Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Whitaker to Appear Before House Judiciary Committee; Jeff Bezos Accusing "The National Enquirer" of Blackmail and Extortion. Aired 6- 6:30a ET

Aired February 08, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Ivanka Trump talking about the Russia investigation in ways we have not heard before plus another story we can't even tell you about for half an hour. How's that for a tease. But first, breaking overnight, wither John Roberts the Supreme Court has blocked a law in Louisiana that would have restricted some abortions from going into effect. They blocked that law for now. The vote was 5-4 with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the courts four liberal judges voting for the stay. So, does this signify a left ward shift for the chief justice? How will the president who has been critical of Roberts in the past respond this morning? We're watching this very closely.

Plus in just a few hours, Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker will appear before the House Judiciary Committee but how much will he say and what will House democrats do to try to force him to talk? Whitaker had refused to appear until democrats promised not to issue a subpoena during the actual hearing.

ERICA HILL, CNN HOST: Democrats are vowing to press Whitaker on two subjects, his decision not to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation despite his public rebuke of the probe and his conversations with the White House about the Russia investigation. That's something the president recently said never happened. Then of course there's the new explosive blog post from Amazon founder are Jeff Bezos which accuses AMI, the publisher of "The Enquirer" of in Bezo's words, extortion and blackmail. The head of AMI, David Pecker, is a long time friend of President Trump. The company has not yet commented on Bezos's allegations although plenty of other people are.

BERMAN: Again it's a big wow on that one. We'll get to that in just a moment. Joining us now, Lauren Jarrett, CNN Justice reporter; Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House Press Secretary; and Anne Milgram, former New Jersey Attorney General.

Laura, I want to start on the Supreme Court ruling overnight. This had to do with a Louisiana law that was set to go into effect. The law requires that doctors have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of an abortion facility. What that essentially means is that fewer doctors would be available to perform abortions.

Louisiana argued it is necessary to provide a higher level of physician competence. Critics argue there's no medical justification, it just makes it harder to get an abortion. That's the law; the judges put a stay on it going into effect meaning there is no law in Louisiana in effect. The larger implication though here has everything to do with the Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts. John Roberts, who appears to be apparently in the middle of the court now sided with the more liberal justices here. What do you see?

LAUREN JARRETT, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: I think that analysis is right John. With the departure of Anthony Kennedy, the question was whether Roberts was going to be the one that has to step up to be that moderating voice, especially now with the addition of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, Trump appointees. The issue is whether Roberts wanted to step in and try to be that moderating force for the rest of the core.

And it looks like in this case and at least in the asylum ban case we've now seen two key decisions where's Roberts has sided with the more progressive liberal members of the court. That's not to say that Roberts has turned into a flaming liberal overnight. I don't think that we can say that. But conservatives have already had it out for him from days or weeks or months earlier and they have been being looking at how he has had this sort of war of words with President Trump.

We remember when Trump came after so-called Obama judges and Roberts hit back. An unusual move and said there aren't Obama judges, there aren't Trump judges, there are just justices trying to do their job. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out for Roberts where are you know how he ruled on the Affordable Care Act has been another ire for Trump and other conservatives. But this is something to watch here to see what happens.

HILL: And it's also interesting that was pointed out by our own Supreme Court Reporter, Ariane de Vogue, we also have to look at this in terms of the way Chief Justice Roberts looks at precedent and that also comes into play here.

ANNE MILGRAM, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Right, I think that's actually probably the most important piece of this conversation. There's two things that matter. The first is this is just a stay, this not the final decision. Before we start saying that Roberts is going to side with the democratically-appointed Supreme Court justices we have to wait and see the final opinion. What he's saying is the Supreme Court has to have a hearing and decide this before the law goes into effect.

This law will have tremendous consequences in Louisiana and he's basically saying, hold. The second piece of it is that he's the chief justice. So in some ways he's the guardian of the entire federal judiciary and the courts and I think he does feel that he has a higher responsibility for fairness and make sure the processes work well. I do think all that's true. I don't think we know whether he'll be centrist or closer to the center as the Supreme Court decisions come down.

BERMAN: No, but I do think there's one eyebrow raised when looking at the court for the next several months to see what else he does going forward. We will watch that very closely. Joe Lockhart, Matthew Whitaker who is the Acting Attorney General will appear before the House Judiciary Committee today.

There was a back and forth.

[06:05:00]

He wasn't going to go because the Chairman Jerry Nadler had a subpoena ready for him during the hearing which he was going use. Whitaker is going to go and be asked about what he has talked about the president with(ph). Whitaker is going to say, "I can't tell you because at some future point the White House may decide to invoke executive privilege. Jerry Nadler was then going to say, "OK, here's a subpoena pal. You have to talk or we're going to find you in contempt."

Now he's going and Nadler has agreed not to issue the subpoena while he is testifying but what's the significance here?

JOE LOCKHART, FORMER CLINTON WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well I think as shockingly there's a lot of politics involved here. The White House is desperate not to have a couple of questions answered which is what did they talk about with the president - what did Whitaker talk about with the president in advance of taking the job and what did he brief him about? Remember the president is part of this investigation. He may not necessarily be an official target, so there are definitely questions.

But executive privilege and oversight are very difficult issues politically. It's very hard for the average person to say if you know something why can't you tell us? It's a real thing. I was on the other side of it in the '90s where we were exerting executive privilege in think in an appropriate way, but even then I knew it was a political loser.

In the broader context, I think Nadler and the democrats want to set up how oversight's going to work and they want to out of the box say we're going to push you and we're going to use these subpoena powers because we think you guys have been stonewalling for two years and have gotten away scot-free. And I think it will be a spectacle but a strategic spectacle to show that times have changed. You'll probably not get bomb shells out of this hearing, but you'll get a sense of what the next six months are going to feel like.

HILL: There was criticism from the Department of Justice, too, Lauren, in this letter saying it's never happened this way before. And that's important too.

JARRETT: Yeah, I think their position at least yesterday was, look, this was a breach of the agreement. He wanted to come voluntarily, then you did this preemptive subpoena just to have it your back pocket and that's about a political spectacle. It's not about oversight of the Justice Department. But Nadler's position is look, I gave you a very detailed list of questions ahead of time so that we could actually get to some answers. And so if you weren't going to answer them you could just tell me.

And it's interesting. You know he wants to get at, how did Whitaker get this job? A lot of people have been very curious as to the relationship between the White House and Whitaker, what Whitaker was doing even as Chief of Staff to lay the groundwork for this job. They also wanted to question him about CNN, our reporting from last month that Whitaker actually got he unloading of President Trump about how prosecutors in Manhattan had carried out the investigation into Michael Cohen.

They wanted to talk to him about all of these things. So obviously the Mueller probe is foremost on democrat's mind. But they really wanted to delve into a lot of issues with him and this is really their last chance. If they don't get him today on the record with some of these things, it's not that they can't question him after he's Attorney General but they just don't have the same power over him and obviously it looks like Bill Barr, the permanent pick for Attorney General is going to get confirmed next week so the likelihood after today that they're going to get Whitaker in the hot seat again is unlikely.

BERMAN: Anne, I do think there's a process fight here. What we saw with Jeff Sessions when he was attorney general is when he was being questioned he refused to answer some questions because of the possibility someday that executive privilege might come into it. And that's what Joe was talking about; there had been battles about executive privilege before. But it's something that needs to be invoked by the executive here and what the House was trying to do was to say, "No, you can't raise it as a hypothetical. If you're going to do it, step up to the plate and we'll have this fight out in this hearing tomorrow."

MILGRAM: I agree completely and I think that's exactly what we're seeing is that the House democrats are basically saying you're going to answer questions and what they're trying to avoid is people coming in and just saying, privilege, privilege, privilege and having it just go on where they have to decide will they hold someone in contempt, try to make them answer questions. And, you know, privilege is not as broad as people say, but it does become a question of do you have to litigate it and actually figure out what it is? And they're trying to short circuit that.

BERMAN: They're saying if you're going to litigate it, bring it on, let's not --

MILGRAM: We're going to literally get rid of that middle step and make it happen.

LOCKHART: I think there's a - there's a tricky question for Whitaker because Trump has said on the record, "We didn't talk about this advance."

HILL: Right.

LOCKHART: So when they say he says I can't talk about those, did you talk to the president? I can't answer the question. Well the president said he hasn't talked about it, is that true or not? You - you can't assert privilege over a conversation the president said didn't happen. You can only assert privilege over communication that has happened. And that will be -- I expect to be one of the more tricky moments for him.

BERMAN: It's going to be interesting, very interesting. And Jerry Nadler has been preparing for this for a long time.

HILL: Yes.

BERMAN: We'll see what happens.

Also speaking, and we're just learning about this as we wake up this morning, the daughter of the president, Senior White House Adviser Ivanka Trump, she did an interview with ABC News with Abby Huntsman from "The View" and Abby pressed Ivanka on whether or not she is nervous about the Mueller investigation. Listen.

[06:10:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO)

ABBY HUNTSMAN, CO-HOST ON "THE VIEW": Are you concerned about anyone in your life that you love...

IVANKA TRUMP, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT AND DAUGHTER OF DONALD TRUMP: No.

HUNTSMAN: ...being involved?

IVANKA TRUMP: I'm not. I'm really not. You mentioned the Moscow example, that's a perfect example. There's nothing there. Yet it's created weeks and weeks and months of headlines. So, no, I have zero concern.

(END VIDEO)

BERMAN: It's interesting. First of all, it's always interesting to hear from the senior adviser to the president on the subjects, White House advisers don't often talk this openly about that. But when she's saying no one she loves is in any jeopardy, one would assume that involves her father, her brothers, her husband, she's connected to a lot of people here who there have been question marks about. Lauren.

JARRETT: Oh, sorry. I wasn't sure you were asking me that. Certainly, but what is she supposed to say? I've been having sleepless nights waiting up to see what the results of the Mueller probe are?

BERMAN: It's true.

JARRETT: It's a hard - it's a hard interview to do, especially without having the benefit of what Mueller's findings are yet. We have, you know, no evidence of any charges on those fronts. But at the same time the investigation is not yet complete, the report is not yet out, and so it puts her in a little bit of a defensive posture here, obviously.

BERMAN: It was interesting to hear that she was willing to at least go and talk about that. And the Moscow project is something that there are questions about. And one of the areas where there are sort of still open questions.

JARRETT: Yes.

BERMAN: And lingering investigations. All right. Everyone thank you very, very much. There is another major story this morning accusations of blackmail and extortion involving the "National Enquirer" and the world's richest man. What Jeff Bezos says the publisher of the "The Enquirer" tried to do and how he outmaneuvered them.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accusing "The National Enquirer" of blackmail and extortion in a bombshell online post, Bezos who also owns "The Washington Post," writes "The Enquirer" threatened to release revealing pictures of him unless he dropped his investigation of the tabloid and publicly stated that the tabloid's coverage was not politically motivated.

Joining us now, John Avlon, CNN Senior Political Analyst; Joe Lockhart, CNN Political Commentator; and Brian Stelter, CNN Chief Media Correspondent. Not surprising this is getting a lot of attention this morning and all of the papers. I give you "The New York Post" and I just will leave it at that.

LOCKHART: Perfect.

AVLON: Genius.

HILL: What - what's remarkable in this post, right, is everything that Jeff Bezos says he's exposing here. He calls it extortion and blackmail and he's not the only one. So he posts this blog and then all of a sudden we hear from Ronan Farrow, we hear from the A.P. We hear from "The Daily Beast." It's revealed a lot, Brian.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENTL This story has everything. We're talking about the world's richest person, an alleged blackmail plot, his sex scandal, love affair, alleged connections to President Trump. But just on the specific idea of blackmail, there are more and more allegations as the hours go on that "The National Enquirer" has engaged in this for years and that Bezos is not the only one to experience it. Ronan Farrow has been describing this; others have described it in the past. So we are seeing once again, as we did with catch and kill, more of "The Enquirer" secrets come out and in this case given the legal consequences here, the stakes are enormous.

BERMAN: I think we need to make clear what's going on here is that Bezos was investigating "The Enquirer."

SHELTER: Trying to find out who leaked his love life, basically.

BERMAN: And "The Enquirer" is saying to them, Brian, just to be clear, if you don't stop this investigation, if you don't back off this we will do what.

SHELTER: We will publish more of photos we have, these lude - not lude, these racy photos we have of you. These racy text messages we have of you. But if you come out Jeff Besos and say we don't think was politically motivated, we'll go ahead and bury those pictures.

HILL: That's the key part.

SHELTER: That's the key part.

BERMAN: Because, go ahead.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Because it ties it up with some attempt to curry favor with the president. Pecker flipped on the president. Remember, this is all in context of the catch and kill allegations regarding one of the president's paramores, right? And then were effectively colluding with Trump, then candidate, to hide information while exposing dirt on his opponents.

Now, Pecker apparently flipped on the president and has spoken to the counsel. Was this an attempt to get back in his good graces and return to form? Obviously this is basically muscle memory in the is extortion; this is blackmail.

And the brilliance of Bezos' Judo move is that we all know sunshine is the best disinfectant to and there's no place to hide for the chief content officer of this company because that whole e-mail going through saying these are the pictures we've got and saying I hope we don't have to release them, I hope cooler heads will prevail, sign this agreement which keeps us -- gives us the power over you going forward and then ending it with a little fig leaf of ethics saying we hope this is obviously a note that no editor would like to send. This is part of their game plan. It's muscle memory. It is extortion. It is blackmail. It is disgusting.

BERMAN: Can I read the threat? Let me read the threat...

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: ... that Bezos published yesterday, and I'm going to clean up parts of it. This is something that Bezos put out on his own. With "The Washington Post" poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of "The National Enquirer's" initial report. This is Bezos publishing a letter that he says was sent to him by the lawyers from "The Enquirer." The lawyer then told Bezos, "I want to describe to you the photos obtained during the news gathering. In addition to the below- the-belt selfie, otherwise colloquially known as a "blank" pic, "The Enquirer" obtained a further nine images."

So that's a threat. We have these pictures of you.

LOCKHART: Listen, I don't think anyone should be totally surprised that "The Enquirer" does this. It should not be shocking it is that kind of organization. But what makes this difference is if you read the letter and John touched on it, they didn't say this wasn't a normal agreement of you know, you go away, we'll go away, we'll never talk about this again.

They brought the political angle in. They said what we really want from you say statement that says there no politics and what makes this now more explosive is the president's relationship with - with "The National Enquirer."

[06:20:00]

We know from the Southern District of New York he was involved in some manner in an illegal arrangement with payments being made and catch and kill and all of that. And that's now the president. And this isn't just Jeff Bezos rich guy, this is the President of the United States involved with this guy whether he's trying to curry favor, whatever the issue is. And it gives you a window into who the president associates with. Look at what we've been talking about for the last couple weeks. Roger Stone, you know, David Pecker, Michael Cohen. These are grifters. These are conmen.

BERMAN: That's right.

LOCKHART: These are people that the president considers his inner circle. That's a scary thing.

BERMAN: And tone comes from the top. That's what we're seeing over and over again. This is a sense of the stakes and dividing lines. Don't forget this fine point, the President of the United States who constantly attacks real journalism calling it fake news is most in bed with an organization that could be most accurately called fake news. But not only that, behind the scenes they are engaged in extortion and blackmail and acting more like organized crime than a journalistic enterprise.

HILL: We should point out too, we've learned from former "Enquirer" employees, right, so from (inaudible), I spoke with him over the summer and he's been speaking out obviously since this all came out who said from the moment David Pecker came in, this was the plan. There was never to be any negative news about Donald Trump and everybody knew that. That's one part of it in terms of history.

But I think it's also important to point out and you brought this up, but Brian just expand on this for us if you will, there's "The Washington Post" connection. Jeff Bezos goes out of his way to talk about how this is -- it's complicated the relationship, but he does not have any editorial control and any editorial oversight of "The Washington Post" and yet because he bought the paper, that made him a major target for the president who is not happy with "The Washington Post" reporting.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Right. He describes "The Post" as a complexfier, not a word but a good one, complexifier...

HILL: I actually like it.

STELTER: ... in his relationship and he's right. Owning "The Post" makes Bezos' life more complex. Also it says makes him feel fulfilled and really proud and I think folks at "The Post" this morning are really impressed by what their boss did by going public with this alleged extortion plot. But the idea here is that "The Enquirer" didn't like what "The Post" was going to publish so it tried to punish the publisher of "The Post" and the publisher of "The Post" didn't go for it; didn't except it. That's impressive. By the way, American Media and "National Enquirer," they've said nothing. It's been 12 hours now and they have no comment.

HILL: You can't even get through in their voicemail right?

STELTER: I keep calling the spokes people and it goes to their voicemail. I think they're probably consulting with lawyers about what to say because there are legal consequences here. They have an immunity deal with federal prosecutors in the Cohen case and that immunity deal disappears if they've committed crimes.

BERMAN: I definitely want to get to that and I just want to put more meat on the bones here so people see exactly what was in this letter. And again, it's a little bit hard to understand but Bezos is saying that "The Enquirer" was trying to force him to say that he didn't think "The Enquirer" was going after him for political reasons. So "The Enquirer" was trying to get Bezos, and this is in Bezos' letter, affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces. They're threatening him with naked selfies because they think it's so important for him to say it wasn't political.

LOCKHART: Okay.

BERMAN: Why? I mean, why? That is fascinating.

AVLON: This is America.

BERMAN: And then one other aspect here that Bezos points out and this is a connection that's particularly relevant when involving "The Washington Post" and Jamal Khashoggi who was a columnist of the post, he drew a connection between the Saudis and the "National Enquirer." He said Mr. Pecker and his company have also been investigated for various actions they've taken on behalf of the Saudi government. Federal investigators and legitimate media have suspected and proved that Mr. Pecker has used "The Enquirer" and AMI for political reasons.

AVLON: That's subjectively true. What he's referring to there is all of a sudden one day probably a year and change ago supermarket dailies found basically a glossy brochure magazine advertising the glories of Saudi Arabia? Why was this coming out? It wasn't identified for what it seems to be which is basically a pay to play brochure. But it raises questions about these political connections.

We know, we have the evidence of the political efforts on Donald Trump's behalf as a candidate. And now, of course, adding Saudi into this mix is particularly fascinating given the way this administration has covered for the Saudi regime and the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist who was working for Bezos's "The Washington Post." This is really deep stuff. It's really for all tabloid's dependence on sensationalism, this is as about as high stakes and genuinely sensational as you can get with real stakes behind it all.

LOCKHART: Listen, the reason you want a statement saying it's not politically motivated, because it is politically motivated.

AVALON: That's right.

[06:25:00]

LOCKHART: That's why Bezos is saying they wanted me to lie because it would be a lie. There's one other explosive thing that Bezos alleges from his security firm, this maybe the most important part of the story. These sorts of stories come from hacks. Somebody has to hack into this phone or...

STELTER: To get the pictures.

LOCKHART: To get the pictures. Every once in a while someone steals a phone and it's low-level theft but it's generally technology theft. And his security people have told him and he says in his letter that they suspect that there may be a government -- a U.S. Government agency involved. They don't provide the evidence, they don't provide the backup, but if that is the case, you have taken something that an explosive story and made it into a nuclear bonfire because that goes well beyond this and that's something we'll have to watch.

BERMAN: That much we just don't know yet. What we do snow that AMI with the Southern District of New York as part of the charges against Michael Cohen, AMI was not charged even though they basically admitted that they broke the law and engaged in campaign finance violations. But as part of that agreement, they said we won't do anything illegal again.

STELTER: Right. American media claimed we're going to clean up our act; we're going to engage more ethically in the future. It was really specific language in this immunity deal that says if there are future crimes committed by American media, by the "National Enquirer," by David Pecker, then the immunity deal is off. So federal prosecutors, what are you going to do now?

BERMAN: Yeah.

AVLON: Got to go back to alien babies; it's a lot safer.

BERMAN: One more thing, John. You ran "The Daily Beast", you ran a journalistic enterprise. Is there any whiff of journalism in anything that AMI did here?

AVLON: No and I think that's why I'm so fired up about this, because Dylan Howard tried to use the fig leaf of journalistic ethics at the end of his extortion note. This is a note that no editor likes to send and let's hope cooler heads prevail. This is thuggery. This is backmail. This is extortion with very high states and this is not anything resembling normal journalistic practice, even in the lower depths of our business.

This -- I think the prosecutors should look at this and it should compromise the immunity deal. This is something much more serious. Again, that judo move by making it public, exposes it to the world. That's a power play and a gift for transparency.

HILL: Dylan Howard is the chief content officer but it is fascinating. I know we're out of time, we can't ignore the fact that he also put these e-mails were out there from the general counsel from Jon Fine. So the fact you've got the general counsel involved, that also.

AVLON: It's the opposite of the Midas touch, everybody gets diminished.

BERMAN: What a way of saying it cleanly. All right John, Joe, Brian, appreciate it.

HILL: A stunning revelation from top white house aide, Kellyanne Conway, what she tells CNN about a disturbing incident she recently experienced. That is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)