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FBI Clears Hillary Clinton Again In Email Review; Trump Praised FBI Last Month, Now Crying Foul; Trump Makes Big Final Push In Five States Today; Is James Comey's Letter Too Little, Too Late?; The Road To 270. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired November 07, 2016 - 05:00   ET

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

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. It was the second unexpected letter from FBI Director James Comey.

[05:00:00] Remember, law enforcement officials telling CNN beforehand, they did not expect conclusions in this second review of the e-mails found on disgraced Congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop until after Election Day.

James Comey in his letter telling lawmakers that his investigative team worked day and night sifting through thousands of emails.

Many of them duplicates and realizing that there was no new information that they needed to reopen this investigation. However, this conclusion, while it seemed like great news for the Clinton campaign, exactly what the Clinton campaign does not want to be talking about in the closing hours.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY (voice-over): With mere hours left on the campaign clock.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This election is a moment of reckoning. It is a choice between division or unity.

MATTINGLY: Hillary Clinton hitting the ground in Ohio and New Hampshire making no mention of the FBI director's conclusion that she should not be charged in the latest e-mail probe. Instead Clinton focusing on uniting a divided nation.

CLINTON: I'm asking for the support not just of Democrats, but also Republicans and Independents in this election.

MATTINGLY: Clinton aides tell CNN questions still linger about whether the damage has already been done.

JENNIFER PALMIERI, COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, CLINTON CAMPAIGN: We are glad to say that he has found and we are confident that he would that he has confirmed the conclusions that he really reached in July and we're glad that this matter is resolved.

MATTINGLY: Clinton trying to rally voters. Deploying yet another big name to get out the vote, Cleveland Cavaliers star, Lebron James.

LEBRON JAMES, NBA PLAYER: President Hillary Clinton.

MATTINGLY: And in New Hampshire, Khazir Khan, the gold star father who gave a rousing and emotional speech at the Democratic National Convention.

KHAZIR KHAN, GOLD STAR FATHER: Thankfully, Mr. Trump, this isn't your America.

MATTINGLY: Clinton also pinning an op-ed in "USA Today." Listing her top priorities for her first 100 days in office, saying to voters, "We have to decide who we are."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: Chris, if you want to know how the Clinton campaign wants to close the race, just look at where Hillary Clinton is going to be. Heading to Michigan, a state that has become unquestionably much tighter than Democrats expected.

She is there today and President Obama is also going to Ann Arbor trying to rile up University of Michigan students then heading to Pennsylvania.

Two rallies there, one in Pittsburgh and the big primetime rally in Philadelphia with the first lady, President Obama, Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, and then finally a late night rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.

If she can win all three of those states, guys, the race is in the bag, but no question at all, this is an important closing moment for the Clinton campaign.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know if it is more like a campaign or a rock concert she's got going on here at the end. Bon Jovi for you, Springsteen for me.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: But they're both Jersey boys. I've never seen them outside of the state New Jersey. Something big is happening today.

CUOMO: Or tomorrow. All right, so Donald Trump saying the FBI decision to clear Hillary Clinton, again, proof the system is rigged. He is also making a host of wild claims and calling on Americans to, quote, "Deliver justice to Hillary Clinton at the ballot box." CNN's Sunlen Serfaty joins us now more on that -- Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONENT: Good morning, Chris, to you. Donald Trump is right now sticking to this message that he thinks Hillary Clinton is guilty. That is in defiance with what the FBI director now says that is in a message of close matter.

Trump is now trying to cast doubt on the broader conclusions of the FBI as part of his closing message on the campaign trail. Telling voters it is up to them to bring justice.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She's being protected by a rigged system.

SERFATY (voice-over): Donald Trump trying to undermine the FBI's announcement that they have cleared Hillary Clinton again.

TRUMP: You can't review 650,000 e-mails in eight days. You can't do it, folks. Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it. The FBI knows it. Now it's up to the American people to deliver justice at the ballot box.

SERFATY: But law enforcement officials tell CNN they worked around the clock and that the e-mails were mostly personal and duplicates of what had already been reviewed. Trump's reaction a complete 180 from the praise he once expressed for the FBI director.

TRUMP: There is little doubt that FBI Director Comey and the great special agents within the FBI will be able to collect more than enough evidence to garner indictments against Hillary Clinton.

SERFATY: Now facing the final day of campaigning, sprinting to the finish, Trump traveling across a whopping six states on Sunday alone keeping up his attack on Clinton and continuing his push in blue states with a midnight rally in Virginia.

TRUMP: Hillary right now is fast asleep.

SERFATY: Trump publishing his closing arguments in a new op-ed in "USA Today." Offering his contract with the American voter outlining what he calls a 100-day action plan to clean up corruption and bring change to Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[05:05:04]SERFATY: And Trump has another marathon day today campaigning in the must-win states of Florida and North Carolina. Then he is on to Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Michigan. His last rally today in Michigan, this is a late in the game ad buy focus really by the Trump campaign.

This is a state that hasn't gone Republican since 1988. The Trump campaign as Clinton is clearly playing some defense in Michigan and sensing some opportunity to flip this state -- Alisyn and Chris.

CAMEROTA: OK, Sunlen, thanks so much for all of that. So let's discuss this with CNN senior political analyst and senior editor of "The Atlantic," Ron Brownstein, CNN political analyst, David Gregory, CNN political commentator and political anchor for Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis, and CNN political analyst and Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich.

Great to see all of you here. David, let's start with you. The Comey effect, it changes every week. What today has the Comey effect of the last nine days been?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The legacy of this can be debated for a long time. There is no question that this letter nine days ago stopped Clinton momentum in a huge way because up until that time, this was really a debate in the election about his fitness, Donald Trump's fitness for office.

It completely switched and became much more about her and her bad judgment and e-mail server that stop that momentum. She came out of that and it's been trending her way. I think this will only help.

But a lot of the damage has been done in terms of putting the focus on this and another sign of why it was so unfortunate that Comey allowed himself to be inserted into the political process.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The fact they were able to review this so quickly using the software that they had, kind of makes the initial decision to go forward before you review the e-mails even more indefensible. I mean, it is --

CUOMO: No source I have at the agency, by the way, even entertained the idea of whether or not this was hard to culminate, but just -- to David's point, the letters from Comey showed Clinton at her most vulnerable. The response to this is showing Trump at his most vulnerable.

These claims are baseless. The idea he would say to the American people, you can't do this. He can't know what he's talking about because we can't find anybody who will say anything (inaudible). They say finding intent and changes of things, that takes a lot of human capital, but just calling the emails was a no brainer --

BROWNSTEIN: That's right. Therefore, like the decision to go forward before doing it seems even more, as I said, indefensible. As David said, the bell cannot be un-rung. First of all, tens of millions of people voted during the period when this was kind of hanging out there.

And secondly, it really did change the dynamic of the race because at the point that it happened, Donald Trump was trailing. The lead was getting there and Republicans risked a kind of death spiral.

The death spiral is as the polls get bigger, more of your partisans get discouraged and the polls get bigger and more of your partisans get discouraged. This stopped all of that from happening. It is a fundamentally different race.

You know, Mr. Comey is facing, I think, enormous questions after the election regardless of which candidate wins.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And not only the presidential race, down ballot, because you had a lot of Senate candidates that really got the wind in their sails when Trump was sort of spiraling. But then this Comey thing came out and then they had something else to talk about.

They could talk about Hillary Clinton. They didn't have to defend Donald Trump anymore. So you saw a lot of these Senate candidates who are worried. Now have a little bit more spring in their step. As you said, every day is Election Day. There's people who already voted and who may have been on the fence, that damage is done.

CUOMO: But the overwhelming majority of people will not vote until tomorrow. They are getting to see you, well, you have --

BROWNSTEIN: It could be as much as 40 percent of the -- that will vote before Election Day. Go ahead.

CUOMO: You have about 85 million, 90 million people go to the polls tomorrow, right? If you are at 130 million, right?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes. A little less than that.

CUOMO: Whenever it comes to number, I want to hear it come out of your mouth.

BROWNSTEIN: I think it will be over 40 million early voters so we'll see.

CUOMO: All right, so you're going to have this big group of people. Are we good with that, big group of people?

BROWNSTEIN: A lot of people.

CUOMO: And they are going to get to see Clinton and Trump in this final snapshot. How she deals with this. I thought it is clever not to say anything and let the campaign go on. Trump has been at his most wild when he deals with this kind of thing. Everything's rigged. You have to meet justice at the polls. I thought that was the weirdest thing for them to let him say. Your take?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Well, I mean, look, they've tried to cover all of this with the sort of cloud suggesting that because there is a question out there that law enforcement is looking at, therefore, she is guilty and she should be jailed.

Therefore, you the voter have to meet out justice, all of the wild extrapolations from the fact there is an investigation. The facts that there is an investigation is a problem. Remember Watergate broke before the election. Eighteen months later, Richard Nixon is resigning.

[05:10:02]You know, this is a ticking time bomb. This is going to continue. People are gearing up. They've sort of just created this thing. We were all at the convention listening to them chanting lock her up.

Never was there a reason given why that should happen. Even now, there's all these suggestions that some horrible crime has taken place. That the voters now have to stop.

GREGORY: This really is a question about the rule of law. As a political argument, you know, the good thing is if you don't like Hillary Clinton and you think she exercised bad judgment and unethical and she did bad thing, you can vote against her. That's why we have elections.

But as to whether she committed a crime, we have institutions that examine this and reached a conclusion. That's what the FBI did. You had Mike Pence, a former Congressman and governor running for the vice presidency pronouncing during a rally last night that she committed a crime.

After the FBI said, no, she didn't and we look at this. So this is a team of Trump and Pence that has said, "I will jail our opponent. We may not accept the election result and we don't accept the rule of law."

This is from a group who says they love America. Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, you should be really concerned about an FBI director impacting the election either way.

CAMEROTA: Ron, I want to challenge what Chris said that he thought it was a good idea that she didn't mention it on the trail yesterday. She was vindicated, you know, I mean, --

CUOMO: I thought it was clever.

CAMEROTA: Yes, OK, so it was clever. There is another way to go. Hey, guys, great news. Once again, I have been vindicated. If you have any reservation, you don't need to have --

BROWNSTEIN: Democrats are very ambivalent talking about e-mails at all on the last day of the election. I mean, the fact is that the last few points of her lead when it gets bigger, it goes from 3 to 4 to 7 or 8, the last few points of her lead are voters who really don't like her very much and don't trust her very much.

But found that inconceivable to imagine Donald Trump as president. I think particularly college white men and what the Comey letter did was it flipped the focus from the things they don't like about Trump to the things they don't like about her. It put them front and center.

Now does she have an opportunity to kind of shift it back? That is what they are trying to do since the Comey letter is get people to focus again on really, are you ready to make Donald Trump president?

Because there has never been an affirmative majority of Americans who are willing to say that they are.

GREGORY: And to the extent that people think that she got screwed in all of this, her core supporters, maybe that makes them more enthusiastic because she got a raw deal. She will let the media and surrogates kind of carry this conversation.

BROWNSTEIN: (Inaudible) numbers in the early voting among -- particularly minority constituencies, Latino constituencies.

CAMEROTA: OK, we will get all of that. Luckily we have four hours. Coming up on NEW DAY, Clinton campaign manager, Robby Mook and Trump senior communications adviser, Jason Miller will join us live in our 7:00 hour. CUOMO: Breaking news overnight, former Attorney General Janet Reno has died. Her sister tells CNN Reno has battling Parkinson's disease for some 20 years. She was the first woman to ever hold the post of attorney general.

She became one of the most recognizable and potentially polarizing figures in Bill Clinton's administration. She did face her share criticism for handling the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, killed 80 people.

And of course, the Elian Gonzalez custody saga, the 5-year-old taken by armed federal agents to be returned to his father in Cuba. Reno ran unsuccessfully for governor of Florida in 2002. She was 78 years of age.

CAMEROTA: All right. Up next, the race to 270, who reaches that magic number tomorrow night and which states are most crucial? We break all that down next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:17:52]

CAMEROTA: The big focus heading into tomorrow remains, of course, the battle for 270 electoral votes. Donald Trump still has to win all of the battleground states and then some. CNN's political analyst, David Gregory, is at the magic wall to walk us through all the scenarios. You have arrived, my friend.

GREGORY: I will not take more than 10 or 15 minutes. Watch closely. The big thing to talk about here is one of those two roads. If we look at the numbers, we understand that Hillary Clinton is in a better position. She is at 268 so she is very close at 270.

So what does that mean for her? If you are Clinton and -- we'll just -- don't worry. If you are Clinton, you have a way to close this down that is rather easy. You can take Nevada, you're done, right?

And you expect high turnout among Latinos for instance around the country based on early voting numbers. That gets her there. She could deal with Florida and North Carolina and New Hampshire. That puts her farther over the top with a bigger victory.

The difference is we have a more difficult path for Donald Trump as he makes these final campaign stops around the country. You have to give him all of the battleground states. He has to flip Nevada. He has to hold on to Arizona. He has to win Florida and North Carolina and New Hampshire, he is only at 269.

So under those circumstance, he would have to do better than that. He'd have to go where he is going in a state like Michigan and do that and win Michigan. It seems difficult for him or he has to come over here and win Pennsylvania to somehow get over 270, 305.

So a much easier path for Hillary Clinton at this point. Also relying upon higher non-white turnout. Whereas Trump has to turn the table. That what's daunting here as we are just a day away.

CAMEROTA: Well done. David, nicely done.

CUOMO: So good, please come back to the table. You handled the gremlins of the wall very well.

BROWNSTEIN: There are serious analysts who say that Nevada is already won for Hillary Clinton based on the extraordinary early turnout.

CUOMO: Even with that poll came out late last week?

BROWNSTEIN: Even with the polls that came out. The actual people who have come out. You know, in Nevada 70 percent roughly or -- two thirds or 70 percent of the vote is early.

[05:20:09]The Latino turnout is off the chart. If Hillary Clinton wins this election, the defining image of the end will be the line outside that one Mexican grocery store in Las Vegas on Friday night, the last night of early voting. The line that stretched and really never ended, 1,000 people in line. The other big --

CAMEROTA: Hold on, the one that Donald Trump said was evidence of a rigged system where in fact we know legally you can keep the polls open if there is a long line.

BROWNSTEIN: The other biggest thing that Democrats have been nervous about the polling and the other thing is what happened in Florida where the Hispanic, over 900,000 Hispanics have voted and most significantly over a third of them did not vote in 2012.

CUOMO: So people can see the early voting for the Latino population that Ron is talking about. So take us through it, Ron, what do you see?

BROWNSTEIN: Look, you have a place like North Carolina and Georgia, which we don't focus on. Latino voters are a thumb on the scale. The Latino population is growing very quickly in the southeast. In Florida, the numbers I see are even bigger than that. Over 900,000 Hispanics voting.

But most importantly and the good analysis, over one-third of them did not vote in 2012. That is an incredible number. White turnout is up too, only a quarter of them did not vote in 2012. So the risk again for Trump is that he will have to really max out on white voters.

By the way, African-Americans in Florida after a slow start did finally vote in larger numbers --

GREGORY: The high percentage increase of Latino voters is in North Carolina.

KUCINICH: If Donald Trump doesn't take bad news well and for example, in Nevada, when you had all these reports coming about the turn out in Clark County, he immediately said the system is rigged and made illusions that because there were Hispanics in line that Democrats were somehow putting their thumbs on the scale. The other open question is how he continues to deal with the news with the FBI investigation is over and done with. The "New York Times" had a great story over the weekend that basically said that story line of Clinton potentially in legal trouble was the only thing tethering him. That message is gone. So what happens now? Where does he go now?

CUOMO: Again, this final moment, there is no question. All of you have it right that this was bad for Clinton. In fact, the whole thing is bad for Clinton. It's probably the biggest negative that she faces.

But in this last moment, you are getting to see a snapshot of them, you know, today and tomorrow of who they are when they are under this great stress. Trump is not helping himself.

Errol Louis, the idea of them leaving it all on the field, listen to these states. Today, Trump is in Sarasota, Florida in the morning, Raleigh, North Carolina in the afternoon, late afternoon Scranton, Pennsylvania.

In the evening, Manchester, New Hampshire and he's finishing at 11 Grand Rapids, Michigan. Let's deal with that first, he is going with the theory of the case that I need a landslide. I need a cascading event in order to win this election, how so?

LOUIS: There's partly that, right, because he's got to just as we saw with the magic wall that he has to flip some normally Democratic states. But the reality also is that these are states, Pennsylvania, that don't have early voting.

So whatever they are going to get, they are going to have to do it at the end. To a certain extent, it is not necessarily a Hail Mary pass. It's just the way you would work both particular states.

Loading them all up at the end, I mean, I thought over the weekend, stops in places like Minneapolis where there has been little polling. The last Republican they voted for was Nixon. That to me looked like a sign of desperation.

GREGORY: If you are going to go someplace, go someplace that has a higher percentage of whiter voters, non-college educated voters where you've seen some movement like in Michigan, some movement toward --

BROWNSTEIN: Something big is happening. We are accelerating fundamental change in the Electoral College and the balance of power between the parties. When you go back over the last 20 years, the Democrats have better -- won the White House popular vote five out of six times.

They have almost always done better in the rustbelt than in the sunbelt. Their average share of the vote in all of the rustbelt swing states, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Iowa is higher than the average share of the vote in any of the sunbelt swing states.

But in this election, you are seeing a historic reversal being enormously accelerated. Donald Trump according to the NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll yesterday is winning non-college white voters by as much as Ronald Reagan did against (inaudible).

That is allowing him to batter at the doors in Ohio and Iowa and even Michigan not so much Wisconsin but those three. On the other hand, this large Latino turnout combined with more college whites is making Hillary Clinton more competitive in the sunbelt.

Colorado and Virginia maybe off the board. Nevada maybe off the board and Florida and North Carolina are tethering and even Arizona is. So you are seeing a decade -- what people expected to (inaudible) over a decade being condensed into one election cycle. It's extraordinary what we're watching.

CAMEROTA: David, let's look at where Hillary Clinton is going to day and you can tell us what this reveals. She is going to Pennsylvania and Michigan and Philly where Springsteen and Bon Jovi will be, by the way. They don't go far from New Jersey.

CUOMO: And the election question is whether or not you are a Bon Jovi person or a Springsteen person. They are not the same people.

CAMEROTA: No, they are not.

CUOMO: You're a Bon Jovi.

CAMEROTA: He is very handsome. I will admit.

GREGORY: There are a couple of fundamental things. First of all, there is no early voting in Pennsylvania. They want to drive as much enthusiasm as they can to get their base out, non-white voters in Pennsylvania.

In Michigan as well and as Ron wrote about last week, the fact they did not pay attention to Michigan up until now, we're kind of taking for granted that the voters are white non-working -- college educated voters is very significant.

Part of that shift that Ron is talking about is interesting. That is she has benefitting from something unusual, which is that is white voters with college degrees are trending toward Hillary Clinton.

She may win them by ten points when even Obama who came closer lost them. Whether that is a permanent part of this new Democratic coalition is very much an open question. If Marco Rubio were in the race, I'm not so sure she'll be doing well --

BROWNSTEIN: The Republican Party defined on the terms that Trump is defining. It is an insular part of (inaudible) party that's skeptical of, you know, global alliance, immigration, (inaudible) with the world. That is a Republican Party that is going to be a working class party and struggle both in minority and white collar white America.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Jackie.

KUCINICH: We can also talk about Ohio again. It looked like he was pulling ahead in Ohio and "The Columbus Dispatch" showed it a dead heat. They are tied right now. There is still room and you know -- GREGORY: It was dead even on Election Day in 20. Turnout is what

made it big for Obama.

KUCINICH: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: Safe to say we have no idea what will happen tomorrow. Panel, thank you very much.

CUOMO: Errol Louis, Bon Jovi or Springsteen?

LOUIS: Bon Jovi, of course.

GREGORY: I was much more of a rap and hip-hop guy.

CUOMO: All right. Please stay with CNN all day with Emcee Gregory and the gang. It will be complete tomorrow for Election Day. Nobody will cover every race all day like we will all day for you. Be with us.

CAMEROTA: OK, one of our other stop stories, the battle for Mosul is intensifying. There is heavy fighting between ISIS and Iraqi forces. A new battle may be on the horizon in Syria. U.S. task forces ready to retake Raqqah from ISIS. We have the latest on both fronts for you next.

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