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Trump Gives Attorney General Barr Sweeping New Powers In Russia Probe Review; Trump Approves Deployment Of More Troops To Middle East; Trump Allies Share Doctored Video Of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Slurring Her Words. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired May 24, 2019 - 10:00   ET

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


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[10:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: All right. Welcome, everyone. Top of the hour this Friday. I'm Poppy Harlow in New York. Jim has a well- deserved day off. And we do begin this hour with maybe not a power grab, but at least a power request freely granted. It's a vast amount of power newly in the hands of an Attorney General who admits he shares the President's suspicions of the Mueller probe, specifically with how it began. Remember this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think there is -- spying did occur, yes. I think spying did occur.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Well, overnight, the President ordered leaders across the U.S. Intelligence Community to give Attorney General Bill Barr whatever he wants as Barr oversees a third investigation of the Russia probe's origins. He also empowered Barr to declassify any intelligence he chooses. Supposedly -- and I'm quoting here to, quote, ensure that all Americans learn the truth.

Meanwhile, the White House refuses to budge on any of the supporting evidence for the Mueller report. We'll get to the irony of all of that in a moment, but let's begin with the facts and the significance of it this morning. My colleague, Evan Perez, is with me from Washington.

This is an extraordinary granting of power. And for many, it's alarming. Why?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is sweeping power for an Attorney General to have. And just to reinforce what you just said you know, the President is saying that he doesn't want the public to know what Don McGahn has to say about what happened in the White House. He doesn't want his tax returns to be made public. But CIA's sources and methods, that's totally fine, if the Attorney General determines that that is the case. And so this is an order that orders the intelligence agencies to provide support, to provide any assistance that the Attorney General wants as part of this review that they're doing, this investigation of the investigation to look into the origins of the Russia investigation, which the Attorney General has made clear he's very suspicious about.

And so we'll read a piece of the order, where it says, quote, the Attorney General may declassify, downgrade or direct a declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence that relates to the Attorney General's review. Again, this gives him sweeping power over the intelligence agencies to take information that they may have collected at the beginning of this investigation, and make it public if he determines -- if the Attorney General determines that's in the interests of essentially exposing what happened here. Again, these are words that you hear from the Attorney General. He's suspicious not only of what the FBI was doing but what the CIA and other agencies were doing.

Of course, there's a lot of strong reaction from the democrats. Adam Schiff, the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Tweeted the following. He said, quote, while Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, Trump and Barr conspired to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies. The cover-up has entered a new and dangerous phase. This is un-American.

A lot of concern, Poppy, about exactly how this goes, how this ends. As you mentioned, there's already multiple investigations. There's a couple of reviews from a couple U.S. attorneys as well as an inspector general review that's still ongoing.

HARLOW: Right. Well, yes, you've got the Attorneys General in Utah, in Connecticut, Michael Horowitz's I.G. report, and now this. And then, I mean, Evan, what if they don't all have the same conclusion?

PEREZ: Right. I think this -- because the Attorney General is the top guy at the Justice Department, he will be the final arbiter. He will be the final voice, not those more independent investigations, as you will, that are going to be done by those other offices.

HARLOW: Okay. Evan, thank you.

Joining me now to talk about this, former prosecutor Lis Wiehl and FBI Special Agent Josh Campbell.

So, Josh, you just heard Adam Schiff called this dangerous and un- American. It's not just him. You have the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, weighing in. Here is what he said last night on AC360.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CLAPPER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: There's already been so much information declassified already that, particularly in the form of the Mueller report, and the previous indictments.

I wonder what else is going to be declassified that risk jeopardizing sources and methods.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[10:05:03]

HARLOW: Is he right, that this is dangerous?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, I'm of two minds on this. And let's stipulate that at the outset that transparency is important. These government agencies have to have oversight.

In fact, earlier this week I had a dinner with a group of FBI agents. And one looked at me in the eye and said, you realize this is insane, right? The idea that there was a deep state cabal that was out to get the President, president-elect at the time. You know that's insane? And I looked at him and said, well, that may be the case, but too bad for you, because in an agency with such power, you have to have oversight. And so, there will be these people that are looking at your work. You don't get to have these powers without someone looking into your work.

The problem here is not that there's oversight, it's who is actually doing the review, the investigation. We're not talking about the Inspector General, an independent entity, which is already conducting its review into the FBI's work. We're talking about an Attorney General who was already in the minds of some showed a willingness to run interference for the President. So that raises questions whether this will actually be an independent review.

And then, secondly, we've seen a pattern with this president, using high-profile people to go after the intelligence community for political purposes. I'm talking specifically about Representative Devin Nunes, and, you know, essentially cherry-picking intelligence to paint the narrative. That causes a lot of heartburn, a lot of concerns, or at least it should for the American people, that this would be done independently.

HARLOW: I think that's important you bring Nunes out, because I thought about him when this news broke because, he used that little known house rule to declassify selectively, right, and really did something we haven't seen in a long time with that.

Elise, just to Josh's point about giving an attorney general sweeping powers like this, that's questionable in and of it --

LIS WIEHL, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Of course it is.

HARLOW: But what about giving this Attorney General those sweeping powers?

WIEHL: It's very questionable. First of all, let's look at the timing. This happened right after his little spat, you want to call it that, with Nancy Pelosi. So this looks like it's payback for that. Then you look at what's going to happen with now giving this increased power. They're going to go right into the FISA warrants.

Remember those FISA warrants?

HARLOW: With Carter Page.

WIEHL: With Carter Page, right. Those didn't just come out of nothing. Those were three judges independently giving those warrants again and again and again, over 90 days each time. So this Attorney General is going to run right into those FISA warrants and into the investigation. And you have to give that information over. That's going to backfire, I think, on President Trump, because he doesn't want that information out there, because that's not going to help his cause.

HARLOW: But remember --

WIEHL: So when --

HARLOW: Then Barr may not release that.

WIEHL: There you go. So when Barr doesn't release that, which I don't think he will, when Barr instead comes up with a little memo that sort of white-washes that, play the chess game a little bit further down. That then could become for the democrats one more issue of obstruction of justice. It could be --

HARLOW: Yes. Well, I mean, you see it playing out this way. We'll see what happens. But I take your --

WIEHL: -- to backfire.

HARLOW: I take your warning.

Two though is the FISA warrants being renewed by the those three judges 90 days. You have to make quite a case to get them, Josh Campbell. And it wasn't just those judges who said, yes, this is legitimate, we need to be looking in and doing our intel work, Bill Barr might call it spying, but our intel work to get to the bottom of, you know, American democracy under attack here.

James Baker, who is the former FBI General Counsel at the time, you know, he's spoken out since subsequently, publicly defending that move, and, you know, that's rare for him to come out and do that. And h said, quote, it would have been a dereliction of duty not to investigate this information.

You know, is he right? Should the feds have looked the other way?

CAMPBELL: Well, I think baker is right. And I actually know Jim Baker very well. I worked with him when I was in the FBI. And his point, I think, is what many people inside the Justice Department believe, and that is, this is an agency that was staring at a set of facts, and their job, again, is to protect the United States from foreign intelligence threats. And when they saw all this smoke, they opened an investigation to get to the bottom of it. And as you mentioned, there was oversight as it related to the surveillance tools, not only the 90-day renewal, but they had to go back to the FISA court and show what they found in order to keep these surveillance techniques going. And so you had that oversight that was in place.

One thing I'll say, and Lis hit on it, which was spectacular just now when she talked about this potentially backfiring. Again, if you're the President or you're House Republicans, I think, careful what you wish for here, because the more you get to the bottom of what the FBI was staring at, it's going to be that constant reminder that for the first time in known history, we had a campaign for president that was at least willing to accept help from a foreign adversary.

And the more you review that, again, get to the bottom of it, find out what the FBI did, but they might be careful what they wish for because there's going to be that constant reminder that this was different. You had people that didn't call the FBI when they saw an intelligence threat. They were happy to take meetings.

WIEHL: That's right.

HARLOW: Yes, it's a very interesting point. Josh, thank you for the expertise. Lis, so nice to have you.

[10:10:01]

All right. We do want to jump to the Pentagon now. We have some breaking news on the rising tension with Iran. Our Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr breaking this with her new reporting.

What can you tell us this morning?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. Well, CNN has learned that, now, President Trump has given his thumbs up, his approval, to a Pentagon plan to send additional forces and weapons to the Persian Gulf region to counter what the Pentagon says is this rising aggression and threat from Iran. What we are learning is officials are telling us the President, after meeting with the acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, late yesterday, gave the thumbs up. And what the Pentagon wants to do is send additional patriot missile batteries and reconnaissance and intelligence aircraft.

And what would that accomplish? Well, these patriot missile batteries are to defend against Iran's own ballistic missile and cruise missiles. They have a very significant inventory. They have thousands of those missiles, and there's a good deal of concern that in these rising tensions, Iran could decide to enact some sort of attack against U.S. forces in the region. So, beef up the U.S. patriot missile defenses, put more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft into that region so that they can conduct overhead surveillance and try and keep track of what Iran might be up to.

Officials tell us they continue to see the rising threat from Iran that the Iranian military has increased its readiness in recent days and that there is still the chatter, the intercepted conversations the U.S. has with Iranian officials, talking about attacking the U.S. To be clear, the U.S. has not publicly shown any of this classified intelligence to the American people. There is skepticism. But now, the Pentagon very much wanting to send additional resources and the President giving the thumbs up to be able to do that. Poppy?

HARLOW: Look, it's really notable here, especially when you have an administration seemingly, publicly on different pages when it comes to the threat level from Iran, from the President to National Security Adviser to the Secretary of State, at least with their public comments.

Barbara, really important reporting, thank you.

Still to come, as the feud between the President and Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, intensifies, allies of the President are spreading a doctored video of Pelosi meant to demean her online. What is true, what is false? We'll set the record straight ahead.

Plus, one of America's biggest allies about to see a change at the top, British Prime Minister Theresa May announcing her resignation amid backlash over Brexit. This could have major global implications.

And several 2020 candidates hitting the campaign trail this weekend, will they face questions of impeachment? Oh, you can bet they will, ahead.

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[10:15:00]

HARLOW: All right. This morning, a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes it seem as if she is slurring her words. And now it has millions of views on social media. And it's from a speech she made earlier this week. We're going to show you the real speech first and then the doctored one. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): And then he had a press conference in the Rose Garden with all this sort of visuals that obviously were planned long before.

And then he had a press conference in the Rose Garden with all this sort of visuals that obviously were planned long before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: All right, see the difference? Another carefully edited mash-up of Pelosi making her appear to be stammering. That actually aired on Fox Business News. And it's a video that you see there on the President's Twitter feed because he Tweeted it, and it was pinned on the top of his Twitter page overnight, just recently taken down.

Let's talk about this with our CNN Tech Reporter, Brian Fung. Good morning to you.

So, I mean, obviously, YouTube took that one video down. What are social media sites doing to stop this stuff?

BRIAN FUNG, CNN TECH REPORTER: Well, Twitter right now isn't saying very much about what it's doing, but Facebook told me this morning that they're demoting the video, making it less visible to users of its news feed, although it's not completely removing the video entirely from its platform.

The reason it says is because the video doesn't technically violate its community standards. There's no rule that says that items posted to Facebook must be true. And that's why Facebook has not yet removed the video from the platform.

HARLOW: That's a -- I mean, this is such a predicament. It is an example of the predicament they're in, right? That fake stuff that affects our democracies, it is really significant, can be posted, right? And how are they going to deal with this going forward?

Can you just explain how these videos even work, how it's possible to make these?

FUNG: Sure. So one of the things that digital forensics experts have highlighted in light of these videos is that it looks as though they've been slowed down to about 75 percent speed, making Speaker Pelosi's words seem like they're much more slurred than they really are, and then they compensate for other audio artifacts, adjusting her pitch, the tone of her voice, to make it sound like her -- not like a slowed-down version of her voice.

[10:20:09]

HARLOW: Okay. Brian Fung, we appreciate it very much. So, that's how it happens in the tech response.

Let's talk about the politics of all this with Jackie Kucinich, Washington Bureau Chief for The Daily Beast. Good morning to you.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning, Poppy.

HARLOW: I mean, putting aside the fact that like these are fights our children would have, right?

KUCINICH: Right, right.

HARLOW: I mean, preschool, name-calling, et cetera.

KUCINICH: Right.

HARLOW: Where does this go from here? The President now has a nickname for Nancy Pelosi. He's Tweeting an edited video of her to make her look like she's stammering. Now what?

KUCINICH: You know, this is really reminiscent of what we saw in 2016, what the President said about Hillary Clinton. Remember, she was unhinged, she was mentally unstable at one point. They said that she was dying, aided by some of his allies in the conservative media. So we already know kind of where this goes and whether he'll do this again. This is going to continue.

The real question is, is how democrats and Nancy Pelosi continue to react to it. I've talked to operatives, democrats and republicans, who weren't against trying to, you know, name-call your way out of a fight with President Trump, because most politicians, and most people for that matter, have a bottom. They won't go to a certain level. And the President really doesn't. We saw this during the 2016 campaign, both during the primary and the general, and it's not going to get any better going into the 2020 election.

HARLOW: Do you think, Jackie, that this could backfire on the President by uniting democrats around Nancy Pelosi? I mean, you know, she's had to wrangle her caucus this week.

KUCINICH: Yes. I mean, I think it could. You know, one way to get democrats all on one page is attacking Nancy Pelosi, attacking the woman who is leading them, and especially in the way that the President is attacking her. Again, doing a lot of the same things we saw to Hillary Clinton, another woman in a powerful position. So it absolutely could backfire on the President, and you'd have a united front with democrats.

That said, there is -- it also could resolve democrats to really push more to punish the President.

HARLOW: You know, this is a president who rails consistently against real news and facts, calling them fake news. And in the same breath or, you know, Twitter post with some, he posts fake news. I mean --

KUCINICH: Well, yes.

HARLOW: -- it's not new but it's -- you know, it's the House Speaker.

KUCINICH: Yes. But, again, we're talking about someone that doesn't have a conventional set of values, I guess, I could say, and doesn't care, doesn't care that that's slowed down, doesn't care that that Fox Business piece really just put together her pauses and misrepresented how she sounded during the totality of that press conference.

And, you know, I think this is just a preview, again, of what we're going to see in 2020, and it doesn't get any better from here. Not only -- these videos are, you know, slowed down. I've heard other guests this morning talk about the presence of potentially deep-fake videos, which are more realistic, are -- you know, it's actually the person in it, and, you know, words that are not theirs are put in their mouths. So there's a lot of fear out there about that and an expectation, frankly, that it's going to be used and it's going to happen at some point in the next year-and-a-half.

HARLOW: And what will the President's response be if this happens to him, right, if the table is turned here?

KUCINICH: Right. HARLOW: Jackie, thank you very much.

KUCINICH: Thanks, Poppy.

HARLOW: Again and again, President Trump has called for investigating the investigators. Next, how he is ordering intelligence agencies to help the Attorney General do exactly that.

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[10:25:00]

HARLOW: All right, welcome back. It is a direct order from the President. Attorney General Bill Barr can declassify any intelligence he chooses and leaders in the U.S. Intelligence Community have to give him what he wants. And he oversees a third -- this is all while he's overseeing a third investigation now into the origins of the Russia probe.

With me to talk about this and more, Congressman Mike Quigley, democrat of Illinois, of course, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. Good morning, sir.

Adam Schiff, the Chair of your committee, calls this dangerous and un- American, says it's weaponizing law enforcement against political enemies. Do you agree with Schiff or is that taking it too far?

REP. MIKE QUIGLEY (D-IL): Oh, I don't think you can take this too far. The Special Counsel called what the Russians did a sweeping systematic assault on our democracy. I think when history looks back, the President's reaction to what the Russians did is far worse. So far, it's been an assault on the independence and the integrity of law enforcement and the Justice Department. This is weaponizing them against its political enemies.

This is what autocrats do, and it's extraordinarily dangerous, and if allowed to, would create a very dangerous precedent for the future.

[10:30:04]

HARLOW: Congressman, just to be clear on what you just said.