Trump Wanted Justice Department to Investigate Hillary Clinton; Responses to Robert Mueller Questions Submitted by Trump's Lawyers; Trump Sides with Saudis Over Murder of Journalist
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are watching the president undermine the principles of our democracy.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If I win I am going to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.</s>JOHN DEAN, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL TO FORMER PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: I think Richard Nixon would tell this president he's going too far.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president essentially put a price tag on a man's life.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's one of the most amoral statements any president has ever uttered.</s>TRUMP: It's America first to me. It's all about America first.</s>ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.</s>JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, November 21. It's 6 a.m. here in New York. Listen to this: "Nixon would tell the president he's going too far." That is a jaw-dropping statement and what Richard Nixon's White House counsel, John Dean, told me overnight about the stunning revelations that President Trump wanted to order the Justice Department to go after his political rivals. "This is the sort of stuff of a banana republic," Dean told me. "This is what an autocrat does." A source tells CNN the president wanted to have Hillary Clinton prosecuted and repeatedly pressed then White House counsel Don McGahn to lean on the Justice Department to do so. The source says on multiple occasions, the president raised investigating Clinton with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Matt Whitaker, now acting attorney general, but then Jeff Sessions's chief of staff. Recently, the president claimed he never knew Matt Whitaker. But these conversations prove that to be a lie. "The Times" reports the president also wanted to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, but McGahn pushed back, saying he had no authority to order a prosecution and even, quote, "have White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump, warning that, if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a possible of consequences, including possible impeachment."</s>ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And the other top story, President Trump siding with Saudi Arabia over the U.S. intel's assessment that the crown prince did order the murder of "Washington Post" journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The president making it clear he will not punish Saudi Arabia for killing and dismembering Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul two months ago. The president thinks the crown prince's culpability may never be known. In his words, he says maybe he did, maybe he didn't. Critics are blasting the president for putting economic interests above morals. Even some Republicans are slamming the president's inaction on this. Senator Bob Corker, who heads the Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted, quote, "I never thought I'd see a day a White House would moonlight as a public relations firm for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia." All right. Joining us now, we have CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins; and the host of CNN's "SMERCONISH," Michael Smerconish; and former federal prosecutor, Laura Coates. Guys, there's so much to get to. It's supposed to be the day before a holiday.</s>BERMAN: It's not anymore?</s>CAMEROTA: Sometimes the news cycle used to slow down, but not now. Laura, before we get to the morality of all of this, let's start with prosecuting and going after your political adversaries. So legally, can a president of the United States go after and prosecute -- order an investigation and prosecution of political rivals?</s>LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, not in democracy. That's the expectation, isn't it, Alisyn? And the thing is, the president is the head of the executive branch of government, so everyone thinks, because the Department of Justice falls under his purview, that he necessarily would have complete autonomy on deciding what they prosecute, who they prosecute and to what extent. But in reality, the executive branch and his role as the president is to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed, not necessarily to actually determine whether or not and to what extent and who is prosecuted. So the president over a course of this last two years, and every president prior to that, back to the Watergate administration -- the Nixon administration, have known that there are certain parameters they must abide by. They cannot simply order it and it shall be done. They can have their appointees do something. They can ask their appointees to investigate issues. But likely -- but largely speaking, the notion of the president in a democracy being able to go after political rivals for no other reason but to grind an axe, is unheard of and should remain so.</s>BERMAN: Let's remember. This is what Donald Trump told us he would do. On a debate stage with tens of millions of people watching, he said he wanted to do this. Let's review.</s>TRUMP: If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it, and we're going to have a special prosecutor.</s>HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in large of the law in our country.</s>TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail.</s>BERMAN: OK. That was during the campaign, Michael Smerconish. He was asking his White House counsel to go to the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton until spring of 2018. He'd been president for 14 to 16 months, plenty of time to know that that is way out of bounds, which is why John Dean told me overnight. And these are stunning words. He said that Nixon would tell President Trump he's going too far.</s>MICHAEL SMERCONISH, HOST, "SMERCONISH": When you look at the timeline, I think what's most stunning is that, for a full year, because according to The Times this was a request that he made of Don McGahn this past spring. Mueller was appointed in the spring of 2017. So for a full year, the president knew that he was the focus of at least a portion of the Mueller probe relative to possible obstruction of justice, and that didn't deter him. That possibility that Mueller would look and find evidence for the president having improperly fired Comey did not, in and of itself, dissuade him from wanting to use the Justice Department to investigate two political rivals. I have to say this. I agree with everything that Laura Coates articulated as to the impropriety, but I don't know that I'd go so far -- and she didn't -- but I don't know that I'd go so far as to speak of the illegality. Because that "Times" piece makes clear that Don McGahn said to Donald Trump, said to the president, "You do have the authority to request a probe," but he cautioned him against it and said it could lead to impropriety -- or could lead to impeachment.</s>BERMAN: The key words were "said he wanted to order." He did not order; he said he wanted to order. So the order itself never happened, so there was no illegality there. But I suppose it could get to the issue of criminal intent. Sorry.</s>CAMEROTA: Here -- here's the little passage that Michael was referring to. "Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that, if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment." And so Kaitlan, that just brings us to what we often debate here on the program, which is that people around the president often seem to have to keep him from himself, to keep him from his impulses.</s>KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Alisyn.</s>CAMEROTA: Being the guardrails.</s>COLLINS: And that's something that frustrates President Trump so -- right, that frustrates President Trump so much, is this idea that there are people in this administration who are working to reign him in or restrain him. But clearly, we are seeing that with Don McGahn here with this, and this is the second time we've seen it. The first being when "The New York Times" reported that President Trump tried to fire the special counsel, Robert Mueller. And now again, we are seeing with this. And this is how the president views not only the White House counsel, but also the attorney general and the Justice Department overall, as someone who should be working for him and, in a sense, not instilling his agenda but -- not only protecting him from the Russia investigation, as we saw with that frustration with Jeff Sessions but also in the other way, going after his political adversaries that he feels have done something wrong, even though it's unclear what it is he wants James Comey and Hillary Clinton to be investigated for or what they would even look at. And we've seen that before. Aides say the president comes to them often with this idea, something he wants to carry out or do, whether it's about immigration, the Justice Department, what have you, and they, in turn, have to explain to the president, as Don McGahn did with this memo that he outlined, telling the president why either he can't do this legally or why politically, it would be a disaster for him to do something like that. Now the question, John and Alisyn, is whether the president even read that memo that Don McGahn had outlined for him, explaining why he couldn't do this, because we know, from what sources are telling us, president Trump continues to talk about this. He continues to be frustrated with the FBI director and, of course, until recently, continued to be frustrated with the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for not doing what he believed they should do with regards to James Comey and Hillary Clinton. And that's crucial, because James Comey is a witness against the president in Robert Mueller's investigation, an investigation that includes whether or not the president sought to impede this investigation.</s>BERMAN: And among other things we know the president has been asking Matt Whitaker, his new acting attorney general, about what the Justice Department was doing with Hillary Clinton for the past year, which among other things proves the president was flat-out lying when he said he didn't know Matt Whitaker.</s>CAMEROTA: And by the way, it also sounds like, from all of the new reporting, that Matt Whitaker played along. He'd been briefed that the president had this bee in his bonnet, and so when he would go into the Oval Office, he played along of, "Yes, sure, I suppose" that he would look into it, but then, you know, didn't. Apparently.</s>BERMAN: So -- so to the issue of what the legality here might be, Laura, we also know that Don McGahn has testified behind closed doors or answered questions from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team for at least 30 hours, maybe well more than that. So if the issue is intent, what would the president want to do, not just here but when he fired James Comey? Not just here, but when he got involved in the Michael Flynn investigation, perhaps? Intent is so important and this could shine a light on that.</s>COATES: Absolutely. I mean, 30 hours is no small amount of time. And although we're referring to James Comey as a political adversary, he was the former head of the FBI who was a part of an investigation into collusion aspects and would know a lot -- a great deal about the Hillary Clinton e-mail controversy, as we know from his press conference. The fact that Don McGahn essentially blind-sided the president with the news that he actually spoke to the Mueller team for over 30 hours, not only was he the head of his campaign finance issues, he was somebody with the FEC who knew about issues about campaign contributions. He would know about the president's thoughts about why he wanted to fire James Comey. He would know about why he wanted to prosecute or pursue somebody like Hillary Clinton. You know, all of these things goes to not just the president's own words about what he said but corroboration. Corroboration for the president's tweets, his interview with Lester Holt and everything he has said since then that contradicts his original statements about why he was involved in trying to fire these people. And although the president does have the prerogative to let members of his cabinet go and exercise that prerogative, it can't be for a nefarious or criminal intent. And for 30 hours, Don McGahn spoke with Mueller's team. For 30 hours, he held the attention of seasoned prosecutors about everything he knew. Well, we should expect that this is also part of it, as well.</s>CAMEROTA: So Michael, I mean, while all of this fuming from the president comes to light about how he wants to prosecute his rivals, the Mueller investigation continues apace. We know from the president himself. Here's what he said about the written answers that have taken about a year to negotiate -- or, I guess, who knows, but many, many months they've been negotiating whether or not he would answer these written questions. So here is what he said about that.</s>TRUMP: The written answers to the witch hunt that's been going on forever -- no collusion, no nothing -- they've been finished; finished them yesterday. The lawyers have them. I assume they'll turn them in today or soon.</s>CAMEROTA: So what does that tell you, if anything, about where Mueller is and when we might have some answers?</s>SMERCONISH: So for ten years I tried cases -- I litigated civil actions. I would always rather, Alisyn, have a witness face-to-face and be able to ask follow-up questions in a deposition format, take their oral testimony, than receive answers to interrogatories which don't allow for follow-up, can be lawyered up. You often don't get what you're looking for in terms of written responses. So I think in this instance, Mueller was probably denied the opportunity to get what he wanted, at least for now, in being able to face-to-face question the president of the United States. I can't imagine that there will be much value in the written answers other than Mueller being able to say, "Well, I gave him the opportunity to respond and here's what I received." But it would have been better for the prosecutor to have Trump, the president, on record in oral responses.</s>CAMEROTA: OK. Michael, Kaitlan, Laura, thank you very much for all of the expertise. Meanwhile, President Trump apparently turning a blind eye, siding with Saudi Arabia over his own CIA's assessment of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. So what will Congress do now?