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Don Lemon Tonight
President Trump Cave in to Democrats; Robert Mueller Indicts Roger Stone; Trump Signs Bill Reopening the Government Temporarily; Interview with Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA); Interview with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). Aired 10-11p ET
Aired January 25, 2019 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: That's all for us tonight. Thank you for watching. CNN Tonight picks up the coverage with D. Lemon right now.
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: You know who else said the false thing? He didn't say I will not bear false witness, but that he wouldn't flip on the president?
CUOMO: Moses?
LEMON: No. No. Michael Cohen.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: Right? He was in the president's circle for a long time, was his fixer.
CUOMO: Yes. He was his lawyer. He was his confidant. He did lots of things for him and something else, my friend. Michael Cohen sat in a room with his mouth shut listening a lot.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: During this campaign. A lot of other people did too. They sat around and listened to Trump talk to people.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: What did they hear?
LEMON: Yes. You know, it's interesting because, you know, you hear some of the president's supporters, this doesn't touch the president, whatever. It was, the campaign was mentioned 22 times in this indictment.
Of course, there's OK. Well, they're talking about collusion. I know what they're saying. But it does touch the president.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: This is the president's campaign.
CUOMO: It touches him all over the place. LEMON: Yes. And these are people he knew.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: Didn't your mom ever tell you, you shouldn't hang out with those folks. And you say why. Because people will think you're like them. They're bad because birds of a feather flock together.
CUOMO: Right.
LEMON: Look at the people around this president. Look what happened. Thirty-seven people and entities have been charged by special counsel Robert Mueller. A lot of those are Russian nationals.
CUOMO: Yes.
LEMON: But Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Michael Cohen, and now Roger Stone.
CUOMO: Look, you know, you don't have to emphasize what is already obvious, OK? And, again, the reason I built this argument around the three amigos, the fact that when Manafort and Stone got into the stink, people said, like Sarah Sanders today, it has nothing to do. It can't have nothing to do.
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: He knew these people the longest and the best. The idea that he didn't know what they did for him and what they're capable of and what they're like and who they know, it strains credulity. He had to know. He's always known. Did he commit a crime?
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: Probably -- you know, we don't know anything about that. Did he collude the way they may have? We don't know.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: But that he didn't know what they were doing? Hard to believe.
LEMON: Look, you grew up here, meaning New York City for those who -- you grew up in New York City. I've only -- you know, I started in New York City in the '90s, right, that's when I started living in New -- and working and I knew about Donald Trump and some of these characters.
I'm looking over my glasses to say, really? You're going to tell me you didn't know what these people were about and what they were capable of before you sought their counsel, before you put them on as advisers --
CUOMO: Right.
LEMON: -- before you hired them? Really? I may have been born yesterday, but it wasn't last night. I mean, come on. It wasn't las night. Give me a break.
CUOMO: Here's the fight.
LEMON: As they say, don't play me. Play lotto. But go on.
CUOMO: Here's the fight we're going to have, not you and me. This is going to be the fight. Well, but none of it is a crime. There was never any proof that the president committed any crimes. How can he be in any trouble?
My argument is that is not and has never been the standard of accountability for a president of the United States. And even if you talk about impeachment -- and, again, I see that as a remote aspect of the possibilities here. High crime or misdemeanor does not mean crimes or misdemeanors necessarily.
As Gerald Ford told us what he was president, it's whatever Congress says it is, which means it's whatever the American people call for.
LEMON: I don't -- I don't -- I actually don't see it. I actually don't see it happening. I don't think that he will be impeached.
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: I see it as a very remote possibility.
LEMON: Whether he should or not, listen, that's up to the folks who are -- that's a different pay grade than me. But I think if people really -- if they don't want this president, it's not up to me.
Listen, vote for whoever you vote for, who want to vote for whoever as president and you and I will be sitting here on television, as you say testing them, right, and as I say, or criticizing them or, you know, looking at them with a critical eye. But if you really don't want this person as president, vote him out. That is the best way --
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: That is the cleanest way to create change in our system.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Just vote him out and say, we're done with him. He's gone. Get out of here. That's it.
CUOMO: For some people say that takes too long. It's too far away.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: They believe that this is so egregious, he could be a threat to our national security because if he were willing to enable these kinds of actions or stand idly by as they went by, that makes him dangerous.
Now again, I think that requires a threshold of proof that I haven't seen. But I know what the right questions are, and I know what's suspicious.
LEMON: Do you always want an asterisk by the name going, well, people drove him out of office, or maybe -- maybe he was unfairly removed from office, whatever. The best way, if you want to get rid of this president, if you don't like him, if you want someone else as your president, vote for that other person, and don't vote for this president. It's really that simple.
(CROSSTALK)
[22:04:53] CUOMO: I get it. Ultimately, what you want to see here are the facts and that, God willing, we will finally agree on a basic body of truth. We can feel different ways about it. You can want different things done, but that here's what Mueller says. We have every reason to believe him, except for what the president says about it, which nobody agrees with who has ever worked with the guy before.
LEMON: Right.
CUOMO: And now let's go from there. That's the only thing that I want. If I have a want in this, I want that report for us to come out, for us to get all of it, to digest it. But I've got to tell you, I've never seen a guy do what Roger Stone did today in his position.
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: The day he's indicted with legal counsel, in an indictment that reads like this one, Don -- they only got to get you on one of these things to put you away. And he comes out and says, let's go.
LEMON: Yes. I'm not a crook. He did the whole thing.
CUOMO: Yes, he did.
I got some bedtime stories, so I'm going to have to go here. I have to read from your favorite.
CUOMO: Is that signed?
LEMON: No, it's not. Maybe you can get it signed for me.
CUOMO: They're going to wind up putting Pelosi's face on that book.
LEMON: Or you can sign it for me. Sure. Both sides, Chris. To Don, from both sides Chris. Thank you.
CUOMO: That's called journalism. Of all your insults, that bothers me the least.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: On both sides Cuomo. I messed it up. I have messed up my own thing. Chris, thank you. Have a good weekend.
CUOMO: You too. I hope to see you.
LEMON: All right. See you later.
This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon.
Has there ever been a worse day for President Trump? Think about it because this is a day he caved on the shutdown without his wall, suffering a total, abject defeat at the hands of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.
This is a day the president's dirty trickster ally, Roger Stone, was nabbed in a pre-dawn raid by the FBI and indicted by Robert Mueller after he allegedly went to WikiLeaks to get stolen e-mails to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.
Is it any wonder on a day like this that Donald Trump was the picture of the sad president, or as he been known to say, low energy? Look. Did you guys that today?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you very much, my fellow Americans.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Is it any wonder the president didn't sound as proud as he said he was when he announces the deal to reopen the government. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I'm very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown and reopen the federal government.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Applause? Really? What is there to applaud? This president shutdown the federal government, leaving 800,000 workers without paying and creating chaos all across the country, only to take a deal that he could have taken 35 days ago. The emperor not only has no clothes, he has no walls. But he apparently couldn't resist immediately ad-libbing this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: As everyone knows, I have a very powerful alternative, but I didn't want to use it at this time. Hopefully it will be unnecessary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Of course, it is a powerful alternative. Is there any other kind for the president? Presumably he means declaring a national emergency.
But I want you to ask yourself this. If it wasn't an emergency for the first two years of the Trump administration, if it wasn't an emergency for the 35 days the government was shut down, if you're apparently willing to wait three more weeks, can you really call this an emergency?
One Trump adviser is telling CNN that the president lost big-league, or is it bigly? Bigly, I think today, saying, quote, "the White House is walking in a valley tonight."
So, what exactly was the point of all of this? What was it? Why? What was the point of throwing 800,000 people into chaos with no paychecks? What was the point of federal workers going hungry, sleeping in their cars to save on gas, going without desperately needed medical treatment? What was the point?
What was the point if all the president was going to do was take the deal he could have taken more than a month ago, or a little over two weeks ago, when this president stormed out of a White House meeting, when Speaker Pelosi said nope on his wall? The president claimed to be proud today, but we've heard that before.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck. I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I'm not going to blame you for it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: So, listen to the president's latest attempt to bamboozle his base tonight. Quote, "This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it is off to the races."
[22:10:02] This is all about ego. That's what that is. It's about a White House completely out of touch with reality after inflicting more than a month of pain on people who had nothing to do with making this mess.
The president can learn a lesson from a little best-seller. Here it is. It's called "The Art of the Deal." Shall we do some bedtime reading? Pages 48 and 49, OK? Here we go. Pages 48 and 49. It says, quote, "the point is you can't be too greedy. If you go for a home run on every pitch, you're going to strike out a lot. I try never to leave myself too exposed, even if it means sometimes settling for a triple, a double, or even, on a rare occasion, a single."
Or in this case, striking out and ending up going home with nothing. And then there is the State of the Union. Nancy Pelosi not budging on that either.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NANCY PELOSI, UNITED STATES SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: The State of the Union is not planned now. What I had said to the president is when government is open, we will discuss a mutually agreeable date, and I'll look forward to doing that and welcoming the president to the House of Representatives for the State of the Union when we agree on that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: Chuck Schumer may have said it best.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D) MINORITY LEADER, NEW YORK: No one should ever underestimate the speaker as Donald Trump has learned.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: A word of advice, though, Chuck. Don't spike the ball. Don't be a sore winner. All right?
All of this on the same day the FBI came for Roger Stone in an early- morning raid at his Florida home. The indictment from Mueller's office, Robert Mueller's office, is charges that Stone sought stolen e-mails from WikiLeaks damaging to then-candidate Trump's opponent at the direction of senior Trump campaign officials.
The president's longtime ally appeared in federal court in Fort Lauderdale this morning. But outside the courtroom, it was a different Roger Stone that we saw, in a defiant V for victory pose. Does that remind you of anyone? Yes, the man whose face is tattooed on Stone's back, Stone saying this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROGER STONE, FORMER TRUMP ADVISER: As I have always said, the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: And just listen to what Stone had to say about the FBI raid this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STONE: They terrorized my wife, my dogs. I was taken to the FBI facility although I must say the FBI agents were extraordinarily courteous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEMON: OK. So, which is it? They terrorized or extremely courteous agents, who, by the way were doing their jobs without pay during this shutdown. The White House reacting today. Sarah Sanders, there she is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH HUCKABEE-SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: This has nothing to do with the president, and certainly nothing to do with the White House.
(END VIDEO CLIP) LEMON: Except for the fact that Roger Stone has been part of Donald Trump's inner circle since the 1970s and was an official on his campaign until August of 2015, and stayed in touch with the campaign throughout the election. That is according to Mueller's indictment.
The president himself praised his longtime crony's guts in a tweet last month, for saying "I will never testify against Trump."
So, here's the big picture, OK? Roger Stone is the latest of 37 people and entities charged by the special counsel, Robert Mueller. The list includes six Trump associates, including Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, and now Roger Stone.
Mueller has brought 199 total criminal charges in all. Seven of those counts were added today for Roger Stone. And all of that makes what happened today a very, very big deal.
From Roger Stone to the president caving on the wall, we've got a lot to talk about with Charlie Dent, Kirsten Powers, Ryan Lizza, next.
[22:15:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: So, you heard my question at the top of the show. Has there ever been a worse day for President Trump? After vowing repeatedly, he would never agree to open the government without a deal for money for his wall, he did exactly that today. On the same day his longtime ally Roger Stone was indicted by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Let's bring in Charlie Dent, also Kirsten Powers and Ryan Lizza. Hello, everyone.
RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, Don.
LEMON: Ryan, you first. The president has a lot of bad days, right? But I mean, do you think this was his worst one yet?
LIZZA: You know, I'd have to go back and review them. They always seem the worst when you're in the middle of them. But this one is up there. And, I mean the shutdown, the way this ended was completely predictable, right?
I mean, it reminds me of that old episode of South Park. Do you remember that episode, Don, when the gnomes are stealing all the underwear in town? And the kids find out, and they confront them and say, what are you guys doing? They say, it's our master business plan.
They go to the gnomes' business headquarters, and they put up a big chart. It says, step one, steal all the underwear. Step two is a giant question mark. Step three is, profit.
Well, step one was shut down the government. There was no step two. Step three was, the wall gets funded. So that is my -- that's my take on that.
LEMON: Here's what I remember from South Park --
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: They sure did.
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I can't top that. I'm sorry.
LEMON: That's all I remember is they took our jobs. All right. So, let's move on. Moving on, Charlie, listen, everyone, Democrats, moderates, conservatives, they're all angry at the president. And in the end, there's no wall funding. Does this make him look weak now?
DENT: Well, it makes him look incompetent. I mean, this shutdown was an act of political, legislative, and governmental malpractice. I mean, who would have ever thought this was a good idea to shut the government down before Christmas, knowing that a Democratic House is going to take over and that they might somehow get a better deal in the new year?
[22:20:07] You know, I've said repeatedly, these shutdowns always end the same way, with some kind of a clean funding bill for a limited duration of time. That is exactly what's happened.
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Was it you, Charlie, who was on before, and I said, what is he doing?
DENT: Yes.
LEMON: Doesn't he realize that when he comes back from the holidays, he's going to have zero leverage? Didn't I have that decision with you? I know I had it on this program.
DENT: Yes, you did. I mean this is just -- this is almost breathtaking. And listen to who he's been taking advice from, Ann Coulter and the Freedom Caucus, people who would have never supported an agreement like this. They were the people guiding him through this whole process.
I mean, I can't even begin to tell you how absurd and ridiculous this was. It was not only pointless, but it was also painful for so many people. And they're going to have a negotiation between now and February, and I hope there is some kind of agreement on border security, DREAMers, DACA, TPS. I hope so.
LEMON: Yes.
DENT: But I guess I don't have that much hope going forward.
LEMON: Kirsten, a couple questions for you. How long does the pain last, though, do you think? How long does it affect this administration?
POWERS: You mean Trump's pain?
LEMON: Yes.
POWERS: For what he did?
LEMON: Well, just for people, you know, being upset, blaming him on the shutdown, for the shutdown --
POWERS: Well --
LEMON: -- not getting a paycheck and, you know, missing some of their rent or mortgage payments and on and on.
POWERS: Yes. I mean I think that's one of those things that probably, you know, there's going to be some other crisis, some people will move on to. I mean, things just happen so fast, there always seems to be other things happening, things that we can't even imagine that we're going to be sitting here, saying, this was the worst day of his administration.
LEMON: All right. I got you. All right.
POWERS: So, I think that -- but I do think that -- well, so I think he -- and I said this at the time that he did t. I thought he made a huge mistake not just because it was the wrong thing to do and he was going to pay a political price for it.
I also -- I think he -- I don't know why he thinks that Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh have more power than he does. I think he really has -- he does have more power with the base. I remember when he turned --
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Why is he scared of them, right?
POWERS: Well, no. But I remember when he turned against Fox News, and Fox news was very anti-Trump in the beginning. And he bent them to his will. And they thought that they were more powerful than him, and they learned the hard way that they weren't.
LEMON: Yes.
POWERS: I don't know why he doesn't remember that lesson that he really shouldn't have caved to them because in the beginning, I don't even think this is what he wanted. I think he ultimately caved because he felt like he was losing his base.
LEMON: Did he -- did he underestimate Pelosi?
POWERS: A hundred percent.
LEMON: A hundred percent.
POWERS: But so many people have. And I think that you have people in her own caucus who have underestimated who --
LEMON: Yes.
POWERS: -- you know, before the election were telling her that she was too old and needed to step aside. I think a lot of people owe her an apology.
LEMON: Yes. Charlie, I just want to read from the indictment, OK? It says, after the July -- excuse me -- July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC e-mails by organization one, that's WikiLeaks by the way, a senior campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information organization one had regarding the Clinton campaign.
So, a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Roger Stone. Are you wondering how high this goes up?
DENT: Yes. Yes. I don't know how much higher it can go than Roger Stone. I mean the speculation is of course it's either the president or maybe his son, or could it have been Steve Bannon? I don't really know.
But I guess what is astounding to me as a Republican, you know, I remember back during the George W. Bush administration when WikiLeaks was revealing classified secrets of our men and women in uniform in the Middle East and elsewhere, damaging breaches, and we thought they were the enemy.
And then along comes the Trump campaign, and all of a sudden WikiLeaks has been redeemed because they were now, you know, cohorting with the Russians and trying to damage Hillary Clinton.
So, my sense is, Roger Stone, he's in big trouble. He's not in Paul Manafort trouble, but he's in trouble, and the noose is tightening around the president. All these people close to him are now indicted or have already pled out. So, he's just going to be another one.
LEMON: Yes. Ryan, there's always a tweet, right? You pointed this out from, this one from Trump's 2020 campaign manager. This is from Brad Parscale. This is about a year ago, and it says, "Truth, Jared Kushner and Eric Trump were joint deputy campaign managers to real Donald Trump, nobody else. Not one person made a decision without their approval." No, right?
"Others just took credit for this family's amazing ability. I'm done with all these lies. They will be embarrassed." Well --
LIZZA: Yes.
LEMON: Well, interesting tweet, right?
LIZZA: There you go. He's saying what a lot of people know. I think there was a lot of truth to that. Trump was -- did micromanage that campaign. He ran it himself. He was his own best communications strategist, political adviser, right?
[22:25:04] LEMON: Yes.
LIZZA: He made all the decisions just like the same way the White House operates now. He is a micromanager. And so that tweet was written when I think the Wolff book came out, and he was trying to argue that certain people that Wolff was saying were important weren't important as they are.
But of course, in light of what the indictment said today and about what -- who may have directed Stone to do what, I thought that tweet was pretty interesting in the current context. I do wonder, though, if Mueller in an indictment would say a senior campaign official, and he would refer to the candidate as a senior campaign official.
LEMON: Right.
LIZZA: Doesn't that -- isn't that a little off? In a previous indictment -- I can't believe we have to talk about it. This previous indictment --
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: Maybe he didn't want to give it away. It was an individual something or maybe --
LIZZA: Right.
LEMON: If you didn't want to give it away, you would redact it.
LIZZA: Right. The Cohen indictment --
(CROSSTALK)
LEMON: But go on. Sorry.
LIZZA: Yes, exactly. So I do wonder if that is Trump himself. But you know, I understand why that's, you know, a lot of people think it might be.
LEMON: Yes. You know, the president, Kirsten, continues to call this a witch hunt. But Roger Stone is the sixth associate charged in the special counsel investigation. The White House can say that this has nothing to do with the president, but this was his campaign. These are the people he surrounded himself with. He hired them. He sought their counsel. There you go. It's all laid out in front of you on the screen now.
POWERS: Yes. Yes. I mean it's about his campaign. So, this all relates to his campaign. So, I mean, I don't know how you can say that it's not about him in some way. And I think Sarah Sanders had an opportunity to say that it wasn't Donald Trump who directed this, and she didn't say that.
So, at a minimum, we know that there were senior people on this campaign who were communicating and seemingly coordinating -- it certainly looks like coordinating releasing information -- you know, with WikiLeaks, releasing information that was harmful to Hillary Clinton that was obtained by the Russians, hacking into the DNC.
So, I don't think we should lose sight of that, that this is whether it's illegal or not, you know, which it very well -- I guess it's not illegal. I mean, you know, that's not what he was charged with. But it's certainly highly problematic and not something you would expect somebody who is running for president and becoming president of the United States to do.
LEMON: Thank you all. I appreciate your time.
LIZZA: Thanks, Don.
LEMON: How do intel officials view Roger Stone's actions? I'm going to ask the director of national intelligence. James Clapper is with me next.
[22:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Robert Mueller's indictment of longtime Trump ally, Roger Stone, is a big deal. Mueller charges the president's longtime ally, a man he's known since the 1970s, sought stolen e-mails from WikiLeaks, e-mails damaging to then-candidate Trump's opponents, at the direction of senior Trump campaign officials.
Let's bring in now James Clapper. He is a former director of National Intelligence under President Obama. Good evening, director. So good to have you on.
JAMES CLAPPER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Thanks, don.
LEMON: What do you see in this indictment? Is this collusion? Is it obstruction? What is it?
CLAPPER: Well, I read it over carefully a couple times. You know, this is a -- it has kind of fallen into a template pattern for Mueller. You know, these things are meticulously written, very circumspect about trying to avoid involving anyone else.
In your last segment on discussing the phraseology about, you know, senior campaign official and who that might be, I think that's deliberate on Mueller's part. That's going to -- whoever that is, that's going to come up in a subsequent indictment, and I think there are more to come.
Mueller's done, you know, the building-block approach here, and today was another big brick in the wall. That's probably not a good metaphor, I guess, today, but against the president. What it means is, you know, confirmation. I mean, this was a shoe we all knew what's going to drop, and it finally did.
LEMON: Yeah.
CLAPPER: And the relationship between Roger Stone and WikiLeaks, who was fed the e-mails by the Russians, I don't know if that meets the threshold for collusion or conspiracy, but it sure does indicate coordination, collaboration, whatever.
LEMON: Yeah.
CLAPPER: The other thing -- and of course, are Trump's public statements at the time contemporaneously. And I recall at this rally speech he made, I think it was in June of '16, in which he alluded to some big revelation that was going to come out very soon, which didn't happen.
LEMON: Yeah.
CLAPPER: And, you know, you start to put these pieces together. So today, was a big deal as you said.
LEMON: Well, let me -- let me read some of the indictment. It will help clear up some of the things that you said when you talked about the president, what he did and on and on and on, and what Roger Stone did.
So, it says -- part of it says during the timeframe of June and July of 2016, Roger Stone contacted the Trump officials to let them know that organization 1, a.k.a. WikiLeaks, had information that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign if they were released.
And then this happens, right? On July 22, 2016, organization 1 -- again, that's WikiLeaks -- released documents stolen from the DNC. So does the fact that Stone seemed to know those documents would be released look like coordination to you is the question?
CLAPPER: Well, it has for some time because, you know, this has been widely speculated just because what was out was known publicly. And of course, this indictment, at least in my mind, just confirms that.
LEMON: Yeah. More from the indictment, all right? After the July 22nd DNC e-mail dump. A senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information organization 1 had regarding the Clinton campaign.
Stone, thereafter, told the Trump campaign about potential future release of damaging material by organization 1. What's interesting is that a few days after that senior person was directed to contact Stone about WikiLeaks, the president then said this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[22:35:01] LEMON: So what's your reaction? I want to put into perspective of what you said. What's your reaction to that?
CLAPPER: Well, again, this -- I don't know if you can call it collusion or not, but his exhortation, public exhortation to the Russians --
LEMON: It seemed like coordination may be a better word.
CLAPPER: Maybe or synchronization. I don't know what.
LEMON: Synchronization, right. CLAPPER: And the fact is, as revealed in Mueller's GRU indictment of, I think, last July, the -- they took him up on it. And that very day, after hours, they went to look for those 30,000 e-mails in response to Trump's seeming direction.
So, you know, I don't know what you call it, but it's, you know, clearly synchronization between Trump and the Russians. And I did discuss this in my book at some length about the striking parallels and similarities thematically between what the Trump campaign was saying and doing and what the Russians were saying and doing, particularly on social media with specific respect to Hillary Clinton and all the -- you know, her alleged illnesses, and she had a stroke and all that sort of thing. Well, those themes emerged both from the Russians and from the Trump campaign.
LEMON: I want to read this quickly and get your response before I let you go. The indictment goes on to say, to lay out what happened in October of 2016. This is a month before the election and one day before the release of that Access Hollywood tape, OK?
Stone tweets from a now defunct, deleted account. He says, Julian Assange will deliver a devastating expose on Hillary at a time of his choosing. I stand by my prediction. And then the very next day, WikiLeaks releases hacked e-mails from Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta.
The indictment says shortly after organization 1's release, an associate of a high-ranking Trump campaign official sent a text message to Stone that read, well done.
Is this as damning and as straightforward as it sounds, Roger Stone was directly coordinating with Trump officials?
CLAPPER: Yes. And when you -- you also recall that that same day, October 7th, was when the Access Hollywood audiotape was released, so very coincidental, again, coordination or synchronization. And it also -- just a footnote -- was the same day that Jeh Johnson, then secretary of Homeland Security, and I put our public statement about the Russian, meddling, which got completely lost because of all the other news.
LEMON: Yeah. What a day, director, huh?
CLAPPER: Yes.
LEMON: Thank you, sir. Always a pleasure.
CLAPPER: Thanks, don.
LEMON: I hope you feel better. I can tell a little cold there. Thank you. All right.
Today's indictment charges Roger Stone with lying to the House Intelligence Committee. Who better to speak to than a member of that committee? Congressman Eric Swalwell is next.
[22:40:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: Longtime Trump ally, Roger Stone, has been indicted by the special counsel on seven counts including lying to the House Intelligence Committee. I want to ask a member of that committee about that. Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell is here. Good evening, sir.
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D), CALIFORNIA: Good evening, don.
LEMON: Nothing happened today, right?
SWALWELL: Yeah. Easy breezy, right?
LEMON: Easy breezy, nothing went on, pretty mundane. Listen, Stone was charged with lying to you and the House Intelligence Committee about having any contacts, e-mails, texts, showing communications with WikiLeaks and Assange. Did you believe he was lying when he testified?
SWALWELL: Yes. You know, actually, I expected him to be, you know, the typical in your face, confrontational Roger Stone, and I observed throughout the interview he wasn't like that at all. He was actually, you know, pretty serious, which I guess should have told me that something was going on, which was he was facing Congress and lying to our faces.
But the message here should be you have to be straight with Congress. If you are not, you know, we are a rule of law society. You will be held to account. And he's paying the price for that today.
LEMON: Yeah. I want to show you the key passage in that indictment that states that back in July of 2016, a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information organization 1 had regarding the Clinton campaign. What is Mueller saying here?
SWALWELL: Well, you know, what I see is that we have, you know, strong evidence now of the intense interest that the Trump campaign had all the way up to the very top levels in obtaining the Russian- hacked materials that would help Donald Trump.
A senior campaign official, Don, can only be directed by someone more senior than that official, and that leaves us really only with Donald Trump and, you know, perhaps, you know, Paul Manafort. But we know from other evidence from Michael Cohen and others that Donald Trump was involved in poll-rigging. Donald Trump was involved in paying and silencing witnesses who would testify, you know, or talk to the press about his character.
So he's a shadowy operator. So we at least have good reason to look and see if Donald Trump was the one with this intense interest in finding out what Roger Stone was obtaining.
LEMON: Shadowy operator, that is an interesting way to put it. What else stands out to you from the indictment, Congressman?
SWALWELL: Well, you know, here we see powerful, powerful evidence of a consciousness of guilt. We see not only the great length that Roger Stone went to obtain the Russian-hacked e-mails, but the length that he went to bury the evidence. And you know, the president and his defenders are saying, well, there's no charge of collusion.
Fortunately, in America, you know, when you bury the evidence, we believe that you did that because the truth would show that you're guilty. And here, Roger Stone has been found holding a shovel. So, whether we find all the evidence he buried or not, he did it for one reason, which was that if we had found this out, it would probably be evidence of the underlying crime of collusion.
[22:45:07] LEMON: We know that Don Jr. had that Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016. We know that he also exchanged messages with the WikiLeaks Twitter account. Do you think there's more here?
SWALWELL: Well, we also know that Don Jr. has changed his account as to what happened on that Trump Tower meeting. And again, the pattern here of so many people from General Flynn to Donald Trump Jr., to Paul Manafort, to Jared Kushner, who have had to change their accounts as it related to dealing with the Russians shows a consciousness of guilt.
If there was an innocent explanation, they would have offered that first. And so, that's why I think all the arrows continue to point in the same direction. This team was a team of cheats. They were willing to do anything to take help from the Russians, and we should, for all these reasons, allow Mueller to continue his investigation and get right to work, as we already are doing on the house intelligence and judiciary committee.
LEMON: Speaker Pelosi is out with a statement about the Stone indictment, and it says, "In the face of 37 indictments, the president's continued actions to undermine the special counsel investigation raise the questions what does Putin have on the president politically, personally, or financially? Why has the Trump administration continued to discuss pulling the U.S. out of NATO, which would be a massive victory for Putin?"
Are these the questions Congress want to look into?
SWALWELL: Yeah. We're going to get to the bottom of it, Don. And you know, I know that some people in Washington say that people outside Washington don't really care about the Russia investigation. And sure, it's not like the near fatal shutdown and affects their lives in that way.
But I think this has truly affected our country, and we've been on the ropes since it happened. Russia attacked the very idea of America. And until we can tell the American people who worked with the Russians, how many people did, and what they did with the Russians, I don't think we're going to climb out of this hole we've been in. That's why it's so important.
LEMON: Congressman, thank you for your time. Have a good weekend.
SWALWELL: You too. My pleasure. LEMON: The president caving, agreeing to end the government shutdown for three weeks. But what happens after those three weeks are up? I'm going to ask Senator Amy Klobuchar.
[22:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
LEMON: There's no other way to say it, President Trump caved today when he agreed to a deal to temporarily reopen the federal government, a deal that doesn't include any money for his border wall. That concession came on the same day as long time ally, Roger Stone, was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Joining me now to discuss all of this is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. Senator, thank you for joining us. What a day, right?
SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: Unbelievable day, but we're just glad those workers are doing to be back to work. And I think a lot of people are focused on the wins and losses understandably, and what this meant for the president and the strength of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Schumer and all of us that really stood up and said, you know, we're not going to do something that makes no sense while you hold the workers hostage.
But really, the story to me is those workers, how so many of them kept doing their jobs with the FBI, with the prisons, at the airports, without pay.
LEMON: You were on my show the night the government shut down. And today, the president, you know, everyone is saying he caved, but he did exactly what Democrats were offering back then. And my question was 35 days for what?
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you so much for realizing that because I think that's gotten forgotten in these 35 days. Literally, it was actually -- 37 days ago, we voted for that to stop the shutdown, and then the shutdown started two days later. That bill was nearly identical to what this bill is.
LEMON: Wow.
KLOBUCHAR: That's it. It was a temporary bill so that the border security issues could be much more thoughtfully negotiated. And he rejected it. That was a bipartisan bill that passed the Senate.
LEMON: The president said that this is a crisis. It's an emergency. But the wall wasn't an emergency for the first two years of his presidency when he had a Republican-controlled House and Senate. Why now?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, that's what's very interesting is he said that a while back and now he continues to say it. And I think the more he says it, if he does resort to with the stroke of his pen declaring some kind of emergency, that's going to make it much harder for him to make that case because it seems to me that he's just using that as some kind of a bargaining chip as opposed to looking at technology and things that we should be doing to stop drug trafficking a the ports of entry and other things.
LEMON: Listen. A lot of people have been saying, you know, during this whole thing, where was Mitch McConnell, where was Mitch McConnell. So, I just want to read a quote. This is from the Daily Beast, OK, Senator.
This is Nancy Pelosi describing a conversation she had with Leader McConnell about how he handled this entire process. She said, "I know he's a professional." Pelosi said of McConnell. "So it is particularly painful to see him cow telling to the president of the United States. And I said to him, do you just want to abolish the Congress or maybe just the United States Senate because that is effectively what you're doing." So, I mean -- "Ask what McConnell said in response," Pelosi replied, "What does he ever say? Nothing."
Did all this strengthen the speaker you think?
KLOBUCHAR: Well, yes. I think she has come out of this. She has shown how she will stand up for her principles. But in this case, I think that really bothered us is that -- 67 votes -- and by the way, this has happened before. I remember when President Bush was in the Senate overrode him on a veto of the farm bill. So, this isn't -- this happens. This used to happen in history because if you get 67 votes then you can override what the president does. But when you give up that tool, then you are basically conceding things.
LEMON: Right.
KLOBUCHAR: And I think that is specifically when you look at the rules what she was talking about. But certainly, this has been a day that like no other because at the same time you have this going on, as you pointed out at the top of our interview, you have the Roger Stone indictment being handed out and --
LEMON: Well, that's what I want to ask you about. May I ask you about that?
KLOBUCHAR: Yes. Sure.
LEMON: I want to ask you about the predawn arrest by the FBI. Of course, Roger Stone is a long time friends of this president. How damning do you think this is for Stone and for the White House?
KLOBUCHAR: This to me, I've tried to explain all of these indictments and they're all important, as you know. But sometimes it takes half of your show to explain Papadopoulos in a bar in London, all these things
[22:55:04] This is very clear. This is someone who is close to the White House. And in the indictment, it says that the campaign, a senior official, unidentified -- so that means someone way up -- asked Roger Stone to go to WikiLeaks. By then we knew, they knew, and it was out in public, had those Hillary Clinton e-mails and talked to them about release and talked to them about various things relating to them. Then you see documented evidence of him talking about trying to use her health and falsehoods about her memory, and putting that out there as well. And so, to me, this just makes a much more straightforward case that you had a campaign, and we don't know how high it goes, but at many levels was coordinating through WikiLeaks with a foreign government. And that is illegal and that is against the national security interests of America.
LEMON: Senator, thank you for your time.
KLOBUCHAR: Thank you. It was great to be on, Don. And you did a great job in Minnesota at the Martin Luther King breakfast. Thank you for coming out.
LEMON: I appreciate that. That's very kind of you.
KLOBUCHAR: Yes. Thank you.
LEMON: Robert Mueller indicting Roger Stone today, shedding new light on how the Trump campaign allegedly eagerly tried to benefit from Russian election interference. So the big question is, what did Trump know and when did he know it?
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