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House Dems Subpoena Records from Trump Associates; Secret Nuke Site May Have Led to Collapse of Trump-Kim Talks. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 05, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

[07:00:07] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY.

New this morning, the White House is firing back after House Democrats have launched this sweeping investigation into nearly every aspect of President Trump's world.

The probe is taking on allegations of corruption, obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The House Judiciary Committee sent letters and document requests to 81 people and entities, including the White House, campaign staffers, the Justice Department, even the president's sons.

The White House is blasting this sweeping probe as, quote, "disgraceful and abusive" and calling it nothing more than a fishing expedition.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Also new this morning, the "Wall Street Journal" reports that a lawyer for Michael Cohen approached President Trump's attorneys and raised the possibility of a pardon after Cohen was raided by the FBI last year.

What's unclear at this point is whether Michael Cohen knew about it. Remember, Cohen said just last week under oath that he never asked for nor would he accept a pardon from President Trump.

Joining us now, Mary Katharine Ham. She's a conservative blogger and a CNN political commentator. David Gregory, CNN political analyst. And Jeffrey Toobin. He's a former federal prosecutor and CNN's chief legal analyst, who brought his glasses today. Twitter had a lot to say.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, I know. I was flattered that anyone noticed. Glasses are back.

BERMAN: Glasses are back. Listen, here is some breaking news or breaking news sound. And that's Ty Cobb, who was the White House lawyer in charge of handling the Mueller investigation, has done an interview with ABC News; and he had remarkable praise for Robert Mueller. I just want you to listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TY COBB, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I think Bob Mueller is an American hero. I've known him for 30 years as a prosecutor and a friend, and I think the -- I think the world of Bob Mueller. He's -- he is a very deliberate guy, and he -- but he's also a class act and a very justice-oriented person.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He also said, Jeffrey, notably and declaratively, this is not a witch-hunt, which is very different than what the president says.

TOOBIN: Well, you know, there has been a major sea change since Ty Cobb left and Emmet Flood came in.

Emmet Flood brought with him the Williams and Connelly mentality which is total war, title fighting all the time. Rudy Giuliani came in around the time that Ty Cobb left. There has been a complete 180 in the White House in how to deal with Mueller.

That's the old view, which is try to cooperate, get it behind you, don't pay undue attention to it, and total warfare. That's where we are now.

CAMEROTA: David Gregory, as you have probably heard over the past 24 hours, there's now a talking point among President Trump's supporters that this is a fishing expedition. You keep hearing that word.

So I'll just read to you what Sarah Sanders says about it. She puts a finer point on it. "Chairman Nadler and his fellow Democrats have embarked on this fishing expedition, because they are terrified that their two-year false narrative of Russia collusion is crumbling. The Democrats are not after the truth. They are after the president."

Of course, that ignores all of the different bits of evidence that have come up over the past three years that Jerry Nadler, among others, say they must follow in terms of abuses of power, but do you feel that the Republicans -- that there's some legitimacy to that talking point?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. Because they may be proven right. There's no question that how broad this request is for all of these subpoenas in so many different directions of investigation of President Trump and those in his orbit is incredibly broad, plays right into Trump's hand saying, "Wait a minute. I thought collusion was the thing." Nobody's brought any evidence yet of collusion that ties him, and they'll continue to make that political argument.

But a couple of things can be true at the same time. This can be really broad. This can be the result of elections that put Democrats in power, who now are trying to play catch up on congressional oversight. And the investigation itself can be the thing.

You know, Democrats could say, "Look, there's a lot to investigate here," and there is. There's a lot of questions. And maybe they never get to impeachment. Maybe the point is to have a kind of Michael Cohen show over and over and over again, to raise questions about what the president has done, what the president is hiding and see if, in a public airing, there's -- there's some truth that is arrived at.

BERMAN: Mary Katharine Ham, it's not as if Republicans, when they controlled the House and there was a Democrat in the White House, it's not as if they didn't launch many investigations and used their oversight power, you know, with gusto.

MARY KATHARINE HAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, elections have consequences, and oversight is within their purview.

Some of this stuff can be totally legit, but with all eras of Congress and with all investigations and onslaughts of investigations, there is a political calculation in how much the American public can take of a two-year Michael Cohen show, for instance.

And whether that would be convincing to them, that they should go with your team in the next election, which I think is what Democrats are -- that's the ultimate end here.

[07:05:03] Look, I do think there's a shift not just from the Ty Cobb era to the current era in the Trump White House, but there's a shift among Democrats in the rhetoric about Mueller, which is "He's the gold standard. We're going to wait for all of this to come out. On collusion this is going to be -- this is going to be the end game. This is the answer, right? Whatever he tells us is important."

And now we get, "Well, we already have evidence of obstruction of justice." According to Nadler, it's a done deal any way. "And now we're going to do two more years of investigation."

I think they do risk looking like the goal posts are moving, because it looks like the goal posts are moving.

CAMEROTA: I mean --

TOOBIN: But when you -- when you consider that Michael Cohen said for the first time, "By the way, we committed bank fraud and insurance fraud that no one knew by submitting false financial statements to banks and insurance companies," you can hardly criticize the Democrats for saying, "Wow, maybe we should look into whether there's bank fraud and insurance fraud," since no one knew that before.

GREGORY: Right, and you have Republicans who ran Congress, who were not interested in asking any of these questions; who were not interested in any kind of oversight which is part of a general pattern of even when they would say softly that they thought the president was off the reservation, they didn't do anything about it.

So Democrats are going to do that. They're going to assert it.

And it's also a hedge. If you have an incoming attorney general who says, "Well, I don't know if the Mueller report is going to see the light of day. I'll have to follow procedures, and we'll have to see what's in the country's interests." Then the Democrats have a right to stand up and say, "Wait a minute.

I seem to remember the standard of Republicans when they were in an oversight capacity, on Benghazi or lots of other things going back to the Clinton administration, where everything got an airing. Everything was legitimate. So we're going to do that, too."

And I think Mary is right, that -- Mary Katharine is right, that the question is how the public absorbs all of this, because I do think the president is potentially strengthened by all of this, by it being overly broad, by looking like Democrats are simply after the president. It will depend what they find, and ultimately, this is why Mueller is so important, what he finds.

CAMEROTA: Mary Katharine, I mean, do you see this as just tit-for- tat, "Well, Republicans did this, and now Democrats run the House and now they can do this"? Or do you see it as Jeffrey pointed out, that new things are coming to light? I mean, not just Michael Cohen. There's the Jared security clearance. There's the abuses of power. New things are coming to light.

What do you want Democrats to do, sit on their hands when these things are revealed?

HAM: So it sounds very "Big Lebowski": "New stuff has come to light."

No, I think -- I think that is part of it, and that can be a legitimate part of it. But, for instance, when you're talking about Nadler, you're talking with Warner, who was part of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, which we were also told was very important and was doing things the right way. Both of them are talking about things that Mueller has covered.

Mueller has all the information. He has, I think, better information than they're going to have. And it makes me wonder what the point of all this is or what the point of the Mueller investigation was and why we had to protect it so fiercely, which I was on board for if, in fact, they think they already have all the goods on this; and they're just going to do the -- a different investigation, if the answer from Mueller, it seems, might not be the one they wanted.

That is -- that is what that reads like, not the other stuff, that could be a separate issue, but on the issue of collusion, yes, that is what that looks like. It looks like goal post moving.

TOOBIN: But if the Mueller report doesn't come out, and we don't know what Mueller --

HAM: Then why did we pay for that sucker?

TOOBIN: Well, that's a good question. But -- but you can hardly blame the Democrats if Bob Barr refuses to let the Mueller report see the light of day.

HAM: I don't think we've seen a ton of indication of that.

TOOBIN: Well, we'll see. GREGORY: We don't have an indication that he's going to, you know,

send it all to Congress in the public interest. So the truth is that Democrats don't know.

So if we look at it a slightly different way, when we have revelations, Alisyn, to your point, whether it's security clearances or other aspects that may or may not be part of Mueller's purview; when we hear from Michael Cohen that there's ongoing investigations in the Southern District that's outside Mueller's purview, should Democrats just ignore that? Should they say, "Well, you know, four things to investigate is fine, but we shouldn't do six because that would just be unseemly"? But if there are six, then they should -- then they should push hard.

You know, the Williams and Connolly playbook was one used by, oh, yes, Bill Clinton, too, who had David Kendall, a Williams and Connolly lawyer, who fought the same kind of fight that this president is fighting now against impeachment. And they did it to very good effect, by the way, politically, which is the page that I think the president and his team have taken here.

BERMAN: Can I raise a new issue brought up in the "Wall Street Journal" overnight, which is "The Journal" reports that lawyers for Michael Cohen approached the president's personal attorneys to discuss the issue of a pardon.

Do we have a clip from this to throw up on the screen? It's a full- screen here. It says, "Mr. Ryan" -- Stephen Ryan, who was at that point, Michael Cohen's attorney -- "left the impression that if Mr. Cohen couldn't rely on a pardon, he might cooperate with prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office investigating Mr. Cohen."

Now, Jeffrey --

[07:10:06] TOOBIN: Which is what happened.

BERMAN: Right. Which is what happened.

Let me just play you what Michael Cohen had to say about this, the issue of pardons in the hearing last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: I have never asked for, nor would I accept a pardon from President Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Now, there might be wiggle room here. "The Wall Street Journal" notes in the article that it's not clear whether Michael Cohen asked his attorney to ask about a pardon or whether the attorney was freelancing there.

But how do you see this overall pardon issue?

TOOBIN: If you are an attorney for -- for Michael Cohen, you are doing your job by trying to get him a pardon. I mean, he -- he was closes enough to the president. The president has shown through pardoning Joe Arpaio, through pardoning Dinesh D'Souza, that he uses the pardon power to help out his friends. So it is not surprising that they went out there to try to get a pardon. I don't think it was even inappropriate.

You know, I don't really think it -- makes Cohen to be a liar. It's not clear what he knew about that.

But remember, Michael Cohen's attitude about everything Trump related has changed dramatically in the last few months.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I think that's fair to say. And Mary Katharine, isn't that just called standard operating procedure? I mean, first you see if you get a pardon?

HAM: Yes, I mean, it seems fine to me, and it seems Trump has been open to these things. And it does -- it's sort of amusing that Trump is like, "Cohen was doing his own thing. He was freelancing."

And Cohen is like, "My lawyer was probably freelancing. I didn't know about this pardon thing."

But look, this seems par for the course for this crowd of folks, to sort of just --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: The one thing that's interesting in this article also is it says that the president's personal attorneys would not respond to this request, except for Rudy Giuliani, who apparently wouldn't rule it out in these discussions.

CAMEROTA: Right. But that wasn't good enough. They wanted more of a guarantee, David.

GREGORY: Right. And you know, you don't know who ultimately had sway. I mean, there's a lot of lawyers discussing a lot of different things and eventualities. And we're catching a bit of process here in this reporting, where somebody's checking something out.

But I think it's also true that Michael Cohen's views about Trump changed in particular in response to the way they started targeting him, once the raid happened once he got closer to cooperating.

So again, his level of righteousness increased as time went on. And he's got plenty of credibility problems that doesn't necessarily detract from whether or not he was telling the truth.

CAMEROTA: He's coming back this week to Congress. It's hard to know what stone has been left unturned, and I don't mean Roger.

BERMAN: Well, but we have someone. Speaking of Roger --

(CROSSTALK) TOOBIN: Some actual Roger Stones. He -- but this isn't secret. So we don't -- I mean, somewhat to my surprise, not anything as far as I'm aware of of his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee or the Senate Intelligence Committee has leaked.

CAMEROTA: True.

TOOBIN: So we don't really know what he's -- what he's covered with them.

BERMAN: Can I ask you about Roger Stone, since you brought him up.

TOOBIN: I'm the world's foremost authority on Roger Stone.

CAMEROTA: Did you bring the stone?

TOOBIN: I did not bring my --

CAMEROTA: Your Roger Stone?

BERMAN: The special counsel's office apparently pointed out to Judge Amy Berman Jackson -- no relation -- that -- that Stone had an Instagram post and has this book coming out which possibly could violate the gag order. Let me read a clip from "The New York Times": "In a new post published on Mr. Stone's Instagram account on Sunday, Mr. Mueller was accused of adopting tactics 'straight out of gestapo's playbook,' and Mr. Stone's followers were asked to donate to his legal defense fund. His Instagram account published another post on Sunday of black T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase, 'Roger Stone did Nothing Wrong,' accompanied by the caption, 'The proceeds will go to defend Stone against the deep state hit squad.'"

TOOBIN: In one of those photographs, it was my head imposed on the Roger Stone T-shirt.

CAMEROTA: Congratulations.

TOOBIN: Just, you know, I'm kind of famous.

CAMEROTA: How does this not violate a gag order, Jeffrey?

TOOBIN: I mean, the Instagram post, you know, he is allowed to fundraise, but he's not allowed to attack Mueller. I mean, I think he's playing with fire. I think he could get locked up. I mean, this is insane, what he's doing.

The book is a little bit of a different story, because the book had come out previously. This is a new edition with a new book. Of course, he should have said to the judge, "By the way, I'm coming out with a new edition of my book."

But the Instagram post, which I assume was done by his coterie of advisors, you know, these people who come -- who help him out in Florida, but I think he's -- he is playing with fire. And Judge Jackson is -- is not screwing around. I mean, I don't think this will get him locked up, but it might.

CAMEROTA: David, this is the problem. I mean, is that there's a lot of people around the president, and the president included, who are playing by the old playbook. They're old rules, of when they were, you know, in charge of -- when they were at the Trump Organization, or when Roger Stone was a top advisor. But things have changed. There are new rules now.

And that's why it will be so fascinating to hear from Allen Weisselberg, who is the CFO of the Trump Organization, Rhona Graff, who was one of the gatekeepers. That's the old rules. And now new rules. Congress wants to hear how it -- how it worked.

GREGORY: Yes, exactly. And the question is whether the courts will ultimately settle who comes before them, if they fight these subpoenas. And we can find out in the next couple of weeks.

And I think Judge Jackson, who -- who made the point that, you know, you get two strikes but not three, is likely to show him who's boss in this case. I've seen a lot of tough federal judges who, I don't think, should be putting up with this kind of stupidity.

BERMAN: Judge Berman Jackson, no relation.

Mary Katharine, quick last word.

HAM: Yes, I mean, everybody wants to be an Instagram influencer these days, whether you're Roger Stone or a "Bachelorette" contestant. He's taken a different path. Taking a different path.

BERMAN: Leave it there.

TOOBIN: I -- I'm an Instagram influencer now, I guess, because I'm on Roger Stone's website.

CAMEROTA: I guess so.

BERMAN: Looking sharp.

CAMEROTA: You've arrived. You've really arrived.

BERMAN: All right. Jeffrey, David, Mary Katharine, thank you --

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

BERMAN: -- very much. President Trump blamed Michael Cohen's testimony for the failed North Korea summit. But why did talks actually collapse? We're joined by the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper. He will weigh in next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:10] BERMAN: President Trump, in his words, walked away from the nuclear summit with North Korea empty-handed. Now we are learning a closely-held North Korean secret that the president knew about may have played a role in why the talks collapsed. Joining us now is James Clapper, former director of national

intelligence and a CNN national security analyst. Director, thank you so much for being with us.

What we are told is that Kim Jong-un raised the possibility of dismantling, under the watchful eye of American inspectors, Yongbyon, this longtime nuclear power plant and weapons production area that we've known about that's been public for some time.

Then President Trump went back to him and said, "OK, but you've got to do that plus everything else," and everything else apparently includes a different facility. Kang Song (ph), which is near Pyongyang, which is also now involved with producing nuclear technology.

When Kim Jong-un wouldn't give that, that's when the president walked away. Is that a valid reason to walk away, Director?

JAMES CLAPPER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it could be. The thing about this, John, I think and the reason it went south was actually -- apart from, you know, this site, is both from a process and a substance standpoint.

from a process standpoint, and I thought that's the reason for appointing a special envoy, which you would typically expect, is that there would be some deliverables worked out ahead of time that the North Koreans had -- and we had already agreed to so that the actual summit could be more of a formality.

But even more broadly than that, I think, in the absence of knowing -- of having, as far as I know having, failed to ask the question of Kim Jong-un, "What is it you need to feel secure so you don't need nuclear weapons," and to have agreed on what exactly denuclearization means. And this site is just a manifestation of that failure to have arrived at a mutual agreement of denuclearization.

And just bear in mind the North Koreans, in their mind, denuclearization applies -- it's a two-way street. It applies to us, as well. So from both a process and a substance standpoint, I think the summit was doomed from the get-go.

BERMAN: In other words, if this was going to be a problem, the president should have known that going in; and that's symptomatic of a greater failure, you're saying?

TAPPER: Exactly. I think just a lack of preparation or a combination of that and perhaps, you know, the president's hubris. He thought he could charm Kim Jong-un into agreeing to anything.

And it isn't sufficient for us simply to demand that the North Koreans denuclearize when the only apparent promise is we'll be less coercive. That's not a very appealing negotiating strategy.

BERMAN: In your mind is the United States in a worse position, vis-a- vis North Korea, than it was just a week ago?

TAPPER: No, to his credit -- and I was concerned about this -- I thought -- you know, the president did walk away. You know, no deal is better than a bad deal. And I thought -- I was concerned that, in an effort to do a -- generate a counter distraction to the Cohen hearing, that he might concede something like agreeing over time to take all U.S. forces off the peninsula, which I think would be a huge blunder. Well, he didn't do that.

BERMAN: Do you think it's possible that the Cohen hearing, as the president suggested, contributed to the failure of the summit?

TAPPER: No, I don't think it had anything to do with it. And it took him two or three days to think that one up.

BERMAN: The one thing that has disappeared, presumably now or apparently for good, at least under this administration, are the major joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea. You think that's a real problem.

TAPPER: I do. I think it's -- this is something the president gratuitously gave away at Singapore in June, and he didn't need to. And what do we have to show for it? We didn't get anything for that. And now, I guess, the Department of Defense has decided to officially take those down.

The reason those exercises are important is, first, they have to -- we have to exercise jointly among our own forces, who are turning over every year, as well with Iraq. So it's both a joint and a combined necessity, I believe, for readiness purposes, to have those exercises.

And by the way, the North Koreans fully understand the purpose of that exercise. The scenario is about the same every year. It was when I served there 30 years ago, and it's no different. It's defensive, posits an invasion by the North into South and then restoration to the Demilitarized Zone. And the North Koreans know that.

BERMAN: Director, I want to ask you a question about something that you were intimately involved with in your time as director of national intelligence, and it has to do with the NSA surveillance program, or metadata collection apparatus.

It changed. I mean, it changed in 2015, it went from the fact the U.S. government had to ask the phone companies for some of this metadata, which is essentially who called whom from where, domestically.

There are reports overnight that CNN has confirmed that this administration has abandoned that program and may very well let it expire when its authorization comes to an end, which is soon.

Glen Greenwald, who's something of a nemesis of yours, who writes for "The Intercept" and was integral in Edward Snowden's exposure of some of these programs, this is what he wrote overnight. "The very first NSA program we revealed from Snowden document, the mass domestic spying program of Americans' phone records was James Clapper lied about and Obama insisted was vital to national security, has been shut down."

We have you here, so we'd like your reaction to that.

CLAPPER: Well, the original thought behind this, and this was -- this program was put in place as a direct result of 9/11, and the point was to be able to track quickly a foreign communicant talking to somebody in this country who may have been plotting a terrorist plot and was put in place during the Bush administration for that reason.

I always regarded it as kind of a safeguard or insurance policy so that, if the need came up, you'd have this to refer to. An example of that was in the -- after the Boston marathon bombing, there was concern and a suspicion at the time that there may have been a broader intent to attack, particularly in New York City. That turned out not to be the case.

So I think the big lesson here was, you know, a need for more transparency. Now, you know, I can't comment on whether, to the extent to which, you know, NSA has actually used this since the USA Freedom Act, which was enacted in 2015 to replace the Patriot Act 215, was intended to move that, instead of NSA storing this metadata, it would be stored at the providers and NSA could ask the providers. So I don't -- I can't comment on whether or not it's been used or not.

At some point, you'd want to have that capability, though, if you ever had another plot involving plotters in the United States with plotters overseas.

BERMAN: One other thing --

CLAPPER: As far as the comment about the allegation about my lying, I didn't lie, I made a big mistake. And I just simply didn't understand what I was being asked about. I thought of another surveillance program, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, when I was being asked about Section 215 of the Patriot Act. At the time, I just didn't understand that.

BERMAN: One of the things that's noted in "The New York Times" article, which broke this story overnight was that it suggested no terrorist attacks have been stopped or terrorists caught as a result of this program. If that is the case, does that indicate that it might not be necessary?

TAPPER: It -- well, that's true, and we -- I think probably at the time, contemporaneously back 2013 or so when all this broke, that we may have oversold it a bit because, you know, we were hard pressed to point out to a specific case in point.

What this was was just trying to capitalize on lesson learned from 9/11.

I will say that -- and I've said this publicly many times before, that what this did prove is the need for the intelligence community to -- to have been more transparent. I'm convinced, had this been explained contemporaneously at the time it was introduced, that it would have been accepted by the public and probably wouldn't have caused any more anxiety then the fact that the FBI maintains hundreds of millions of fingerprint files on innocent Americans. But people know it, know about it, know why, know how it's used; and it is regulated and given proper oversight.

BERMAN: Director James Clapper, thank you for being with us this morning to discuss this and also many other issues, as well.

CLAPPER: Thanks, John.

CAMEROTA: All right. John, so who do Democratic voters want to run in 2020, and how will they take on President Trump?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It seems like the dude is made of rubber. Like, anything you throw at him just bounces off. I mean, there's nothing that sticks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. This group has a lot to say. We get the pulse of the people next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)