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Nadler Subpoena's for Full Report; Mueller Leaves Obstruction to Congress; Testimony from Trump Advisers in Report. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 19, 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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[12:00:25] JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

The Mueller report gets a Trump Twitter nickname, crazy. This as the president realizes the 400-plus ages are dominated by his own aides discussing a White House culture of lies, temper and retribution.

Plus, House Democrats demand more. A new subpoena today calls on the Justice Department to quickly turn over a full, unredacted report, plus all the evidence the special counsel collected.

And, how will the findings go over outside of Washington? Democratic candidates, they're asked much more about health care and job. Voter reaction so far, tends to track party loyalty.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LINDA WELLS, REPUBLICAN VOTER: We're sick of hearing about it. I think Washington, they want to focus on it. Those people want to. But for us, my friends, we're sick of hearing about the Mueller.

SUSAN NIEDERFRANK, DEMOCRATIC VOTER: I think I've been reading about it for a long, long time, and it seems like I'm not sure anything is going to change.

PAM MASILOTTI, INDEPENDENT VOTER: The full report needs to be fully disclosed to everybody. We have a right to see the full report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And we'll begin there.

The president's tune, and his tone, on the Mueller report is shifting today as he soaks in the details and the media coverage. Quote, total exoneration was his immediate take yesterday, even though the often damning report did no so much thing. Today, the report gets a nickname, and the president calls it total BS, though he used the full word, not the shorthand.

He's mad because he's learning the report repeatedly quotes people who work for the president describing his efforts to thwart the special counsel investigation. Quote, statements were made about me by certain people in the crazy Mueller report in itself written by 18 angry Democrats, Trump haters, the president tweets, which are fabricated and totally untrue. The president goes on to say that some of those statements are, quote, total, again, BS. He uses the full word. You can see it right there, and only given to make the other person look good or me look back. This was an illegally started hoax that should never have happened.

There's new reaction on day two from the Democrats as well. The House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler serving the Department of justice with a subpoena for every last word of the report and the evidence used to write it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JERRY NADLER (D-NY): We need the entire report unredacted and the underlying documents in order to make informed decisions.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Including the grand jury evidence.

NADLER: Including the grand jury evidence, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Chairman Nadler writes this, I cannot accept any proposal which leaves most of Congress in the dark as they grapple were their duties of legislation, oversight and constitutional accountability. Even the redacted version of the report, Chairman Nadler says, outlines serious instances of wrongdoing by President Trump and some of his closest associates. It now falls to Congress to determine the full scope of that alleged misconduct and decide what steps we must take going forward.

Let's go straight up live to Capitol Hill. CNN's Manu Raju joins us there.

Manu, the Democrats didn't wait. Just 24 hours. There's the subpoena. What's next?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the subpoena for the full report. They want it -- they have a deadline by May 1st. They're not expecting to get compliance from the Justice Department. And if they don't get compliance, expect a court fight for the full report and the grand jury information.

At the same time, expect hearings first starting with Bill Barr before the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and also Robert Mueller, who Jerry Nadler is calling to come before his committee, Adam Schiff wants him to testify before the House Intelligence Committee.

And Jerry Nadler made clear just moments ago in a radio interview that he wants to have major hearings with players as part of his investigation into potential obstruction of justice. That's going to be a major focus of his committee going forward, what exactly happened? He said in the same radio interview that he does not believe the president would have been indicted on obstruction of justice charges had it not been for the Justice Department's policy saying that a sitting president cannot be indicted. And he also said that he does not want to pursue impeachment, or he said that the idea is not to pursue impeachment at this point. He said the idea is to investigate who did what and then decide what to do about it. Then we'll decide what row to go down.

So, John, you're going to see investigations happening on multiple fronts, the obstruction part, the part of the House Judiciary probe. The House Intelligence Committee wants to continue to look into the financial aspects of the president's organization, whether he has any ties to foreign interests, Russian interests. That is something that is not clear whether or not the Mueller investigation fully looked into the redacted report, really didn't reveal anything about that. So you're going to see Democrats pursue the investigations on multiple fronts, even as folks on the left are demanding impeachment and leaders are putting -- trying to throw cold water on that. And Jerry Nadler, who's in charge of any impeachment proceedings saying that's not the focus right now. The focus is on the investigation and potential obstruction of justice.

John.

[12:05:07] KING: Manu Raju live on Capitol Hill. Appreciate the live reporting.

My biggest question from your perspective up there is, will Mueller say yes? And, if so, when will he come up?

With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Kaitlan Collins, Sahil Kapur with "Bloomberg," CNN legal analysts Shan Wu, and Karoun Demirjian with "The Washington Post."

Let me ask you, just quickly, as a former prosecutor, is Chairman Nadler's view, as relayed by Manu there, correct, in your view, that if the Justice Department written guidelines were, you don't indict a sitting president, you can't indict a sitting president, is that the case Mueller makes, does he make a case, is there a strong enough case in that report, in your view, to charge somebody with obstruction of justice?

SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Oh, absolutely. I think it's very clear that Mueller was explaining to the public and to Congress that, here are the facts, here's a road map for how he would have been indicted. And unlike what Barr wanted us to believe, Mueller references the Office of Legal Counsel's opinion. He also does a really beautiful job starting about page 159 analyzing the counterarguments that Barr had really made in his memo as to why you cannot indict a sitting president for obstruction and completely destroys those arguments.

KING: So let me ask you another question now and put it into a political context. If you are asked by House Democrats, they're not ready to go there, they're not anywhere close to go there. We'll have the political conversation about this in a minute. But could you prosecute an impeachment case based on that document?

WU: Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean if you can prosecute -- to me, if you can prosecute a criminal case, can you prosecute an impeachment case.

KING: Impeachment.

So let's get to that conversation. And let me read -- let me read because it is interesting watching the reaction. The Democrats, most of the Democrats say let's go slow. Let's ask for -- Barr is already scheduled to come back up. Let's get Mueller in the chair. Let's demand the full report. Let's see what was redacted. Let's see if we can get our hands on the investigative files to see if there's even more in there. And they're guided by this. This is what Robert Mueller said in his report. With respect to whether the president can be found to have obstructed justice by exercising his powers under Article Two of the Constitution, we concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a president's corrupt use of this authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice.

So that -- we'll get more into Bill Bar later. That is Robert Mueller saying essentially, as I put it yesterday, I can't be the fire department because I'm not allowed to prosecute. But here, here's my smoke.

SAHIL KAPUR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "BLOOMBERG": It's going to elevate an already heated debate inside the Democratic Party about whether to pursue impeachment. There are progressives who say the evidence is already compelling, that it would set a horrible precedent if they simply let the president skate on this without a trial. Have the trial. Let the chips fall where they may. Let voters decide.

The other side of it, and where leaders fall right now, is that they don't have the votes to remove him and that pursuing impeachment would be an all-consuming affair and would drown out their message. And they feel tested in 2018, running on economics, running on health care, basically ignoring the president, and it worked. Most of the country hasn't made up their mind about him. There are not a lot of votes to be had for an impeachment trial.

KING: Right. And you know from looking at the statements from Republicans yesterday, which, it's really interesting, a modern day Republican Party founded on standing up to the Soviet Union, now the Russians, and on a strong law and order platform say this is total exoneration, time to move on. If you read the report, it's not anything close to that.

But in the political environment, is censure a backup option. Could the Democrats pass a censure resolution? They have the majority and maybe quiet the pro-impeachment forces but still go on the record taking some sanction against the president?

KAROUN DEMIRJIAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I'm not sure that you can actually do that in a way that's -- you can censure your own in Congress, but that sort of a move would not actually satisfy what the -- the people who are pro-impeachment in the Democratic Party want. They can make statements all the time. They can go on television absolutely ever hour of the day, it's still not what they want. They want something that's as formal, as bad as where things got in the Nixon years and that's the goal and that's what the Democrats are weighing the option of whether they can do.

And there's a reality of this, which is that you have not, as you pointed out, heard Republicans express any willingness or any openness to this at that point. Part of this may be just because I seriously doubt that most of the rank and file members of Congress have actually read this entire report and are familiar with all of the details. They have been thrust into the political interpreting sphere since even before the report came out and they haven't let go of that. Even the champions of transparency, like Chuck Grassley, are, you know, sending out statements within a few hours of it coming out saying, oh, congratulations, Barr, for upholding that standard.

In order for them to get off that spin, they're going to have to find something very specific. And I think this is what's going to be really interesting to behold if and when Mueller gets to The Hill because people will continue to spin around Barr because that's where we are. That's what we've been doing. But Mueller's a different story. And once they synthesize this report over a weekend, we may -- we may hear discussion, but right now there's no cracks in that armor. And if there's not, Nancy Pelosi's not going to go ahead.

KING: And I'll come back to this in a second and I'll come back in greater detail to the president in a few minutes, in our next segment.

But I just want to get at the top of the program, what changed? How did he go from the "Game of Thrones" image, the total exoneration, to, giving it a Twitter nickname? That tells you it's got his attention and he's mad about it. The crazy Mueller report now. The BS. It's Holy Week. I'm not going to -- it's Holy Week for Christians, it's Holy Weekend for Jews. I'm not going to start throwing profanities around the air today.

[12:10:05] KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Probably best.

KING: But to use the -- you know, to BS.

COLLINS: Yes. And this is the predicament that the president is in, that he is counting on the conclusions from this report, no collusion, that he didn't obstruct justice. In the White House's view that's what they're banking on. But then he's also got a problem with the other aspect of the report that are embarrassing and unflattering to him, and that tweet, he didn't name Don McGahn, the former White House counsel, but he might as well have tagged him in it because it was a very clear and direct message, he -- implying that his notes on what the president said were made up.

But the report is so much more than just what Don McGahn said. The worst quote or most damning quote, I think, is what the president said after the special counsel was appointed. And that's a quote that came from Jeff Session' chief of staff, not from Don McGahn's note.

DEMIRJIAN: Yes.

COLLINS: So it's really the entire report. And the president does not like negative coverage. Often an event can happen. The president will not have an opinion on it one way or the other. But if there is negative coverage of it, that's what gets to the president.

And that's what you saw play out yesterday. But, yes, there was talk about the collusion. Of course there was talk about obstruction. But there was also a lot of talk about the fact that the president's aides are trying to circumvent him and subvert his orders that he gives them because they either want to protect themselves legally or they don't want to make the president to make this destructive political decision. And he doesn't like that.

KING: He doesn't like that. And more on that as we come back.

Up next, what the president's reading today and why he's so angry.

But first, one Democrat having a little bit of fun here in the wake of the Mueller report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE COHEN (D-TN): And I want to say, I want to announce my candidate for president in 2020.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What does that say? Not Trump.

COHEN: Not Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[12:15:46] KING: Back now to the anger the president is showing today and why. In his tweets labeling the Mueller report crazy, it is clear just what has the president so animated. Quote, watch out for people that take so-called notes, the president laments. Among those who took notes and shared them, as Kaitlan just noted, is the former White House Counsel Don McGahn. Don McGahn among at least 21 -- among at least 21 -- let me say that again -- close Trump aides and advisers quoted in the Mueller report and its footnotes. That list includes former top strategist Steve Bannon, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks.

Their account of the president's conduct and character is beyond damning. "The New York Times" captures it perfectly here. Quote, the White House that emerges from the more than 400 pages of Mr. Mueller's report is a hotbed of conflict infused by a culture of dishonesty, defined by a president who lies to the public and his own staff, then tries to get his aids to lie for him. He was saved from an accusation of the obstruction of justice, the report makes clear, in part because aides saw danger and stopped him from following his own instincts.

CNN's Michael Warren joins our conversation.

Again, the president is right and all Americans should be happy Robert Mueller says there was no criminal conspiracy with the Russians. But if you stop there, then this is a great report for the president of the United States. If you read the report, it's a horrible report for the president of the United States. MICHAEL WARREN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, and I think it's worth reading it

if you can get through all 400 pages because you have examples great and small of exactly what "The New York Times" described there.

KING: Not from 18 angry Democrats. Not from anonymous sources. But from -- put some of these footnotes up on the screen if we have -- we have the footnotes here. And I didn't mean to interrupt, but I just want to make this point. The president says it's angry Democrat. It's the deep state. Just on this page alone, it's his former White House Counsel Don McGahn, his trusted chief strategist Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus, his first chief of staff, Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, Hope Hicks, who came to the White House from the Trump Organization and was at his side throughout the campaign. These are people who were and some who still are loyal to the president, but they understood where they were sitting and they had to tell the truth.

WARREN: That's right. And the combination of all of their testimony, I think, tells an interesting story. There's one moment in -- at one point where the president has a letter, a resignation letter, from Jeff sessions, the attorney general, in which he's got it in his pocket. They're on a foreign trip to the Middle East. And he shares, according to Hope Hicks, shares this letter with some people on Air Force One. On that same trip, according to Reince Priebus, somebody else interviewed by Mueller's investigation, Reince Priebus asked for this left and the president claimed that it was back at the White House. It's a -- sort of a small but revealing episode.

I think the -- the question here is, politically, is this kind of view of the president, that he lies about things big and small, is that baked into the -- to the vote's mind about who he is? Anybody who is on the fence about the president anyway, and particularly anybody who's on the fence going to have their minds changed by reading this? I think that's a big political question.

COLLINS: Well, and there's two points. Basically this report is showing all of these things that the staffers said about the president behind his back. Very different things than what they've said publically about the president. Things that they actually thought about the president, which is pretty revealing in and of itself. But it -- of course, it all starts with the top. It was the president pressuring people to lye, telling them to deny stories that were true, to make up timelines that did not occur. And it was the president who was encouraging a lot of what happened, a lot of damning events that are in here.

Two, a lot of people who sat down with the special counsel are questioning the original White House strategy to fully cooperate, to give them every document, to make every person available to sit down with them because, of course, once they go in there, they could be subject to lying to federal investigators, so they're going to tell the truth, and the truth is not a very flattering portrayal of what's going on.

KING: Right. And to that point, I mean, remember, as they were going in, many of them going in, they knew Manafort was charged, Gates was charged, Flynn was charged, Michael Cohen later charged. I mean people went to jail for their lies. People went to jail for their lies. That's why.

I just want to bring in some new reporting from our chief Washington correspondent, anchor of "THE LEAD," Jake Tapper. He says a senior administration official tells him, regarding the Mueller report, says that it's, quote, nothing surprising that the president makes absurd demands of his staff and administration officials who are alarmed by them and reluctant to follow them. It's only unsurprising because it has become the norm.

[12:20:10] Again, this is -- I -- this reporting is important to sort of understand the mindset there, but this is what is -- from day one of this administration, whether it's law and order issues like this, which is critically important, or immigration policy or tax policy or health care policy. Being told by people, pay no attention to what the president says. Pay no attention to what the president tweets. He's a temperamental hothead, sometimes he's a blow hard. These are people who work for him. These are not our words. Just watch what we do, not what he says.

KAPUR: It's a crucial point because the Mueller report details at least half a dozen instance of the president's aides and advisers refusing to carry out directives, you know, on -- that came from the president. And this partially -- this may be partly why the president didn't get into deeper hot water on obstruction of justice because Mueller says the president tried but he did not succeed because these people refused his orders. I wonder if that's something that's also affecting the president. And this is something that, you know, one of the reasons that democratic institutions can survive authoritarian tendencies is people say, no, because they know the law is more powerful than any individual, even the president.

KING: And they were smart enough to note that they didn't want to go to jail.

DEMIRJIAN: Although you have to wonder what might have happened if he'd actually talked to Trump, because a lot of the things you can't necessarily substantiate intent unless you talk to the guy, and they never made him available.

But also -- and also you have to wonder, if we had seen this sort of a report near the beginning of Trump's presidency, how shocked we would have been by that because it has become the norm. People have become kind of immune and used to the pattern, which is not going to change.

KING: Right.

DEMIRJIAN: The president is going to continue to spin this report and other -- and pressure others to do the same going forward as well. And so that -- we may be inoculated to that too given where we come from.

KING: And he can't get inoculated in the sense that if he continues to do it and it's outside the norms, or if it's outside the law, we should be shocked by it and we should continue to think of it as news, even though you do get this point like, oh, yes, he always does thing like this.

I just want to show you the list. Again, as the president attacks the report, he calls it BS, he doesn't want you to believe it. He doesn't want you to believe it. Look at the number of people. These are not Trump haters. He says angry Democrats. He says Trump haters. These are people who worked for this president in the campaign, some of them in the Trump Organization as well, worked for them in the White House and various agencies of government. These are people loyal to the president.

Among them -- among them, Sarah Sanders, the current press secretary, who, when Jim Comey was fired says that she was just overwhelmed with calls from rank and file FBI people saying thank you, Mr. President. The Mueller report says that was BS. Founded on nothing. This is Sarah Sanders explaining this, trying to, today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I said the slip of the tongue was in using the word "countless." I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democrat Party that went out for two and a half years and stated time and time again that there was definitely Russian collusion between the president and his campaign.

I said that it was in the heat of the moment, meaning it wasn't a scripted thing. It was something that I said.

The big takeaway here is that the sentiment is 100 percent accurate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The sentiment is not 100 percent accurate. It wasn't then and it isn't now. Comey was -- had some issues, but he was actually pretty well-liked when he was running the bureau.

Number two, I have some empathy because of who she works for. She's essentially told to lie every day. But should we, or more importantly you at home, I mean, how do you believe anything they say?

COLLINS: Well, that's the point. It's not -- this is not just pitting the White House against the press corps that covers the White House. That's a taxpayer funded press secretary. So when she makes a comment from the podium, she says it's a slip of the tongue. She actually made it multiple times. And I was there that day. A reporter gave her the chance to walk it back. They said, really, Sarah, countless people have called you from the FBI? She said, yes, she had received e-mails and texts from a large number of people at the FBI, even though she gave the caveat she didn't know that many people who worked at the FBI.

WARREN: The --

KING: Mueller, the former FBI director, I think made it a point to put that in the report, even though Mueller not -- not a giant fan of James Comey either if you read the entire report. But -- I'm sorry. WARREN: Just -- the press secretary is sort of unique among people in a White House. The entire credibility of the her job is based on the idea that the people who were asking her questions in the press room, or these days the press gaggles, are -- maybe they're getting spin on it, maybe they're getting certain information left out, but they're at least getting some kind of truth. I think this -- her entire credibility, such as it was, real, really damaged by this.

DEMIRJIAN: Right. As we've --

KING: Yes, I lived through this in the Clinton/Lewinsky days when I was covering the White House. And it's hard. It's a hard job.

WARREN: Yes.

KING: But, you're right, you can -- you can understand your loyalty to the boss. You can try to spin things as favorably as you can of your boss. But on basic truths, what day of the week it is, did you get a phone call, did you get an e-mail, you can't make that stuff up. I'll stick with stuff.

[12:24:45] Up next, the big divide between what the attorney general says and what Robert Mueller said and what the Russia special counsel actually wrote.

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KING: The Attorney General Bill Barr and the Russia Special Counsel Bob Mueller have a relationship dating back decades. But the release of the Mueller report just might strain that friendship. Why? What the attorney general says, at least especially what he said yesterday, very different than what Robert Mueller and his team actually wrote in the report.

Let's just look at one example here as we explore Barr versus Mueller, which has been a dynamic now as you read through the report.

Let's start by listening to the attorney general about the degree of cooperation from the Trump campaign and White House.

[12:30:04] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: Nonetheless, the White House fully cooperated with the special counsel's investigation.

END