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Epstein Found Injured in Jail Cell; Fake Presidential Seal Displayed Behind President Trump; Democratic Presidential Candidates Prepare For Second Debate; Mueller Testimony Fallout. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 25, 2019 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:50]

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Top of the hour. I'm Erica Hill, in for Brooke Baldwin.

While the dust is still settling in the aftermath of Robert Mueller's testimony, Democrats may have even less closure on what comes next. Some, of course, are arguing the special counsel -- the former special counsel advanced their case to impeach the president.

Others, though, say there's still more investigating to be done. No one, though, seems to be more cautious about how to proceed than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Are you going to discourage your members at all from announcing their support for an impeachment inquiry?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Never have done that. I never, never have done that.

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): I mean, this is all an agenda that has to happen in 2019 if it's going to happen. So, the clock is ticking.

QUESTION: What is the risk if you don't move forward now?

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): The risk is ours. (OFF-MIKE) the future constitutional provision power.

QUESTION: Is the speaker wrong in her approach here?

REP. LLOYD DOGGETT (D-TX): Well, I want to encourage her to expedite this matter more than has been done in the past.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: So, there you go, kind of all over the map.

So what about the legal fallout? That, we can certainly focus on in this hour. Kan Nawaday served as federal corruption and fraud prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. And Sarah Coyne is a former federal prosecutor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

Good to have both of you here.

So, if we look at this clearly, Robert Mueller clearly stated the president could be indicted after leaving office. What's the statute of limitations on something like this?

KAN NAWADAY, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: It's five years. So, basically, he is absolutely correct that the president can be indicted after he steps down or isn't reelected.

But...

HILL: But what if he is reelected?

NAWADAY: If he's reelected, then and statute of limitation is going to get blown, basically, because all this conduct is from 2017.

HILL: And so when we look at what the possibilities would be, right, if he were charged -- and I believe we have a list of some of them -- looking at some of those there, walk us through some of these, if we could put those up.

Because of what we heard from -- and there's so much talk about obstruction of justice and what would happen. There's also the lying. There's a lot of lying that Robert Mueller said happened there. And he said very clearly the president lied on multiple occasions. People go to jail for things like that.

What could happen to President Trump if that were to come with a charge?

SARAH COYNE, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: That's exactly right.

The false statement charge that prosecutors called 1001 is a really useful tool. That's what Martha Stewart was prosecuted with, Scooter Libby. So, it's -- it carries a lot of weight.

It is not an easy charge to prosecute. Not only is there a lie. It has to be material. It has to matter and have affected the recipient of the lie. So, in this case, although Mueller did comment that he found him to be generally untruthful in certain ways, he didn't note that in the report. He didn't suggest that there was liability for that.

And, frankly, if you read the answers that were given on his behalf by his lawyers that he signed, they're very heavily lawyered, I would say, and well-defended against potential liability for a false statement.

HILL: There's been a lot made of -- even we just heard from some of the Democrats there, right? There obviously is not consensus in the caucus about what they would like to do in terms of moving forward.

They have been fairly cautious, though, even since the Mueller report came out. When you look at what's happened, where they have gone or have not gone, have they dropped the ball at all on their oversight, or do they seem to be proceeding with their investigations in the way that one needs to, based on the time an investigation takes?

NAWADAY: I think they're proceeding the way they should. They're proceeding deliberately.

And they're proceeding as they should by first looking at the report, then speaking with Mueller. They have subpoenaed others. They're going to have more witnesses. And this is going to be part of the public discourse, I think, for quite some time.

So I think they are proceeding the way they should. And when we look at how everything is being laid out, when you talk about being part of the public discourse, there's also this sense of whether it's picked up any momentum after yesterday with the public.

Does that change the public opinion at all vs. lawmaker opinions? How much does that come into play when we're looking at what could happen legally and the support for it?

[15:05:03]

COYNE: I think what you saw yesterday is proof that the rule in court when you do a trial is, there are no leading questions on direct exam, because the jury needs to hear from the witness. They don't need the question to embed the fact and then have the witness say, yes, because then the person hasn't told the story.

I think what you saw yesterday is that Mueller was not going to tell the story. And if they want the story told, and they want to get public support around that, they're going to have to call the witnesses and they're going to have to explain what happened.

HILL: We will be watching to see what comes next.

Sarah, Kan, appreciate both joining us today. Thank you.

(CROSSTALK)

NAWADAY: Thank you.

HILL: While Robert Mueller was often tight-lipped in his responses, as Sarah just pointed out, he didn't hold back when it came to the core issue of his investigation.

We're talking about Russian interference in our elections. This week, his warnings were echoed, in fact, by FBI Director Christopher Wray.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. WILL HURD (R-TX): Do you find evidence to suggest they will try to do this again. ROBERT MUELLER, RUSSIA PROBE SPECIAL COUNSEL: Oh, it wasn't a single attempt. They're doing it as we sit here, and they expect to do it during the next campaign.

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: The Russians are absolutely intent on trying to interfere with our elections through their foreign influence...

(CROSSTALK)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Is it fair to say that everything we done against Russia has not deterred them enough, all the sanctions all the talk? They're still at it?

WRAY: Well, my view is, until they stop, they haven't been deterred enough.

GRAHAM: And they're still doing it?

WRAY: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Despite those warnings, some Republican senators blocking legislative attempts to protect U.S. elections.

Three security bills were blocked yesterday, hours after the hearing, after the very clear warnings from Robert Mueller, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer making a second attempt today. Again, though, that was met with opposition.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): We are asking our Republican colleagues to join with us in doing everything we can to stop it. This is serious stuff.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): What my friend the Democratic leader is asking unanimous consent to pass is partisan legislation from the Democratic House of Representatives relating to American elections.

It's just a highly partisan bill from the same folks who spent two years hyping up a conspiracy theory about President Trump and Russia. Therefore, I object.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Keep in mind, the bills would require that if someone is approached by a foreign power, perhaps with information about an election, that it has to be reported. It has to go through the normal chain of events.

We will certainly be talking about that more.

But, right now, I want to turn to my next guest, who's one of the researchers who actually helped to inform Mueller about just how pervasive Russian influence was in 2016, two University of Wisconsin graduate students conducting a study on how often masked Russian Twitter accounts were used in major media outlets.

And much to their surprise, the day Mueller's report was released, there was their study referenced, volume one, page 27, footnote number 71.

Cue the cell phone going off.

Josephine Lukito is the lead author of that study. Great to have you with us.

I know that was quite a day for you. But also, yesterday, you're now really a part of this American story, of history here. What did you think of yesterday's hearing, and specifically what we heard in terms of the ongoing threat to U.S. elections?

JOSEPHINE LUKITO, GRADUATE STUDENT: Yes, thank you for having me. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.

It's really been an exciting experience to be just like a footnote in history, to be part of this and to really do work that contributes to our understanding of Russian infiltration in the U.S. political election.

I think your point that you make about Russian influence is exactly spot on. One of the things that I was really glad to see was Mueller kind of going back to Russia repeatedly as the instigator of a lot of these activities, particularly on social media, and particularly as it relates to our public discourse.

HILL: And so in terms of your research, just to give folks a better sense of how it worked, so you go, you click on a news story on a Web site, we see some of these tweets maybe embedded in a story, just to sort of tell the -- continue to tell the story.

LUKITO: Yes.

HILL: What you found is that a lot of those tweets were part of this whole Russian plan?

LUKITO: Yes, exactly, unwittingly.

I don't think the journalists who wrote the stories or the people who shared these stories even realized that there were Russian trolls that were embedded in these news stories. And so what we did is, we looked for the Russian troll account names in about 117 different outlets, and we found that about 60 percent of them, 71 outlets, had one story, at least one story with an IRA tweet in them.

And so these are Russian trolls. These are real human beings who are writing posts as if they were pretending to be American citizens sharing stories as if they were American citizens talking about American politics and the 2016 election in particular, but they're not American citizens. They are Russian trolls.

HILL: And what's the biggest threat?

[15:10:01]

LUKITO: For -- in terms of our research, I think the biggest threat for us is this realization that it's difficult to identify who those Russian trolls are, I think.

We realize that citizens, both journalists and regular everyday people, as well as politicians, it's really hard for us to identify when something is a -- when someone is a Russian troll. It's hard to figure out who the person is on the other side of the screen.

And I think that this is something that's going to continue being an issue in 2019 and going forward.

HILL: So, just out of curiosity, the cybersecurity chief for DHS said -- quote -- "We're not going to be caught flat-footed. We're ready." Today, he said: "We're prepared for 2020."

Just yes or no, do you think we're prepared?

LUKITO: I think we're as prepared as we can be. It's a little difficult to say whether we're fully prepared.

I think that when it comes to Russian activity on our social media platforms, particularly Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, so on and so forth, it's difficult to say will have complete -- we will always know when someone's a Russian troll and when someone isn't.

HILL: Right.

LUKITO: And I think the best thing that we can do is just try to be as critical as possible, try to verify as much information as possible, and to think a little bit more about the tweets that we put into our news stories.

HILL: Yes, well, you're doing -- it's great work, important work. And I appreciate you taking the time to join us today.

Josephine Lukito, thank you.

Still to come, a CNN exclusive: Documents reveal hundreds of red flags were raised about family separations at the border from inside the Trump administration. So then why didn't anyone seem to listen?

Plus, former Vice President Joe Biden on the attack against his 2020 rivals, after they went after his record, hitting back now at Senators Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Keep in mind, too, this is just a few days before he faces them on the debate stage.

And someone just lost their job over this doctored presidential seal. It showed up behind President Trump, as you can see there, at a speech this week. Take a close look. Think about whether you notice anything that's off.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:16:50]

HILL: Despite launching his campaign with a let's all get along mantra, Senator Cory Booker not holding back when it comes to criticism of his competitor Joe Biden, and Biden's newest plan for criminal justice reform.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CORY BOOKER (D-NJ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I'm disappointed that it's taken Joe Biden years and years, until he was running for president, to actually say that he made a mistake, that there were things in that bill that were extraordinarily bad.

Now he's unrolled his -- unveiled his crime bill. For a guy who helped to be an architect of mass incarceration, this is an inadequate solution to what is a raging crisis in our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Biden hitting back with a jab about Booker's history and his time as mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you look at the mayor's record in Newark, one of the provisions I wrote in the crime bill, pattern and practice of misbehavior, his police department was stopping and frisking people, mostly African-American men.

If he wants to go back and talk about records, I'm happy to do that. But I would rather talk about the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: All of this, of course, setting the stage, literally, for an interesting second debate.

Biden Booker will face off, along with Senator Kamala Harris, who has already, of course, pushed back on Biden when it came to school busing in that last debate.

CNN's chief political analyst, Gloria Borger, joins me now.

So, Gloria, the gloves are definitely off at this point, I think we can say. Fireworks expected next Wednesday, especially based on where everybody's going to be on the stage.

Talk to me, though, about what we're seeing in terms of this more aggressive approach from Cory Booker. Is this just about criminal justice issues? Or is there more to it? Do you think he saw maybe some of what happened for Kamala Harris in the wake of her pushing back on Joe Biden?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think, for Booker, this is really about survival. Don't forget, for the fall debates, the bar is double. And so this is

make-or-break for him. And, when you're in a debate, you look at, OK, who's the person I really need to take down a little bit, so I can grab his voters?

And one of those people, clearly, for Cory Booker is Joe Biden. He thinks he's vulnerable on a couple of issues that he thinks he has a lot of credibility on. But Biden's at 22 percent in the polls. Booker is at 3 percent in the polls. So this is his moment. And he's got to make it.

He's got to make that moment himself. And he thinks he can do it with Biden.

HILL: We're seeing the former vice president too go after Senator Harris more, taking swipes, sometimes by name, sometimes not, we should point out. But it's pretty obvious who he's talking about, including going after her Medicare for all plan.

So, here's some of the latest of what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Well, you got to find $30 trillion to $40 trillion somewhere. And how are you going to do it? Well, I find that people who say that, for Medicare for all, that they're not going to tax the middle class, because we don't need to do that, come on.

What is this? Is this a fantasy world here?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: I think it's interesting too, Gloria, that he also said this on Tom Joyner's radio show: "I thought we were friends. I hope we still will be," talking about how he went out, right, going on to say that she asked him to come out to the convention to be the guy from outside of California to nominate her for the Senate seat.

[15:20:03]

"I did. We have talked," talking about how they work together a lot, that she and, of course, Beau Biden were attorneys general who took on the banks.

What's the strategy in that?

BORGER: Well, look, I think Biden likes Kamala Harris. I think they are friends.

And if you remember from the last debate, I think he was a little stunned when she took him on. And he didn't respond by -- in a very good way. And he lost a lot of altitude.

I mean, she's number two, and she's a close number two to him. And I think what his staff is telling him and what his debate coaches are telling him is, you have to earn every vote. You can't just run as the front-runner and say, oh, OK, I can beat Donald Trump. Sure, that's part of it.

But what you have to do is tell people why you can beat Donald Trump and how you can beat Donald Trump. And that means you have to be able to go on the attack when you're attacked, fight back. And I think they're telling him he needs to do that.

I think Biden doesn't like to do that. It's funny about people who have been vice president. They kind of walk in a room and they expect everybody's going to stand up and say, oh, aren't you fabulous?

And then you get on a stage and suddenly someone is attacking you. And you kind of go, oh, really?

HILL: Wait a minute.

BORGER: Yes.

So he's been out of practice. And so he's got to learn how to do that again.

HILL: Well, I mean, to that point too, what's your sense of how much he's listening to that direction, as all of this preparation is happening behind the scenes, right?

That first debate, there's a lot to be learned in how that went for Joe Biden both during and after. So how much of that, we will call it helpful criticism do you think he's really taking to heart?

BORGER: I think he's taking it to heart a lot.

And I think what you're saying in all these campaign stops are kind of practices. I think what he's doing is, he's kind of practicing his lines and getting it in his head, so he will be able to say it very easily on the stage.

And I think he's listening to them. I wouldn't be surprised if they played him a tape of the debate and looked at how he looked, and that he did not look strong and he did not look in control. And that's what people want to see, because when you look at the polling among Democrats, the number one issue for Democrats is choosing someone who they believe can beat Donald Trump.

And Joe Biden has to prove that he can do it. He can't just say, I'm electable. He has to show it.

HILL: We will be watching for all of that and much more.

BORGER: Yes, we will.

HILL: Gloria Borger, always good to see. Thank you.

BORGER: Thanks, Erica.

HILL: And be sure to watch right along with us the debates only on CNN, two big nights next Tuesday and Wednesday, coming to you at 8:00 p.m. live from Detroit. A visual mishap during a presidential speech, and now someone's fired.

Mm-hmm. Take a good look at the presidential seal in this photo behind President Trump. It has a two-headed eagle. That's pretty similar to the state seal the Russian Federation.

You will also note that the eagle is clutching not arrows, but golf clubs in its talons, and then also there, a sickle, if you look closely.

That is clearly not the official United States presidential seal, but it briefly showed up behind President Trump on Tuesday. This was as he was addressing the conservative student group Turning Point USA. And the group insists there was zero malicious intent here, but, as we pointed out, at least one person lost their job.

CNN White House reporter Sarah Westwood joining me now with more.

So who was it who got in trouble? Was this a student? Was it an adult?

SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Erica, Turning Point USA, this conservative group, is saying this was an audiovisual aide who was let go in the wake of what they are describing as an honest mistake.

So here's what a source familiar with the event told our colleague Betsy Klein about what they say happened. They say originally the group planned to have its own branding on the screens that were supposed to flank President Trump on that stage here in Washington, but during a run-through a few hours before the event, the organizers were told that those screens actually had to display a picture of the presidential seal.

So, the A.V. aide, who has since been fired from the organization, performed a Google search trying to find a high-resolution image of the presidential seal. And because of the pressure of the deadline, the events being just a few hours away, the source says the aide selected an image that he did not realize was actually a parody, had that double-headed eagle associated with the Russian state seal.

Also, that eagle was holding golf clubs. Now, the White House is pointing its finger at Turning Point USA for this mistake, saying they had nothing to do with it.

But another source familiar tell CNN that this is also the fault of the White House advance team. Those advance staffers should have either provided the organization with the picture of the seal that they wanted to be used, or, at the very least, should have approved what was put on the screen beside the president.

But, Erica, it appears that did not happen in this case.

HILL: Sarah Westwood, appreciate it. Thank you.

[15:25:00] New details this afternoon about what happened to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, how he is explaining the injuries to his neck after he was found unconscious in his jail cell.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Multimillionaire and accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein found mysteriously injured in his New York jail cell.

He's now being placed on suicide watch. The 66-year-old reportedly says he was beaten up, called a child predator. Epstein is accused of paying girls as young as 14 years old, running a sex trafficking ring that would bring young women

[15:30:00]