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Don Jr. Releases E-mails of Russian Meeting; Legal Issues with Meeting; Russia and its Intelligence Community. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 11, 2017 - 13:00   ET

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

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 8:00 p.m. in Moscow. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: We begin with breaking news. Explosive and very fast-moving developments in the Russian meddling incident in the U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump Jr. just releasing a chain of e-mails leading up to his meeting with a Russian lawyer. A meeting where he hoped to get information damaging to Hillary Clinton.

He released those e-mails, by the way, released them on Twitter just after being notified by "The New York Times" that it was about to publish those e-mails.

This is from one of the e-mails Donald Trump Jr. just posted. It's from the British publicist, Rob Goldstone, who helped arrange the meeting with the Russian lawyer. Quote, "Good morning. Emin just called and asked me to contact you with something very interesting." Emin, by the way, is a pop star whose businessman father has ties to President Putin and did business with now President Trump.

The e-mail goes on to say, quote, "the crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras," Emin's father, "this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father."

Continuing. "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump helped along by Aras and Emin." What do you think is the best way to handle this information?

The e-mail goes on to say, would you be able to speak to Emin about it directly? It continues. I could also send this info to your father via Rhona, Donald Trump's long-time assistant but it is ultra- sensitive so I wanted to send to you first. Best, Rob Goldstone.

Let's bring in our Senior White House Correspondent Jim Acosta and our Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto.

Jim, these e-mails, very, very explicit. This is a bombshell. JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question.

Listen, you have the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, the FBI, and now the special investigator, special counsel rather, who have, for weeks and months, been investigating the question of collusion or cooperation, whatever you want to call it.

To this point, that has been based on the existence of meetings, right? Perhaps unusual in number. Perhaps unusual that they are with Russian officials or others tied to the Russian government. And unusual as well that many were undisclosed.

But the reason of those meetings, until this point, was not known. All the meetings happened. The question was, why did they happen?

So, now, with one of those meetings you have the intention, damaging information on Hillary Clinton supplied by the Russian government. Not just Russians, by the Russian government. And designed to help Donald Trump.

It's all written down in print form in an e-mail here from the president's son. And that brings us at least with evidence. It's not conclusive.

I'm not a lawyer. We're not prosecutors. We're not judge and jury. But it is evidence of, at minimum, a willingness to cooperate. And that is truly a momentous development in this -- in this investigation and in this story.

BLITZER: It also refers to the Russian attorney who was going to go into that meeting with Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner. And it describes the attorney as the Russian government attorney.

SCIUTTO: Exactly.

BLITZER: Now, she is denying that she was a Russian government attorney. But in this e-mail, it clearly stipulates she was a Russian government attorney.

SCIUTTO: That's right. And she's denying it but the fact is that the president's son, in this e-mail, that's how this person in the meeting was identified to him, as a Russian government attorney.

So, at least a willingness to take a meeting in Trump Tower, one floor below the future president's offices, to take that meeting with someone that he believed to be coming from the government and coming from the Russian government with information helpful to his father and damaging to Hillary Clinton.

BLITZER: And the fact is that the information was to be very damaging. And in his reply, Donald Trump Jr. says, if it's what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer.

And now, let's get the context here. This is in June, after he clinched, for all practical purposes, the Republican nomination, before the July convention. But the real campaign gets going later in the summer? SCIUTTO: Right, absolutely. And it's interesting. At this point, in

June of 2016, based on our own reporting, speaking with investigators, cyber security firms, the Russian hackers had been inside the Democratic National Committee's computers for one year, at this point.

So, they had been able to be inside those computers exploiting, gaining information, vacuuming up e-mails and documents for one year, at this point.

BLITZER: Let me go to Jim Acosta over at the White House. Jim, what's been the reaction so far from White House officials?

[13:05:05] JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Silence. Wolf, the White House has not responded at all to these Donald Trump Jr. e-mails that have come out this morning. We've tried to reach out to a number of officials. They just haven't gotten back to us.

There is a briefing, an off-camera briefing, with Sarah Huckabee Sanders at 2:00, so I suppose she'll get those questions then. But, of course, the answers will be off camera. We'll have to wait until after the completion of the briefing to bring that audio to you.

I did talk to a White House official just in the last several minutes who said, frankly, they just have nothing to say, at this moment.

And so, this is a White House, Wolf, that is essentially feeling its way around, trying to find the best answer to all of this.

I did talk to a former Trump campaign adviser earlier this morning who was trying to offer some spin on all of this. And what was essentially said is that during that time of June of last year, the campaign was receiving, sort of, an avalanche of opposition research offers from people all over the place.

And this person, this former adviser that I spoke to, described it as something that happens with all sorts of campaigns. That this happens all the time.

Now, obviously, getting offers from people who claim to be, oh, you know, at least connected to the Russian government, that does not happen every day in politics. And so, that's what makes this so unusual and potentially illegal and potentially very troubling for this White House.

But that was the spin that this person was offering and that this adviser was saying, well, Donald Trump Jr. likely did not really know what he was doing when he was setting up this, sort of, meeting.

But, of course, when Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman is involved, when Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, is involved, this obviously is a meeting that was given a high level of importance inside the Trump campaign. You would not have those three people at a meeting with a Russian -- a Russian individual unless they thought it was highly, highly important to the campaign.

Now, we should point out, because, you know, we have been chasing this story for so long, this issue of, did the president's associates' aides have contact with the Russians during the course of the campaign? There have been so many denials from various officials and members of the Trump family, including the president, himself, that we should note that Vice President Mike Pence in January earlier this year was asked about all of this and said, of course not. There were not contacts between associates of the Trump campaign and the Russians.

We do have a statement for -- from a spokesman for the vice president. We can put that up on screen. We can read that to you if we have it handy. It says here, the vice president is working every day to advance the president's agenda, which is what the American people sent us here to do. The vice president was not aware of the meeting.

And, Wolf, we should point out, people like to talk from time to time about that January 11th press conference that the president had during the transition at Trump Tower. He was president-elect at that time.

You know, we were trying, as a news organization, I was trying, as a reporter at that press conference, to ask the president-elect, at that point, did -- can you categorically deny that your associates had contacts with the Russians during the course of the campaign? You know, we can all remember and go back and remember that the president- elect, at that time, would not answer that question.

But later on, as he was leaving that news conference, he said, himself, no, there were no contacts. And as it turns out, we can see in these e-mails today that his on son was in contact with Russians.

And in context of these e-mails, at one point, this attorney is referred to as a Russian government attorney and this is about Russian government support for Mr. Trump.

And so, a lot of very important, very critical questions are going to be thrown at Sarah Huckabee Sanders at this press briefing coming up at the top of the hour, Wolf. And, of course, we'll be in the room there to ask those questions.

BLITZER: Yes, and it's going to be off-camera, as you point out.

And you say there has been silence from the White House so far to this bombshell, this e-mail chain that has just been released. It was released by Donald Trump Jr. after being informed by "The New York Times" they had it. They were about to release it.

You know, the silence that you described for the past three days, there has been a thunderous silence on Twitter and any -- every place else from the president of the United States.

ACOSTA: Right.

BLITZER: So, you would think that he would be coming out very quickly to strongly defend his oldest son but we're not hearing that.

ACOSTA: That's right. And my colleagues, Jeff Zeleny and Jeremy Diamond, have been told by sources that he has been advised by aides to avoid tweeting on this subject. And it appears, at least in this category, he is showing some restraint.

You recall over the weekend, when his daughter, Ivanka, controversially sat down at that meeting at the G-20 taking the place of her father. The president did come out and tweet about that and defend his daughter.

In this case, the president's own son, Donald Trump Jr., is acknowledging here and making it known to the whole world that he was meeting with the Russians, during the course of the 2016 campaign.

[13:10:10] And that the context of the meeting was to provide damaging information about Hillary Clinton, and that this was about support coming from the Russian government, at least according to this associate of Donald Trump Jr.

Now, we should point out, the White House is just not going to have the opportunity to be silent coming up here top of the hour. They're going to have to answer this question.

Wolf, I think this is one of those circumstances where perhaps the White House should reconsider this policy of having this briefing off camera today. It seems to me that this is just such a critical day, with the information that is detailed in these bombshell e-mails, that they would want these answers on camera today -- Wolf.

BLITZER: And it's only going to be audio, at least so far. Unless they change their mind.

ACOSTA: That's right.

BLITZER: And it's only going to be audio that's delayed. We won't be able to play some of the audio until after the entire briefing has concluded. Is that right?

ACOSTA: That's right. But, of course, reporters in the room can live tweet what is being said at that time. So, we will get -- and I'll do my best to live tweet what Sarah Huckabee Sanders is saying during this briefing. But we will get some sort of instant response that we can at least report at the top of the hour if this briefing starts on time, in terms of what she is saying.

We should also point out, Wolf, for the record, that the White House has been saying, in the last several weeks about these off-camera briefings, well, we don't want to step on the president's message. If he has a public event during the day, that's one of the reasons why we have these briefings off camera because we don't want to step on the president's message.

Well, on this day, Wolf, if you look at the White House schedule, he has no public events today. There is no White House message getting out today. The White House is choosing to have this briefing off camera for whatever reason. They can explain that reason.

But at least today, there is no rationale that holds up that they're trying to not step on the president's message, because he has -- there are no video sprays. There are no opportunities for the press pool to go in and record him saying something about whatever. That's just not on the schedule today. It is a completely blank, empty schedule.

From a public standpoint, he's just not out in front of the cameras today. And so, the White House really can't use that excuse on this day -- Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Jim, I want you to stand by. You're going to be getting more information from your sources. I also want to get some perspective from our panel. With us, our Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Our Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Sciutto with is us. Our Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger is here. Our CNN National Security Analyst Susan Hennessy, she's a former national security agency attorney. CNN Legal Analyst, a former federal prosecutor, Laura Coates is with us. And CNN Intelligence and Security Analyst Bob Baer is joining us from Telluride, Colorado.

Gloria, Donald Trump Jr. says he released these e-mails in order, in his words, to be totally transparent. What's your reaction?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the real story, as tweeted by "The New York Times," that they had the e-mails. They were asked to, kind of, hold for a comment from Donald Trump Jr.

And in the interim, he released all the e-mails. So, while everyone might applaud his transparency, we also know that "The Times" had these e-mails.

The question, really, --

BLITZER: First rule of damage control here in Washington is if there is bad news about to come out, it's best that you release the bad news. Don't let your critics release the bad news.

BORGER: That's right. But then, they pushed the button and released the story almost immediately.

I think the question now that we all need to think about. First of all, we know, and I think Senator Warner said this today on the Hill, is that it appears, without a shadow of a doubt from Mr. Goldstone's e-mails, that the Russian government, in fact, was trying to help Donald Trump, period.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BORGER: End of sentence. And this is something that the president has been unwilling to admit. And I think that it's kind of here in black and white in this e-mail. If the e-mail is to be believed.

The second thing we need to consider is this whole question of why Donald Trump Jr. was so willing to meet with someone who had said that they had sensitive information from the Russian government that could help them? One reaction of someone perhaps who had been in politics or in public service would be to call the FBI and say that you -- this is not really something we do.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: This has historically happened. BORGER: Yes.

BASH: It happened in the 2000 campaign.

BORGER: Exactly, with Al Gore. So, I think these are questions now that we all need to, sort of, chew on and try and get some answers to this.

BLITZER: Yes, because this is the first time, Dana and Jim, and others have pointed out, that there is hard evidence of coordination --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BLITZER: -- between the Russian government, at least if you believe these e-mails, and top leaders of the Trump campaign.

BASH: You know, I talked to Brian Fallon at the end of the 12:00 hour and he was -- who was Hillary Clinton's press secretary. And he actually looked shell shocked.

[13:15:06] He just -- he's not somebody who is usually searching words and he said, my mind is blown. And it is because, just looking at this e-mail - at these e-mails, and I encourage people to really read them, it's almost as if it's written by somebody who wants to get - it's almost as if it's, you know, somebody who wants Donald Trump Jr. or the Trump campaign to get caught. I mean it's so explicit in using buzzword after buzzword. I'm not saying that it was a setup at all, and that might be ultimately their political defense, and that's even irrelevant because the offer was there and the offer was accepted. The meeting was accepted with enthusiasm, according to an e-mail response from Don Jr., released by Don Jr. This is not, you know, something that we're reporting on based on sources. This is in black and white, e-mails that Don Jr. released, that he sent saying that if this is true, that they had this information to hurt Hillary Clinton, to explicitly help Donald Trump from the Russian government, if what you say - "if it's what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer." Later in the summer meaning as they get closer to the general election.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's interesting, and Donald Trump Jr., he attached a statement to the release of this e-mail and at the end he said it ended up being, in his words, "the most inane nonsense I ever heard." In effect saying that nothing -

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, no substance in the meeting.

SCIUTTO: Yes, nothing came of it, meaning, it's not really a defense. It's sort of like saying someone opened the door to the bank but there was no money in there. I mean, you know, he was - he was willing to accept -

BASH: Exactly.

SCIUTTO: The information, and it's not a defense - and I'm not saying it as a lawyer, I'm just saying in sort of the political world, it's not a defense to say, well, I was willing to take it but they didn't come to the table with any goods I considered - considered valuable.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: No, and the point -

SCIUTTO: The fact is, he took a meeting with information that was specified to be coming from a Russian government that was supporting his father in the election.

BORGER: And they're not unknown quantities, the Agalarovs. I mean this is somebody that did them - the father did the Miss Universe Pageant with Donald Trump.

SCIUTTO: Right.

BORGER: So they are - they are known quantities, and maybe that is one reason that he was more willing to respond to this. But it doesn't change the fact of what was stated in Goldstone's e-mail. Although earlier "The New York Times" points out that in their first interview with Mr. Goldstone, who was the intermediary here, he said that he didn't know whether the elder Mr. Agalarov had any role in arranging the meeting, but in the e-mail he makes it clear, in fact, that he did.

BLITZER: Let me bring Laura Coates into this conversation, our legal analyst, former federal prosecutor.

Laura, from the legal standpoint, it seems to be the first evidence we've heard. For months and months there was no evidence of collusion. We've heard that from Trump administration officials, also from top members of Congress. They haven't seen any hard evidence. Is this evidence, from a legal standpoint, of collusion?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, absolutely, it's evidence that there has been some coordination of some sort that could link to a criminal statute that would justify this probe, whether there was, in fact, collusion. It's interesting, Wolf, the naivete people assign to the Trump campaign, that they used as an asset to perhaps win the election, may now be their downfall in the legal context because it you're unfamiliar with the campaign procedure or the campaign finance laws, you would make errors like this. Which, of course, the campaign finance laws are quite clear that you cannot solicit or obtain or try to seek to get information or a contribution of some sort or a donation. And that's defined very loosely. It could, in fact, be the in-kind donation in the form of information of value to this campaign.

And so you talk about collusion as being this nebulous term over the past few months. What is going to be the legal hook? What is going to be the criminal fact you're going to link it to? Well, now you've got the federal campaign finance laws that are now in play and you've got another "c" term. You've got the term conspiracy and what they're actually trying to gain information from. And the big thing that every lawyer looks for, when you have these sorts of high bar of proof cases and claims is intent. Well, you've got in black and white, you've got somebody saying that with glee they would relish the information, they would love to have information, and you've got the second step of actually taking the meeting.

And Jim was right, absolutely talking about, you know, just because nothing came of the information does not mean you did not perform the act that would actually suggesting you were involved in a criminal enterprise. So right now, one thing to be clear of, though, is, if what Donald Trump Jr. was saying is accurate, that he did not tell Paul Manafort or Jared Kushner about the actual substance of what the meeting would be about, they may not face the same legal perils as he would because they would not have the intent or the knowledge per say, if you believe that, the knowledge was actually happening, what they were actually going to receive.

[13:20:00] BLITZER: You make an excellent point.

And I want to bring Susan Hennessy into this conversation as well.

Susan, as soon as I saw the e-mails this morning, I thought of the campaign finance laws. Let me read one line from the law of the land. This is in terms of the campaign finance law. "A foreign national shall not directly or indirectly make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation in connection with any federal, state or local election." It goes on and on, but that's the key point. You cannot accept money from foreign nationals if you're running for president of the United States, or any - or other thing of value. Here's the question, is the damage about your opponent, is that a thing of value?

SUSAN HENNESSEY, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY AND LEGAL ANALYST: Right. So the entire sort of question of criminal activity here depends on that definition of "thing of value." The federal guidance on it says that it should be construed pretty broadly. They don't want - the intention here is not for it to be a loophole.

That said, derogatory information in and of itself is not necessarily a thing of value. It would be a thing of value essentially if it freed up the campaign from spending its own money to obtain that information. So there certainly are forms -

BLITZER: Opposition research can be a thing of value in a campaign.

HENNESSEY: So there are certainly forms of opposition research. So the question is whether or not that was the expectation. So in these e- mails it's not entirely clear what information, what types of information they expected to receive. Based on what we know now, it's probably a difficult sort of argument to make that this was a clear thing of value.

One thing that's not going to be difficult or will be clear is whether or not false statements were made to congressional investigators or federal investigators. We've seen that Trump Jr. and other sources close to the campaign have made materially false statements over the course of this weekend. You know, they said that the substance of the debate was about adoption. Now we know it was actually about somebody quite different. He said that Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner were not aware. Then his

own e-mails show that, no, they were cc-ed on this e-mail exchange. They were aware. Now, lying to the public or to "The New York Times" is not a criminal offense. Lying to Congress and lying to the FBI, that is a criminal offense.

BLITZER: And very quickly, you know, Dana, because you and I have covered politics for a while, maybe, you know, Jared Kushner, he was new to politics. He was not that familiar with the campaign finance laws. Maybe Donald Trump Jr., who was new to politics, not necessarily familiar with the campaign finance laws. But Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, he's been in politics for 30 years. Very familiar with the campaign finance laws. And you would think before you have a meeting between - with a Russian attorney you would go to the campaign counsel and say, is this appropriate?

BORGER: Well, you might think about that, but this was a very small, insular group of people who maybe didn't have a campaign attorney at the time. I'm not quite sure if they did or not. I don't know. It they were facing a delegate fight. They had other things to think about, especially Paul Manafort, who was hired to make sure that Donald Trump got enough delegates. According to the Russian who was there, he was looking at his cell phone the entire time. But, you know, look, it seems - it seems to me, everyone, just common sense is, this is a Russian who says the Russian government supports Mr. Trump, and we have sensitive information for you. Yes, it was before Russia became a big issue in the campaign, but common sense would say - and again they're inexperienced, I understand this - but common sense would say, there is something about this that isn't right, and this is not a meeting we should have.

BASH: And -

BLITZER: Let me - hold on one second because I want to bring Bob Baer into this, former CIA operative.

Bob, you know, in the e-mail chain, it clearly identifies the Russian attorney as "the Russian government attorney." She was interviewed. She denies that she's a Russian government attorney. Clearly she's a Russian citizen. She's a Russian attorney. Talk a little bit about cutouts, if you will, because in a situation - a sensitive issue like this, the Russian government, the Russian intelligence community, would not necessarily employ a specific Russian operative, but they would have what they call cutouts.

BOB BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Exactly, Wolf. This lady you should look at, the lawyer, as an access agent. That's what the Russians would call her. She was sent to the Trumps to probe their willingness to cooperate. It's very clear at this point. And once they said absolutely, yes, then you hand it off down the line, whether it's to a KGB officer, to another cutout. But the Russians are very clever. They're not going to send a diplomat from New York, for instance, to make an indecent proposal like this. They send somebody where there's plausible deniability, this lawyer, and they're denying it now, of course. [13:25:07] But this is a classic KGB M.O. tradecraft. Anybody with any

sense at this point would have called up the FBI and said, you wouldn't believe this, but I just got an approach from the Russian government. Something that's illegal.

You know, I've got to say, this is looking more and more like treason, Wolf. I mean, from a CIA officer's perspective, this doesn't pass muster in any level. A CIA officer that dealt with the Russian intelligence, or a proxy, would be fired. The same way with the FBI, National Security Council and the rest of it, for our standards. And I have to ask the question, how does Jared Kushner still have a security clearance at this point setting up, you know, something that's apparently illegal with the Russian government? I - I just - the standards have fallen in Washington. Sorry.

BLITZER: Yes, you're not the first person today that we've heard that word "treason" from. Senator Tim Kaine said possibly treasonous as well.

Everyone stand by.

I want to show our viewers some live pictures coming in from Capitol Hill where the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, they've just weighed in. What they are saying in this explosive new development, that's coming up next.

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[13:30:07] BLITZER: Back to our breaking news.