Rudy Giuliani Accuses Mueller of Unethical Tactic.
SCIUTTO: The wheels of government will come to a halt while the nation honors the late 41st president. The special counsel investigation, however, does not take holidays. It moves on. So much to talk about, particularly after developments last week, senior political analyst for CNN Ron Brownstein, CNN legal analyst Shan Wu. Shan, if I could begin with you. This is as much a public messaging campaign as it is a legal one because with each development, you have the president and his allies attacking the substance of it. Shan, they are calling what Cohen pled guilty to simply a process crime, lying to the House. You spent a lot of time, you're a prosecutor, you defended one of the defendants, Rick Gates, in this investigation. How can the FBI or the Hill do their jobs if people lie to them?</s>SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: They can't. And that term process crime, that's just nonsense. I mean, it's a crime. It's a crime to make false statements to investigators. It's a crime to make false statements to Congress. It's basically perjury. So that's a substantive crime, it's not just a mere process crime. And as you were saying, Jim, I mean, it's a PR campaign here. So the Trump people want to spin that as oh, there's no real substantive crimes going on here. It's all these process crimes. But you know, when you look at this investigation, the amount of false statement convictions is just unbelievable. I mean, it permeates the entire situation here. And that says a lot about what's going on and also raises the question of what is it they're all so desperately trying to hide at this point.</s>SCIUTTO: Ron Brownstein, the lying was part of the issue revealed by Michael Cohen's guilty plea last week, but it also raises a question of influence. Does it not?</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.</s>SCIUTTO: Because you had a U.S. presidential candidate a month away from being named the nominee at the convention, right up into June of the 2016 campaign speaking with a foreign power, in this case an adversary who would we find out was interfering in the campaign, about business interests, which raises questions, at least questions a bit about trading of influence, U.S. and Russia. Is that the bigger political problem beyond the series of lies about this, including from the president?</s>BROWNSTEIN: Well, there's another twist in the screw here, which is what Adam Schiff, whose name I think the president will learn how to spell shortly, and Jerry Nadler, who will be the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, have both focused on in the last week, which is that the president was making misleading statements that were being corroborated at the time by Russia when they knew they were misleading. And the question of whether that provided a foreign adversary undue influence and ability to leverage the president because in effect they were functioning as his alibi, as -- as you know, as a Kremlin spokesman acknowledged, you know, just the other day that the Cohen statements were accurate. And so I think, you know, the larger dynamic here, Jim, is that you now -- with the Democrats about to take control of the House, you now have another player in the arena. And the ability of the administration to kind of make these allegations unchallenged because certainly Mueller is not conducting his investigation in public, will end. And you will see, I think, a different -- you'll see all of these events from a very different vantage point. And that will, I think, influence the way the public debate unfolds.</s>SCIUTTO: No, it is a good point, one of the details of many last week, which was that Kremlin lies were aligned with campaign lies during the campaign. They backed up the story, which was interesting. Shan Wu, you've got a lot of experience inside a courtroom. Rudy Giuliani, his latest charge against Robert Mueller in a series of charges is that it's unethical to flip witnesses, get them to cooperate in effect. Have a listen to his comment, and I want to get your reaction.</s>RUDY GIULIANI, PRESIDENT TRUMPS' LAWYER: I think the special prosecutor stepped over the line now with the way he's intimidating people in order to tell what he believes is his version of the truth. This is what's wrong with the special prosecutor and independent counsels, they think they're god. I mean, they think they know the only trust that exists, even if there's a lot of doubt about it.</s>SCIUTTO: Now beyond this being rich for Rudy Giuliani, the former D.A., who I'm sure pressured a witness or two to cooperate with the prosecutor, beyond the richness of that, is there anything legally unethical for a special prosecutor to offer leniency in effect, although this agreement, we don't know what the leniency is, but to offer something in exchange for cooperation?</s>WU: No, absolutely not. I mean, that's exactly the way that we have cooperation structured. And Rudy Giuliani certainly is, as you said, very familiar with that. I think, you know, there's a danger he's creating for himself here, I mean, making these sorts of assertions is one thing when we all know they're completely baseless, but he actually potentially has a base, which is he had this very risky, unusual joint defense agreement with the Manafort attorneys. And if he's actually relying on information from them and saying that that's the truth and the special prosecutor is saying X but Manafort goes Y, and Y is the truth, and usually turning himself and his team potentially into a witness. So it's one thing if they're just baseless hot air, but if there's some substance to it, then he's actually putting himself at risk.</s>SCIUTTO: Another -- sorry, Ron, you wanted to add.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Yes, can I add something to that? Which is that, you know, the kind of language from Giuliani there is, you know, kind of indicative of the way they have approached this from the beginning from the White House, which is to essentially try to delegitimize Mueller with arguments that are really not aimed to persuade. They're really aimed at mobilizing their base. That, you know -- that's what that kind of extreme language is. We have just had kind of --</s>SCIUTTO: Except, Ron, that --</s>BROWNSTEIN: Yes.</s>SCIUTTO: Except that those arguments are repeated not just by the base. You hear them repeated from -- I heard Senator Ron Johnson on our air the other day.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Yes.</s>SCIUTTO: C calling the process a crime.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Yes. I was going to say, where that has had success is in kind of intimidating almost any voice in the Republican Party from acknowledging the legitimate questions and issues that the Mueller investigation have raised. But in another sense, we just had a real world test of a messaging strategy, and for that matter, a governing strategy that has been aimed almost entirely at the base. And that was the midterm election where Republicans lost the popular vote by a larger margin than any party has ever lost the popular vote in a midterm election. And where they lost by a larger margin as a share of the vote than in the 2010, 1994, and 2006 landslides.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes.</s>BROWNSTEIN: So, you know, while this is having an effect within kind of the four corners of the Republican Party, the relentless focus on kind of stoking the base, both in messaging and governing, ultimately does have a cost in that everybody else notices what's happening.</s>SCIUTTO: Yes. Yes. Well, and listen, folks who are not relentlessly parroting the administration line, Republicans, will say this is going to have a political effect as the investigation continues. Ron Brownstein, Shan Wu, thanks very much. We're learning new details today that the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi was texting another Saudi dissident in the months before his murder. Now that friend says that those messages were hacked, stolen, but you get a real sense of what worried Khashoggi in the final weeks. The CNN exclusive is next.