NY Times details evidence in obstruction of justice probe; NY Times: Mueller examining statement on Trump Tower meeting; NY Times: White House attorney misled Trump before Comey firing. Aired 11- Midnight ET
PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: This is Trump one year later, a CNN special report. Tonight, a new bombshell report about President Trump's efforts to keep control of the Russia investigation. An eye-opening new details of what looks to be an obstruction of justice inquiry by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. I'm Pamela Brown.</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I am Jim Sciutto. Also tonight, CNN has a copy of this stunning new book that has forced the Trump White House into damage control, attempting to push back against vivid descriptions of a chaotic dysfunctional first year of the Trump presidency, and also, raising new questions about Mr. Trump's fitness for office. First let's get to tonight's breaking news. A new report by the New York Times, detailed direct attempts by the president to scuttle the Russia investigation and describes potentially damaging evidence now in the hands of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The Times reports the president dispatch White House Counsel Don McGahn to lobby Attorney General Jeff Sessions to keep control of the Russia investigation and not recuse himself. Sessions rejected that request. The Times also revealed that four days before the president fired FBI director James Comey, one of Session's aids asked a Congressional staff member, whether that staffer had damaging information on Comey. Another startling revelation, a White House lawyer was so unnerved by Trump's talk of firing Comey. He actually misled the president about whether he had the legal authority to do so. Also the Times reporting that Mueller is examining the false statement dictated by the president on Air Force One, soon after news broke that his son, Don Jr. met with Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. A lot there tonight. Pamela.</s>BROWN: Let's bring in our legal and political experts here with us this evening. Joining us is our political commentator, Jason Miller. He is a former Trump campaign senior communications advisor, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Laura Coates. Brian Fallon, who was Hillary Clinton's press secretary and CNN political analyst, Brian Karem, executive editor of the Sentinel Newspapers. Thank you all for coming on. So much to discuss, yet another night this week, with a lot of news. Laura, first to you, about this New York Times report that came out tonight, and I want to read you a portion of it. It says, President Trump gave firm instructions in March to the White House's top lawyer, stopped the Attorney General Jeff Sessions from recusing himself and the Justice Department's investigation into weather Mr. Trump's associates had helped the Russia campaign to disrupt the 2016 election. The White House Counsel Donald McGahn carried out the president's orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry according to two people with knowledge of the episode. So what are the legal implications of an order like this from the president?</s>LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well the key term here is the White House Counsel, not the personal press -- personal lawyer of the president of the United States. The White House Counsel is there to serve the office, not the occupant of that particular office. And so, when you have that at the get go, you realize that the president of the United States believed he could use a kind of marionette function to control who had access and who would be able to give advice to the head of the Department of Justice. That's never been how it was supposed to work. And so, from the outset, you see yet again with the other contextual clues we've had over the course of past six or seven months. You're seeing that the president of the United States seems to fundamentally misunderstand the role and the independence of the Justice Department, and certainly Jeff Sessions' decision...</s>SCIUTTO: Don't stop there.</s>COATES: His decision to not accept that request shows that he was following regulations to actually recuse himself. He was more prudent than the president.</s>BROWN: And I want to bring in -- I want to bring in Jason Miller. Jason, the New York Times reports that the president erupted in anger after Sessions recused himself, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. Protect him from what, exactly?</s>JASON MILLER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, we're seeing a lot from this story of unnamed sources and such. So I think it's important to point out. We got to take that with a little bit og context.</s>BROWN: But, Jason, we know that he is not happy that Sessions recused himself. He's been public about that part.</s>MILLER: Right, and he's absolutely right because I think what happened was the attorney general was hearing the chattering folks in Washington saying that he needed to go and recuse himself. And though that if he did go and recuse himself, that that would make those -- the political opponents die down with their criticism of him. And I think what the president knows is whether it be from the campaign or in his time in office as president, is that's not going to slow people down at all. All it's going to do is make people double down and say, see, see, see. There must be something wrong. So I think President Trump was absolutely right and say no, you don't need to go and step aside and recuse yourself. So the president was spot on here.</s>SCIUTTO: Brian, you've heard the defense of the president there. Give us your response.</s>BRIAN KAREM, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, SENTINEL NEWSPAPERS: Well, this is -- you know, my dad from Kentucky had a saying. I've been to three county fairs and a goat wrangling and I've never seen anything like this. And you can call it the goat wrangling. But the point is, this presidency hasn't told me once that they have ever made a mistake. I've been in the pressroom for more than a year now, since before them and back to the 80's. This guy has never said he done and made a mistake. This guy has never admitted wrongdoing of any sort. This guy has come forward and manipulated -- and what you are talking about earlier, he doesn't understand the fundamental ways this government works. And I think it's very...</s>BROWN: And you think that extends to him not understanding the role of the attorney general.</s>KAREM: I think he doesn't understand the role of the federal government. I don't think there is -- I think he thinks that he is -- he thinks of himself as a despot or a king. And that we should all be vassals in his vast empire. And that's the impression you get everyday when you are in that pressroom.</s>SCIUTTO: Jason, I have to ask you, this is part of a pattern here of this president seeking, it appears, to undermine this investigation, right? Whether it's telling his attorney general not to recuse himself, whether it's directing apparently the attorney general to look for dirt on James Comey, and then of course he fires James Comey. And he's said as much in public that he fired James Comey because of the Russia investigation.</s>MILLER: Hold on, Jim, I've got to correct you, because I did go through and read the story twice to make sure I was getting this right. Not only does it not say in the story that the president asked for someone to go and look for dirt on Comey, the allegation was that someone in the Justice Department asked some low level staffer to do it, and the Justice Department has flat out denied that.</s>KAREM: You're just parsing words.</s>MILLER: And said that absolutely did not -- no, because it's very important, because if it's not true, then we need to go and make sure that we're being clear very here. So, please don't try to throw shade, just because I'm making sure that...</s>KAREM: I'm not throwing shade, I'm just trying to stay flat.</s>MILLER: No, you are.</s>KAREM: The simple fact is, this president has never been...</s>MILLER: ... start telling the story properly.</s>KAREM: ... at all during his entire year.</s>MILLER: Look, I'm sorry that you hate the president so much.</s>KAREM: I don't hate anybody. I'm just the guy asking questions.</s>MILLER: Yes, you do. You are sorry about criticizing the president...</s>SCIUTTO: How could you make that judgment that I hate the guy, simply because I ask a question about him and I made notice...</s>MILLER: Because you absolutely started off criticizing...</s>KAREM: He hasn't been truthful things.</s>BROWN: Let's listen to what Jason has to say this.</s>SCIUTTO: No, but, Jason, you haven't answer the fundamental question here which is this is part of a pattern of the president taking multiple steps by his own admission to get in the way, it seems of the Russia investigation. Because he said, for instance, with the firing of James Comey, that's why he did it, he instructed his attorney general to try to get -- rather the White House Council to instruct the attorney general or encourage him not to recuse himself, it's part of a pattern here, is it not?</s>MILLER: It's absolutely his prerogative if he wanted to fire the FBI director. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean the legal experts have come on and talked about it at length. I mean he can go in and fire him any time he wants. In that case, he can fire come in and fire the current FBI director tomorrow, if he wanted to. There's absolutely nothing...</s>KAREM: That would be interesting.</s>MILLER: There's nothing wrong with that. They serve at the discretion of the president of the United States.</s>BROWN: And I want to bring in Brian Fallon here. Brian Fallon, you worked at the Justice Department. How do you see it?</s>BRIAN FALLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, let me go back and correct something that, Jason, said. He just covered minutes ago, speculated that Jeff Sessions was bowing to pressure from his outside liberal critics by recusing himself. That's none sense. There's a -- there's a formal process within the Justice Department where there are career ethics lawyer to whom a political appointee like Jeff Sessions would and seek their guidance. And council on how at particular set of circumstances might fit, the regulations which govern when an official like Jeff Sessions should recuse himself. So he would have gone through that process then told point blank, you need to recuse yourself.</s>BROWN: And he said he was told by career department officials.</s>FALLON: Exactly, for him to have rejected that advice and continued on and not recused himself, he would have lost the confidence of the building. I think he's probably lost it by now anyway.</s>MILLER: Not necessarily, there is a chance that he may have stayed. And I think he should have gone on as long as he could have.</s>FALLON: So what's clear is that he acted base on the guidance that he was given by the career lawyers, whose job it is to give suggestions in these scenarios, and what has he done despite that? He didn't recuse himself, but he's gone about trying to please Trump in every other way, including by deputizing. Not some random funky at the Justice Department, Jason, to go ask somebody on the Hill to smear Jim Comey. But Sessions aide, according to the New York Times report. And I'm sorry, but the spokesperson at the Justice Department who's denying it, she has been caught denying things that have been proven true in the past.</s>SCIUTTO: He denied everything.</s>BROWN: But look, what we do know and according to the article, Mueller is looking at all of this, this has all been handed over to him, and everything is a piece in the puzzle, as you well know, Laura, including the crafting of that first misleading statement aboard Air Force One. That's talked about in Michael Wolff's new book. Wolff writes in the book that the president's legal team thought that statement was an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation's gears, and that it led one of Mr. Trump's spokesmen to quit, because he believed it constituted obstruction of justice. How significant is that?</s>COATES: Extremely significant. Because if you were to look at those things as the tendency is by many people that are partisan and lenses are on, look at it in isolation, you cannot do that. You have all of the context that's been provided to say, you have a pattern and a theme here that's emerging, the president of the United States, who is having a hand in either crafting or trying to spin a particular narrative as opposed to providing truth. And that is what the premise of any obstruction of justice charge is going to be, essentially saying, are you getting in the way of an investigation -- an active investigation? Are you doing all that is within your drudgers to try to undermine our ability to seek the truth?</s>BROWN: Even if it's lying to the media?</s>COATES: Even if it's lying -- well, you can lie to the media any time you want. But remember -- what you should remember at this point in time, they were aware that it wasn't just the media who was listening, it was Robert Mueller. And his very existence and edict at that point in time, said that when they were lying to the media, it may be a suggestion that they were trying to have the true audience be Mueller and his team. One would hope that Mueller and his team probably are -- probably much more well versed in this than certainly the non-media savvy Trump campaign team was. But this is what Mueller already knows.</s>SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this -- Jason, before you go, this gets to an essential legal question here. And I should note that it's not just Michael Wolff's book that has the details of this Air Force One crafting of what was really a false statement about what that Trump Tower meeting was about. Saying it was about adoptions, while in fact, when we know that Russians were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. So that matches what we have reported at CNN as well. From a legal standpoint, if a president crafts a false statement about this with his staff members present, and then taking part, from a legal standpoint, does that constitute instructing subordinates to lie?</s>COATES: What it constitutes in instructing subordinates to try to not provide forthcoming truth and be forthright in their statement...</s>SCIUTTO: Not provide forthcoming truth.</s>COATES: Right, now that's very nuance and the reason I'm making it a nuance statement is because, Mueller's objective here is to figure out whether a crime has occurred and whether or not somebody is impeding his ability to do that very thing. And so, part of the inquiry will always be whether or not somebody has played some very relevant hand in trying to undermine his ability to do so. So if somebody is saying, that I'd like you not to be forthcoming, I would like you not to disclose the truth, even though we know that the FBI probably already had the e-mails in their possession, and the e- mail trail that said which was not just about, you know, Natalia Veselnitskaya talking about adoption. It was more than that.</s>KAREM: And can we go back -- let's keep the facts and order because we were told in the pressroom, in the beginning there was no collusion, no contact with Russia, then there was limited contact. And oh yes, somebody else had contact. Now, you've had two people that pleaded out, and two others that have been charged. There's obviously been some contact, and also, go back to what the president himself said as a candidate, when he encouraged Russia to check into e-mails from a podium during a public event. So the -- the truth of the matter has always been very different from the narrative that has been spun from the White House. And it's disturbing to anyone in that room who's in search of mere facts to have to sit there and listen to that story change. And to be told day after day, that we're the fake news, that we're the false media, and then -- then they tell us stories that never pan out.</s>MILLER: And you know who what...</s>BROWN: Jason Miller.</s>MILLER: Exactly, because when you have reporters who go and bundle things all the way up like this, and come to their own conclusions and skip way ahead. I mean let's talk about what he did. I mean he basically tried to say, that -- back there in your statement a moment ago, that people on the campaign were colluding with a foreign entity. Well, what you had is, you had a couple idiots who clearly weren't completely forthcoming when they had their interviews with the FBI, that doesn't mean that the campaign was including with a foreign entity. I mean the fact of the matter is...</s>KAREM: Of course, that's not the entire truth.</s>MILLER: President Trump won this election. Hey, I'm sorry that Secretary Clinton didn't win. You don't get a do over. If you want a do over...</s>BROWN: But, Jason, it is true that the president came out and said, there was zero contact with any Russians, it was after a report we did. And then it's like a slow slip, drip, drip.</s>SCIUTTO: Let's be frank, one of those couple of idiots was his former national security advisor, a three star general.</s>COATES: One was his son.</s>MILLER: That wasn't -- that's why he got fired, because he lied.</s>FALLON: And the rub --the rub of the New York Times story tonight is, that whatever you think of the collusion investigation, that there's a very viable obstruction of justice potential charge against the president and members of his senior team. And as a result of what we've learned from the New York Times story tonight, Jeff Sessions is caught up in that. He's at the very least a witness, based on the attempts to pressure him into recusing himself. And he's potentially on the line himself over potential obstruction depending on what he may have deputized an aide to go do in terms of smearing Jim Comey. And I think at the point -- at this point, his tenure is unsalvageable. I mean I know that Democrats are a little bit bitwise in between. There were a couple of conservatives in the House today that call for Session to step down. That's clearly a bad fake attempt to get somebody installed there that can maybe run an appearance for Donald Trump. The Democrats are sort of stuck in this position to try to defend Jeff Sessions to keep him there as a worry that Mueller would get fired. I don't think they can abide Jeff Sessions in this job any longer. If we looked everything -- if Jeff Sessions is able to go and have time with the president, we can't trust Christopher Wray, the head of the FBI, Rod Rosenstein to do their job and act honorably, and stand up...</s>KAREM: What's important though, if you go to the Hill today, and you were talking to people, that's exactly where they're at. They're like, we don't want Sessions, but it's six of 1.5 dozen of the other. What do we get if we push for him to come out. The problem with this administration is there's no viable path for Sessions at this point. He may stay.</s>BROWN: Let me jump in really quick because we keep talking about this notion of Comey dirt who ask for it. I want to read from the New York Times what it said, and get your analysis. Two days after Mr. Comey's testimony, an aid to Mr. Sessions approached the Capitol Hill staff member, asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the FBI director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media, about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. Now, we knew that the White House instructed Rosenstein and others to find cause to fire Comey, but going to dig up dirt, an aide of the attorney general going to dig up dirt so that there are negative news stories day in and day out, your reaction.</s>KAREM: It's very scary that we are even discussing that in this day and age. And when you look at it on the face of it, it speaks to the very depths of depravity that I think we're seeing from this White House.</s>MILLER: Well, first of all, the DOJ says that didn't happen.</s>KAREM: Have we seen anything like this? And this is only the third day of the year.</s>SCIUTTO: Jason, I have to ask you, what's interesting about this, is this sounds a lot like what the White House is doing to James Comey today.</s>MILLER: Yes.</s>SCIUTTO: And has for several months. I mean it sounds like a consistent strategy, because they've been attacking his credibility since the moment they fired him as well.</s>MILLER: Are you talking about the former director who leaked his confidential work product to the media, and is now working on the book deal and the movie deal and everybody else?</s>SCIUTTO: We're talking about the FBI director James Comey who served under Republican and Democratic administrations for years, frankly and when -- let's be frank, when he was leading the investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mails, the president praised him repeatedly.</s>MILLER: And you know what -- there's no reason to go dig for any dirt, which of course the DOJ has said didn't happen. All you have to do is go back and pull quotes from the, Brian, and other folks from the Clinton campaign. You spent all of last year bashing him. Saying he was doing a terrible job and misdirecting the FBI. And they even tried to blame the entire election on former director Comey's incompetence.</s>BROWN: Let's not forget, the irony here, is that if he hadn't fired James Comey, then none of...</s>SCIUTTO: There wouldn't be special counsel.</s>BROWN: There wouldn't be special counsel. And perhaps it wouldn't be where it is.</s>FALLON: But also remember -- also in the New York Times story tonight, there is a piece of reporting that Reince Priebus' notes are in the possession of Special Counsel Bob Mueller and it confirms Jim Comey's theory.</s>SCIUTTO: We have a break coming up now. We do have a lot more time. Next, the Times revelation, that a White House lawyer deliberately misled the president about whether he had the authority to fire FBI director James Comey, and later, new excerpts from the bombshell book raising questions about President Trump's White House and his mental fitness.