Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Deadly Shooting in Portland Amplifies Racial Tensions in U.S.; Democrats Slam End of In-Person Election Security Briefings. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired August 31, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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


[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: This is New Day.

And as we begin a new week, 180,000 Americans have died from coronavirus. Three Americans have been killed in the protest and pockets of unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon.

Today, Joe Biden will address that unrest in a speech in Pittsburgh. In a preview, he says, shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable and he condemns the violence unequivocally. He also says of President Trump, quote, he may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong, but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: President Trump tweeted praise for a caravan of hundreds of his supporters. He called them great patriots, as they were heading into Portland, where they clashed with protesters. His tweet was before a man identified as a supporter of a far-right group was shot and killed.

He also appears to -- he also liked a tweet that offered support to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old accused of killing two protesters in Kenosha.

Tomorrow, the president will visit Kenosha, even though Wisconsin's governor is pleading with him not to come.

And this morning, there was growing criticism of the intelligence -- the director of national intelligence's abrupt decision to end in- person briefings on national security, citing concerns with leaks. Why less transparency now?

CAMEROTA: Okay. Joining us now to talk about all of this, we have CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst, Andrew McCabe. He is the former deputy director of the FBI. Andy, great to see you.

I think that, you know, obviously, it's our job to keep things in perspective and context. And so 183,000 Americans dead from coronavirus, of course, the president is trying to distract. He doesn't like talking about that death toll.

And it is easy to find a distraction in the videos of these pockets of unrest in the country, though, relatively speaking, they are small pockets in Kenosha, Wisconsin, or Portland. But still, he is much more focused on that violence.

And he, you know, tries to depict America as being in flames and cities suffering with anarchy, though the numbers don't bear that out. I mean, we're talking about several dozen violent protesters. And, tragically, three people dead.

And the 17-year-old boy who is accused of shooting two of the protesters is named Kyle Rittenhouse, and President Trump re-tweeted his support for Kyle Rittenhouse. Why? Why would you -- why would a president support somebody who brought his AR-15 to what was supposed to be a peaceful protest and mowed down two, we think, unarmed protesters?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: You know, Alisyn, I can only assume that there's a very simple political calculation going on here on the part of the president. He has shown us time and time again that he is willing to embrace any group that he believes is key to his -- supporting his re-election effort.

So at a time when any president -- you know, I think sometimes he forgets that he is the president and things that happen in this country on his watch are actually his responsibility. So if there's violence in cities across America, you would expect the American president to step up and do something about that to try to help cities approach those situations, both on a tactical level from a law enforcement response, and on a policy and political level.

Instead, he embraces those groups, no matter what their behavior and their activity is, because he thinks they're important to his re- election.

You know, Kyle Rittenhouse has been accused of homicide, double homicide. So for the president to come out and support someone who our criminal justice system has determined there is probable cause to believe committed two murders last week is unfortunately another head- shaking moment with this president.

BERMAN: And, again, he called his supporters who were going in in this caravan in Portland great patriots. Now, one of them who may have been affiliated with a far-right group was killed. And, obviously, that too is a tragedy, Andy.

This morning, though, the question is what helps. What is going to help end the violence that does exist in a couple of these cities? What is helping and what is hurting solve the problem that exists. What's your view?

MCCABE: Well, as I mentioned, John, I think there's really two sides to this issue, very broadly. There is a tactical issue of how Portland is addressing and responding to these protests. You know, one of the key ways to try to ensure that a volatile, potentially violent situation between opposing protest groups does not kick off is by trying to maintain some geographic separation between them.

[07:05:00]

Everyone has the right to politically protest. You don't want to -- you can't do anything to step on people's First Amendment rights and the expression of those First Amendment rights, but they don't have to be expressing them right in each other's face in a way that leads to violence. That was one of the key problems in Charlottesville. They allowed the countering protesters to be in too close of physical proximity.

You see it here in D.C. I was on the streets in D.C. at the beginning of the protests following the killing of George Floyd. You could not have driven a caravan of vehicles supporting either side of that debate through downtown D.C. Streets were blocked off. There was an enormous law enforcement and National Guard presence.

So, tactically speaking, Portland needs to start thinking about some of those measures. The other side of this equation is policy. And that is where, typically, we have seen American presidents step in and try to provide voice of calm, try to create an arena in which the two sides can debate or at least present their demands in a civilized and kind of, you know, more -- a less emotionally-charged venue, and to try to bring the sides together in a discussion.

That is not happening here. This president clearly thinks that chaos and this sort of disruption is good. It supports his re-election theory. And so he is going to do everything he can to stoke these flames.

CAMEROTA: Andy, we want to ask you about new information that has come out about President Trump's personal and financial ties to Russia. And you are involved or at least mentioned in this big New York Times article that happened over the weekend. You'll remember that Eric Trump, the president's son, had said, publicly, at one time, oh, Russia provides all the funding we ever need for some of their projects. And they were trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

So, of course, around the Mueller report, there were all sorts of questions about, are they beholden to Russia? How much money has the Kremlin or Russia or whoever given to them? And I think that we were under the impression that the Mueller report could go wherever it wanted. Whatever thread they found, they would be able to follow to its completion. Not so, we find out. And, in fact, what has come to light is that Rod Rosenstein, the deputy FBI director, had actually curtailed it and told Bob Mueller that he could not follow those personal threads if he unearthed anything.

And I'll just read a portion of this from The New York Times for you. Mr. Rosenstein concluded the FBI lacked sufficient reason to conduct an investigation into the president's link to a foreign adversary. Mr. Rosenstein determined that the investigator were acting too hastily in response to the firing days earlier of James Comey as FBI director. And he suspected that the acting bureau director who approved the opening of the inquiry, Andrew G. McCabe, had conflicts of interest. your response?

MCCABE: Okay, so, before I address Mr. Rosenstein's comments specifically, let me just say that in May of 2017, we had information to indicate that a threat to national security might exist. That threat being, specifically, the president's potentially damaging relationships, financial ties, what have you, with the government of Russia. That's essentially the counterintelligence doomsday scenario, to have a president of the United States who may be beholden to the Russians on some level.

So with that information, we opened a case. I handed that entire counterintelligence case over to the special counsel's office. I expected that all issues related to that would be investigated. If they have not been investigated, they certainly should be. We don't have fewer reasons to suspect the president's relationship with Russia. We now have many, many more, as have been detailed by the special counsel's results and the recent report coming out of the Senate Intelligence committee. So that problem still exists.

As far as the former deputy attorney general is concerned, when we opened that case, I was obligated by policy to tell Rod Rosenstein exactly what we were doing and why we were doing that. The reason for that obligation is to give the DAG, the deputy attorney general, the opportunity to say, no, don't open the case or to question us or question our motives.

Rod didn't do any of that at the time. In fact, he supported what we were doing. He supported it so much that when I went to Congress to brief them about the steps that we had taken, opening a case on the president, Rod went with me and sat exactly on my left and never raised an issue, never raised a concern. And we discussed specifically in that briefing that the case I had opened was a counterintelligence investigation.

[07:10:04]

So for Mr. Rosenstein to come out now and profess to have had some concerns at the time that he never raised and never acted upon, I think, is just -- it's preposterous. It's revisionist history.

BERMAN: Andy McCabe, it's all very interesting. And I just want to remind people, Jeffrey Toobin in his book pointed out, we didn't notice, that the Mueller team never went after the president's tax returns, which is something we all assume they did. They never looked backwards at all for any financial potential ties or relationships with Russia. Andy, we appreciate your time. Thanks very much.

MCCABE: Thanks for having me.

BERMAN: I want to go back and talk more about what's going on in Kenosha, in Portland and also in the presidential campaigns.

Joining us are Jonathan Swan, he's a National Political Reporter for Axios, and CNN Legal Analyst Laura Coates, she's a former federal prosecutor.

And, Jonathan, I want to start with today, because we are seeing action today politically tied into this where former Vice President Joe Biden is going to Pittsburgh to give a speech on what's going on. And the campaign put out a statement, the vice president did yesterday, where he uses language that I want you to explain why exactly he's using.

He says of the president, he may believe tweeting about law and order makes him strong, but his failure to call on his supporters to stop seeking conflict shows just how weak he is. I was struck that the former vice president is trying to do a turnabout here and say that Donald Trump is weak, that it's the president's weakness that is connected to what we're seeing now. Why? Jonathan?

JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, AXIOS: Sorry, I lost you for a second there.

Yes, look, what's happening here is Joe Biden is not going to allow himself to be tagged by President Trump as an empty vessel who will be fueled by the excesses of the far left, you know, unwilling to stand up to the violence. He's trying to reclaim that issue, and that's what you're seeing this week.

President Trump's team, on the other hand, sees an opportunity to fire up a lot of their supporters who are unregistered, people who would naturally be their supporters in the upper Midwest, white, non- college-educated supporters who could be registered to vote between now and November and turn out and potentially swing some of these states like Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. They see this as an issue there.

They also see it as an issue to win back some of the suburban voters who are not supporting Donald Trump but may like his policies. They see this as an issue to try to energize them.

CAMEROTA: Laura, can you just help explain the celebration of Kyle Rittenhouse? This 17-year-old kid who showed up with his AR-15 to a protest and was clearly overwhelmed, clearly didn't know what he was doing, ended up shooting two people because I suppose he got scared or whatever happened. And the idea that he's some hero now, you know, on social media, of the right and that President Trump is re-tweeting support for somebody who is a double homicide suspect.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I can't explain the celebration, nor can I actually conclude that he did not know what he was doing. I mean, he's been charged with intentional homicide and he has chosen a number of things that led to his presence at that particular protest and armed as a 17-year-old, which you know in Wisconsin, will be tried as an adult.

And so the idea that the president, the head of the executive branch, which, remember, their function, Alisyn, is to enforce the law, we now praise those who are accused of committing two homicides of people who are engaged in an otherwise peaceful protest? It's unfathomable to me.

But I guess if you look at this as a full arc, from the president saying there are good people on both sides, to pardoning people who juries have already convicted because they are within his orbit, it makes sense in a perverse notion of what the executive branch of government is supposed to do. But, to me, former prosecutor, makes no sense whatsoever, the president of the United States or anybody would be praising somebody who has committed those acts.

BERMAN: Laura, very quickly, I want to stick with you on one more question. It wasn't until this weekend that the president made any direct reference to Jacob Blake, his shooting, at all. And that was because he was asked specifically. He said he didn't like the video. And then he also offered a defense of sorts of the police who were involved in it. I think we have that sound. Can we play that for a second. It's where the president says they choked.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: What you don't see is the thousands and thousands of great decisions that are made, where people are saved. So we have to understand that. I mean, people can make a mistake. It doesn't make them bad. They choked. Bad things happen and it can happen. And we have to protect our police. We have to allow our police to have the respect that they used to have.

And if you look at these Democrat-run cities, it's a disaster what's going on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:15:01]

BERMAN: So, again, he liked a tweet that praised Kyle Rittenhouse, and in terms of the police officers who shot Jacob Blake, that was a mistake. They choked. We have to move on.

COATES: It's unbelievable that he would have made that statement. It's irresponsible from his platform and also belies the facts. I mean, he was shot seven times in his back. He was only talking about it because they were pulling teeth to get him to respond to it.

The choking incident happened in Minneapolis. That's the choking we're concerned about, about somebody's knee on somebody's neck. What these officers have done in the city of Kenosha, Wisconsin, is to shoot someone at close range, and they have yet to explain any justification for why lethal force was used.

Yes, police officers do have difficult jobs, but it's also very difficult to be black in America, to work around be able to go into your car and not get shot seven times in the back. And the president of the United States was well aware that there are going to be people that make poor decisions. There are people who also need to be held accountable for those decisions.

Our entire Justice Department, John, are prosecuting people who have made bad decisions. Why do officers get off on that? Why do officers not get to be accountable for that? Every person in the courtroom can tell you, it was the worst decision of my life on that day. And guess what, we still prosecuted them.

CAMEROTA: Jonathan, on a separate topic, we want to talk about your reporting. And that is, you're learning more about what President Trump did in the days after James Comey was fired. And the thought was that he was fired for not being sufficiently loyal. And tell us about your reporting that builds on that.

SWAN: Well, I wish I could say, it was my reporting. Unfortunately, it's reporting from a fabulous reporter named Michael Schmidt in The New York Times. I just happened to get his book a little bit early. It's really interesting.

So the day after President Trump fired James Comey, he calls up John Kelly, who was at the time the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. And in Schmidt's reporting, Trump offers Kelly the job of FBI director, remember, day after he fires Comey, but he says, you need to be loyal to me and only me.

And Kelly rebuffed that and said, you know, he would be loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law. But the reason it's so interesting is Robert Mueller's team did not know this fact. And the reason they didn't know it was because the White House had limited the scope of John Kelly's interview with the Mueller team.

So he was never -- he never revealed this to them, even though it would have been an important part of the investigation, it would have revealed the mindset that Donald Trump was in when he fired James Comey. Because, of course, as you know, he had the same conversation according to Comey's contemporaneous notes with Comey at dinner, saying, you know, I want your loyalty, effectively.

BERMAN: Jonathan, you're every bit as intrepid in your book reports as every other kind of journalism --

CAMEROTA: And humble.

BERMAN: -- you're engaged in.

SWAN: (INAUDIBLE) with Jonathan Swan.

CAMEROTA: Consider it, okay? Those are all the rage right now. But also he's so humble. I mean, Our producers are willing to give him credit for the reporting, but he didn't take it.

BERMAN: We appreciate it. Jonathan Swan, Laura Coates, thank you both very much.

The director of National Intelligence has canceled in-person election security briefings to members of Congress. Why? Why does he want them to have less information about possible foreign attacks on the election? We're going to speak to one member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who's getting stiffed, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: New this morning, Democrats are threatening to subpoena the nation's top national security officials after the director of National Intelligence informed congressional leaders that his office will no longer do in-person briefings for lawmakers about election security issues. We're two months before the election and the DNI has said, we're no longer going to brief you in person. Why?

This came after the last briefing, which said that Russia is trying to help re-elect President Trump and also talked about China and Iran as well.

Joining us now is Senator Angus King. He is a member of the Intelligence Committee. Senator King, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

What is lost? Tell us what is lost by ending in-person briefings to members of Congress?

SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): Well, John, the way you characterized this was Congress was not being briefed. The real story is that the people are not being briefed. By cutting off these briefings and particularly the in-person part, what we're basically saying is, the intelligence community may know something nefarious is going on. They may know Russia is attacking us in a variety of ways, but they're not going to tell us. And if they don't tell us, they're effectively not telling the American people.

The best defense we have against foreign meddling in our election is for the people to know it's going on, so they can weigh the evidence, they can understand the source, where it's coming from. And this decision is outrageous. I mean, it basically -- I mean, the question I ask is, who are these guys working for?

BERMAN: What do you mean?

KING: They don't swear an oath to the president of the United States. Who does the intelligence community work for? They work for the people of the United States. Their oath is to the Constitution, not to the president. The people deserve whatever information they have, subject to reasonable classification for sources and methods. But whatever information they have about Russian or other foreign governments meddling in our information, we ought to get that information.

BERMAN: Why? Why would the intelligence community want us, not just Congress, but you say the American people to know less about foreign efforts to attack our election?

KING: Well, it's not the intelligence community, John. It's the director of National Intelligence, who was a Republican congressman, a big supporter of President Trump. That's who's made this decision.

[07:25:00]

I am guessing that there are people, in fact, I'm quite sure there are people in the intelligence community who are astounded and angry about this decision.

So, it's not like everybody in the intelligence community is saying, we don't want to share this information. It's the political appointee at the top that's making this decision. And, again, I emphasized, the people being hurt by this, and this isn't a spat between Congress and the president or Democrats or Republicans. This is a fundamental right of the people to know what their government knows about foreign interference in the election.

After all, our tax money paid for this collection of intelligence. We, all the people, members of Congress and the people should know what they know. If the intelligence committee learns something that's really dangerous coming at us and they don't tell us, then what's the point?

BERMAN: I guess what I'm asking is, this comes after it was reported or has been reported by CNN and others that one of the last briefings, the members of Congress were told that Russia is actively, again, trying to help elect Donald Trump. Also in these briefings, it mentioned intentions of China and Iran. But if that's what happened the last time, why would anyone, the DNI, who as you've said, was a Republican congressman, want to keep this information secret or controlled going forward?

KING: Well, you know, I can't get into the head of these people, but we have a president who never likes to hear the word Russia, at least, not in the context of relationships or of Russia meddling in our elections. Why?

I mean, John, I hate to say this, but it looks like a pre-cover-up. It looks like they don't want to share the information, they're covering up information that may or may not -- I don't know what they've got or not -- what they have or don't have, but it looks like they're trying to keep this information from the public, so that when everybody goes to vote on November 3rd, they won't know to the extent to which they've been attempted to be influenced by the Russians or some other country.

BERMAN: And you're not persuaded by the explanation from DNI Ratcliffe that it was because this information was leaked out in past briefings?

KING: Well, look, leaking classified information is a crime and there are ways to deal with that. And I think, you know, that's an important consideration. But I've not yet heard after three days of what they allege was leaked that was somehow damaging to national security. You know, there's this tricky thing with classification, where sometimes things are classified not because they're national security issues, but because they're embarrassing.

But I would like to know, as a member of the Intelligence Committee, give me the six things that were leaked that were damaging to national security and then we can assess that, but there are ways to work around this and get the information to Congress and to declassify what needs to be declassified. That's -- the real point here is that this is the denying the public's right to know that's information that has been collected by their government that would be helpful to them in making their decision on November 3rd. Cutting that off is just -- it stinks. It's just not -- it's just not the way this system should be functioning

BERMAN: And think about the context too. I mean, we're two months before the election. Think about what happened four years ago. What we were not told because the reports are that Mitch McConnell tried to block some of this information going public at the time, what we were not told about the Russian efforts before that election, it all comes into play here.

Speaking of Russia, speaking of Russia, there is reporting, and Jeffrey Toobin's book had it first and The New York Times amplified it, that there was never a serious counterintelligence investigation by the Mueller team. They were looking into possible criminality, but never the counterintelligence angle, which is something the Senate Intelligence Committee did look into, possible influence that Russia might have over Donald Trump over the years here.

What do you make of the discrepancy there, the fact that the Mueller team didn't look into it and how important was it for your committee to do so?

KING: Well, I -- number one, it was very important for our committee to do it. But the Mueller investigation was a criminal investigation. It was looking for criminal acts that could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. That was their focus. Our committee focused on what happened, what were the facts.

And I just -- I didn't know you were going to ask me that question, but I've got -- here is a thousand pages that was just issued last week by our committee that talks about what were the connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians in 2016. We viewed it as a counterintelligence investigation to try to get at the facts.

For example, Donald Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, in August of 2016, had a meeting with a Russian intelligence agent, where he gave them internal polling data and the strategy of the campaign and what the battleground states are or were.

[07:30:06]

END