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Pelosi: Barr 'Lied to Congress' and 'That's a Crime'; Trump Pushing Back Against McGahn Testifying Before Congress; Presidential Candidate Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) is Interviewed about His Platform. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 03, 2019 - 07:00   ET

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

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COY WIRE, CNN SPORT ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: -- will be in focus more than ever. Also, so will mint juleps. WalletHub estimated 140,000 of them will be sold, half a million beers and 120,000 hot dogs. Typical weekend for us, John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: A hundred and forty-thousand and one, officially. All right, Coy Wire, thank you very much.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: In your bonnet.

BERMAN: In my -- yes.

CAMEROTA: I know that.

Thanks to our international viewers for watching. For you CNN TALK is next. For our U.S. viewers, NEW DAY continues right now.

BERMAN: Good morning, welcome to your NEW DAY. This morning, what is unfolding before our eyes in public for everyone to see? Is a White House effort to keep Congress from asking questions about the findings in the Mueller report.

The president told us he does not want White House counsel Don McGahn to testify. Told us that last night out loud. McGahn was part of what might be the most overt episode of possible obstruction discussed in the Mueller report. McGahn is under subpoena already. So what will Congress do if he doesn't show?

CAMEROTA: Well, House Democrats are threatening to begin contempt proceedings against William Barr for failing to turn over the unredacted Mueller report. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is accusing the attorney general of committing a crime by lying to Congress.

But testimony from Robert Mueller himself could eclipse all of that. One date being mentioned for his appearance is May 15. That is less than two weeks from now.

Joining us now to discuss all of this, we have Susan Glasser, staff writer for "The New Yorker" and CNN global affairs analyst. We have Michael Smerconish, host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," and Abby Phillip, CNN White House correspondent. Great to have all of you. Michael, I'll begin with you. It seems as though Robert Mueller could

have solved a lot of these problems by recommending, making a recommendation. He knew that he couldn't indict a sitting president. But he did seem to find ample evidence of wrongdoing and obstruction.

And so here we are left with Congress trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together still, trying to call some of the people that Robert Mueller called. The White House stonewalling. The White House blocking it. And the American public feeling sort of unsatisfied.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, HOST, "SMERCONISH": I completely agree. I'll take it a step further. He created this situation. And we had a conversation, Alisyn, immediately after the release of his report; and I said that I took issue with his lack of finding on obstruction of justice.

Frankly, I think he believes that the president did commit obstruction of justice. Because relative to collusion or conspiracy, call it what you will, he had no problem giving the president a clean Bill of health. If he similarly believed that about obstruction, I think he would have said so. He left a void.

And Bill Barr then filled that void with his own interpretation. We wouldn't be subject to all these interpretations if Mueller had finished the task.

BERMAN: But now what's happening is that the administration seems to be blocking Congress from getting into that void at all with some help from Congress itself, I might say. I mean, Jerry Nadler.

CAMEROTA: Why? What are they doing to block it?

BERMAN: Jerry Nadler, what he did was not have William Barr come testify because, you know, House lawyers couldn't ask the questioning. If you want to get more information, limiting yourself from getting that information isn't a good way of doing it.

But the White House is standing in the way. Let me play you what the president said last night about White House counsel Don McGahn testifying, because I think it's very significant.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I've had him testifying already for 30 hours.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So is the answer no?

TRUMP: And it's really -- so I don't think I can let him and then tell everybody else you can. I would say it's done. We both knew this. Nobody has ever done what I've done. I've given total transparency. It's never happened before like this.

BERMAN: Don McGahn is the central player in what is possibly the most incriminating case of obstruction, possible obstruction laid out by Robert Mueller. And the president just told us he doesn't want to let McGahn testify. Now, there will be a legal debate about whether he can stop McGahn from testifying. But it is important to note the president is going to try to stop it.

And Susan Glasser, to you. The big question, then, is what will Congress do? Where this this fight go? How much and how do Democrats want to battle here?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, it is an important question. Because if you draw in all three branches of government in a court fight, right, that's what potentially is going to happen.

And Donald Trump is essentially daring Congress to follow through on their threats against him. And so right now, yesterday, you had a really extraordinary situation where you had a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee with an empty chair for the attorney general.

There was thunderous claims made by Chairman Jerry Nadler that the fate of democracy itself and the presidency not being a dictator was at stake. And yet, they didn't quite decide what to follow through.

So next week I think we'll see, A, whether they do pursue this and say, "We're going to enforce our subpoena." B, then, whether the White House is willing to go to court, where they might well lose this.

[07:05:08] Congress has a very strong argument as a coequal branch of government that is entitled to the full not only Mueller report without the redactions. But also, I think this is very significant and overlooked. The underlying evidence.

In the past, for example, when Ken Starr, again, a different statute. When he brought his report to Congress about Bill Clinton, it came with all of the FBI's interviews, all of the underlying research and investigative material that went into that report and then form the basis of the subsequent impeachment hearings.

And I think that's what Congress is -- believes it's entitled to, and I think there's a pretty strong precedent there. So it will be interesting to see the Trump Justice Department follows through on their very maximalist interpretation.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, Abby, it sounds like the president wants everyone to believe it's done, we're done. The Mueller report is out. And Congress believes they are just getting started because of the evidence in those 400-plus pages of, you know, again, ample evidence of wrongdoing. And so they believe that they have this oversight responsibility, and they're just getting started. And these two are just on completely different timelines.

ABBY PHILLIP, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And, you know, what Susan is talking about, that underlying information, is exactly what the White House is trying to say that they don't think Congress is entitled to.

The president's White House lawyer, Emmet Flood, put out a letter yesterday. And part of the purpose of that letter was to basically say we believe that the underlying information here is potentially privileged. And we reserve the right to not only stop you from getting that information but also stop any of these people like Don McGahn, like any of the other White House officials that cooperated with the special counsel probe from testifying yet again before Congress.

And I think that they're doing that, because they don't think that this is a closed book. They are worried that Congress is going to take up the issue of obstruction which they view as a sort of subjective kind of determination. They're going to use that as a means to simply just investigate the president into the ground.

So they view this in a lot of ways as kind of a major threat to Trump's presidency, not just about -- you know, about pushing back against partisans in Congress.

I think they think that obstruction is sort of an open door that Bob Mueller left there. And that they have to close it, because if they don't, they could be opening up all kinds of avenues for Congress to continue to push President Trump on some of these issues of accountability and create some problems for him at a particularly important time when he's going into his re-election campaign.

And they're willing to fight this all the way through the courts, even if, as Susan said, they may not have a strong legal argument. The thing about the courts, though, is that it just takes a long time. And time is what they need right now.

BERMAN: Michael.

SMERCONISH: I think that Don McGahn won't move the needle, even if he does testify. In a big-picture sense what's just transpired -- and this is the real impact, I think, of what's gone on with A.G. Bill Barr in the last couple of days.

There was a two and a half or three-week window there where all of us were dealing only with the four-page summary that Barr provided, which I argue is at odds with the Mueller report itself.

But I think that's baked in. Because at the time that four-page summary was out on the street, you had the president saying no collusion, no obstruction. And to half of the American population, I think they've now walked away from it with that conclusion in their mind. It will be very hard to now go back and convince them otherwise.

BERMAN: That's a matter of public opinion. I will say that's a matter of public opinion. Not necessarily a matter of truth, though, if the pursuit of truth is the goal here, asking Don McGahn under oath did you think the president was telling you to fire Bob Mueller, yes or no? The answer to that question matters, whether or not it moves public opinion.

Abby, I cut you off. Go ahead.

PHILLIP: No, I mean, I think the president believes that Don McGahn is no longer in that category of people who he can rely on to -- to protect him in a public setting like this.

And to him, letting Don McGahn testify is -- is just one more way in which all of this negative information about him can be put out in the public.

Don McGahn has made it very clear he thought the president was doing something that imperiled his presidency that would cause a Saturday Night Massacre. And that is -- you know, he is no longer someone in the camp that the president can trust to go out there and say things in a way that -- that is the least damaging to him. So that's why Don McGahn in important.

Maybe he's not going to move the leader from a legal perspective but certainly, laying out for the public what the president's intent was or what McGahn believed the president's intent was on this issue of getting rid of the special counsel is going to be critically important for people's understanding of whether or not they think, in their own minds, that that was an attempt by the president to thwart the investigation. That's the crux of obstruction.

[07:10:10] CAMEROTA: Susan, that leads us to your piece. And I think that it is so timely. Because I hear so many people out loud wonder what it is about President Trump, what is it about Donald Trump that gets people around him to kind -- that he can coopt people around him and that get them to kind of change their own moral compass in a way where they begin parroting his figures of speech, his frame of mind, his world view, even if they didn't come into the White House with that.

Here's what you write: "Getting and staying in this president's good graces, it appears to require an extra helping of public obsequiousness, groveling, flip-floppery, and over-the-top televised pronouncements. This unseemly aspect of the Trump era was on full display at Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing where both the committee chairman, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Attorney General Bill Barr went out of their way to appeal to the president at the expense of their own credibility." What is happening there?

GLASSER: What is happening? You know, there was that really powerful piece in "The New York Times" within hours of the Barr testimony the other day from James Comey, the former FBI director, he called Donald Trump an eater of souls. And he said, "He eats your soul in small bites." Now, that's a very dramatic rendering of it.

But I think it gets at this psychological fact of the Trump White House that we've all been puzzling over. People who have had a long career as Attorney General Barr have had. Why strike your credibility on a president who's so challenged with the truth? Why stake your professional reputation on some of the actions that the president requires you to make?

I was just blown away listening to Lindsey Graham open up that hearing the other day by reading out loud, in this tone of complete moral outrage, text messages from FBI agents complaining about Donald Trump. And you know what? They were actually more mild-mannered about Donald

Trump than the things that Lindsey Graham himself said in 2016 about Donald Trump when he called the future president a kook, when he said he was unfit for the office.

So what is it that requires Lindsey Graham to do that? Why be so over the top, so flagrant and so insulting to the American people as to say, like, "You are idiots, basically. And I'm allowed to say -- to change my mind and to say anything I want, because my only concern right now is to talk to the president of the United States.

And again, I'm just marveling over the substance of this, too. It's not just some rhetorical flip-flops. Right? The attorney general gave an extraordinary statement of executive power the other day. He basically said Donald Trump is like a king. He said that Donald Trump can shut down any investigation of himself that he wants if he thinks it's unfair. Now, is that really how the government works? I don't think so.

CAMEROTA: Friends, thank you all very much for your perspectives on this. And remember to watch "SMERCONISH" tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Eastern. Michael's guest --

BERMAN: What?

CAMEROTA: -- rock star Peter Frampton.

BERMAN: Do you feel like I do?

CAMEROTA: We didn't see that coming. All right.

BERMAN: Is Michael still there?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. Michael?

BERMAN: Is he going to have that thing where he plays the guitar through his mouth on your show?

SMERCONISH: Do you mean the -- the Framp-tone?

BERMAN: That's exactly what I mean.

SMERCONISH: Tune in and watch.

BERMAN: Really? It might be there? That is awesome.

SMERCONISH: It might be there. I'm not promising.

BERMAN: Michael is going to do his whole show through the Framp-tone. That is fantastic. I didn't see that coming at all.

All right. So what will Congress do about the attorney general and the president's administration stonewalling seemingly all investigations? We're going to speak to a Democrat running for president, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[07:18:07] REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): What is deadly serious about it is the attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States. That's a crime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Attorney General Bill Barr lied to Congress last month. And a growing number of Democrats want him to resign. So will Congress hold Barr in contempt for not handing over the full Mueller report? And what will that mean?

Joining us now is Democratic presidential candidate, Congressman Seth Moulton.

Welcome here to the studio on NEW DAY.

REP. SETH MOULTON (D-MA), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It's good to be here.

CAMEROTA: Great to have you here. So if -- you believe the attorney general lied, is that accurate?

MOULTON: Yes. I mean, he clearly lied.

CAMEROTA: So now what?

MOULTON: Well, I think that Speaker Pelosi is right. That he needs to resign. I've called for him to resign. I called for him the night that it was very apparent that he had lied.

You know, when I went to Marine training, one of the first things you learn is that you can drop out of a run; and they'll let you retake the run. You can fail a test and you can redo the test. But if you lie about anything, you're gone that afternoon. I mean, that's the standard of integrity that we expect from privates in our military. This is the top law enforcement.

CAMEROTA: Understood.

BERMAN: But that's not the code apparently in the administration. So the question again is what are you going to do about it?

CAMEROTA: He's not going to resign.

MOULTON: No, he's not. He should be held in contempt. Now, there are a lot of different options for what that means. You can essentially hold someone in contempt and do nothing. You can technically put that person in prison.

BERMAN: Are you going to have them thrown into the House jail?

MOULTON: He might like it. He's got a lot of Trump associates in prison, as well. That campaign chairman is there, like a campaign reunion.

BERMAN: But that's not going to happen. He's not going to be put in.

MOULTON: You could assess a fine to really put pressure on him every single day. But the bottom line is that it's just really sad that, in this country, we have to talk about the top law enforcement official lying before Congress, violating the Constitution that he swore an oath to protect and defend.

[07:20:04] BERMAN: I don't -- I still don't get, though, as sad as it might be, then, what the repercussion is. Because it can be sad, or Democrats can try to do something about it.

So does that mean you hold hearings about William Barr? You invited him; he doesn't show up. You hold impeachment hearings about him? Does that mean -- does that mean you hold impeachment hearings. Are you for impeachment hearings?

MOULTON: I am absolutely for impeachment hearings. And I voted for that with regards to the president last year.

You know, Congress does two things. We debate things and we vote on them. You should always debate them before you come to a vote. I don't think the time is right to vote on impeachment of the president, for example, because we don't even have the full Mueller report.

But I called a year ago to start discussing this. I mean, don't tell me when you have over 30 people indicted by the Mueller investigation, the campaign chairman in prison right now, that we shouldn't be debating this in Congress. That's our job.

CAMEROTA: Here's what Democrats say are the important issues to them right now. We'll pull up our -- our graphic. Climate change rates top. Medicare for all rates very high. Guns and what to do about the gun violence, very high.

Free public college, impeaching Trump is fifth. Paying reparations, voting rights for felons. That came up, of course, after Bernie Sanders talked about it.

And so -- I mean, in terms of prioritizing, you know, there's only 24 hours in a day. And so what does Congress want to focus on? All of this, you know, Barr and impeachment stuff, or the rest of the things?

MOULTON: How about -- how about Congress does what's right by the Constitution? I mean, those are polling results, and that's important. We need to be in touch with the voters that we represent.

But just the simple fact is the right thing for us to do under the Constitution of the United States is to have this debate, to have a check on the administration. That's our responsibility in Congress. That's called leadership. That's called upholding the oath that we swore when we got this job.

Can we throw up that chart once again? Because Medicare for all was No. 2 on that list of Democrats. Now, as a presidential candidate and a member of Congress, you are not for Medicare for all. You are more for a public option, sort of the Medicare-X like Tim Kaine is proposing there, is that something you would want?

MOULTON: Like President Obama wanted under Obamacare, which is to have a public option that would compete against private options and bring down premiums, bring down prescription -- prescription drug prices and improve outcomes for everyone. I mean, competition is good in the market.

So let me be clear. Everybody in America deserves health care. It's an absolute right. I just think that we shouldn't force everybody onto a government plan designed in 1963 to get there.

A lot of people like their private health care plans. Let's let those plans compete.

I mean, look, the postal service, a big government-run system, it's not exactly the hallmark of efficiency. Imagine how much worse it would be if it didn't have to compete against UPS and FedEx. Some people like to go to UPS and FedEx. We should preserve that competition. That's American competition at its best.

CAMEROTA: And as a veteran, is it fair to say you've had a less than satisfying experience with health care for yourself?

MOULTON: That's more than fair to say. I'm the only candidate in this race who actually gets single-payer socialized medicine today, because I made a commitment to continue going to the V.A. even as a member of Congress. I said, look, as long as my fellow veterans are going there, I'm going to go there, too.

CAMEROTA: And what's it like?

MOULTON: The first time I showed up for surgery was at the V.A. in Washington. And I checked in at the desk, gave them my name and Social Security number.

Of course, they're supposed to have this comprehensive record system. After 20 minutes they said, you know, we can't prove you're a veteran. So we'll consider taking you as a humanitarian case.

So fast forward a day later. I got surgery for a hernia. And the surgeon was actually great. She was volunteering her time there. She didn't have to work at the V.A., but she wanted to take care of veterans. I mean, this was a really good thing. But after the surgery, which went well, they sent me home. They sent me back to Capitol Hill, actually. They gave me some pretty strong painkillers. They aid when the anesthesia wears off, you're going to need this.

And I took them because, well, first of all, I didn't take them right away, because we had votes that afternoon, and I wanted to remember.

CAMEROTA: Good thing.

MOULTON: I voted, right? But then it really started to hurt. And I took one pill. They said you could take one; you might need two. One pill didn't seem to help at all. So I went back to get a second, and I looked at the bottle more closely. And they'd sent me home with the wrong medication.

CAMEROTA: Oh, my gosh.

MOULTON: So that -- that's the experience of a lot of veterans.

Now, there are things the V.A. does well, and I think that's important to say, too.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

MOULTON: There are lessons that can be learned from a single-payer system. Like, the V.A. actually negotiates drug prices, which Medicare does not do. I mean, that's something that the V.A. does much better than Medicare. That's a positive lesson that we should learn.

BERMAN: So my question to you, then, from a politics perspective, is do you think Medicare for all is bad politics, because you've been quoted as saying we can't go too far to the left or we will lose middle America. What's too far to the left?

MOULTON: I think too far to the left is forcing everybody onto a government system. That once you start asking -- I understand this sort of, like, top-line polling. You know, it sounds good.

As soon as I start having this conversation with voters and listening to them and what they really want, they start to realize, yes, we could have a better system. We've got to have some competition in the system. Obamacare with a public option that competes against private plans would probably be better for everyone.

So I just think it makes more sense. And I think that's what voters want at the end of the day. They want better health care. They want coverage for pre-existing conditions. But they also want an American system that makes sense.

CAMEROTA: OK. Now for the kicker. We want to take one minute to talk to you about one of our favorite topics. Music. Candidate mix tape. We ask all the candidates what's your favorite musical genre.

MOULTON: You know, I'm kind of all over the place. Because I grew up a classic rock guy. And then I spent time in the Marines which, you know, you're just literally bombarded with country from every direction. And I think my favorite band at the moment is Zach Brown Band.

CAMEROTA: OK. Very cool. And --

MOULTON: Went to a great Zach Band concert at Fenway Park not too long ago.

CAMEROTA: If it's at Fenway, it must be good.

BERMAN: What about, like, the Cars and J. Geils Band. Good Massachusetts, Boston bands.

MOULTON: Yes, yes. There are a lot of great Massachusetts bands.

BERMAN: Aerosmith.

MOULTON: I mean, Boston. There are some great ones.

BERMAN: Aerosmith, Cars, J. Geils. Boston, eh.

MOULTON: OK. Fair enough. But no, we've got a good music culture in Massachusetts. People don't realize it.

BERMAN: You sure do. There's a lot of live music. It's great there. Congressman, great to talk to you. Thanks so much for being here in studio.

BERMAN: Appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: All right. "The New York Times" says the FBI sent an undercover investigator to meet with a Trump campaign adviser because they were suspicious of what he was up to. What do you call that? We discuss it next.

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