Interference in Cohen Probe; McCabe Claims No Objection to Investigation.
KING: Sharp, new attacks from the president today on new reporting that again raises this question, did the president try to obstruct justice? Dishonest, no basis in fact, out of control and false is how the president, in some tweets, describes the nearly 5,000-word "New York Times" report. The newspaper report details two years of presidential frustration with investigations and numerous efforts to battle them that includes this big, new nugget, that the president's phoned his then acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, and asked him to change the leadership of the federal investigation in New York that directly touches the president and could reach into his family business. "The Times" said the episode is part of the president's, quote, more sustained, more secretive assault on law enforcement, a covert companion, if you will, to his public raging constantly against the special counsel. "The Times" cautions there's no evidence that Whitaker took any action to make the change the president reportedly wanted. CNN's Shimon Prokupecz joins our conversation. To me fascinating in the sense that this is more recent in the tenure of Matthew Whitaker, now departed, but in the several month tenure of Matthew Whitaker as the acting attorney general, "The Times" is saying that a president, who knows he is under investigation for potentially obstructing the Mueller Russia probe, called Matthew Whitaker and said, can you put Geoff Berman, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, back in charge of this investigation, from which Berman had recused himself.</s>SIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right.</s>KING: So, the president meddling in an investigation even though he knows he's under investigation for meddling in the other investigation.</s>PROKUPECZ: Right. And it also comes way after the president has already been told that it's inappropriate for him to have this kind of contact with people at the DOJ, with people at the FBI. It comes at a time when the president has been told really not to even talk about what's going on in the Southern District of New York. What's very clear, and I think what this reporting lays out for us, is that he is very concerned about what's going on in the Southern District of New York. There's been a lot of focus on the Mueller investigation, but not enough focus on the Southern District of New York where he certainly -- and his -- and the Trump Organization certainly has the most liability and the most concern. That's what I think this does. It also is interesting that he -- he wanted someone in that job, in the Southern District of New York, who would ultimately protect him. The fact that Berman, Geoffrey Berman, had recused himself from the Michael Cohen investigation I think concerned the president certainly. It certainly concerned people close to him. But they knew what was going on there. And that investigation is not ending anytime soon. I mean this could go on for a couple of years, John.</s>KING: And this -- the issue of, did the president ask you to do anything that was wrong came up with Whitaker was on Capitol Hill. Here's one of his answers.</s>MATTHEW WHITAKER, FORMER ACTING ATTORNEY GENERAL: At no time has the White House asked for, nor have I provided, any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation.</s>KING: Now, you could take that as Matthew Whitaker saying, no, I didn't do anything, or you can read it closely, provided any promises or commitments. It doesn't mean the president might not have called and vented. Called and said, is this possible? Is there any way you could pick up the phone and make this happen. That's different than saying, you know, do it.</s>OLORUNNIPA: Yes, this is a very lawyerly statement. You saw him looking down reading what was written because this wasn't something that he was just saying off the cuff. It's very likely that this was sort of written in a way, sort of a rhetorical sleight of hand where it sounds like he's denying that the president did anything improper but not necessarily denying what we've seen in "The New York Times" where the president was angry and that he called and asked Matt Whitaker to, you know, take some action that people could definitely interpret as obstruction of justice. So that statement is sort of a non-denial denial. And we'll have to wait to see if Whitaker or anyone in the Justice Department comes out with any more forceful or clear, direct language saying that the president did not do this because often we've seen denials of stories and then we've seen, over time, the stories turn out to be actually true.</s>KING: To that point, what we are witnessing in recent days is to turn on your television and you find Andrew McCabe, the former number two at the FBI, because acting director when James Comey got fire. He's selling a new book. It's highly critical of the president of the United States. He's everywhere on television. And to your point, one of the values, if you will, of McCabe is that he's proving a lot of journalism -- if you believe Andrew McCabe -- proving a lot of journalism right, things that were reported that the White House denied, labeled as fake news, labeled as reckless, labeled as law enforcement run amok. Andrew McCabe is now talking about them publically. This was interesting with Anderson Cooper last night. You know, the question is, he says, maybe the president's a Russian asset, wittingly or unwittingly. He talks about launching a counterintelligence investigation. He says he briefed key members of Congress and they didn't say anything. The question is, what don't we know? Listen to this.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, CNN'S "AC360": Are there other things that haven't been made public at this point that contributed to the opening of the investigation into the president?</s>ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER ACTING FBI DIRECTOR: I'm not so sure that there are things that haven't been made public.</s>KING: That, to me, was like, well, wait then, you know, is this -- how much -- is there classified information about interactions with the Russians? Is there something else behind it? What did you make of that?</s>PROKUPECZ: So, yes, there is. There's a lot of intelligence, I think. It's human intelligence. I think there are intercepts. I think there's a lot of stuff that the intelligence community was dealing with that was shared with the FBI that they were working to try and corroborate. There's a lot of information from the Russians talking to each other, perhaps indicating that they infiltrated the campaign or they thought they infiltrated the campaign. There's conversations about Paul Manafort with the Russians that we know about. Other conversations. So, yes, there is. What happened with all that information and was the FBI, the Mueller team, able to corroborate any of that. And the other part of it is, could this ever be revealed? Because it is intelligence, it is considered sensitive intelligence. That has always been one of the things, I think, for the FBI in his investigation is how do you put some of this forth? How do you go forward and reveal some of this information? Even in court documents it's very difficult to do that.</s>KING: We're going to see what happens when we get to the point of a Mueller report and then what of that becomes public.</s>KING: Shimon keeps thinking it's going to be soon. Do you got a Powerball number for me on that one? Another interesting thing is, one of the most significant things McCabe has said, you know, that Trump himself and Trump supporters call this essentially an attempted coup, the deep state, rogue law enforcement, an insurance policy against the president winning the election. Andrew McCabe says, no, actually, we had every reason to launch the investigation and we went up and told the top members of Congress as we're supposed to do on very sensitive things. We looped them in on that. He says none of them objected. That would include allies of the president, including Devin Nunes, who, at the time, was the House Intelligence Committee chairman. This is Trey Gowdy, former Republican congressman who knows Devin Nunes well, knowns the former speaker, Paul Ryan, well, saying that's not fair.</s>TREY GOWDY (R), FORMER HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: The reason he's doing it this way is Devin and Paul are not allowed to discuss anything that is said in a gang of eight meeting. And McCabe knows that. So he can level the accusation and Paul and Devin cannot refute him.</s>KING: Is that right? I mean you're not supposed to discuss the things you're told in those private meetings, but would it be out of bounds for either Paul Ryan or Devin Nunes if Andrew McCabe is not telling the truth. He says they briefed them, there were no objections. Couldn't they issue a statement saying, I can't discuss those meetings, but I was never in one like Andrew McCabe described?</s>BALL: You would think. You would think that if this were a brazen falsehood on his part, they would feel that the confidentiality had been breached to the point that they could at least -- you could even do a vague denial that says there are statements out there that are inconsistent with what I experienced. And that has not happened. And so the sound of crickets from those quarters I think is significant. It might not mean anything. It could be that, like Gowdy says, they would -- they would love to quibble with this but they -- their hands are just tied. But it's not like we have suffered from a lack of information coming out of the -- those meetings and that committee. So --</s>KING: From Devin Nunes in particular who has not been shy about saying he thinks there was corruption in the FBI. He did think there were problems. One would think that if he could -- if McCabe's not telling the truth, that Nunes would find a way to say something, wouldn't we?</s>OLORUNNIPA: Yes, and he has broken protocol the past. I mean we had, you know, talk about unmasking. We had, you know, memos that were released that the FBI did not want released that had information about, you know, internal methods that the FBI was using and Devin Nunes was very much a part of that process as Republicans on that committee tried to run interference for the president. So the idea that they're now following protocol and their mouths are tied because they're not able to talk about what happened in this gang of eight meeting doesn't line up too well with what we've seen over the past year with Devin Nunes leading a committee and breaking protocol on a number of different</s>KING: Everything -- everything could just be returning to norm, right? No one's going to make a bet on that?</s>BALL: Right, who said that?</s>KING: No, not a safe bet. Up next, plenty of team changes over at the Justice Department, but one very important thing hasn't changed, the boss down the street.