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Democrats Demand Testimony from Trump Officials; DOJ Sought Records of White House Counsel; Alberto Gonzales is Interviewed about the DOJ Investigation; Biden Visits NATO; Ivo Daalder is Interviewed about Biden at NATO. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 14, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:40]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Monday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

And this morning, new questions in an expanding scandal over the Trump Justice Department, who else it targeted, and why. Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers, calling now on Donald Trump's former attorneys general, both Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions, to testify under oath. This over the Trump DOJ's secret seizures, and they were secret, by the way, of data records of prominent Democrats and news organizations. CNN also learned it was not just political critics and press organizations Trump's DOJ targeted. Last month, former White House Council Don McGahn, and his wife, received disclosures from Apple that their records were sought as well back in 2018. This as current Attorney General Merrick Garland is meeting today with the leaders of CNN, "The Washington Post," and "The New York Times," all of whose journalists were targeted, to go over the leak investigations carried out by the DOJ under former President Trump.

Also, this morning, President Biden is in Brussels for his first in person summit as president with NATO. It comes ahead of this highly anticipated meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. We will be there for it in Geneva.

Let's begin, though, with CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill for more on Democratic leaders now calling on Barr and Sessions to testify about those secret subpoenas.

You and I, Lauren, have covered over the last couple years, lots of times when congressional subpoenas were ignored by members of the Trump administration. Do we -- expect such subpoenas to be issued, but do we expect them to be listened to?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, I think this is going to have to play out a little bit up here on Capitol Hill. First, they are going to request that Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions testify before Congress. There's a lot of interest in getting more answer into specifically why members of Congress and staff might have been targeted or whether or not they were just sort of part of this widespread dragnet to try to get more information on this meta data that was being collected by the Justice Department under former President Donald Trump.

Now, I think one of the key questions up here on Capitol Hill is how far Democrats want to actually go to pursue this. Are they going to try to subpoena, like you said, Jeff Sessions or Bill Barr, or are they simply going to make these requests and see what happens. I think all of that has to be given a little bit of time.

This is the first time that lawmakers are going to be back on Capitol Hill this week after that news broke late Thursday. So I think that that is what's going to happen up here on Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, Democrats very clear that they have some deep concerns about what is alleged to have happened.

Here's what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): What has happened here are fingerprints of a dictatorship, not a democracy.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What the administration did, the Justice Department, the leadership of the former president, goes even beyond Richard Nixon.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And one thing that Pelosi made very clear yesterday when she appeared on CNN was that she's not quite sure how it has happened that both Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr have said they had no idea about these dragnet searches.

Now, she says that that's pretty unbelievable and she says it's beyond the pale. So a lot of questions here as to what those former attorneys generals knew and when they knew it. Democrats pledging they're going to try to get to the bottom of it.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Lauren Fox, we'll see if they're able to. Thanks very much.

CNN has now learned that the Justice Department also obtained records belonging to President Trump's own former White House counsel, Don McGahn, and his wife, this back in 2018.

CNN's Paula Reid, she has been covering this story.

Paula, there are really two possibilities here, as I understand it, either McGahn was a target of this leak investigation in some way or that his communications were kind of scooped up because he was in communication perhaps with someone who was a target. Do we know -- do we know at this point?

PAULA REID, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At this point, Jim, we don't have an answer to that question. One of many in the investigation. We've been talking to many sources and at this point it's just not clear.

I just got off the phone with someone at the Justice Department. It is not clear whether he was swept up in some other investigation or if he was being specifically targeted. But, Jim, we know this is an extraordinary step by the Trump Justice Department to secretly request the records of the then president's top lawyer.

[09:05:02]

And Apple was barred from disclosing this request until this past May, which means that the Justice Department repeatedly had to go before a judge to insist on keeping this secret.

Now, what's also notable is that this request came around the same time they were seeking those requests for records of Democratic lawmakers. And what we have here is a pattern of requests, these unusual requests, that appear to be related to leak investigations but they also connect to people the president at that time was unhappy with.

Yes, Don McGahn was his top lawyer, but the president was increasingly frustrated with McGahn over the president's desire that McGahn begin the process to fire then Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

And what's even more extraordinary here is that a source tells CNN that then Attorney General Jeff Sessions and then Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein didn't know about this request.

Look, Jim, something about that just does not add up. That the Justice Department would make an extraordinary request like this and the two top officials at the Justice Department knew nothing about it. Some former officials have suggested that's just not possible. Other people have suggested that maybe these folks were all swept up. But, at some point, that likely would have been reported to a supervisor.

SCIUTTO: It's either misleading or you might say bad oversight. Paula Reid, thanks so much.

Well, joining me now is a former U.S. attorney general under the George W. Bush administration, Alberto Gonzales. He also served as White House counsel to President Bush. He's now the dean of the Belmont University College of Law.

Sir, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

ALBERTO GONZALES, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Jim, it's a pleasure. This is a very unusual story. I find it -- it's bizarre that White House counsel --

SCIUTTO: Well, let's talk about that because previous administrations have pursued leak investigations, the Obama administration included, which at times involved journalists, although in those cases I believe the journalists were investigated as possible conspirators, not just in communication potentially with government officials.

What's unique here is the scale. Dozens of accounts, including of family members of people in this investigation, but also that it targeted two Democratic lawmakers, a host of others.

Did the Trump administration, in your view, break disturbing new ground here?

GONZALES: Well, look, let's -- let's make some assumptions. Let's assume that what's being reported is true and -- and, quite frankly, we really need to wait for the investigation by the IG, and, of course, there will be investigations by Congress before we fully know and are comfortable that we know all of the facts.

And let's just assume that they're true. Typically -- and, of course, prosecutors have a great deal of discretion in engaging in investigations and in prosecuting cases. Now that discretion is cabined (ph) when you're talking about involving the press or records or, you know, records of the press or members of a separate branch of government. In that case, you know, there's a heightened scrutiny, there's a heightened need to get this information in order to move forward in a prosecution.

So it is very extraordinary as a general matter. But the notion that senior officials at the Department of Justice were unaware of what was going on here is really troubling because that -- that would mean -- if, in fact, the facts are true that there were individuals operating within the Department of Justice, who are probably doing things that they should have gotten from the signoffs from their superiors before moving forward.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you about that because both Sessions and Barr are saying the didn't know about it. You served as attorney general. A very powerful position at the top of the Department of Justice. Do you buy that explanation? I mean either it's --

GONZALES: What I know is --

SCIUTTO: It's misleading or -- I mean would you call that good leadership to not know about a scale of subpoenas like this?

GONZALES: Listen, there are -- you know, there are over 100,000 employees that work for the Department of Justice. At any one time, somebody is probably doing something they shouldn't be doing, but this is extraordinary, no question about it.

But it's possible that the leadership at the top did not know what was going on. Now, of course, they should have known, and there are protocols in place that would require generally for lower level employees, even those that are -- that hold Senate confirmed positions, we're talking about a subpoena with respect to the White House Counsel, a member of the media, or a member of Congress. Generally that goes up to the attorney general or at least the deputy attorney general.

And so, you know, again, it's possible they didn't know about it, but I think it would be highly extraordinary and it would probably -- it would mean that there were people in -- operating in the Department of Justice who are doing something that they should have gotten permission or at least notified their superiors. This is something that they believe was absolutely necessary. No other way to get the information. And, you know, again, this is something that as a general matter does involve the attorney general or the deputy attorney general.

SCIUTTO: To get a gag order, though, would you not need the attorney general to approve -- I mean because these were quite expansive gag orders, only expiring now. And that's why we're finding out about this now because the companies, Apple among them, Microsoft as well, can now let the targets of that -- those subpoenas know that they were targeted.

[09:10:10]

GONZALES: Well, typically, yes. And, usual case, would require -- it would require again sign off approval by the deputy attorney general or the attorney general, no question about it, Jim. So there's -- some of the facts here I, again, I find bizarre and amazing.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GONZALES: I don't know whether or not the reporting is completely accurate because of that reason. And I, quite frankly, I'm hopeful the reporting is inaccurate because otherwise it paints a picture of everything (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Well, but, with respect -- with respect, we know many of the facts here. For instance, CNN's reporter has gone public with being notified, as have other targets of these investigations as they've been notified by Apple. So they're not making this up.

GONZALES: What we don't know, Jim, for example, is, what is the investigation about? What is the scope of the investigation? What's being targeted here? What are the source of information that exists out there that the department says we can't get this information any other way? So there is a lot -- I'm just suggesting there's a lot here that we don't know yet.

SCIUTTO: OK. Well, what predicate then, to use a legal term, what justification would be necessary in your view to justify, right, an investigation, a dragnet, as it were, this broad?

GONZALES: Well, of course, we're talking about some serious issues, or serious commissions of large scale crime here. So -- and the predicate would be, again, as I indicated before, there is an absolute need to do this.

SCIUTTO: Right.

GONZALES: There is no other way to get this information to move forward on a legitimate investigation or prosecution. Again, because you're involving members of the media and members of another branch of government, members perhaps in the White House, you're talking about a very high bar that would have to be met in order to move forward with some kind of investigation of this nature.

SCIUTTO: OK. So just test this out for me. Could all these things be true, could it be such a serious threat to national security, require so many subpoenas, right, including of lawmakers and journalists and family members of people involved and the attorney general or deputy attorney general not know about it? How could those things be true?

GONZALES: Highly unlikely -- Jim, highly unlikely. Highly unlikely. You know, is it possible? I suppose it's possible. But it's highly unlikely, yes.

I mean protocols are in place. People understand what those protocols are. They know what the rules are. They know -- and with respect to certain kinds of subpoenas, for example, you've got to got approval higher up.

And so, you know, is it possible? It's possible. But it's, again, highly unlikely that they -- that they didn't know about it. And yet, on the other hand, Jim, I've got to tell you, you know, when a former attorney general says publicly I didn't know about this, I mean, to me, it carries a great deal of weight.

SCIUTTO: Sure.

GONZALES: So I can't imagine that they would lie about it.

Now, listen, they're not -- they're not under oath, no question about it. But, nonetheless, you know, to make a public statement like that, boy, it will take --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GONZALES: It would take some nerve to make a public statement because it's going to come out.

SCIUTTO: Sure. Well --

GONZALES: It's going to -- people are going to find out the truth (INAUDIBLE).

SCIUTTO: Understood. I'm just testing how all those things can be true, it can be such a huge threat but they wouldn't know about it and yet it was justified.

I mean, listen, a lot of questions to be answered here. You're right.

Alberto Gonzales, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

GONZALES: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour. Right now, President Biden is attending his first NATO summit as president. And, at the same time, intensely preparing for his meeting with Vladimir Putin, CNN has learned. We're going to have more on that next.

Another deadly weekend, sadly, here in the United States. Gun violence in this country exploding as law enforcement officials brace for a potentially bloody summer. Plus, a CNN exclusive. Authorities are investigating a reported leak at a nuclear power plant in China that the company, a French company involved, says poses a radiological threat. What we know so far just ahead.

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[09:18:40]

SCIUTTO: Right now, President Biden is in Brussels taking part in his first NATO summit as commander in chief. It comes as he looks to reset and repair the U.S. relationship with NATO allies after former President Trump's vastly different approach, which included downplaying the very need for the organization, complaining that other countries weren't paying enough, even raising questions about the mutual defense aspect of the alliance.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is in Brussels with more.

And it seems that part of Biden's intent here, right, is to flip that message on its head, to say that the U.S. is back and committed to NATO.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Jim, that's exactly what President Biden is doing. And you saw it really from the moment he arrived here. You see it on the looks of his counterparts. There are smiles. There is not the tension that was felt here during both visits that former President Donald Trump had. I was here at those and you can just feel an entire different moment.

But what President Biden is trying to do is just, you know, to reaffirm the commitment for the Transatlantic Alliance and the need for NATO. He explained that when he arrived here a few moments ago.

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to make it clear, NATO is critically important for the U.S. interest in and of itself. If there weren't one, we'd have to invent one.

[09:20:01]

And it is -- it allows America to conduct its business around the world in a way that never would have occurred.

And I just want all of Europe to know that the United States is there. The United States is there.

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ZELENY: So that clearly was the message that President Biden wanted to send, that the U.S. is back. But, of course, he needs to prove it. So, right now, he and other leaders of the 30 allied nations are meeting. Jim, they only get about five minutes each to speak because there are so many of them. But what is going to come out of this also is the beginning of a what

is going to be a yearlong discussion, really trying to have a NATO statement about the aggression of Russia and the rise of China, which has never been mentioned before herein a statement from NATO.

SCIUTTO: You have reporting that President Biden is unlike his predecessor, using his time away from summit meetings to prepare for his summit on Wednesday with Vladimir Putin. How exactly and what does he intend to accomplish in that meeting?

ZELENY: Well, President Biden is spending most of the mornings that he's been away for the past several days meeting with leaders and talking to advisers and preparing for what he expects will be a tough confrontation with President Putin, but he's also talking to other world leaders who have been dealing with Putin for years, for example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He had a conversation, we are told, with Angela Merkel about Putin. The president even talked to Queen Elizabeth yesterday about Vladimir Putin. He told reporters that as he was leaving. So we know that he is spending a lot of time on these conversations.

Now, of course, President Biden, the fifth American president in a row who will meet with Putin. Of course, the outcomes have never been that strong or good. He believes that his experience on the foreign stage will -- will change that. But the reality is expectations are pretty measured if not low. But he's spending a lot of time preparing for that big summit on Wednesday, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Jeff Zeleny, thanks very much.

I'm joined now by the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder. He's also the co-author of the book, "The Empty Throne: America's Abdication of Global Leadership."

You can take from that subtitle the message of the book.

Ambassador, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

IVO DAALDER, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO NATO: My pleasure, Jim.

SCIUTTO: So Biden will deliver a very different message from Trump. And words matter. Trump, very publicly, questioned key underpinnings of the NATO alliance, but it was necessary, whether the mutual defense aspects of it stood firm today. Biden is saying the right things. In your view, is he proving that to NATO allies?

DAALDER: Well, of course, a security commitment is at the core, like -- like NATO, the commitment to defend Europe and for Europeans to defend the United States is at its core. Something that resides in capabilities of intentions.

The capabilities are there. We have significant forces in Europe. We have, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, moved more forces forward to the eastern borders of NATO. But it's also about intention. And intention matters. Donald Trump, of course, famously said that NATO was obsolete, argued

that NATO was a transactional relationship in which our presence needed to be paid for by European forces rather than something that was in our interest. Here Biden comes and says, no, NATO is not only essential, it's core to who we are. We would have to create it even if it didn't exist. That matters.

SCIUTTO: And certainly the contrast to Trump's words.

I want to talk about Russia because you have this meeting on Wednesday. I'll be there covering it, among others. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says the Biden/Putin meeting, the intention is the following, and I quote, is a beginning of testing the proposition, the question of whether Russia is interested in a more stable and predictable relationship and finding areas to work together.

Every of the last several administrations has come into office, from Bush to Obama to Trump and Biden and said, I can get this right. I'm going to find a way to get this right. The one consistency has been, Russia remains a hostile actor. I mean, for instance, look at the cyberattacks which continue right into the Biden administration.

Is it worth even testing that, right? I mean or is the -- is the Biden administration likely to face the same disappointment again?

DAALDER Well, it's worth testing the question whether there are any areas in which we might be able to work together. Even in the depths of the Cold War, in the 1960s and 1970s and 1980s, American presidents reached out to their Soviet counterparts in order to find areas in which they could work together. And they did. They did on arms control. They did on controlling nuclear weapons. They did on finding ways to avoid wars that neither side wanted to fight. And a number of other areas.

[09:25:01]

Even as they were competing in a Cold War-like fashion, spying on each other and doing all kinds of things in which confrontation was the core of the relationship.

And so I think Biden is coming to this with his eyes wide open, knowing full well that Vladimir Putin is set to continue his disruptive behavior, disruptive of the internal processes, economic and political of the United States and our allies, disruptive of NATO and our relationship with allies around the world and, at the same time, testing the proposition, are there areas, like arms control, like strategic (INAUDIBLE), maybe climate change, where we can say, listen, despite all our differences, let's work together.

SCIUTTO: OK. But on the negative side of the ledger, right, you know, Russian hostile activities remain. Does the Biden administration have a strategy to deter that in a way that will work because deterrents under Trump, Obama, Bush didn't work.

DAALDER Well, that's going to be the challenge, right, both in terms of Russia's external behavior, cyber and other attacks, and, of course, it's internal behavior, which is totally unacceptable, where it's just (INAUDIBLE) the opposition (ph) and Putin has just said that he doesn't even know whether Alexey Navalny will come out of prison alive. This is a remarkable kind of statement.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes.

DAALDER So I think Biden will come in and make very, very clear that that kind of behavior will continue to be unacceptable to the United States. And one of the challenges for U.S. policy, working with our allies, I imagine this is one of the issues very high on the agenda in the meeting in Brussels is to say, what steps are we willing to take collectively to increase the price on Vladimir Putin for this kind of behavior.

SCIUTTO: I want to ask about one ally because President Biden will meet with the leader of Turkey, Erdogan, today. Turkey, it's a NATO ally, doesn't behave like one in a lot of ways, including buying a missile system from Russia in direct violation of the NATO treaty. I mean is Turkey today still a NATO ally, is it a U.S. ally, what is it?

DAALDER Well, it is an ally formally in the sense that it's still a NATO member and, as a result, falls -- is part of the alliance. It is, of course, and has been behaving in ways that raise real questions about his commitment to the alliance along the lines that you mentioned. But there are other areas where we're working together.

For example, Turkey has played an extraordinarily important role in our entire mission in Afghanistan. They have taken the security of the Kabul Airport, as well as Kabul region for many, many years. And we used to fly our AWACS, NATO AWACS aircraft, these early warning aircraft, out of Turkish bases over Afghanistan.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DAALDER So the meeting here is to see, can we come back to some fundamentals in which we can cooperate. Erdogan is coming, in this case, from a position of weakness. His economy's in shambles. The pandemic has been devastating for the country and for its people.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DAALDER And so he's looking to reset the relationship and Biden may provide the opportunity to do so.

SCIUTTO: Ambassador Ivo Daalder , thanks so much for giving us some perspective this week.

DAALDER My pleasure. Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, nearly a dozen lives lost since Friday as cities nationwide continue to grapple with the devastating surge in crime and gun violence. We'll have a live update.

And we're moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. U.S. futures, they're mixed. This after the S&P 500 closed at another record high last week. Investors will be keeping a close eye on this week's big Federal Reserve meeting. Big question about interest rates going forward. We'll going to talk about all of it.

Stay with us.

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