NYT: Mueller Focusing On Trump Tower Cover Story; Trump Presses Congress To Back White House Immigration Plan.
CUOMO: All right, I'm actually getting read in on what we're about to learn right now. All right, good. So breaking news tonight in the Russia investigation, "New York Times" reporter and CNN Political Analyst Maggie Haberman is on the phone. Maggie, what have you got? What's the headline?</s>MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST (via telephone): It's a complicated one. It's a tick-tock into the drafting of a statement aboard Air Force One that the president supervised. He had Hope Hicks, Donald Trump Jr., and a lawyer with the Trump organization involved in the writing of this statement, and it was in response to a "Times" story that was coming about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign in the summer of 2016. Specifically we've learned a couple of things. One is who was involved in the drafting, how it came about. We get into, you know, how it sparked an enormous amount of infighting. A significant piece in our story is Mark Corallo who is a spokesperson for the president's legal team for a time is anticipated to tell Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigators who want to speak with him and that is in previously reported, but about a conference call that he was on with Hope Hicks and the president the day after "The New York Times" story ran. It was a weekend, so this would have been a Sunday, where they were discussing e-mails involving a discussion between Donald Trump Jr. and people setting up the meeting that described its intent as about offering up dirt on Hillary Clinton. Hope Hicks allegedly said that those e-mails would, "never get out." Her lawyer denies that was said. Corallo is expected to tell investigators that he wondered whether that meant she was looking to obstruct justice. Again, I want to make clear that her lawyer has insisted she was never discussing anything about destroying documents. But it is another turn of the screw in how they handled what was one of the deepest crises of last year.</s>CUOMO: That's interesting, and the context will be that on the reverse side, it will be Trump Jr., if they're the same body of e- mails that went into the discussion of this meeting that he wound up having, that he released those e-mails that Hicks may have been referring to. But, again, you have act, and you have intent. And when they're looking at obstruction of justice, the intent is the tricky part.</s>HABERMAN: Correct.</s>CUOMO: Can a prosecutor find evidence of corrupt intent? So impeding and doing acts with bad cause. Maybe this fits into the puzzle. It certainly fits into our understanding. Maggie Haberman, whatever you were doing, get back to it. Thanks for calling us tonight.</s>HABERMAN: Thanks, Chris. Take care.</s>CUOMO: All right, well, perfect. That really helps us to set the stage for tonight's "Great Debate". CNN Contributor, Former Obama White House Ethics Czar, Norman Eisen, and CNN Legal Commentator, Former Trump White House Lawyer, James Schultz. Gentlemen, thank you very much. Counselor Eisen, this latest piece of information that Mark Corallo, pr. guy for the legal team for Trump for a little while says he heard Hicks say these e-mails will never get out. Now, they did get out. Trump Jr. put them out if they're the same body of information we're thinking of. Is this relevant?</s>NORMAN EISEN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Chris, thanks for having me back. It is relevant. It's another part of the mosaic, the evidence that is accumulating of -- as you say, corrupt intent to obstruct justice. We're not ready yet to find that the offense has occurred, but it's troubling. You know, part of the problem is, it's evidence of cover-up, Chris, and that's what always goes along with obstruction. The effort to hide it. Whenever you have a witness who may have said -- and I know Bob Trout from my days in the white collar bar, he's an honorable guy. If he says no, you can take that seriously. But whenever there's an indication that a witness may have tried to hide a document or suggested a document might have been destroyed, that's another problem that you have. So we have this drip, drip, drip, and this incident was so alarming that Mark Corallo, who's a very seasoned veteran of these wars, ran for the Hills. He was scared of obstruction, he saw it coming, and he quit. The case, boy, that takes a lot.</s>CUOMO: All right, so, Jim, I'm suspecting that where Norm sees a mosaic, you see an ink blot test where people see what they want to see.</s>JAMES SCHULTZ, CNN LEGAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first we see a denial by her lawyer. And, again, we don't know --</s>CUOMO: Well, the lawyer says she would have never been discussing destruction of documents. Obviously he's giving her cover from what would trigger a statute on her. But let's say, of course, she denies it.</s>SCHULTZ: OK. And let's say it's in the context of press conversation and whether or not it's going to get out in the press. Remember her job at the time. Everything needs context, and the context of this just doesn't match up to obstruction in my view. She's the press person. She has to deal with crisis communications. She's not dealing with evidence and facts and the issues that are going to come before an investigator or a court of law.</s>CUOMO: All right. We don't know enough. It's one piece in the puzzle. You guys have discussed it. I liked it. I have something else I want you to chew on. I've got to go over to the white board because Kevin, our floor manager, spent so much time doing on this board tonight. Then we had a whole fight. I did half. He did half. You can go to my Instagram and tell me which -- who did a better job. All right, so Norm and Jim, you guys are going to take on the two sides of what this move with the memo is. It is either what is being sold as by the GOP, which is transparency. This is all about transparency for the American people. Or it's about expediency, distraction from the Russia investigation, distracting people's focus. All right, now, on the transparency side, James, we're going to go with you first. The house Intel took a vote. They did it as order. It was divided by partisan lines, but they went through their procedure, had the vote. There is the public disclosure, which they're saying is the value here, that the people need to see, the people will judge. Their counsel, they're saying, scrubbed this to make sure that it was OK. They don't think they're going to hurt sources and methods, hurt the intelligence behind it. And then their big sell was that Christopher Wray, Trump's handpicked FBI director had seen it, and he hadn't offered any pushback. Do you believe the case for transparency? Make the case yourself, Jim.</s>SCHULTZ: So here's what we had. We had the Intelligence Committee with staff and some of the best lawyers on the Hill in the Intelligence Community conducting their review and ultimately preparing a product that was put before the committee that the committee decided to release. This isn't something that just done willy-nilly. This is done with seasoned staff on the Intelligence Committee, folks who know the laws as it relates to sensitive information. Then you have a similar process undertaken by the Democrats, led by Schiff. And they have their own memo out there. Let's not forget about that.</s>CUOMO: It's not out there, though.</s>SCHULTZ: -- to the majority memo. Well, it's been prepared.</s>CUOMO: Important facts, though, Jim. They voted not to let it out.</s>SCHULTZ: OK, it's been prepared. So then --</s>CUOMO: But they're not letting it out.</s>SCHULTZ: Then it goes to the White House, and it's now the White House's determination as to whether this thing goes or not. And there's going to be folks who have spent their careers in the intelligence, you know, Legal Community working on these issues, reviewing that document, and making a determination. And they're going to take into consideration what the FBI director had to say.</s>CUOMO: Are they in.</s>SCHULTZ: And they're going to make a judgment as to whether things are redacted or not?</s>CUOMO: Are they, because they fudged --</s>SCHULTZ: And then ultimately a decision will be made because that's the process, right, that would be the process that takes place. And if you hear the White House statements, they keep talking about process, right? And I know you're going to say, well, the president said last night.</s>CUOMO: Yes.</s>SCHULTZ: But the White House said today that they were going to walk through a process.</s>CUOMO: Yes, but who makes the decision?</s>SCHULTZ: And that's apparently what's taking place.</s>CUOMO: But who makes the decision? President said a hundred percent --</s>SCHULTZ: Ultimately it's the president and the chief of staff that make that informed decision after the lawyers have had an opportunity to review it.</s>CUOMO: But, you know --</s>SCHULTZ: And apparently that's what's being done.</s>CUOMO: But Jim, legal counsel is only as good as it is listened to, right? So even if everybody there was being as conscientious as you say, and as reason as suspect it's not, the chief of staff saying it's going to get out real quick and then the whole world is going to get to see it. And the president saying 100 percent it's getting out and he hasn't read it yet. That takes us to the other side of the ball. And this is you, Norm Eisen, that it's political expediency. We see Congress going around the Intelligence Community. We have not seen this, even the torture memo and what happened there where the CIA under Obama was against it. It was the Senate that wound up muscling that through. It wasn't Obama. It wasn't the kind of end run that we're seeing here, the DOJ and FBI concern. Remember, these are Trump's people, Christopher Wray, Rosenstein, Stephen Boyd. These were his choices for this, and they're saying don't do it, the Senate Intelligence Committee. Nunes won't let them see it, not even the chairman Republican Burr hasn't been able to see the memo. The president hasn't even read it yet. Devin Nunes reportedly hasn't looked at the classified information, the facts that the conclusions in his memo are based on. And none of them, Norm Eisen, not a single person calling for the release of this memo, because what it shows about corruption in the FISA process, have seen the actual FISA application. They have not seen the proceedings that they want to say were wrong.</s>EISEN: Chris, with all due respect to my fellow White House counsel --</s>CUOMO: I thought you were coming after me for a second. I was like, this is going to be terrible. Go ahead.</s>EISEN: With all due respect to James and his focus on the process, this process is a sham, and it is putting our national security in danger for the sake of the president's political expediency. You heard it last night when he was caught on the hot mike, Chris. Are you going to release it? One hundred percent. And he hasn't even read it yet. They don't know what's in there, and this is not an isolated incident. They're using it as a smear on the theory that the best defense against the Russia investigation is a good offense. They don't know if the FISA warrant was proper or not because they haven't looked at the underlying evidence. And, Chris, here's what's most disturbing of all. This abuse of the process is not a one-off. I have a new report out tonight with the American Constitution Society, my watchdog group, seven big lies, Chris. They've done this again and again. Mr. Trump and his enablers, starting with the phony claim --</s>CUOMO: Don't go through all serve. We don't have time.</s>EISEN: I know. I'll just do the first and the last.</s>CUOMO: All right.</s>EISEN: The phony claim that Mueller, a Republican himself, has conflicts. Now this bogus Nunes memo. Trump's own people in the FBI and the DOJ in open revolt, Chris, saying it's a danger and that it's false. And you know where it's headed? This is the most ominous of all. It's headed to create a false justification to get rid of Rod Rosenstein. He is in the same jeopardy as Jim Comey was.</s>CUOMO: All right. So --</s>EISEN: This is bad.</s>CUOMO: So last word to you, James Schultz. Norm says it is a travesty of a sham of a mockery, also known as a travashamockery (ph). Why is he wrong?</s>SCHULTZ: Well, Chris Wray has said himself that the sources and methods are not being released and therefore we're not talking about a national security crisis here as Norm would seem to portray. What we're talking about is a dispute of facts and the FBI disputing what's in that report, not necessarily the sources and methods in this giant issue that's going to bubble up as a result of some national security emergency. It's just not there, Chris.</s>CUOMO: All right. Gentlemen, thank you for presenting both sides of this. I appreciate it. Good to have you tonight. Another topic that needs our attention, the president says Americans are Dreamers too. What did that mean? How did that line land with people? That is something that needs to be debated. We have two great people. Navarro and Schlapp. Another "Great Debate" ahead.