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Inside Politics

Soon: Stone in court after controversial Instagram post, CNN: DOJ preparing for Mueller report as early as next week, 2020 candidates hear voters' issues on campaign trail, Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 21, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

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[12:00:28] JOHN KING, CNN INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us. Long-time friend and confidant Roger Stone is due in court soon. After a social media posted included a targeting crosshairs and accused his trial judge of political bias. Plus, a word the new Attorney General is preparing to get a report from the Russia Special Counsel soon. How much of that you get to see remains a giant question. And a remarkable twist in a criminal case that provoked a lot of snap political judgments. Chicago police say, actor Jussie Smollett fabricated a hate crime.

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SUPERINTENDENT EDDIE JOHNSON, CHICAGO POLICE: I'm left hanging my head and asking why. Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations? To make things worse, the accusations within this phony attack received national attention for weeks. Celebrities, news commentators, and even presidential candidates weighed in on something that was choreographed by an actor.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Up first for us though, the Russian Special Counsel investigation and it's continuing fallout. One close confidant of President Trump, Roger Stone, due in court this afternoon. Another long-time Trump confidant, Michael Cohen, now on the calendar to testify before three

congressional committees, that before Mr. Cohen begins a prison sentence. And we have reporting today that the new Attorney General is preparing to receive a report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A lot to discuss, including how much of Mueller's work will be shared with the public. And a list of topics for Cohen's congressional testimony that is certain to infuriate the President.

But let's begin with that consequential court hearing coming up for Roger Stone. His trial on charges of lying and obstruction of justice still down the road of it. He's back in court for bad behavior while out on bail. An intimidating Instagram post that accuse the trial judge out of bias, included her photograph as well as an image of a gun site. CNN's Sara Murray is outside to the court house. Sara, call in quickly by this judge who must be angry, what do we expect?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, she certainly must be aggravated. And, look, she called this hearing after Roger Stone and his attorney submitted a formal apology to the court for that post, which, as you noted, Roger put on his Instagram and then he took it down.

But she has a number of options in her filing calling this hearing. She basically said she wanted to see Roger Stone in person here so that he could explain for himself why she should not change his requirements right now, he's out on bail, or change the requirements around his gag order.

She put a pretty lenient gag order on Roger Stone. His attorneys are not allowed to talk about the case. But the only restriction he has been under is that he can't talk about the case here in and around the courthouse.

Now, that could change in court. She could decide that she wants a harsher gag order for Roger Stone, she could decide she wants to place a fine on him, or, John, depending on what she sees in this courtroom today, she could decide that Roger Stone should be awaiting his trial in jail. That would obviously be a very severe restriction. It's something the same judge did to Paul Manafort when he was caught witness tampering. So there are many options she has. And she's a lot of leeway, John, on what she decides to do today.

KING: Well, a fascinating afternoon for Roger Stone. We will see how this one plays out. Sara, I appreciate the live reporting. Keep us posted.

With me in studio to share the reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Catherine Lucey with the Associated Press, CNN's Evan Perez and Lisa Lerer with The New York Times.

Evan, let me start with you, and I want to just show our viewers this Instagram post, which, look, we know if you're on the Trump's side of this, if you're charge with this, you want to say, witch hunt, you want to say, you know, corrupt prosecutors. This is beyond. This makes witch hunt look tame. A photo of the judge, where we've blurred it out, that says, "Legal trickery deep state hit man Robert Mueller has guaranteed my upcoming show trial, this is before judge Amy Berman Jackson. The Obama reappointed judge who dismissed the Benghazi charges against Hilary Clinton, incarcerated Paul Manafort prior to his conviction fixed is in. You just don't do that, period."

For all the norm busting we talk about at the age of Trump, you don't do that ever. So what happens.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: No, you don't do that ever. And especially because - you know, not only because this is actually a threat on the judge. I mean, the U.S. Marshals take this very, very seriously. They probably have to increase her security to make sure that she is protected. But he's also off base. I mean, the idea that this is somehow that the Mueller prosecutors were able to pick a judge is just not true. And the fact that she's an Obama appointee is irrelevant in this case.

So I think Roger Stone is trying to use these types of things to raise money for his defense. I think that's what his main goal here.

[12:05:01]

But he really went way over the line here. He understood that it seems very quickly because he took it down and he's apologized, but he's not withdrawing the accusation essentially that this is some kind of a fixed situation.

KING: Right. Do we know, and it's an odd one, but because the judge has to call him in, can Roger Stone now credibly make the case that I deserve a new judge for my trial because this has become personal?

PEREZ: No, you don't. You don't get to do that. You don't get to try to conflict the judge by attacking the judge. That is definitely not the way you do it.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And it's interesting because Roger Stone has been complaining about his treatment basically from the very beginning of this process, which is extraordinary considering that he has really been given a lot of, you know, leeway and the judge has been trying to get him to protect himself. And he's sort of proven in this instance that he can't really be trusted to do what he wants to do, to say what he wants to say, because he can get himself in real trouble, not just with the jury but potentially with the judge as well.

And, Evan, you said that he realized what he did. But I would suspect that his lawyers realized what he did much more quickly than he did, and they said to him, look, this is not optional. You must take this down because you're putting yourself in some real - in a really difficult stuff in an already difficult case for you.

KING: So we'll watch this one play out this afternoon. We'll see if Roger Stone gets new restrictions. I do suspect at least a more strict gag order or maybe he goes to jail, we'll watch that one. And a reminder, that means that trial is going to go on for months. We'll talk in a minute about the Mueller reports. Some people say, the Mueller report is coming. This is going to be over. No.

And now, let's move on to Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen now has a date with three congressional committees before he goes to prison. This is the scope of the testimony to one, the House Oversight Committee, which is working with the House Intelligence Committee. Trump's debts and payments relating to efforts to influence the 2016 election, Trump's compliance with financial disclosure requirements, Trump's compliance with campaign finance laws, compliance with tax laws, potential and actual conflicts of interest, business practices, Washington D.C. hotel, public statements and their accuracy, foundations have potentially fraudulent practices, efforts to intimidate Cohen not to testify.

If the President reads this list, he is not happy. Democrats clearly see with their new aggressive oversight an opportunity here. LISA LERER, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Right. And, look, we've talked so many times on this show about how this matter in Congress is extremely political. And so part of what we'll see is this political process is playing out. As democrats try to get answers and make the President - essentially make the President look bad, look corrupt in some way. And as the republicans try to undercut Cohen's credibility, questioning what they think are shady deals with his family, things that the President has raised to try to undercut his ability to be taken seriously as a witness of the President's potential misdoings.

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS: I also think, with Cohen, it's important to remember that - and as we see potentially a resolution or at least moving towards the Mueller case, we have this other probe in New York, and that's the one that a lot of people in the White House has been more worried about. So a lot of this material that you're talking about are things that really make the President nervous.

KING: Which is a great point because it also begs the question, even as Mueller prepares to shut down, as we believe there's still so much we don't know. We don't know what the Southern District of New York has. We don't know the entirety of what Mueller has handed over to other prosecutions and other offices around the country. We'll get to more of that in a minute.

But we do know this, that they did seize - the Southern District of New York seized from Michael Cohen tapes. One of the things Michael Cohen says is that the President was in on the hush money payments for Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. One of the things Michael Cohen says that the President denies, his campaign denies, is that he knew these were campaign violations when he did it, when orchestrated the hus payments.

One of the things that Michael Cohen has, and since this is in the public record, I wouldn't be surprised if it's used at the committee, is the President's own voice.

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MICHAEL COHEN, DONALD TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David so that - i'm going to do that right away. I've actually come up and I've spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to to set the whole thing up with funding.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: So what do we get to pay for this?

COHEN: Yes. And it's all the stuff.

TRUMP: Yes, I was thinking about that.

COHEN: And I spoke to Allen about it when it comes time for the financing, which will be --

TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing? COHEN: Well, I have to pay him something.

TRUMP: [INAUDIBLE] pay with cash.

COHEN: No, no, no, no,no. I got it.

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KING: I mean, just in that little snippet, and we don't know how much more prosecutors have, David, the publisher of the National Enquirer, Mr. Weisselberg, the CFO of the Trump Organization. That is why, number one, the Cohen hearings will be a remarkable theater and potentially illuminating, but number two, it's just a taste, just a snippet of what we don't know what investigators are looking at.

PEREZ: But can I just note one small thing. This is going to be happening while the President is conducting foreign relations in Vietnam, right? This is - it's almost like the democrats took a look at the calendar and saw the perfect day to do this.

PHILIP: Yes. I mean, it's going to be extremely embarrassing to the President. That's the one thing that we know. Because Michael Cohen, whether or not these things are necessarily illegal or putting the President in any kind of legal jeopardy, they are going to be embarrassing to him.

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And Michael Cohen has absolutely no reason to protect President Trump anymore, unlike a lot of people who have been dragged before these committees and Congress. He's not going to be saying, well, I'm not going to talk about my conversations with the President. He's going to talk about his conversations with the President and talk about everything that's been going on in the Trump Organization that he might have been a part of.

And so, you know, I don't know whether it's going to amount to anything. But certainly at a time when President Trump is traveling overseas, he's already spoken about how embarrassing these kinds of probes are to him, how he believes they diminish him on the world stage, and this is going to be yet another example of something like that. That's going to be right there for the world to see.

LUCEY: And, you know, the last time he went and met with Kim Jong-Un in Singapore, he was thrilled with the press coverage. You know, days that sort of blocked out everything else. And certainly the second time is not quite the same as the first. But if this breaks through, as he is trying to conduct high the sort of high stakes diplomacy, he's not going to take that long.

KING: And a reminder, at February 2019, this is a cloud over the President since day one, and it's getting closer and closer to 2020 as well. Keep track on that up.

Next, coming soon, to an Attorney General near you, the long awaited Special Counsel report, why there is chance you'll never read a word of it.

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[12:15:23] KING: The minted new Attorney General, Bill Barr, is preparing for a giant early test. Sources telling CNN Barr is making preparations to receive a report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller as early as next week. That would be a crossroads moment for the country both legally and politically.

A little Special Counsel 101 here. Mueller is required to provide the Attorney General with, quote, closing documentation. That means Mueller submits a confidential report to the Attorney General explaining the case as he investigated and why he decided not to pursue others. Then it's the Attorney General's turn. Barr will notify the House and the Senate Judiciary Committees about Mueller's conclusions. And then he has some discretion about what to include.

He can also determine if publicly releasing the report or parts of it is in the public interest. Among the factors the Attorney General will consider, grand jury secrecy rules, the desire to protect classified sources and methods and the reputations of people interviewed and perhaps investigated but not charged. How much do you get to know and see was a hot topic at his confirmation hearing.

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WILLIAM BARR, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I also believe it is very important that the public and Congress be informed of the results of the Special Counsel's work.

I'm in favor of as much transparency as there can be consistent with the rules and the law.

It's really important to let the chips fall where they may and get the information out.

My goal and intent is to get as much information out as I can consistent with the regulations.

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KING: It's the consistent with the rules and the law, consistent with the regulations. He sounded like he wanted to be transparent. But if you're skeptical of that, you can also say, no, he's going to hide behind the rules and regulations. What do we know about his mindset? Is he for as much as I can or for less as I can or least I can?

PEREZ: Well, look, I think in the conversations that I've heard about going on in the Justice Department, and one of the things I think he is very mindful of is the idea that probably someday all of this report might come out. We don't know whether the democrats and people in the Congress might file a lawsuit, whether a court will side with them. But he has to sort of make the assumption that it's going to come out. So he's mindful of that because he's going to get massacred if he's seen as hiding something to protect the President.

But at the same time, you know, if the Special Counsel, if the FBI investigated someone and decided they couldn't bring charges, it didn't reach the standard to bring charges, then it's unfair to air all of the things that you think they might have done wrong but which doesn't reach to the level of criminal behavior.

So I think that's where he's sort of caught in between those two [INAUDIBLE].

KING: So let me give you the flip side to that, and I'm not sure this should apply. I don't - logic and Washington should not be in the same sentence. Here is Democratic Congressman Jim Himes to your point saying, well, Jim Comey screwed this up when it came to Hillary Clinton, so why not apply the same standard now?

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REP. JIM HIMES (D), C.T.: The FBI and the Department Justice, for better or for worse, crossed that bridge a long time ago when FBI Director Jim Comey decided to tell the American public not once, but twice, that then-candidate Hillary Clinton was under investigation. And then remember the very public announcement that, gosh, we didn't find anything. That was an unusual statement of no finding and investigation that actually may have had a substantial impact on the election of 2016.

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KING: It's hard to argue with in some ways. However, is that - should - everyone was mad about what Comey did in 2016 except for maybe the Trump campaign in hindsight at the end, but we should apply that standard now?

PHILIP: It's a really - that's a hard argument to make. I mean, isn't Barr - one of the things Barr, I think, probably wants to do is to fix some of those perception problems over at the Justice Department, that this is a place where people just go out and have press conferences and just say all kinds of things about people who were not being charged with Any kind of crime.

And, you know, to sort of apply the Comey standard to this is a little hypocritical on the democrat side, but it would also be, I think, compounding and already damaging problem for the department that is really in bad shape in terms of public perception and in terms of their ability to really do what they are supposed to be doing, which is carrying out investigations without it all being out for the world to see.

With that being said, this is an extraordinary investigation. And I do think something is going to have to come out. And to Evan's point, more than Barr wants to come out is probably going to end up coming out.

[12:20:01] LERER: And it's hard for me to see given the politics of the Democratic Party right now, how anything that Barr puts out will be sufficient to satisfy the democrats. They are inherently going to want more. This was a major piece of why they took control of the House. There are, I don't know, what, 10,000 democrats running for president right now. This is - they know that the number one thing all democratic voters want is the person who can beat President Trump. They are fired up about impeachment, they are fired up about the Russia investigation. There is no way that - there may be a handful of voices talking about the integrity of the Justice Department, but no one is going to be hearing them because the din from the rest of them is going to be overwhelming.

KING: Let's flip the coin. Here is Mueller's scorecard so far, four people sentenced to prison, one person conviction at trial, seven guilty pleas, 37 people and entities charged with crimes, 199 overall criminal counts, including in these investigations just about anybody around the President and his campaign that's been interviewed by the Special Counsel.

So the President has an interest here. You know his instinct is, as little as possible, please keep this under wraps. That's his instinct. But a politico had fun with this with this headline, Trump butters up Barr amid signs of Mueller conclusion. That's the line there. And here is the President yesterday. Look, we've watched the President attack Jeff Sessions, attacked Rosenstein, attacked the FBI, undermined every institution of law enforcement in the country. Bill Barr came up yesterday at the White House and --

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REPORTER: Mr. President, should the Muller report be released when you're abroad next week?

TRUMP: That will be totally up to the new Attorney General. He's a tremendous man, a tremendous person who really respects this country and respects the Justice Department, so that will be totally up to him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PHILIP: That's a dangerous territory to be in if you're Bill Barr, I would say.

LUCEY: I mean, Bill Barr is in a very difficult position. The President is watching this very closely, and is sure going to be making his feelings know in a variety of ways, even if it's just like this.

KING: But whether you believe it or not, that was exactly the right thing to say from the President of the United States right there.

Up next, there's a growing list of 2020 hopeful jockeys to replace President Trump. What are the issues that really matter to you, people outside of Washington?

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[12:26:52] KING: The field of 2020 presidential candidates is large, diverse, getting too big to fit all on one magazine cover. Take a look here. The New Time captures the crowd of some but far from all, presidential hopefuls, each of those on the outside there jockeying for their chance to replace the man on the other side of the glass.

Now, that man, the President, calls most of those looking in socialists. The early 2020 chatter here in Washington also has a lot of talk about race, diversity, fundraising, even DNA tests.

On the trail, what voters want to talk about though is often different than the cable chatter.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is your stance on gun violation and gun regulation and the impact that [INAUDIBLE] have in our communities?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Universal pre-K, universal higher ed, Medicare for all. How do we pay for it all?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have a 14-year-old son who has a life- threatening disability. I am wondering if you would consider co- sponsoring Senate Bill 102, the Drug Company Pricing Bill?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How can we get away from pharmaceutical companies being such an influence on doctors?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm a mother of a combat veteran. He's self- employed. He has no other health insurance other than the VA. What are we going to do about this? We can't treat our veterans this way.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She's been about immigration with a [INAUDIBLE] that I appreciate.

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KING: Sahil Kapur with Bloomberg joins our conversation. Play that sound just to - sort of to remind - I'm one of the Senators. I don't say this from any high position. You know, Bernie Sanders, no way, right? That's what everyone said when he ran against Hillary Clinton in 2016. They like to put a lot of dents in the aircraft carrier. Donald trump, republican nominee? Come on, that's never going to happen. How disconnected are we here from what's happening out there in what I call real America?

SAHIL KAPUR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, BLOOMBERG: Yes. It's going to be a very unpredictable cycle. I mean, just look at the fundraising numbers. Bernie Sanders raised $6 million, I think, in 24 hours. That shows he's going to be funded for the long-haul. He can stay deep into the primary cycle. How does that square with Elizabeth Warren and her Economic message? Are they going to take votes from each other? The voters that are showing in these town halls to ask candidates questions are less ideological than the people on Twitter driving the conversation. That's also another factor. They're talking about healthcare and prescription drug prices, a little bit less so the Green New Deal coming up at town halls. But these are all things that the people are going to be considering and this is going to be an unpredictable cycle.

LERER: I think what seems to be very clear, and, I mean, it is so early. I cannot stress how extremely early. Like at The New York Times had a chart this week that showed how much earlier this is with people getting in than any other race, really, even that crowded republican primary last time around.

But the one thing we do here is that democratic voters are deeply concerned with electability. They want to know who can beat Donald Trump. That is the overwhelming concern. The problem is they all have different views on what that person looks like. Some people think it's more moderate, some people think it's a pragmatist, some people think it's a progressive liberal, some people think it's a woman. It's all over the map. So they don't agree on what electability looks like, but they know they want it.

KING: But they have time to think about it.

LERER: They have a lot of time.

KING: They can define it and redefine it and maybe redefine it again as it plays out, which is a good thing. One of the great things about the campaign so far is the historically diverse democratic field.

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That's not taking sides for democrats.