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Trump Asserts Executive Privilege; Trump Tax Documents; Students Say Victim Saved Lives. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired May 08, 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] REP. MARTHA ROBY (R-AL): Vote including DOJ would significantly ease restrictions on the review of the less redacted report to allow designated members and staff to more easily review the report and confer with each other. DOJ would expeditiously bring the minimally redacted version of the confidential report to the House of Representatives to facilitate the chairman's review.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. We're going to drop out of our live coverage here of the House Judiciary Committee hearing, but we'll continue to keep our eye on this in a packed hour ahead.

As you're watching right there, this is a congressional clash in the Judiciary Committee over whether to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt of Congress.

Also happening this second, the president holding a meeting with his cabinet at the White House.

The bigger news this morning, the president, as this hearing was underway, evoking executive privilege over the entire Mueller report.

Let's get straight to CNN's Manu Raju, up on Capitol Hill.

Manu, this has been partisan sniping back and forth all day. We're going to go back into this committee hearing when they have the actual vote. Take us inside what's transpired so far.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Democrats are outraged by the White House's move to defy a congressional subpoena by invoking executive privilege and saying that the -- what the Democrats have been requesting, which is the underlying evidence, along with the redacted portions of the Mueller report, should be turned over. The president now saying that that should not be turned over because it could breach executive privilege.

Now, what Democrats plan to do now is fight this probably in court. After they vote in just a matter of moments to hold the attorney general in contempt, then the full House will vote to hold him in contempt. We don't know exactly when that full House vote will be, but it should be soon, perhaps in a matter of days. And afterwards Democrats plan to initiate court proceedings to try to get the information that they have been demanding. But, John, make no mistake about it, a very significant escalation for the fight that we have been seeing building for weeks and weeks. The White House stiff arming Democrats' efforts to try to get information that they believe -- that Democrats believe should be handed over. The White House and Republicans pushing back saying this information should not be turned over to Congress, namely grand jury information, that they say that Congress does not have a right to.

So we're seeing a real power struggle between two branches of government and it's going to require the third branch of government, the courts, to come in and step in to say who's right. But this is happening not just over the Mueller report, but on a whole range of oversight matters, whether it's getting the former White House counsel, Don McGahn, to turn over documents, getting ahold of the president's finances, getting ahead of the president's tax returns and now seeing what's behind those black lines of the Mueller Report. The White House is pushing back and Democrats are prepared to go to court.

John.

KING: Manu Raju, live on The Hill, keep us posted as the hearing transpires.

And, again, we'll go back live into the committee room once they begin to vote on this contempt citation.

Let's go to the Justice Department now and CNN's Laura Jarrett.

Laura, the administration has been defiant from the beginning in these requests. But to issue the word that it is now evoking blanket executive privilege as this hearing was underway, more than a message.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: More than a message indeed, John. And you listen to this hearing this morning. It's almost like two different universes. For the Democrats, this is a crisis. This is a real danger zone. For the Republicans on the committee, they really come to the defense of the attorney general, Bill Barr, walking through chapter and verse all of the different accommodations that the Justice Department has made in their view.

And last night the Justice Department has been trading these letters, a letter writing campaign really with Chairman Nadler for the past couple days. And last night they essentially outlined once again the fact that they had offered the members a -- limited members of Congress to come over here to the department to see the less redacted version of the report. And so, from their perspective, they've sort of teed this up in the best possible light for the court by showing that we were offering to show the report.

But the real question is now that the president has asserted this blanket executive privilege over the entire report and the underlying materials, what does that do for witness testimony? And a Justice Department official I spoke with just a short time ago saying that this actually does not affect the ability of Robert Mueller to testify. That, of course, had been the big witness that the Democrats want in the coming weeks. We'll see when exactly that gets scheduled. Obviously, no date yet, John.

KING: No date yet. We will watch this play out. We know the president has made clear his view, he doesn't want Mueller to testify. We'll watch as that plays out.

Laura, come back to us in the hour if there are more developments.

Again, we'll continue to watch the live hearing up on Capitol Hill.

With me in studio to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Julie Hirschfeld Davis with "The New York Times," Catherine Lucy with "The Associated Press," and "Politico's Laura Barron-Lopez.

It is the chairman this morning declared a constitutional crisis. There are legitimate questions about the power of Congress versus the power of the executive branch. In addition to that, you also have some pretty sharp partisan politics. And I think the administration's hope is that that's how everybody views this. It's D's versus R's, R's versus D's, run up, retreat to your tribe and pick your side.

[12:05:07] ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, I think this is pretty in the weeds, actually, for a lot of the American public watching all of this. And I think that's what the White House is kind of banking on, that they are hoping that the details of what this is really all about doesn't really penetrate and that they can put out a message that Democrats are pushing for something where they already have a -- the vast majority of it, which is true, they have probably about 90 percent of the report that was un-redacted.

And, you know, according to the White House, they've been repeating that members of the committee have been given opportunities to go and see the un-redacted report at the Justice Department and they are saying that none of those members have taken up that opportunity. We heard Jerry Nadler push back on that saying this -- that's not good enough for him and that -- the fact that he can go there, take notes, and then he has to leave his notes there doesn't really work for him.

But all of this is just -- it's just really in the minutia right now. And so it's not clear to me what people will take away from this. But both sides are trying to put out their narrative that they -- that on the Republican side that they've given enough and on the Democratic side that this is -- this is about separation of powers and this is just obstruction. And I think the American public will have to decide.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "POLITICO": And less than a small percentage of the American public, as Abby referenced, has even read this report, has even been paying attention to what Democrats and Republicans are saying, which is partially why Democrats want to hold hearings. They want Mueller to come forward. They possibly also, I've heard from some of them, that they -- they could be open to having Rod Rosenstein come to testify before them because they want this evident to be presented to the public in hearings, knowing that this will be televised, so that why they can show them what they think is justifiable means to pursue a possible obstruction against the president. KING: And the Democrats say they've lost patience because in their

view, and there's reason to document this out, that the attorney general, Bill Barr, has shaded his findings of the Mueller report in a way that is grossly favorable to the president. And, if you read the Mueller report, Democrats have a point. What Bill Barr has said publically does not match up with what is actually in the Mueller report.

So listen to the chairman, Jerry Nadler, this morning saying, look, we're out of patience, we're out of gas, we don't trust anybody who works for the president to describe to us the Mueller report or to share with us testimony about the Mueller report. We need the whole report.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): If Congress is not entitled to the full, un- redacted Mueller report, one must wonder what document we would be entitled to.

This is unprecedented. If allowed to go unchecked, this obstruction means the end of congressional oversight. As a co-equal branch of government, we should not and cannot allow this to continue or we will not be a co-equal branch of government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's the broader argument of Democrats. And they would argue whether it's their request for the president's taxes, whether it's a request for other documents, financial records, whether it was a request for the full, un-redacted Mueller report, that they are in what they call a crisis because the administration just has this blanket no. And so their first big recourse here is to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt.

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right. I mean I think it's important to pull back for a second and look at what, you know, the Democrats are trying to do. I do think that it is -- there's a lot of sort of political gamesmanship going on today of both the Democrats and the Republicans in the White House trying to set the narrative here. And that is a big part of it, the political sort of picture.

But they're also trying to substantially kind of move the ball here. They have decided for now to keep impeachment, you know, on the side table, not to sort of go straight there. But if they are going to lay out what happened here, if they're going to try to have, you know, their own sort of fleshing out of what the Mueller report says, they are going to need access to some of this underlying material. It's not just posturing what they're doing today. They are actually taking an affirmative step that they, I think, hope will ultimately lead to them potentially getting access to some of those documents.

And it's also an important principle for them, if they're going to go the route of impeachment or keep it on the table during this whole debate, to keep on outlining for the American people and to keep taking that argument to the administration that obstruction itself, the refusal to hand over documents and things that a co-equal branch of government should have access to is potentially grounds for impeachment itself. That is a potential --

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": But, of course, the White House push back on this is that they feel like this is a fishing expedition, they're going looking for things that, you know, weren't even -- that have been beyond what has been covered and there's a lot of anxiety there that, you know, where does this lead.

I think also what you're hearing form the president is this argument that we've been doing this for two years. He -- you know, he keeps saying this is going on for long enough. People are ready to move on. And you're hearing that from some Republicans as well.

KING: Right. And the Democrats are saying, too bad, we have -- we won the House. We have constitutional powers to do this.

LUCEY: Absolutely.

KING: We can look at what we want.

The White House take is what the Democrats are asking the attorney general to do, by giving them the full, un-redacted report that includes grand jury -- protected grand jury testimony. Here's the White House press secretary saying the Democrats are asking the nations' top law enforcement official to break the law.

[12:10:03] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Chairman Nadler is asking the attorney general of the United States to break the law and commit a crime by releasing information that he knows he has no legal authority to have. It's truly outrageous and absurd what the chairman is doing and he should be embarrassed that he's behaving this way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now, she's right, but she's also taking -- she's lacking context. Shall we say, she should be embarrassed as well that she doesn't say the Justice -- the committee says they've asked the Justice Department repeatedly, let's go to court together and get a judge to release the material, and the Justice Department says, no, we're not playing. We're not going to have any part of that.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean that -- that's the part that everybody always omits when it comes to the grand jury material. It -- there is a mechanism by which the grand jury material can be legally released and the committee wants the Justice Department to, at the very least, take it to a judge to make that final decision.

So this idea that it is -- it is not ever possible for grand jury material to be released to Congress is not true. And it's -- frankly, it doesn't seem to be the strongest element of their -- of the White House's argument. So it's not clear to me why they keep bringing that up. I think a lot of people -- Sarah issued a statement this morning and

in the statement she wrote, it's the no collusion, no obstruction report. A lot of people are going to be asking, why is the White House fighting so hard to stop this report in its entirety from being released to Congress if they believe it, in fact, exonerates the president so clearly on all of these grounds?

KING: Right.

And one other point made by the Republicans on the committee, he says the ranking Republican, Jim Jordan, he says, what are you waiting for? Why are you in such a rush, I mean. Why are you in such a rush to hold him in contempt? We're going to have Bob Mueller in the chair pretty soon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Mr. Mueller is going to be here next week. Why are we doing it? You're going to get to ask the guy who wrote the whole darn document. We're all going to get to ask him questions. Why don't you hold off on this contempt until at least the guy who wrote the thing, spent 22 months and $35 million with a whole bunch of Democrat lawyers, putting it together, why don't you wait and ask him next week before we do this contempt resolution?

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): I'll answer -- well, essentially because it would be useful to read the material before we have him in front of us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We don't know for sure, though. It has not been scheduled, right? They had a tentative idea that it would be May 15th. Now that the president has said, I don't want to testify, if Laura Jarrett's reporting is they say this executive privilege doesn't apply to Mueller. But the tone certainly has been -- and as of today he's still a Justice Department employee -- the tone has been, we don't want him to. So that's not certain, right?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Right, May 15th was not set in stone. Nadler, just this morning, told "Politico" that he thinks that this evoking of the executive privilege by Trump could actually complicate Mueller coming forward to them. So there's no, yes, Mueller is coming to testify. So Jordan is a bit inaccurate there.

DAVIS: Right, and they're -- they're clearly not in a waiting mood here. I mean this is not your typical like congressional administration give and take where there's a whole lot of sort of, you know, may -- you know, courtesy and collegiality. I mean all of that is now off the table and has been, I think, in this context for weeks. They're not going to trust that the administration is going to do anything that is being asked of them by Congress. And I think they're probably wise not to at this point. So it makes sense for them to sort of -- if they're going to do this, to go forward with it.

And to you point, if the date does hold, it would be a lot more useful for them to have that information, particularly the underlying information that -- that resulted in the Mueller report, before they talk to him so that they can ask him questions that would be more pertinent and that potentially would produce more information.

KING: Well, we'll continue to watch this hearing. Again, the Judiciary Committee preparing to vote to hold the attorney general in contempt. We'll watch this and we'll come back to it live when they get to that vote.

Up next for us though, a new report takes a deep dive on the president's financial history and pokes holes in his long-time narrative of unprecedented business success.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:18:19] KING: Keeping our eye on the House Judiciary Committee is preparing to hold a vote to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt. We'll go back there live when that vote starts.

President Trump, though, lashing out today at "The New York Times" after a lengthy report in the newspaper showing how badly his businesses were struggling in the 1980s and into the 1990s. The newspaper got its hand on ten consecutive years of the president's tax transcripts. That's different, of course, than his full returns.

But, take a look, this chart shows you Mr. Trump's adjusted gross income from 1985 to 1995. See that red? "The Times" reports his business has lost more than $1 billion over that decade. It's a loss so staggering the paper estimates it was among the worst in the country.

Here's a key quote for the report. In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991, more than $250 million each year, were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the IRS information for those years.

The president's attorney says the data is old and unreliable. President Trump tweeting in his own defense, though he does not challenge the data mind you, like his lawyer, the president says, in those years, this was normal for real estate developers. Quote, you always wanted to show losses for tax purposes. Almost all real estate developers did it. It was sport. He also calls "The Times" report a hit job.

This comes as Democrats want his more recent tax reports. What it shows you, and you can just put that chart back up there, if you can put the chart back up and show all this red. If you go back to the time, he was bragging that he was rolling in the dough, that he was doing great and everybody else was suffering in this horrible real estate market but was the art of the deal guy who had it all figured out. No.

[12:20:13] DAVIS: I mean what the Democrats -- the reason, obviously, that Democrats want to see the president's tax returns, apart from the fact that, you know, it's a long standing precedent that presidents have released their tax returns, is that they think that there might be something nefarious there, some -- potentially some criminal activity, potentially some fraud. That's what they're concerned about.

But let's not forget that one of the major reasons that President Trump has not wanted to make his tax return public, putting all of those questions aside, is just because of his pride. He does not want the holes poked in the narrative that he is this master dealmaker and has been so fabulously successful over his career, yet he can't stand the thought of people knowing that he was having all these losses.

Putting aside the fact that this morning he was very willing to say, as president of the United States, that he was intentionally gaming the tax system to have to pay less taxes to the government. The fact that this is now public, that he was really suffering this degree of loss in his business career is, you know, it's not a great thing for a president who likes to appear, you know, at the top of his game all the time.

KING: Pride is a big thing here without a doubt and this myth that he has created about his businesses, will it bother him, for example, that the Drudge report, "The Daily Caller," "The Washington Times," the outlets that his base might pay attention to, all picked up on this story here.

And I just want to go back, this is -- this is Donald Trump talking to Larry King in 1991, a year in which we'll show you on the other side of this big -- he's -- big losses. But it's not how he sounds here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (November 19, 1991: I had a bad year and a half. I had one hell of a year and a half. From every standpoint. Divorce and this and this. And you learn whether or not you're a tough guy. And some people go in the corner and they start sucking their thumb and they say, forget it. And other people come out fighting. And you really do learn about toughness. And I've really weathered it great. I mean I feel that I'm in great shape. I mean I have really good relationships with the banks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I've really weathered it great. Again, if you can put the chart back up, that is in 1991. This is where -- that's the middle -- in the middle. That's where it's getting worse and worse and worse. If that's weathering it great, that's not math I learned.

BARRON-LOPEZ: It's a stunning report. I mean, you know, as he's coming out with "The Art of the Deal." He's in the red. He's losing a ton of money. And so he's building up this myth at the same time, that he is this master businessman. It's also something that he ran on the trail with extensively, that he's tried to keep up this persona as he's been in office.

Now, it's important to note that it doesn't change the battle in Congress, as you mentioned. Neal, the chairman of Ways and Means, is still figuring out his next steps on how they're going to get ahold of those tax returns. They expect that it's going to go to court now that Mnuchin has denied turning those over.

LUCEY: I would expect that we'll hear more from him probably today. He's leaving for an event tonight. You know, he's speaking later this afternoon. He's very sensitive to these kinds of reports. It was excellent reporting in "The Times" a while back also about the financial support he had gotten throughout his career from his family, because part of his narrative also is that he's a self-made businessman. How much of this he did himself. And so he did not like the suggestion that he actually was bolstered by family resources along the way.

KING: And the facts in these documents tend to chip away at the mythology of Trump. Now you mentioned, will we hear from him. They closed the cabinet meeting. The reporters were supposed to go into the cabinet meeting that's underway. They closed that. But he does have a rally tonight. That is when he does tend to air his grievances. So, we will watch that one.

Up next for us, an update on a school shooting in Colorado that killed an 18-year-old student and a student whose actions may have saved lives.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:28:26] KING: The latest now from Colorado, the scene of yet another mass shooting. This time in Highlands Ranch, where a school shooting left one student dead, another eight wounded. Two suspects now in custody, an 18-year-old male and a juvenile female. As they investigate this latest shootings, officials are mindful of their area's history.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE BRAUCHLER, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, 18TH JUDICIAL DISTRICT: I grew up in these parts. And if you had suggested to anyone behind me or in this room that within 20 years and 20 miles we would have dealt with Columbine, Aurora Theater, Arapahoe High School, the shooting of Zach Parish and four other deputies, we'd have thought you mad. And yet here we are again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN's Ryan Young is live in Highlands Ranch.

Ryan, what are we learning this morning.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Still very tough. We know we have our first court appearance a little later on this afternoon. But so many people in this community are focused on one hero, Kendrick Castillo, an 18 year old who decided to stand up to the shooter. He got in the way of that gunman and maybe saved some of the fellow students' lives.

In fact, listen to a student I just talked to in the last 20 minutes or so as she was in this classroom. She said at first when the gun came out, she thought it was a toy. But Kendrick sprung to action.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NYKI GIASOLLI, STUDENT: They all risked their own lives to make sure that 10, 15 of us all got out of that classroom safe and that we were able to go home to our families. And they risked their own lives so that we could all have our own.

[12:29:59] NUI GIASOLLI, MOTHER OF NYKI GIASOLLI: If it wasn't from him, I wouldn't have my baby today. And I can't imagine.