Lobbyist with Russian and Ukrainian Ties Admits He Arranged Illegal Foreign Donation to Trump's Inauguration; Source: DOJ Official Bruce Ohr Testified That Dossier Author Told Him Russians Thought They had Trump "Over a Barrel"; Poll: Disapproval of President at a High of 60 Percent; New Plea Deal In Mueller Probe.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: President Trump keeps talking witch-hunt and the Russia probe keeps finding broomsticks. John Berman here in for Anderson. One more guilty plea in connection with the investigation. One more cooperator for Robert Mueller. He is Samuel Patten, the Washington lobbyist with busy ties to a Russian national, who himself was a close colleague of Paul Manafort. He pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to register as a foreign agent, and he admitted to making false statements, obstructing the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee and causing foreign money to flow into the Trump inaugural committee. What he's got to offer the special counsel remains to be seen. What he represents, though, is clear. Another reminder on top of the Manafort conviction, the Cohen guilty plea, the Russian indictments, Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos that what the president calls a rigged witch-hunt continues to bear fruit, which may explain the president's tweet storm on the subject the last several days, his attack on the attorney general, and his threat which he restated on the stump last night.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES: All I can say this, our Justice Department and our FBI at the top of it, because inside they have incredible people, but our Justice Department and our FBI have to start doing their job and doing it right and doing it now, because people are angry. People are angry. What's happening is a disgrace. And at some point, I wanted to stay out, but at some point, if it doesn't straighten out properly, I want them to do their job, I will get involved and I'll get in there if I have to.</s>BERMAN: The whole world gets it, he went on the say. Keeping them honest, though, what the whole world gets seems to be something quite different than the message the president gives. Sixty-three percent of respondents in a new ABC/"Washington Post" survey support the Mueller investigation. Only 29 percent oppose it. The poll also shows record high disapproval of the president's performance on the job. More on that shortly. More as well on the revelations by one of the president's bogeyman Bruce Ohr about a breakfast he had with Christopher Steele of dossier fame. We've got new reporting tonight on what he says Steele told him about just how much the leverage -- just how much leverage, I should say, the Russians believed they had over Donald Trump. The phrase he used, over a barrel, that they thought they had the Republican presidential nominee over a barrel. That's coming up. More, though, on the Patten plea and what it could lead. CNN's Evan Perez joins us now with that. Evan, what more can you tell us about this man Patten and his plea deal?</s>EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Samuel Patten is a lobbyist here in Washington, and he pleaded guilty today in federal court here in Washington to essentially failing to register as a foreign agent. But there is a lot more to this story. He got paid over a million dollars or the representing a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party. And one of the people he was in business with is Konstantin Kilimnik, and that name rings familiar because the special counsel Robert Mueller has named him in the past in court papers as someone who is suspected to be a Russian spy essentially. So, Patten has now agreed as part of his plea deal to cooperate with prosecutors. This is a case that began as part of an -- as part of the Robert Mueller investigation that was referred over to prosecutors in Washington, D.C. And one more interesting thing about this, John, is that, Patten basically admits in the court papers today that he helped Ukrainians funnel money into the Trump inaugural committee. Essentially what they did is they used someone else to buy tickets to the Trump inauguration so that he could take this Ukrainian with him to the Trump inauguration. This is illegal under federal law. You're not allowed to donate as a foreigner. You're not allowed to donate to the inauguration committee. So, what this case does, really, what it does is it shows that the special counsel and the prosecutors are very much keen on trying to figure out whether foreign money made into it the Trump campaign or to the Trump inauguration, and we expect that there is more to this story that we'll learn later.</s>BERMAN: And it is really interesting. As you say, it does draw a line between foreign money, Ukrainian money.</s>PEREZ: Right.</s>BERMAN: And the Trump political machine. But there were more than a few people who wondered if on this Friday before Labor Day, Evan, there would be some perhaps bigger news from the special counsel's office. And while this charge is something, it isn't that bombshell some expected. And there are those who wonder if maybe Robert Mueller is about to go quiet for months before the midterm elections.</s>PEREZ: No. And that I think a lot of people are assuming simply because there has been this practice at the Justice Department. It's not written policy, per se, that you do observe a period of silence so as not to affect an upcoming election. In this case, we know that special counsel Robert Mueller plans to say a lot in the next month. We know he's got testimony, grand jury testimony that he is going to be taking from witnesses. So, we expect that we're going to see a lot more from Robert Mueller, more shoes to drop, if you will, between now and October. Now there might be a period there where he will go quietly for the election because it is something that is important to observe. But we certainly don't expect that to happen right now.</s>BERMAN: Maybe not, maybe. Who know? Robert Mueller does what he knows, he doesn't often tell us.</s>PEREZ: Right.</s>BERMAN: As for the president's team, Rudy Giuliani, he weighed in on this latest conviction, this latest plea deal today. What did he say?</s>PEREZ: That's right. Well, Rudy Giuliani basically called attention to the fact that there is no mention here of Donald Trump in this plea deal. Take a listen to what he had to say.</s>RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TURMP: Turned out to be this irrelevant indictment where I think Mueller has turned into the private prosecutor. I mean, what does this have to do with President Trump? Not a single thing. It has nothing to do with collusion. Some guy who donated to the inauguration? My goodness. There are about 500,000 people who donated to presidential administration. Every time they got a speeding ticket, the special prosecutor is going to do it.</s>PEREZ: And, look, Giuliani can minimize this plea deal today, but the fact is that this is the first time we're seeing on paper that the prosecutors have been examining any foreign money that went into the Trump inauguration. We know from our previous reporting that there were witnesses who were asked about Russian money, Ukrainian money that made its way into the campaign and the inauguration. So it is something that we know is very much in the focus of the special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators. And it's just a matter of time, obviously, before we find out the rest of this story. As we mentioned, Patten has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as part of his plea agreement.</s>BERMAN: So this could just be the beginning of Patten's role in this story.</s>PEREZ: That's right.</s>BERMAN: Evan Perez, thank you very, very much.</s>PEREZ: Thanks.</s>BERMAN: Now, the troubling notion that a foreign power could hold such sway over a presidential candidate that they can believe they had him, quote, over a barrel. According to a source with knowledge of the testimony, that's what a Justice Department lawyer told the members of the house judiciary committee this week. He, that person who testified, is Bruce Ohr, a 30-year veteran of the DOJ, and until the president of the United States made him the target of his online ire and called for his firing, he was just another career official specializing in Russian organized crime. Now, he is the center of quite a story. And CNN's Sara Murray has it. So, Sara, what are we learning about what Christopher Steele told Bruce Ohr at this breakfast?</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the latest twist in this is that Bruce Ohr was testifying in front of a congressional committee, and he said he was at a breakfast in July of 2016, and Christopher Steele was there. You know, Christopher Steele is this ex-British spy who compiled the dossier with all of these salacious allegations about Trump. And at that breakfast, Christopher Steele tells Bruce Ohr that Russian intelligence believes that they have then-candidate Donald Trump over a barrel, suggesting that for whatever reason, Russian intelligence believes that they, you know, hold something on then-candidate Trump. So, this is what came out in his testimony. And, you know, it does line up, of course, with the allegations that we've previously heard from Christopher Steele through the dossier he compiled. Many of them, the salacious parts are still unfounded, but sort of the broader notion that Russia was trying to wage this campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, that is something that U.S. intelligence agrees with now.</s>BERMAN: So, Sara, this information from Steele, do we know if Bruce Ohr ever passed it along to anyone at Department of Justice?</s>MURRAY: Well, one of the tricky things about the Bruce Ohr situation is that, you know, his superiors were not aware of the extent of the contact that he was having with Christopher Steele. So, as you point out, this a guy who has been at the Justice Department for a long time, and he was overseeing these organized crime cases. Well, he is no longer doing that. He was removed from that position. He was stripped of some of these responsibilities, in part because his bosses were uncomfortable once they found out about the extent of his contact with Christopher Steele and the fact that they were not aware of it the entire time.</s>BERMAN: So as we know, Ohr has been a frequent target of the president and his allies. Does this new information support their theories that Ohr somehow was involved in collusion against the president?</s>MURRAY: You know, it's really hard to say if it tells you anything about the president's vendetta and his allies that they decided to wage against Bruce Ohr. It's possible. You know, this is one of the contacts that was completely aboveboard and was part of him trying to do legitimate research, a legitimate investigation. But anything that Bruce Ohr does at this point with Christopher Steele looks nefarious to the president and his allies because they see Christopher Steele as someone who is out to get the president, someone who is being essentially paid for by liberals and that Bruce Ohr was all a part of this.</s>BERMAN: Sara Murray, thanks so much for the reporting. Appreciate it.</s>MURRAY: Yes.</s>BERMAN: More on the legal angles and the political implications of this and the latest guilty plea. Joining us, former FBI supervisory special agent Josh Campbell, who also worked as a special assistant to James Comey and is currently a CNN law enforcement analyst, by the way. Happy birthday, Josh.</s>JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Thanks, John.</s>BERMAN: It's my mother's birthday too, which is a strange connection. I'm not sure if they're related. Also with us, CNN legal analyst Carrie Cordero and CNN global analyst Max Boot. Josh, I want to start with you. Now that this man Sam Patten has agreed to cooperate with Robert Mueller, what kind of things could he offer? What insight could he provide and what interest could he be to the special counsel?</s>CAMPBELL: So if you look at this through the lens of an investigator, this is investigation 101. You start with the low level crime. You start with the lower level criminal and then work your way up. The violation we're talking about here is a FARA violation. It's registering as a foreign agent. Obviously, he was operating in a orbit of people that would be of interest of the special prosecutor and that's obviously going cause great concern to the president and his allies as well. I think what's interesting and, you know, what possibly is even worse for them is that you look at the broad scope of this investigation, you now have four offices that are some way involved in this. You have the national security at Main Justice. You have Mueller, and you have two U.S. attorneys' offices that are working on this investigation. I think it shows that they're not leaving any stone unturned. Interestingly enough, as this campaign to discredit them continues, people talk about draining the swamp. They seem to be the only ones that are out there draining the swamp as evidenced by this plea today.</s>BERMAN: And, Carrie, to pick up on one thing Josh was talking about there, this is the first time we've seen formal charges by the government related to an illegal foreign donation to Trump election related events, the inauguration. You think this is a big deal and could lead investigators to more. Why is that?</s>CARRIE CORDERO, FORMER COUNSEL TO THE U.S. ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: John, I definitely think it's significant. I think the most important paragraph in the plea documents that were filed today by the government is really the paragraph that pertains to other conduct. So, not the one FARA charge, the Foreign Agents Registration charge that he pled guilty to, but the other conduct that's not charged that's described. And that goes to what Evan was describing earlier, which was the donation that was made to the inauguration committee through a U.S. person, unnamed U.S. person straw man. And that's really, I think, the first time that we are seeing actual evidence in a court pleading of a foreign donation that has made its way to a Trump campaign entity. So, it is the inauguration committee, not the actual campaign donation. But I think it does show that if the individuals that have been drawn into this investigation were able to so readily set up a straw man through a foreign bank account, that it certainly indicates that investigators would be looking for other foreign money. Whether or not they find it, we'll find out. But I think it certainly indicates that they're looking for it.</s>BERMAN: So, Max, "The New York Times" reported that the inauguration tickets that pat purchased were for a Russian political operative believed to have had ties to Russian intelligence. So when you hear that, does that raise any suspicions to you?</s>MAX BOOT, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, of course, John. I mean the number of contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians is off the charts. I mean, according to the Center for American Progress, their Moscow project, we now know about 87 contacts, 87 contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian. And they reported none of them. They didn't call the FBI about any of them. They kept them all private. They lied about all of them. We're seeing the substance of some of those come out now. What we're seeing is a lot of the people around Trump were very closely and suspiciously connected to the Kremlin. Of course, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, his deputy, Sam Patten was another one who was funneling money to Trump from essentially Russian interests and who was also close to Konstantin Kilimnik who was the Russian intelligence agent who was also very close to Paul Manafort and to Rick Gates. I mean, we hear this constant refrain from Rudy Giuliani, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion. Well, actually we see a lot of evidence of collusion. We have not seen the absolute proof presented yet because Robert Mueller is building his case methodically and he is not going to show his cards before he has to, but the building blocks of collusion are there along with, of course, obstruction of justice, which, you know, the president continues to commit in plain sight with his attempts to intimidate Sessions and Mueller and perhaps to get rid of them, along with other crimes, including the fact that last week Trump's lawyer pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign laws at the direction of president Trump. So the case against Donald Trump, I mean, these are very small building blocks that we've seen the last day, but the overall case is getting very, very strong.</s>BERMAN: In terms of Patten, just to be clear, it isn't clear to me that Samuel Patten was extremely close to the Trump campaign per se. He appears to be close to Konstantin Kilimnik who's this Ukrainian figure with ties --</s>BOOT: I mean, according to the indictment, he was funneling Russian money to the Trump inauguration.</s>BERMAN: Ticket, absolutely. He admitted to that. And that is significant. And if you're following the money, that is the first time as Carrie has pointed out that foreign money went into Trump political operations. It could be just the beginning or not. We'll have to wait and see. Josh, in terms of Bruce Ohr, who is increasingly a messy figure in this drama, we know that Christopher Steele and Bruce Ohr had a number of meetings. We now know that Ohr was told by Steele that the Russians thought they had Trump over a barrel. Does it surprise you that Ohr didn't go back and tell his superiors at the Department of Justice what he was learning?</s>CAMPBELL: So I don't think we know enough about that exchange right now to make a fair assessment on what Bruce Ohr was or was not doing. He had a history of being involved and investigating Russian organized crime. That's how he first met Christopher Steele. So, he was serving as that conduit, possibly for the government to provide this information. What I'm afraid of if we continue to chase these lines from the president where he tries to attack people, undermine their credibility, we're going to lose the forest for the trees here. I think the main focus as we talk about Christopher Steele is people are trying to make him out to be this boogieman, that he is some partisan who is going to campaign to destroy the president when -- what I think is important if we stop and actually think about who he is, this is a former or retired officer with the British security service, the secret intelligence service who was retired and was investigating on behalf of a client whether or not Donald Trump had connection with the Kremlin. And he took that information. He was so concerned with what he found that he first took it to the FBI. He didn't think they were doing enough with it, so he decided to make it public because of the time crunch running up to the election. Now, he is a collector. In the intelligence business, a collector will take information and provide it to analyst who will then discern whether that information is true. We never got that benefit because of that close time crunch. So, a lot of people try to look at the Steele dossier and discredit it and focus on this tawdry detail, the salacious part. But you have to remember, that is one aspect of a larger document that is purporting to claim that the president is compromised by the Russians. And I would ask you this. If you have someone, whether you're in the media or an intelligence official, you have a source that tells you 10 things, eight of them turn out to be true, two of them turn out to be false, you don't simply discredit everything that they tell you. You look at it with greater scrutiny. So, I don't think sitting here today that we can say that Christopher Steele, what he provided was, you know, completely false. And the last thing is the president is actually helping us corroborate some of that information because the more time that passes where he continues to not ridicule Putin, he continues to act opposite the interests of the United States, he is helping us corroborate the information Steele put in the dossier.</s>BOOT: Can I jump in very quickly just on the subject of Bruce Ohr. I just want to stress how incredibly outrageous I think it is that Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is out here excoriating this career Justice Department official, this hardworking civil servant who by all accounts is honest and effective, and there is zero evidence that Bruce Ohr did anything wrong. Not only is he being excoriated by the president, but his wife is being excoriated by the president. In a tweet that Mrs. Ohr speaks Russian. This is somehow supposed to be something that is really damning. I mean, this is really McCarthyism in action. We should not become so inured to this that we overlook how outrageous it is that the president is hanging career civil servants out to dry for doing their jobs, trying to keep our country safe.</s>BERMAN: Again, what Bruce Ohr was told is the Russians believed they had a candidate for president over the barrel. Carrie, I want to talk about where we are tonight, August 31st, important not just because it's Josh Campbell's birthday and my mother's birthday.</s>CAMPBELL: And your mother.</s>BERMAN: But because it's the Friday before Labor Day. And there is this notion that the political season kicks off officially after Labor Day. And while the Patten indictment is interesting today, it may not be the major development or shoe to drop that some people were expecting Mueller to provide before things get very political in a few weeks. Do you think he would be resistant to come out with more indictments as we get closer to Election Day? What do you take from the fact that Rudy Giuliani says he hasn't heard from Mueller in three weeks?</s>CORDERO: The policy or the unwritten rule about not affecting an election, normally that would have pertained in the Justice Department to public corruption cases. In other words, if a public corruption case is being conducted, then the general guidance within the department would be the FBI and the Justice Department wouldn't want to take any steps related to that investigation that would be interpreted or actually be able to affect an elections outcome. And so, then they would hold off. I think in the special counsel's situation, it depends on what the particular charging activity might be. So, if there is somebody that may be more of a minor player, and they plead to something that might happen, but it would be a judgment call that the special counsel, probably in consultation with Rod Rosenstein, the acting attorney general for purposes of this investigation, would need to make if they had a major new charging decision to make.</s>BERMAN: And I'll note, President Trump not on the ballot in November. Carrie Cordero, Josh Campbell, Max Boot, thanks so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. Josh, have a great birthday. Next, more on the president's poll numbers and what effect they could have in the midterm. David Axelrod joins us live. Also, remembering John McCain. Washingtonians power into the capitol to pay their respects. And later, remembering Aretha Franklin as only Jennifer Hudson, Stevie Wonder, Cicely Tyson, and so many others can. A regal sendoff for the Queen of Soul ahead on 360.