr in late March, telling him his four-page summary of the report, quote, "did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions."

The two long-time friends then spoke by phone with the special counsel, telling Barr his summary lacked Mueller's nuance on obstruction of justice.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: It also appears Bill Barr wasn't truthful when he spoke to Congress two weeks after getting Mueller's letter. Here's just a small portion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: We'll play more of that for you.

As we look ahead to Barr's testimony this morning, there is one man on Capitol Hill -- I should say a lot of lawmakers on Capitol Hill would like to hear from. And that, of course, is Bob Mueller.

But joining us now is Mark Mazzetti. He is the Washington investigative correspondent for "The New York Times" and CNN national security analyst. He is one of the reporters who broke this explosive story. And it is -- it was stunning to hear this for the first time, Mark, because it's the first time that we hear, really, how Robert Mueller, who had been so tight-lipped during all of this, how he felt about Bill Barr's characterization. And it turns out that he was quite frustrated. What did he say in the letter?

MARK MAZZETTI, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, we need to -- we need to see the full letter. We need to see exactly the words he used, the phrases, exactly what he was objecting to.

But what we were learning was that, at the very least, there were concerns expressed in the letter about how William Barr's letter had taken the findings out of context, somewhat mischaracterized the judgments, at least in terms of how damning or not they were for the president.

And we had known, of course, that there had been anger and frustration among members of Mueller's team. We reported that some weeks back after Barr's letter. But for Mueller to take this step to write a letter, send it to the Justice Department, send it to Barr, it's pretty extraordinary. Because as you said, the first time we really get a sense of Mueller himself.

CAMEROTA: You also write, "Mueller laid out his concerns in such stark turns it shocked senior DOJ officials." Do you know what those stark terms were?

MAZZETTI: So that was actually something that "The Post" put in their story.

CAMEROTA: Oh, sorry. You both have stories.

MAZZETTI: I don't -- I wouldn't characterize -- yes, that was them. But I wouldn't characterize, you know, the -- the sort of how it was received at the Justice Department.

I think we still need to know more about, you know, what the terms of the letter were, how it was received. I mean, I can say certainly that the fact that there was a letter surprised people at the Justice Department, in part because they were not expecting Mueller -- I mean, again, this is a career prosecutor who knows what actually putting something in writing, sending it up the chain can do. People have to respond.

And I think that there was a scramble that went on at DOJ to figure out, well, how are they going to respond? And then Barr decided, well, let's get on the phone and talk about it, rather than have kind of a letter exchange between him and Mueller.

CAMEROTA: I also read -- and forgive me that I don't remember exactly which article it was in -- was that, as you're saying, Justice Department officials say they were taken aback by the tone of Robert Mueller's letter. And so do you have any -- can you categorize what the tone was?

MAZZETTI: I mean, we have -- we have glimpses of it at this point. And as they said, we really need to know the full context. But in terms of what we know, you know, he was up front. And, you know, Bob Mueller doesn't write letters that sort of convey a hair on fire aspect to -- you know, to what he's thinking. He's still very kind of by-the-book and deliberate and careful with his words.

But to say that, "Hey, I and my team object to some of the things that you put in your letter, in itself is a powerful statement. And so the tone even saying that this, this and this were of concern to my team, in itself is a big deal.

CAMEROTA: This I know is from your article. And I think it's really an important point; and I want to read it. "Mr. Barr and senior Justice Department officials were frustrated with how Mr. Mueller ended his investigation and drafted his report, according to three people. They expressed irritation that Mr. Mueller fell short of his assignment, declining -- by declining to make a decision about whether Mr. Trump broke the law. That left Mr. Barr to clear Mr. Trump without the special counsel's backing."

[07:05:10] That's also interesting, because we hadn't heard from that side that they -- how frustrated they were with Robert Mueller.

MAZZETTI: Yes. I mean, there is clearly this simmering and possibly escalating dispute between the two sides.

There is some sense from people around Barr that -- you know, that Mueller left them to have to decide this. And therefore, they were put in this position to have to decide it.

Now, you know, one might question whether Robert Mueller really did leave it to decide -- for them to decide. If you read the report, it looks like he -- they didn't make a judgment. But it doesn't necessarily mean they were expecting the attorney general to make the decision. There was -- one reading of the report was that, you know, they thought maybe this was for Congress.

It's not completely clear, but there is some bad blood between the two sides. And certainly, if you look at what's happened since then, since the initial letter, you see the way that Barr, in his testimony was asked, well, was it a witch hunt. And he said, "Well, I don't know if it was a witch hunt," which was different than what he had said before. His characterization in the press conference on the day the Mueller

report was released. He said flat-out he objected to some of Mueller's legal reasoning, and he defended the president in some cases. So -- so this isn't going away.

CAMEROTA: And even -- even furthermore, when lawmakers asked him, "Does Robert Mueller support your conclusions?" he said, "I don't know." But we now know from the reporting and from the letter that Robert Mueller had real concerns with the conclusions. So that was not fully truthful to Congress either.

MAZZETTI: Well, there were was one clip -- there's been a couple of clips that have been floating around since last night. And one of them specifically does ask the question, did he know about concerns among the Mueller team about his initial letter? And he says no.

And that -- that clip, you'll certainly hear more about today, I would imagine, with the questioning by the Senate. That seems to be much -- very much on point to whether he was misleading Congress. Because we now know he did know about the concerns, because Mueller had written him a letter about them.

CAMEROTA: We will play those moments for our viewers. Mark Mazzetti, thank you very much for sharing your reporting with you.

MAZZETTI: Thank you.

BERMAN: He received a letter and had a telephone conversation with Robert Mueller.

CAMEROTA: He knew there were concerns.

BERMAN: He knew there were concerns. Full stop.

All right. Want to bring in David Gregory, CNN political analyst; Kaitlan Collins, CNN White House correspondent; and Elliot Williams, former deputy assistant attorney general and former counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Let's do something here we haven't done yet. I want to read P-108 and P-109 so we can get a little sense of what exactly is in Robert Mueller's letter.

This was in "The Washington Post." "The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions." I will highlight the words "substance" and "conclusions."

Then, "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed the special counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."

And David Gregory, I will just note, the fact of this letter, Robert Mueller is making paper here. DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BERMAN: He is creating an official document of his concern, his split with William Barr.

GREGORY: Right. And I think it's easy to underplay and say, "Well, he outlined some of his concerns."

No, this is, in effect, him screaming, "This is really wrong, what you've done, Attorney General Barr, and it has now muddied what were critical findings about what happened, what the conduct was and what the dangers are, not just of what happened here but what could be for the future."

Now there is so much to discover in this morning's hearing. To understand, well, you know, why is it the attorney general felt he had to make the legal conclusion, to say there was no obstruction of justice? What Mueller does in the report that's pretty clear, if you read it, is to say, "We knew at -- from the get-go we weren't going to charge him criminally because of the guidance and the guidelines in the Justice Department. So therefore, here's behavior. And this is for Congress and its role to make a decision about whether to proceed."

CAMEROTA: Elliot, how do you see it? Now that we know about the existence of this letter and some of its contents and the phone call, how do you think it changes the equation of what we know?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: It does, pretty dramatically. Look, not enough can be said about the decision to put this into writing. Mark Mazzetti had pointed that out a few moments ago, and you'd questioned him on it.

Lawyers know when something is going to be made public and when something needs to be memorialized and so on. And legally, I think there's no reason why this letter can't be made public. It does -- I don't think it's going to contain grand jury information or national security information.

And given the care -- or, you know, it was deliberative internal document or anything like that. And given the care that went into drafting the report, I'm sure that that level of care also went into the drafting of this letter. So it's as if Robert Mueller was drafting it with an eye toward the public seeing it.

As we've seen, it seems like his goal is maintaining the integrity of the investigation and keeping public faith. And, you know, so one of the things you quoted in this is that "I'm concerned" -- and I'm just paraphrasing here -- "but I'm concerned that public faith in this is being damaged or is being -- being harmed."

So it's almost that secondary to the legal findings is what does the public think about this? And so I think this changes things dramatically. And I also think it makes Robert Mueller's testimony far more likely now. Yes, initially, the testimony would -- any testimony he would have

given would have just been on the four corners of the report. Now you can ask about, OK, well, tell us about this dispute you had with the attorney general. So it becomes a much richer congressional tale now.

BERMAN: How does he not testify? I mean, I can't imagine what the excuse would be not to appear before Congress and explain your misgivings.

CAMEROTA: I don't know. I mean, I only know that he is seen as a man of few words. And so he -- he avoids the spotlight. And so --

GREGORY: But writing this memo, I agree, is a way to say not only do I expect this memo to become public, but I think -- I think he probably feels, you know, kind of that his work was violated enough that he's willing to speak out about what should be the correct interpretation.

CAMEROTA: That would be helpful.

GREGORY: Let me do this. Because William Barr testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, and he did face questions. This was in the interregnum. This was after the summary was released, after William Barr received -- it's a good word.

CAMEROTA: He is.

GREGORY: After Barr received the letter from Mueller and had the phone conversation. Let's make sure we played both exchanges here. So you can see Barr being far less than truthful, we think, in his answers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?

BARR: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.

REP. CHARLIE CRIST (D-FL): Reports have emerged recently, General, that members of the special counsel's team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24 letter, that it does not adequately or accurately, necessarily, portray the report's findings. Do you know what they're referencing with that?

BARR: No, I don't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: At this point, he had already read the letter from Robert Mueller and had a phone conversation with Robert Mueller. So his answer there does not seem true.

Kaitlan, go ahead.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's that second exchange there that is so crucial. Because of course, he had already received that letter over about a week before from Robert Mueller, detailing his issues with how Barr had portrayed the report.

So telling that lawmaker, "No, I don't know why members of Mueller's team are frustrated," as had surfaced in media reports, is simply not what he had heard from the special counsel himself.

Now there, Barr goes on to say that he believes that members of Mueller's team would have wanted more of this report to come out. That actually, according to "The Post," is the conversation that Bill Barr and Robert Mueller had.

But what makes all of this more fascinating is the personal relationship between the attorney general and the special counsel, because Bill Barr did not know the president very well before the president picked him to be attorney general. But he does have a relationship going back with Robert Mueller. They talked about that. He talked about it under oath during his testimony before lawmakers. So that's what makes this interesting.

That it's not only significant that Bob Mueller is someone who is famously tight-lipped throughout the two years of this investigation, wrote this letter to the Justice Department, detailing his issues, but that he also had a phone conversation with the attorney general. And then when the attorney general is before lawmakers, he said he did not know what their grievances with his portrayal of the key findings was.

CAMEROTA: I'm with Kaitlan. I find that very interesting, the psychology of this friendship and about who Bill Barr is. Because Bill Barr famously said, as you'll remember, John, the Barrs and the Muellers have been friends before this report; and the Barrs and the Muellers will be friends after this report.

And in some ways, that comforted people to think that, OK, they're on the same team; they're both looking for truth.

GREGORY: Right.

CAMEROTA: They both want to get the real facts out. And now to know that they had what was described as a cordial and professional conversation, that's not a friendly conversation.

GREGORY: Right. Right, I mean, because I think that clearly, Mueller felt like he -- that Barr had gone way too far in being reductive of the report, in reducing it and short-handing it in a way that was -- that really violated kind of the central mission and raising these concerns which we still don't know the basis of. What -- you know, disagreeing with parts of his legal reasoning. Did that -- was that a trip wire for then coming down and saying, "No, there was no obstruction."

By the way, Rod Rosenstein signed off on all of this, as well, to those conclusions. So finding out what was behind that, I think, is important.

I think the other point to make here is that, in the end, Donald Trump, President Trump got the attorney general he wanted. Someone who would protect him, someone who would basically lead the charge in shaping the public narrative around this report, such that his own legal team still has not put out its rebuttal. I think they feel they don't have to.

[07:15:14] Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he said it's over for him. We'll see how much even the drama of today will change anything.

BERMAN: And Elliot, to that point, did Robert Mueller get played here? Is it a fair question to ask at this point? If his intention was to tell the American people, look at all the evidence of obstruction of justice. Did he get played by allowing William Barr to step in the way he did?

WILLIAMS: That's an excellent question. Because the underlying question here is what was the goal of the whole enterprise? Was it to find whether there was wrongdoing, or was it to exonerate the president?

Now, all of the actions that we've seen William Barr take, both from starting with his theory on obstruction of justice a couple of years ago, to the press conference, to the letter, all seem geared at clearing the president's name, far more than making a determination as as to whether there was wrongdoing or criminal conduct.

His -- his testimony today does make clear. Look, we are prosecutors. And it's our job to decide whether something is a crime or whether something isn't.

But on this much bigger question of was there wrongdoing or misconduct, that Mueller seems to be punting to Congress, you know, as he pretty explicitly does in the report, you know, Barr seems to say, "Well, you know, look, this is really about clearing the president's name." And he was angry that day. So that's why he took those actions.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Kaitlan.

COLLINS: John and Alisyn, one thing we've got to look at here is the timing of all of this. Because this came out shortly before he is scheduled to go before the Senate today, just hours before he's scheduled to go before them. And there was already a level of scrutiny facing the attorney general. Now it's a whole fresh new level of scrutiny with this letter from the special counsel.

But one thing to keep in mind is, over the past few days, we've seen the attorney general pushing back on a request from the House, because he's supposed to testify before them tomorrow; because he doesn't want to be questioned by staff lawyers.

That's something Democrats have been pushing for. Jerry Nadler has been very strident that he wants that to happen tomorrow. So it makes you question, is this part of the reason why Barr has been pushing back on that?

BERMAN: That's a super fair question. It's also worth asking if Democrats should just wait to talk to Barr altogether at this point, until they get Robert Mueller. At this point --

GREGORY: Right. Get him in front of the committee.

There's also three presidential candidates who will be doing the questioning today, which underscores another point, which is how completely polarized this report has been, will be seen; and that will continue in today's hearing.

BERMAN: All right. David, Elliot, Kaitlan, thank you all very much.

The attorney general will be appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in just a couple of hours. Coming up, we will speak to a senator who will be part of this questioning. Senator Chris Coons, what will he ask the attorney general now that we know how Robert Mueller feels about all this?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[07:21:56] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?

BARR: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That was Attorney General William Barr just a few weeks ago. And that statement, its veracity is now being called into question.

Special counsel Robert Mueller sent Barr a letter two weeks prior to that testimony, telling Barr that his characterization of the report, quote, "did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions."

Barr testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee just hours from now. Democratic Senator Chris Coons is on that committee. He's on Foreign Relations.

I think you're on Appropriations also. You were a part of that last hearing, as well. And so let me start with that, Senator. Did the attorney general lie to you in that answer?

SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): Well, John, that's one of the things I think we should explore today. He certainly wasn't fully forthcoming, because he did know that Robert Mueller had reached out to him, first in a letter, a second in a phone call to convey that he was upset or disappointed that William Barr's summary, his four-page summary to Congress was creating, as he called it, public confusion, that it didn't fully reflect the context, substance, nature of the important work of the special counsel.

So one of the first questions I want to get to this morning, John, is whether or not it was that letter from Special Counsel Mueller that propelled Attorney General Barr to release much of this report and to commit to testifying in front of Congress. One of my thoughts is that the timing of the release of this letter is

quite telling. It was released yesterday on the eve of Attorney General Barr's testimony and suggests that at least some on Mueller's team remain very upset at the ways in which this four-page summary, released by Attorney General Barr weeks ago, was significantly misleading about the conclusions of the special counsel's work.

BERMAN: Does this change the questions that you plan on asking the attorney general today?

COONS: Yes, it does. That first question I just suggested: did this letter from Mueller telling the attorney general that he was unhappy with the characterization of his work lead to him agreeing to testify or to release the content?

There's two other things I hope to get to. As you know, John, there's lots of members of Judiciary. So it's tough to predict exactly what I'll have the chance to question.

But first, it's blindingly clear from Robert Mueller's report that Russia directly interfered in our 2016 presidential election. That's been the conclusion of our intelligence community for a long time. But in great detail, Robert Mueller lays out the many ways in which Russia interfered in our election.

What is the president doing to protect our country for the next election from foreign interference? There are things that folks at homeland security or NSA or FBI are doing, but I don't believe President Trump has ever directly said this is a threat; we need to confront it; and we need to invest in securing our next election.

Second, if part of what Robert Mueller's report was supposed to do was to clarify whether there was wrongdoing or misdeeds, there's ten different instances detailed in Mueller's report of actions that amount to an attempt by the president to obstruct justice

One that really stood out to me was two instances when he directed White House counsel Don McGahn to fire the special counsel. The only reason that didn't happen was Don McGahn refused to carry out that order. To me, for the many, many months that I was trying to get a bill passed to protect the special counsel, and many Republicans said there's no need to worry about that, Trump would never do something like that, this is clear, hard evidence that Trump tried to do exactly that.

And the only reason we're not sitting here talking about an obstruction prosecution is that Trump's own deputies, his White House counsel, in this case, didn't carry out his directive. That's stunning.

BERMAN: Well --

COONS: And John, that deserves some further discussion today.

BERMAN: I will also note the other reason we're not sitting here talking about an obstruction prosecution is because Special Counsel Robert Mueller explicitly says, repeatedly, that he does not feel that a sitting president can be indicted.

COONS: Right.

BERMAN: And he framed his entire investigation around that fact and the report. He said, "I'm not going to say he was guilty of any crime. Because it's inappropriate to do so, because we can't charge him, and he can't defend himself in a court of law."

I do want to ask you. Because you said if Robert Mueller's intention was to lay out the case for obstruction and provide the evidence. You used the word "if." Did Robert Mueller get played here? If his intention was to make a case for obstruction, did he get played by creating the space where William Barr could come in and shape the narrative?

COONS: Well, they have a long professional relationship. I think he trusted the attorney general to represent the work of the special counsel faithfully.

I'll choose to be thankful for the hard work of the special counsel and his team and for the evidence that's in front of us today in the report that we have, even with the redactions that we have. To your point --

BERMAN: Don't you have to -- don't you have to get Robert Mueller in front of you, though, and now ask him about this?

COONS: Absolutely. That's the conclusion I was heading towards, John, is that I'm now convinced that the attorney general is conceiving of himself as the president's lawyer, not the people's lawyer.

As someone who really was trying out for the role of president's attorney by sending in an unsolicited 19-page memo attacking Robert Mueller's theory of obstruction, and that his conduct since becoming attorney general suggests that he thinks his central role here is to defend the president and to make the best case he can on the evidence given him by Mueller that the president was cleared, even though there's voluminous evidence in the Mueller report that misdeeds, inappropriate actions did, in fact, take place in the White House.

BERMAN: I want to ask you one quick question on Venezuela. There's bipartisan agreement that the Maduro regime is illegitimate and should go. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, last night said that there was a plane on the tarmac waiting to take Maduro to Cuba, but the Russians then intervened. Do you have any information on that?

COONS: That's as much as I know about it. Russia and Cuba have played a fairly heavy hand here in supporting the Maduro regime. And the regional pressure that has been assembled, in no small part due to Secretary Pompeo, I think, is an important piece of this.

There is strong bipartisan support for what the administration is doing and for the demonstrations and protests of the Venezuelan people as they seek to restore a legitimate constitutional government in their country. My hope is that this will come to an end soon. But this is just one

of many countries where we see Vladimir Putin interfering to prevent legitimate constitutional elections.

BERMAN: We'll be watching Venezuela very closely today. Likewise, we'll be watching you in the Senate Judiciary hearings coming up in just a couple of hours.

Senator Chris Coons, thanks so much for being with us.

COONS: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, John. Now to this story. A CNN investigation raising new safety concerns about Boeing 737 Max jets. The details that you need to hear next, in a live report.

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