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Judge: Manafort Lied to Mueller Team About Russia Contacts; Congress to Vote Today on Spending Bill, Trump Expected to Sign. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired February 14, 2019 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: It's going to be devastating to Manafort. He's likely to have the judge throw the book at him.

[05:59:25] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All of this seems to involve Konstantin Kilimnik, who is incredibly important to this investigation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My sense is it has little to do with politics and a lot to do with him saving his own skin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe that he will take executive action to make sure he gets the dollars that he needs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's possible that the president will, in all likelihood, take this deal.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a big wall. It's a strong wall. They would be able to climb Mount Everest a lot easier.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Thursday, February 14, 6 a.m. here in New York. Alisyn is off. Erica Hill joins me.

Happy Valentine's Day.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Happy Valentine's Day.

BERMAN: In the spirit of Valentine's Day, do you know where we're going to start? Lies.

HILL: Washington.

BERMAN: Lies!

HILL: Wow. BERMAN: New this morning, it may be the single biggest question hanging over this presidency. Why are there so many lies about Russia? Lies, lies, and more lies.

Lies to investigators, lies to grand juries, lies to Congress, lies to the American people, lies before convictions and now lies after convictions. And not just any lies, lies about meetings with people linked to Russian intelligence.

The Mueller team says those are big lies. A federal judge ruled that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort intentionally lied to the FBI, the special counsel, and the grand jury. Lied to them about something central to the probe. Meetings with someone linked to Russian intelligence with whom he shared polling data and conversations about pro-Russian policy.

He lied about this after he had already reached a plea deal. That plea deal is now a dead letter. Manafort is in even bigger trouble, facing an even stiffer sentence, but most of all, it gets to the bigger question of why. We will discuss that and what it means to the overall investigation.

HILL: And on the eve of a deadline to avoid a second government shutdown, the House and the Senate expected to vote today on a bipartisan spending bill.

More than 1,100 pages, and in that bill, less money for the president's border wall than was offered before the shutdown. While it appears President Trump will reluctantly sign it, not everyone is sold on the plan.

"The New York Times" reporting calls have been made from the White House to at least two FOX News hosts, Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, in an effort to get them on board and to sell the narrative that the president got more than he would have without the shutdown.

BERMAN: Joining us now, our legal Valentines: Carrie Cordero, former counsel to the U.S. assistant attorney general; Elie Hoenig, a former federal prosecutor; and David Gregory, CNN political analyst.

Lies, that is where we are starting this morning, Elie. We're going to talk about the "what" and then the "why." The "what" is Paul Manafort lying about these meetings with Konstantin Kilimnik, who is this official who worked for him before, when he was a political consultant. But who the FBI believes has ties to Russian intelligence.

And let's put up P-101 so people can see here. Manafort lied, so said this judge, about interactions and communications with Kilimnik about a $125,000 payment for legal bills and information material to another DOJ probe. He lied about a meeting on August 2 in which there were discussions about policy toward Russia. There had already been sharing of polling data, and he lied about all that.

So the Russian collusion picture is really coming into sharper focus now, and that August 2 meeting is so important. Because you have what lawyers call almost a quid pro quo, a this-for-that exchange. Right? There's what Kilimnik wants is relief on sanctions, ultimately, the change in policy.

And what Manafort gives him is that internal polling data. And that is such an important exchange.

And here's how important it is. This is what Mueller's own team said on the record during the hearing. They said that exchange goes very much to the heart of the special counsel's investigation. And why did he lie? We have part of an answer also from Mueller's team.

One of the things that Mueller's attorney said on the record is the reason they believe Manafort lied was, quote, "to at least augment his chances for a pardon."

Now, who's he -- who's he trying to appeal to there? Who's the only person who can grant Paul Manafort a pardon? So I think that we're getting at the larger picture of collusion and who else may be involved.

HILL: It is fascinating, though. You know, as we look at all of this, Carrie, trying to figure out -- we have these little snippets that Elie just pointed out that we can read into. And yet, there's still some larger questions out there.

What is the -- what is your main question after learning what we learned from the judge yesterday? After seeing all of this, what really sticks out to you?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the question is by August of 2016, Paul Manafort was not, at that point, the chairman of the Trump campaign.

So the big question is did the candidate Donald Trump know at the time what Paul Manafort was doing: that he was providing polling data, that he was talking about potential policy issues that the Trump presidency, if it became that, would adopt. And so that's the question.

Because the Trump supporters and the administration, they can't any longer say that this did not affect the campaign at all. Paul Manafort had been the chairman of the campaign, and he was providing campaign-related information. So the question really is who are the specific people that knew about it.

BERMAN: David Gregory, this is a happy anniversary for us in some way, because the time period that this meeting happened, we had shared some moments, memorable moments on television together.

[06:05:03] And let me give you the calendar of events here. July 22, WikiLeaks releases nearly 20,000 hacked e-mails from the DNC. After July 22, prosecutors now say a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Roger Stone about additional releases.

On July 25, the FBI announced it has launched an investigation into the DNC hack. On July 27 -- and this was our special day together, David --

candidate Trump said, "Russia, if you are listening," you know, "get me those e-mails," basically.

And then on August 2 this meeting between Manafort, Gates, and Konstantin Kilimnik at this New York cigar bar.

That's a whole lot of stuff happening in a very short time frame there.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, what that picture paints is that you have a campaign that's open for business, right? For anyone who has information that's opposition research against Hillary Clinton. He says it at the time. The candidate says it at the time, "Yes, we'll take it. Who wouldn't take that opposition research? And you know, Russia, why don't you try to find those missing e-mails?"

So what this a deeper look into is what the prosecutor said, Andrew Weisman, in court yesterday, this goes to the core of what this investigation is about.

Was there a this-for-that relationship? What was Russia providing to the campaign? And what were they getting as a promise in return, based on what policy would be.

We know that Vladimir Putin -- it was not a surprise -- favored Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. Now you get into the details of what they were prepared to do to secure that and whether they had any help.

And so the fundamental question is, if you just kind of were arriving today and saw that the campaign manager to -- for the Trump campaign had these kinds of ties to Russian officials and was discussing a quid pro quo around Russia policy, it is potentially devastating, especially in the frame of all this lying to investigators, the special counsel, to Congress about what that relationship was. Why the lies?

HILL: And that's the main question, right? Why did you need to lie about any of this?

And let's just put up the list of people who have lied that we know about. Right? So we have Paul Manafort. We have Michael Cohen. We have Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos.

And again, it all comes back to, as David just raised, Elie, this question of why was there a need to lie about any of these interactions?

ELIE HOENIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: There certainly is a common thread with what they're lying about, which is contacts with Russians. And understand, the lie that Paul Manafort told to Robert Mueller was particularly high stakes for him. He was down to his last chance.

He'd already been convicted at trial. He already pled to additional conduct. This was it for him. And now that he has told this lie and got caught in it, as the federal

judge ruled yesterday, he's going to get buried at sentence. He's going to be behind bars, in all likelihood, for the rest of his natural life, because he told that lie. But that tells you something about how strongly motivated he was to lie and to protect perhaps himself and likely others.

BERMAN: And that theory, to take that theory one step further, Carrie, it's interesting, because the reason that the prosecutors and the prosecutors in the paper that Elie was talking about said their theory is that maybe Paul Manafort was pardon shopping here, is that Manafort, what, somehow thought that by admitting or telling the truth about this meeting, it would be so embarrassing to the president or so damaging to the president that it would somehow affect or hurt his chances for a pardon?

CORDERO: Sure. Well, the president has sort of made some sounds all along the way that he potentially might be open to giving a pardon. And he has brought authority to do so. And he has demonstrated a willingness to use pardons in somewhat unusual circumstances not yet related to the Russia investigation, but in other circumstances throughout his first two years of his presidency.

So it is not unreasonable to think that Paul Manafort thinks that there's a chance that he still might get a pardon. And so -- and I think that that is still a possibility -- that he could get a pardon, because he has gone to the mat for the president.

If there was contacts that either the president knew about when he was a candidate or that Paul Manafort thought would hurt him at this point in his presidency, and Paul Manafort has gone to the mat to protect that information, given the types of things the president says about people who turn being rats and other mob-like statements that the president interprets -- interprets to be cooperation with the government, it seems like it might not be a crazy theory on Paul Manafort's part.

GREGORY: We also have something that is central to the fundamental question of the investigation, right? As we just were talking about. What were contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian officials about what and what would be the -- we give you this, we get that in return, the quid pro quo.

This is separate from some of the other crimes that are being investigated that, on the face of them, seem tangential to the core investigation. And we have a starting point here, which is we have a president who has maintained every day that this is a hoax, that this is a witch-hunt, that there is nothing here.

And then the evidence starts to mount that, in fact, related to that key question, you now have critical evidence.

[06:10:04] BERMAN: Can I just put up one more key date? And it's a piece of sound here from Paul Manafort. On July 27, 2016, he did an interview with CBS, where he was asked again about his contacts and the then-candidate's contacts with Russian oligarchs. This was right in the middle of all of that. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

PAUL MANAFORT, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: That's what he said. That's what I said -- that's obviously what the -- our position is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Oh my God. And that was --

HILL: I'm not sure I follow that.

BERMAN: It was six days. It was like six days before he sat down at the Grand Havana cigar bar with Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI says has ties with Russian intelligence.

HILL: Although in his sort of rambling answer there, right? He said, "Well, the president doesn't."

GREGORY: Right.

HILL: So that part of it is interesting, too, just in the way that he tried to craft that answer.

GREGORY: Right. And that's going to be -- that's going to be critical. Because obviously, there are legal questions here that will be the subject of what Mueller ultimately concludes.

And then there is the political part of this, that if there were to be impeachment proceedings, even a debate about the report, that will fall short of what the legal standards are about what those relationships were on policy levels. Were you trading polling information and other opposition research in order to get a softer line against Russia in terms of policy in the Ukraine?

And I think we have to remember, our recent history with Russia. Russia has not been an ally of the United States. It's been working at cross purposes of the United States and of democracy in that part of the world. And that's hardly a basis on which to have this tight relationship based on, you know, an exchange of things that are worthwhile.

BERMAN: All right. David, Elie, Carrie, thank you very much. Happy Valentine's Day to all of you.

Congress expected to vote on the border deal today to prevent a shutdown. If it passes, the president is expected to sign it. Not too thrilled about it all, but what options does he have after that?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:15:50] HILL: Lawmakers expected to vote today on this bad boy, this right here. This is 1,159 pages. I got up at 1:48. I did not finish it all, but Berman speed-read through all of it, which is great for us.

This includes, by the way, only a fraction, of course, of what President Trump had demanded for border security. If this passes the House and the Senate, the president then, of course, must sign it before midnight tomorrow to avoid another government shutdown.

BERMAN: It's border security and a bicep work-out all at the same time.

HILL: It is. That's how Cuomo talks about it, actually.

Joining us now, David Gregory; Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News; and Joe Lockhart, former Clinton White House press secretary.

You know, we just touched on this in the break, but the thing that is fascinating to me -- and David I want to start this off with you, is this reporting that we saw this morning from Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman. The White House, right, calling on FOX News hosts Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity, because the president needs some help. And he needs this to be spun as, "Hey, it may only have $1.37 billion for some sort of border barrier, but the president got way more than he would have if he hadn't done the shutdown." Except that's not really true.

GREGORY: Right, it's not really true. But there's no question that the president maintained this issue as the dominant issue in Washington and, in this round, got more than the Democrats said they were willing to give.

It's far short of what he wanted. It's far, far short of what he could have gotten as part of an overall immigration deal last year.

But to your point, he's so transparent in the way to say, "Look, I've got a base problem here. I've got people who are going to say I sold out on this thing."

What he wants to do is -- is create all the sound and fury and then come back and say, "Wait, I've got something. The wall is already being built. Now we're going to get more for the wall, and we're going to keep him on." And he's telling sheriffs yesterday, "I will never waiver in my duty to protect the American people," again, casting this as a major national security issue, because people seeking asylum are coming to the border as they've always done.

So that's where he is at this point. Really grasping now to keep his core supporters on board enough to say, "OK, well, this was better than he might have gotten otherwise."

BERMAN: I want to read, actually, from that "New York Times" piece. I really think it's worth letting it sink in here. This is from Maggie and Peter Baker.

"One call was made to Lou Dobbs, a favorite of Mr. Trump's, whose FOX Business Network show he often tries to catch live. Another was placed to Sean Hannity, the FOX host who regularly talks with the president. The message: Mr. Trump deserved support because he still forced concessions that he would never have gotten without a five-week partial government shutdown."

And Margaret, what's interesting to me, and we joked -- we've been joking or stating, not even a joke, all week. Sean Hannity, in a way, is the co-president here who has veto power over this. The president and the White House seems to be acknowledging that by calling Sean Hannity and saying, "Hey, we need you on this." Without him, are they in some kind of trouble?

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Sean Hannity has been such a promoter of the president and has stood by him so much that I think, if he really took a step back or turned against him in this case, it would send a real signal to that base.

And of course, you remember watching the rally the other night in which the president had just heard about the contours of the deal on his way over to the rally. And even -- they even pulled away from the rally for a minute in which Sean Hannity called the offer garbage.

And so there's been a pretty quick recalibration of this. But I would argue, to David's point, that this deal that they're going to be voting on today has far less to do with the wall than it does to do with the '20 election. And that's both in terms of the pressure to avert another shutdown, which the president does not want on his tab at this point, and on the president's ability to try to just begin re- messaging what all of this means.

We know what the contours of the wall are out of this: another 55 miles within the parameters that were already allowed and going to happen under kind of the existing law structure.

And on the other side, on the Democratic side, such pains by the Democrats taken to make sure that the kind of guardrails for the way this money could be spent, the 1.37 billion, that it could not include the sort of either futuristic wall that the president lurched toward later of the original kind of concrete thing. That's all off the table.

[06:20:09] So for both parties, the messaging on this is to allow both of them to preserve the message that they didn't let the other guys do what they were trying to do.

And Joe, there was a little pushback, too. Not surprising, but there is some pushback from Republicans, including members of the Freedom Caucus not -- not happy with this, as we know. The president needs to work with that, as well, in terms of messaging.

JOE LOCKHART, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's interesting. The Freedom Caucus -- it's about 40 members or so -- has been the group that has gummed up the works in Washington for the last eight years. Because when you're the minority in a majority, that's a lot of leverage. They're now the minority in the minority, and they're irrelevant.

They have nothing to say. They, you know -- they can hold a press conference. They can do this, but they can't hold up their leadership, because they're not in leadership. And that's actually a very good thing for getting things done.

You know, the calling Sean Hannity and, you know, Lou Dobbs, it's -- all of this is based on a lie. You know, they were offered $1.6 billion before the government shut down.

Thirty-five days the government shut down, his poll numbers drop, and he's now going to say 1.3 is some big victory. You know, it's like me saying -- coming on this saying you forgot in the intro to mention that I played in the NBA for 15 years and was the most valuable player. I can say it. It doesn't make it true.

So, yes, there will be some face saving. That's part of politics. But this is a stunning defeat for the president, and as you look to 2020, we made -- he made 2018 about this issue and lost in a resounding way. Can he turn that around for 2020? I don't know. But I don't think the signals are positive.

GREGORY: I have a slightly different view in that I certainly agree on the numbers. But the idea of the wall as metaphor is really what this is about.

And, you know, Democrats without a comprehensive deal are funding something that they said was totally immoral. Even though we know that there's been an existing barricade, and there was an expanded, you know, mileage of how much, you know, wall or barricade there will be. So they're in that position.

So he has been campaigning on the idea of metaphor, that this was important. This was a promise that he made that he wants to keep.

And we don't yet know. I mean, we certainly saw the hit he took over the government shutdown. I just don't know how lasting that political damage is when it would be much more lasting, I think, for somebody else.

And the fight, he can go to his base and say, "Look, I've got what I got, and we're going to keep this fight going. I'm not going to waiver." And, again, the fact that he can do this through metaphor and through a lot of falsehoods doesn't change the political calculus, necessarily.

LOCKHART: But Democrats were willing to give him more before he shut the government down. Let's not forget that. There was a hundred- nothing vote in the Senate. So this is -- you know, it is a climb down after a defeat.

BERMAN: Chris Stewart yesterday, Republican from Utah, yesterday said that on CNN. He said that "We had a better deal, in some ways, before the shutdown." You know, who knows? You're talking about mileage of barriers, maybe not. You're talking about money, maybe so.

The polling seems to indicate that Americans turned on the president because of the shutdown almost exclusively, not necessarily because of the wall. His numbers have actually gone up over the last week. What Americans don't want is a shutdown. What Donald Trump wants is golf, clearly, a lot of golf. And I don't

necessarily think he should be blamed for it. Golf, I'm told, is nice. I don't play myself. But he apparently had inside the White House, according to "The Washington Post," a new indoor golf setup, some $50,000 worth of his own money so he can play anytime inside the residence.

Now, I think if you talk to people who have covered the White House for a long time like David or people who worked in the White House like Joe, they'll tell you -- or Margaret also will tell you it's important for presidents to get a break when they need it. So there might not be nothing wrong with it.

But there is someone who has thought that playing a lot of golf was not good for a president, and that's Donald Trump. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Obama, it was reported today, played 250 rounds of golf.

Everything's executive order, because he doesn't have enough time; because he's playing so much golf.

Obama ought to get off the golf course and get down there.

If I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf.

He played more golf last year than Tiger Woods.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: He doesn't have time to play. That's why he needed --

GREGORY: Here's the irony of putting it in the White House, though. What presidents do, smartly, is they go play golf, because they can escape the bubble and the press. Why put it inside when you're inside the bubble? That doesn't make any sense. If you're going to play golf, go out to a course and do it.

BERMAN: You know, Margaret, the setup costs $50,000, but irony is priceless.

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Irony is priceless, but I will also point out that every time the president leaves town for the weekend, we're also going to one of the president's places to play golf.

GREGORY: Right.

TALEV: So, yes.

BERMAN: Again, maybe it's a good thing, Joe.

LOCKHART: Listen, I asked President Clinton a couple months after he left office, I said, "I thought you'd be out on the golf course every day. You've barely played at all."

[06:25:05] And he looked at me, and he said, "I went to play golf to get away from you." And as -- but it's true. And it's David's point, to get away.

GREGORY: Just to get away. That's why nobody goes to play tennis, because it's -- you get too tired, too fast. You can't be away long enough.

HILL: I'm learning so much this morning just for the record.

GREGORY: There you go.

BERMAN: All right, guys, thank you very, very much.

HILL: Just ahead, she worked as an U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist, but now she is charged with spying for Iran. We have those details in a live report next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right. New this morning, a new indictment. A former U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist has been charged with spying for Iran. The 39-year-old woman is accused of handing over highly- classified information to the Iranians.

CNN's Barbara Starr is live, traveling in Oman with the very latest -- Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

END