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White House Responds to FBI Director Announcing New E-mail Probe; Former Prosecutors, Former Justice Department Officials Send Letter Criticizing Comey's Decision on Clinton E-mail Investigation; GOP Congressman: Growing Number Oppose Ryan as House Speaker. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired October 31, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00] TOM FUENTES, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: And that meeting lasted more than 30 minutes, so it had to be more than hello, how are you, see you later. They had some kind of a discussion. They say golf and children, grandchildren, but it was a more than 30-minute meeting, which was completely inappropriate. When the attorney general was confronted with the fact it was inappropriate, she makes the announcement -- she doesn't say, I'm recusing myself from the Clinton case, and my deputy attorney general will take over. She doesn't say the career prosecutors, who are professionals, will cover my role in this case. She says I'm completely deferring to Director Comey. That's what starts the whole problem, is then, that gives Comey license to do the press conference on July 5th, which I myself questioned, as well, that he did it, but he did it, and he announced that. That never would have happened if the attorney general didn't start the ball rolling for him to be in the --

(CROSSTALK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Did Comey do the right thing, by going ahead and making this announcement?

FUENTES: Now that you started this thing and testified before Congress --when you have an investigation was closed, it wasn't concluded. Loretta Lynch announced shortly afterward the case against all the primary subjects of this are closed also, this is done. When it's finished, you no longer have the restriction of you can't comment on a pending investigation. Not pending. When he testifies to Congress and gives a lot of details about the case, he wasn't commenting on a pending case at the time. And I think that's why he felt compelled to send the letter last week.

And by the way, Comey didn't make this public. Somebody at Congress --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: But he knew as soon as he sent the letter out, it would come out --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: -- within a nanosecond. Dana, the Senate minority leader, the Democratic leader, Harry Reid,

says Comey actually may have broken the law, violating the Hatch Act?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. I just talked to an aide to Reid that said the reason why they crafted this and started the ball rolling on this attack line through a potential legal fight is because they say the way the Hatch Act is written -- you can check this as a legal expert -- is it's about intent. Meaning, if you are in the government, and you intend to do something that is a political action, then that is something that is not legal, when you're in the executive branch like he is, and that by saying what he said in a press conference and on Capitol Hill, making clear that he didn't think Hillary Clinton did the right thing, and subsequently by doing what he did now with these e-mails, reopening the investigation, that that -- and not doing anything on the flip side, that that is, in and of itself political. That's what they argued. They haven't gone as far as making an actual claim or trying to challenge it in a formal way, but that's why they're doing that.

Look, it seems potentially a bit of a reach. It's a talking point we're talking about right now and it's sort of another angle for them to go at. So that's that.

I have to say that just on Josh Earnest, which we've been listening to the past 20 minutes, you don't need a magnifying glass to read between the lines of what's he was saying. Saying I'm nothing going to talk about it, but it would be really nice if he would follow the protocol that Jeff was talking about. He can't say more that than, but he didn't have to. Pretty clear what he's saying on behalf of the president.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Talk about threading the needle. You know? Well, we're staying out this but what about the accepted norms that we're used to abiding by, and he didn't abide by it?

BLITZER: Guidelines need to be followed.

Molly, I want to play for you a clip of an exchange our own Jake Tapper had with the Clinton campaign chairman, John Podesta, yesterday. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, ANCHOR, STATE OF THE UNION: She's still part of the campaign?

JOHN PODESTA, HILLARY CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Of course, yes.

TAPPER: Is she still working on the campaign?

PODESTA: Yeah, absolutely. She's been -- played a central and vital role in this campaign, and she continues to do that, and continues to do her work, running our overall scheduling in advance operations, being a confidant to the senior people in the campaign and traveling with Hillary. She doesn't travel every day but travels frequently with her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We're talking about Huma Abedin, longtime aide to Hillary Clinton.

So what's going to be the impact on her in the short term as far as the remaining few days of this campaign and if Hillary Clinton's elected president does she get to serve in the White House with the new president of the United States?

MOLLY BALL, WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: There's so much uncertainty here. 'T know what's going on. White House said they don't know what's going on with the investigation. The Trump campaign certainly doesn't know. They're not making decisions. We have not seen Huma on the plane today or yesterday. They're keeping her out of the spotlight for her sake, probably.

But something we know from the hacked and released e-mails from the State Department and her entire career, Hillary Clinton tends to be loyal to a fault to the people she feels she can trust, a very small group of people. There are a lot of people in various trouble, and Clintons generally stay loyal to them, generally protect them, if they feel somebody had their back. Clinton people that I've spoken to feel like this might hurt her chances of having a high official place in the administration, but in terms of her personal relationship with Hillary Clinton, that's not jeopardy.

[13:35:14] BLITZER: Juana, I want to -- listen. Hold on a second. Donald Trump just spoke about the FBI Director Comey and his decision. Let me play the clip for our viewers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I have to give the FBI credit. That was so bad what happened originally, and it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had with them trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that.

(CHEERING)

TRUMP: It took a lot of guts. I really disagreed with him. I was not his fan. But I'll tell you what, what he did, he brought back his reputation. He brought it back. He's got a --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: What happens if within the next few days Comey announced, you know what, there's nothing there? We're moving on?

(LAUGHTER)

BORGER: Right.

BALL: I don't think there's any problem that Donald Trump has with saying mutually exclusive things about James Comey, sort of a theme on both sides of this campaign.

BLITZER: Juana, has there been indication of the actual political fallout from this decision on Friday by Comey to go ahead and inform Congress that he was going to review these related issues?

JUANA SUMMERS, CNN POLITICS EDITOR: I don't think enough time passed to really know. We're in the final eight days of the election. More than 18 million Americans already cast ballots. We see a lot of polling at this point. It's hard to look at the national polls, and the average we see, our CNN polls of polls tells us this is still a really tight race. Right now not a lot of information and frankly the state of where things are now, you saw it in the briefing, too. Really raises more questions than it actually answered. The average American probably doesn't quite understand what it's going on well enough to decide whether or not it will impact their ballot, if they haven't cast a ballot already.

BORGER: Can I say how Shakespearean all of this is? When you talk about Huma Abedin, who is like Hillary Clinton's second daughter, they're that close, and how painful that must be on that front.

And to Tom's point, if Bill Clinton had not sat down on that airplane last summer with Secretary Lynch, would she have been in the position, or should she still have been, but would she have been in a position to say, huh-uh, the Justice Department is going to speak on this, not the FBI, and would everything have been different?

BALL: You forgot the Anthony Weiner part

BORGER: And the Anthony Weiner -- I was getting to that. Kind of the --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: On that note, everybody, stay with us.

Former prosecutors, former Justice Department officials, they're turning up the heat on the FBI Director James Comey, sending a letter criticizing Comey's decision on this Clinton e-mail investigation. We're going to talk to one of the people who signed that letter.

Also this --

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:42:15] BLITZER: The FBI Director James Comey has come under lots of fire from Democrats and career investigators for his handling now of the Hillary Clinton e-mail case. Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, even accusing Comey of possibly violating the law, the so-called Hatch Act, which says federal employees, quote, "may not use official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the results of an election."

Peter Zeidenberg is a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and later served with the U.S. Department of Justice Public Integrity Section. And he's also one of 99 former federal prosecutors and high-ranking Justice Department officials who signed a letter about Director Comey saying, in part, "His unprecedented decision to comment on evidence in what may be an ongoing inquiry just 11 days before a presidential election leaves us both astonished and perplexed. We do not question Director Comey's motives, however the fact remains the director's disclosure invited considerable uninformed public speculation about the significance of newly discovered material just days before a national election."

Peter, thanks for joining us.

Why did you decide to sign this letter?

PETER ZEIDENBERG, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA & SERVED IN U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PUBLIC INTEGRITY SECTION: Well, as the letter said, Wolf, this is unprecedented, and disturbing. There is a long tradition of not acting so close to the election. And the nature of this announcement just invited speculation and mischief from the other side.

BLITZER: Because when he announced in early July that he was not going to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton, he then testified before Congress. He did say under, during his testimony, to members of Congress, if there's a new development, I'll let you know. Presumably, he was thinking, I made that promise, I've got to live up to that.

ZEIDENBERG: Presumably. Well, I think in retrospect, it may have been, it was a poor decision to tell them, I'll keep you updated, because that's not the job of the FBI to constantly inform Congress as an investigation is ongoing.

But more to the point, Wolf, I don't think this warranted an update. This was just too preliminary. Once they had done a review of the e- mails and found something, perhaps then if he felt, I had made a prior representation that I will keep them updated, maybe at that point there's something substantive to update them on. But simply saying, we found a ton of e-mails and we're going to look at them and see what's in them, that's all that -- if the public reports are to be believed -- that's all that they know right now. So at that point, what is it that -- that he's updating them on, and it allows the public and, you know, people who are partisans to get involved with this and to make way more of this than perhaps is warranted?

BLITZER: Because we have no idea what's in those e-mails, if anything important. So how does he fix this from your standpoint? What should he do immediately, if anything, between now and November 8th, the election?

[13:45:27] ZEIDENBERG: You know, I don't know how you put this, you know, un-ring this bell, put this back in the bottle. It's very difficult.

You know, you can't just release all of these e-mails. Who knows what's in them? That would be irresponsible as well. I think, you know, it may be warranted to make a statement that, in fact, there is no "there" there. This is -- BLITZER: But he doesn't know that.

ZEIDENBERG: That he doesn't know there's any "there" there.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: There may be something, there may not be anything there. They simply don't know yet.

ZEIDENBERG: I mean, that's the case everyday FBI agents or investigators go to work. Right? Every day, something could happen. There could be a phone call. Someone could walk in the door with new information. You know, unless you get that information and you vet it, then there's nothing to report.

BLITZER: Peter Zeidenberg, thanks very much for coming in. Appreciate your perspective.

ZEIDENBERG: Happy to.

BLITZER: Thank you very much.

Coming up, Paul Ryan faces a tough fight to hold onto his speakership amid some GOP turmoil. Fellow Republicans criticized his tepid support of Donald Trump. We'll talk to a Republican Congressman who says an effort to oust the speaker could be growing.

We'll be right back.

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[13:51:08] BLITZER: Joining us now, North Carolina Republican Congressman Mark Meadows, a member of the House Oversight Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee and also a Donald Trump supporter.

Congressman, thank you for joining us.

REP. MARK MEADOWS, (R), NORTH CAROLINA: It's great to be with you, Wolf. Thanks.

BLITZER: Very quickly, your reaction to what we just heard from Josh Earnest, White House press secretary. They don't want to criticize or defend Comey's decision, he's a man of integrity, they say, but there are long-standing traditions that should prevent -- guidelines, institutional responsibilities, to prevent these kinds of statements, presumably, from coming forward just before an election. What was your reaction?

MEADOWS: Well, obviously, it's a good thing that he didn't come out to criticize or defend. There's plenty of people that are going to do both of those things, Wolf. Really, when we look at it, this was Director Comey following up on testimony that he gave before my committee, where he made a commitment to us and the American people that he would, if anything, substantial changed that he would let us know. Obviously, he did that. But even before that, we talk about long-standing traditions. None of

this would have happened without a private server, Wolf. We somehow forget the nexus between what we're talking about today and what we're really asking the American people to weigh in on.

BLITZER: The former attorney general during the Bush administration, Alberto Gonzales, he said this, "The FBI director has made an error in judgment in terms of releasing this kind of letter, which really says nothing."

I take it you disagree with Alberto Gonzales.

MEADOWS: Well, I disagree with him. I mean, a number of people are going to say, well, this breaks protocol. Well, we've never had a nominee for the highest office in the land that has been under federal investigation at the time that the American people have to make a decision. I would like to err on the side of transparency. Hopefully, that's what the administration wants to do. And certainly, I agree with the direction that Director Comey took on this.

BLITZER: She was cleared of any wrongdoing, criminal wrongdoing, even though the FBI director said she was extremely careless in dealing with classified information. He recommended against any criminal charges being put forward.

And they haven't really reopened this case right now. They're reviewing some details that may or may not be related. So it's unfair to say right now she's under criminal investigation, right?

MEADOWS: Well, I don't know that it's unfair. Obviously, they're reopening the case, is what Director Comey has said. They'll look at this additional information.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: He said they're reviewing information, and then they'll -- presumably, then they'll make a decision.

MEADOWS: You're accurate.

BLITZER: -- whether or not to reopen.

MEADOWS: You're accurate there.

BLITZER: I just want to precise. I just want to be precise

MEADOWS: I appreciate it. No, I appreciate that. You're a good journalist and so --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Let's talk quickly about Paul Ryan, the speaker. Are you with him to remain as speaker or not? He's been sort of tepid, as you know, in his support of Donald Trump, a man you want to be the next president. MEADOWS: Well, you know, his support or where he's been on that

really is something that the vast majority of the American people are really not focused on. They're focused on one thing, November 8th, who's going to be the next president. And so, as we start to look at that, all eyes, especially here in North Carolina, are really on that -- battleground states, on who's going to be the nominee. So, who's the speaker is really a lower concern to most Americans in terms of what is important to them. So at this point, I know of no one running against the speaker. And so it could very well be that he is running unopposed in January. And that's a discussion that will happen long after November 8th, Wolf.

BLITZER: How much disappointment, anger, if you will, within the Republican Freedom Caucus, as it's called -- you would like to run, I take it, to head that freedom caucus, if Congressman Jim Jordan steps down -- how much disappointment in the speaker has there been?

[13:55:14] MEADOWS: Well, there's been a lot reported on, it Wolf. I'm glad you bring it up because really we've had little, if no, conversations. I can tell you most of my conversations have been with Jim Jordan, as you mentioned, about Ohio because it's a swing state. In terms of leadership races, there have not been any official meetings or any official discussions as it relates to that. I think everybody has it on hold and wants to make sure that we keep the main thing, the main thing, and that's about getting our nominee elected to the office of president.

BLITZER: Mark Meadows, the Republican, North Carolina, key battleground state.

We'll be watching that state together with you very, very closely on Tuesday, Congressman.

Thanks very much for joining us.

MEADOWS: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Thank you.

That's it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

The news will continue right here on CNN right after a quick break.

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