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Judge in Stone Case Sentencing to Move Forward on Thursday; Trump Tweets More Criticism of Stone Trial Judge; Federal Judges Association Calls Emergency Meeting After DOJ Intervenes in Stone Case; Trump: Obama "Trying to Take Credit" for Strong Economy; Trump Visits Key States for 2020 Election in Four-Day Trip. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired February 18, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:31:08]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The federal judge presiding over Roger Stone's case made clear today sentencing for the Trump ally will go forward as scheduled on Thursday. Judge Amy Berman Jackson letting attorneys for both sides, the government and Mr. Stone, know her intent on a morning call this morning. All happening amid some very loud mood music from the president of the United States, tweeting again today both against the Mueller investigation and directly attacking Judge Berman Jackson.

CNN's Sara Murray joins us now. Sara, what did the judge say?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: The judge basically said we are moving full speed ahead with sentencing. She wanted to hold this call to get everyone on the same page but she made it clear that she was not going to address the merits of what Roger Stone has been asking for lately which is a new trial, his alleged juror misconduct. The government opposes that motion.

She just wanted to say, can we move forward. Stone's attorneys were trying to get her to delay this sentencing, but as she went back and forth with Stone's attorneys, with the government, she ultimately decided to proceed as scheduled on Thursday. But, she did say that she would delay the execution of Stone's sentencing while they work out his appeal for a new trial, other appeals that could come. So even if Stone is sentenced to time behind bars on Thursday, he will not be detained immediately.

It was interesting though, you know, John, we've been watching this whole controversy play out in the backdrop of this case, we saw Bill Barr's intervention in the case, we've seen the president tweeting, we saw four prosecutors who were involved in this case remove themselves. Amy Berman Jackson did not address any of this in the call today. She kept it pretty short, pretty swift, about 15 minutes just to get everyone on the same page and say, you know, we'll see you, Roger Stone in court on Thursday.

KING: I need the memo on how she can block all that out. Some of us could use that memo on a case. And Sara Murray, I appreciate the live reporting. Bringing it in the room. It is extraordinary, I'm joking about it, but here is a federal judge in the middle of case, you know, waiting for sentencing where you're under constant attack from the president of the United States, and the person you're about to sentence happens to be a friend of decades of said president of the United States. Just today, "Judge Jackson now has a request for a new trial based on the unambiguous and self outed bias of the foreperson of the jury, whose also a lawyer by the way. Madam Foreperson, you're a lawyer, you have a duty, an affirmative obligation." He goes on, "Existence of these tweets which are so harshly negative about the president and the people who support him, would order a new trial. I'm not so sure about Judge Jackson, I don't know." The president tweeting there are some other people pushing into this.

Again, every day, we're having conversations about norms being busted, but this one is up here. The president directly getting involved in the sentencing of a friend and attacking personally a federal judge in the process.

MICHAEL BENDER, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: We've seen this approach from the president time and again. He doesn't really have legal strategies, he has PR strategies. It worked for him in a special counsel investigation with Mueller, it worked for him in a quasi judicial setting of the impeachment trial, and now he's trying to put it into the actual judicial system.

It is a different ball game, you're right about this, but maybe the judge should have taken up a page from Barr's playbook and just simply said to the president, your tweeting is making it very difficult for me to do my job.

KING: But you mentioned Barr. You have an emergency meeting of the Federal Judges Association today to talk about this. That they think Barr is getting too involved in the day-to-day work of the Justice Department. You had all these former prosecutors write a letter, Justice Department employees write a letter saying, hey, Mr. Attorney General, you should resign, you're overstepping here. So this is -- there are other dots to connect to this as Judge Jackson decides, number one, how long is she going to send Roger Stone to jail, and you raised the question while we're off the air, and how long after that might word from the president come, because the expectation is at some point, he will pardon Roger Stone.

JULIE PACE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I don't know how you could sort of expect anything different base on what he's tweeting. You know, it comes against this backdrop of the president really pushing the boundaries of the traditional independence of the Justice Department. And he looks at Bill Barr as the attorney general that he has always wanted. He has always assumed that that role was more of his lawyer, the president's lawyer, than a quasi-independent member of the cabinet.

[12:35:04]

And that's why I think he's willing to put up with some of these public criticisms that we saw from Bill Barr of the president. And when you see things happen like this weekend when you've got more than a thousand, 2,000, you know, career Justice Department official who say Bill Barr should retire. That doesn't move President Trump. He looks at that as, there's a deep state. They've been out to get me and my administration since the beginning. Here is more evidence.

So, the sort of traditional ways of Washington and career officials and traditionalists expressing their displeasure, it does very little to move the ball with President Trump.

MELANIE ZANONA, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: And can I also just say, the criticism of the tweets from Barr is such low-hanging fruit. We hear it from Republicans all the time in Capitol Hill, including Mitch McConnell last week said, I agree, I think the president should stop tweeting. But that's a difference in style not substance. Barr, every step of the way has shown he is in lockstep with the president including just recently, the New York Times reported that he tapped an outside prosecutor to re-look into the Michael Flynn case.

KING: And to the point about, is the president giving us hints about whether he'll pardon. The other tweets today, he's been busy this morning. "These were Mueller prosecutors, and the whole Mueller investigation was illegally set up based on a phony and now fully discredited fake dossier. Everything having to do with this fraudulent investigation is badly tainted and, in my opinion, should be thrown out." And it goes on and on and on.

The grievances against Mueller continue. And in the context of why today, knowing this Roger Stone hearing is happening, it just tells you where the president is. Anything that you can connect to Mueller in his view, his own words, fraudulent.

PACE: And I think the other thing that you want to keep an eye on is that this Durham investigation is happening in the background. And so, you know, I've had a lot of people asking me, is he going to get rid of Bill Barr, is he going to push him out. He wants the Durham investigation to be finished and Bill Barr is overseeing the Durham investigation which Trump believes will finally unlock all of the dirty secrets about how the Mueller investigation got started. And you can expect that he will likely campaign on that investigation through November.

KING: And for anyone who's forgotten the drama around Roger Stone, he was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering as part of the Mueller investigation. He was conduit with WikiLeaks, and there's a dispute about what he told the president, whether he gave the president a heads-up and the like. But this is not like going through yellow light, he was convicted of very serious offenses here --

BENDER: Multiple counts.

KING: Yes. And the president is trying to essentially say it's all BS.

BENDER: Yes, that's right. I mean, this is the president sort of bringing us back to the Mueller investigation, the Russia investigation. He views this as every problem he's had in office can be traced back to the Russia investigation and, you know, and the missteps along the way go back to, you know -- which is, in his view, you know, a problem of the Democratic Party and his Democratic opponents instead of the people he surrounded himself with and how he's chosen to -- you know, the vision he's set for this administration.

KING: As he points the finger, it's just important to remember, plea agreements or jury verdicts from Roger Stone, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates.

BENDER: Yes.

KING: We could go on.

Up next, a feud of who gets credit for the strong economy. How a tweet by the former President Barack Obama set off what President Trump calls, quote, the latest con job.

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[12:42:35]

KING: Topping our political radar today, John Bolton suggesting he has something to say about the President Trump and Ukraine, but in truth doing more teasing than talking. In his public remarks since President Trump's impeachment acquittal, Bolton urged the White House not to, quote, suppress his upcoming book, which he says includes details of his conversations with the president. When asked if he agrees that the president's phone call with Ukraine's president was, quote, perfect, Bolton said, you'll love chapter 14.

Secretary of State Pompeo is calling on China to be more transparent about the coronavirus. Saying it's important that every country help reduces the risk to people around the world. This as the number of global cases tops 73,000, and almost half of China's population is living under some form of travel restriction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE POMPEO, SECRETARY OF STATE: It took us too long too get the medical experts in the country. We wish that could have happened more quickly. But we are hopeful that the Chinese Government will increase its transparency, will continue to share this information.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And President Trump now accusing the former president, Barack Obama of, quote, for trying to take credit for the strong U.S. economy. This after Barack Obama put out a tweet marking 11 years since he signed the Recovery Act. Here's what Trump's trade advisor, Peter Navarro said a bit earlier when asked on CNN, why not give credit to both presidents.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: What President Trump realized is that we had a structural problem. He fixed those structural problems that set up the economic boom that we're having right now. And back in the Obama/Biden years, it was horrible. Barack Obama himself said you need a magic wand to bring half a million manufacturing jobs back, and guess what, President Trump was the magic wand.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A little simple math and then you can all help me with why, why, why. The economic expansion has been underway for 126 months. That's a record. Donald Trump has been president for 35 or 36 months depending how you want to do the math. 126, 36, that means it started before him.

BENDER: It's just -- it's indisputable that the trend line has been going on for a well beyond President Trump took office. And it's just sort of stunning that they would make this point because there are a lot of economic indicators that have really taken off under Trump. There are parts of this economy that they have -- that they can really celebrate to sort of stack this up as a Trump versus Obama thing doesn't make sense.

[12:45:04]

PACE: Yes. It's funny because they kind of undermine their own best arguments which is, that after Trump came in you did have certain pieces of the economy that have gotten much more robust but they continue to want full, undeniable credit for it despite the fact that the numbers don't back that up. And I think it just goes to what his campaign argument is going to be, don't hand this economy back to a Democrat, Democrats ruined the economy, you have to stick with Trump.

ZANONA: House Democrats actually just did internal polling, and it show that when there is this blame game between Obama and Trump, Trump actually wins in that match up. So, you know, it's not necessarily a benefit for Democrats to just say, Obama should get all the credit for this. They need to find a way to talk about the economy without sort of doing Trump's style of selling himself.

ASMA KHALID, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NPR: I mean, the interesting thing too though is like when you look at continuous polling both across Obama and Trump, and I did some of this work in the midterms is increasingly the economy is viewed through a very bipartisan lens. So, really regardless of which way the metrics go, if you're Democrat or Republican. I think it's yours, it's not.

KING: Republicans (INAUDIBLE) when Obama was president. Democrats think it does now. That's the world we live in.

Up next, the president heads west kicking up a four-day tour visiting several states key to his election and the Republican Party.

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[12:50:48]

KING: President Trump on his way to California this hour. The start of a four-day trip with some official events on the docket but also a heavy emphasis on campaign events for his won re-election.

Up first, two fundraisers in California where the president is expected to raise about $14 million. Then a string of campaign events in other key states in the region. In Phoenix tomorrow followed by Colorado Springs Thursday, and a rally in Las Vegas, Friday. That, of course, on the eve of the Nevada caucuses.

He's doing what every president does in a re-election year, add a couple official events, taxpayers help foot the bills, that's the way it works. That's the way it works. But, California is really, forgive me, California, an ATM for a Republican president. He's not -- and the president -- this president of the United States is not going to win California next year.

But then, this gets -- it's interesting, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, fascinating states for him, and in the case of Colorado and Arizona, Senate races as well.

ZANONA: Right. It's not just about his own re-election, he's out trying to protect the Senate majority, which is really up for grabs. And he's going into two states where there are vulnerable Republicans up for re-election. But unlike Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski, I think they are going to embrace the president because part of their calculate for Cory Gardner in Colorado and Martha McSally in Arizona, is they need the base and they need the Trump supporters if they have any chance of surviving.

KING: Right. If you lose the Trump base in those places, you're done even if it complicates your efforts to get out to the middle.

Let's just look at the case of Arizona, because the debates here in Washington, especially the impeachment debate, now a big issue in the campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Martha McSally is complicit in Trump's crimes. Martha McSally didn't do her job. But we are ready to do ours. Vote her out.

Liberal Mark Kelly supported their impeachment sham. Kelly said he would have voted to remove President Trump from office and the November ballot. He's too liberal for Arizona.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We'll see if the issues debate. The ad content moves on as we get -- as impeachment is in the rearview mirror, we get closer to November. But some of these races will be laboratories about what the voters think. Washington decided, the Senate acquitted, but the voters get their word.

PACE: Look, Trump is the center of our political conversation. And so, in some ways it's not surprising that in some of these Senate races and even in House races, you are seeing him really define the battleground, the battle lines here for these candidates. I do think, though that you're right, Melanie that for some of these Republicans, you know, Cory Gardner is looked at in Washington as a little bit more of a moderate, but he has had to go all in with Trump. He doesn't have a path to victory unless he is lockstep with Trump.

Martha McSally, the same thing. We have seen her after her Senate race sort of turn more to the right, turn more toward Trump. There is no way out for them unless they rise and fall with Trump. That it is.

KING: If you just look, California, 55 electoral votes, again, pretty safe to leave those blue. But Arizona, 11, Democrats think they have a shot in Arizona because of the changing demographics there, the changing politics. Hillary Clinton won Nevada and won Colorado, six and nine respectively there. But if you look at the margins, you know, Clinton carried California by more than 30 points but she carried Nevada by 2.4.

Trump only won Arizona by 3.5 and Clinton won Colorado by five. So all states that you -- if you look at the map now, with the exception of California, those three others reasonable to be, a, competitive to a degree, and for those Republicans, and we can show you Martha McSally and Cory Gardner, the two we're talking about. It's critical for them that the president at least invest in their state, that he at least be in their state, be active in the base, trying to turn out his voters, because without them they're doomed.

PACE: Right.

BENDER: This is going to be one of the most interesting things to see where Trump goes and what (INAUDIBLE). He's had roughly 90 campaign rallies since he won in November 2016. About 10 of them have been in states that Hillary won. He's going to have to two just this week alone. And Arizona, there -- that's right, there is a very competitive Senate race there, but outside of the Midwest, Arizona is where the folks around the campaign and in the campaign see as their most vulnerable state, outside of those Midwestern states.

And, you know, California obviously is the ATM. These are the things that Trump hates doing. This is Trump's least favorite part of the campaign is going and playing small rooms and doing these fundraisers.

ZANONA: He'd rather be in Daytona, right?

[12:55:04]

BENDER: Yes, absolutely. He'd rather be in a campaign rally. And how are they mitigating it this time? With three campaign rallies right around these fundraisers. So, if Bloomberg keeps rising, and so far money has not been an issue for Trump, maybe -- and Bloomberg, and if Trump has to start spending more money -- more time raising money, it will be interesting to see how he reacts to all that.

KING: He doesn't like those things. Two hundred million dollars on hand for the Trump campaign, so they can experiment a little bit and see what happens.

Thanks for joining us today on INSIDE POLITICS. See you back here this time tomorrow. Don't go anywhere. A busy news day. Brianna Keilar starts after a very quick break.

Have a good afternoon.

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