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FBI Obtains Warrant to Search Clinton Aide's E-mails; Cubs' Win Forces World Series Game 6. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 31, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Hillary has nobody to blame but herself for her mounting legal troubles.

[05:59:04] HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We're not going to get distracted. We're not going to get knocked off course.

TRUMP: She deleted 33,000 e-mails. I have a feeling they just found a lot of them, don't you think?

CLINTON: Donald Trump is already making up lies about this.

TRUMP: We're leading all over the place. We're going to win.

CLINTON: For as long as he has been rich and famous, he has wanted people to believe he is generous.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: He's been incredibly generous with his time and his money.

CLINTON: He abuses his power, games the system, and he doesn't care who's left holding the bag.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Boy, oh, boy, this takes trick-or-treat to a new level. Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, October 31, Halloween, of course, 6 a.m. in the east.

Up first, the FBI obtaining a warrant to examine thousands of newly- discovered e-mails from a top aide to Hillary Clinton, still needing to determine if there's any link to this investigation into Clinton's use of a private e-mail server.

FBI Director James Comey has made himself politically relevant in a way that we have not seen ever.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Dozens of former federal prosecutors now blasting the FBI chief's decision in the final days of this election. Both campaigns are calling for full transparency from the FBI.

Donald Trump thinks this is bigger than Watergate. So much at stake with only eight days left until election day. We

have it all covered for you. So let's begin with CNN's justice correspondent, Evan Perez. He's live in Washington with more.

What is the latest, Evan?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, FBI investigators are now armed with a new search warrant, and they're beginning the work of reviewing thousands of these newly- discovered e-mails belonging to Huma Abedin. Abedin is one of Hillary Clinton's closest advisors, and investigators think that at least some of the e-mails that are now found are from an account that was on Clinton's private server, and perhaps they were ones that were previously delated.

Now, that's the reason why they're investigating whether it affects the case that the FBI thought that they had completed back in July, when FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges be brought against Clinton.

Investigators found these e-mails weeks ago, stumbling on them as they conducted an investigation of Abedin's estranged husband, former Congressman Anthony Weiner. He's under investigation for allegedly exchanging sexually-explicit messages with an underaged girl. That's leading to questions from the Clinton campaign about why all of this only became public on Friday when Comey sent a letter to Congress, days before the presidential election.

Law enforcement officials tell CNN that investigators spent the past month doing a lot of work, trying to figure out how big of a deal this was. Technical experts spent time cataloguing the e-mails, analyzing metadata to determine the significant -- that a significant number of these e-mails went through the Clinton server. But they were constrained by the fact that they were operating under an existing search warrant that was limited to the Weiner sexting case.

The investigators tell me that they saw enough in the e-mails that they know that there may be classified information in them and that some may not have been viewed by the FBI before.

Now, despite calls from the Clinton campaign and from Republicans to provide more information, Comey right now has no plans to say more while his investigators are still doing their work -- Chris.

CUOMO: And that's as big a story as any of this. The FBI director deciding to speak and now deciding not to speak has a lot of people upset and trying to understand his true motivations. Dozens of former federal prosecutors feel they know, and they don't like it. They're blasting the FBI chief in a new letter, saying that just shouldn't have happened this way.

The new probe is obviously going to dominate the last week of this election. Let's check in with CNN senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar, live in Washington with more.

Tough for the Clinton campaign to deal with the unknown.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It sure is. And it's also just so unprecedented, from the FBI director's actions to the fact that there's never been a major party candidate heading into election day who is under this cloud of an FBI investigation. So right now the Clinton campaign is trying to change the narrative by taking aim at Comey.

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CLINTON: It's pretty strange to put something like that out with such little information right before an election.

KEILAR (voice-over): Shockwaves through Hillary Clinton's campaign following a surprise letter Friday from FBI Director James Comey.

TRUMP: If she never heard the word "e-mail," do you think she'd be a very happy woman today?

KEILAR: Comey notifying members of Congress that the bureau discovered e-mails that appear to be pertinent to the now-closed Clinton server investigation. Those e-mails found on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the husband of Clinton's long-time aide, Huma Abedin, currently under investigation for sexting with a purportedly underage girl.

Comey can't say if the e-mails are significant. They could even be duplicates of those already reviewed. Now Democrats and some Republicans are criticizing Comey's decision to go public as political, worrying it could tip the scales in Trump's favor.

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This is an unprecedented move as your folks were describing earlier, because it happens close to an election, which is in violation of normal Justice Department protocol, and it involves talking about an ongoing investigation, which also violates the protocol.

KEILAR: Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid penning a damning letter to Comey, alleging that he, quote, "may have broken the law by violating the Hatch Act," a law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. As 100 former federal prosecutors and high-ranking Justice Department officials, Democrats and Republicans, sign a letter criticizing Comey's actions.

TRUMP: Hillary has nobody to blame but herself. Her criminal action was willful, deliberate, intentional and purposeful.

KEILAR: But Trump's campaign hoping to capitalize on the issue.

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R-IN), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We commend the FBI and the director on their decision to keep their word to the Congress and move forward.

KEILAR: House Speaker Paul Ryan called Comey's move, quote, "long overdue," and he's renewing his call to suspend all classified briefings for Secretary Clinton until this matter is fully resolved. Clinton remaining confident that she is in the clear.

CLINTON: We've called on Director Comey to explain everything right away, put it all out on the table. Of course, Donald Trump is already making up lies about this.

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KEILAR: Hillary Clinton getting some help today from Eric Holder, the former A.G. of the Obama administration. He pens a "Washington Post" op-ed today, where he says that he's deeply concerned about what he describes as this vague letter to Congress. He says, "This decision by Comey was incorrect." And he says that violated rules, including not talking about an ongoing investigation and then one that he put in place, which was not doing anything unnecessary in the lead-up or around an election. That may be the question: Was this unnecessary? We don't know the answer at this point -- Chris and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: There's a lot of things we don't know the answer to at this point, but there are some things that we do know, so let's discuss that. We want to bring back our panel. We have Evan Perez. We want to introduce the rest of our panel: CNN political analyst, Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich; CNN political analyst and national reporter for "The New York Times," Alex Burns; and CNN political analyst David Gregory. Great to see all of you.

Alex, now they have a search warrant. We have eight days. The FBI can start going through some of these e-mails. They can probably make a lot of progress. They can probably read hundreds a day. Is it their obligation to release more information before the election, because this is all so murky?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, it's hard to say what their obligation is and isn't, because we're in such totally unchartered waters here.

I do know for a lot of reporters who have been paging through those Podesta e-mails that are released daily on WikiLeaks, you know, going through thousands of e-mails a day is not some, you know, inhuman task that would be impossible to do over a period of days. It's just a question of the legal propriety, which is really a difficult call, sort of case by case for the FBI director at this point.

You saw over the weekend, Alisyn, just the level of pressure that Comey is under from both sides, who really don't know what he has, and don't particularly know exactly what the substance of the other investigation is at this point and what he could disclose, if he wanted to.

So in both ways, both campaigns are playing this kind of strange game of chicken with the FBI, you know, challenging them to release more information without actually knowing whether it would be politically beneficial to their side to have it out there.

CUOMO: Well, Comey has boxed himself in. There's no question about that. Why he did it, that's probably the biggest unknown. But Evan, just to be clear, on the basis of your reporting, and you're

as dug in as well as anybody when it comes to the FBI. Donald Trump is saying proof of intentional behavior, went through the server of these e-mails, classified information, obviously, significant, 650,000 of them. That's all untrue. True or false?

PEREZ: Well, some of -- like a lot of what Trump says. You know, there's some truth in what he said. You know, we don't know how many e-mails there are. We know that there are thousands of e-mails that were...

CUOMO: But not 650,000.

PEREZ: Not 650,000.

CUOMO: Any proof of intentional conduct that they already have?

PEREZ: We do not know. We do not know yet whether there's any proof of intentional conduct. The FBI director, the reason why he can't say more, Chris, is because he, frankly, doesn't know what's in this thing. He does know that he knows that these investigators took a look, and they saw enough that they saw that these e-mails look like they went through the Clinton server, which is interesting and which is new.

He also saw -- they also saw that there might be signs of classified information. So, now, what they have to do is bring in -- bring in other agencies -- the CIA, the State Department, everybody -- to review these e-mails. That is something that takes days.

And so, while I understand that everybody want an answer as quickly as possible, the FBI now feels that they have to take the right -- the amount of time that's necessary to look at all these things before they make a final call.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, went through the Clinton server. That sounds nefarious. However, it's also possible that, I mean, they also said that they have no evidence that these were to or from Hillary Clinton. Meaning, it's possible that Huma Abedin just forwarded her own e-mails to herself at home, for whatever reason. It's possible these are duplicates of everything the FBI has already gone through. It's possible that these e-mails were automatically backed up on this laptop as something mysterious from the cloud; happens at my house, also.

So, you know, we just have to be careful, because there is no smoking gun yet.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: In some ways, if nothing else comes out, the damage is already done, because you sort of put -- Donald Trump is having his take on this, whether or not parts of it are accurate. The Hillary Clinton campaign is trying to move on and say there's nothing here.

But they've already -- this has already been clouded, again, which is why, if you're the Clinton campaign, you're saying, "OK, this is baked in. People have already made their decision based on the e-mails." And if you're the Trump campaign, you're sort of emphasizing the unknown. And that -- we'll see how that plays out over the next couple days. But I keep on saying this: every day is election day. So this does matter every single day that this does go on.

CAMEROTA: Early voting.

CUOMO: And it's just important for us to clarify. At this point, nothing that Donald Trump has said about these e-mails and this latest wave is provable at this point. None of it.

And, David, you know, just when we thought that Comey couldn't do something more unorthodox than he did when he came out and, you know, ran out with that statement in front of the DOJ, saying, "I'm not going to bring a case, that no prosecutor would," even though he's not the prosecutor in this case, now he does this. Why?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I want to be careful here, and as I've said for months on this program, my wife, Beth Wilkinson, represents Clinton's top aides in the e-mail investigation, not Huma Abedin and not Hillary Clinton. But I want to be transparent about that.

And I said, I've been saying for months, long before this was a Clinton camp talking point, this is an unprecedented step by the FBI director, who never does this. If you decide not to recommend charges, you don't talk, period. That is true for U.S. attorneys. It's true for the attorney general. There is an unwritten policy that says exactly that, specifically with regard to any elected official near an election.

Comey made this decision because of the heat he was getting from his own agents. I know from speaking to FBI officials there is a view that the Clintons are corrupt within large swaths of the FBI, and he was under a lot of pressure to recommend charges.

He said back in July, this was not a close call. There was no mishandling of classified data. There was no criminal intent. He made that decision.

Now, there's a reason -- and I think this is where this should become beyond politics here. OK? Because Republicans may rue the day when they, you know, are doing a happy dance over what's happening to Hillary Clinton. There's a reason why the FBI director has a ten-year term, so that he or she -- although it's only been "he" -- should be not buffeted by the political wins. So he has complete independence, even though he officially works for the attorney general.

In this case, he has decided to put his thumb on the scale. It has never happened. And I think they have decided in the Clinton camp to go after Comey now, because there was a high degree of confidence that, whatever is in these e-mails, there is no evidence of any mishandling of classified data, that it's more of what they've already seen. And now, from a political point of view, they want to fire up the Democratic faithful, who can see this as an abuse of power. CAMEROTA: And so, Alex, so now that he has inserted himself into this

and since, if David -- what David is saying is true, that he is sensitive to the criticism that he's been getting since the summer, will he come out and say something before election day?

BURNS: Look, I'm certainly not going to try to predict what Comey is going to do next. I think, you know, a lot of people would have gotten a lot of things wrong trying to play that game so far.

I do think sort of one way or the other, it's going to be really, really interesting to see what the president-elect says and does and how they behave toward Jim Comey starting next week, right? That it's awfully hard for a guy to repeatedly insert himself in the electoral process like this and then continue to work with somebody who they have to deal with in an intimate, trusting, nonpartisan way after election day.

And I do wonder if we'll hear from the candidates on that this week. The FBI director obviously does have a protected status in the government that other senior government officials do not have. It's a different kind of appointment than the attorney general or the secretary of defense.

But we've never seen, certainly not in my lifetime, an FBI director get directly politicized like this with both sides of the race really directly going after his personal, individual credibility.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you so much.

More to talk about. The election is now just eight days away. The race is tightening between Hillary Clinton and Trump. We'll take a look at the latest polls, next.

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[06:18:20] CUOMO: A new national poll of polls shows that Hillary Clinton -- this is actually a specific poll. Shows Clinton with a one-point lead over Donald Trump as the Trump campaign is seizing on the FBI probe of a Clinton's top aide e-mails to try to change this race.

Now, the poll of polls that I was talking about, CNN's, that averages the last five national polls. That shows Clinton with still a five- point lead. That's coming down as we have this latest round of numbers.

Let's bring back our panel: Jackie Kucinich, Alex Burns, David Gregory; CNN political commentator and senior contributor for "The Daily Caller," Matt Lewis.

Brother Lewis, I go to you first. You're loving the unknown of the FBI, because it is distracting from the known knowns of your own campaign. Specifically, what Fahrentholt in the "Wall Street Journal" brought out about all the charitable non-giving of your candidate and the voter fraud that was revealed to be a Trump supporter who voted twice, heeding the call of your candidate. How do you make sense of these things, sir?

MATT LEWIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I am admittedly fully in the tank of Donald Trump. I've been pulling for him this whole time.

No, look, I think that there -- you know, we are now in such a weird election cycle, and whether it's the "Access Hollywood" comments that are, obviously, horrific that Donald Trump made or whether it's this e-mail scandal, which I think is very problematic. At the very least, Hillary Clinton had this private e-mail and -- and deleted 33,000 e- mails.

So, those things are overshadowing other stories like the fact that Donald Trump, you know, hasn't released his taxes. They're overshadowing those stories, because there's so much controversy, there's so much scandal on both sides that other stories that might have been huge are basically being ignored.

CAMEROTA: So, David Gregory, something is affecting the polls, not only the national polls, but the state polls. Take a look at this new Florida poll because this is very interesting. This is a "New York Times"/Siena Florida poll. It was just out yesterday. Trump is now leading there, 46 percent to 42 percent.

What do you think is going -- what does this mean? Does this mean that the elderly vote in Florida is sort of outpacing the Hispanic vote or how do you see what's shifted there?

GREGORY: Well, that very well may be. I don't think we know. We know that Florida has been getting tighter in the past week even before Friday and Comey's letter. So, it's hard to measure that impact yet.

That initial ABC/"Wall Street Journal" poll did capture Friday night but didn't capture the full breadth of it, I don't think. But we see that Florida is trending to be a closer contest, and I think that bodes well for Donald Trump, because it makes the electoral map a bit more competitive.

Again, still so many more routes to 270 for Hillary Clinton and for Donald Trump, but he's certainly got to win Florida, especially as Pennsylvania is now slipping out of his grasp and has been now for a number of months.

I think the most damaging political part of what's happening as a result of this e-mail conversation is that this is no longer a campaign conversation that is about Donald Trump. It is now about Hillary Clinton in the final days. And I think that becomes more problematic, because she had built up momentum, where she was essentially trying to put him totally outside of this. And now -- now she has to deal with, as Matt says, you know, the really unpleasant facts of how she conducted herself vis-a-vis the e-mails and deleting e-mails and setting up the private server; the specter of an investigation of the Clintons that goes on into her presidency, should she be president. So there's a wearying effect that that could have on voters here. CUOMO: Well, let's get the take of you guys here in this studio.

False equivalency is one of these made-up words, as it's become very popular in this election. Which basically, said, well, you make things even when they're not. Let's take a look at this, because we're seeing it in real time right now.

E-mails, which right now, the latest wave is a complete unknown. Right? Even the FBI director, who went out and started talking about this, did so without any basis of fact of how he could advance his own investigation. All right. So that's unknown.

The known, Farenthold from "The Washington Post," not "The Wall Street Journal." I said that; it's a mistake. He's going to be on the show later. Finds out the guy, Trump, hasn't given a fraction of the money, maybe any money in over a decade. That's, according to Farenthold, true.

The lady votes twice in Iowa. If that had happened with Clinton -- these are both knowns. But they don't stand up to the unknown of the e-mail. Why?

BURNS: I think, in some respects, it's just because that's the stage of the race that we're in. Right. That the level of attention and frenzy around this campaign is such. And the e-mails have been such a sort of constant drumbeat for Clinton's campaign that it's not some sort of side plot that people need to familiarize themselves with. They know instantly, as soon as you say "e-mail," sort of broadly at least, what you're referring to. But look, I do think one of the reasons why the impact of this Comey letter may be somewhat smaller than you might imagine is because of all the known knowns around Donald Trump. That voters do have an enormous amount of definitive information about him when it comes to things like charity, when it comes to, you know, his personal finances and his personal character and his views about women and people who aren't white, that, if Hillary Clinton were running against a candidate with somewhat softer or more flexible fundamentals in terms of how they're viewed by the public, I think this kind of late x-factor could be much, much more damaging to her campaign.

But I don't know that voters put these issues on the same level, even if the way we talk about them, just almost as a necessity, you know, says that this happened with candidate one today, this happened with candidate two.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, we only have 10 seconds left. What do you think we'll hear today or this week? Will the ball be advanced on the e- mail front?

KUCINICH: On the e-mail front, I don't know. I mean, it depends on if Comey feels pressure to come out. It certainly doesn't seem like he's going to do that at this point. But I think you're going to hear the Clinton campaign really try to rally their supporters to make sure they don't get depressed by this latest -- this latest information.

CUOMO: Now, in elections, we often say, "Well, it ain't over until it's over. It ain't over, you know." And we draw that metaphor from sports, and that's playing out in real time right now. The Cubs living to play another day.

Andy Scholes live in Chicago with our "Bleacher Report." It ain't over until it's over.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: That's right, Chris. You know what? I'll tell you, the Cubs fans here at Wrigley Field so happy. They finally got to see a World Series win at Wrigley after 71 years. They were so happy, they wouldn't leave. They were staying around inside, out here on the streets. And it was an awesome scene. And the team even came out to admonish all the fans that hung around inside.

I'll tell you what: All the Cub celebrity fans were out for this one. Vince Vaughn in the stands, first-bumping fans; Bill Murray here, once again; Eddie Vedder singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" in the seventh inning.

[06:25:09] Now, there were nervous moments in this game. The Cubs down 1-0. That was until Kris Bryant hit a home run in the fourth to even the score. That was one of three runs the Cubs got in the inning, and that was all they needed, because their closer, Aroldis Chapman, came in to get the final eight outs of the game, throwing over 100 miles per hour on some pitches. Cubs wins 3-2 in game five to send this series back to Cleveland.

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KRIS BRYANT, CUBS THIRD BASEMAN: Why not us? I mean, that's kind of our, you know -- I feel like we play our best with our backs up against the walls. Hopefully, we go out and win game six, because you know,, you never know what can happen in a game seven. So you know, but we're all about writing our own history. You know, this team is -- is a special one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: The Cubs trying to become the sixth team ever to come back from 3-1 deficit in the World Series. Cleveland one win away from their first championship in 68 years. You know, Cleveland will be rocking for game six tomorrow night. So no World Series tonight, what are you going to watch, sports-wise, on TV? Alisyn, don't worry, Monday night football not too far from where we are right here. We've got the Bears hosting the Vikings.

CAMEROTA: Oh, goody, I will tune into that, Andy. Thank you very much for that programming note.

Up next, Hillary Clinton and her supporters pressing the FBI director, James Comey, for full disclosure; and they're blasting the timing of this e-mail probe announcement. Did Comey go too far? We dig deeper, next.

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