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Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is Interviewed Regarding Mueller Report; Controversies Surrounding Bill Barr; Mueller Wrote Letter to Barr. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired May 01, 2019 - 08:30   ET

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


[08:30:00] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Judiciary Committee. Overnight there was a big development. We learned that Special Counsel Robert Mueller sent a letter to Barr expressing frustrations that Barr's four page summary did not fully capture the context, nature or substance of Mueller's conclusions.

Here to react to all of this we have Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff. He is the chairman, of course, of the House Intelligence Committee.

Good morning, congressman.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): Good morning.

CAMEROTA: How does the fact that we now know that this letter exists and a phone call happened between Robert Mueller and Bill Barr change what we will see on Capitol Hill today and tomorrow?

SCHIFF: Well, I think it changes it a lot because we now have, you know, very direct confirmation that Bill Barr, the attorney general of the United States, willingly misled the Congress. He was asked very directly by my colleague Representative (INAUDIBLE), are you aware of misgivings that the special counsel's team reportedly has about your summary. And Barr's answer was unequivocal, no.

Now, Barr's a very smart guy. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's saying. And he knew that was false.

This would be bad enough if it were an ordinary citizen. For an ordinary citizen, we might consider whether that's perjury. But it's worse when it comes from the attorney general of the United States because means the public cannot have confidence in what he says, it means that we cannot have confidence in how he administers justice, and I think that's going to be very much a subject of today's hearing.

CAMEROTA: So the fact that you think that he lied to Congress on April 9th, that moment that you're referencing, how can you trust what he says today?

SCHIFF: Well, you can't. You can't. And this is why it's going to be so important to hear directly from Bob Mueller. He needs to come into the Congress without delay because I think what Barr is still doing is, he is still out there delaying Mueller, delaying Mueller's own words so that he can put forward his own false narrative.

There was no reason -- and now we know Mueller objected to this -- there was no reason for Barr to put out his own summary to begin with when Mueller had written his own summaries. And the fact that, you know, the Justice Department now tries to justify that by saying we didn't want to release the report piecemeal doesn't pass the laugh test because they could have put out Mueller's own summary first and foremost. Barr didn't need to do that to set his own false narrative for the president.

CAMEROTA: Yes, about Robert Mueller coming to testify. You wrote a letter requesting that he appear before your committee last month. Have you heard from him?

SCHIFF: We have been in discussions with the Justice Department. They, frankly, have been delaying making Mueller available to our committee. But we fully expect he is going to come and testify.

Again, I think --

CAMEROTA: Why? I mean why are you confident that he can testify if the Department of Justice doesn't want him to?

SCHIFF: Well, first of all, we can subpoena him and compel him to testify. Second, even Barr recognizes it's going to be in supportable for the department to try to oppose his testimony. So it's going to happen, it's just a question of, how long can they delay it, how long can they allow Barr's own interpretation of events to sink into the public before we get to hear from the man who did the investigation. But we are pressing and we're going to demand he comes in and we fully expect that he will.

CAMEROTA: Isn't Robert Mueller now a private citizen? Can he just decide himself that he's going to come in?

SCHIFF: He can decide himself that he wants to come in. I do think that because he is an institutionalist, he's likely to come in, in coordination with the Justice Department. He's likely to have a Justice Department lawyer sitting behind him, telling him what questions he can and cannot answer. And unless the department continues to misrepresent his work or asks him to somehow misrepresent it, I don't think you are going to see him at odds with the department publicly.

And it was quite extraordinary that we have seen this as much in the letter already, the fact that he would put his misgivings into writing to his superior in the department was a pretty dramatic step by someone that has the kind of veneration for the department that Bob Mueller does.

CAMEROTA: The fact that William Barr, the attorney general, the top law enforcement officer of the land, you believe lied when he spoke to Congress and Robert Mueller believes misrepresented, mischaracterized the findings in which Robert Mueller spelled out evidence of wrongdoing. How will he continue on with his job as attorney general? SCHIFF: Well, look, you know, I was one of those making the case he

should have never been confirmed and certainly not confirmed unless he committed to recusing himself from an investigation in which he had an obvious bias. And now we see that bias playing out time and time again. So he should have never been given the job under these circumstances.

Now, you know, he's, I think, in the interest of the department, should step down, but I have no expectation that he will. And what we are seeing, I think, is that anyone that gets close to Donald Trump becomes tainted by that experience. And the fundamental conundrum is, how do you ethically serve a deeply unethical president? And as we are seeing with Bill Barr, and I think as we saw with Rod Rosenstein, you can't.

[08:35:08] CAMEROTA: If you think that Bill Barr cannot legitimately serve as attorney general and he -- you don't believe he would step down voluntarily, obviously he disagrees with your assessment, can Congress do anything?

SCHIFF: Well, I'm not sure what remedy there is. We could certainly try to remove him from office. That would face the same difficulty and obstacle as removing the president through an impeachment proceeding.

And, look, we are going to consider all of the options here. This is bigger than Bill Barr. This is a problem now of a president who there is a strong case to be made has violated the law with innumerable acts of obstruction of justice, has potentially violated the law in terms of a campaign fraud scheme and we are engaged in a debate within our caucus about what's the right remedy for this.

And this just, I think, adds to that. We also have the problem of the administration obstructing the legitimate congressional oversight, which I think only adds to the desire to, you know, take an important step to hold this president accountable.

CAMEROTA: Look, I mean, as you know, some of your colleagues have called for Attorney General Bill Barr to be impeached. And so your response is that that's too politically fraught?

SCHIFF: No. You know, listen, I think we're going to have to consider all of the remedies that we have in terms of an attorney general who can't be trusted to level with the American people, a president who can't be trusted to level with the American people, and who obstructed the Justice Department and now is obstructing Congress. We're going to -- and we are having that conversation about whether impeachment is warranted or whether we can conduct the same oversight through a non- impeachment process through our ordinary oversight process and that may lead us to impeachment down the road. But I think the fact now that the attorney general has compromised himself in this way only raises the stakes.

CAMEROTA: Congressman Adam Schiff, we will be watching very closely what happens on Capitol Hill today and tomorrow. Thank you very much for coming in with your viewpoint on all of this.

SCHIFF: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, these questions will be fascinating given the news that developed overnight.

But here's a question, should lawmakers really be surprised by what William Barr has done and how he handled this? We're going to hear much more about the attorney general, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:40:58] BERMAN: In just about an hour, Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. His testimony is happening in the wake of revelations that Robert Mueller objected to Barr's early spin of the Russia investigation.

Our Gloria Borger has a look at the controversies that have surrounded Barr since he became attorney general.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to wish our new attorney general great luck and speed and enjoy your life. Bill, good luck. A tremendous reputation.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST (voice over): Bill Barr came to the Trump administration with a long resume, dating back to the George H.W. Bush administration.

MICHAEL MUKASEY, ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: He was deputy attorney general and he was attorney general. He's had quite a government career, in addition to having been partner of a substantial law firm.

BORGER: And now a political lightning rod, largely because of the way he handled the release of the Mueller report, in a way that pleased the president and angered Democrats.

BORGER (on camera): Was he putting his thumb on the scale for the American public?

RON KLAIN, CHIEF OF STAFF FOR VICE PRESIDENTS AL GORE AND JOE BIDEN: He was putting his fist on the scale for the American public. It was a lot more than a thumb.

BORGER (voice over): And when he said this --

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think that spying did occur.

BORGER: He made the president very happy.

TRUMP: I think what he said was absolutely true. There was absolutely spying into my campaign.

BORGER: Now Barr, a Republican with establishment credentials, faces Congress at the center of a political firestorm.

It started with his decision to summarize the special counsel's 488- page report in a four-page letter, that even some on Mueller's team downplayed and mischaracterized their damaging findings about the president.

KLAIN: He wrote up a spin letter. He then went before Congress and spun the spin letter. He then did a press conference where he used a non-legal phrase, non-collusion, as many times as he could without being comical in a short period of time.

BARR: There was no evidence of the Trump campaign collusion, no collusion.

No collusion.

BORGER: Barr also cleared the president of obstruction, even though the special counsel made no decision.

BOB BAUER, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL FOR PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I don't think he should have participated in the decision on obstruction. And to have substituted his legal judgment for Bob Mueller about the appropriate legal theory, I believe was a significant misjudgment on his part and I don't think it reflected well on the department.

BORGER (on camera): Did you get that sense from -- from Barr, he wished Mueller had made a decision?

MUKASEY: Sure. And so the only person left who could make a decision is the attorney general. And he did.

BORGER: What if Barr had just decided not to do anything?

MUKASEY: And sort of leave it out there?

BORGER: Uh-huh. Impossible?

MUKASEY: Not impossible, irresponsible.

BORGER (voice over): And then explained it in a press conference before anyone had read the Mueller report.

BARR: That the president was frustrated and angered by his sincere belief that the investigation was undermining his presidency.

BORGER (on camera): Could that be interpreted as excusing the president's bad behavior?

GEORGE TERWILLIGER, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: I don't -- I don't think it should be interpreted that way because I don't think he was -- he was trying to excuse the president's behavior, bad or otherwise. I think he was simply trying to explain the basis for a decision he, as a prosecutor, was reaching.

KLAIN: He didn't explain a decision, he went out there justifying reckless behavior by the president. He wasn't serving as attorney general, he was serving as the president's guidance counselor.

BORGER (voice over): But Barr's decision not to prosecute wasn't a complete surprise. He had already made his views known in an unsolicited 19-page memo sent to the Justice Department in June of 2018, saying, among other things, that the theory of the obstruction investigation against the president was fatally misconceived.

BORGER (on camera): Is this something people do all the time?

BAUER: You mean former government officials who produce long, legal memoranda and bring them to the government on pending issues and ask, you know, officials then in power to look at them?

[08:45:02] BORGER: Yes, that's what I mean.

BAUER: No. No. That is not common practice. I think it's a reflection, again, of the passion with which he views that issue. But it's -- it's unusual.

BORGER: Do you think it was an audition for a job? I mean that's --

TERWILLIGER: Definitely not.

BORGER: How do you know that?

TERWILLIGER: Definitely -- well, we talked about the memo at the time. I mean the idea of being attorney general or taking any job with the administration was the farthest thing from his mind.

BORGER: Really?

TERWILLIGER: Yes.

KLAIN: He didn't get this job by accident. He got this job because he promised in advance essentially that he wouldn't find the president guilty of obstruction. And so he did exactly what he said he was going to do.

BORGER (voice over): Back in a 1998 interview unearthed by CNN's KFile, Barr was more sympathetic to the independent counsel's plight, complaining that Attorney General Janet Reno wasn't doing enough to protect Ken Starr from hatchet jobs and ad hominem attacks. Yet he has remained silent as the president continues to lob grenades almost daily at the Mueller team.

TRUMP: We just went through the Mueller witch hunt, where you had really 18 angry Democrats that hate President Trump

BORGER: Barr's loyalties are bound to be tested once again as the president says he will not comply with House Democratic subpoenas.

TRUMP: We're fighting all the subpoenas. Look, these aren't like impartial people.

BORGER: And he could well have Barr on his side. In 1989, in another memo, Barr warned against what he called congressional incursions against the office of the presidency.

TERWILLIGER: I think Bill's view is a constitutional one. It's grounded in the separation of powers. And if one of the branches oversteps its bounds, he will call that branch on it.

BAUER: It would be really disappointing if he enabled the president to pursue a theory like the one the president has articulated, which is that because the House that is asking for this information is in the hands of the other political party, he's not going to permit anybody to testify. That is a lawless position. It's one thing for the department --

BORGER (on camera): Lawless?

BAUER: Lawless. It's utterly lawless.

BORGER (voice over): And a matter ultimately that another branch of government, the courts, could decide.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BORGER: And so, is this all about pleasing the boss for Barr or adhering to his own view of a strong executive? Luckily for Barr, those two things coincide.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Gloria, we have a lot more -- many more questions for you and much more to talk about. So, stick around, if you would.

BORGER: Sure.

CAMEROTA: You can help us figure out how Barr will handle today's hearing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:51:20] CAMEROTA: All right, we now know that Robert Mueller sent a letter to AG Barr complaining that Barr' four-page memo to Congress did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of Mueller's views on obstruction of justice.

How is this going to go over when Barr faces lawmakers this morning?

Let's bring back CNN's chief political analyst Gloria Borger.

BERMAN: How about not well?

BORGER: OK.

CAMEROTA: OK.

BORGER: That's what I was going to say.

CAMEROTA: That's the short answer. The longer issue is that on April 9th Bill Barr went in front of

Congress and he was not honest with them when he told them -- they asked specifically, do you know of any frustrations on the -- on Mueller's team? Is there a letter of some kind where they're expressing frustrations with how you characterized the findings? And he said, no, I don't.

BORGER: No. Exactly.

CAMEROTA: So how is it -- how is this going to work today when he encounters these lawmakers again?

BORGER: Well, I think they're going to ask him some very direct questions about his conversations with the special counsel because a lot of them -- the Democrats share the special counsel's frustrations when they read the entire Mueller report and when they saw what Barr had produced. And they're also upset, of course, that Barr actually came to a conclusion on obstruction. And you see in his opening statement and in the piece I was doing, you know, that like-minded former attorneys general were saying, you know, look, he has no -- he had no choice but to come to a conclusion because Mueller did not and he was upset that Mueller had not come to a conclusion, so he felt he had to do it.

I think we'd like to know what Mueller felt about that. Why did Mueller do it that way? And why did the attorney general feel that he had to go further than Mueller and not leave it up to Congress?

BERMAN: I think all of a sudden we need to look at the hearing today within the framing of, what will Mueller say --

BORGER: Exactly.

BERMAN: About what Barr says today? Because I think Robert Mueller is going before Congress, perhaps soon, in some capacity and he will be asked very directly and William Barr has to know that going in.

Gloria, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, all senators on the Judiciary Committee, running for president.

BORGER: Yes, I heard that. Yes.

BERMAN: How are they going to handle today?

BORGER: Well, I think they're going to be on attack mode with Barr. And I think they would have anyway, by the way, to be honest. I think these are -- these are -- these are people who don't like the fact that Barr -- that Barr decided on obstruction and they also believe that he mischaracterized the report, having read the report and seen those ten instances of obstruction. And I think that they believe that Barr took it a step further than he should have.

And I think the real question here, sort of the philosophical question is, that Barr is so devoted to this notion of executive power, he believes in that more than anything else and believes that you cannot indict a sitting president, et cetera, et cetera. And the question is whether his devotion to that legal theory, which is long standing, actually caused him to not take a look at the facts here as closely as he should have and come to a different conclusion. And I think that -- that that's what they're going to -- that's what they're going to ask him about.

CAMEROTA: Well, I don't know if his belief in executive power was quite as ardent when Bill Clinton was president.

BORGER: That's right.

CAMEROTA: I mean your profile just spells out, I think, that people should have seen him as more of an unapologetic partisan before this moment.

BORGER: Right.

CAMEROTA: Because he was so supportive of Ken Starr's work, more so than he is of his friend Robert Mueller's.

BORGER: Yes, and he felt that Ken Starr had been so badly treated. And as we point out, he didn't say anything about the president tweeting about Mueller every day.

[08:55:05] Barr is a conservative. He made it very clear that while he interprets the law and serves the government, he also serves the president, because he says the job is a policy job. And we shouldn't forget that. He supported the president on the question of national emergency, for example, invoking a national emergency over the wall.

So he is conservative. He comes from a conservative background. But it is establishment Republican. So he and Donald Trump are kind of an odd couple, but they do agree in a strong executive. And I believe that's one of the reasons Trump picked him, and that memo that he wrote, that unsolicited memo back in June of 2018.

BERMAN: Can't hurt.

BORGER: No, not at all.

BERMAN: All right, Gloria Borger, great to have you with us. We know you are going to be a big part of the next several hours, a potentially explosive day on Capitol Hill. William Barr scheduled to testify about one hour from now in this room. You're looking at live pictures.

CAMEROTA: That very room.

BERMAN: That very room. He'll be sitting in one of those chairs, the one on the floor.

CNN's special live coverage picks up with Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END