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Rosenstein and Wray Defend DOJ; Trump Casts Doubt on Russian Meddling; Trump to Meet with Putin. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 28, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:25]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Thank you, Kate.

And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King.

We begin with breaking news.

A remarkable confrontation on Capitol Hill. The House of Representatives, the Republican House, just voting to demand that the Justice Department do a better job of producing documents. That after a contentious House Judiciary Committee hearing -- we'll take you back there live as soon as possible -- a confrontation between Republicans and the deputy attorney general principally, but also the director of the FBI. Rod Rosenstein locked in a public feud with House Republicans over their demands that the government produce documents about the Russia investigation, specifically about the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign. Republicans say Rosenstein and the FBI and the Justice Department are hiding things. Rosenstein pushing back repeatedly, at times angrily, at that suggestion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: I am the deputy attorney general of the United States, OK? I'm not the person doing the redacting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you're the boss, Mr. Rosenstein.

ROSENSTEIN: That's correct. And my job is to make sure that we respond to your concerns.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Department of Justice.

ROSENSTEIN: Can you believe me because I'm telling the truth and I'm under oath. If you want to put somebody else under oath and they have something different, (INAUDIBLE) respond.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I know these staff members.

(END VIDEO CLIP) KING: House Republicans also putting the special counsel investigation under the microscope. The special counsel investigation, of course, is secretive. Rob Mueller speaks in court documents, not on TV. But Republicans say they're tired of waiting and they need Mueller, in their view, to fill in the blanks and do it quickly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. TREY GOWDY (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: We've seen the box. We need to see the evidence. If you have evidence of wrongdoing by any member of the Trump campaign, present it to the damn grand jury. If you have evidence that this president acted inappropriately, present it to the American people.

There's an old saying that justice delayed is justice denied. I think right now all of us are being denied. Whatever you got, finish it the hell up, because this country is being torn apart.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Again, that contentious hearing in a break right now. We'll get back to it momentarily.

CNN's Manu Raju up on Capitol Hill.

Manu, the tempers flaring. We know that these Republicans, some of them, don't trust Mr. Rosenstein and Mr. Wray. Take us inside that committee room again and what you're hearing in the hallways.

MANU RAJU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a partisan fight that is intensifying by the moment, John. Just moments ago, as you mentioned, the House passing this resolution by a party line vote, a vote of 226- 183, compelling the Justice Department, actually calling on the Justice Department to provide these documents about the Russia investigation, about the Clinton investigation by July 6th.

Now, what does that mean practically? It's a symbolic threat because if Rosenstein does not provide the documents to the satisfaction of the Republicans, expect some punitive steps to be taken by this House, potentially holding Rod Rosenstein in contempt of Congress. Maybe even going as far as trying to impeach Rod Rosenstein, as some conservatives have called for.

But all of this fight between the House Republicans and Rod Rosenstein has just been intensifying, as we saw in this very, very tense public hearing over the last several hours. Republicans saying not enough information has been provided to their committees about the Russia investigation, about the Clinton investigation.

Rosenstein backed up by FBI Director Christopher Wray, said they had been responding to the tune of hundreds -- 880,000 pages of documents. They say 100 employees have been working around the clock to provide this information. And they are providing -- responding to, quote, legitimate requests from Congress. This has just not been to the satisfaction of the Republicans on this committee. And Democrats, John, saying this is all part of an attempt to undercut

the Mueller investigation, to undercut Rod Rosenstein, and that's why that they are pushing back and giving Rod Rosenstein some defense. But, seriously, not -- Rod Rosenstein not quelling any of his Republican critics so far this morning, John.

KING: Certainly not. And, again, we'll be back in that hearing momentarily.

In the meantime, let's bring in our crime and justice reporter, Evan Perez.

Evan, as you're watching this play out, the deputy attorney general, he tried to stay calm. He got a little angry at other points. His integrity, his credibility being questioned by members of -- the interesting part about this -- his own political party.

[12:05:10] EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, John.

I mean, look, this is a man -- Rod Rosenstein is someone who I've known probably close to a decade and I've never seen him so fiery and so passionate, really, because he was coming under personal attack. Again, as you mentioned, the fact is he is a Trump appointee. He's a lifelong Republican.

Christopher Wray, the FBI director, is the same. He's a Republican who served in the Bush administration. I knew him then when he was in the criminal division at the Justice Department. And now he even made a joke saying that he didn't know in the first ten months of his -- of being on this job that he'd be staring down the barrel of a contempt citation, because that's what the Republican members of Congress, at least some of them, are saying that needs to be done.

But, look, I think part of the issue here is that members of Congress have an expectation that they are -- they're frankly moving the goalpost, right? They have produced, as Manu pointed out, 880,000 pages of documents. A hundred staffers are working as hard as they can, according to the Justice Department, to produce these documents. And every time they meet a certain requirement, the documents that they've asked for, the Republicans come back with some new request. There is a new letter that just went out just in the last few days, and so there's a moving of the goalpost that the Justice Department is trying to figure out how to meet, while at the same time protecting this ongoing investigation by Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation, which is still ongoing.

The one -- one last thing I would point out is that Trey Gowdy and his -- really his soliloquy that he went on there against Rod Rosenstein, it wasn't much of an exchange. But Gowdy was railing about how long this investigation has been going on, which is just over a year. If you remember, Trey Gowdy oversaw the Benghazi investigation, which was for a couple of years. It cost about $8 million.

And if -- he also was saying that members of Congress on the Democratic side are, frankly, just -- you know, assuming that President Trump is guilty of something. And if you look at the coverage of Trey Gowdy during the Benghazi hearings, that's exactly what Republicans were accused of doing. So it looks like partisan politics is at play in some of these hearings today.

KING: Don't try to apply consistency here, Evan, that's not allowed, especially in an election year in Washington.

Stay with us.

With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights, Jackie Kucinich with "The Daily Beast," Michael Shear with "The New York Times," "Bloomberg's" Sahil Kapur, and Mary Katharine Ham with "The Federalist."

I want everybody to listen here. Again, Rod Rosenstein tries to keep his cool. During his remarks, he essentially went out of his way -- and you have to read into this because he doesn't say it directly -- but he's essentially saying, I'm the deputy attorney general. I have to follow the law. I'm not a Republican member of the House who can say whatever he or she wants on television.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: I've devoted almost 30 years to the service of my country. My line of work, we keep an open mind, we complete our investigations before we allege wrongdoing by anybody. Our allegations are made under oath and supported by credible evidence.

Ignore the tyranny of the new cycle. Stick to the rule of law. Make honest decisions that will always withstand fair and objective review.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: His own understated way, but that was Rod Rosenstein essentially telling House Republicans to take a hike. But they kept asking the questions.

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, they kept asking the questions because in part what they want is not answers. What they want is coverage of themselves asking the questions. Because in large part, you know, this is part of -- this hearing, as all these other hearings have been, is part of not a kind of genuine search for answers but rather a kind of consistent and methodical effort to undermine the legitimacy of an investigation that they fear, if it leads to a place -- that it could lead to a place of real political damage to the president, to the people around the president, and ultimately to the Republican Party. And so they -- you know, this is a big show.

And you saw, I think, Rosenstein getting really kind of upset finally and kind of breaking through a little bit of that anger at the show as opposed to the fact that it's not genuine.

KING: Right. And for those who don't remember, it was the attorney general, because of his role in the Trump campaign, Jeff Sessions recused himself early on. So it was Rod Rosenstein who, after the James Comey firing, who appointed Robert Mueller as the special counsel. Rod Rosenstein says he has followed all of the practices. He has checked with the ethics people at the Justice Department about whether he should recuse himself. He says he's following the rules.

Here's a question here from one of the Republicans, Ron DeSantis here, running for governor of Florida. A -- one of the Republicans who has alleged essentially that the deep state, the Trump Justice Department, is trying to undermine the Trump presidency, asking Rosenstein, why are you still here?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RON DESANTIS (R), FLORIDA: It seems like you should be recused from this more so that Jeff Sessions. Why haven't you done that?

ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: If it were appropriate for me to recuse, I would be more than happy to do so and let somebody else handle this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:10:07] JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "THE DAILY BEAST": But as Michael said, a lot of this is theater. And, you know, you heard Rosenstein at one point say, these are Trump appointees doing this, trying to really hammer home that this is not -- because initially you heard a lot of Obama's deep state, blah, blah, blah. He made the point of noting that these are Trump appointees who are making these decisions.

Congress -- several members of Congress do not care. This is much more for the clip factory than the actual, you know, House of Representatives. But as you said, I mean I really can't expand on that. He didn't think he would be here. You have to really remind yourself that this is a Republican official that Republicans are going after.

KING: It's --

SAHIL KAPUR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "BLOOMBERG": Those members of Congress see themselves getting closer and closer to an election where this is looming large. They want to -- they want to find evidence. They want these documents so they can look at them and find evidence to advance their narrative about their investigation being, in the words of the president, a witch hunt.

Trey Gowdy talked about this, you know, finish it the hell up. I just -- a few prior investigations, Whitewater lasted seven years, Watergate lasted four years, Iran Contra, six years. This is just a year -- a little over year and I don't think, historically speaking, this has gone on for a particularly long time at this point.

KING: But this is -- the hearing ostensively is for the FBI director and the deputy attorney general to talk about the inspector general's report on the Clinton e-mail investigation where the Republicans do have legitimate concerns about the conduct of some FBI agents, principally Peter Strzok, who was on the Clinton e-mail investigation, went over for a short period of time on the Mueller investigation.

When Mueller heard about these texts to stop Trump, we'll stop Trump, a clear Trump bias in the texts -- again, the FBI -- he says the FBI says it didn't affect his work, but it certainly affected his mood. But they have a legitimate issue but they seem to be taking that into some much grander conspiracy theory, essentially saying that the deputy attorney general, appointed by Donald Trump, and the new FBI director appointed by Donald Trump, are part of this somehow nefarious Justice Department effort to undermine the Republican president who gave them their jobs.

MARY KATHARINE HAM, SENIOR WRITER, "THE FEDERALIST": I'm of two minds of this. One, it is literally their job to oversee this and it's absolutely essential that elected officials oversee appointed officials, especially law enforcement, who has the force of law and the force of imprisonment and the force of violence to go after citizens. That being said, it's a congressional testimony and hearing, which means it is inevitably ridiculous, even though it is essential.

But all that being said, there are real problems. And I think one of the issues and one of the sort of -- the dynamic you're seeing here with -- less with Rosenstein than with a Comey or with others who have testified in the past is this idea that they are above having made mistakes and that law enforcement is full of just nothing but perfect actors who cannot basically be held accountable for what they've done wrong.

Well, people do need to be held accountable for what they've done wrong. Peter Strzok, as of now, remains in a job and it remains to be seen what happens. And he's got three FBI lawyers answering questions for him in front of the people he is supposed to be answerable to.

So the things to be upset about, I'm not sure that this is the way to (INAUDIBLE).

KING: Right. And to that point, the FBI director was asked about what disciplinary proceedings will take place. And he said, I'm not going to talk about that publicly because I'm not going to taint the proceedings which are going on and the like.

The issue --

HAM: Which will take another year.

KING: Yes. Right.

The interesting -- one of the interesting dynamics here is you have the Democrats coming to the defense of two Trump appointees, Rod Rosenstein and Christopher Wray here, after Trey Gowdy made his soliloquy, well put by Evan Perez, about what's up with the pace of the Mueller investigation.

Listen here. Democratic congressman asking a question, essentially characterizing should -- is Rod -- is Bob Mueller somebody who's slow walking or keeping -- going to keep looking until he finds something?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROD ROSENSTEIN, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Director Mueller understands that I want him to conclude it as expeditiously as possible, consistent with his responsibility to do it right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Has anybody ever accused Director Muller -- Special Counsel Mueller, excuse me, of being dilatory, lazy, slow?

ROSENSTEIN: I certainly haven't, sir.

CHRISTOPHER WRAY, FBI DIRECTOR: My -- my own experience and familiarity with Director Mueller is that none of those adjectives would describe to much of anything he's done in his career for this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I think Evan Perez is still with us.

If you are, Evan, it's impossible, right, to get Director Mueller, or Special Counsel Mueller, to respond to any of this. He does his speaking only through court documents, right?

PEREZ: That's right. And you don't hear very much except for "no comment" from the special counsel's office.

And, look, I do think that the problem here, the Pete Strzok problem, the FBI agent who sent those inappropriate texts, those things have done a job here to undermine what Mueller and what the FBI have been doing. I think you cannot get away from those facts.

And so the FBI and the Justice Department are under an obligation to try to answer the questions from members of Congress. But I do think that sometimes if you -- if you watch these hearings, these are co- equal branches of government. If you want to do a civics lesson, it doesn't mean that Congress, you know, has super powers over the executive branch. It just means that they're going to have to duke it out and maybe Congress will never really be satisfied so long as this investigation is still going on, because they're never -- they're not really going to get all of the answers that they think that they're entitled to while this investigation is still going on.

[12:15:23] KING: That's a key point there.

And, again, we're waiting for that House Judiciary Committee meeting to get back underway. The deputy attorney general and the FBI director facing more questions. We'll go back there live when the proceedings come in.

Next, though, the president gives -- President Trump gives President Putin two gifts, a summit date and a tweet again questioning whether Russians actually meddled in the 2016 election.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back. The White House and the Kremlin today making it official, announcing that President Trump and President Vladimir Putin will hold a summit in Finland next month. That meeting will come just a few days after a big NATO meeting in Brussels.

So the world will be watching. And here's a question, will President Trump treat his Russian counterpart better than he does the leaders of allies like France and Germany? One possible hint, a tweet this morning, just before the summit was announced, from the president of the United States saying, quote, Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with meddling in our election. The tweet went on to criticize James Comey and Hillary Clinton as well.

[12:20:20] CNN's Abby Phillip is live at the White House for us.

Abby, a simple question, why?

ABBY PHILLIP: Well, John, I think if anybody knew that, we would have some answers by now.

This has been actually something that President Trump has done repeatedly as president when he first met Vladimir Putin. There were lots of questions about whether he raised the issue of meddling.

The second time he met Vladimir Putin in Vietnam, just a few months ago, he said to reporters on Air Force One, he said he didn't meddle, and I believe, I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it.

Now, no one else believes that. The president repeatedly casts doubt on the conclusion of the intelligence -- the U.S. intelligence community that Russia did, in fact, meddle in the 2016 election and that they also plan to meddle again.

But the president making these comments, just as the summit with him and Putin is being confirmed by the White House, really leads you to wonder whether or not this is something that he is willing to bring up despite what his aides have said. John Bolton, who was just in Moscow a day ago said that the president would bring it up. Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, has also said that it would be a big topic of conversation.

But President Trump, every time he's given the opportunity, doesn't want to say definitively, and in many cases repeats the Kremlin line, which is that Vladimir Putin had nothing to do with this.

Now, John, the reason maybe -- there might be a hint in President Trump's own tweets about this. He tweets about the Russia investigation and he also tweets about Russian meddling in the election. In the president's mind, it seems those two things are very much -- are very much connected. He went on this morning to issue several other tweets, attacking Robert Mueller. It seems that the president believes that if there is any credibility given to the idea of Russian meddling in the election, it only gives more credibility to that Russia probe that he has called a witch hunt, John.

KING: Stunning, stunning, stunning. Abby Phillip live at the White House.

Let's bring into the conversation David Sanger with "The New York Times," our national security analyst as well.

David, you've talked to the president about this. You write about it in your book, "Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age." You've had a direct conversation with the president about this. Why is he inclined to believe Vladimir Putin over every single official in a senior position in U.S. intelligence?

DAVID SANGER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, that's exactly what I asked him, John. And as I relate in the book, his answer to this was that he believes the intelligence reports that were written from this at the end of the Obama administration were so politicized -- he specifically mentions James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the former CIA director, that he couldn't possibly believe them. And so you say to him, well, sir, it's also been signed onto by every one of your intelligence officials, including, at that time, Mike Pompeo, the director of the CIA, now, of course, the secretary of state, who presumably will be accompanying the president to the meeting in Helsinki.

And he just ignores that because he so associates any recognition of the Russian role here with the questions about legitimacy of his own election. Even though right now we don't have any concrete evidence that the Russians actually moved any votes. They might have, but we can't measure it.

KING: And this meeting will come after the NATO summit. The president has lectured the NATO allies. He's now in a trade war with many of the NATO allies and a separate European Union fights over steel and aluminum tariffs. What's the big concern of the key NATO members about the president's, my term, coziness with Vladimir Putin?

SANGER: Well, I think, two big worries, John. The first one is that the president suggested at the head of the -- at -- ahead of the G-7 meeting the other -- a few weeks ago, just before he went to Singapore, that Russia should reenter the G-7 and that we should forget about Ukraine. And basically the reason the Russians are not in the G-7 right now is it's part of the sanctions for Ukraine.

So NATO, ever since, has been gathering themselves to have a common front against the Russians to keep them from expanding the Ukraine operation to some of the NATO -- new members of NATO in eastern Europe. Their big concern is that the president is basically going to give Putin a free pass and say, it's fine that you took Crimea. We're done with the sanctions. We don't really care about what you're doing to destabilize Ukraine.

I think the second big concern is that the president's going to go into the NATO meeting clearly beating up on them, maybe rightly so, for not raising their defense budgets enough. And then he could go off and have as friendly a meeting with Vladimir Putin as he had with Kim Jong-un. And that you'll have the optics of fighting with his allies and then embracing an adversary.

[12:25:07] KING: David Sanger, appreciate the insights.

Let's bring the conversation back into the room.

And our Elise Labott at the State Department confirming some reporting first done by Axios that at the G-7 meeting the president actually said NATO is as bad as NAFTA. So the allies have reason to be a little concerned about the president. I'm not sure, can I -- I won't try to translate that face.

HAM: It's difficult. (INAUDIBLE) throughout the campaign (INAUDIBLE) concerning talking points was about NATO and then he sort of seemed to get his mind right after the election and has people surrounding him who thinks that's deeply important. But he can always turn on a dime. That's who he is.

SHEAR: Can I just say, I want to underscore David's second point, which I think is really important. Aside from just the substance of where the United States is vis-a-vis Russia, Ukraine and some of these other issues, the feeling -- I was at the G-7 in Charlevoix in Canada when he blew up what essentially was a -- you know, two days of already tense meetings and then he blew it up after he refused to sign on to the agreement.

You know, the -- the feeling that President Trump is literally blowing up the alliances of United States allies all over the world, the G-7, the G-20, NATO, and the contrast between what you do and what you say if you're the president of the United States with our allies, vis-a- vis our adversaries, is really dramatic. And he really is causing concern all over places like Europe and going -- I have a feeling that this sort of several days of meetings is going to be really dramatic.

KING: He lectures them on trade. He lectures them on defense spending, although he gets it NATO dues concept wrong. The president's never quite been able to figure that one out.

SHEAR: (INAUDIBLE).

KING: He lectures them on migration and then he calls Kim Jong-un honorable and now he's going to sit down with Vladimir Putin. That's the -- that's the dynamic where they think, sure, meet with Putin, sure, talk to Putin about Syria, talk to Putin about other stuff. But the -- it's the --

SHEAR: And it's up -- and it's up-ending -- it's not -- I mean in a -- in a time when all of our views of these things is Democrat versus Republican, this is upending decades of foreign policy --

KUCINICH: Right.

SHEAR: American foreign policy that has been shaped by Democrats and Republicans alike. So it's not a partisan thing, it's a sort of dramatic shift in the way the United States deals with --

HAM: Well, and also -- it also --

KAPUR: The question here is what he's going to get out of this? Is he going to go into this meeting with a strategy to try to extract certain concessions from Putin? There's the issue of Syria, where Trump and Putin have been at odds with Russia, support for Assad. There's the issue of Ukraine, where the United States has approved lethal aid to Ukraine. Russia is clearly not happy about that. Does President Trump intend to go in there and ask, you know, Putin to make concessions on these things?

You -- we know that the president loves the stagecraft of this. He loves the theater of it. He loves being in this, you know, big meeting that the entire world pays attention. And as he did in North Korea, he didn't get any tangible concessions, but he kind of created his own reality and said everything went fantastically. There's a media empire that is dedicated to amplifying his message. Is the same thing going to happen here or is there going to be a tangible movement?

KING: Pay no attention to those satellite photos. The North Korea nuclear threat is over.

All right, a quick break for us here.

When we come back, back up to Capitol Hill, we hope. The House Judiciary Committee has the deputy attorney general and the FBI director. You see they're in recess right now. We expect more fireworks.

INSIDE POLITICS will be right back.

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