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Cohen Reimbursed for Hush Money; Interview with Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA); Cohen Alleges Trump Crimes. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired February 28, 2019 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] NEAL KATYAL, FORMER ACTING U.S. SOLICITOR GENERAL: It's really, really hard and looking very, very problematic for the president. And, remember, this is a president who unlike, I think, some members of the public has understood, the Southern District investigation poses a mortal threat to him. Last week "The New York Times" reported that President Trump tried to remove the U.S. attorney who was overseeing the investigation and install his own person, even though his own person had recused for ethics reasons. So the president is aware of how serious this is. And, you know, just reading the pleadings by the prosecutors, they are aware of how serious this is.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And, in fact, there was this moment where Michael Cohen was asked what else he knows about, and that sort of elicited some gasps.

So let me play that for the viewers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D), ILLINOIS: Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven't yet discussed today?

MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: Yes. And, again, those are part of the investigation that's currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: But, Neil, are those things that we don't know about? Because he already laid out a whole host of things that we do know about, from tax fraud, to bank fraud, to defrauding a charity, to the campaign finance violations. Did that suggest to you that there's more than that?

KATYAL: Yes. I mean that's certainly the -- what Cohen was saying. And it's for good reason that he didn't go further and try and detail those crimes. Those are ongoing active investigations. I would suspect that his appearance yesterday before Congress was negotiated with the investigators, with the federal prosecutors so that there were bounds of what he could and could not talk about. So that's a very natural thing.

But, yes, it's pretty astounding, because you already had Cohen naming a whole bunch of crimes that Donald Trump had committed and then you had a whole bunch of people that he identified, who worked for Trump, who were -- is part of this criminal conspiracy and who themselves lied.

And, at the end of this, you almost have to wonder, is there anyone that Donald Trump was hiring who wasn't lying and committing crimes? That is the unmistakable implication of yesterday's testimony. It was riveting, striking. And, you know, most importantly, it was credible.

You know, the Republicans really only had one defense to all of this, which was, they said, you know, Cohen, you're a convicted liar and so on. And all of that is true. But anyone who watched that testimony showed -- I think would see Cohen had the hallmarks of credibility. He didn't go too far. He was, you know, measured. He didn't say, you know, things he didn't know. He stuck really closely to the lines, even when there were -- you know, if he went further, he could have attacked Trump even more.

So, you know, this kind of credibility attack on Michael Cohen as a liar, maybe it would be one thing coming from a different camp, but coming from the Donald Trump camp, it's a little bit of pot/kettle black.

CAMEROTA: But, Neal, very quickly, as to what Michael Cohen testified about in terms of the defrauding of the charity, the tax fraud, the bank fraud, no one's above the law. So, legally, what can happen next?

KATYAL: So I think there's two different -- or I should say three different avenues. One is the one that I think most people are talking about, which is, can there be a federal indictment, federal charges? There are two Office of Legal Counsel DOJ opinions that say in general a sitting president can't be indicted. But I don't think they apply to a circumstance like this, which is, when someone cheats in order to -- allegedly cheats in order to win the election in the first place, because you wouldn't want to incentivize someone to cheat so much that they become president and then get a get out of jail free card. So that's number one.

Number two, the states can prosecute him, including New York, that has active investigations. And, number three, that old constitutional chestnut in our Constitution, high crimes and misdemeanors. When presidents commit them, they get impeached. All three of these are on the table and rightly so in a democracy in which no one is above the law.

CAMEROTA: Neal Katyal, thank you very much for your expertise.

KATYAL: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Michael Cohen grilled about these hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. We're going to speak to the lawmaker who led that line of questioning, next.

CAMEROTA: And a new CNN original series looks at the Bush family, "The Bush Years," narrated by Ed Harris. It premieres Sunday at 9:00 p.m. only on CNN.

Here's a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE H.W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I would like to introduce you to my family. The fact is, I'd be nothing without them.

Our four sons, our daughter, Doro, my own Barbara Bush.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think it's hard to imagine any family that have been more significant to American politics.

GEORGE W. BUSH, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I can hear you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Bush family, going back generations, believe in public service and helping their fellow man.

[08:35:03] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People referred to the Bush family as a dynasty. That's what it is and that's what it was.

GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm running for president of the United States. There's no turning back. And I intend to be the next president of the United States.

GEORGE H.W. BUSH: He's my boy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The Bush Years," Sunday at 9:00, on CNN.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, during the seven hours and 21 minutes of explosive testimony, Michael Cohen claimed President Trump told him to lie about hush money payments paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KATIE HILL (D), CALIFORNIA: Did the president call you to coordinate on public messaging about the payments to Ms. Cliffords in or around February 2018?

MICHAEL COHEN, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S FORMER ATTORNEY: Yes.

HILL: What did the president ask or suggest that you say about the payments or reimbursements?

COHEN: He was not knowledgeable of these reimbursements and he wasn't knowledgeable of my actions.

HILL: He asked you to say that?

COHEN: Yes, ma'am.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: And, of course, based on Cohen's testimony and evidence we have seen, that is a lie.

Joining us now is the congresswoman you just saw ask those questions, Katie Hill of California. She is a member of the House Oversight Committee.

[08:40:06] Congresswoman, thank you so much for being with us.

REP. KATIE HILL (D), CALIFORNIA: Good morning.

BERMAN: What did that moment tell you?

HILL: Really what it told us is that there's a good probability and pretty strong evidence that the president lied while he was in office. And I think that -- not only lied, but I -- but committed campaign finance law violations while he was in office as the president of the United States.

BERMAN: Well, we've seen the video of the president on Air Force One. It's pretty clear the president lied about the payments to Stormy Daniels. It's pretty clear if that moment that Michael Cohen was testifying and Emily Jane Fox, a "Vanity Fair" reporter has said it, too, if that happened, Michael Cohen -- Donald Trump was telling Michael Cohen to lie.

HILL: Right.

BERMAN: But lying to the public and lying to the press, not illegal.

HILL: Right. Right. But this -- but the actual payments, the fact that the payments happened while he was the president of the United States is the commission of campaign finance law violations. And that's the real kicker. That's the piece that we have not seen evidence of until this point, including the check with his signature on it from his personal bank account.

So now we have to take that further. We have to look at corroborating evidence that shows that, you know, he knowingly did this. He knowingly tried to commit the fraud and -- or the finance law violation. And that -- and, you know, see if there's anything that we can do to kind of contradict the claim that they're going to try and make, which is that it was a retainer.

BERMAN: And, again, you're talking about this check. And I have a copy in my hand right now.

HILL: Right.

BERMAN: People have seen it.

HILL: Right.

BERMAN: And it's dated August 1, 2017, while Donald Trump was in office. If you get more corroborating evidence of this, and if you are

convinced, as you say, that Donald Trump committed crimes while president of the United States, then what?

HILL: Well, I think we really need to let this process play out because while there are offenses that I think really could lead us down the road towards impeachment, this is something that the public has to get on board with because we need to be able to get to that two-thirds majority in the Senate and in the House. And right now, as you saw yesterday, the Republicans are still staunchly defending the president. They're trying to discredit the witnesses. And we -- we live in a moment where this can -- this can backfire significantly if we don't change the public opinion around that.

And I think that that's why these kinds of hearings are so important because the public gets to have the chance to see for themselves whether they believe the witnesses and whether these -- you know, there's not just speculation at this point. There's not just reporting. This is directly hearing from the people who know Trump the best and who were with him when he committed these egregious acts and see if it's enough for them. And for us as members of Congress, what else we need to follow, what other bread crumbs we need to follow to expose the truth.

BERMAN: You used the phrase "egregious acts." And I just want to move on after this point, but I do want to ask, because there are people who suggest -- Republicans and some Democrats -- that if it's just a campaign finance violation or breaking a campaign finance law, maybe that's not so egregious that it should lead to impeachment.

What do you say to them?

HILL: Well, I -- I guess -- I had the fear of God scared into me when I was running about campaign finance law violations. And I think that the reason it's so egregious is because it's about lying to the public. And this one in particular was about an act, hush money that is paid to influence an election and influence a critically important one just days before the election to make sure that a woman was silence and did not come forward. So it's not only, you know, making this -- this campaign finance -- a finance violation, it's also conspiring to -- to, you know, defraud the public.

BERMAN: Right.

HILL: So I think that it is absolutely egregious. And I also don't believe that that's the only thing that there is. I think that there were indications of so many acts of wrongdoing that we saw yesterday and that we're going to learn more about after today's testimony behind closed doors and in the months to come.

BERMAN: Right.

Who do you want to hear from on your committee next?

HILL: I would like to hear from Donald Trump Junior. I would like to hear from Mr. Weisselberg. And I think, you know, we want to review all of the testimony from yesterday. It was a long -- a long hearing that we need to kind of process and sit down and strategize with our team and strategize with the chairman to figure out what the next steps are. But those are the names that stand out as people we certainly need to talk to next. And I imagine that there's probably a long list of people that are -- that we should be seeing.

BERMAN: You've been in Congress only a short time at this point. Everyone's talking about yesterday as this moment in history.

HILL: Oh, yes.

BERMAN: I don't know if you've had a chance -- you've been on TV a lot since then, so I don't know if you've had a chance to step back and reflect. But what about being part of that history just, you know, 55 days into your time in Congress?

[08:45:03] HILL: I mean the magnitude of that is -- it really is heavy. And I think, as we were coming into Congress and as I started to realize that I may end up on Oversight, I was very aware of that. And I was just talking to one of my team members yesterday as I was about to go into the hearing. I was like, you remember when we were going to go -- when it seemed like I was going to go onto Oversight and you were like, that means that you might be there when Michael Cohen testifies. And -- and, sure enough, that was yesterday.

So I think it is pretty substantial. And this is something that as the -- as the chairman reminded us all, this is something that people can be talking about and that could be in the history books for hundreds of years. And that reminds you of how gravely important this job is. There are -- John -- I think it's John Dingell is always quoted as saying that you have an incredibly important job, but you're not an important person. And we always have to remember that, that we are -- we are a part of history, but we -- we are -- we have to stay humble and we have to remember that we are committing a service to the American people and doing our job is upholding the Constitution and providing that check and balance on the executive branch. And that's exactly what we're doing right now.

BERMAN: Congresswoman Katie Hill, thank you for getting up and being with us this morning. I really appreciate it.

HILL: Thank you. I appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: All right, so was Michael Cohen's testimony the knockout punch that Democrats had hoped for? Carl Bernstein has some thoughts on this and he gives us "The Bottom Line," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:50:36] CAMEROTA: Not since the Nixon era have we seen a trusted confidant of a sitting U.S. president testify on Capitol Hill about alleged crimes committed by a president while in office. And there is the split screen proving it to you.

So, what have we learned from Michael Cohen's testimony and where do we go from here? Let's get "The Bottom Line" with someone who knows a lot about this, Carl Bernstein. He's one of the legendary "Washington Post" reporters, of course, who broke the Watergate scandal and our own CNN political analyst.

Carl, great to see you.

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to be with you.

CAMEROTA: You've said that now there is a sense that their -- there is a massive cover-up that is unraveling before our eyes. What gave you that sense yesterday?

BERNSTEIN: I think that there was both a specificity and a texture and context to Michael Cohen's testimony and pulling strands together from various investigations that we now can now see the whole ball of yarn and how those strands get pulled. And also we see for the first time the fruits of Robert Mueller's investigatory decision-making to parcel out a lot of this investigation into the Southern District of New York, to U.S. attorneys in the District of Columbia, in Virginia, and that there are ongoing investigations that will ensure that all of this presidential cover-up in areas financial having to do with obstruction of justice, having to do with Russia, that there is now a mechanism in every jurisdiction to make sure that the facts are investigated and run down to the bottom.

So I think that we now can see that the strategy of the special prosecutor to perpetuate his investigation no matter what happens in terms of who is the attorney general is now beginning to become more apparent.

BERMAN: Talk more about that, because I think it's really interesting, because so many of the new things we learned, or the new details, we outside the small Mueller realm, weren't exactly about Russia. They were the hush money payments, which was SDNY. It was the news of further SDNY investigations. It was allegations of cooking the books for bank fraud and things like that. None of that is likely to be part of the Mueller report next week.

BERNSTEIN: Well, we don't know because obstruction is likely to figure in some way in the Mueller report. And what has the obstruction been about? It's been about trying to keep all of these facts, I believe, from coming out in various ways, but especially as they relate to Russia. And if you listen to -- very carefully to Cohen's testimony there was really significant testimony about Russia yesterday. And the Moscow Trump Tower project and how both Jay Sekulow, the president's attorney and Cohen sat in the White House and were more or less in code, as he put it, instructed how to testify. So -- and he indeed testified perjuriously. He perjured himself and he's been convicted of perjury for those reasons.

So all of these strands, as I said a moment ago, are coming together. And they're really inseparable, I think, because what Cohen also did is he gave us a picture, a believable picture, of the man that's consistent with what others have said who know and have worked with Trump. If you talked, as I have, to real estate people in New York, they wouldn't do business with him. They've always regarded him as a grafter, as a conman, as a fraud. And that's really what Cohen was telling us yesterday from the inside.

And we now have Weisselberg, we have the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. He is now in the crosshairs, if you want to put it that way, of the investigator's sights in terms of testimony that can be compelled from him. It's very significant, I think, that we haven't seen anything of Don Junior in terms of appearing before a grand jury. That usually means that perhaps he may be a target of one of these investigations.

[08:55:05] So we're going to see a -- and we have now the congressional investigations with a Democratic majority and hopefully that Democratic majority will be a bit more effective and restrained in terms of its rhetoric than we saw yesterday and more interested in simply putting the facts together, especially because the Republicans have shown such obstructionist tactics, as we saw yesterday.

CAMEROTA: As you've been speaking, Carl, we've been watching Michael Cohen arrive for that closed door testimony that he will be doing in front of the House Intel Committee. So you saw him there with his lawyer, Lanny Davis.

And so, you know, the question is, what more is there to get out of him? I mean behind closed doors, will he be more free to speak about the SDNY investigations that he said he wasn't comfortable disclosing yesterday?

BERNSTEIN: I don't -- I don't know. But I think, again, there are certain things that he can testify to in greater detail than he did yesterday.

Also, the Intelligence Committee, again, for the first time, is no longer controlled by the Republicans. And they have subpoena power to get the witnesses that they want in there, including perhaps Donald Trump and Weisselberg, et cetera, et cetera.

BERMAN: Carl Bernstein, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

BERNSTEIN: Good to be with you.

CAMEROTA: The other big story, President Trump leaving the North Korean summit without a deal. "NEWSROOM" has much more on all of this after a very quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END