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Barr is Refusing to Testify Before a House Hearing Today; Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is Interviewed about Barr Testimony. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 02, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: -- quote, "a bit snitty." Will Robert Mueller come to Capitol Hill to answer questions?

[07:00:07] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Barr, the attorney general, is refusing to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee when it convenes in just two hours, because he does not want to be questioned by the committee's staff attorneys.

Barr really offered no apologies for his handling of the report yesterday. He admitted he did not review Mueller's underlying evidence before his summary of the report. We're going to speak to Senator Kamala Harris about that exchange in just minutes.

CNN's Lauren Fox is live inside the hearing room. She's there. William Barr, not going. Lauren, what's going to happen today?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, this morning, this is the room where Bill Barr was supposed to be. And you can see, in the chair behind me, essentially, that's where Bill Barr was going into sitting to be grilled by House Democrats who have concerns about how he handled the Mueller report and the rollout of that report.

Now, he's not attending today because of a dispute with the committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, over the format of this hearing. Essentially, what Nadler wanted to do was he wanted to allow staff lawyers on both the Republican and Democratic side to question Barr for 30 minutes each. That's not going to happen, because the Justice Department said Bill Barr is not attending if that's the format of this hearing.

Now, everything has been escalated, because yesterday, the Justice Department refused to turn over the unredacted Mueller report, even though Nadler had subpoenaed it.

Now, Nadler said he's going to give the Justice Department a day or two. Then we expect that he would move forward with contempt proceedings against the attorney general.

Here's what Nadler said yesterday about the defiance he's facing when it comes to the Justice Department.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): He is trying to blackmail the committee into not following what we think is the most effective means of -- of eliciting the information we need. And the Congress cannot permit the executive branch, we cannot permit the administration to dictate to Congress how we operate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And Democrats are refocusing at this point. They say that they want to hear now directly from Robert Mueller. And they are hoping to discuss with him the report with him in the next month or so. That is still up in the air, but we'll keep you posted on what Jerry Nadler says this afternoon -- John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right. Thank you very much, Lauren.

So joining us now is Maggie Haberman. She's the White House correspondent for "The New York Times" and a CNN political analyst.

Robert Mueller is the man of the hour. Everyone wants to hear from him, particularly since, you know, the kind of back story between Bill Barr and Robert Mueller. They were friends, as described by Bill Barr. He said, "We were friends before the Mueller report. The Barrs and the Muellers will be friends after the Mueller report."

I'm not sure about that after yesterday. When he characterized Robert Mueller's letter to him, expressing real concerns about the way that Bill Barr had summarized the -- his findings, and he described it as "a little bit snitty," you know, some people heard that as a lot snotty.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And dismissively said that, you know, he suspected it was written by Mueller's staff, that it couldn't have been written by Mueller himself.

His criticism of Mueller was really striking, and I think that it didn't actually get enough attention yesterday, because there was so much else going on at that hearing.

But it was -- it was dramatic. I mean, he was basically suggesting -- and we have all heard this privately heading into this hearing -- that Barr felt this way. He made it very clear publicly that he felt that Mueller didn't complete his work.

He didn't understand why Mueller had not made a decision on obstruction, that he had not chosen to decide whether the president did or did not commit obstruction of justice. He -- we had been hearing for a while that he was annoyed that it had been left up to him.

You can give Bill Barr credit for the fact that he did release the report. It is public. There was a fair amount redacted. There's a big -- you know, "it's only lightly redacted" chorus out there, but it's not only lightly redacted. The first section, in particular, is pretty extensively redacted.

BERMAN: Russia is heavily redacted.

HABERMAN: Russia is heavily redacted. Obstruction is -- obstruction is more visible.

But there is still a lot you can't see in that report. But Barr made clear that he did not agree with a fair amount of how Mueller had described this.

And then he went on to portray this conversation that he said they had had that we, of course, can't hear yet Mueller's side of, because he has not testified, where he claimed that what Mueller was really doing with that letter was expressing frustration with the media coverage.

And I think that, for -- for people who have covered this administration for a very long time, that had a very familiar tone to it because, of course, blaming the media for almost all things has been a hallmark of the Trump administration from the get-go.

BERMAN: And that's why we need to hear from Robert Mueller.

HABERMAN: Right.

BERMAN: Because Barr's depiction of what Mueller said has said has already been called into direct question at this point by Mueller himself.

HABERMAN: Right. Correct. And -- and we don't know. There was apparently some other letter that he had written, and that's referenced in -- in the letter that was released. We haven't seen that letter. Barr was asked by Blumenthal, "Will you release the notes of your conversation with Mueller?" And he said no.

And Mueller -- Blumenthal said, "Why not?"

And Barr said, "Well, why should you have them?"

[07:05:04] Look, those are government property, those notes describing a conversation between government officials. So one would argue that a coequal branch of government should get them.

BERMAN: And we're going to talk to Senator Blumenthal in just a second, and we'll ask about that very moment.

Can I just say one thing about the Barr criticism of the fact that Mueller didn't reach a conclusion here? There's part of it which I find disingenuous. Because if you read the report, if push came to shove, if Mueller was forced to make a ruling on obstruction, if you read it, you get the sense that he thinks there's a lot of evidence for obstruction.

So what does Barr want here? Did Barr want Mueller to come out and say, "Yes, there was obstruction?" Because then I have the feeling that Barr would be out there waving the flag, saying, "No, no, no." You'd have this crisis of a split between the attorney general and the special counsel.

HABERMAN: I don't know enough to be able to assess whether Barr would then be trying to spin it in another direction, had there been an actual top-line finding of a commission -- committing obstruction of justice.

But certainly, if you read the report, look, Mueller made clear that there are -- should you read the report, read the summaries in the report, and then read the actual documentation, there were some instances where he considered there to be mitigating factors that could weigh against the idea that the president had corrupt intent.

There were a couple where he made pretty explicit that he thought that there could not be some other logical explanation.

And what was striking about Barr's testimony was that he was giving an enormous amount of benefit of the doubt to the president. And I think it really is the office of the presidency. But he's ignoring sort of a lot of the real-time conduct of the president, which has included lying and falsehoods; which has included claiming that things are not true when they clearly are. Many of the press accounts that are cited in the Mueller report on obstruction, the White House denied in real time, as you guys know.

BERMAN: Your accounts.

HABERMAN: And so right -- All of our accounts. It was interesting to me how Barr chose to handle it yesterday.

CAMEROTA: Speaking of lying and falsehoods, Barr was -- it was obvious that he wasn't telling the truth on April 10 when the last time that he was in front of Congress, lawmakers. And they asked him, do you know about any reservations that the Mueller team might have about your -- the way you summarized it?

Now we know that he had already received a letter. He had already had a phone call about that very thing. And he was trying to parse it, truly within a millimeter about the -- he didn't understand the word they were asking. And it didn't ring true, at least to Senator Mazie Hirono, who just didn't mince words. Here's that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MAZIE HIRONO (D-HI): Now the American people know that you are no different from Rudy Giuliani or Kellyanne Conway or any of the other people who sacrificed their once decent reputation for the grifter and liar who sits in the Oval Office.

You know the difference, but you've chosen to be the president's lawyer and side with him over the interests of the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was interesting. And I think that what she's saying is that there's something about when you go to work in the White House or close to President Trump that Democrats think you've changed.

HABERMAN: I think that there is plenty of evidence of people over time. And I -- to be clear, I thought that that was actually not a great moment in the hearing. Because it took a very long time for an actual question to emerge from what was basically a speech. And these are still hearings where you're supposed to ask questions.

I do think that there are a number of cases, and we have seen this over time, where people have had difficulty dealing with the president and how the president wants aides to present themselves.

I don't sense that Bill Barr is somebody who feels that way. I think it's really important to just notice this. I mean, I understand what the senator was trying to do there.

But in reality, Bill Barr is somebody who doesn't need this job, who you know, had a very long and successful career, had been in government service before, is clearly doing what he now believes.

I mean, there were a number of questions Democrats could have asked him that they didn't ask him about, for instance, his press conference where he used the word "collusion," where he talked about, basically, how unfairly the president thought he had been treated. He did reference that yesterday, and he didn't really get pressed on it. So I think there was a lot of running room.

But I don't sense that Barr is somebody, unlike, say, a Kirstjen Nielsen where we all heard that there were a lot of concerns that she had about what she was doing. I don't sense Barr is sort of emotionally wracked here.

CAMEROTA: But what is his motivation? I'm just curious. If he doesn't need this job. He was already out, and he had a legacy from the -- his last time around. What is his motivation this time?

HABERMAN: I have to assume that he -- he believes what he's saying. I mean, he's --

BERMAN: He told us. I mean, he told us. He wrote the memo, you know, well before he was ever attorney general.

HABERMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: He actually has come out speaking against the idea of special prosecutors, and he's a big fan of executive power.

HABERMAN: I was going to say, he takes a very expansive view of what the Constitution allows under executive power. And he laid that out yesterday.

It's funny. I mean, you think about what Trump thought he was going to get with Matt Whitaker, the acting attorney general. You know, we know Trump famously said the -- when he was upset about an A.G. not defending him, "Where's my Roy Cohn?" You know, and he thought he was going to get a Roy Cohn with Matt Whitaker.

Matt Whitaker actually did not do a lot of the things that the president was hoping he would do. But Barr is very comfortable, and he's able to parry these questions.

I mean, he was good. He was effective in terms of what he was trying to do in terms of his testimony. It may not have been consistent with things he'd said previously. It may have raised a lot of concerns among a lot of people.

[07:10:06] But in terms of just getting in and out of that hearing and not getting red-faced, and getting defensive and so forth, he handled it pretty well.

BERMAN: You could see the wheels spinning.

HABERMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: The legal wheels spinning. Where is the line between perjury, not answering the question.

HABERMAN: Careful.

BERMAN: You know, he was skillful in that case.

HABERMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: I do want to say, there is this new development, which is that all of a sudden, Democrat after Democrat, particularly the presidential contenders, are calling on Barr to either resign or be impeached. That's a new dynamic. I don't know what it does. I mean, it's not going to happen, I don't think.

HABERMAN: I don't think either one is going to happen.

BERMAN: But it could take some heat off the president, I suppose?

HABERMAN: I guess. I mean, I think that it just basically allows -- I think there are a lot of voters in the Democratic Party who are very frustrated with what they're seeing. And I think it allows elected officials to appear to be responding to those concerns. But I don't think it's going to go anywhere.

And I mean, the number -- I'm very struck by the statement that a number of Democrats made, which is that he has to resign. I mean, he doesn't have to resign, and he's not going to resign.

And the reality is that if he is working -- you know, you had this independence between DOJ and the White House that we have had really honored since the Nixon days. And you are seeing that sort of eroding over the last couple of years.

Unless the majority party in the Senate is going to raise concern about that, it will continue.

CAMEROTA: There was one moment where Bill Barr seemed to be tripped up, and that was under questioning from Senator Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris was asking, "Have you been asked by anybody in the White House to investigate the investigators?" And let me -- do we have that moment that I can play?

OK. So she was asking that. And he was -- seemed sort of deer in the headlights. And he said -- he again parsed words. He needed an -- and then he said, "Can you repeat the question?" Which she did.

And he then said, "I'm struggling with -- um, suggestion. Your word 'suggests' and what that means."

HABERMAN: But he got out of it without actually answering the question. And at the end of the day, I mean, I think that was his goal. I'm not praising that, to be clear. But it was a -- it was a very noticeable moment. Because there was obviously an answer that he didn't want to give. He managed to avoid being on the record saying something that he could face a problem for later.

BERMAN: Two things that could happen, one of which I think definitely will. Robert Mueller testifying, which I think is inevitable. I don't know how soon.

HABERMAN: One would think. Yes.

BERMAN: And then Don McGahn testifying. What's the White House view on both of those?

HABERMAN: On -- on both of those, I mean, I think in terms of Mueller, I think they realize they're going to have a harder time trying to keep him from testifying.

In terms of McGahn, they are going to, I think, exert this -- you know, they didn't -- they like to talk about the fact -- and it's true -- that they really turned over all of these documents during the Mueller report. I think it was 1.4 million or something like that. They did not assert executive privilege. They are now going to, I think, try to, retroactively. It gets really tough to put the toothpaste back in the tube on that one.

They let McGahn go testify for dozens of hours with Mueller. It's going to be hard to then say, "No, no, no, this is privileged. This is a secret."

CAMEROTA: There was one moment where, once again, Bill Barr seemed to be acting as the president's defense attorney more than the country's attorney general. So listen to the pronoun that he uses in 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 -- he's a close adviser to the president. And the president --

DURBIN: Never exerted executive privilege.

BARR: Excuse me?

DURBIN: May have already waived his --

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

(END VIDEO CLIP) CAMEROTA: "We haven't waived it."

HABERMAN: It was an -- it was -- my ears perked up when he said that. I mean, it was -- there was a moment where Barr had said that he was going through the report, not during the hearing but weeks ago, when the report came in. And he said he was going through it for executive privilege.

And I spoke to people around the White House and said, "Is this the White House's job to decide whether they want to do that?" So yes, it is just this further blurring of the lines between an independent DOJ and the White House.

BERMAN: Maggie, you had a story out today which gives us a sense of what we will see going forward about how the White House will respond to all the different investigations. And the headline isn't this, but it could be, which is just "Sue, sue, sue."

HABERMAN: Yes.

BERMAN: And it's something that he learned from his father.

HABERMAN: It's something he learned from Roy Cohn, actually. What he learned from his father was what not to do. When his father was facing scrutiny for how he had used housing subsidies, both federal and state, there were two sets of hearings. I think one in the '50s, one in the '60s. And Fred Trump was JUST excoriated. And he didn't fight back. And then he was not allowed to partake in those programs going forward.

A 27-year-old Donald Trump, when HUD filed a discrimination suit against Trump's company, with Roy Cohn, his mentor, as his lawyer, he counter-sued, claiming defamation. And it helped gum up the gears. It helped slow things down. And, you know, by the time it was all over, Trump was claiming that he had a victory, because he didn't make an admission of a guilt in a consent decree he signed. And that has been his model forever more. He will sue whether it seems like there's grounds or not.

I mean, I think, you know, there are -- there are different opinions among legal experts that I've spoken to about whether these suits he has filed to try to prevent banks from responding to House subpoenas with his financial records, whether those are frivolous or not. But this is going to be his M.O., I think, on everything going forward, both White House and personal.

[07:15:17] CAMEROTA: Maggie Haberman, always great to get your insights and reporting.

HABERMAN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Thanks, Maggie.

So now that Congress has heard from Attorney General William Barr, what questions do lawmakers have for Robert Mueller? Really, what's next here? We're going to ask Senator Richard Blumenthal next. CAMEROTA: Also, coming up in just minutes, 2020 presidential

candidate Senator Kamala Harris joins us live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Attorney General William Barr refusing to testify today before the House Judiciary Committee after yesterday's contentious Senate hearing. A greater number of Democrats are now calling for his resignation. One of them is Senator Richard Blumenthal, who pressed Barr about whether he spoke to anyone at the White House about the ongoing investigation spawned by the special counsel probe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): You can't recall whether you have discussed those cases with anyone in the White House, including the president of the United States?

BARR: My recollection is I have not discussed those.

BLUMENTHAL: But you don't recall for sure?

BARR: I just --

BLUMENTHAL: Let me move on --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining me now is Senator Richard Blumenthal.

Senator, thanks so much for being with us. If I can, I want to provide some more context for the few of the moments you were involved in yesterday and then look forward. Because I think this all raises a whole bunch of new questions.

First, to that sound we just played, why is it important to you whether or not the attorney general has discussed with the White House the ongoing investigations?

BLUMENTHAL: Great question, John. First, let's remember about those ongoing investigations that they were spun off or spawned by the Mueller investigation. In fact, they involved one in the Southern District of New York, where the president of the United States has been named as an unindicted coconspirator. The last time that happened was with Richard Nixon.

So there are these ongoing investigations that have to be kept independent. And the pattern of obstruction that is so clear and dramatic in Mueller's report is the White House trying to intervene.

And so I asked William Barr whether he'd any conversations with anyone in the White House and, as you can see from that exchange, he found it inconvenient to recall.

You have to understand, he would know whether there were any conversations with the White House. That kind of fact isn't one that any attorney general would forget. But here, he's acting as the president's personal defense lawyer, not as the people's lawyer, the attorney general of the United States.

BERMAN: And those -- fact of those conversations, you're saying, would reflect that the White House is trying to meddle in the ongoing investigations?

BLUMENTHAL: That's been the pattern under Donald Trump. The effort to persuade Jeff Sessions to un-recuse himself; the order to Don McGahn to fire the special counsel; the numerous condemnations, in private and public; the firing of James Comey.

There is a litany in the Mueller report. It is a really graphic and dramatic, chilling portrait of that kind of improper intervention. Attempts at obstruction. In fact, in four of those instances, every element of obstruction shown by significant evidence.

BERMAN: Robert -- William Barr, of course, says he looked at the Mueller report and didn't reach the same conclusion that you just reached from it. We don't know what Mueller's conclusion was, because he didn't tell us.

Now, William Barr has not recused himself from the ongoing investigations. He will not do so. But you're going a step further. You're now joining the chorus of Democrats saying he should resign. Why?

BLUMENTHAL: Well, first of all, his credibility was shredded yesterday. That answer, combined with his saying that the reason why he decided against criminal charges was a lack of evidence is absolutely incredible. Robert Mueller himself found that significant evidence as to four or maybe as many as ten.

But he concluded he couldn't bring criminal charges on those four to ten episodes of obstruction, because of a 20-year-old office of legal counsel opinion that says a sitting president can't be indicted indicted. But for that opinion, the president of the United States would be under indictment.

BERMAN: Mueller doesn't say that, just to be clear. Mueller doesn't say that. That's your interpretation of the evidence that Mueller put out.

BLUMENTHAL: What Mueller says is that he will abide by that rule and, therefore, charging the president would be unfair, because the president couldn't answer in court, since a sitting president can't be indicted. So you're right, there is a little bit of complexity.

BERMAN: Yes.

BLUMENTHAL: But remember here, John. And here may be the most important point in response to your question about resignation.

The biggest argument for resignation isn't from United States Senator Richard Blumenthal or any of the other members of Congress. It's from Robert Mueller himself. That scathing rebuke in Mueller's letter to Barr, after Mueller did that four-page summary, where Mueller says, "You mischaracterized our report. It failed to capture the nature, contents and substance" --

BERMAN: Will you continue to -- will you continue to work with the attorney general going forward if you think he should resign?

BLUMENTHAL: I absolutely have an obligation to work with him. I will continue to work with him and the Department of Justice. I'm a member of the Judiciary Committee. I believe in the rule of law, not the rule of Trump. But we're going to work together.

BERMAN: So I do not think you will get a chance to question Robert Mueller yourself, because Lindsey Graham, your chair, has said he's done with all of this.

But I expect that Robert Mueller will testify before Congress. Likely the House side, probably the House Judiciary Committee. We're not sure yet.

[07:25:06] What I do want to know from you is, if you could ask Robert Mueller one or two questions, what would they be?

BLUMENTHAL: I am still hopeful that we will have an opportunity in the Senate Judiciary Committee to question Robert Mueller. Because I still have some hope and faith in my Republican colleagues that they'll want to do the right thing for the sake of history and the future of our democracy.

But I would want to know from him why he was so critical of the Barr summary? What was the conversation between him and Barr? In response to my questions yesterday, Barr said that his staff took notes. I want to see those notes. I want Mueller's version of those -- that conversation, which Barr said involved just a complaint about the press. Let's blame the press again.

So I want to know also why Robert Mueller didn't subpoena the president to testify. And why he didn't bring criminal charges against some of the individuals like Donald Trump Jr., who are deeply implicated in that Mueller report.

BERMAN: Robert Mueller, there's a lot of questions, new questions, frankly, developing just over the last day, now knowing -- that we know that Robert Mueller wrote that letter to him.

You are a prosecutor and have worked in law for years. You know there's a line between perjury and lying. Do you believe that William Barr perjured himself in his testimony before the Senate?

BLUMENTHAL: What William Barr said in response to questions at the Appropriations Committee was that he had no idea whether Mueller supported his conclusions. I've just quoted from a letter that plainly indicates Mueller questioned his conclusions.

What he told the House Appropriations Committee was that he had no idea whether members of the Mueller team were frustrated or dissatisfied, when he had in hand Mueller's letter, showing that they were plainly dissatisfied and frustrated.

Perjury depends on intent as much as the substance of a response. And I think he ought to be given a further opportunity to explain. But I think it comes very close to that line if it doesn't cross it.

But remember, also, that Barr was very dismissive, like his boss, of the continuing threat of Russian attacks on this country. And so I would want to know from both Mueller and Barr whether they're committed to additional measures to stop continuing Russian interference in our election.

BERMAN: And that's a question we should be asking every public official going forward, full stop, no matter what the party. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, thank you very much for being with us.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

BERMAN: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, John. As you know, 20 Democrats are running for president, hoping to deny Donald Trump a second term. If voters had to choose right now, who would they pick?

BERMAN: Do they have to choose right now?

CAMEROTA: Well, for our purposes, yes.

BERMAN: OK.

CAMEROTA: And it's really interesting.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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