Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Butina Pleads Guilty; Trump on Cohen Breaking the Law; Government Funding Stalemate; GOP Majority Favors Wall. Aired 12- 12:30p ET

Aired December 13, 2018 - 12:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:00:19] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

Breaking news. Just moments ago, an alleged Russian spy pleading guilty in federal court here in Washington. Maria Butina told the judge this morning that she conspired to act as an illegal foreign agent. Federal prosecutors now say Butina is cooperating and sharing information on who directed her to infiltrate one of the most important organizations in Republican politics, the National Rifle Association.

CNN's Jessica Schneider live outside the courthouse in Washington, D.C.

Jessica, what are we learning at this plea hearing this morning?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, a guilty plea from Maria Butina. But, more importantly, a remarkable portrayal by prosecutors about how Maria Butina tried to infiltrate political organizations all at the behest of Russian officials.

Prosecutors laid it all out, saying that this conspiracy kicked off in 2015 when Maria Butina drafted a policy proposal. It was called "Description of the Diplomacy Project." In that policy proposal, prosecutors say that she detailed how she would be this conduit between the Russian government and important U.S. political figures. They say that at one point Alexander Tortian (ph), who was a former Russian bank official, he gave her $125,000 to attend important political conferences, including conferences led by the National Rifle Association. They also said how she worked with a U.S. citizen to organize a so-called friendship dinner where important figures would be there and that they would discuss Russian-American policy. And they also said that as recently as 2017, Maria Butina went to the National Prayer Breakfast. And she said that the people there, and she put it this way, prosecutors saying, they were coming to establish a back channel of communication.

So really a remarkable portrayal by prosecutors about how exactly Maria Butina operated. Remember, she said that she was here in Washington, D.C., solely to be a graduate student at American University. Now she is admitting in court that she did conspire to act as a foreign agent. She pled guilty to that. And we know that her sentencing will be coming up on February 12th. The judge actually delaying the sentencing because prosecutors intend to continue working with Butina, seeing what other information they can get from her, perhaps more information about how Russians tried to infiltrate these political organizations and she might have some insight into how they meddled or interfered in the 2016 election.

John, she is facing up to five years in prison. Of course that sentence could be reduced depending on how much she actually cooperates with prosecutors. And after that, after she is sentenced and faces that prison time, she ultimately will be deported likely to Russia.

John.

KING: Jessica Schneider outside the federal courthouse. Appreciate the live reporting.

Let's bring in our CNN legal analyst, Michael Zeldin, for some analysis here.

Michael, as you learn the details of this case, and, obviously, there's more to be learned as she continues to cooperate and we see the actual court filings. Is this run-of-the-mill spying? We do it on people too. We have -- the United States has people who try to infiltrate organizations in other countries around the seas -- overseas. Let's not be naive. Or in the context of the Russian effort to play the Trump campaign, to infiltrate the Trump campaign, to test cyber-wise whether they can infiltrate election systems, and you have a young woman here trying to essentially build relationships within a major political organization, the NRA and other conservative groups. Put it into context.

MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So, it's a little of both. Remember, we had that television series, "The Americans," which were Russians who came here and assumed U.S. identities for the purpose of being foreign agents. We saw the Tom Hanks's movie, "On the Bridge."

She had a little of that, but I think in the broader context, we have to see her as part of a multi-pronged effort by the Russians to infiltrate 2016. You had, prong one, the social media efforts through FaceBook and Twitter and the like. You had, two, the hacking, which was, you know, a direct effort to steal information and distribute it through WikiLeaks. Now you see the third part, which is another element of this, which is direct contact with American politicians. We saw it with Jared Kushner, with his back channel and the Russian ambassador, we see it with Don Junior at the Trump Tower. Now we see it with Butina and the NRA and direct politicians. And the last thing will, which will be fleshed out, will be financing of the transition. So you've got these four legs of a stool. This is just one part of that broader context, I think.

KING: A fascinating piece as we learn more about it, and we'll bring you more if we get more from the courtroom. In a related subject, fresh tweets from the president today, same investigation, lying down a new legal marker. Why should I be held responsible, the president says, if my lawyer gives me bad advice. Quote, I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law, the president tweeted this morning. The president says Michael Cohen, his long-time lawyer and fixer, should have known better. And if he knew something was illegal, Cohen, the president says, should have told candidate Trump, stop. That is why they get paid, quote, from the president there.

[12:05:24] A judge sentenced Cohen yesterday to serve three years in prison. And one of the crimes is what prosecutors painted as a wide- ranging conspiracy to funnel hush money payments through shell corporations with the cooperation of a tabloid. A judge, prosecutors, Cohen, and now American Media, the parent company of "The National Enquirer," all say this scheme was directed by a man identified in court papers as individual one. That would be the president of the United States.

With me to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Kaitlan Collins, Perry Bacon of FiveThirtyEight, Karoun Demirjian with "The Washington Post," Michael Zeldin stays with us.

If you read these tweet this morning, and this is part of your job, sadly, for better --

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it is.

KING: For better -- for better or worse, it's part of all of our jobs, this was not normal Trump tone. This was clearly done in consultation with somebody on his legal team who didn't like the looser language the president used in describing this the other day. What's he trying to do here?

COLLINS: You can always tell when it's a Trump tweet and when it's something he's dictated, when it's something that he's had the help of someone with, because the president doesn't use terms like liability and he doesn't usually tweet the way that we saw him tweet this morning in that three-part series. But it was seeking to put some distance between himself and Michael Cohen. And he's saying he's not disputing that he directed Michael Cohen to make these payments, he's disputing that he directed Michael Cohen to break the law while making these payments, essentially saying Michael Cohen should have known better because he was my legal counsel. And if he didn't know better, how is that my fault.

This is not what President Trump said before when he denied on camera on Air Force One making these payments or knowing about these payments in the first place. He said he didn't know about the Stormy Daniels payment, that they would have to ask Michael Cohen about it. And then not only do we have that, him saying on camera he know about the Stormy Daniels -- or him saying he didn't know about it, and now he's saying he did. He's also, in an audio recording with Michael Cohen, discussing the other payment. The payment to Karen McDougal, the $150,000 to her to keep her quiet as well.

SO we're seeing the president's story continue to change from, I didn't know about these payments, well, I did know about these payments, they didn't break campaign finance violations, well, if they did, it was Michael Cohen's fault and not mine.

KING: But not my fault. Not my fault. He's the CEO of the operation. He's now the CEO of the country. And it's not his fault. It's Michael Cohen's fault. It's Paul Manafort's fault. It's Rick Gates' fault. It's Michael Flynn's fault. It's never his fault. That's a recurring theme here.

To that point, let's listen to a bit of that audio. This is Michael Cohen -- one of -- one of the president's arguments, and Rudy Giuliani made this clearly -- clear yesterday, he said, Michael Cohen wasn't so loyal. He was secretary recording the president. They have a point there. But the recordings are reporting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER LAWYER: I have spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with --

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?

COHEN: Funding. Yes. Um, and it's all the stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Allen Weisselberg is the CFO of the Trump Organization, who is now apparently cooperating with the Southern District of New York as well. So you have Michael Cohen's testimony. You have Mr. Weisselberg's testimony, a guy who knows the numbers, knows the books.

Now you have American Media, David Pecker, the president's long-time friend, who runs the "National Enquirer," the Southern District of New York releasing this just after Michael Cohen's sentencing yesterday. AMI made a payment in the amount of $150,000 -- you just heard about it on the tape there -- in cooperation, consultation and concert with and at the request and suggestion of one or more members or agents of a candidate's 2016 president campaign to ensure that a woman did not publicize damaging allegations about that candidate before the 2016 presidential election and thereby influence the election.

The president is trying to make the case, this is like John Edwards, it's not direct campaign finance violations. You have AMI, Michael Cohen, presumably Mr. Weisselberg. The president's getting lonely on this one.

PERRY BACON, SENIOR WRITER, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT: Right. I think with AMI, we are now away from the Michael Cohen's disloyal, he's a liar, because he has lied about things in front of Congress that is relevant here, to a broader group of people saying this was a conspiracy or a project to violate campaign finance law and hide these affairs. I think yesterday was significant. This news is really significant.

ZELDIN: And I agree with that. And I think that an additional piece of evidence is the manner in which the monies were paid and repaid. Remember, Michael Cohen sets up a limited liability company, essentials something or other, designed specifically for this payment. Then he's repaid through essentially being a straw employee of the Trump Organization. They jack is it up $430,000 so that it covers his taxes. Then they give him additional sort of bonus for doing it and they pay him in monthly increments. All that speaks to knowledge of the organization of which Trump is the, you know, CEO, as you called him. And so I think it undermines the notion that I relied on counsel.

The other point is that, of course, for the campaign, his FEC counsel was Don McGahn.

KING: Right.

[12:10:06] ZELDIN: So if he wanted to do it properly, he would have asked Don McGahn how to do it. Not do this, you know --

COLLINS: Great point.

ZELDIN: This, you know, circuitous way with Cohen.

KING: With a guy whose joint title is fixer and -- fixer and lawyer.

ZELDIN: Correct.

KING: And, to that point, another piece of this, Michael Cohen continues to cooperate. Michael Cohen says he shared his testimony before he went up to Congress and lied. He -- Michael Cohen says he lied in the sense that he told Congress the Trump Tower Moscow conversations ended very early in 2016. Mr. Trump's becoming a serious candidate. We decided, we've got to shut this down.

Now he says they went on through June, at a time when he was the presumptive nominee, at a time when he was saying let's ease sanctions on Russia, at a time when the Republicans were watering down their platform. Michael Cohen says this.

Now, listen to Lanny Davis, who's an attorney, who now says he's going to be a communications adviser to Michael Cohen, saying, guess what, the White House knew Michael Cohen lied.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LANNY DAVIS, ADVISER TO MICHAEL COHEN: They knew that the testimony was going to be what Michael Cohen knew to be false testimony about the Moscow Tower. So there's no question that President Trump knew what Michael's testimony would be. Mr. Trump and the White House knew that Michael Cohen would be testifying falsely to Congress and did not tell him not to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I mean, if that's true, if that's true, the jeopardy for the president is getting deeper and deeper or steeper and steeper. I don't know the right word for it, in the sense that implicated and now allegedly corroborating witnesses and felony campaign finance violations. If the White House was involved and the White House knew, Michael Cohen says this is what I'm going to tell the Senate, they know it's false and they don't stop him? KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST":

Right. I mean the question -- the other question is, is Michael Cohen just independently saying, hey, this is what I'm going to tell the Senate and never, you know, checked to see if maybe they said, oh, could you make sure that you don't tell the Senate this, right? So I mean there's a whole -- several other layers of trying to figure out what the discussions were that transpired and who was briefing who on what should be said before he actually came all the way to Congress and said things that he was now saying were lies.

And, you know, at the end of the day, Michael Cohen is the one who was sitting in that room, is the one that was being asked the question, is the one who perjured himself in that way, not the president. However, if there's direction here, if there's organization, if there's plans that are being laid before he actually gets to that point, that just makes it look worse and worse for the president. And, again, it undermines what we were talking about before, that he's tried to pin this entirely on his lawyer. If he knew, it's not really just a Michael Cohen game anymore.

COLLINS: And he is trying to pin it on his lawyer, but that's the question, are we supposed to believe that Michael Cohen came to the president and said, we've got to pay these two women who were alleging whatsoever. And President Trump, who is not just loose and free with his money, was like, OK, let's pay them each over six figures. That is really hard to believe for anyone who knows Donald Trump.

KING: Right, he's not known as a hands-off guy whatever the issue within his organization.

COLLINS: Right.

KING: Often to his credit --

COLLINS: (INAUDIBLE).

KING: Often to his credit, but he's not known as a hands-off guy. So, as I said, I don't know if it's steeper and steeper and deeper and deeper, but the president's troubles are mounting.

Up next for us, walls work. That's the new messaging strategy from the Department of Homeland Security. But the question is, can the department convince Congress that a wall is worth a government shutdown?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:17:20] KING: Welcome back.

To stone cold silence in the negotiations to avoid a partial government shutdown. Aides on Capitol Hill telling CNN, Democrats and Republicans still are not talking about the next steps. And there's an understanding that it's up to President Trump to counter and break the current stalemate.

This morning, the president did a version of that, tweeting, I often stated one way or the other Mexico is going to pay for the wall. This has never changed. Our new deal with Mexico and Canada, the USMCA, is so much better than the old, very costly and anti-USA NAFTA deal that just by the money we save Mexico is paying for the wall. It's an interesting way to do wall math.

That tweet making Senator Chuck Schumer, the topo Democrat in the Senate say, well then, OK, problem solved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D), MINORITY LEADER: Well, Mr. President, if you say Mexico is going to pay for the wall through NAFTA, which it certainly won't, then I guess we don't have to. Let's fund the government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: It's worth noting that the president did speak to his new counterpart in Mexico yesterday. A White House summary of that call makes zero -- that would be zero mention of Mexico paying for anything.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us live from Capitol Hill.

Phil, there's some confusion, obviously, and I'm going to try to do the trade deal math on paying for the wall. But, can you tell me, is there a clear path forward?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, if there's one benefit of how many of these fights we've been through up on Capitol Hill, it's that congressional staffers have any number of ways to thread the needle and get themselves out of this. They've been kind of crisis hardened, if you will, when it comes to legislating out of crises.

Here's the problem, and you mentioned it up top, they can't move until the president moves. We're told that the president and the White House have not been in discussions with House Democrats or leader Nancy Pelosi since a brief phone call after that meeting earlier this week. They have not been talking to Senate Democrats. And when you talk to Republicans in both chambers, they're not sure how to proceed because they don't know what the president actually wants.

In fact, I asked Senator John Cornyn earlier today, the number two ranked Senate -- Republican in the United States Senate, what his thought was on the president's broader strategy. He said, I don't know. And that's where people stand right now.

To give you a sense of kind of the uncertainty right now, I've been talking to a lot of staffers who have been paying very close attention to the president's Twitter account and noting that he hasn't fired back at Leader Pelosi, he hasn't fired back at Leader Schumer. And perhaps that's a sign or perhaps his tweet about Mexico that you read earlier, perhaps that's a sign that he's backing off.

The reality is, nobody really knows right now. They know it ebbs and flows and is a little bit like a roller coaster. And as the clock ticks down, there are pathways out of this. One thing that's certain, Democrats feel like they have the leverage and they're not going to budge. That means it's up to the president to do so and at this point nobody knows if the president's willing to.

John.

[12:20:01] KING: So we will wait to see if he blinks or has a counter proposal.

Phil Mattingly live on The Hill. Thank you very much.

Let's discuss it in the room. And Catherine Lucey from the "Associate Press" joins the conversation.

Here's one of the reasons the president is doing this, in the sense that look, he's been -- on two issues he's been very consistent, trade and immigration, throughout the campaign. For all his roller coasters, he's pretty consistent. But now he's -- after this election, the Republicans got shellac. They lost control of the House. The president's trying to, a, think about his re-election, b, an environment where the Mueller investigation continues, the Democrats are going to investigate him. So he's doubling down on the wall. Why?

A brand new poll we're releasing this hour. Do you favor building a wall along the entire border with Mexico? Eight in 10 Republicans, 81 percent, said yes. Only 38 percent of independents and only 7 percent of Democrats. So the president has lost most of the country here, but 80 percent of Republicans say build the wall. The president is trying to keep that base locked in.

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": That's right. I mean we've seen this again and again. When he's in doubt, he wants to go back to his base, he wants to reassure his base, and he really wants to give this promises kept message. And we saw him really lean into immigration rhetoric, wall rhetoric during the campaign. And he -- he credits that for the success they had in the Senate, if mean not the House, obviously.

So he's coming back to it. We've seen sort of some mixed messages throughout the week. I mean in addition to the meeting with Chuck --

KING: Some. You're being kind. You're being very kind.

LUCEY: We had the -- obviously the tweet today. But, you know, earlier in the week, the conversation about how a lot of the wall has been built, which they -- is not the case. A lot of the wall has not been built. There's been some, you know, some renovation of existing fencing. And we're kind of waiting -- I think the White House was surprise. And certainly some people in the White House were surprised by the tack he took in the meeting with the congressional leaders. And we really are sort of waiting out to see what he does. He has not fully unleashed.

KING: Here got baited. Yes, he got -- he got baited into that and he took the bait. LUCEY: Yes.

KING: But there's an interesting point. However this ends up, we're approaching the two-year mark and you have to give, you know, President Trump some grace. He was in the business community. He never worked in government. So you understand it doesn't -- the White House doesn't work in normal procedures.

But this is the number two Senate Republican. Phil just touched on this, John Cornyn. I don't understand the strategy, but maybe he's figured it out and he'll tell us in due course. But I don't understand it.

If your own party and the leaders of your own party, the people who have to carry the water for you and get this to the finish line don't have a clue what you're doing, how do you get things done?

DEMIRJIAN: Well, you keep everybody in doubt until you can make a deal maybe by yourself, which the president has seemed to try to do, but he's not somebody who follows through on the nitty-gritty that has to be done to actually get these things to the finish line.

Cornyn also is not somebody who normally is out there criticizing Trump. So the fact that it's him saying this tells you really quite how frustrated the GOP is.

I think that this is one of those moments at which you have to kind of wonder if the Republicans are just going to try to tune out the president and whatever the president is angling for and wants, because he can continue to play the public role. They have to decide whether or not to get the budget done. But -- and that's a question of, you know, will they end up calling the president's bluff. Will he veto the whole thing because he doesn't get his wall.

But, at this point, if you don't have that synergy between the Republicans on The Hill and the Republicans in the White House, it's kind of anybody's guess who's going to win out. And at the end of the day, if the president kind of gets distracted from that negotiating room, they may just decide to go it alone without him.

BACON: I do think Cornyn is being a tiny bit disingenuous here. The president is trying to, you know, get the wall built, have an extreme idea out there, negotiate toward the middle.

On the wall issue itself, we really have three parties. We have Trump and the House Freedom Caucus, we have the mainstream Republican that really don't care about the wall, then the Democrats. And part of this is that Republicans don't really want the wall that much in Congress and don't really want to fight for it.

KING: That's a great point because, listen here, this is Nancy Pelosi, who has now, we'll talk more about this part of it later, has now secured the votes to be the next speaker of the House. She was in the Oval Office when the Democrats, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, got President Trump to say, I'd be proud -- I'd be proud to shut down the government over border security. Nancy Pelosi today saying, explain. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: Does he want to have a government closed forever? I mean what's this about? I know he doesn't believe in government. I know he doesn't know that much about what is at risk to shut it down.

Let's talk about what we can do right now to keep government open. There is strong bipartisan support to do that. The only obstacle is the president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This, to me, is a very interesting gambit. She's betting, to your point, that they can't get it through the House, especially the moderates who just lost have no loyalty to President Trump, and that the House Republicans won't be able to get it through. Some House Republicans say the more Nancy Pelosi talks like that, maybe that will rally the Republicans to say, we have to do this. Let's not make it about the president, let's make it about Leader Pelosi. Where we going?

LUCEY: Well, isn't there also an issue with actually physically having enough Republicans in place to do a vote?

DEMIRJIAN: Right.

KING: Yes.

LUCEY: I mean it's brinksmanship on both sides. She's challenges him. The president certainly hasn't backed away. And people around the president also will argue that he is underestimated in moments like this and sometimes his strategies can, you know, sort of move the ball or, you know, make things -- make things happen.

[12:25:08] COLLINS: Potentially. And Democrats are clearly feeling smug after that meeting that everyone watched play out at the White House. But a lot of this does come between President Trump and Republicans who do not know what the president wants with this. He's saying today that the new NAFTA, USMCA, is going to pay for this. It hasn't even passed through Congress yet. So actually that hasn't even been clarified.

And also the president is the one who signed a budget at the earlier -- at the beginning of this year that had $1.6 billion funding for his border wall. Even that has not been spent. And it's the president who signed that $1.6. It was his White House budget director, Mick Mulvaney, who put that number in the budget. So that is why Republicans are essentially saying, what are we supposed to do now that you've changed your mind. Now you want all -- more of this money. Even though he begrudgingly signed that. That is raising the question.

But it does seem to be just the president and aides in the White House knowing they are not getting this $5 billion for this wall, but they want to be seen to their supports as making the argument for it. And that's why you see the president not only fights for that, but also say, well, we've got barbed wire plus happening. We've got this. That is not the wall his supporters were expecting when they voted for him.

KING: Barbed wire plus and the taxpayers paid for it.

All right, we'll keep it -- the clock is sticking, but we'll keep an eye on this one.

Up next, conflict of interest questions for a senior Republican senator. Why his stock purchasers raising eyebrows on Capitol Hill.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)