Security Breaches Raising Alarm at White House; FBI Chief Comey to Testify at Russia Hacking Hearing; Neil Gorsuch Confirmation Hearings Start Tomorrow
ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Eight more games on the schedule today, and the action tips off 12:30 Eastern with Louisville and Michigan. Hopefully, we got some more exciting finishes like we did yesterday. It was a great day of action.</s>CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: No doubt. Andy, thank you so much.</s>SCHOLES: All right.</s>PAUL: Appreciate it.</s>MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Speaking of exciting finishes. We are done for this hour, but we will pick it up right after and continue with</s>NEW DAY. PAUL: Yes. Hour two starting now.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The White House seems to be preparing for this big moment.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we are going to hear on Monday from Director Comey is a denial that there's any evidence about this.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And who knew health care would be so complicated?</s>MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let me be blunt. We need your help to get this plan passed.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A man in a car told the person at that guard shack that he had a bomb in his vehicle.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Chuck Berry was one of the pioneers of rock 'n' roll.</s>PAUL: I want to wish you a good morning on this Sunday. It's always good to have your company here. I'm Christi Paul.</s>SAVIDGE: And I'm Martin Savidge, in for Victor Blackwell. And let's get going. It's going to be a critical week ahead, that is for President Trump and his credibility is going to be put to the test.</s>PAUL: Tomorrow, Congress will finally have a chance to ask the FBI director publicly about two key issues -- the Trump administration connections to Russia and his claim that President Obama had Trump Tower wiretapped during the campaign.</s>SAVIDGE: Also tomorrow, a potential Senate showdown as Judge Neil Gorsuch finally takes the hot seat in a hearing to confirm him as the next Supreme Court justice.</s>PAUL: And can the GOP sell its health care plan to its own party in time for that key vote in Congress on Thursday. House Speaker Paul Ryan says it's now or never. And add to an already intense week, another intruder tried to make it into the White House overnight.</s>SAVIDGE: And security is back to normal after a car drove up to a White House check point late last night, the driver claiming he had a bomb. That check point is still block, authorities searched the vehicle for more than four hours, but ultimately, they found nothing. Our Ryan Nobles is on the ground last night and filed this report.</s>RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: They removed the man from the car and placed him under arrest, and we have watched as they have gone in and very methodically taken everything out of this vehicle very cautiously, and in fact they had a robot at one point go up to the vehicle in its trunk, pulling material out of the vehicle, and then we saw a bomb squad technician dressed in the full gear come out and also take materials from outside of that vehicle and sift through those materials.</s>SAVIDGE: This, of course, is the latest in a string of recent White House intrusions. Earlier yesterday, another person was arrested after jumping over a bike rack outside the White House. He had a document he said he wanted to deliver. And then last week, a man was on the White House grounds for more than 15 minutes. He was found just steps from a main door to mansion carrying mace. One of the most consequential weeks for the Trump administration begins with a hearing on Russia. Eugene Scott, CNN politics reporter, David Swerdlick, CNN political commentator and editor for "The Washington Post", and Phil Mudd, former CIA counterterrorism analyst and former CIA terrorism official, all joining us this morning to talk more about the big week ahead. Good morning.</s>PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Good morning.</s>SAVIDGE: Eugene, let me start with you. The FBI's testimony on the Russian investigation and President Trump's claim, let's get it clear, on wiretapping are going to be watched carefully. I'm wondering, is Director Comey feeling the pressure about all of this? He's had a rough year.</s>EUGENE SCOTT, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: It seems like he certainly maybe. He's definitely -- has the desire to prove the integrity and the credibility of his agency and that they have operated legally and did not compromise ethics. And as President Donald Trump's tweet suggested, he very much is expected to make it very clear that there is no evidence to support the claim that President Barack Obama had intelligence agencies wiretap Trump Tower during the election. But one thing a lot of people will be looking to hear is just what the FBI has been working on and what they've been focused on since the election.</s>SAVIDGE: Phil, the former national security adviser to Vice President Biden made some pretty strong claims. He said that there are only two conclusions that could come from these hearings, what's your reaction to -- well, first, let me play it and then I'll let give your reaction.</s>JAKE SULLIVAN, FORMER BIDEN NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: One of two things is true, and either he knows it's wrong and he is lying about a national security issue, in which case, it's going to be hard to trust him going forward, or he can't tell the difference between truth and fiction. And in a crisis, that's really going to matter.</s>SAVIDGE: A lot of people had that kind of a thought when it comes to President Trump. What's your feeling?</s>MUDD: I think we ought to look at it more carefully, and I am not sure it's that black and white. I would agree, obviously, it's a question about the president's credibility, but let's step through this for a moment. The first question for Dr. Comey's going to be, did you see the president's allegations? Obviously, yes, and what do you think? And the answer is going to be, we don't have information to support them. It will get interesting after that. The questions I think that will emerge during the day will be is there anything to suggest that Americans affiliated with the Trump campaign or in the White House now were in communication with Russians and did you pick them up in intelligence traffic? I think that's going to be tough for the director to answer in open testimony, and I think some of the questioning will start to fuzz up this real issue about whether Trump people are part of an intelligence investigations. The answer is going to be yes, because if they are talking to Russians, they're going to be in the collections of the FBI, that doesn't mean though that anybody, including President Obama, wiretapped Trump Tower. That's where this will get fuzzy.</s>SAVIDGE: David, timing of this next sort of change it seems of the president here, the way he has described Putin in the past, he seems to give the Russian president a lot of regard. But here is Trump on FOX News last night, and he was describing Putin as a leader and characterizing their relationship. Take a listen.</s>TRUMP: Don't know him, but certainly he is a tough cookie and I don't know how he's doing for Russia, we're going to find out one day, I guess.</s>SAVIDGE: So, it seems to be a dramatic turn around from the ways he has referred to the president before, David, and it's coming right before this hearing?</s>DAVID SWERDLICK, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's right, Martin. I mean, tough cookie seems like an intermediate step in what might be a new way of messaging about what President Trump wants to do with President Putin. All through the campaign, throughout the transition, President Trump sounded a lot more like very complimentary towards President Putin and then also saying he wanted to talk to him, wanted to have better relations. That was a little more neutral of a comment and probably is not a consequence that the timing comes when we are in the middle of the discussions about what contact have been happening between his inner circle and Russia. And as Phil said, who, if anybody, was surveilled in any way by our intelligence agencies. That still doesn't, though, help him square the circle of directly accusing President Obama of spying on him in those tweets from two weekends ago, and what we may or may not find out in these hearings coming up this week. And as Phil said, it's probably more complicated than simply no, nothing was going on. But unless Judge Andrew Napolitano from FOX knows something that almost no one else knows, it's going to be hard for what we hear on Monday to match up with those tweets.</s>SAVIDGE: Well, we're going to will all be paying attention. Eugene Scott, David Swerdlick and Phil Mudd, thank you very much.</s>MUDD: Thank you.</s>PAUL: Also tomorrow, President Trump's pick for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will be on the Capitol Hill for what is believed to be an intense week of confirmation hearings. The Colorado appellate judge was tapped to replace the late conservative judge, Antonin Scalia, of course. His confirmation would be a big win for the White House after this catalogue of frustrations and setbacks since President Trump has taken office. CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Laura Coates joining us now. Laura, good morning to you.</s>LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning.</s>PAUL: Let's talk about the state of the court right now currently sitting 4-4 in terms of the political breakdown between Democrats and Republicans. When we look at the seat for Scalia and the dynamics that Gorsuch would bring, when would he be a true replacement for the Scalia seat?</s>COATES: Well, he is expected to be, he is somebody who has valued and has honored Scalia's, not only his holdings in the past, but believes in the ideology that Scalia has espoused in the past. But remember, not to split partisan lines, not just Democrats or Republicans, but they have an allege split, and frankly, replacing a conservative with another conservative is not going to shift the balance of power a great deal. A lot has been made about replacing Scalia for the purposes of Roe v. Wade. But remember, Roe v. Wade existed and maintained even with Scalia on the bench.</s>PAUL: So, let's talk about some of the things that hard line conservatives take issue with when it comes to Gorsuch, and a lot of that, it's around his religious views. He was raised Catholic and attends an Episcopal church that is openly pro-gay, that's pro-Muslim. How significant do you think that's going to be?</s>COATES: Well, I think everybody thought it would be very significant given the fact that we were talking about one of the campaign promises Donald Trump made was to reverse Roe v. Wade. But now, we're trending toward executive order legacy and what is presumed to be among some communities a Muslim ban. The focus is tipped away from Roe v. Wade, and overturning that, and more towards whether or not the president will have enough deference from the courts to be able to implement policies that may infringe with the spirit of liberty. Now, Gorsuch is somebody who from the beginning of his presence on the bench has been somebody who's been a staunch advocate of religious believers and not having the courts impose their view points. There was a controversial case just a few yeas ago, Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters, all these cases involved whether or not the government could impose and force these small businesses or businesses that had certain beliefs to actually force them to have contraceptives as part of their plan. So, the issue now is, he was somebody who said, absolutely not, and the courts cannot be in a position, let alone the government to impose those requirements. I think everybody is going to look at this and say, I wonder how much his religious believes, not the Catholicism or the Episcopalian views, but his views in the past about how the courts and Congress should do with religion will guide his logic on executive orders.</s>PAUL: OK, lastly, of course, Democrats never voted on Merrick Garland, President Obama's pick. Dems probably are still feeling the sting from that. Could not sting drive what they do this week?</s>COATES: I think it will. I think you're going to have a lot of abstinence from Democrats precisely because this was never a matter or battle of legal qualifications. Merrick Garland, Neil Gorsuch both stand in their own with respect to their qualifications and both should be steadfastly supported in terms of their qualifications. However, this is a battle of power. And the Democrats are going to have to decide at this point whether or not this is the battle to fight. Remember, there's an aging judiciary among the United States of America, and President Trump will probably have more than one opportunity to fill a Supreme Court seat. And because this seat will likely not shift the ideology of the court, Democrats may be better served waiting if -- for the next seat.</s>PAUL: Laura Coates, so appreciate you being here. Thank you.</s>COATES: Thank you.</s>PAUL: Well, Health and Human Secretary Tom Price and Senator Tom Cotton both guests on "STATE OF THE UNION" with Jake Tapper this morning. That's at 9:00 a.m. right here on</s>CNN. SAVIDGE: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is on his way back to the United States from which China. Next, the important meeting he had before taking off.</s>PAUL: And China says the U.S. needs to have a, quote, "cooler head", when dealing with North Korea. That word of advice came as North Korea, though, announced another rocket engine test.