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John Kelly Speaks Out Against Trump; More DOJ Resignations Possible in the Coming Days; Bloomberg's Campaign Scrambles to Contain "Stop-and-Frisk" Controversy; Attorney General Bill Barr to Testify Before House Judiciary Next Month; Mobile Tech Conference Canceled Over Coronavirus Fears. Aired 9-9:30a ET
Aired February 13, 2020 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[09:00:02]
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.
Listen to this. The president's former chief of staff and retired Marine General, John Kelly, has called the president's demand that Ukraine investigate the Bidens a, quote, "illegal order." That's right, Kelly in public defending Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman and his decision to report that controversial demand and phone call to his higher ups.
HARLOW: Yes, it's remarkable that he chose these words and said this now. It was first reported by "The Atlantic." It happened overnight. Kelly told an audience that Army Officer Vindman who was repeatedly targeted by the president and of course mocked and then removed from the White House did exactly what he was taught to do. Again, to report, quote, "an illegal order" and Kelly did not stop there.
SCIUTTO: Also this morning, the Justice Department is roiled today. This after the attorney general intervened to reduce a sentencing recommendation from Justice Department lawyers for the president's longtime ally Roger Stone. Sources tell CNN that more prosecutors are now considering resigning. "The New York Times" reports that others fear pressure from the president. We're on top of all of the news this morning.
HARLOW: All right. So let's begin on this at the White House with White House correspondent John Harwood with more on the stunning comments. I mean, it goes so far beyond Vindman.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It goes beyond Vindman, Poppy. John Kelly really let loose in the set of remarks. And he talked, in particular, about the sense of duty that's bred in people in the military, that he brought to the White House, that he used to try to constrain the president.
Let's first look at what he said about Alexander Vindman. He said, he did exactly what we teach them from cradle to grave. We teach them, don't follow an illegal order. And if you are given one, you'll raise it to whoever gave it to you, and say this is an illegal order and then tell your boss. There was, in addition, a quote on Trump's intervention in the case of Eddie Gallagher, the Navy SEAL, who had been convicted of murder in Iraq.
The president restored his rank in the Navy SEAL. John Kelly said, "If I was in the White House, I think I could have stopped it." That's because John Kelly understands what is necessary for order and discipline in the military. And this is a president who doesn't value those things. And it is very clear at the moment, not just John Kelly who is not there anymore, but no one in the White House or in the Republican Party at this point, guys, is willing to stop him.
SCIUTTO: No, and he's removed those who have stood up to him. We've seen it from experience.
John, please stay with us.
Let's also bring in CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor himself, Shan Wu, and former Republican congressman and Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr, who's also a former federal prosecutor.
Shan, if I could begin with you. What's the legal standard for an illegal order? Is there one? Is this up to the judgment of uniformed commanders?
SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: There's not really going to be a legal standard that's relevant to them because they're going to be in the field. They're making these decisions on the fly. I mean, there could be something that seems, again, it's going to be their discretion. If they're ordered to do something that they feel is illegal in terms of military regulations or other law, they're going to have to make that call at the time.
He wasn't in a situation, Vindman, where he had to make an instant judgment. He was able to go to a superior, which is exactly why Kelly is saying he did the right thing to do. He didn't have to make a judgment on the fly.
HARLOW: Bob Barr, to you, you have criticized the impeachment of the president. You've called it a Democratic sham. But John Kelly is hardly a Democrat, and he is backing with these comments, the very foundation of the impeachment. Do you disagree with his take?
BOB BARR, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: It doesn't make any sense to me what the general is saying because Vindman was not given an order to do anything. By all accounts, he simply overheard a conversation and then he interpreted a certain way.
HARLOW: So, Bob, I would just -- I would just jump in there with the context for people who haven't read the entirety of Kelly's comments. The idea is, if you are, you know, a lieutenant colonel, if this is your position and you hear something that you know is wrong, it is your duty to report it.
SCIUTTO: Right. Report it to the chain of command. BARR: Well, he overheard the president who is the commander-in-chief
and who is in fact in charge of U.S. foreign policy on a conversation with a foreign leader talking about U.S. policy with regard to that country. The colonel apparently interpreted what the president was saying one way. Others interpreted it another way. I see nothing in this equation that equates to an illegal order.
SCIUTTO: Shan --
HARWOOD: Guys, it's not just Alexander Vindman --
SCIUTTO: Sorry. John, go ahead.
HARWOOD: Not just Alexander Vindman who interpreted it that way.
HARLOW: Yes.
HARWOOD: Gordon Sondland, the president's appointee, interpreted it that way. Bill Taylor, the president's choice to be envoy to Ukraine, also interpreted it that way.
[09:05:04]
There's no misunderstanding what happened here. And in fact, at the end of the Senate trial, we know that Ted Cruz told White House lawyers we all know there was a quid pro quo here. The only question being whether it's enough to convict and put him out of office.
HARLOW: Right.
HARWOOD: But the facts of the case and the fact that it was an improper association, link that the president made between those two things is universally accepted now.
BARR: No, it's not universally accepted now.
SCIUTTO: Shan, does it make a difference --
HARWOOD: Yes, it is.
BARR: It's not. I mean, I disagree with what you're saying and an awful lot of U.S. senators did also, and I suspect that if there had been a fair proceeding --
HARWOOD: Not according to Ted Cruz.
BARR: There would have been a lot of other witnesses that interpreted it very differently.
SCIUTTO: Shan, you heard Bob Barr there talk about how the president's the commander in chief. Does that negate a uniformed officer from making a judgment to say, listen, to me -- to me, this sounds like an illegal order and, therefore, I will report it through the chain of command?
WU: Yes. It absolutely does not do that. I mean, the commander in chief is simply a higher commander. So if he were, let's say, in the field, in a war zone, and his immediate supervisor gave him an order that he felt was illegal or something wrong to do, we want our armed services soldiers to not do that. To follow their training and to follow their own moral conscience. And that's what he was doing here. He did exactly the right thing. That's what General Kelly is saying. We should be proud of what he did.
HARLOW: Bob, quick response and then we're going to move on.
BARR: There was no order of any sort. This was a president talking about a U.S. foreign policy with regard to another leader. That can be interpreted and characterized many different ways.
WU: Well, that's exactly the point. I mean, you want them to interpret it and to fall back on the technicality, there wasn't an order to do this. That's just silly. Obviously, he felt he was witnessing something wrong.
SCIUTTO: Yes. And we should note that there was an order issued. We saw that in the e-mail traffic, the White House directed this aid to be stopped. But please stay with us. There's much more to cover this morning.
HARLOW: There is because there could be more exits from the Justice Department. This comes just days after four federal prosecutors just completely up and quit the Roger Stone case over the agency's decision to overrule their sentencing recommendations.
SCIUTTO: New sources saying this morning that several federal prosecutors have discussed resigning. Joining in these resignations in recent days.
CNN's Laura Jarrett joins us now. So we've already seen four resign from this case. One, I believe, from the job itself.
LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: From the (INAUDIBLE). Yes.
SCIUTTO: Completely. You're hearing that there are others who are considering the same?
JARRETT: Just imagine trying to do your job every day and you have been there throughout multiple administrations. And you find out on FOX News that now it's going to be reversed for what reason? We don't know exactly what happened in those conversations, but we've seen this play out now in a way that I think undermines how they're supposed to do their job.
And it's really a morale issue. We talk to sources and things were really heated on Tuesday. We'll see how it plays out in the days to come. Maybe things calm down. And it's not unusual for there to be policy disagreements. I think that's happened.
HARLOW: Sure.
JARRETT: But in criminal cases, those usually don't get touched. And what we're seeing now in Stone and other cases is different. HARLOW: How much of this, Laura, your reporting in terms of the
turmoil and the angst and the actual, you know, leaving of positions or cases at least that the Justice Department has to do with the attorney general himself?
JARRETT: Well, look, there's no question, Bill Barr, if anything, takes a hands-on approach to these cases. And it turns out that Stone's case is not an outlier. The reporting shows that it's also in the case of the former National Security adviser Michael Flynn. We saw some court filings that were sort of discordant, if you will, on the sort of softening of the sentencing and it turns out that he was involved in some of those discussions behind the scenes.
But there's also so many more cases to go that are in the queue right now, that are politically sensitive that the president cares about. Look at, I mean, just that map right there. It shows you what we're facing in the weeks and months to come. So many we can barely fit it on one page there. And so for instance, on Eric Prince, Betsy DeVos' brother, if they don't indict him for lying to Congress, how are people supposed to look at this?
I think that's the question for the Justice Department. How do people look at this and say, it was on the up and up? And so I think the appearance of impropriety, even if we've giving them the benefit of the doubt and that there's nothing wrong here.
SCIUTTO: Yes.
JARRETT: It's the appearance that some people aren't getting a fair shake.
SCIUTTO: It's why you have rules against conflicts of interest. Right?
JARRETT: Precisely.
SCIUTTO: Because, you know, if you have those conflicts you should not be involved.
Bob, I wonder how you respond to that. The president has an interest in all these cases. There are folks who advised him. Roger Stone has been one of his most loyal advisers through the years. Do you have any issue? You're a former federal prosecutor as well. Imagine if a president interfered in a case that you prosecuted to the best of your ability and said, no, I don't care what you did. This guy is a friend of mine. Ain't going to happen. How would you respond to that?
[09:10:03]
BARR: There's something important to keep in mind here. While federal prosecutors have a great deal of flexibility in how they handle their cases, it is not absolute. And particularly with regard to cases involving public figures and corruption involving public figures, the U.S. attorney or the line attorneys prosecuting the case are required by the U.S. attorney's manual to coordinate that case with main justice. And, in fact, what happened here, apparently, is there was some
disagreement between main justice and the attorneys handling the case. There was an understanding that they would follow the guidelines, and then they filed a paper with the court that did something very different.
SCIUTTO: Not the question I asked. I mean, I asked if you would have any issue with the president repeatedly intervening in cases in which he has a personal interest as a former prosecutor yourself.
BARR: The president is not intervening in anything. The decision here first and foremost is going to be made by the judge, and not by the line attorney, not by William Barr. It's going to be made by the judge. The president can say whatever he wants. That's not going to influence the judge.
HARLOW: All right. I would just note, Bob, in your piece in the "Daily Caller" you criticized the judge as an Obama appointed judge and took aim at all of this, saying Stone was never charged with any substantive criminal offenses, and you're talking about five counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a proceeding.
Shan Wu, you've been in meetings like this when you were a former counsel to AG Janet Reno. I mean, did you see anything like this happen?
WU: Absolutely not. There's a very solid wall between the White House generally and the Justice Department. Precisely for the reason of the integrity of the process, not wanting public confidence to be undermined. In fact, the sort of interesting thing is usually when defense counsel are making appeals to the higher ups at the Justice Department, main justice, usually they have very little success if they're going against the judgment of the operational people, the trial folks who have actually worked the case.
The higher up you go, the less inclined the officials are to overrule the people at the bottom. So the idea here that this is a normal situation, it's not. It's very abnormal.
SCIUTTO: Well, we're watching it unfold. Shan Wu, Bob Barr, thanks to both of you. Laura Jarrett as well.
Still to come, Attorney General Bill Barr with face lawmakers on the hill weeks from now. We're going to speak to a member of the House Judiciary Committee who will be asking Barr questions, just ahead.
HARLOW: Also 2020 Democratic presidential Mike Bloomberg picking up several endorsements from prominent African-American lawmakers, including one from New York, even as he faces all of these questions over his controversial stop and frisk policy in New York City. So what do those endorsements mean?
Also, Rush Limbaugh, recently awarded the Medal of Freedom by the president, now targeting a presidential candidate's sexuality, saying on his radio show that he wonders what would happen in a debate between, quote, "Mr. Man," President Trump and in Limbaugh's words, quote, "gay guy" Pete Buttigieg. It's difficult to even repeat his words here and the way that he clearly meant them. Much more on that ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:15:00]
JIM SCIUTTO, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: As the Bloomberg campaign scrambles to contain the fallout over the former New York City mayor's comments on stop-and-frisk this morning, the campaign is responding to another race-related controversy.
POPPY HARLOW, CO-ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Right, this was first reported by "The Associated Press", former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg once blamed the end of redlining for the 2008 housing crash and financial crisis that ensued. So what is redlining? It's a historically discriminatory housing practice that deemed African- American neighborhoods, largely minority neighborhoods too risky for mortgage lenders, literally drawing a redline on maps around those areas. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (D) & PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It probably all started back when there was a lot of pressure on banks to make loans to everyone. Redlining, if you remember, was the term where banks took whole neighborhoods and said people in these neighborhoods are poor, they're not going to be able to pay off their mortgages. Tell them, your salesmen, don't go into those areas, and then Congress got involved and local elected officials as well, and said oh, that's not fair.
These people should be able to get credit. And once you started pushing in that direction, banks started making more and more loans where the credit of the person buying the house wasn't as good as you would like.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: OK, the Bloomberg campaign is responding this morning -- this morning, saying that the mayor, quote, "attacked predatory lending", and they also say that he has plans to, quote, "help a million more black families buy a house and counteract the effects of redlining if he's elected.
SCIUTTO: Joining us now is Reverend A.R. Bernard; he is the founder and pastor of Christian Cultural Center in New York City where Bloomberg apologized to the congregation for his stop-and-frisk policy. First of all, Reverend, thanks so much for joining us.
ALPHONSO BERNARD, REVEREND MINISTER: Thank you --
SCIUTTO: So, according to "The Times", Bloomberg, he called you back in October to talk about an apology. Can you tell us about that conversation, and did you accept the apology? BERNARD: Sure, you know, we've known each other for 20 years. I
served him when he was mayor. And we had a conversation, and he was expressing a period of reflection on what he did -- what he had done while he was in office, what was good, what was bad. And this was an issue that continued to stick with him. Now, I understand that the timing is suspect because he announces that he's going to run for president right after that.
But I think he was genuine in rethinking this whole thing of stop-and- frisk. Let me say this to you because we have to understand that communities of color live in a tension between the need for safe communities, safe streets, and over-policing. Without police presence, crime becomes a problem. With over-policing, the innocent suffer for the guilty.
HARLOW: Yes --
[09:20:00]
BERNARD: So there has to be a balance that we strike with this. But stop-and-frisk did not begin with Michael Bloomberg.
HARLOW: Right --
BERNARD: Stop-and-frisk as a racial profiling policy --
HARLOW: Yes --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
BERNARD: Goes back to 120 years of explicitly racial policies in America from a federal, state and local level, it has to be changed --
SCIUTTO: And we should remind people that President Trump has called for a national stop-and-frisk, so on that issue.
HARLOW: That's what I was going to say, as even as recently as last year, the president called for a national stop-and-frisk. But you know, Mayor Bloomberg has seen a pretty dramatic uptick in his support from the African-American community nationally in the last two weeks, he's up 15 points, so 22 percent. That's really important for him. But that was before this audio came out of just in 2015, him talking about stop-and-frisk.
So, let's let people listen to that and I want to get your response on the other side.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
BLOOMBERG: We put all cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that's true. Why do we do it? Because that's where all the crime is. And the way you get the guns out of the kids' hands is to throw them up against a wall and frisk them!
(END AUDIO CLIP)
HARLOW: Is it going to hurt him or do you think he'll --
BERNARD: I think he was wrong. I think it's inexcusable, and any other -- any other comments that may come out like this. But I do think this that Mike Bloomberg's insensitivity to the negative effect of stop-and-frisk on community of color was providential. It allows him an opportunity to now craft a black agenda --
HARLOW: Yes --
BERNARD: As part of his campaign to deal with racialized policing system --
HARLOW: Yes --
BERNARD: Racialized criminal justice system, inequities in education, inequities in economic opportunity. That's a black agenda. He has an opportunity to craft a black agenda and push forward so he can do something about it.
SCIUTTO: Tell us about his record here, right? Because President Trump, part of his campaign in 2020 is saying he's done well for African-Americans --
HARLOW: Lowest unemployment, yes --
SCIUTTO: He's got lowest unemployment rate. For instance, tell us about Michael Bloomberg, his terms as mayor here. Was he good in some ways for African-Americans?
BERNARD: Look, when he went into office, it was on the tail of 9/11.
HARLOW: Yes --
BERNARD: We were in economic crisis, along with emotional crisis. We were a grieving city. We needed someone to be the CEO of the city of New York, the corporation of the city of New York, he came in and he did what he did very well to stabilize things. Now, in terms of developing relationship with the community, that was an ongoing process for him. Look, he's a Wall Street banker, he comes from that world.
Now, you become a politician, you represent people that you did not really know their context. That's a learning curve.
HARLOW: I mean, there's so much to that statement about really knowing communities and spending time in them. And I worry about, you know, saying the African-American community as a monolith, I think we all have to be very careful of that, and politicians have to be so careful about that. But there was another pastor, Harlem Pastor, Calvin Butts, and he made the point this week that Bloomberg's financial support for important causes to largely African-American minority communities helps alleviate concerns over what he has done and said was stop-and-frisk.
But what about critics who say, you know, that's him throwing all this money at problems to try to get votes. BERNARD: That's not enough. Look, we can't judge his heart. We don't
--
HARLOW: Yes --
BERNARD: Know what he's feeling inside. But we can judge his actions. I mean, we can go back to a text in the Bible, John the Baptist said, if you're repentant, bring me some fruit. Show me the money, show me the evidence. Show me change. So, again, he's in a position now, if he wants a black vote --
SCIUTTO: Yes --
BERNARD: To craft a black agenda -- but just those four things that I named. And if he does that, he can grab the attention of black people in this country.
SCIUTTO: The president has accused him of being a racist.
HARLOW: Yes --
SCIUTTO: Is he?
BERNARD: I think the pot calling the kettle black here. Is he a racist? I don't believe that. I believe -- look, people only think to the level of what they're exposed to. I think in his world, he was not exposed to the realities of the African-American experience. Now he has an opportunity to learn. So he needs to surround himself with the people who can inform him so that he can clearly articulate an agenda for our community.
SCIUTTO: We'll be listening.
HARLOW: Yes --
SCIUTTO: Reverend --
HARLOW: Reverend Bernard, thank you -- come back --
SCIUTTO: Yes, please do --
HARLOW: You're such an important voice, thank you very much --
SCIUTTO: Let's keep up the conversation --
BERNARD: Thank you --
HARLOW: We appreciate it. Next week, join CNN for a series of town halls with the -- a number of the Democratic presidential candidates live from Las Vegas next Tuesday and Thursday night, 8:00 Eastern only right here on CNN.
SCIUTTO: The House Judiciary Committee will soon get a chance to question Attorney General Bill Barr. One of the lawmakers who will have that opportunity is coming up next. HARLOW: We're also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street.
The Dow should fall slightly at the start, that's what we're looking at here, giving back some of those gains from Wednesday's record close. The coronavirus outbreak keeps on hitting the business world and fears among investors.
One of the tech industry's biggest events of the year, Mobile World Congress now canceled after more than a dozen tech companies pulled out of that event over fears of the virus.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:25:00]
HARLOW: Right now, house Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are putting together their plan and their questions for Attorney General Bill Barr. He is set to appear before that committee next month. You can expect the names Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani to come up a lot. With me now is a member of that committee, Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee.
Congressman, nice to have you here --
REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN): Thank you --
HARLOW: I appreciate -- I appreciate it. So, last time, he didn't show up, you brought a bucket of chicken to make a point. Sounds like --
COHEN: Yes --
HARLOW: Bill Barr is going to show up to testify at the end of March. What's your most pressing question for him as we sit here today?
END
