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Barr Refuses to Testify Before House Hearing Today. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired May 02, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Barr is declining to testify before the House Judiciary Committee.

[05:59:33] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He picked a fight, because it's good for him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The attorney general is afraid to be accountable. That's terribly disappointing.

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: It was my decision when to make it public, not Mueller's.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (via phone): They want to treat him differently than they have anybody else.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The performance was what you would expect a paid defense lawyer for the president to be doing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Thursday, May 2. It's 6 a.m. here in New York.

And this morning, your move, Robert Mueller. How will the special counsel respond, now that the attorney general labeled his concerns as, quote, "a bit snitty?" How will Mueller address the criticism from William Barr over the findings in the Mueller report? How does Mueller feel about the fact that the attorney general essentially cleared the president of obstruction of justice, despite the ten possible instances laid out in the Mueller report in painstaking detail? And most importantly: when will we hear from Mueller himself?

We will not hear again from the attorney general, at least not this morning.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Well, Barr is refusing to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee, because the Democrats wanted staff attorneys to ask some of the questions.

The Justice Department also defying a subpoena to turn over the full Mueller report. The attorney general could face contempt proceedings.

Barr defended his handling of the Mueller report yesterday, even though the special counsel did send him that letter in late March, objecting to Barr's characterization of the report's findings. Democrats are now accusing Barr of lying to Congress, many calling for his resignation.

So it is a busy day. CNN's Jessica Schneider is live in Washington with all of the latest -- Jessica.

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

The battle over Barr's testimony slides into a second day now, this time with the war of words over Barr's intended no-show before the House Judiciary Committee.

Barr, of course, was called before the committee weeks ago, but the two sides have been haggling over the set-up of questioning.

Now the Justice Department saying Barr will not appear, since the format is unnecessary. Well, the DOJ is also refusing to provide the full Mueller report without any redactions, prompting committee Chair Nadler to threaten contempt.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Attorney General William Barr refusing to testify again today, objecting over the House hearing format for questioning. House Democrats demanding staff lawyers ask questions of Barr in a 30-minute block in addition to five-minute rounds of questions from lawmakers.

The Judiciary Committee's chairman intends to leave an empty witness chair for Barr, and he's now threatening to hold Barr in contempt.

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): He's trying to blackmail the committee.

SCHNEIDER: President Trump slamming House Democrats and supporting Barr's decision.

TRUMP (via phone): Well, I guess they want to treat him differently than they have anybody else. And for many, many years, they've never done it this way, where they're bringing in outside counsel or something. And that's not the way -- you know, you elect people. They're supposed to be able to do their own talking.

SCHNEIDER: Trump neglecting to mention the outside attorney that questioned Christine Blasey Ford, brought in by Senate Republicans during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process last year. On Wednesday, Barr defending himself before a contentious Senate hearing.

BARR: It was my decision how and when to make it public, not Bob Mueller's.

SCHNEIDER: Democratic senators focusing on Robert Mueller's communications with Barr after the attorney general sent a four-page memo to Congress summarizing the special counsel's findings. Mueller saying it "did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions."

BARR: His work concluded when he sent his report to the attorney general. At that point, it was my baby. I didn't feel that it was in the public interest to allow this to go on for several weeks without saying anything. And so I decided to simply state what the bottom- line conclusions were.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): This letter was an extraordinary act, a career prosecutor rebuking the attorney general of the United States, memorializing it in writing. Right?

BARR: You know, the letter is a bit snitty. And I think it was probably written by one of his staff people.

SCHNEIDER: The attorney general stressing Mueller told him nothing in the memo was factually incorrect.

BARR: He was very clear with me that he was not suggesting that we had misrepresented his report.

SCHNEIDER: Regardless of the president's claims --

TRUMP: It was a complete and total exoneration.

SCHNEIDER: -- Barr pushing back, saying he did not exonerate Trump.

BARR: I didn't exonerate. I said that we did not believe that there was sufficient evidence to establish an obstruction offense, which is the job of the Justice Department.

SCHNEIDER: Senators questioning the attorney general on his conclusion there was no obstruction of justice case, despite Mueller laying out ten episodes of potential obstruction by President Trump.

BARR: We're not in the business of exoneration. We're not in the business of proving they didn't violate the law. I found that whole passage --

SCHNEIDER: Barr making a stunning revelation when grilled by one of the 2020 presidential hopefuls.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: In reaching your conclusion did you personally review all of the underlying evidence?

BARR: No. We took --

HARRIS: Did --

BARR: -- and accepted -- we accepted --

HARRIS: Did Mr. Rosenstein?

BARR: No. We accepted the statements in the report as the factual record. We did not go underneath it.

HARRIS: You did not question or look at the underlying evidence that supports the conclusions in the report?

BARR: No.

[06:05:03] SCHNEIDER: Democrats also accusing Barr of lying, referring to this exchange in a Senate hearing last month before the redacted Mueller report was publicly released.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?

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

SCHNEIDER: The attorney general trying to clarify.

BARR: The question was relating to unidentified members who were expressing frustration over the accuracy relating to findings. I don't know what that refers to at all.

SCHNEIDER: The answer, not enough for Democrats.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: And the hearing and House Judiciary will still proceed this morning, even without Barr. It's expected to gavel in at 9 a.m. this morning with opening statements from Chairman Nadler and top Republican Doug Collins.

They are also looking forward to Robert Mueller's possible testimony. Chairman Nadler saying May 15 is their target date and that the Justice Department was not objecting to Mueller's appearance. But John and Alisyn, crucially, no confirmation from Mueller himself just yet -- guys.

BERMAN: Not yet. But to me, Jessica, I have to say, that is the biggest question now out of the hearings yesterday. When will we hear from Robert Mueller? And what did Robert Mueller think about what he saw yesterday? Our thanks to Jessica Schneider for that.

CAMEROTA: I wish there was a live camera in Robert Mueller's living room while he had been watching that.

BERMAN: But this is what it would have looked like. This is what it would have looked like. Because that's, I imagine --

CAMEROTA: Very upset.

BERMAN: Or very happy, elated, depressed. All of those things.

CAMEROTA: You're so right.

BERMAN: So I'm not sure that the live camera would have told us much. I do think some questions to him could be very revealing.

Joining us now, CNN political director David Chalian -- CAMEROTA: He looks a lot like Robert Mueller.

BERMAN: -- doing his impression of Robert Mueller watching the hearings yesterday. Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent and a CNN legal and national security analyst; and John Avlon, CNN senior political analyst.

As I said, I think one of the biggest questions this morning, as we wake up is what now? What now, in a political sense, for Democrats? What now for Bill Barr? He's not going to show up to this hearing today. And really, what now from Robert Mueller?

Asha, let me ask you. If you're Robert Mueller, and you were watching that yesterday, what are you thinking this morning? And what questions do you think you have to answer to Congress and the American people?

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: I think Robert Mueller, watching that yesterday, would find that what Barr did at the hearing was just more of what he did in his initial letter and then later in his press conference, which was to confuse and obfuscate and misstate and mislead about the law. And so I think that Mueller could come in and clarify those things.

I do think that Mueller is an incredibly understated person. So he's not going to editorialize in person any more than he has done in writing. But he can certainly clarify the nature and context of his findings, which is what he believed Barr had not done accurately.

CAMEROTA: David Chalian, now almost 24 hours later, what do you think is the thing that sticks with everyone after this Barr testimony?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, I do think this notion -- we have to get some other version of the story that's being told of us of the March 5 meeting that Barr had with Mueller. That, I feel like, has been hanging out there since Barr first mentioned that in his press conference when the Mueller report was released.

We have to get the other side of that phone call they had later in March that Barr was talking about yesterday. So I do think that needs to be squared away. But I also don't think we should have any expectation that it's going to be some rumble that Bob Mueller is going to come in and throw William Barr under the bus. I don't -- I don't anticipate that.

I also think, though, you just played that little bit of Chris Van Hollen's comments with Bill Barr and then Bill Barr yesterday trying to explain it. His explanation made absolutely no sense to what, actually, Chris Van Hollen was asking. He -- he recharacterized what he was being asked about into something that was not -- I mean, you just heard Chris Van Hollen's sound bite again.

So I still think we have an attorney general who has a bit of a credibility problem on this day after his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. BERMAN: Can I just jump in, John? And you can speak at length about

this. But I think the two things David said are very related right now. We need to hear from Robert Mueller about these conversations, because Bill Barr's versions are now not reliable. Because we know that he has twisted what Mueller has said about other things. So how and why can we believe Barr's version of this telephone conversation?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Unfortunately, we can't. I mean, the attorney general has been caught over and over again, misleading the American people and Congress about the contents of the report and even did so yesterday, sticking to some talking points that are utterly at odds with the text of the Mueller report.

And so you've got a situation where the attorney general seems to believe his role is as part of the White House defense team, not as somebody whose job is bigger than being, you know, the White House counsel. And that -- that leads directly into credibility gap problems.

[06:10:03] The difference is Barr, unflappable, dogged, doesn't seem to care. And that undermines faith in our institutions. And that's where the larger danger comes in.

CAMEROTA: Asha, he's also parsing words to within an inch of their lives.

BERMAN: Oh, man.

CAMEROTA: Like, he is parsing them to a millimeter. Like, "Summary? I'm not sure what you mean exactly by summary." I mean, it was --

BERMAN: Summarize and summary are two completely different --

CAMEROTA: Completely different. I mean, please specify which one you mean.

AVLON: One is a season.

CAMEROTA: And you know, that -- that, I thought, was an interesting insight into either how he's trying to obfuscate or how his mind works, because you know, he's claiming that he didn't mislead Congress originally when they asked, "Did you know of any objections on the Mueller's team" -- I mean, from Mueller's team -- "to how you characterized this?" And he really zeroed in on the exact wording so he can get around that.

RANGAPPA: Yes. Well, Alisyn, you know, the attorney general prefers incredibly precise words like "snitty" and "spying." But he chose to parse words at various points. When he didn't want to directly answer the question.

And you know, if you noticed, I would say that many of the questions yesterday were very poorly worded; they were ambiguous. They left him a lot of room.

But when he was under questioning by people who really drilled down, like Senator Harris, for example, he started to, you know, bob and weave.

And I think this goes to why he does not want to show up today, because he knows that, if staff attorneys question him, they will be giving him more surgical questions without the kind of leeway he had yesterday to do his talking points. It seems pretty clear to me that Mueller had summaries in his report that he expected to be released. He mentioned that in the letter.

CAMEROTA: He says that specifically. I mean, specifically, they say that they thought that the executive summaries is what should have been released to Congress and to the public and that what Bill Barr did, just to remind everybody in this letter from Robert Mueller, "did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's working conclusions and also created public confusion about critical aspects of the findings." I mean, that's just -- you know, yes.

John, go ahead.

AVLON: But no, I mean, and the DOJ yesterday saying that, you know, Mueller had been very clear that he didn't take issue with the -- with the contents of the characterizations by the attorney general --

CAMEROTA: Yes he did.

AVLON: -- before the report was released. Yes, he did. And that's where the credibility gap starts flowing from.

BERMAN: All right.

AVLON: It's fundamental.

BERMAN: David Chalian, this hearing with Barr will not appear at today, the political ramifications of all that and how Democrats will handle this going forward. Because they actually have a new range of questions facing them all of a sudden.

CHALIAN: Yes, it's such a good question, John. Because the Democrats have to make a strategic choice here overall about how much is this going to be their agenda? How much are they wanting to keep this on the front burner?

Now, you have heard Nancy Pelosi and others say, "Hey, the committee should go continue to do their work." So if the attorney general doesn't show up, and you need to hold the attorney general in contempt, you keep going down there, but we're going to focus on health care or "X," "Y," "Z" issues and continue to pass our agenda. That is not the easiest -- that is far easier said than done.

And so I do think Democrats are going to have to consider here. Because if you have these full-out fights with the administration, which is stonewalling you, there's no doubt that the base of the Democratic Party wants to see this Democratic Congress that they elected fight those fights. And yet, there are those in the party that believe that may not be the politically strategic, advantageous avenue to take. CAMEROTA: Yes, they shouldn't have. But John, what about the Democrats were pretty dug in on having these staff attorneys do the questioning. And you told us yesterday that is an unusual set-up, and they could have done other things. I mean, there's a million creative ways they could have gotten around this.

AVLON: It's unusual. It's not unprecedented. It has been done before, during the Iran-Contra hearings, during Watergate.

CAMEROTA: That's a long time ago.

AVLON: But you've got to go way back. Look, and I do think that, you know, Nadler insisting on this may have deprived House Democrats of a chance to obviously interview, question Attorney General Barr at the outset. And it is a question about what's the right fight for Democrats?

The emphasis should be on the additional investigation that needs to be done. The administration is stonewalling Democrats. Those are fights that are much bigger than partisan, you know, fights for Democrat versus Republican. It's about oversight. It's about checks and balances. And those need to be pursued, because it gets to the heart, again, of our system.

But there are ongoing investigations, for example, into the money trail about the Trump organizations that the House should be focusing on and continuing to do. Because that will bring new information to the table, not just, you know, not just fisticuffs, if you will.

BERMAN: I have to say -- I have to say, after the hearings yesterday I'm not sure what more we actually would have learned from William Barr today. And maybe everyone is better served preparing questions and getting Robert Mueller there, and that's where they're all focused on. I'm not sure America loses that much from not having this hearing today. But we will see.

[06:15:13] CAMEROTA: All right, thank you all very much.

Will we ever see former White House counsel Don McGahn answer questions before Congress? And of course, all of the unanswered questions after Attorney General Barr's testimony. We have more on that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Attorney General William Barr will not be back on the witness stand today, but the House Judiciary Committee will still convene at 9 a.m. for some reason. It is not clear if former White House counsel Don McGahn will testify before Congress. But listen to this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): Do you have any objections? Can you think of an objection of why Don McGahn shouldn't come testify before this committee about his experience? BARR: Yes. I mean, I think that he's a close adviser to the

president.

DURBIN: Never exerted executive privilege.

BARR: Excuse me?

DURBIN: He may have already waived his --

BARR: No, we haven't waived the executive privilege.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Who is the "we"?

BERMAN: Who's "we"?

CAMEROTA: Let's bring back David Chalian, Asha Rangappa and John Avlon.

John, the president is supposed to waive -- or is supposed to give executive privilege. So it makes it sound sometimes as though the attorney general is on the president's team.

[06:20:04] AVLON: That's what we call a tell. Yes. No, this gets to the heart of how Bill Barr sees his job. And the testimonies to date and the pregaming and framing of the report, he seems to be acting like a member of the president's defense team. And that tell would indicates it, as well.

BERMAN: Counselor, when you heard that, what did you think?

RANGAPPA: I agree with John. And there's actually no reason that McGahn can't come and testify.

So in addition to the waiver of executive privilege, even if the White House, the president, who actually holds the privilege, asserted it, you know, what he would be testifying about are potential acts of obstruction. And we already know that executive privilege can't be used to shield that kind of evidence from coming to light.

And the third thing is that McGahn is no longer an employee. There's no way to stop him from coming. And so, I mean, this is like when Sally Yates testified. So he still has the option of coming. And there's really no leverage that the White House can exert to stop him from doing that.

And the reason it's important to hear from him, obviously, David, is because he is at the heart of the matter of obstruction. What did the president tell him exactly about getting rid of Robert Mueller? What was the paperwork that he was tasked with drafting in order to cover the fact that the president asked him to fire Robert Mueller? And what did -- how did he refuse? All of those things seem to be very pertinent.

CHALIAN: Precisely. We can listen to Bill Barr all day long explain that he wasn't ordered to fire Mueller. But Bill Barr wasn't there and wasn't part of the conversation.

It would be really important for the American people to hear from the person who was on the other end of the communication from the president about what he was perceiving the president to be ordering him to do. Bill Barr wasn't present for that. So I don't know how he can say that the president didn't order him to fire him.

BERMAN: We don't even know if Bill Barr has read the transcripts of Don McGahn's testimony.

RANGAPPA: Right. He hasn't.

BERMAN: Because he didn't say that he looked at any of the underlying evidence. And all he looked at was the Mueller report there, which is fascinating.

David Chalian, while we have you, I want to ask about this political revelation yesterday. The revelation was Judiciary Chair Lindsey Graham and his handling of all of this. Listen.

CAMEROTA: Cover your ears.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): October the 19th, 2016: "Trump is a (EXPLETIVE DELETED) idiot. He's unable to provide a coherent answer."

I'm sorry to the kids out there.

These are the people that made a decision that Clinton didn't do anything wrong and that a counter-intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign was warranted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So in addition to being FCC public enemy No. 1 right now, but Lindsey Graham was doing there was reading text messages between Lisa [SIC] Strzok and Lisa Page there.

And David Chalian, what it teaches us, though, is what the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Republican in charge, what his disposition is going forward.

CHALIAN: Yes. Which is to be not just a defender of the president's but somebody who is going to lead the charge in putting out a counter narrative when it is time to distract from a narrative that the White House is not interested in.

I mean, it was astonishing to see. Especially for people that have covered Lindsey Graham's career. It was astonishing to see him in this role as chair, to see it entirely as about embracing Barr and protecting him, as best he can, in the witness chair and to take up these theories from the president that are not germane to, actually, why Bill Barr was sitting there at the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was about testifying what's -- what's in the subject of the Mueller report. So Lindsey Graham just seems to be a complete apologist at this stage

of the game, which is not normally how you see the chair of a committee.

CAMEROTA: And at one time, Lindsey Graham was a critic of Donald Trump. When Lindsey Graham --

BERMAN: Yes, I can't remember that.

CAMEROTA: I do remember it.

BERMAN: It was only two years ago.

CAMEROTA: I remember it vividly. I remember that Lindsey Graham at one time may have thought some of the same things that he read yesterday and was a vocal critic.

But more importantly, Asha, as you were in the FBI for years, the fact that they have zeroed in on these text messages from Peter Strzok and Lisa Page as the defining moments of some sort of grand conspiracy, I'm just wondering from your experience in the FBI, of the, say, 35,000 people who work at the FBI, do you think any of them ever expressed or exchanged text messages that were critical of Hillary Clinton, or no?

RANGAPPA: I would expect that they did. But you know, this is -- it's very interesting that you mention that they -- he went back to those text messages, which were about Trump and, ostensibly, I guess, the idea is that this somehow, you know, proves the bias or taint of the Russia investigation.

[06:25:03] We now have the Mueller report. The Mueller report actually states it's on page 89, footnote 465, what the basis and predicate was of the Mueller investigation.

Bill Barr can go and look at that documentation. He's the attorney general. If he asked for it, he would get it within probably an hour. And yet he has not reviewed that. And he continues to allow, he does not dispel at all this continuing conspiracy idea that, you know, the DOJ and the FBI were out to spy on the president.

And I think that that really undermines the credibility, not only of him; but it's undermining people's faith and legitimacy in the Department of Justice, which is an absolute travesty.

AVLON: Not only is he not dispelling. He's actively advancing. He's saying that there are people on his team that are looking into it.

This Lindsey Graham, this was part of his opening statement. You know, this has been -- this was a primary focus of the Republicans on the hearing. Not the contents of the report, not what the report says. A political effort to investigate the investigators at the president's behest, to muddy the waters and distract and deflect. That's serious when it's coming from the A.G. and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who's got a reelect coming up on this.

BERMAN: Since you brought up Hillary Clinton --

AVLON: Sure.

BERMAN: -- let's hear from Hillary Clinton. She did an interview last night, and she actually responded to Lindsey Graham, and the type of focus he would like to see and to the hearings in general. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC HOST: Senator Graham opening up today's hearings, suggesting that you're the one that he really wants to go after.

HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace. You know, they know better. But this is part of their whole technique to divert attention from what the real story is.

The real story is the Russians interfered in our election, and Trump committed obstruction of justice. That's the real story. That's what they don't want the American people thinking about. So when in doubt, say something wild about me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Much as I'd like a hidden camera in Robert Mueller's TV room, sometimes I would also like a hidden camera in Hillary Clinton's TV --

AVLON: No.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Yes, I would.

BERMAN: I bet it would be more expressive than the Mueller camera.

CAMEROTA: Can you do an impersonation?

BERMAN: No, I'm not. I'm not doing that.

CAMEROTA: I mean, of what she thinks when she's watching a hearing and the first thing they lead with is Hillary Clinton.

BERMAN: David.

CHALIAN: Listen, this is not new for Hillary Clinton, right, to be the subject of these kinds of attacks. It's a part of her entire career in -- in public life.

But it -- but her point shouldn't be missed there, which is why it is so clearly a distraction. The Mueller report was in two parts. Hillary Clinton is not wrong. It talked about Russian interference in the 2016 election and laid out ten episodes of what could possibly constitute obstruction of justice.

She is correct when she says that. And that is not what the Republicans were focused on. And the other thing that Clinton made a point of in that interview that I think gets lost all the time in these partisan battles, what is being done to protect America's elections going forward.

AVLON: Correct.

CHALIAN: That should be the thing that gets talked about every day because of this.

AVLON: Correct. And instead, the administration and then Congress seems utterly fixated on an effort to -- I mean, let's be honest. Presidents going after their political opponents and critics with the aim of possibly putting them in jail in the advance of an election, sets up a banana republic type situation; as opposed to rallying around what should be the unifying theme, which is defending our elections going forward, which we know from the FBI director is still in the crosshairs of Russia and other bad actors.

CAMEROTA: All right. Asha, John, David, thank you all very much for this conversation.

So coming up, we speak with two senators who were instrumental yesterday. They questioned Bill Barr. We have Richard Blumenthal and Kamala Harris. Stick around for that.

BERMAN: All right. A new CNN poll shows how the leading Democratic candidates are doing against President Trump. Who comes out on top? The answer might surprise you. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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