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tv   Cuomo Prime Time  CNN  June 10, 2021 10:00pm-11:00pm PDT

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but more importantly, it's one of the most cowardly things you could ever do. we learn that when you're young, to shoot a man in the back, why is that acceptable for police to shoot black people in the back? joey jackson, the cnn commentator said correctly that we must stop local district attorneys being in charge of investigations over police officers that they work with every day. >> let me ask you, you're making plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit on behalf of the family, what's the nature of this lawsuit and who will it be filed against? >> it will be filed against the two counties that are involved in the execution of this search warrant. remember, this was a search warrant, john. this wasn't an arrest warrant. they killed him executing a search warrant. it would be filed against the
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offices for engaging in excessive use of force that violated the civil rights of andrew brown jr., his most basic, fundamental rights, and that's the right to life. >> would that be an avenue, would that federal case be an avenue to win the release, maybe, of the body camera footage? >> exactly. once we get into the litigation, we can get it through discovery, and they will no longer be able to come up with excuses, we believe, to deny the family the transparency that they seek, but more importantly, to let the public know what happened so they can try to build this mistrust that has been created by this district attorney in elizabeth city, north carolina, by trying to hide the truth of andrew brown being executed. i don't know what you call it, john, when a person is shot in the back of the head going away from you. >> benjamin crump, i appreciate you joining us tonight.
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thank you so much for your time. >> thank you. >> a lot of news tonight. it continues. let's hand it over to chris. for "cuomo prime time." chris? >> appreciate it, john. i'm chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." we have breaking news on our watch. claims of deep state intrusion, claims of abuse of the government being used for political purpose. they were more true than we knew. trump was making those claims, but he was also the one doing what he was complaining about. the new york times nails the trump administration for going to extremes to track down leaks early in his term. exacts between trump associates and russia, contacts that happened. "the times" says the trump doj under jeff sessions took the extraordinary step of having prosecutors subpoena apple for data from the accounts of at least two democrats on the house
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intelligence committee, along with their aides, their family members, and even kids. and they put a gag order on apple. so apple wasn't allowed to tell anybody about what was going on, even though they were main members of this government. one of them, was adam schiff, who is now chairman of the intel committee. he ultimately led the prosecution in trump's first impeachment. he's coming on this show in a moment. but this is much bigger than him. he tells "the times," the subpoenas for data on him and others were used as a cudgel. against trump's political opponents and members of the media. the politicalization of the department and the attacks on the rule of law are among the most dangerous assaults on our democracy carried out by a former president. remember, we know that trump took this stuff very seriously because he complained about it all the time. this is the deep state. what was that about? it was using those who are behind the machinery of
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government to do bad political things, that is exactly what he was doing according to the "new york times." the white house was adamant that the sources be found and prosecuted, they report, and the justice department began a broad look at national security officials from the obama administration. we had heard of going after reporters, even their phone records, including a member of cnn. but going after the main members of the opposing party and their families? "the new york times" reports that investigators also opened cases that focused on then fbi director comey and his deputy at the time andrew mccabe, and that repeatedly the same staff that was tasked with these investigations kept arguing there was no case. and that it looked bad. but they were told by sessions and then bill barr to keep
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going, sparking concerns this was about politics, not protecting national security. andrew is with us tonight, along with norm eisen. good to have you both. andrew, obviously, you're aware of some of this because you were caught up in it. understanding more of the scope and who they were going after and what the pushback was from the same staff, what does it tell you? >> well, honestly, chris, obviously, i know that the president and his henchmen have had it out for me for many years. that's not a surprise. but the revelations that we've been privy to over the last few weeks about the subpoenas of journalists' records and now the absolutely -- i don't want to say unprecedented, the ground-breaking step of subpoenaing data, private data of a sitting member of congress. i had never -- i had no idea that that kind of stuff was going on and it is just -- 21 years in law enforcement, i served at every level you can
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possibly serve at as an agent of the fbi, and i have never seen activity like this on the part -- dictated by the department of justice. i think that william barr will go down in history as the person most responsible for politicizing the justice and ewing it as a political weapon, more than anyone who sits in that chair. it's an absolutely disgrace what we did to that institution. >> norm, have you ever heard about anything like this and why is it remarkable to you? >> chris, in my 30 years in washington representing people in front of congress and at doj working in government and the executive branch as a staff member like those staff members who got subpoenaed in congress, it is completely without a precedent. it's groundbreaking and earthshaking. and there are going to be consequences.
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there's going to be fall out, chris. you're going to see congressional investigations. we're going to need a policy or maybe laws not just to protect reporters. we talked about that a few weeks ago, but to protect members of congress. chris, they even went after the child of one of these targets on the hill to get information about a child's account from apple. and then there's the question of bill barr, as andy says. we've already had two judges criticize him for a cover-up in connection with protecting trump from obstruction charges. now people are going to be looking at his law license afresh. expect a lot of legal fallout from this. >> in terms of the practicality of it, andrew, when you were -- you served at the highest levels of the doj. if you had guys and women that you would task with something come to you repeatedly and say, it's not there, this is getting weird that you have us on this, we're not finding anything. even the things we're finding,
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even against comey, we can't make the case. how often was it that you guys would say, keep looking, keep looking, just keep looking? >> anyone who has served in a leadership position in the fbi or the department of justice will tell you that your job as a leader is to oversee these investigations, listen to what your investigators tell you, to process the facts as they are uncovering them. and to take the recommendations of your investigative teams in terms of the steps you're going to take going forward. so on the day they come to you and say, we think we're done, you may question -- ask a few questions and make sure that all of the "t"s have been crossed and "i"s dotted, but when they investigators say there's no case here, then that's the time to stop the institution from investigating a private citizen. it's clearly -- what you had here was william barr throwing a hail mary pass
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to try desperately to generate some sort of information to put some of the president's enemies in jail. i know this from personal experience. in some really sad way, i'm not surprised with some of these revelations. >> jeff sessions first and then william barr. norm, the idea of, well, this is what the government does, no. this is not the same thing as going after congressman matt gaetz for alleged behavior where you have proof, this is an investigation in search of a crime, in search of proof. not the opposite. big distinction? >> yes. there are cases where there have been serious allegations of corruption by a member of congress, the william jefferson case is one that comes to mind, where there's investigate tools that are deployed. but, chris, this was a pure act of political retaliation.
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it was abuse of power. we talked this week about the president's former lawyer and the extraordinary things the white house counsel said, describing the president's behavior as crazy stuff, only he didn't use the word "stuff." this is more of the same and it makes you wonder how much more of this is going to come out, how much more abuse happened by trump and by those who were doing his bidding. and in the department of justice, that is just appalling. and i think there are going to be consequences for barr out of this revelation and there should be. >> right. but, look, pelosi says she supports chairman schiff. we're going to have him on coming up in the show. but this is bigger than schiff. and the idea that they're going to look into it, okay. what is most shocking in terms of scale here, andrew, you have sessions, maybe or maybe not at trump's direction. we heard he was directing him in public to do it, so we assume
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the president was telling the truth because the same thing was happening. then it gets shut down by lack of information. then barr comes in and in february of 2020, barr brings in a new guy, a prosecutor from new jersey with no particular pedigree in this type of stuff. he was about gangs and health care fraud, to reopen all of the cases. people come -- and i'm reading this from the "new york times." they come and tell mr. barr at and mr. benvenuto at multiple meetings, it's not there, it's not there. we can't do anything with this. and they're told to keep going. i have never heard of anything like that before, of things being reopened is rare enough, once you guys shut it down, if there's no new information. but to have somebody say, no, we got to keep doing this. >> go find it, right? when have we heard this before? we heard it recently in trump's
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phone call to the secretary of state of georgia, go find my votes. go find the fraud for the election. that was the modus operandi of this operation. they wanted what they wanted and they didn't care what they had to do to get it. so two things quick, chris. i will tell you, i oversaw many leak cases in my time as national security ead and also deputy director. eric holder changed the rules on how we can think about going after reporters' information and essentially it eliminated it. i didn't happen after holder changed that policy. so the fact that they did it so many times in the last few years of the trump administration is absolutely mind-blowing to me. and the last point i leave you with is, let's remember, as a point of context, this is the same group that is still yelling and screaming, trump is still yelling and screaming to this day about how dare us actually seek fisa coverage over a former
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campaign foreign policy adviser who had already been separated from the campaign. >> carter page. >> and trump couldn't pick out of a lineup. that's right. and now let's -- and this is the same group that so offended by that, but they're actively pursuing the records of members of congress and the media to pursue some leak conviction fantasy. it's absolutely hypocrisy. >> look, you read the reporting for yourself at home and you backtrack it. start with this understanding. they were looking at these guys for breaches of national security. but by definition, trump, if you believe him, there couldn't have been a breach of any national security because there were no contacts that were in any way damning. so why would you have people looking for leaked information that was a matter of national security if you believed everything that had been done was fine? so norm, you take it from there. and this is a man and an administration, as andrew tickles the point, where they
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bang deep state. they bang guys like you and mccabe. you deep state people who have been around government, you abuse the process for political power, that's what you do, have you ever seen a more example than this? >> chris, it's the naked abuse of power for revenge, retaliation and destruction. you can draw a straight line through from trump's comments, russia if you're listening, abuse as you'll be mightily awarded, abuses as a candidate, to abuses in office. we're finding out more what went on. and, you know, the capacity -- we should not lose our capacity to be shocked about this, but we also should ask what can we do to make sure that people face consequences, starting with a challenge to bill barr, legal ethics he should not any longer be allowed to have his law license. and how can we change it so this never happens again in america.
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>> andrew, do you have an answer to that question? is part of the answer found in the fact as identified in the reporting, mr. demers, mr. aidle steen, mr. blue and mr. benvenuto are all still at the justice department and therefore they're not able to say i don't want to talk about this because they'll be talking to their bosses. and they can do through what they were told and now do it through the lens of attorney general merrick garland. how important is it that they're still there in terms of understanding what this was about and what change needs to be taken? >> yeah, well, where is the investigation? where is the outrage from the doj ig. as sitting employees, they have to cooperate with that sort of investigation unless they face some political -- i'm sorry, unless they face criminal liability, individually, which is unlikely here.
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so, yeah, they're there. if there was a legitimate investigation of this put forth by either the ag or the inspector general, they would have to tell what they knew. there will be records of those conversations. there will be emails, text messages between employees and all of that stuff should be looked at. we need an accounting as a nation of what happened inside our department of justice. it's not trump's department of justice or biden's or anyone else's, it's the people's department of justice. and it looks like it was taken pretty far off the rails. >> let's do this. let me take a break there is a lot more in the reporting here in terms of the scale of the scope, and one of the things that makes this most shocking, again, i've made this point with andrew, but not in context of everything that happened. the number of times that sessions and then bill barr were told we don't know why you're having us do this, and things that happened that made it pointless and were ignored are just as shocking as who they went after.
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please, andrew, norm, i'll buy you dinner. i'm sure you're missing invitations right now. stay with us, we'll keep this up because this is a very important story for people to understand about how our government was being abused. stay with us. >> announcer: one on one is >> announcer: one on one is brought to you by appleby's. kaur carside to go and delivery. ♪ ♪ and they're always glad you came ♪ welcome back, america. hi guys! check out itthis side right here.you. welcwhat'd you do?ica. - tell me know you did it. - yeah. get a little closer. that's insane. that's a different car. -that's the same car. - no! yeah, that's before, that's after. oh, that's awesome. make it nu with nu finish. we're carvana, the company who invented car vending machines and buying a car 100% online. now we've created a brand-new way for you to sell your car.
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my tuuuurrrrn! tonight...i'll be eating cheesy cauliflower pizza and yummy broccolini! (doorbell rings) thanks. (doorbell rings) thank you. ♪ ♪ is that my leotard? no. yes... ehh, you can keep it. >> announcer: this is cnn breaking news. >> cnn has confirmed that the trump administration was using the department of justice and its assets and resources to go after political rivals and looking for leaks, specifically, about contacts between the trump administration and russian associates. now, we have never seen or heard of the detail, scope and extent of going after political
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opposition without finding a single shred of proof with investigators consistently pushing back against their bosses that there's nothing there and this is going to look bad. we just got from the house intelligence committee the following. individuals associated with the committee, we know chairman schiff of another democrat, two sitting members of the house intelligence committee, they had scrubbed metadata, got a gag order from apple so apple couldn't tell them until now, this was in 2017-2018, including members former and current of the committee and their family members, including minor children were notified last month by apple that the department of justice had issued grand jury subpoenas in february 2018 for their information. the breadth of these requests for information, a long list, which included the chairman and the potentially partisan nature
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of the subpoenas raised troubling questions about the department's willingness to engage in a partisan investigation on the former president's behalf. now, we have norm eisen, andrew mccabe and dana bash joining us. dana, let me ask you the question that started all of our conversations tonight, which is have you ever heard of anything like this? >> no, and you know it is so easy now especially looking back and knowing more about the trump administration saying, this is just another norm-busting move by the trump administration. it's not. it's not. it was bad enough when we learned about the information that they were seeking from reporters. but to do this not just for members of congress, but from specifically members of congress who had been aggressively trying to investigate them, congress is first in the constitution, congress has the oversight, not the administration.
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and the fact that the doj was used in so many political ways but in this particular, unprecedented, as far as we know, remarkable way, i don't have words for it. >> now, the good news, andrew, as we discussed earlier, the people who were involved at the higher levels are still there. so they would have to cooperate with any internal investigation. if they started asking for information in 2018 and apple was gagged until just last month, that does that mean they could have been collecting data on these people all the way through the trump administration? because it doesn't say when it stopped. >> it's really hard to know that at this point, chris. we haven't seen any of the legal process that was served on apple which would have the time period for which the collection was authorized. it may have been -- could have been 30 days, could have been longer than that. the nondisclosure orders that
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sometimes accompany that sort of -- that sort of process typically run much longer than the collection period. so it's hard to make an assumption about that based on order was in place. >> norm, the idea of who was involved going after obama staff, interviewing them, no charges, then it gets sticky for them because ratcliffe, who was the director of national inllse tru ally, transcripts of the calls, the authorized disclosure would have made it more difficult for prosecutors to argue the news stories. at the same time that they were hunting down the leakers, his own guy, put out the transcripts of the calls which made it harder to make it a national security case. >> chris, one of the reasons that democracy survived the onslaught of the past four years is this was the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
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when i was counsel for the committee on the impeachment, i saw then congressman radcliffe up close. and he was a complete lap dog, pet poodle for donald trump, doing whatever he thought would win the favor of the president. and to think that he enjoyed the incredible power of the dni and the ability to do damage is terrifying. chris, i don't think we're at the end. you and i have talked about this and we keep saying, where is the bottom? i don't think we're at the end of hearing these revelations. it's the nightmare of the framers. >> it's interesting that it took this long to come out, to be honest, dana. i'm surprised by that. in here, in this statement from the committee, there's some interesting language. the committee expects the department, doj, to provide
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additional information. and we would support an internal investigation by the department into its own actions. it's kind of light language there. it doesn't seem as though -- figure out what happened, they're all still there. and then come tell us. because we have to figure out who to go after about this. doesn't seem that strident. >> it doesn't, probably, because it's not the trump administration in charge now. an investigation seems pretty -- sort of basic when you're talking about the biden administration and you're talking about merrick garland who was specifically tapped by president biden in order to separate the justice department from, you know, really horrific notions like what we're seeing reported tonight.
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and so, you know, this is a democrat calling on a democratic administration to do something that probably doesn't need to be demanded like we saw when the trump administration was there. >> andrew, what do you say to members of the current administration, president biden -- dana, check me on this if you think i'm going too far. he was pretty quick early on to say nah, i don't want to investigate trump anymore. and i've heard from people around him and we've heard from the president before, we really want this guy in the rear-view mirror. if they say, look, don't chase this down, make sure it doesn't happen again, change your internal procedures, talk to the people who did it, make sure it wasn't their idea but leave it alone, what is your word of advice? is that okay with you? >> absolutely not. and i doubt that this administration, that president biden would send that sort of direction to the justice department. the justice department should be opening and closing investigations based on the facts that they find and the information that's presented to them.
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they should not be taking direction from the white house on how to pursue investigations, why they should keep open investigations that the facts like here don't -- didn't call for continuing. i don't see ag garland taking that sort of direction from the white house and i don't think the white house would give it. it's up to the department of justice to try to break away from this sordid and mercifully short history under president -- former president trump. and honestly, i'm not sure that you want doj doing that investigation entirely independently internally. maybe the time has come from congress to get involved and to start calling people up to the hill, putting them -- sitting them down in front of the microphone and collecting some testimony so we all find out about the sort of activities that were going on under sessions and trump. >> norm, don't get mad at me, but doesn't congress kind of
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stink at this? how many hearings have we watched where it becomes a circus and they're all trying to pose with their questions. sometimes people do well. sometimes people evince testimony when there are people like you putting ideas in their head. but most of the time, they're not great at this, are they? >> well, chris, that's why you bring in outside council. i had the privilege of doing it in the first impeachment of examining witnesses, kicking off the hearing by examining the witnesses and then the members ask their questions. so in every important investigation of the modern times, from watergate on down, they've brought in outside counsel to help do the work, to help organize the work, and that's what's going to be needed. i agree with andy. i think congress needs to look at this, and they need to do a serious inquiry, either with capable counsel from the outside
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or staff counsel can also very ably ask questions. lead the inquiry. let's figure out what happened. let's pass a law so that it's not just a matter of, oh, you violated ethics rules. doj internal ethics rules say you can't pursue investigations for political reasons or to curry favor with the president. but that's not enough. we need tougher restrictions here. frankly, for the really outrageous abuses, we may need not only civil remedies, but also criminal ones. we can't let this happen again. it's too dangerous. >> dana, last word to you. and any feel for the stomach of the biden administration to go after this? >> it depends on how you define "going after this." right? it seems to me that these two notions of doj doing an internal investigation in congress doing its own investigation are not mutually exclusive. part of the problem, as you were alluding to, chris, is that
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congress can have public hearings and those are incredibly important, but it quickly devolves into partisanship and the benefit of an ig report in addition to that is that it is independent, yes, it's internal, maybe there's not way to do it. but, you know, it seems to have, you know -- more credibility because it comes from within as opposed to congress which is incredibly partisan. never mind the fact that we are talking about members of congress who were at the -- who are the victims here. they were the ones who were investigated in a way that does not seem appropriate. >> if we've learned anything recently, it's that congress won't necessarily go after something, even if they are the targets and victims of the situation. they wouldn't investigate january 6th. >> good point. >> look, the way to do this is i
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had your better minds. this is beautiful. now we got to hear from chairman schiff because if anybody is going to push the ball forward. he will. thanks to them and now there is the chairman. we'll take a break. we'll come back. when did he learn about this? what does he think about this? why does he think this happened and what does he think has to happen now? next. at panera, we take care of dinnertime. we use fresh, clean ingredients to make mouthwatering masterpieces. order on the panera app and get free delivery through june 13th. only at panera. no, he's not in his room. ♪ dad, why didn't you answer your phone? your mother loved this park. ♪ she did.
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all right. let's bring in one of the men at the middle of this breaking news about the trump abuse of power, using the department of justice to go after political opponents. house intel committee chair, congressman adam schiff, thank you for joining us on short notice, sir. >> good to be with you. >> let's start with the nonpolitical question, how did you feel when you learned that you were being targeted this way by the united states government. >> you know, shocked on the one hand. not surprised on the other. i did call for me being investigated, it certainly looks like they were going after records of the committee, including my own. what they were looking for, i still don't know. apparently, they didn't find anything, but when they wanted to close down the investigation, barr wouldn't let them.
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and it's just another terrible abuse of the rule of law, the department of justice. i spent almost six years with the department of justice. i love my experience there. and to see how it was turned into this bludgeon to go after the president's enemies and a shield to protect those who lied for him, people like roger stone and mike flynn and others, it's disgraceful, but it's also, such a body blow to our democracy. >> does it matter to you that they used grand juries to get this subpoena? does that add legitimacy to the efforts? >> that doesn't add legitimacy. it expands the abuse. to abuse the grand jury process in this way. and while i can't go into who received these subpoenas or whose records were sought, i can say it was extraordinarily broad, people having nothing to
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do with the intelligence matters that are at least being reported on. it just shows what a broad fishing expedition it was and so many norms were broken in connection with this. the norm of a president not involving himself in specific cases here. you had the president calling on his opponents to be investigated. the norm of the president seeking records from a member of congress and staff and doing so on a partisan basis. going after a committee that was investigating him. one guardrail after another just smashed by this unethical former president. and just shows you how much we're reliant on people to say no. if they don't stand up to an unethical president, how quickly the guardrails can come down. >> two shocking things here, one, the situation is actually a little bit more perverse than even you suggested.
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because according to "the new york times" and seconded by cnn in major part, the cases were looked at under sessions, closed. barr comes in in 2020, it's not just about keeping them going, it's restarting them. he brings in somebody new. he creates a new circle of trust. he is told by his staffers, yeah, there is really nothing there. that's why the cases are closed, and reopens them. and the only thing that changed during that period, other than him, was trump saying he wanted you looked at. have you ever heard of anything like that before? >> no, certainly not. and you know we brought about these new norms after watergate to prevent exactly this kind of abuse. but they didn't survive this presidency and -- but it is shocking. at the same time, look, bill
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barr lied to the country about the mueller report. he lied to congress about what he was aware of, mueller's objections to. his false summary. he had a long pattern of duplicity as well as intervening in specific cases of roger stone and mike flynn to try to protect those who were lying to cover up for the president and to authorize investigations of his opponents. and so, you know, i view bill barr as the second most dangerous person in the country after donald trump and this is just further proof of that point. >> without revealing their identities, to your knowledge, how many people were swept up in this effort in terms of looking at people's records? >> you know, a lot. and the reality is, i don't fully know how many -- i think we'll find out about more now that the story has broken. people got these notices, these emails from apple and thought
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they were spam or that they were, you know, some kind of a spear phishing attempt or something. and so i'm not sure we know how many are impacted. and, you know, i would like to know. we've asked the justice department was this just going after democrats and democratic staff? >> they know. >> they know exactly who was looked at and for what period, just to be clear for people misconstrue the idea about apple. apple was under a gag order. obviously you know all of this chairman, but for the audience. so the doj said you're going to give us these records and you're going to shut up. and ordinarily the period that they look for records is much shorter than how long someone is gagged, give them time to make a case. apple started telling people last month there was another provider who was telling people early last year that they had been asked about this. so apple didn't choose not to do this
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as far as we understand. under the gag order. but in terms of the scope of this, in just the last week, okay, people say, don't look back, you have to. such a big part of trump's attraction was that he was going to go and disrupt the chaos. he was going to go in there and disrupt the ugliness and the deep state stuff. in just the last week, you, the cnn revelations, meadows asking the doj to investigate nonsensical allegations of election fraud, the rudy tape, zelensky's assistant, the president of ukraine at that time watching and listening, echoing that yeah, rudy did it and then trump did it, all of this was going on and then the doj was being used as the muscle arm to shut people down who were going after the president's behavior. i mean, i can't think -- it
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literally makes watergate look like jaywalking. >> you know, i remember during marie yovanovitch's testimony, and this was this courageous ambassador to ukraine who the president and his son and others just ruthlessly smeared to the point where her life was in danger. i remember during her testimony she was called by the state department said you need to get back to washington right away. you need to be on the next plane. and she was incredulous, what's happening? what's going on? and she talked about, am i under investigation or something? and i remember thinking, you know, i know how you feel. i didn't know about this at the time. but, you know, i never expected in this country to feel the way that so many people do in the developing world that they could be the subject of investigation by unscrupulous executive just because they want it done. and that's such a terrible turn for this country.
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and we've got to put up stronger guardrails to make sure this kind of thing never happens again. >> what do you see as remedial here? the statement from the committee i have all this paper on my desk. the statement from the committee is you look forward to information from the doj about this and you support an internal investigation. what needs to be done here. the good news is, many of the people who were at the top of the food chain during these efforts are still at the doj, meaning that there will be a higher degree of compliance expected, assuming there's no criminality attached and andrew mccabe said -- i suggest the same, it's not a criminal situation at this point. what do you want to have happen? >> look, i think there needs to be an internal investigation within the department of justice. not just involving, you know, this abuse of power with respect to our committee, but also what they were doing to reporters and press organizations, the
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attorney general's intervention in specific cases like roger stone, mike flynn and others. in the case of mike flynn, this person twice pled guilty, barr went to the extraordinary step of seeking to have that case dismissed. the judge in that case appointed someone to advocate someone against the justice department. that just doesn't happen very often, if ever, and so i think the department needs to really clean house and look at all of these ways in which the department was abused and take corrective steps and implement new policies and to make sure this doesn't happen again. in terms of the congress, you know, i can't play a role because they went after some of my records. but i do think the department needs to do a lot of self-examination, get to the bottom of how it was misused and abused and take corrective action. >> why are you conflicted out when you were victimized by the effort? they didn't find anything on you. the case was closed against you and there was never any proof
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brought to any point of consequence? >> no, that's true. but i think there would be a perception that i have a personal stake and, of course, as a victim of this, i do. so, look, i think that others are better situated to look into this than i am. but i think most important because the department is going to be very reluctant to share and it's going to be a fight to get information. we need to encourage the new attorney general to do an internal and independent investigation and take corrective action. >> and just one more circle back on something that cnn is trying to nail down. that there were over 100 people in the basket of who they were collecting records on. does that sound like anything that's familiar to your understanding of the scope of the situation? >> you know, i really don't know. but it wouldn't surprise me if it was an extraordinary number
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because just the circle that i'm aware of was so overbroad that they clearly were not discriminating, they were simply fishing and looking to validate the president's continued false attacks and smears. >> this is exactly what people thought trump would change, which is something like a deep state, where they're using an institution of government to investigate you in search of proof against you as opposed to proof driving an investigation. it is exactly what they thought he would change and he was the ugliest example of the problem i've ever seen. congressman adam schiff, thank you very much. appreciate you being with us, chairman. we'll be right back. >> thank you.
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different story, another, troubling question. nicole harper. two months pregnant. driving 84, in a 70. state trooper catches her. turns on the siren. flashes his light. she doesn't pull over. she travels over to the right lane, with her hazard lights on, and slows down. she says, two minutes and seven seconds after the trooper performed a pit maneuver on her vehicle, allegedly, causing her to lose control. this is the video. >> why didn't you stop? >> because i didn't feel like it was safe.
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come out this way. i got plenty of room out here. are you the only one in the vehicle? >> yes. >> okay. >> i'm pregnant. >> ma'am, you ever have got to over. >> harper feared that the crash killed her baby. it didn't. cnn reached out to the arkansas state police for a statement, they haven't responded. harper joins us, now. thank you for joining us. first things, first, how's the baby? >> perfect. >> beautiful. beautiful. how old, now? >> four months. >> great. great. that's really all that matters. so, let's go through the fact pattern. you see the lights come on. you're speeding. you don't stop and pull over. why not? >> honestly, the shoulder did not have enough room for -- for my car, alone.
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but my thoughts were, also, he, the officer, didn't need to be standing beside my car there. like, there, literally, was not enough room. >> so, two minutes and seven seconds, by your count. you know, the question becomes, well, why that long? there was nowhere that you could pull over, along that time? >> no. um, if you -- if you watch a little bit more of the video, or, i guess, it was a little bit before where he hit me. you'll notice a sign that says the exit is one mile away. just after he hit me, the road kind of turns and it opens up. and the shoulder does get bigger. there is more space. and it would have been so much safer. >> um, did you slow down? >> yes, of course. >> so, he did that pit maneuver -- we are showing the video of that right now -- he
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did that to you, when you were already slowing down? you didn't maintain the same speed or accelerate? >> no, not at all. >> and in terms of personal safety, explain, again, did you not stop because you thought the police were going to hurt you? >> i never would have thought the police would hurt me. >> so, you didn't pull over, just cause you thought that it wasn't easy enough to do on that road? >> right. i didn't feel like there was an adequate amount of space on the side of the road for my car and the officer to be standing beside it. >> you're being charged with speeding, failing to yield to an emergency vehicle. the driver's license manual says, pull to the nearest, safest spot, out of the traffic lane. do you believe that, that's what you were intending to do, at the time? or had you passed what was the -- you don't think that you
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passed up where the nearest, safest spot was? >> no. no. >> and when the trooper came over to you, he's seen on tape saying to you, why didn't you stop? why didn't you stop? how did you feel about that back and forth with him? you say to him, i was pregnant. what happened? what happened? how did you think he was with you after that? >> i mean, i thought, like, he was getting on to me. telling me i was doing something wrong. and in -- in my mind, i was doing exactly what i was supposed to be doing. and i was -- i was trying to keep us, both, safe. >> how fast you think you were going, when he hit you? >> um, i mean, i'm not certain. but i believe, i slowed down anywhere between 60 and 65. >> you, certainly, weren't still speeding, though? you don't think he could
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reasonably think you were trying to get away? >> there is no way he could have thought i was trying to get away. >> and the hazards were on. >> right, exactly. my hazards were on. i had, clearly, slowed down. >> so, you are suing them. but what do you think of the fact that they are charging you? even though, what they discovered in the car was a pregnant lady who, clearly, wasn't trying to get away. and, i assume, they didn't find anything in the car because they're not charging you with anything, except what we see on tape. what does it mean, to you, that they're charging you? and what do you want out of suing them? >> i don't understand how they are charging me with fleeing, when i -- i wasn't fleeing. that doesn't make any sense, at all, to me. >> hmm. nicole harper, the good news is this. the baby's okay. you're okay. and this is gonna be litigated, and we will see where the liability lies. and what needs to change. so, i appreciate you taking this opportunity, and i am happy the baby and you are safe.
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>> thank you, so much. >> all right. be well. and again, we reached out to the arkansas state police. they haven't answered. when they do answer, i told you what she's been charged with. i showed you the video. if they say anything that fundamentally changes our understanding, you will hear it, right away. all right? we are going to take a break. stay with cnn. with a revolutionary, rollerball design. because with the right pain reliever... life opens up. aleve it, and see what's possible.
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