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Trump Attacks Sessions Again; Kushner on Capitol Hill; Lewandowski Talks about Priebus; Senate Plots Move on Health Care. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired July 24, 2017 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thanks for sharing your day with us.

And busy news day is a big understatement. We're told a rare public statement from president son-in-law Jared Kushner could come any minute. Kushner, on the moment, on Capitol Hill, telling Congress he did not collude with the Kremlin during the 2016 election. This as the president himself lashes out at his own attorney general again, while also suggesting Republicans in Congress should do more to protect him.

Plus, Senate Republicans hope this is the week they finally get their Obamacare repeal act together, but don't bet on it. And Democrats promise a better deal, outlining a new economic platform they hope appeals to liberals and to Trump voters.

We begin, though, with the big, new developments in the Russia election meddling investigation and big new insights into the president's mind-set.

With us to share their reporting and their insights, Laura Meckler of "The Wall Street Journal," Perry Bacon of FiveThirtyEight, Michael Bender of "The Wall Street Journal," and CNN's MJ Lee.

To Capitol Hill in a moment and today's important questioning of presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. We'll also keep our eyes out for that public statement we are told he will make after finishes his interview with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

First, though, the president's latest attack on his own attorney general and what this attack tells us. In an angry tweet this morning, the president asked by Congress, the special counsel, and, quote, of course our beleaguered attorney general aren't investigating Hillary Clinton.

Now, imagine if your boss publicly called you beleaguered and it's hardly the first public rebuke. Remember, the president twice, in an interview with "The New York Times" last week, said Sessions had been unfair to the president, and the president said he never would have appointed Sessions attorney general if he knew he would go on to recuse himself from decisions related to the Russia election meddling investigation.

CNN's Sara Murray is live at the White House. Sara, the president is no doubt trying to send a message to the

attorney general. Just what is it?

SARA MURRAY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's a great question, John. It's certainly hard to believe the White House's line last week, that the president somehow still has confidence in his attorney general. But so far he stopped short of flat out calling on Sessions to tender his resignation.

Now, he was asked about this, the president, earlier today in a photo op with interns. He had some pretty classic Trump facial expressions in response. Take a look.

I guess we don't have that video for you, but the president did not respond to a question about whether he wants Jeff Sessions to resign. He did offer a pretty significant eye roll, though, before moving on. I think, obviously, the thing to remember is that the relationship between Jeff Sessions and the president has deteriorated significantly. Sessions was one of President Trump's closest allies, one of the first senators to endorse him. But ever since he recused himself, the president essentially puts the blame on the fact that there is a special counsel investigation squarely on the shoulders of Jeff Sessions.

Now, is it possible Trump is looking at other people to fill the spot? Absolutely. But we do know his advisors, both inside and outside the White House, have explained to the president, look, you could talk to Rudy Giuliani, you could talk to Chris Christie, you could talk to other people who were loyal to you and by your side during the campaign. But there's a chance that they're going to face the same pressure to recusing themselves and you are going to be in the same boat.

So it will be interesting to see how Sessions responds to this and if he feels like he can stay in this job with the president just publicly jabbing at him day after day in media interviews and on Twitter.

John.

KING: That is remarkable. Sara Murray for us live at the White House.

Sara, thank you very much.

Now, as we noted, Jared Kushner's up on Capitol Hill this hour answering questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee staff members. That's hours -- this questions is hours after the president's son-in-law and, of course, senior adviser released a lengthy statement defending his interactions with Russians during the campaign and presidential transition. In that statement, Kushner said he has now disclosed all of his Russia contacts, explains them all as innocent, and says, "I did not collude nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded with any foreign government."

CNN's Manu Raju up on Capitol Hill with more, including, Manu, we are told now we can expect a public statement from Jared Kushner when he's done with this session. MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Yes, that's right. In fact, he's actually going to -- he's expected to leave his meeting momentarily. That's why we're waiting for him here, standing in a -- crowded gaggle of reporters. He's going to be walking down this hallway. There are microphones set up here in case he wants to make a public statement. We are not expecting him to do that here. But we do expect him to say something publicly at the White House.

Now, this comes, John, as Kushner and his team are really going on a public relations offensive, if you will. He issued an 11-page statement to the committee earlier today detailing contacts that he had with Sergey Kislyak during the campaign season, which he said was a brief interaction at the Mayflower Hotel. He also talked about meeting with that Russian -- the Russian ambassador and -- during the transition time, including with the former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, which they discussed having perhaps a secure line of communication, discussed issues of importance in people in Moscow.

[12:05:12] Now, the one meeting that, of course, has gotten a lot of attention over the last several days is that Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr. in which Jared Kushner also attended. Now, in his statement, John, he does discuss this meeting and says there was really nothing to it. He says he really didn't know anything about this meeting with Russians who offered dirt to Donald Trump Jr. and he said that he got an e-mail that he didn't really read.

This is a part of what he said. He said that when he was at this meeting, which he arrived at late, he was looking for a polite way to leave and get back to my work. He said, I actually e-mailed an assistant from the meeting after I'd been there for ten minutes or so and wrote, can you please call me on my cell. He said he needed an excuse to get out of the meeting. He said, I have not met the attorney before the meeting, nor spoken with her since. I thought nothing more of this short meeting until it came to my attention recently.

Now, John, of course, this came to people's attention recently because Mr. Kushner was forced to amend his security clearance form by -- because he did not include this meeting initially when he submitting his for his security clearance application. So -- so clearly this is one issue, John, in which investigators are going to ask questions behind closed doors.

Tomorrow he'll be going before the House Intelligence Committee. And just speaking to a couple of members of the committee, including Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat, they want to question him as well. The senators want to have a chance to question him as well. The question will be whether or not Jared Kushner agrees for any public hearing or any meeting with senators after meeting here with staff on Capitol Hill.

John.

KING: Manu Raju live on Capitol Hill.

Manu, keep us posted. I guess somebody stretching there. You know, you wait in those hall a long time, you got to stand up and stretch. Apologies for that little yoga demonstration there.

Manu, appreciate it. Keep us posted on when Mr. Kushner leaves the room and when we expect to get that statement.

Now, in addition to Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort also face congressional questioning this week. And the president seems more than a little annoyed. In one tweet last night he said, the Russians are laughing and, quote, the phony Russian witch hunt continues.

Then this from the president. It's very sad that Republicans, even some that were carried over the line on my back, do very little to protect their president.

Let's start the conversation there.

That came in a series of tweets, most of them about health care, so it's easy to read that tweet and say the president's talking about Republican's not passing health care. It's also easy to read that tweet, especially the part about people I carried over the line, as a shot at Richard Burr, who's the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, won re-election in North Carolina because of the Trump surge in the end there. So maybe we'll get an explanation at some point.

But let's come to the bigger picture. The president's mad at the congressional investigation. He's lashing out at his attorney general again. I believe we can show you -- let's show you -- we tried to get this to you during the Sara Murray appearance at the White House. Let's watch the president. He's with White House interns taking a photo op. He gets asked, does he have confidence in the attorney general. Look at this.

(VIDEO CLIP)

KING: In a vacuum -- in a vacuum, that's a funny picture. The president is known for his facial expressions. He's known for his sense of humor, actually, as well.

But he has now, for the third or fourth time in a week, publicly undermined the chief law enforcement officer of the United States. And as he's done so, with the context of, I appointed this person and he did not protect me from investigation. These cabinet officers swear an oath. They swear an oath to the Constitution, not to protect the president.

MICHAEL BENDER, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Yes. And we've seen -- to be sort of fair here to Senator Sessions, we've seen people survive this. I think an apt parallel here is Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon came under a lot of fire about a month ago. The president repeatedly criticized him in interviews, called him a guy who works for me. This is his chief strategist. Now he's going after his attorney general.

We asked the president -- or we asked the White House about the comments a couple weeks ago related to Sessions and they insisted that he has full confidence. I think sometimes the president has trouble acting on his -- acting on his impulses here. I mean if he wants to get rid of Sessions, it's -- he -- all he has to do is say it.

It took him a while to get rid of Flynn. He -- we saw he didn't go after Bannon. I think Bannon and Sessions both represent, you know, a -- one of the few ties to the conservative base in this White House. But, you know, the bigger question here is, this president demands loyalty from his staff, from his top cabinet and just refuses to show that loyalty to any of them. So it's not a surprise here when -- when you get leaks and when he gets some back-fighting inside his White House.

KING: And yet I'm going to make a -- I agree 1,000 percent with everything you just said, the president's -- it's a roller coaster working for this president. He can throw you under the bus and then two weeks later you're with him at the top of the peak.

However, I would just make out the case that the attorney general of the United States is a little bit different. And as I do, I just want people to listen. We saw the tweet today. He called his attorney general beleaguered. Asked openly, why aren't you investigating Hillary Clinton? Listen to "The New York Times" interview last week. We've got -- which put this into high gear.

[12:10:11] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Zero. So Jeff Sessions takes the job. Gets in to the job. Recuses himself. I then have -- which -- which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, thanks, Jeff, but I can't -- you know, I'm not going to take you. It's extremely unfair, and that's a mild word, to the president.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And today he calls him beleaguered. Again, if you listen to when the president fired James Comey, he told NBC News he did it because of the Russia investigation. He's saying here, if he thought Jeff -- if he knew that Jeff Sessions was not going to be there making big decisions about the Russia investigation, he wouldn't have given him the job. That tells you a lot about this president's mind-set.

LAURA MECKLER, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": And every -- every bit of Washington that is involved or touching this Russia investigation, he is seeking to diminish or reject or say that they're being inappropriately disloyal. So whether that's the -- whether that's Jeff Sessions, whether that's people on The Hill who are continuing to investigate it, whether it's the intelligence community itself who have a consensus view that Russia intervened in the election to try to help elect him, he rejects that, too. Sort of, it's all around him, and he seems to think -- and maybe this comes from a -- in business where you really are the top person and you can call the shots and people sort of go along, as long as you have that job, but it's different. You're different -- it's different when you're president where there are independent powers centers within government that act independently and have loyalty to things other than the president himself. And I don't think he -- I honestly don't think he understands that.

MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: And what's striking, re- listening to that "New York Times" interview, is how personally President Trump takes this move from Jeff Sessions. Never mind that there are obviously rules and reasons why Sessions felt like he had to recuse himself, because there would be a conflict of interests. President Trump sees that and remembers it clearly and has, you know -- has been holding on to sort of this grudge almost that Sessions decided to recuse himself. He doesn't view it as a decision that was necessary. He views it as something of sort of a letdown, that someone that should have been loyal to him was clearly loyal to him during the campaign decided to make this decision.

And this is a way in which he conducts himself when he interacts with folks on Capitol Hill as well. The health care debate, what he sees that someone like Dean Heller is on the fence, he turns to them and says, look, you want to stay in the Senate, don't you? You can tell that that personally affects him and sort of personally offends him.

KING: Is it -- is it just that? Is it just this personal sense of pride, personal sense of slight for people who aren't loyal to him, despite, Michael, you make an excellent point, he shows no loyalty back to people. He does not bite his tongue when he's disappointed at people. He lashes out at them.

Or, to the bigger issue about, you know, again, if you look what happened to Comey. You hear what the president's talking about his attorney general. You put this into context, not a Trump rite large but Trump and this investigation. Why does he need people to protect him if he's done nothing wrong, which he said from the beginning?

PERRY BACON, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT: And I see the way he brought up the -- he brought up Sessions in "The New York Times" interview, then brought it up again today. Maybe this is an argument for Jeff Sessions catches the hint and goes ahead and resigns. I can think of an A.G. who is going to be loyal to me in the way I want. And that's the sort of broader implications of this (INAUDIBLE).

KING: But can -- but can he -- can he do that? Again, let's -- let's assume for the stake -- you know, there is -- let's assume the president has done nothing wrong. Let's assume the president has done nothing wrong. Wouldn't he make his political mess, the political ditch, a whole lot deeper if he fired his attorney general now or forced him out now? If Jeff Sessions suddenly says, I can't do this. I'm -- I give --

MECKLER: But the same -- the same thing happened with Comey.

BACON: The thing happened to Comey.

MECKLER: It was exactly the same dynamic with Comey. He -- it was -- he made his case -- made things so much worse for himself. In fact, it was the firing of Comey that led to the appointment of the special prosecutor. So if he was thinking that way, I think we would have seen different actions along the way. I don't think he understands that, really, or appreciates that at least. KING: Do they -- and this all happens -- so let's -- this all happens

in the context of new communications director for a first full day today, Anthony Scaramucci. Sean Spicer resigns. The question is, is that the end or is there more coming at the White House? I don't know what to make of this, but Corey Lewandowski, the former campaign manager, speaks to the president from time to time, is on television today and, this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Look, Reince Priebus works directly for the president of the United States and it is the president's prerogative to determine how long Reince Priebus works for. And I think what the president has said very clearly is that he wants to make sure that the leaks that are taking place in his White House are eradicated. And if the president doesn't see the success that he wants, then he will continue to make changes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: They complain, senior White House officials, all the time that we, in the media, are manufacturing this sense of crisis and chaos in the White House. The president himself calls his attorney general beleaguered after giving an interview where he twice says he's being unfair to me. The former campaign manager, who we know continues to speak to the president of the United States, goes on television and clearly, we know he's no friend of Reince Priebus, but clearly stirs up the idea, well, maybe the chief of staff's in trouble, too.

[12:15:07] Find me a management book that says this is the way to do it.

BACON: Yes, and we saw the new comms director immediately say in the first comments, I report to the president.

KING: Right.

BACON: In other words, not the chief of staff. The chief of staff has been disempowered in every way possible, you know, continually.

MECKLER: Well, we -- another problem that Reince Priebus has is that he sort of is neither fish nor fowl and he's not a Trump loyalist, he doesn't have a base -- base of support among the Trump supporters, but he also isn't like really a guy who knows how to govern either. I mean people call him an insider, but he has no government experience himself. He has political experience, but not government experience. So it's not like he knows how to run the White House, you know, necessarily in some sort of special way. So I think that, you know, it kind of leaves him --

KING: This -- my bottom line on this, though, is whether it's true or false, all this, you know, this person's in trouble, that person's in trouble, it hurts the president. It hurts the president to have this discussion going on. And the discussion is being stoked, not by us, but by people who say they're loyal to the president. They're hurting the president. A quick break here. When we come back, remember, we're awaiting Jared Kushner finishing his questioning before staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. We are told he will make a public statement after that appearance. That would be a rare public statement. We've almost never hear from Jared Kushner.

Also, Senate Republicans come back to work this week. They say they're going to move on to the Obamacare repeal debate on the Senate floor. They just won't tell us what that's going to look like.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:20:42] KING: We'll remind you with these live pictures, one of Capitol Hill, one just outside the West Wing at the White House, we are awaiting Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and a senior adviser, meeting with staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's been there for more than two hours now answering their questions about the Russia election meddling investigation.

We are told Mr. Kushner plans to make a rare, public statement. We believe it will be at the White House. We're going to watch him exit up on Capitol Hill and we'll watch the White House as well. We'll bring you that to -- bring that to you live when it happens.

That's just one of the big stories here in Washington today.

Also tonight the Senate Republican leadership meets to plod its way forward on health care. Now, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promises an Obamacare repeal debate this week on the Senate floor. But exactly where the debate would start or even whether he has the votes necessary to start it is an open question.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is live on Capitol Hill.

Forgive me, Phil, I'm going to be a little bit skeptical. Will this really be the week the Senate debates?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes -- maybe. Look, at least that's the goal of Senate leadership. And I think you hit the key point here, the beauty of Senate procedures. You have to vote to even start the debate. And that's what they're planning to have this week as soon as tomorrow. Leadership aides are saying that's the tentative goal right now. And the reality is, they need 50 votes to be able to move forward on that. The reality also is that they don't have 50 votes, at least as of this morning, to move forward on that procedural vote. So as long as they don't have those votes, they can't move on to the actual debate on the bill.

Now, look, John, you know this process and this place quite well. What they're doing behind the scenes right now is really kind of twisting arms, pushing their members saying, look, you will be able to offer whatever amendment you want. You can make this bill look however you want it to make, we just need to start debate on this process. Allow us to start debate.

And the incentive here for leadership is, if you start debate on this bill, and they would be starting debate on the House health care bill and then be amending it as such as they feel necessary, if you start debate, the ability to have this bill fail, the pressure that would come upon the Republican members to vote no at the end of this entire, very lengthy amendment process would be a lot. They want to start the process because they know once this process kicks into gear it becomes exponentially more difficult to vote no in the end.

But, again, the real question right now is, can they start this process at all? And I think the big issue they're having right now is a lot of senators are saying, look, we don't want to go into this blind. We want to know, at the end of the day, what that substitute amendment, to use the Senate language, that we all agree upon is going to be. What are we going to -- what's our end game here? Do we have everything in place? And as we all know quite well, that replace amendment, how they're going to actually move that forward, there was currently no deal there.

There was no kind of negotiation that has reached a compromise agreement to where they would be on that. And so long as they are short of that, the reality remains that they likely will be short to proceed on the vote.

One quick note here, John, I think this is important. If this goes down tomorrow on the procedural vote, the idea that they're just going to throw up their hands, move on to tax reform and call it a day, don't bet on that. I think there's a lot of feeling behind the scenes right now that they're starting to move closer and that if this fails tomorrow, that might actually add some incentive with pressure from the base to keep going. This health care thing isn't dying anytime soon, John.

KING: Phil Mattingly on Capitol hill tracking that. We'll continue the health care conversation in a moment.

But there you see the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the tall gentleman in the middle there, walking out of the staff committee room. He's on Capitol Hill. He's being interviewed by the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, again, about Russia election meddling. He released an 11-page statement this morning saying, yes, he had several contacts with Russians during the campaign and during the president's transition, but he said they were all about policy issues. He said nothing nefarious took place.

We are told we will get a rare public statement from Jared Kushner. Let's listen as he walks past --

QUESTION: Will you -- will you testify publicly, sir?

QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) sign my Russian flag.

KING: Reporters trying to shout some questions at him there, and also, as always, somebody up there with a stunt, saying, will you sign my Russian flag. That happens in a democracy. You get protestors and what I like to call stunt dummies here in Washington around, as well as the reporters trying to ask their questions. As you can see, Mr. Kushner not entertaining any questions there as he

leaves the Senate office building. We are told, though, he plan as public statement. We expect that to happen when he makes it back to the White House. We will, of course, bring it to you live.

A very dramatic day. The committee has been gathering information, requesting documents for months. The Senate Intelligence Committee, just one of the investigative committees on Capitol Hill. The House Intelligence Committee will hear from Jared Kushner again tomorrow. This represents a new chapter in the sense that some of the bigger witnesses now going before these committees on Capitol Hill.

Mr. Kushner is leaving the building now. We'll let him get to the White House and we expect to hear from him. We'll bring you that conversation.

[12:25:10] Let's come back -- and if we see Mr. Kushner again, please, tell me and we'll track his movements up on Capitol Hill.

But let's come back to the important health care conversation because if you're an American and your health care's in a flux or if you're thinking about changing your job and you're worried about how that would impact your health care and you're looking to Washington for answers, it's been six months of wait, wait, wait, we're not sure, wait. The question is, will they get to it this week?

And we talked about the politics of this all the time. Phil Mattingly brilliantly laying out the internal calculations among senators here. Can they get to 50 votes to start the debate. Then can they reach a compromise? If you're an American watching at home, no matter where you live in the country, and you have any health care issue in your family -- and, again, we're going to show these live pictures of Jared Kushner. Forgive me for going back and forth between health care and this. He's leaving the Senate office building, hopping into his car. Another -- we applaud effort, but we sort of knew the -- there was not going to be an answer to that question as Jared Kushner gets in the car.

A short drive back to the White House. We'll see what happens when he gets there.

Can they do this? Can they do this? Including one of the questions in this debate from day one has been the president's role. Congressional leaders often say he has undermined them by tweeting certain things at certain times or saying this is open to negotiation when they're trying to close the deal and get to a final vote.

The president of the United States will, at 3:00 this afternoon, before going to West Virginia, whose senator -- Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito is one of the issues. She's a no vote right now. Will the president today move this forward with either what he says at the White House or perhaps even more importantly. That's in Washington. Get going. We need to do this. We've promised this. Or what we haven't seen. And what a lot of Republicans say, why haven't we seen more of this, Mr. President? Get out on the ground where it really matters and try to change a vote. BENDER: The indication from the White House this morning -- folks in the press shop told me that he plans to appear this afternoon with what they like to call Obamacare victims. He's going to explicitly ask the Senate to move forward on a motion to proceed, ask them then to repeal and replace it and tell them, what's certain to become a mantra in this White House, that inaction is not an option. That starts to look more like a sort of typical president, a typical administration trying to move forward an agenda that would be on point to what the -- what Republican senators -- Senate leadership wants to do. It might be a little bit -- a little too late at this point. And then tonight, when he gets in front of a crowd, kind of, who knows what would happen -- happens there.

KING: Right, and the who knows is the interesting part because if the president's going to do what you just said, that would be applauded by Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. The president of the United States using the bully pulpit, the platform of the White House, to say, we have an obligation and a responsibility. We promised this. Let's start the debate and get to the finish line.

Last week he had the Pontius Pilot at the White House where he said, I'm not going to own it if this collapses, which infuriated Republicans. So you've had these mixed signals from the president and they need his help. Sometimes they say they don't want it because it's been back and forth like a yo-yo, but they need it.

MECKLER: Well, they do, but they also need some sort of substantive plan that they can agree to, that can bring together moderate Democrats -- excuse me -- Republicans and very conservative Republicans. There is a very large ideological span within the Republican Senate caucus. So, you know, I think that the -- and I think a lot of senators probably are not real confident about whether Trump is going to have their back at the end of the day given what we've seen so far.

You know, he praised the House bill and then called it cruel later on. So, you know, I think that they're going to have to feel comfortable voting for the bill on its merits, that they feel like they can defend their vote and not depend on President Trump to back them up or to save them if it turns out to be unpopular, which we know, by the way, it is unpopular.

LEE: And it's really pretty remarkable that we could see a vote taking place tomorrow, a procedural vote, but a lot of Senate Republicans feel like they don't even know what the end goal here is, right? They don't know if the goal is to do a repeal and replace bill, or a repeal-only bill, which was McConnell's latest attempt and latest strategy.

And the president going out there, you know, as you said, he's been so back and forth. You know --

BACON: I think he's (INAUDIBLE).

LEE: He had said that he wanted a repeal only and then he said that he wanted repeal and replace. And it's not as though Senate Republicans really need the pressure right now. They already feel the pressure. They understand the gravity of potentially reneging on this promise that they have been making for seven years. Now it's a matter of, you know, whether McConnell can get the votes at least bring this up for a vote so that he feels like, look, he can say to the public, we had a vote and we tried to get this done and we really couldn't.

KING: Well, it's a messy process. To your point, it's a very complicated issue. Both the politics and the policy have produced a greater divide among Republicans as they've been trying to close them. We'll see if this is the week they can get there.

Again, we're going to head to a quick break, but, remember, Jared Kushner making his way from Capitol Hill to the White House. We expect a very rare public statement from the president's son-in-law about what he told the Congress, asking him questions about Russia election meddling and his meetings with Russians during the campaign and the presidential transition.

[12:29:53] Also, up next, the president's new communications chief says he has a source who says it isn't clear that Russia meddled in the election. That source flies around on Air Force One.

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