White House Acknowledges For First Time That Lawyers Directed Moving Documents To Highly Secure System; Trump Keeps Attacking Whistleblower, Suggests Punishment; Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Says, Attorney General Bill Barr Has Gone Rogue
KEILAR: The timing is changing on when the Justice Department knew about the whistleblower complaint involving President Trump and his call with Ukraine's president. Senior officials first told CNN the Justice Department learned of the allegations in the final week of August when the acting DNI reaching out to seek legal help how to proceed. The final week of August was the time the inspector general referred the matter officially to the Justice Department. Now we learn that national security lawyers inside DOJ knew about the whistleblower's allegations more than a week before the inspector general's official referral. The "New York Times" reports that the White House also became aware of it at that time. I want to turn now to Mary McCord, former acting assistant attorney general for National Security. She led the early stages of the Trump/Russia probe before special counsel was appointed. And you, Mary, are now legal director for the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center. Thanks for joining us.</s>MARY MCCORD, LEGAL DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR CONSTITUTIONAL ADVOCACY AND PROTECTION, GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY LAW CENTER & FORMER ACTING ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, NATIONAL SECURITY: Thank you for having me.</s>KEILAR: So, I mean, I'm curious about this timing, but first I want to ask you, just about the determination of DOJ lawyers, that this complaint did not reach the standard required to send it to Congress. First, let's talk about the idea of this not having to do with intelligence activities. What is your read on that?</s>MCCORD: Well, certainly Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the Intelligence Community, felt it did fall within that definition. And certainly sometimes on difficult legal issues, reasonable minds can differ, including reasonable legal minds, including those of the Department of Justice lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel. Those lawyers wrote the opinion that the complaint, the topic of the complaint, did not involve the funding or administration of intelligence activities. And the subject of the complaint, that being the president, was not a member of the Intelligence Community. It was a very, I would say, sort of technical reading of the words of the statute to say that this is not something that is within DNI, is the director of National Intelligence's purview and requirement to send to Congress. Mr. Atkinson disagreed, was persistent, and continued to ask for guidance so it could get to Congress. He felt it was important to get to Congress and asked for guidance from the director of National Intelligence on how to ensure that this report would get to Congress.</s>KEILAR: Does this complaint warrant a criminal investigation, in your view?</s>MCCORD: So reading the complaint in combination with then reading the memo that was released, I guess it was yesterday, that is sort of a rough transcript of the call, the rough transcript itself I think is indicative enough to warrant further investigation. At least based on my experience, 20 years as a federal prosecutor and three more years over at the National Security Division. There are several, indications of several different types of crimes, not just campaign finance violations but also bribery and gratuities. And so I was surprised to learn -- and I still have friends and colleagues I respect very, very highly at the Department of Justice and I don't want to guess what their legal rationale might have been because we haven't seen it in writing. All we've done is heard from justice officials through their spokesperson I guess that they determined not to go further with the investigation, and that did surprise me.</s>KEILAR: Do you worry that those lawyers are in a tough spot here? And that they could be influenced?</s>MCCORD: I certainly think that there are lawyers in a tough spot at the Department of Justice. Certainly career lawyer who have made, you know, years and in many cases decades out of doing criminal investigations and doing other investigations, national security investigations. I think that these people are of utmost integrity and would stick by their viewpoints. But ultimately the report went up within the chain to political appointees and so the political appointees do ultimately have the final say on matters like this.</s>KEILAR: Very good point. Mary McCord, thank you so much.</s>MCCORD: Thank you.</s>KEILAR: President Trump making threatening comments and accusing the whistleblower of treason. We're going to talk about the impact his war on U.S. intelligence agencies will have on U.S. national security. Also, Joe Biden, one of the president's targets here, says President Trump is trying to hijack and election.