Grand Jury Subpoenas Issued In Russia Probe
PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: -- tower of June of last year. This is according to a person that I spoke with today familiar with the matter. And the subpoenas seek both documents and testimony from people involved in the meeting, as we know, as we saw in that bracket. There were eight people in that meeting. It's unclear exactly who special counsel wants to testify. But given the wide range of the investigation, it's expected that special counsel subpoenas will be or have been issued pertaining to other parts of this investigation just beyond that meeting. But, Anderson, this development does tell us that Mueller takes the Trump Tower meeting seriously and he's doing things by the book making sure a Grand jury signs off on any records request and any testimony.</s>ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: And was the Grand jury just recently impaneled? Do we know the timeline?</s>BROWN: I was told, well, we no know it was impaneled in D.C. after the -- the special counsel was appointed which was in last May. So it would have been the last couple of months. The subpoenas relate into that meeting at Trump Tower were issued just in the last couple of weeks and it shows that the special counsel probe began in May is entering really a new phase of the investigation. As we've reported, Anderson, previously, before the special counsel probe subpoenas have an issued an other aspects of this investigation such as business associates of Michael Flynn, former national security adviser. At that time, investigators were using a Grand jury in northern Virginia but now everything is coming out of D.C. and that's where the special counsel's office is.</s>COOPER: And, that's closer to where -- yes, as you said, to where Mueller's office is. What's the reaction tonight from the White House?</s>BROWN: So the president's lawyer, Ty Cobb, reacted to this. And this is what he told reporters he said, "Grand jury matters are typically secret. The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly. The White House is committed to cooperating with Mr. Mueller. Former FBI Director Jim Comey said three times the President is not under investigation and we have no reason to believe that has changed." And Anderson, one way how source says that the legal team is, "highly content," about this development, which this source says is not causing any anxiety within the president's legal team. Anderson.</s>COOPER: All right, Pamela Brown good reporting, thank you. With me now is Bianna Golodryga, Matt Lewis, Paul Begala, Alice Stewart, and Gloria Browne-Marshall. Gloria, just from a legal standpoint, the formation of a Grand jury, it allows them to do subpoenas but it doesn't necessarily mean that they know that there is wrongdoing.</s>GLORIA BROWNE-MARSHALL, CONSITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR: They are trying to find out if there's been wrongdoing. I mean, there are millions of dollars of resources at hand. So it's not as if they don't believe there is anything going on here. But they have to get to the actual evidence. That means they have a chance to call witnesses, to subpoena documents and to make sure that people are testifying and when they're testifying, they are not testifying with the lawyers in the room. They can go out in the hallway, talk to a lawyer and come back in but the lawyer is not in the room. It's not the testimony. It's whether or not they lie under oath. This is how people have gotten trapped before. It's perjury. It's obstruction of justice, intimidation of witnesses. All the things that the special counsel has authority to investigate.</s>COOPER: Alice, I mean, as a supporter of the president, does it concern you -- to you, does it seem like a bad sign?</s>ALICE STEWART, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, CRUZ CAMPAIGN: I think this is what everyone expected would happen. This is a natural course of events. And I was encouraged by the president's attorney saying we'll fully cooperate, we will help in any way we can, which I think is a far cry and a welcome direction from calling this a witch-hunt. But I think it is important to fully cooperate, put all of the information out there because more than anything we need to put this behind us. And I think the president has always had it in his mind any questions about Russia, Russia collusion, questions whether or not he won or not and that's certainly not the case but it's important as they are doing now, fully cooperating and this is an important step. This isn't, as you indicated, not an evidence of wrongdoing, but it's a part of the investigative process in order to get to the bottom of it.</s>COOPER: So what does this do in a White House when there's this kind of an investigation and a Grand jury? I mean --</s>PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's not crippling but close to it. And by the way, when this happened in the Clinton administration, we were in our second term. We knew what we were doing. We had a really tight team. There had been factions earlier in the Clinton's presidency. At this point there were none. We really got along. It was very tight and thank God. This team is brand new, which my heart goes out to them, it's a hard job to learn, and</s>COOPER: And nobody knows who is being hauled in or, of course, what they are saying, right?</s>BEGALA: Certainly don't know what they're saying. They're likely to know who. But they have real exposure in a way that we didn't in the Clinton White House. I didn't fool around with any of the interns, OK, I was like ever going to get me, but it still stressed me out, right? And this could impact the whole like -- those -- whatever young, talented aides helped craft the statement that later proved to be misleading about Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting.</s>COOPER: Which now the White House now admits the president they say weight-in, and the "Washington Post" said dictated.</s>BEGALA: And the president is a big boy. He could take care of himself. But those young people are going to get dragged in. They're going to have legal bills. They're not going to be able to talk to each about what they said in the Grand jury, lest as Gloria pointed out, they be accused of either witness tampering or witness --</s>COOPER: And they have to pay their own legal fees? This is not --</s>BEGALA: They do. And I have friends with hundreds of thousands of dollars. I'm with Alice. I like to hear the president's lawyer, Mr. Cobb, saying we're going to cooperate and it's an expected sign and maybe it's hopefully to get it wrapped up quickly. I don't like hearing other Trump surrogates saying, this is not a big deal or I think they are laying the predicate to fire Mr. Mueller. If he was -- well, I was talking to Jason Miller in your earlier hour. He was saying they're leaking illegally, which is not true, and that they're violating the scope of their investigation by looking at financial things, which also not true. I think they're laying -- either they are going to go with Mr. Cobb who is saying they are going to cooperate or they're going to with others who are saying, I think laying the predicate to fire Mueller.</s>MATT LEWIS, SENIOR COLUMNIST, THE DAILY BEAST: There were leaks just not in this story, the big leaks from the other story today about President Trump's private conversations with. And that's problematic and they'll try to conflate this. But I think it's part of the, you know, this week, the stock market hit a record.</s>COOPER: 22,000.</s>LEWIS: Tonight, the governor of West Virginia switching from a Democrat to a Republican. You've got a new chief of staff. So you've got a lot of good things happening if you're Donald Trump and if you're watching another network, may be that's all that you're hearing, probably that is. But on the other hand, you've got all of these other major problems. It's not a leak. It's a sive (ph). And you've got the fact that the government has unlimited resources, unlimited time. And somebody is going to go down, I think.</s>COOPER: Yes, and Bianna, there's no telling where this goes to.</s>BIANNA GOLODRYGA, YAHOO NEWS AND FINANCE ANCHOR: Right.</s>COOPER: -- Clinton starts off with Whitewater and ends up with, you know, the Lewinsky.</s>GOLODRYGA: Yes. And his attorney can say all the right things until he's blue in the face. Ultimately, it's the president who is out there in West Virginia tonight, once again, calling this a witch hunt, saying it is fake news, saying that they should have been focusing on Hillary Clinton's e-mails and this continues to fester for the president. This is his constant go-to excuse. He has vilified and gone after Republicans in his own party, everyone else, the media, except for Vladimir Putin and look at where it's gotten him. He can't learn his lesson. All that he has to do initially was say, yes, I agree with my intelligence agencies and we're going to make sure Russia doesn't do this again and we may not be in this situation. We may be talking instead about the stock market and infrastructure and instead the president seems to be shooting himself in the foot every day.</s>STEWART: And Anderson, I was in Little Rock (ph), as a journalist covering Whitewater when all of this was going on. So I see some similarities and the poll is going to come -- but if you also have to -- yes, that started off as a land deal investigation and led to Monica Lewinsky, but also going back to that time, if you recall, the Clintons and the Democrats really attacked Ken Starr and the way he handled it and called it a vast right-wing conspiracy. And we're seeing some signs of that with regard to this administration, just crediting Mueller and way the -- engagements are going. But I do think it is important take more of the Cobb approach to this and let's fully comply and let them do their job.</s>BEGALA: But there is a big difference. I need to defend myself and my colleagues. When Whitewater first had a special counsel, the counsel was appointed just like Mr. Mueller by the attorney general and it was a guy named Robert Fisk, a career prosecutor out of New York, a registered Republican but a career prosecutor. We never criticized Mr. Fisk, ever, and cooperated fully. He was pursing this and then a three-judge panel led by a guy named David Sentelle, sort of Jesse Helms protege, fired Mr. Fisk. We didn't. These Republican judges did. And then put in Ken Starr in there, a man who had never prosecuted a case in his life. And we still were silent. Carver wanted to attack him. Clinton told him not to. We didn't start attacking Starr until it became obvious that he was obsessed with Bill Clinton's sex life, and that was, I think, was special. If Mueller starts digging into Trump's sex life, too creepy to think about, I'll be the first to attack Mr. Mueller.</s>COOPER: But, Gloria, going back to just how a Grand jury works, would they -- I mean, I talked to Jeff Toobin in the last hour who said, they probably already have and they wouold want to have a certain amount of documents -- documentation before they actually interview, before they haul people in front of the Grand jury because they don't want to -- it's not like in front of the Senate where they're just asking random questions. They want evidence that they can specifically tailor their questions.</s>BROWNE-MARSHALL: Yes, but they also want to substantiate what they already have. So they could call people in as witnesses. They can call people in as targets. We don't know which one you're going to be --</s>COOPER: They don't tell you?</s>BROWNE-MARSHALL: They basically don't tell you but you have an idea. You know, if they're calling in the brother-in-law, you pretty much know that's a target. But here's the issue at hand. Is once they get into that room and they start to testify, there's going to be a thread and if you go back even to Vince Foster and the suicide, there was a thread that they were investigating in the Clinton years, the suicide, which then leads a thread into whitewater and leads a thread into -- you know better than I do. But each time someone testify, there was a thread leading to another bigger part of the investigation and when you look at what Bob Mueller is able to do and it says and matters, it all matters. You know, that stem from this investigation. So despite what Donald Trump is saying, there is no red line that says that Bob Mueller has to stop at any particular place.</s>COOPER: Right, his attorney is saying that they're basically exceeding their mandate. You're saying the mandate is actually pretty broad.</s>BROWNE-MARSHALL: It's pretty broad and it was pretty broad as the Nixon years. It was pretty broad in the Clinton years. It's very broad. And once they start to see something -- especially a prosecutor. Now here we have an assistant attorney general as well as the former head of the FBI looking at this, the antenna come up and there you go, OK, wait a minute, I just heard this person testify about this. I'm going to further and broaden my investigation, follow the money wherever it leads me and you don't know where this money may lead.</s>COOPER: Now that gets us to our next segment. We got to take a quick break. More breaking news, CNN has learned the Mueller investigation is crossing the president's so-called red line following the Trump money trail for potential ties to Russia that may have exist along before the election. It had nothing to do with the election. Also tonight, the leaked transcripts of the president's phone calls that Matt talked about with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. He claimed one of the calls was not contentious called it fake news, go attack the "Washington Post" for reporting it. Now we know for sure that's not true. We're keeping them honest ahead.