Comey Won't' Be Constrained When Talking Trump; White House War Room; Flynn Turns over Documents
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: About to get underway. In the meantime, the news continues right now.</s>ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Ana Cabrera, in for Brooke Baldwin. Thanks for joining me as we begin this hour with not just one but three major storylines developing. Any moment now, the White House press briefing is set to begin as the administration admits the Russia probe is impacting the president's agenda. At the same time, the State Department is expected to brief reporters. And this, as President Trump seems to be taking sides in the worst diplomatic crisis in decades to hit several Arab states. And finally, breaking details on the attack against police in Paris. Was it a terrorist at work? We'll unpack all of this. First, to the White House as it grapples with what is and is not happening on Capitol Hill. What is? Well, James Comey testifying in two days. There are new details on how forthcoming the fired FBI director may be about President Trump. What is not happening, the Senate GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare. Remember, the House passed its version of the American Health Care Act one month and two days ago. But the Senate version, well, Senator Lindsey Graham doesn't think there will be a major comprehensive health bill this year. Listen to what he just told CNN.</s>SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: In all honesty, I think it's a stalled Congress. We led off with health care, which I thought was a mistake. We'll probably have a vote on the health care bill. But the chance that the House and the Senate reconciling our positions on health care is pretty limited. So you can't blame the president for that. That's just the lack of coordination on health care within the party.</s>CABRERA: Now, as we wait for White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer to step to the podium there on the right-hand of your screen, let's bring in our panel to discuss. CNN's Sara Murray at the White House, CNN military and diplomatic analyst, retired Rear Admiral John Kirby, CNN senior political analyst Mark Preston, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger and CNN legal analyst Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who used to serve as special assistant to Robert Mueller, who, of course, is the special counsel now on the Russia investigation. Mark, I'll start with you. Bring us up to speed. What's the latest reporting on what James Comey might say. We know Senator Burr talked to CNN yesterday about his conversations with the fired FBI director. What should we expect?</s>MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, we're not quite sure to the point that we don't know how far he will go in his conversations that he had with President Trump. But as you noted, Senator Burr said that he's going to be unencumbered by what he does speak about, meaning he's not going to come to the Senate and the United States Senate is going to put parameters around him about what he can speak about. Now, we should note that he has been in discussions with Robert Mueller, who is the special counsel right now looking into the Russia investigation on behalf of the Trump administration. So you have to think that those two men have discussed and have choreographed what exactly he will say.</s>CABRERA: Sara, I know you have some new reporting on the White House and their response to all things Russia. What can you tell us about this reported war room they're preparing?</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, obviously, everyone is looking ahead to James Comey's testimony on Thursday and this has been a White House that has struggled repeatedly to figure out how to navigate questions about the Russia investigation. They had hoped to try to set up a war room to field this, to have staffers who are dedicated to this and maybe some help from some staffers outside of the White House. But it doesn't look like that is coming to fruition. They've had difficulty finding people to do it. They've also had difficulty trying to set this up at the same time that President Trump is trying to set up his outside legal counsel. He does have one lawyer right now, but they're trying to sort of broaden that and bring on representation in D.C. as well. So I think what you're seeing is a White House that's still coming up against James Comey on Thursday, potentially a little bit flat-footed. Now, we may still see some surrogates out there. My colleague Jim Acosta has pointed out that there are some former campaign staffers who are expecting to get some talking points and sort of be out there saying that there's no evidence of collusion, but not sort of the full, robust effort that even President Trump has been telling allies privately he wants to see more of.</s>CABRERA: We don't know if he will actually talk about the Russia investigation. A lot of the details there were from when he was an investigator with the FBI, obviously as director. So I think a lot of the anticipation we're expecting, as Mark Preston was also alluding to, is this question of, is there any obstruction of justice to be discussed. Let's remind everybody here what Comey had said previously in his testimony just last month, in fact, days before he was fired when he was asked if anyone was influencing the investigation. Watch.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So if the attorney general or senior officials at the Department of Justice opposes a specific investigation, can they halt that FBI investigation?</s>JAMES COMEY, FORMER FBI DIRECTOR: In theory, yes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Has it happened?</s>COMEY: Not in my experience, because it would be a big deal to tell the FBI to stop doing something that - without an appropriate purpose. I mean we're oftentimes they give us opinions that we don't see a case there and so you ought to stop investing resources in it, but I'm talking about a situation where we were told to stop something for a political reason. That would be a very big deal. It's not happened, in my experience.</s>CABRERA: So, Gloria, given he said that in May, could he change the narrative now?</s>GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: No, I don't think he's likely to change the narrative. I mean he was referring there to whether anybody at his own department, at the Department of Justice, had asked him to curtail or stop his investigation. He clearly wasn't talking about the president of the United States in that - in that answer. And I think what we're going to see from Comey is that you're going to see people asking him this obvious question about obstruction of justice. Did you consider this obstruction of justice? And I don't think you're going to get an answer from him. I think he's just going to speak to the facts as he knew them and he may say that he believed the president was inappropriate, that it disturbed him. I've been told by a source close to Comey that perhaps he thought he could train or educate the president about the right way to behave when speaking to the FBI director about an ongoing investigation. Now, he may look at this very differently in hindsight, given the fact that he was fired and given the fact that the president told Lester Holt that he was thinking about Russia when he fired him, but I don't think you're going to have him really change his story because if he had considered it obstruction at the time, one source close to Comey told me he would have done something completely different and he would have perhaps taken it to a different level. But he did not. So I think he's just going to testify as to what he heard from the president and what he memorialized in those memos.</s>CABRERA: And yet he is eager to testify, we're learning. We know based on what Senator Burr said, Comey is expected to be candid. Michael, will there be any limitations to what he can say regarding his conversations with the president? As we know, he doesn't want to step on Mueller's investigation.</s>MICHAEL ZELDIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think that Gloria's right, that he is going to testify to facts. He's not going to offer a conclusion, yes, this was obstruction, in my view, would be my guess. And we're just guessing here. I don't think that Mueller would want him to do that and I don't think he would want to do that. I think he's going to go through the seven or eight events that took place between him and the White House, all of which, if taken together, could or could not equal obstruction of justice. And I think he'll specifically be asked to focus on whether or not he was asked to stand down in the Flynn investigation and what were the details of that conversation, and then, two, also, was the president being truthful when he said that Comey called him to tell him that he was not under investigation. A fact that many people doubt and I think they're going to ask a lot about those two events, the Flynn and the - he told me three times I was not under investigation aspect of the testimony. I don't think he'll talk about Russia and the intelligence and things like that because that's all classified and not really what this hearing is about. This is really an obstruction of justice hearing more than anything else.</s>CABRERA: Could he bring up the Russia investigation in the closed session? We know he's going to talk before the public in the open session at 10:00 a.m. Eastern on Thursday but then it's going to move into a closed session with Congress with that Senate Intelligence Committee in the afternoon.</s>ZELDIN: I would think that's right. That during the closed session, he could testify to whatever they want to know about the state of the investigation to the day he was fired. Except that they know most of that already. So I'm not sure that there's much to be learned from that testimony for the senators. But, yes, that would be the forum in which that type of inquiry would be made.</s>CABRERA: Guys, we just got some new information that just crossed. In fact, we're now learning Flynn has provided more than 600 pages of documents to the Senate Intelligence Committee. This is significant. Remember, Michael Flynn was fired as part of the Trump administration. He was the former national security adviser for the president. He's now turned over 600 pages of documents, including business records, may include some personal documents based on the narrow requests from that committee. Gloria, how significant is this?</s>BORGER: Well, I - we don't know until we get a look at those documents. But, obviously, the committee is interested in his financial dealings. You'll recall that while he was advising Donald Trump, he was also advising the government of Turkey. He did not register as a lobbyist. They are going to want to figure out exactly what had Sally Yates' hair on fire when she went to the White House Counsel and said that Flynn could potentially have been blackmailed and compromised because of his conversations with the Russians. So they're going to try and get documentation perhaps about phone conversations. You know, we don't - we don't know what's in this stuff and we don't know whether it gets to the heart of the matter or not. We do know that, don't forget, that General Flynn was seeking immunity. And he hasn't gotten that. So it would be interesting to see exactly what they handed over to the Congress.</s>CABRERA: Again, we are awaiting this press conference, a press briefing from the White House. Press Secretary Sean Spicer. It's expected to begin any moment now. We'll bring that to you live. We're going to take a quick break. And we're also monitoring some breaking news out of Paris. We want to remind everybody, we're learning now more about an attack that happened at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. A man allegedly yelling something out before attacking a police officer with a hammer. We'll get the latest when we come back.