Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Barr Hearing on Mueller Report; Mueller Letter to Barr; Barr Defends Previous Answers. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 01, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Oh, grand attorney general, as opposed to me, the lowly equivalent of a U.S. attorney instead.

But, in reality, he was saying to him, actually, I already invented a wheel. You want me to see if your square peg will go up the hill. That's now that's going to happen. I wrote these executive summaries and you should have that.

But, again, notice that what Barr did today was in demoting Robert Mueller, elevated the press as a problem by saying, actually, there could be no corrupt intent. He was trying to correct the record of "The New York Times" and other outlets. That was the motivation of the president of the United States. And as a matter essentially of law or executive authority, he wasn't going to be able to violate that statute.

Remember, he called Mueller's decision prudential about that OLC opinion, meaning it was always the elephant in the room that Laura was talking about. It wasn't the idea of, I never considered it, that I was dismissive of it, it was obviously the elephant in the room here is that I can't do anything about this.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Jeffrey Toobin, let me get your thoughts on how the first couple of hours of this extraordinary hearing has been going.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Barr sure did establish that he told the truth when he answered the question about whether Mueller objected to anything he said. I mean, you know, I have to say, I found his answers total gobblly gook about that.

I mean, you know, the fact is, Mueller wrote a letter of protest. He wrote a letter saying, this was not an accurate rendition of the facts when Barr announced, you know, his summary or his summary of conclusions. And Barr was asked about that. He was asked twice about it under oath. And he said, no, Mueller had no problems. But that's just not true. And it's still not true after the explanations he gave.

I mean, you know, Leahy asked him about it. And, you know, I just don't understand -- I -- I was -- you know, I'm fluent in English, but I don't understand what his answer is on that.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. BLITZER: Yes, because the letter -- the specific letter, the March 27th letter, three days after the initial four-page document was sent to Capitol Hill, said, your March 24th letter, quote, did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of this office's work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the department on the morning of March 25th. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the result of our investigation.

The letter is very, very clear, Jeffrey.

TOOBIN: Well, and after -- and when he's confronted with his answer -- you know, his response to Congressman Crist, he says, well, I talked to Bob Mueller and he had no problem. But he obviously did have a problem. I mean he put it in writing.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Jeffrey, let me ask -- Jeffrey, let me ask you a question.

Attorney General Barr said that he took this letter to mean an attorney coming after the case, after the verdict, again, he said his four-page summary letter -- or four-page document letter was not a summary, it was just underlying the verdict. And he said it would be like an attorney saying after the verdict came in, you didn't get in my great cross examination on day three. That was, I think, a pretty direct quote of what he said. Does that pass the smell test? Is that what Mueller was objecting to?

TOOBIN: No. I mean it -- the whole point of this investigation, as Mueller pointed out in his letter, is to tell the public what happened. The whole idea behind a special counsel investigation, as opposed to one under the auspices of the attorney general directly, is so the public can have confidence in the conclusions so that there is a measure of independence, not total independence, but a measure of independence. And so this isn't about the wonderful cross-examination that Bob Mueller did three weeks ago. This is about the fundamental conclusion.

And, look, this is also about politics. That letter, the four-page letter, stood out there for a month shaping all the public discourse about the Mueller report, convincing much of the country that there's nothing here. And that's why Mueller was so upset about it because it was a misleading summary. And then for Barr to tell Congress that Mueller had no objections is just not true.

BLITZER: You know, I want to bring in Jim Sciutto.

Jim, the letter, the complaint letter three days after the original Barr letter was released, his big problem was, all of this, the way you described it in your initial letter to Congress, threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the department appointed the special counsel, to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigation.

SCIUTTO: From the beginning of this story, covering it for more than two years, the hope had been -- and from -- frankly from both parties -- that there would be some non-partisan referee, arbiter of whether crimes were committed here and what should happen next. That confidence was invested in Bob Mueller, again, by Democrats and Republicans.

[12:05:03] Bob Mueller produced this 400-page report that is riven with facts and so on. But the politics have clearly squelched it, right? You saw that in the questioning today. Republicans are from Mars, Democrats are from Venus. Republican questions were about the Strzok-Page texts, they were about the Steele dossier, they barely raised Bob Mueller's clear objections to the way Barr characterized the report. Democratic questions were over there. Asking those key questions.

You know, Mueller realized that this was going to be a political decision and in his letter he makes clear he wants Congress to decide. Ultimately, it is a political decision by Congress. It's going to end up in political hands here.

And even the facts of Barr's report, not just the judgement as to whether Barr came to the right conclusions, you -- rather Mueller came to the right conclusions, you have Barr contradicting stuff that we could read for ourselves here. As you -- as you were saying, clearly the DOJ guidelines factors into his decision not to indict because he said it repeatedly.

BLITZER: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Also, Barr made what is really a fantastical claim in there that Mueller never pushed it on getting the president to testify. They were pushing and negotiating for months to do that. The president refused. Again, even the facts are in question here. Ultimately, it's a political decision riven with politics. And that's a disappointment, really, for the start -- for how this process has played out.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: To that point, think back to the very beginning of this. And what you have here is proof of the success of the president's political attacks on the special counsel, political attacks on anybody who criticizes him and now, if you go back to the very beginning, Jim's right, there were a lot of Republicans still skeptical about Donald Trump, still not sure who he was because as he took over the Republican Party, he was sort of the accidental president in the mind of many Republicans. And they weren't sure what to make of this.

Now, you had the chairman of the committee, at the very beginning, Bob Mueller's the gold standard, let Bob Mueller see what he finds, everybody back off, let him do his job. Now you had the chairman of the committee, how much is the president's attacks on everybody worth? Lindsey Graham said he hadn't even read it all.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KING: In his opening statement, the chairman of the committee with the attorney general in the chair about what to make of the Mueller report, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said, I've only read most of it. That's a disgrace.

BLITZER: He said he's --

KING: Whether he's a Democrat or a Republican, that's a disgrace.

BLITZER: He said for me -- he said, for me, it's over.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

BLITZER: This whole investigation.

KING: And they talk about Hillary Clinton, because they don't want to talk about, there was no conspiracy. But there's a lot of communication and cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians. So why not have a hearing -- never mind what happened in 2016. It's done. What should be right, wrong, over the line? Do we need new laws to convince other campaigns? The Senate Republicans are not going to do that. Whether it's Donald Trump, the Trump Tower meeting, Donald Trump Jr. and communications with WikiLeaks.

Then you move to the second part and these are all people that worked for the president saying these things. Again, you have smart legal minds here, but the Republicans don't want to talk about it. They have the power to call a Hillary Clinton hearing, just like they did when they controlled the House. They like to talk about it when they need -- when they don't want to talk about the issue before them, but they don't actually do anything about it with their power once the ball has moved on.

COATES: John, your point is exactly why he got out ahead of this, because Barr figured in that most people, including apparently Lindsey Graham, were not going to comb through 400 or so pages. So that idea of the principle conclusions and putting it out there, leading in with that four-page summation, that was, in fact, the summation that Mueller confirmed that it was, having a press conference 90 minutes before you provided the entire thing as well, he was banking on the fact that most people would look at his interpretation of it and go with it. And, for them, like Lindsey Graham, it would be done.

Now, the problem, of course, is that we have a comprehensive and two parallel system. Congress' role and what Mueller's is. It was never intended to be over with Mueller. Legislatively, they had to do something more because as Barr said in his testimony, look, Russia still poses a threat.

SUSAN HENNESSEY, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: And this faith that no one is going to read the report, it's not just that they're mischaracterizing in that three week period about why Bob Mueller did what he did. It's also the facts of the report. The attorney general, today, disputed the idea that -- that the president had told Don McGahn to fire Rosenstein. He said, well, he didn't say fire. That's not exactly what he said.

Here's what the report said. It said that the president says, call Rod. Tell Rod that Mueller has conflicts and can't be the special counsel. The president said to McGahn, Mueller has to go. Call me back when you do it.

Now, he doesn't use the word "fire," but anybody who reads that passage can understand the president's direction.

TAPPER: Yes.

And not only that, the report makes it very clear that they believe Don McGahn. They call him credible. They say he has no reason to lie. And repeatedly it says things along the lines that they challenged President Trump's view. On page 90, volume two, for the two percent that read the report, there also is evidence that the president knew that he should not have made those calls to McGahn.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Jake, to pick up on that point, Robert Mueller describes this whole effort as a, quote, effort to remove him, meaning Robert Mueller, page four of volume two. And, boy, one thing we saw, they are scared to death of Don McGahn. He is the number one guy they do not want taking the witness stand or getting in front of Congress.

We even saw Bill Barr go out of his way to preserve executive privilege because that's the legal objection they're going to make to calling Don McGahn. They're desperate to keep him out of there.

[12:10:03] TAPPER: All right, everyone stick around. Our special coverage of the Barr hearing will continue after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to our special coverage.

The attorney general of the United States, William Barr, front and center up on Capitol Hill today. He's been being grilled by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee over his conclusions on the Mueller report and his role in its release.

They're taking a break right now to allow the senators to go and vote on the Senate floor.

TAPPER: Attorney General Barr, today, defending his decisions, including his take on obstruction of justice and how there is not enough to prosecute. At one point, Barr said he was surprised that Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not make a specific determination on obstruction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: We did not understand exactly why the special counsel was not reaching a decision. And when we pressed him on it, he said that his team was still formulating the explanation.

[12:15:09] Once we heard that the special counsel was not reaching a conclusion on obstruction, the deputy and I discussed and agreed that the department had to reach a decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: So it was Barr and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein alone who ultimately determined that obstruction could not be proven.

BLITZER: And also in this, the first part of the -- the hearing, Barr tried to explain the incident dealing with the former White House Counsel Don McGahn and the president's order to have Robert Mueller removed. Barr argued that the president never actually used the specific word "fire," and that the president must have believed that if Mueller were removed, another special counsel would take his place.

Barr also said that if the president felt he was being up fairly accused, then removing the special counsel would not have amounted to obstruction. That's his explanation.

TAPPER: But on his previous testimony during which he said Mueller had no issues with his four-page summary, this is what Barr originally said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion?

BARR: I don't know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.

REP. CHARLIE CRIST (D-:FL) Reports have emerged recently, general, that members of the special counsel's team are frustrated at some level with the limited information included in your March 24th letter, that it does not adequately or accurately necessarily portray the reports' findings.

Do you know what they're referencing with that?

BARR: No, I don't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Today, during a moment during the hearing, Democratic of Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy complained that Bill Barr's past testimony about the Mueller report, as you just saw some of it there, was misleading.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Why did you say you were not aware of concerns when weeks before your testimony Mr. Mueller had expressed concerns to you? I mean that's a fairly simple --

BARR: Well, I answered a question. And the question was relating to unidentified members who were expressing frustration over the accuracy relating to findings. I don't know what that refers to at all. I talked directly to Bob Mueller, not members of his team. And even though I did not know what was being referred to, and had -- and Mueller had never told me that my -- that the expression of the findings was inaccurate. But I did then volunteer that I thought they were talking about the desire to have more information put out. But it wasn't my purpose to put out more information. LEAHY: Mr. Barr, you're -- I feel your answer was purposefully

misleading.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Let me bring in Jeff Toobin.

And, Jeff, we know now that Robert Mueller, based on this March 27th letter, wanted not only a more context and nuance brought in to the public discussion of what the Mueller report revealed, but also that he and his team had written two executive summaries that had been written with no redactions necessary to be released immediately to the press, to the public, that that William Barr did not think that that was something he wanted to do.

TOOBIN: And Mueller said that what Barr had distributed on the 24th, the four-page letter, was misleading, even if he didn't put out the summaries that Mueller wanted. The fact that he misled the country with that four-page summary and the accompanying press conference, that was what the question's about. That was what the question from Senator van Hollen, from Congressman Crist. The question was -- both questions were the same version of the same -- different versions of the same question, are you aware that the Mueller staff, that Mueller is upset about what you did? And he said no and that's not true. And it's still not true notwithstanding the bizarre and convoluted explanation that Barr gave to Senator Leahy just then.

TAPPER: Well, Jeffrey, I don't want to defend what lawyers do, but do lawyers not hair split? I mean, is that not the point? I mean he said, I was asked about these unnamed individuals being upset about conclusions and I didn't know anything about that. But I did know that Robert Mueller was not completely happy with my letter, which is a separate issue. I mean he could certainly have been more revealing to the nation about what he knew. But I guess what I'm saying is, what he not being so specific? And I know this is what people dislike about lawyers, but was he not being so specific as to technically what he was saying was accurate?

TOOBIN: Well, you know, lawyers split hairs when hairs can be split. But I don't think that is a hair that can be split. That congressman and that senator were asking about descent from Mueller. There is no mistaking what they were asking about.

[12:20:10] There had been a "New York Times" story right -- just before Barr testified. And for Barr to answer, in effect, and in so many words, I am unaware of any complaints from Mueller is simply untrue. That's not hair splitting, that's false.

BLITZER: It's interesting, because I went -- I want Laura Jarrett, who covers the Justice Department for us, increasingly, a lot of Democrats, you're hearing it this morning, are coming out, including Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, saying Bill Barr, the attorney general, must go. Either he should resign or maybe down the road he might even be impeached.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, and certainly Democrats are angry about this, and you can understand why. The attorney general, I do not predict, is going to go quietly or going to go willingly. The standard for perjury is quite high. I cannot foresee a situation in which that's going to happen here. The president, of course, has been very happy with his performance, not only with the four-page letter, but clearly with his use and invocation of spying, which we saw Republicans hammer today while Democrats are all over the issue of this report and Mueller's concerns. Republicans are on a different planet with spying. And, obviously, that's something that makes the president very happy.

BLITZER: You know, John, it's interesting because in his testimony today, the Republicans had one line of questioning, attacking Hillary Clinton, going after the Obama administration for not doing enough when there were indications that Russia was trying to interfere in the election.

But at one point, and I think this was new, and you cover the Justice Department for us, the Steele dossier, he even suggested in his response to a question, maybe that was part of a specific Russian disinformation plot to sew descent here in the United States.

JARRETT: Yes.

KING: And the attorney general says he's looking into this.

JARRETT: Yes.

KING: When the Republicans do that, they always say, paid for by the Clinton campaign. They don't acknowledge that it was first paid for by Republican interests, who did not like Donald Trump (INAUDIBLE) primaries.

TAPPER: Not the dossier, per say, but the (INAUDIBLE).

KING: The dossier per say, but the -- the research. And then it was handed off later on.

Look, in Bill Barr, Donald Trump has what he always wanted Jeff Sessions to be, which is an attorney general who says Tuesday is Monday and the sun is the moon and views his job as protecting the president, not being America's lawyer. There's just no question about that.

And, again, you know, the partisans out there will go nuts on the Internet saying how dare you. Just match up what he is saying and what is in his letter with what is in here. They are not in the same universe. They are not the same set of facts. They are alternative facts. That is what the attorney general of the United States is saying compared to Bob Mueller.

Now, if he wants to say Bob Mueller got it wrong, let's have that conversation. And back to the Republican point, I'll say this again, they can have a -- there may be something in the Clinton e-mail investigation. If there is corruption in there, they should have a hearing and they should expose it. That's not what today's supposed to be about. They just use that as their default because they don't want to talk about this.

BLITZER: Pamela, you know, the other point, he was defending his use of the word, Barr, "spying": that was going on against the Trump campaign by either Obama administration officials or so-called deep state operatives inside the FBI or the Justice Department or the intelligence community.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. I mean he said basically that it would have been an anemic effort if it was just one FISA, one informant. But I find it hard to believe that Bill Barr said the word "spying" during the last go around not knowing the kind of reaction it would spark. He tried to defend his use of the word today, saying he doesn't view it as pejorative, that his first job was in the CIA, that it's an all-encompassing word, that there's no synonym for it. But he's been in Washington for a very long time. And he should know that using a word like that, and that -- indicating that that might have happened on the Trump campaign basically echoing the sentiment that we've heard from President Trump, he should know the kind of reaction that that's going to spark, no matter how he views the word "spying."

TAPPER: And Barr's testimony resumes in just moments. Several 2020 Democratic candidates for the presidency are still on tap to question the attorney general.

We're going to squeeze in a quick break. We'll be right back. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:28:59] BLITZER: Moments from now senators will continue their questioning of the attorney general, Bill Barr, on the Mueller report and his handling of it. Here was Barr explaining why he felt it was necessary to give a summary of the Mueller report findings. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAM BARR, ATTORNEY GENERAL: The body politic was in a high state off agitation. There was massive interest in learning what the bottom line results of Bob Mueller's investigation was, particularly as to collusion.

I didn't feel that it was in the public interest to allow this to go on for several weeks without saying anything. And so I decided to simply state what the bottom line conclusions were, which is what the department normally does, make a binary determination, is there a crime or isn't there a crime?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And he -- and he was pretty specific in rejecting the notion that that four-page letter was a summary. He said it was only the principle conclusions.

TAPPER: Basically just the verdict, not guilty, that that's all he was trying to do. He was not trying to --

[12:30:00] BLITZER: On collusion or conspiracy --

TAPPER: And on obstruction. And that's his argument. It wasn't a summary for anybody, including Bob Mueller.