Trump To Hold Rally In Michigan During White House Correspondents' Dinner; Lawyer At Trump Tower Meeting Says She's Kremlin "Informant"; Pruitt Facing Ethics Probe Scrutiny
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Russian lawyer who met with Trump campaign officials in 2016 now admits that she has closer ties to the kremlin --</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible).</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, she was a Russian spy.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It certainly corroborates what we have seen of Veselnitskaya. That she was working to undermine the U.S. policy.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The fact that the leaders of North Korea and South Korea are talking and nuclear missile tests have stopped for now is a cause for optimism.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think it's going to work out just fine. Let's see what happens, but I think it will be very good.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why did it take so long, 11 years to get to this historic moment?</s>PRESIDENT TRUMP: We're not going to be played. We'll hopefully make a deal. If we don't, that's fine.</s>CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. So, we have Merkel and Macron, a dictator to a doctor, a rapper to a Russian lawyer, and a lot of people saying it's been a heck of a week for President Trump, and maybe that's just the opening act.</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Look at you with the literation. That was nice. Nice. The president returns to one of his favorite settings, the campaign trail, today. He has a re-election rally and is previewing a speech on Twitter. It's got the attacks on Russia, the investigation at least, Robert Mueller and Democrats. CNN's Abby Phillip is live in Washington. We'll start there. Abby, we know how much the president really loves these rallies. But there are some major developments in the Russia investigation he'll have to address soon enough at least.</s>ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Victor. The president is having a little bit of a replay this year of what he did last year at around exactly this time. The White House Correspondents Dinner is usually the place where the president will show up and make fun of himself and perhaps the press corps and political scene. But he skipped it last year. He's skipping it yet again this year. Instead, he's having a campaign rally in Michigan. It's something that his aides knew he really enjoyed in part because of the counter programming that it presented to the dinner, which is a very Washington affair often. And also, because the president, as you just mentioned, likes to be on the trail road testing some of these lines, perhaps attacking his enemies. These rallies tend to be very much a free-wheeling affair. And the last couple of days, the president has been doing just that also on social media. As you mentioned, previewing some of these messages. Last night, he sent a late-night tweet addressing the Russia probe saying the House Intelligence Committee rules that there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. As I have been saying all along, it is all a big hoax by Democrats based on payments and lies. There should never have been a special counsel appointed, witch hunts. Now, he's referring to the House special counsel report on the Russia investigation, but that report was a partisan one. It was written mostly by Republicans. Democrats dissented saying that the Republicans really didn't do the leg work to really inquire about some of these very clear ties that there has been the campaign between the president's associates and Russia. And one of those ties, the famous meeting between the president's son, Don Jr., and a group of Russians including a lawyer who has now come out and said that she was an informant for the Russian government, she wasn't there simply to talk about Russian adoptions, that she was there as an -- essentially an agent of the Russian government. So, that is a new development here that this White House is going to have to contend with. And frankly, this is -- this development is perhaps new to the public, but folks in the intelligence community have known for quite some time that her role with the Russians was clearly more advanced than she might have let on. So, we will be watching to see what President Trump is going to say today throughout the day and into this rally in Michigan. But the objective here is going to be to put something else out there for the public to digest and also, perhaps, to go after some of the main themes he's been talking about on social media and in -- in a "Fox and Friends" interview in the last several days. He's been going after James Comey and the special counsel investigation at length -- Victor and Christi.</s>PAUL: Yes, he has. Abby Phillip, thank you so much. One of the big questions this morning, why is this Russian lawyer who previously denied any connection to the kremlin coming forward with this information now? CNN's Frederik Pleitgen following all of these developments from Moscow. So, Fred, what exactly do we know, first of all, about the timing of this, and about her motives for essentially outing herself?</s>FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's not clear what exactly her motives are. Also, she doesn't essentially say that she was an agent of the Russians or is an agent of the Russians. She simply says that she is an informant which in itself is quite interesting. Because, of course, before she'd always said she has no ties to any Russian government bodies. But now the thing that's really interesting here is her ties to Russia's general prosecutor, Yuri (inaudible). That's always been something where investigators in the United States have said they believe that the ties are much closer than she had let on. Now she's come forward and said, yes, I have a relationship with the state prosecutor, a professional one, and I am also an informant. Let's listen in to what she said in an interview yesterday.</s>PLEITGEN: So, she's saying, yes, she is an informant. The question is why is she saying this now? And one of the reasons might be is because some of her emails between her and the state prosecutor of Russia have been leaked. Fairly recently they'd gotten into the hands of an organization that's headed by a kremlin critic, the organization is called "Dossier." And in there, you see that the language between her and the state prosecutor is a lot more cordial and friendly than you might have thought. And also, that there seems to be a lot more interaction than was previously let on. She also apparently had very close coordination with Yuri (inaudible) in the case where the Russian federation tried to thwart the Justice Department, which was going after a Russian businessman in the United States, and she apparently was representing this businessman. At the same time, also worked together with the Russian authorities to try and thwart that investigation. So, there's a lot of new information that's coming out. And also we have to remember that when the infamous beating took place in 2016 there at Trump Tower, she was actually sold to the Trump team as a Russian government lawyer. I want to read to you an excerpt from the e-mail that Rob Goldstone wrote to Donald Trump Jr. saying, (inaudible), a close business partner of Donald Trump, who also helped organize the Miss Universe pageant in 2013 saying, "Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and the Russian government attorney" -- obviously, this being Natalia Veselnitskaya -- who is flying over from Moscow this Thursday." Obviously, that was the meeting where Donald Trump Jr. was apparently told that he would get, quote, "dirt on Hillary Clinton." He says that the meeting led to nothing, that she wanted to talk more about trying to repeal the Magnitsky Act. But certainly, a lot more information coming out and also becoming more clear that her ties to the Russian government certainly seemed to be a lot closer than she has let on and also than she told U.S. authorities, as well -- guys.</s>PAUL: Very true. Fred Pleitgen, thank you so much for walking us through all of it.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. Joining us now, Errol Louis, CNN political commentator and anchor for Spectrum News, and Walter Shaub, CNN contributor and former director of the Office of Government Ethics. Gentlemen, good morning to you. Errol, let's start with you. Your assessment of why Natalia Veselnitskaya is coming out with this assertion now that she is an informant.</s>ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, look, a news organization basically had her dead to rights. The dossier organization that got its hands-on e-mails led by insiders, who are very much in an opposition stance to the Putin regime, they -- they had the emails, they had the information, they passed it on to NBC News. NBC News confronted her with the emails. So, it's fascinating to watch her on camera there. Sort of -- kind of size up the situation and say, well, yes, you know, you got me. I am an informant. When the president keeps talking in all caps about how this is a witch hunt, well, I think we have a witch here.</s>BLACKWELL: House Democrat, Walter, Eric Swalwell, says that, of course, she was an informant when she walked into the room at Trump Tower back in June of 2016 for that meeting. I want you to listen to what he's proposing now after this reporting.</s>REPRESENTATIVE ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA), JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: I have written legislation that is called a duty to report, which says that if you are contacted by an agent of a foreign power as a candidate or someone on the campaign team you have to tell the FBI. There's so many people who were approached by Russians with dirt on Hillary Clinton or who offered to connect Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, and they said nothing.</s>BLACKWELL: I imagine there are some people who once this came out in July of last year about the meeting at Trump Tower were surprised that that was not a requirement. In this environment, what do you think the viability is of that legislation getting through Congress and then getting a signature from the president?</s>WALTER SHAUB, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I don't know if it will get through Congress. I mean, we've got a Congress that was responsible for this ridiculous intelligence committee report. That was nothing more than an attempt to confuse the issues and muddy the waters, but I think it's a very good idea in terms of legislation. I'm glad he proposed it because this is another example of the norm in government. Anybody in the past, you know, however many elections back you want to go would have thought immediately to contact the FBI. This was the beginning of a series of departures from the norms of government by the Trump administration to not contact them. You know, one thing that's interesting about this revolution about this attorney is that it's the product of leaks. I don't know if I missed it, but I haven't seen any clear indication of how it got leaked out. I think we have to remember that Russia's goal here isn't to really to support one candidate or president or another but to create chaos over here. So, whether they're responsible for the leak or not, they're beneficiaries because this creates more chaos coming out around the same time as this House Intelligence Committee report because it shows it's ridiculous since they have no interest into looking into this matter.</s>BLACKWELL: So, one of the issue I want to hit because we're running short on time is EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Confirmation from the EPA Office of the Inspector General that there will be new reviews into some of the ethics questions, notably the $50-a-night condo setup that he had in Washington, D.C. If we have it, maybe we can put this up, the list of organizations and agencies that are investigating Scott Pruitt. You have the Office of the Inspector General, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Government Accountability Office, White House Office of Management and Budget. Some vindications, some violations here, and some ongoing probes. Do these new reviews make him any more vulnerable?</s>LOUIS: I think other than the House, the others are statutorily required to look into the kind of allegations that have been finding their ways into the newspapers. So, this was going to happen. He is extremely vulnerable. This is why these ethics bodies exist in the first place, to sort of let you know that if you start stepping wrong, there are people who were paid to wake up every day, reads the newspapers, listen to what's going on in the government, and launch probes about things that may be going wrong. Especially some alleged retaliation where people were fired, demoted, or reassigned allegedly because they called attention to some of the spending habits of the secretary. So, he's in a world of trouble. A lot more than he really needed to be, and he could have avoided much of it by simply playing by the rules.</s>BLACKWELL: Is there a load capacity for a single member of the cabinet? I mean, we didn't see Tom Price when he was head of HHS get this far into some of the questions related to his expensive travel. Expensive travel is one of just, I guess, half dozen issues with Scott Pruitt. What do you think, Walter? Are we near that tipping point, or as long as he's getting the work done, he'll be fine?</s>SHAUB: Yes, I mean, the last time I counted, there were ten investigations and they may have added more as a result of the IG confirming yesterday that they were going to add additional issues. I don't see how he survives this in any other administration. But right now, he's popular with the president and with some of the members on the committee who held a hearing this week actually defending him and writing off ethics issues as somehow a smokescreen for going after him on substance. But the reality is I've never seen a government official at his level with so many ethics issues continuing in his job for as long as he has. So, he's either on death watch for his career in government, or we are entering an even more extreme era of this administration not caring about government ethics.</s>BLACKWELL: All right. Walter Shaub, Errol Louis, thank you both.</s>LOUIS: Thank you.</s>PAUL: Also new this morning, the National Rifle Association appears to be bracing for a possible investigation. CNN has learned the gun rights group has been setting aside years of documents related to its interactions with a kremlin-linked banker. Now congressional investigators have been looking into the NRA's finances and its ties to Alexander Torshin. They're trying to discern whether Torshin funneled money through the group, NRA, to bolster President Trump's presidential campaign.</s>BLACKWELL: North Korean state media is calling the Korean summit a new milestone, although, President Trump plans to meet with Kim Jong- un, he says he will not get played.</s>PAUL: Also, police spent 40 years trying to find the so- called golden state killer. How a genealogy website helped them do so.