Return to Transcripts main page

NEW DAY

Trump Begins G20 Summit as Mueller Revelations Rattle Him; Mueller's Focus: "WikiLeaks," Trump Tower Meeting, Moscow Tower; Acting Attorney General was Informed about Cohen Plea ahead of Time; President Trump Signs Trade Deal with Canada and Mexico; Analysts Examine Michael Cohen's Guilty Plea of Lying to Congress. Aired 8- 8:30a ET.

Aired November 30, 2018 - 8:00   ET

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


[08:00:00] MICHAEL ISIKOFF, AUTHOR, "RUSSIAN ROULETTE": And when the president, when Trump was asked during the campaign about Felix Sater, that's when he gave that answer, oh, I wouldn't know him if he walked in the room, trying to distance himself from him Felix Sater even though he had been doing business with Felix Sater for many years. Trump's Soho project was something Felix Sater was intricately involved in.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Michael Isikoff, thank you very much for all of your reporting and sharing it with us. The book, again, is "Russian Roulette." We'll talk to you soon.

ISIKOFF: Any time.

CAMEROTA: We just heard about the president but not about the Mueller probe. Our coverage continues right now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, November 30th, 8:00 in the east. We have breaking news and a lot of it. Moments ago, President Trump appeared onstage at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires to sign a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada. He did not take any questions, and that is notable, because there are a lot of questions this morning. Sources tell CNN the Mueller investigation is rattling the president, leaving him spooked. New revelations link him, his business, and, importantly, his children to Russia at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign.

CAMEROTA: So the president's longtime former personal attorney Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Why would he do that? Well, he says he did it to protect the president, and he claims he discussed that proposal with Mr. Trump and members of the Trump family on multiple occasions. President Trump has abruptly canceled the meeting with Vladimir Putin that was scheduled for tomorrow morning at the G20. He says he did it because of Russia's aggression against Ukraine. The Kremlin claims he canceled it for, quote, domestic reasons. Joining us now is CNN's Jim Acosta, he is traveling with the president as well as Jeffrey Toobin, Dana Bash, Phil Mudd. Jim, start with you and what we've just seen. Tell us the significance.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Alisyn and John, I think this was a significant silence from the president when it comes to the Russia investigation, when it comes to the bombshell revelation that came from Michael Cohen yesterday that he pled guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 campaign. The president meeting here with Enrique Pena Nieto, the Mexican president, and the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and signing the new U.S. MCA trade pact that essentially replaces NAFTA.

As you saw during this event that wrapped up just a few moments ago, the Canadian prime minister did challenge the president on the steel and aluminum tariffs that they Trump administration has imposed on Canada. They still signed this anyway. Also absent was any kind of mention of how Mexico would paper for the wall on the border with the U.S. and Mexico. That also did not come up.

But noticeably absent, as you said, was any kind of talk about the Russia investigation. The president leaving it to his Twitter feed this morning to deal with all of that. As he said in tweets this morning, that his business dealings during the campaign were, quote, very legal and very cool. He says he talked about it on the campaign trail. Yes, he talked about business dealings on the campaign trail but he never talked about the Trump Moscow project, that did not come up. That was not brought up in the context of the campaign, and his GOP challengers during that very testy GOP primary battle in 2016, they never really had a chance to challenge then candidate Trump on his business ties to Moscow during that time when Michael Cohen was talking to the Russians, talking to the president, briefing then candidate Trump about all of that.

And then another point he said in a tweet that he was just lightly looking into what he called a project somewhere in Russia when, of course, that was the Trump Tower project in Moscow. So the president leaving a lot of questions unanswered this morning, not only at this event that took place just a few moments ago with the Canadian and Mexican leaders, but in general how he's trying to clean up this whole mess that Michael Cohen really dropped on the whole world yesterday. John and Alisyn?

BERMAN: Stand by there, if you will. Let's remind people where we are this morning. Yesterday Michael Cohen we learned pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Organization's dealings with Russia and trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Jeffrey Toobin has been here with us, notes there's nothing illegal about trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Let's take that at face value. However, then, why -- why then would Michael Cohen feel the need to lie about it? For that matter, why would Michael Flynn lie about his dealings with Russia? Why would George Papadopoulos lie about his conversations with Russia? Why would Paul Manafort lie about his various dealings, and why would Paul Manafort answer a question during the Republican convention like this?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So to be clear, Mr. Trump has no financial relationships with any Russian oligarchs?

PAUL MANAFORT, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: That's what he said. That's what I said. That's obviously what our position is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:05:01] BERMAN: These answers are so squirmy, and wiggly, Jeffrey.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Remember, the Trump Tower is only one aspect of the Trump-Russia relationship. It is true, as the president has said, that building a tower for a real estate developer like Donald Trump is not illegal. However, Robert Mueller -- and as we have been discussing, it would have been of great interest to the voters and his opposing candidates if he had said he was trying to do that during the primary.

CAMEROTA: It might have explained a couple of things.

TOOBIN: It might have explained a couple of things and it might have been a problem, politically, for him. In fact, in the guilty plea yesterday, Michael Cohen said the reason he lied was to protect Donald Trump's political position during the Republican primaries. However, it is also worth noting that Robert Mueller is investigating the WikiLeaks relationship with the Trump campaign. Wikileaks was committing crimes, or participating in criminal activity, the hacking of Democrats' various e-mails. If anyone was associated with that, Donald Trump or his associates, Roger Stone is obviously under investigation, that is illegal. The meeting in Trump Tower where the government of Russia is said to be assisting the Trump campaign, that is potentially illegal.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

TOOBIN: So it's not just that the real estate development is legal, end of story. There's a lot more to the relationship between Russia and the Trump campaign.

CAMEROTA: Phil Mudd, what do you see this morning as it relates to Michael Cohen's guilty plea or anything?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Just two things here that I think are significant. Michael Cohen is important, not just because he pled but because he's a source of information. One piece of information is about money. We're talking about Cohen. Remember, we had those major raids on his hotel, his residence, his office. That information plus what he is saying I think probably involves Trump family members and their negotiations, maybe even an exchange of money for Russians. That's what we saw in terms of the conversation about a future hotel in Moscow.

So he knows about family money. Let's put that together with the second piece. He knows about people. What did the family do, including the son of the president? What did the president know when, including in the middle of the campaign in June of 2016? So you can look at millions of documents, but what Cohen does is sort of take you to the last five pages of the book, and say here's how to put it together. This is where the money went and this is who knew about it.

BERMAN: What's going to be in the last five pages of that book? That is so interesting and a big question. Dana Bash, you note there is so much we can't see here with what Michael Cohen is talking about with the special counsel, but there are now things we can see. And that's what's so interesting about this document, the criminal information we saw yesterday, what's so interesting about this plea agreement that was leaked by Corsi the other day. We see that Robert Mueller is looking at money, for instance. We see that Robert Mueller is looking at the president's children. This treads all over those red lines that the president has set before in this investigation, saying, I'm really going to be upset if Robert Mueller starts looking at my money and really my kids?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Look, we don't have the end of the Mueller book, but we certainly have the prologue to keep up with the literary analogy. And what is in there are these hints. And I think what you just said, that red line is so important. We really need to underscore it, that this isn't just about whether or not anybody on the campaign had any interactions with anyone in Russia with regard to colluding. This is so much deeper than that for anybody, but particularly someone like Donald Trump, who spent his entire business career running a very opaque business. It's not public. We don't have public records. We don't have his tax returns to help us see into what he was doing.

And so there has been a lot of guessing by us and the public. Great reporting, but there's only so far we can go. Robert Mueller isn't guessing. Robert Mueller has so much information, access to information about a whole host of things. And so that's what we really have to keep in mind, and it bears repeating, this is one thing that Michael Cohen talked about with Robert Mueller. And who knows what else is out there, because he does know so much. They do have these tapes, they do have e-mails, to back up what Michael Cohen has said in interviews with the Mueller team.

CAMEROTA: Go ahead, Jeffrey.

TOOBIN: We haven't talked about it because things happen so fast in this investigation.

BASH: We also don't know about it.

TOOBIN: We don't know, but how about Stormy Daniels? How about the payments that Michael Cohen facilitated from Donald Trump to Stormy Daniels on the eve of the election?

[08:10:00] Was that an illegal campaign contribution? Was that whole activity an illegal activity? That's how we first heard about Michael Cohen's intimate involvement in this, and that is still something that is very much worth looking at.

CAMEROTA: Was there something, Jeffrey, yesterday happened you felt shifted all of this into overdrive? It felt to me, listening to you, that you thought that yesterday with the Michael Cohen guilty plea, that something shifted in the entire equation about President Trump's legal jeopardy?

TOOBIN: Yes. I think there are now three areas where the story that the president is telling is deeply improbable. One, Trump Tower, that he simply was not involved, didn't have any major connection to this major initiative, it seems, to build a Trump Tower while the Republican campaign was going on. That's one.

CAMEROTA: In Moscow.

TOOBIN: In Moscow. That's one area. Two, Wikileaks. Roger Stone and the president, and candidate Trump, were talking throughout the campaign. Both of them were obsessed with Wikileaks. Their position is, we never talked about Wikileaks. How plausible is that? And third, there's the meeting in Trump Tower where --

CAMEROTA: Don Junior.

TOOBIN: Don Junior is present, and the position of candidate Trump and president Trump is, I knew nothing about it. I planned a big speech about Hillary Clinton's bad behavior right before this meeting, canceled it afterwards, had no idea the meeting took place. If you combine those three areas and the deep implausibility of the story that Donald Trump is telling, it's a big problem.

BERMAN: Phil Mudd, among us you're the one who has actually worked with Robert Mueller. Tell us what you see in these documents that have come out, and tell us what you expect to see. We have another hearing with Paul Manafort where we could learn more this morning. What do you expect in the next few days?

MUDD: A couple things. First is the teams looking what the president just wrote in terms of his written responses to the Mueller question. As soon as you Cohen him in the room cooperating, they're comparing what the president said with what Cohen said and looking not for what they think, but for what they know. In other words, is there a factual discrepancy between what they heard from Cohen and what they got from his documents and what the president wrote.

The final thing I'd expect to see and which is why Manafort is so important, we're missing the final piece of the puzzle. Did Roger Stone or somebody else actually accept information of value? That could just be a date when Wikileaks was going to release stuff. Did they accept information of value that will make the campaign in this broad term, in collusion with the Russians or entity that took Russian information? That's Wikileaks. That final piece is what I'm waiting for from Manafort.

CAMEROTA: Yes, well -- just one thing, Dana.

BASH: Sure.

CAMEROTA: Because if Manafort's not cooperating anymore and Roger Stone hasn't been called, and Jerome Corsi is not going to cooperate, that final piece might of tough to get. Dana?

BASH: Just real question, this is one of the reasons, this is the reason that the president's attorneys were so reluctant to have him talk in an oral way, to have a face-to-face interview, and also reluctant to do what they did, which is give written responses, because all of the issues that Jeffrey and Phil just laid out is locked in. They're all locked in with -- under pain of criminal, potential criminal action, even though he's the president. Maybe it's just political for him, but that's generally how it works, he's got answers to all of these. And our reporting, as Jeffrey was saying, on Wikileaks and on the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, his written answers were he didn't know anything about it. And what the Trump legal team said yesterday, his answer doesn't contradict what Michael Cohen has said. Is any of that true? We don't know, but we can be sure that Robert Mueller knows, because of the documents that he has, because of the interviews that he's done.

CAMEROTA: OK. Dana, Phil, Jeffrey, thank you all very much.

So he will help lead the investigation to hold the White House accountable in the new year, whatever that looks like. So now with Michael Cohen's guilty plea, what does that mean for the potential incoming held of the House Judiciary Committee? We'll ask him, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:55]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats in the House vow to investigate the circumstances surrounding Michael Cohen's guilty plea and what he has said in terms of making false statements to Congress about Donald Trump's business dealings in Russia. Our next guest is likely to lead the House Judiciary Committee next year. He says the Cohen plea deal raises serious questions about what the Russian government may have over President Trump.

Joining us now, Democratic Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York, he's currently the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. Congressman thanks so much for being with us this morning. What do you mean --

REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY), RANKING MEMBER, JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: A pleasure.

CAMEROTA: -- that the Michael -- what are the serious questions that the Michael Cohen revelations reveal?

NADLER: Well, the president -- the president -- is right to be nervous right now, because it appears that time is running out when he can hold himself above the law and obviously the developments help with that. The significance of the developments this week is that one of the central focuses -- of the investigation is, we have known. It's become very clear that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in trying to subvert the election. The question is -

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: How's - wait - wait - hold on. How is that -- how can you say that so definitively that they've colluded? NADLER: Well, the fact that - the fact that Manafort and Trump Jr. met with Russian agents who told them that they wanted to give them dirt on Hillary as part of the Russian government attempt to help them. And that they said, fine. I mean it is clear that the campaign colluded. There's a lot of evidence to that.

The question is was the president involved? Did he know about it? And we learned two things this week. One, the president's personal attorney lied to Congress about the fact that he was personally involved on behalf of the president in arranging business deals with the Russians during the campaign. And, secondly, that the president's campaign manager was involved with communicating with "WikiLeaks" during the spring of 2016 at the time - you know well before they -- served as the conduit to release the e-mails that the Russians had stolen -- from Hillary Clinton.

[08:20:13] CAMEROTA: Hold on a second. Hold on a second. I just want to ask some questions. You mean Roger Stone was involved?

NADLER: No. I mean Manafort.

CAMEROTA: So, you're saying that Manafort was in direct communication with "WikiLeaks"?

NADLER: Yes. Yes. We learned that this week.

CAMEROTA: And can you just connect those dots? What was happening there? You know, are you saying because Manafort met, you think, with Julian Assange?

NADLER: I don't know whether he met with Julian Assange. We are told that - we've learned that he was in touch with "WikiLeaks." But the point is these two developments are just two more developments. They're not dispositive but they are indications that start during the walls closed around Trump indicating his personal involvement and we'll see as the evidence develops, but it's also clear that Mueller knows a lot that we don't know, and that Cohen's testimony is far more relevant than just his involvements with payoffs to Stormy Daniels but gets into a lot of other things Trump was doing such as business dealings with the Russians.

CAMEROTA: Yes. But what's illegal about doing business dealing with the Russians when you're not president? He was doing this -- he wanted his Trump Tower as he was candidate even before that.

NADLER: I didn't say it was illegal about his doing business dealings with the Russians at that time, but he lied about it to the American people. Repeatedly he said he had no business dealings. He --

CAMEROTA: Not a crime.

NADLER: I didn't say it was a crime, but it starts -- it's another point of evidence about his involvement with the Russians during the campaign, and the walls are tightening about his, that -- about his knowledge of -- of the collusion with the Russians.

CAMEROTA: Look --

NADLER: That's not dispositive proof but -- it's another point of evidence.

CAMEROTA: The president sees it very differently. This won't surprise you. I mean --

NADLER: Of course, of course.

CAMEROTA: He, yesterday on the lawn of the White House, said that he was a businessman. It was no secret. He wanted to do deals all around the world. Here's how he explained wanting to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won. In which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NADLER: Well, he's justifying that now, but he was lying to the American people. Remember, he was saying that he had no business dealings with the Russians. That he had nothing to do with them at that point. And that was a complete lie. We now find out. Now he's trying to justify --

CAMEROTA: Well, hold on a second. Just one second, Congressman. He said that we have the montage of him saying that. And sounds - from what we can tell every date stamp that we have, it was after the deal fell apart. So I don't know that he was lying.

NADLER: Well, what we learned -- what we learned now is that they were having negotiations as late as June of 2016. He had previously said there were no -- there were no dealings after I think January of 2016. But you have film clips -- film clips -- tapes of them these days saying that he has nothing to do with the Russians. We have no business. I have no business dealings there, et cetera. We now know that that was a lie. But the key importance here is that the candidate for president of the United States was having business dealings with a foreign government at the same time that that foreign government was intervening to help subvert the election on behalf of that candidate and at the same time that the candidate was a candidate obviously.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

NADLER: And -- he was dealing with a foreign power, an unfriendly foreign power, and had personal business interests with a foreign power and lying about it to the American people.

CAMEROTA: Congressman, I want to ask about what's going to happen today. You're going to be speaking with the acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker.

NADLER: Yes.

CAMEROTA: CNN has reporting that Matt Whitaker was tipped off on Wednesday night, that he knew that the Michael Cohen revelations and guilty plea would be coming. Obviously, if President Trump is a subject of the Mueller probe, it would be bad to be tipping off a subject. What do you want to ask Matt Whitaker about all of this?

NADLER: Well, if he tipped - if he topped off the subject that would be -- if he told the president in advance, that would be highly improper for the reason you stated. But we're going to ask him. I mean, we are very concerned that he as acting attorney general may interfere with the Mueller investigation. Cut off funds, tell the special counsel not to indict someone or not to follow a line of inquiry, and we are going to express those concerns and ask for him to make a commitment that he won't do those things, number one. And number two, that if he does make any decision to instruct or restrict the special prosecutor, the special counsel, rather, that he will inform us in a timely basis of that.

[08:25:00] CAMEROTA: Congressman Jerry Nadler, we look forward to hear what comes out of that meeting. Thank you very much --

NADLER: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So that was the next chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. We have the current chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Bob Goodlatte joining us next. I expect he will have a much different version that what we just heard.

CAMEROTA: Do you?

BERMAN: That's what I'm betting on.

CAMEROTA: OK. You can bet on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:29:18] BERMAN: President Trump has emerged as a central subject in Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. New revelations are now connecting him, his children, his business to Russia, during the 201 presidential campaign. The president's longtime former attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about plans to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Joining us now is the outgoing chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Republican Congressman Bob Goodlatte. His committee has subpoenaed James Comey, former FBI director to testify behind closed doors about the FBI's actions leading to the 2016 election. And actually that Comey is fighting it in court. Mr. Chairman, we're going to talk about that in just a second.

I want to start with the news over the last 24 hours. What concerns do you have that a Republican candidate for president, that his business was in negotiations with the Kremlin during the campaign and the American people didn't know about it.