Russia's Meddling Still a Hoax to Trump; Emergency Landing After United Jet Loses Engine Cover
CHURCH: This just in to CNN. Shaun White's gold medal win in the men's halfpipe at the Olympic Games is bringing renewed attention to sexual harassment allegations against the American snowboarder. A female former member of his rock band accused White of sexually harassing her and of sending her sexually explicit images. She reached an undisclosed settlement with White back in May of 2017. At his conference after his halfpipe win White call the allegations gossip. He said he didn't think it would tarnish his Olympic legacy. Well, the U.S. midterm elections at just nine months away and the country's intelligence chiefs have a very strong warning. Russia is already meddling in the process. They say they are working hard to fight the interference, but they are not getting help from President Trump. Multiple sources say he remained unconvinced that Russia interfered in the 2016 votes. CNN justice correspondent Jessica Schneider reports.</s>JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A unanimous warning from the heads of all six U.S. intelligence agencies Russia is at it again.</s>MIKE POMPEO, UNITED STATES CIA DIRECTOR: Yes, we have seen Russian activity and intentions to have an impact on the next election cycle here.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I agree with Director Pompeo's assessment about the likelihood of the 2018 occurrences.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is not going to change or stop.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it is not going to change nor it is going to stop.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now we have not seen any evidence of any significant change from last year.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I agree with Director Pompeo.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As do I.</s>SCHNEIDER: The intelligence chiefs also stand by last year's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There should be no doubt that Russia perceive that its past effort is successful.</s>SCHNEIDER: But despite this the president has repeatedly called the entire Russia investigation a hoax.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: For 11 months they've this phony cloud over this administration over our government and has hurt our government. It does hurt our government. It's a democrat hoax.</s>SCHNEIDER: Prompting members of the Senate intelligence committee to ask the intelligence chiefs to push back.</s>ANGUS KING, (I) UNITED STATES SENATOR: I just wish you all could persuade the president as a matter of national security to separate these two issues. The collusion issue is over here, unresolved. We'll get to the bottom of that. But there is no doubt as you all have testified today, and it would -- we cannot confront this threat, which is a serious one with the whole of government response when the leader of the government continues to deny that it exists.</s>MARK WARNER, (D) UNITED STATES SENATOR: The president inconveniently continues to deny the threat posed by Russia. He didn't increase sanctions on Russia when he had a chance to do so. He hasn't even tweeted a single concern.</s>SCHNEIDER: The Russia investigation is ongoing in three separate congressional committees plus the special counsel's office. And when the FBI director was asked if the Bureau would ever share information from any of the probes with the president, Christopher Wray was clear.</s>CHRISTOPHER WRAY, DIRECTOR, FBI: I'm not going to discuss the investigation in question with the president or much less provide information from that investigation to him.</s>SCHNEIDER: Wray publicly clash with the president about making the republican memo public and now nearly two weeks later, Wray continues to question the rationale behind the release.</s>WRAY: We had done and continue to have now grave concerns about the accuracy of the memorandum because of omissions we provided thousands of documents that were very sensitive and lots and lots of briefings and it's very hard for anybody to distill all that down to three and a half pages.</s>SCHNEIDER: Wray also contradicted the president's previous claims that the bureau is in tatters and said morale remain strong.</s>WRAY: I'd like to think that our folks are pretty sturdy. I'm a big believer in the idea that the FBI speaks through its work, through its cases, through the victims it protects. And I encourage our folks not to get too hung up on what I consider to be the nice on TV and the social media.</s>SCHNEIDER: Jessica Schneider, CNN, Washington.</s>CHURCH: CNN's political analyst Ryan Lizza joins us now from New York to talk more about this. Good to see you.</s>RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to see you.</s>CHURCH: So we now have confirmation from all six U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia is indeed a threat to the U.S. midterm elections. But President Trump still rejects that notion. When the leader of the free world does not believe his own intelligence agencies on matters of national security how vulnerable does that leave the country?</s>LIZZA: Well, it leaves the country quite vulnerable because we have a disconnect between the person in charge of the executive branch and whose job it is to tell the CIA and other intelligence agencies what to do in response to this threat. And those senior intelligence professionals who were all up on Capitol Hill and all agreed that Russia has never stops meddling in American politics and that they'll continue to do so in the midterms. And from Russia's perspective it's quite good news. I mean, what they learned in 2016 was it's a very, you know, low cost, high impact way to affect things in the United States is to use social media, these various propaganda channels to have an impact on American politics. And when you have a disconnect with Donald Trump the president who calls it all hoax and the intelligence chiefs were looking to the president for guidance, that is a bad situation in terms of defending the United States from this threat.</s>CHURCH: So it begs the question, why do you think Mr. Trump remained unconvinced that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election and that it also poses this threat to the 2018 midterm elections. Why is he so resistant to that intelligence?</s>LIZZA: Because he believes, you know, rightly or wrongly, wrongly, in my view that this issue is only a partisan issue that is used to discredit his victory and that feeds also into the potential criminal liability he is exposed to from the Russia investigation. And I think he believes that conceding that Russia in any way, had an impact on the election that it meddled means that the Russians effectively helped elect him and that it makes his presidency itself illegitimate.</s>CHURCH: We also heard from FBI Director Christopher Wray at that hearing on Tuesday where he directly contradicted the timeline offered by the White House on the security background check of Rob Porter and the alleged domestic abuse allegations against him.</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>CHURCH: Now press secretary Sarah Sanders scrambled to set the record straight while chief of staff John Kelly insisted that everything was done right. Now we are hearing this chatter about Kelly being increasingly isolated. What are you hearing about that, just how vulnerable is he? Will he stay in the job?</s>LIZZA: Well, it's a good question and you know, there's a lot of chatter overnight about this and but no, definitive word from the White House that Kelly is leaving. What you saw in Tuesday's White House breathing was a little bit unusual because Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary basically said over and over that she's giving the best information, the information that she has on this issue and that she has access to. If you read between the lines what she was saying is she doesn't know what happened and that she doesn't have access to the answers to the questions everyone is asking in terms of how the White House dealt with Rob Porter once they knew about these allegations of domestic violence. And so, what you're seeing is this very factionalized White House. The different factions were stepping forward sort of try to wash their hands of any guilt on this issue. You have Sarah Sanders saying look, I just don't know the story. You have some people internally who don't like Kelly for other reasons leaking to the press saying it was all his fault and he's on his way out. You even have some Trump advisory on the outside the White House doing that. And so, you're seeing the effects of the White House is internally divided and it runs into a major scandal like this, it's very, very hard to get everyone on the same page with a single story.</s>CHURCH: It doesn't help that the president himself is he's pretty much aligned himself with John Kelly on this --</s>LIZZA: Yes.</s>CHURCH: -- in the sense that he hasn't really come out and said anything in support of the victims and in essence, we're seeing even the female members of this White House very much turn on the victims here. What does that tell us about how things are going there?</s>LIZZA: Yes. I mean, the two points here. One district, to go back to what you were saying about the FBI contradicting the White House. That is another example of why it's not so great through a White House to be at war with its own FBI because that FBI has absolutely no incentive to sort of help you from a P.R. point of view when you go through something like this. And then on that question about Trump's reluctance to talk about this issue in the obvious, sympathetic way that any president, we talk about domestic violence, you know, I think it's actually similar to the Russia story where he believes that giving any credibility to accusers somehow comes back to him because he's been accused, and he believes the allegations against him well, not obviously abuse but other harassment allegations. He believes they're all untrue. And I think that that he makes everything very personal. And I think he thinks that giving any voice to victims in this case somehow strengthens the arguments of his own accusers. Now, of course, that's, you know, that's just not the case. You can talk about due process and fairness and fairness to people who are accused of something without being dismissive of credible allegations where there is quite a bit of evidence as there is in this case.</s>CHURCH: Ryan Lizza, we appreciate your analysis as always. Thanks so much for being with us.</s>LIZZA: Thanks, Rosemary.</s>CHURCH: And we'll take a short break here, but coming up, an Oxfam whistleblower said the allegations of sexual crimes in Haiti and Chad are just the tip of the iceberg. We're back with that in just a moment.