Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

House Intel Chair Steps Aside From Russia Probe; House Speaker Touts Progress towards New Healthcare Bill; Senate Ends Gorsuch Filibuster. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 06, 2017 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:01] JOHN KING, CNN NEWSROOM ANCHOR: -- and then tomorrow, important conversations for the President there. I was watching board air force on. Pretty miserable day here. I'm watching this, dinner tonight with President Xi then meetings -- more formal meetings tomorrow. You see the President there boarding air force one. He is on his way down.

Now, back to the United States Capitol, we're keeping track with the vote in the senate. Senate voting as we speak on the so-called "nuclear option" that would be to reduce the number of votes needed to supreme -- to confirm a nominee for the Supreme Court. We'll track that vote in a high drama on Capitol Hill not limited to the senate side. Remember this from just last week?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Are you going to stay as chairman and run this investigation?

DEVIN NUNES (R), CHAIRMAN INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Why would I not? You guys need to go ask them why there are, you know, why these things are being said.

RAJU: Can this investigation continue with you as you as chairman?

NUNES: Why would it not? Aren't I briefing you guys continuously and keeping you up to speed?

RAJU: But they're saying that it cannot run as you as chair -- with you as chairman.

NUNES: You've got to go talk to them. That sounds like their problem. I don't have of, you know, my colleagues are perfectly fine. I mean there's -- they know we're doing an investigation and that will continue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Well, that was last week. Today Congressman Devin Nunes stepped aside from leading the intelligence committee's Russian election meddling investigation because the chairman himself is now under investigation by the house -- ethics committee, the house ethics committee. Manu Raju joins us live to take us inside this latest fine noble twist. Manu, did the chairman go on his own or was the chairman pressured?

RAJU: Well, we don't quite know the full story about whether or not House Speaker Paul Ryan pressured him to step aside. I tried to ask Ryan at the end of a press conference today. He heard my question but did not answer that question. I've put the question for Ryan's although they have not answered that specifically but they did say that Nunes and Ryan met last night. That they agreed on the decision for him to step aside.

And Ryan said in his statement, John, that it was a distraction for him to continue to run because of this new ethics investigation that had been announced today. This ethics investigation about whether or not Chairman Nunes revealed any classified information when he discussed about this incidental collection of potential Trump team communications with foreign officials.

I had repeatedly asked Devin Nunes whether or not any of that information was in fact classified. He insisted that it was not. But others have not believed that to be the case. But over all, John, the real concern was whether or not he could continue to run a credible investigation in light of all these calls for him to recuse himself and light of his decision to cancel a public hearing that was scheduled for earlier in the week about Russia. And which you hear from a number of people that talk about those potential campaign ties between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, the Democrats believe he got a little bit too cozy to the White House.

So this decision had effort to try to get the investigation going. And a huge surprise, John, house intelligence committee members didn't even know this morning when Nunes met with them. And they were handed a statement from Nunes's staff, John, as Nunes left -- before right after he left their meeting abruptly, John.

KING: Doing it his way I guess until the very end. Manu Raju, live press on Capitol Hill. Manu mentioned that the chairman now under investigation by the house ethics committee. Let me read a little bit from their statement, "The committee is aware of public allegations that Representative Devin Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information the mere of fact that it is investigating these allegations, and publicly disclosing its review does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred or reflect any judgment on behalf of the committee."

So this is a review that is just starting. The chairman is presumed innocent until authorized. But this is a big deal. He had resisted this for a very long time. Democrats had lost faith in him. There were Democrats who are saying he was a -- just Nancy Pelosi puts it of the president.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes. And Republicans weren't all together happy either. I think one of the things you saw last week was the senate Intel committee stepped in and essentially say that they would be the adults. And you even saw Mark Warner in his opening statement at that hearing last week essentially say, you know, the house is kind of off on lorcan and we'll be the ones to take care of this. You also saw Lindsey Graham criticizing what Nunes did.

And I guess the issue here is with any of this that had happened with Nunes and his credibility without that early morning tweet from Donald Trump? This sort of conspiracies theory he floated about allegations, false allegations about Obama tapping his phones and then the story evolved to surveillance, and then it evolved to unmasking. And you had Nunes there, I think at least Democrats will say trying to run cover for the White House and provide them with some talking points and some information that would give them some credibility.

KING: Hang on just for one second. Of course we continue this conversation. I'll show you the floor of the United States Senate again. Republicans now have the 51 votes to invoke the nuclear option.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- of the senate the debate on the nomination of Neil M. Gorsuch of Colorado to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States shall be brought to a close upon reconsideration. The yays and nays are mandatory under the rule, the clerk will call the role.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Alexander.

LAMAR ALEXANDER (R), TENNESSEE: Aye.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Miss Baldwin.

TAMMY BALDWIN (D), WISCONSIN: No.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Borrasso.

JOHN BARRASSO (R), WYOMING: Aye.

UNIDENTIFED FEMALE: Mr. Bennet --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: They are back now to another vote on the floor of the United States senate. But the reason we broke in there is the senate has now voted to invoke the so called "nuclear option". Meaning Judge Neil Gorsuch can be confirmed with a simple majority vote.

[12:35:14] It's 52-48 vote. That is the partisan break down of the United States senate. All 52 Republicans voting yes to change the rules, the Democrats including the independents who caucused with the Democrats the 48 of them voting no. So I as we talked in the earlier block more of the partisanship in Washington, we'll watch does this go forward in a big dramatic change in the rules of United States senate.

And again, this is part of the partisan atmosphere in Washington. The conversation we're having before we checked into that vote. This partisanship has also infected these investigations which the intelligence committees are normally the one place where they meet in secret. They pick members by seniority. They pick members who know to get along and do this in a bipartisan, almost nonpartisan way is the goal.

Just for those of you, Devin Nunes has stepped aside because he's now under investigation by the house ethics committee. He says he will be exonerated but he wants to deal with that. The new lead force on the house side will be Congressman Mike Conaway. He's 68-yearsold, elected to Congress back in 2004. He's currently the chairman of the house of agriculture committee. Most of America probably doesn't know much about him. Serves on the armed services committee and the intelligence committee, he served in the United States army. He is about to become now like it or not Congressman a national figure because he is the leader, stepped in standard leader of one of the most sensitive investigations in this town.

MATT VISER, THE BOSTON GLOBE: I think if you think about some of this where Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from Russia investigations, Mike Flynn had to resign because of some aspects of Russia. And now you have Devin Nunes also having to step aside, you know, because of issues with Russia on this investigation and it's really striking.

KING: And the documents in question. The documents in question that Devin Nunes talked about that some people now say he was disclosing classified information even just by acknowledging that he had looked at documents that were obtained under a file of court order. You're acknowledging the order so some people say even that is a leak of classified information even though you're not specific about it.

That is what has brought us to Susan Rice, President Obama's former national security adviser who the Republican say because they're being, you know, the Trump White House says unmasked, meaning masked for information. Who is this American they're referring to in this report and ask for the information? The president of the United States said something quite remarkable yesterday. It was a few weeks ago without any evidence, he accused the former president of a Nixonian McCarthyism plot to wire tap him. No evidence.

Yesterday he told the New York Times he believed Susan Rice has committed a crime. Susan Rice says she has done nothing wrong. I want you to listen here this is General Michael Hayden now is CNN contributor and a former head of the CIA who knows this stuff as well as anybody in the business. Here's his take.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN (RET), FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: On its face what I know about the Susan Rice unmasking story, what has gone on here was lawful, appropriate, and here's the punch line. Pretty routine. Not exceptional.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: General Hayden's take we shall see because Susan Rice is now going to get called up before Congress without a doubt. Susan Rice said she did not wrong. She had legitimate questions in her roles as national security advisor, what does this mean, who was this person. She said she didn't leak anything. But pretty remarkable from the President of the United States to say I think she has committed a crime.

JACKIE KUCINICH, THE DAILY BEAST: Also with no new evidence.

HENDERSON: Great. What been keeping with what he does sort of this constant search for villains, right. And the first villain I this whole thing was Obama who he also accused of committing a crime until Susan Rice who has long been hated on the far right is a pretty good stand in for Obama.

I mean, if you look at the list of sort of enemies from the point of conservatives it's probably Obama, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice. So it's kind of a perfect switch rue for this president and then keeping with what he does and offering this with no evidence. It's just a rumor of something that's not going to get a Breitbart folks very much animated, Fox folks animated and it's also very dangerous. I mean you feel like if you're Susan Rice, you're kind of the target now at this point.

KING: Animating your basis is important to politicians. But this one --

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: This is not animating here, you guys was down of the cut --

SHANNON PETTYPIECE, BLOOMBERG: Yes. But, you know what, they had a few days where everyone was talking about Rice. And to put this into the Nunes context, and now what are we talking about today? Nunes again.

KING: Right.

PETTYPIECE: So, it's sort of like as far as controlling the messaging, they just lost that right story that they were enjoying and now we're back to talking about Nunes. And so --

(CROSSTALK)

PETTYPIECE: They're still talking about Susan Rice.

KING: Well, hopefully perhaps I'm naive, I'm new here. Hopefully at the end maybe we'll actually have credible investigations that will find out the facts and hold the people who should be held accountable accountable, whoever they are or wherever they are, whatever party they're in and clear this all up for people. That's a hopeful in all of this stuff. I'm going to be a long term optimist. A quick break, we'll be back with "Inside Politics" in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:43:43] KING: Welcome back. I want to remind you we're keeping our eyes on another senate vote in the process of moving the Neil Gorsuch nomination along the Supreme Court. We will take you there when we get to the conclusion of that. Now, back to the house side.

Hard to believe maybe but it was just 13 days ago that Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to pull his Obamacare repeal and replace plan from the house floor because there weren't enough votes to pass it. Well, today the speaker claimed progress in efforts to draft the new bill saying a new idea for a high risk insurance pull this part of this progress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), HOUSE SPEAKER: I actually think that divide is narrowing quite quickly. What this idea represents is a goal that everyone from the freedom caucus to every other group that's what I presented here is seeking. How do we lower premiums? How do we lower premiums and continue the protections for people with pre-existing conditions? This idea does that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Mark me down as it had skeptical. CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us with the inside scoop on why Republicans will take this new amendment to a committee vote even though they still don't have a plan that can pass the full house, Phil?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Because the White House told them to. It's literally that simple, John. At a meeting last night, Speaker Paul Ryan, majority leader Kevin McCarthy met with Vice President Pence, met with some of the other senior officials in the White House including Reince Priebus and I'm told it was a very contentious, if not borderline panicky meeting coming from the White House perspective. Basically saying look, the Vice President put himself on the line over the course of the last week trying to resuscitate this effort that imploded 13 days ago.

[12:45:12] You need to show progress. One individual in the meeting -- who's briefed on the meeting, tells me that they essentially said they needed to have a vote by the end of the week on this bill. The speaker and the majority leader made every clear what we've been reporting all week. They are nowhere near the votes that they need to actually move this forward and what the Vice President was negotiating with some of those conservatives that have been holding out didn't actually bring them any closer. It may have actually brought them further apart.

That wasn't the answer the White House wanted. So essentially what happened is the leaders came back and figured they needed to put on some theater. There is actually agreement on the amendment that they're adding in the house rules committee right now. And that does move them closer. But in terms, John, of the major issues that still separate them, those still exist.

And I will say if you took a look at the speaker's press conference this morning, you'll know that thee are about a little more than a dozen members very happy, smiling behind him from all sorts of the ideological spectrum. That was theater. As one aid told me, you know it's expletive. We know it's expletive, but hey, here we are. So that's the current state of play John,.

KING: What's that old saying, Phil? Never let them know how you make the sausage. OK. Phil Mattingly live for us on Capitol Hill. Let's come back in and go around the table. I understand they want to show progress. They want to show they have a win. But so the ultimate outsider Donald Trump is now begging for a committee vote to prove there's progress on healthcare. Give me an inside. Pull me an inside lever so I can pretend we're moving this forward?

HENDERSON: Right. After he of course said, yes, we're not going to do this. We're going to do tax reform. But you know I think the members should have probably done this without the advice necessary from the Whit House. They're the ones who got to go home to their districts and this kind of visual of, oh, we move something along even though it's all for show. I mean they need to be able to hang on to something.

KUCINICH: And that going home is going to cost them. Because when members go home and start talking to constituent, they tend to get further away from leadership in recent years. So particularly these freedom caucus guys who were welcomed back home after they stood up to their leadership. So -- and when you talk to leadership on and off the record yesterday, they would concede to that. That it makes it tougher now that they're gone.

VISER: And I -- I mean it does -- it shows very incremental and symbolic progress, but not actual progress.

HENDERSON: Great. Yes.

VISER: You know. So --

KING: And brought a bill to the floor.

HENDERSON: Yes, yes.

KING: You embarrassed the speaker and the president. They were embarrassed, in fact humiliated by what happened there and now they're going to try to do this again?

PETTYPIECE: Yes. And this has not been handled good from the beginning. I mean if someone would wanted actually to put together health reform and put together a bill that was going to lower insurance costs expand coverage, you wouldn't be doing it in this piecemeal here let's grab this person by that person. You would have done this talking, this consulting, you know, trying to look at ideas before you actually introduced the bill and then try to have a vote on it like in 48-hours after introducing a new amendment to it. So it's not the way it should be done.

KING: And if you listen to the speaker this morning, he brought a bill to the floor. He wanted to have a vote. Then he had to beg the president let me pull the vote. The president wanted him to have the vote. So he had at least to depict Republicans to vote against of this because that's not the way to do things. They had a big plan 13 days ago. Listen to the speaker this morning say no, no, no, we're fine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RYAN: We have in our timeline lots of flexibility built into it. You know why, because we have to work with the United States Senate. The Senate moves a little more slowly on any given weekday or month or a year than the house does. So we have plenty of cushion built into our plans and we are well within that spectrum of timeline that we envisioned on dealing with the Obamacare legislation.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

KUCINICH: They're going to step. They're not even at the senate.

PETTYPIECE: Yes. But there's people within the White House and people close to the president who are loosing patience with Paul Ryan.

KING: Right.

PETTYPIECE: And right now his job security in fact there's no clear replacement. But I don't know where the president stands on Paul Ryan's at the moment, but I do know those are people who talk to the president regularly who are losing patience with him.

KING: Everybody sit tight. Let's go back up to Capitol Hill. CNN's Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Dana, they have now changed the rules and now they have ended the Filibuster, correct?

DANA BASH, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right which was easy to do because they changed the rules and now the overall rule for this particular case was the first test case is that to break a filibuster you only needed a simple majority which is 51 votes. And since Republicans have a 52-seat majority, it was simple for them to do.

So in the short term in this particular case, filling the ninth seat on the Supreme Court, it means that Neil Gorsuch is on his way pretty quickly to being confirmed by the United States Senate to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's seat on the Supreme Court.

And as you were talking about, as we were talking about earlier, it is a very big day in the United States Senate because for the first time they changed the rules in order to effectively take away the rights of whomever is in the minority to try to stop any nomination of the president for the Supreme Court. And again, this is the first time we're seeing it. They changed it for Neil Gorsuch and it's never going to be the same, John.

KING: Never going to be the same. On the question of Neil Gorsuch and final confirmation Dana, am I right that this vote they just took now that they've voted with the majority, the filibuster is over, they start on a 30-hour clock and then we vote on final passage?

[12:50:18] BASH: That's right. That's technically how it happens. You know, sometimes when the Senators can smell the jet fumes especially when they're about to go on a two-week recess, they can shrink, just magically shrink that 30-hour clock. We'll see if that happens in this case because obviously this is in a very important vote and the atmosphere is so toxic. So it might not happen in this case. KING: It might not happen and you say the atmosphere is toxic. I can't believe you would say the atmosphere in Washington is toxic or that any member of Congress would be influenced by jet fume in the chance to get home. I can't believe it.

If we could show the chair just a minute here as we bring the conversation into the room, Orrin Hatch is in the chair, he's the Senate president proclaimed (ph) and I believe he just stood up. I guess I called that of course he moved.

He would chair the proceedings. He's moving now off the key victory for the Republicans here. A traditionalist like Orrin Hatch presiding over this debate. You know, on the back of his mind he didn't want to do this but Republicans felt it was the thing to do so Neil Gorsuch will be on the Supreme Court. The question is how does the character of Washington change because of this?

KUCINICH: And again, it just becomes more partisan now.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KUCINICH: I mean, that -- and we'll see it in several pockets. Now this doesn't -- as we're talking about earlier, it doesn't affect regular legislation.

HENDERSON: Why not?

KUCINICH: And you still need --

HENDERSON: Not yet.

KUCINICH: Yes, not yet. But should there be another vacancy on the Supreme Court, we're really going to see the results of this.

HENDERSON: Yes. And I mean, now, I was looking at the approval rating of Congress, it's sort of high, I mean, for Congress. It's like 24 or 25 percent. It was at 13 percent before.

KING: Let's throw a party.

HENDERSON: And so -- yes, yes. So we'll see what this does. I mean, in terms of people's feelings about Congress and just -- it will probably I think further this partisan divide.

PETTYPIECE: So much for the president. I'd love to work with Democrats. I talk to Democrats all the time. I'm going to work with them. So much for that for now at least.

KING: And yet, Neil Gorsuch is his one big win. A legislative win. And we underestimate sometimes and we underreport sometimes the executive things the administration can do to change policy.

If you're a Trump voter, you know, the economy is going ok. If you're a Trump voter, you see increased immigration enforcement around the country. You're probably happy with some of those. But in terms of a big legislative win or big congressional action, healthcare off the rails, tax reform we don't know, this border wall not going to be exactly what he proposed in the campaign. This, the Neil Gorsuch's nomination, messy in terms of the changing the rules but it's going to be a win.

PETTYPIECE: It's not -- or at least on this issue, the Republican Party was able to be united in the Senate. Because we have -- I mean, they have not been walking locked up arm and arm as a united front like I think people expected they would, you know, back in November.

KING: Right.

KUCINICH: So in this issue, you chose yes, you can get Republicans together on something.

KING: Right. You're watching there in the corner of your screen -- sorry I'm not jumping of this. This is John Cornyn who's a member of the Republican leadership, a senator from Texas. Now we're told by our Congressional Producer Ted Barrett when they had the vote to go nuclear, to change the rules, John Cornyn and the leader Mitch McConnell exchanged a high five.

Mitch McConnell -- the Republicans know they will get Neil Gorsuch confirmed. The Republicans know they will win this battle. For Mitch McConnell, we talked about President Trump, we talked about Washington, as an individual, he is the one who played the risky strategy that Merit Garland is not going to be confirmed. Eleven months, he refused to have even a committee hearing on Merit Garland. It's a big day for him too.

VISER: And it worked. You know, and -- you know, as they're high fiving as you mentioned earlier, Orrin Hatch is presiding. And, you know, I mean he is an institutionalist and a guy who prided himself on working with Ted Kennedy on too much legislation, you know, now he's overseeing this. I think if you're a Democrat, you are praying even more for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her health, you know. And sort of the older -- and Justice Kennedy because, you know, like Jackie pointed out too that the next nominee can be a lot more conservative. I mean, if you only need a 50 vote threshold, that changes the calculus for the White House and who they can nominate.

KING: What happened to this Mitch McConnell? This is Mitch McConnell in 2012 he called the filibuster one of the most cherished safeguards of liberty in our government, the right of a political minority to have a voice.

HENDERSON: Yes. I mean --

VISER: The balance of power.

HENDERSON: Yes, the balance of power.

KING: He was in the minority then.

HENDERSON: Exactly. PETTYPIECE: And so a lot of that statement.

HENERSON: You know, Republicans will be in the minority again. You see Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn high fiving. At some point, Democrats are going to be on the good side of this on the way they aren't right now. So I think that's what we're setting up for at this point.

PETTYPIECE: I think the pick of Gorsuch was an interesting choice to show Republicans that I am going to pick someone center mainstream conservative. You know, a conservative traditional, I'm not going to pick Judge Napolitano, I'm not going to pick Rudy Giuliani. And to give them cover and comfort level to the more moderate conservatives that, you know, let me get these through and I'll give you some good Supreme Court picks that the whole party can come around.

KING: All right. As we watch the debate play out, I guess the question is the spill over effect. You mentioned, it'll get even more partisan.

[12:55:00] They have -- well, allegedly they're going to try to do health care again. A signature promise, a signature promise of the Republican Party. And they're going to try and move on to tax reform.

You've mentioned that will he ever reach to Democrats. Well, he'll need them if he wants to do infrastructure because a lot of the conservatives won't want to do all that spending. How are you going to pay for it. Sometimes we view things in a vacuum or in a silo. I assumed everyone agrees this one is part of the toxic stew.

HENDERSON: Yes. This was part of the toxic stew but it is -- I mean, if you were Donald Trump trying to look for a win in this first 100 days, this is, you know, this is a "w" for him and it's a big "w." I mean, he talks about that list he put out and this is one of the reasons why he's president. This idea that he was able to bring Republicans around in him and then vote for him.

KUCINICH: Nothing brings them together faster than a Supreme Court nominee.

PETTYPIECE: Conservatives who didn't agree with him on a lot of areas who voted for him just because they're one of that.

KING: Right. Just because of this. The president we should note on his way to Florida for important meet with the Chinese president as they get to this win.

Thanks for joining us in Inside Politics. We'll rock and roll all day, we like those here. Wolf Blitzer in the chair big news day. Stay with us. Wolf takes over after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)