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Justice Department Denies Senate Request To Interview FBI Officials On Comey Firing; Sanders Introduces "Medicare-For-All" Bill; Former Sen. Pete Domenici Passes Away; Clinton: Comey Was Determining Factor Of My Loss. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 13, 2017 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:02] MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: -- which a lot of people have raised given the fact that Comey was fired while he was investigating the issue of Russia collusion. And any attempts to try to interfere with that investigation.

And right now, we'll see how the Judiciary Committee responds, whether or not they issue subpoenas and whether or not they give the special counsel access to a private transcript of their own interview with Donald Trump Jr. And some of the Special Counsel's office may want the Senate Judiciary Committee telling me, John, that this is something the full Senate would have to approve before giving that interview transcript as a sign of all the turf wars there happening here as a number of investigations move forward, John.

JOHN KING, INSIDE POLITICS HOST: Manu Raju live on Capitol Hill. Manu, thanks for that breaking news.

And so some of this tension between the Special Counsel and Congress was perhaps inevitable. You knew it was going to happen especially when you get to crunch time. In their investigations on the Hill and more importantly from a legal perspective, the Special Counsel investigation, what does it tell us that the Special Counsel says no, you're not getting this inside account from these two top FBI agents seemingly because it's too sensitive or too important to my investigation. I don't want you going there.

JULIE DAVIS, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, I mean, I think first of all, it tells us what I think a lot of us assumed from the beginning when Bob Mueller was named and we saw the scope of his mandate because not only to look into the issue of Russia and possible collusion but also the circumstance of anything related to that which, of course includes the firing of Jim Comey and whether there was an obstruction of justice situation there. I think when he was named, I remember a lot of members of Congress said privately and publicly that they were worried about just the sort of thing that the investigations could collide and that they could find themselves sort of cross purposes and actually undercutting each other without intending to.

But I think it also shows us that Mueller is being very aggressive here. And he is - this is an issue that he's honed in on in the investigation that he feels is important enough that he doesn't want a committee, a lot of whose proceedings are going to end up being public or are public sort of interfering on the side here.

KING: Congress leaks?

DAVIS: I would never say that. But the fact is -- I mean, and a lot of their testimony is in public. And there is this question of whether Donald Trump Jr. will testify in a public forum which of course the Mueller investigators would like because they want to hear what he has to say.

But for now, all there is, is this transcript of the closed proceedings. And I think these points to probably a lot more of the similar struggles going forward. But obviously, Mueller honed in on the Comey firing as a key piece of the puzzle here. And that just tell us something.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think it's interesting to -- for what Julie is saying, you know, I heard the word deconfliction outside of a combat zone about 3,000 times when all these investigations launched. We're going to talk with everybody. We're going to make sure we don't run into one another.

And it seemed like there were open lines of communication between the Justice Department, Special Counsel and the committees. And this would imply or actually make very clear that there is not an open line of communication between the Special Counsel and at least one of the committees on Capitol Hill. And I think that's interesting, for as Julie notes, where the investigation might be going but also interesting about the relationships going forward. Because these investigations I think some are considered more serious than others. Some, I think, there's concern about the politics in them and maybe this is a reflection of that.

I don't want you to tell people that people leak on the Hill. That's our secret. Put that into motion. But I think the kind of -- the only -- yes. I think the danger here is we try and read tea leaves on these investigations by what does or doesn't happen from entities that don't comment. And I think there's a lot of danger in that. But I think it's very clear that when congressional committees with very respected members of the U.S. Senate aren't getting what they want and what they say they need, that means something.

KING: And I think there's no question. We should be careful. We don't know the conclusions here. We have no idea what the conclusion is here.

Now, we should be fair to the President, all these people around him as we go through this. But it is pretty clear this development. The Wall Street Journal reporting that the president's own lawyers met with the Special Counsel's team to try to convince them there's no obstruction case here. You don't have that meeting, unless you know the Special Counsel is raising significant questions, asking for documents, looking to interview people. And we're told Special Counsel now is looking to interview a number of people very close to the President's inner circle.

I think I get why Bob Mueller would say I'm, at a sensitive point in my investigation, I'm not going to do anything, give you any witnesses on Capitol Hill that could mess with what I'm doing.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, BLOOMBERG: And the idea that Capitol Hill wants to interview these folks is a sign of lack of credibility from the Trump administration who, at the beginning of this process, said Jim Comey was fired because of the way he handled the Hillary Clinton investigation. They said that the meeting at Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer was for childhood adoptions.

The credibility of the Trump administration has been expired and now everyone wants to talk to various witnesses other people to find out what the real truth is. And I think that's a sign of the idea that President Trump and his White House have lost credibility over this investigation.

KING: We'll see as tensions between the Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein and the Chairman Republican Chuck Grassley on whether Donald Trump Jr. will be called back for a public hearing. We'll see where Senator Grassley comes down on that one. One might add to that question there.

We'll take a break. When we come back, Bernie Sanders wants single payer health care. Bernie Sanders has a lot more friends today than he did a few years ago. Is that good news for the Democrats or trouble?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:38:33] KING: Welcome back. Bernie Sanders is just pushing again today for universal health care. And it's a big deal that he has a lot of new friends. Medicare for all a Sander's passion dating back years. When he introduce the legislation just four years ago, he did so alone.

Today, he has at least 15 Democratic co-sponsors. And if you read those names lost on no one, the list includes many Democratic lawmakers thinking about running for president. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, just two of them.

So if Sanders is helping, leave the Democrats to a victorious future or this is a path back to its past when voters view the party is too liberal to trust in red states and in presidential politics. That concern as one reason the House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi says Democrat should not make the Sander's single payer approach a central theme in next year's elections.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D), MINORITY LEADER: The comfort level with a broader base of the American people is not there yet. Doesn't mean it couldn't be. States are a good place to start. But I'm not here today to write the Democratic platform for four years, three and a half years from now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: She is careful. That was a couple months ago. But she holds that position today even though people talked to her privately she personally thinks it might be the better approach. But as a party leader, she can't get control of the House back. She can't be the speaker and get the gavel back unless they win some Republican congressional seats that are in red states.

Is this the right -- there's no question the Democratic Party is moving left. But is this the right prescription, single payer health care?

MATTINGLY: You're looking at people with very different views on what happens next, right? You roll through the potential 20 people who are looking at a potential primary. You look at -- or progress gives --

[12:40:09] KING: And many -- most of them think they have to sign on to this because the primary is about the left, right?

MATTINGLY: Or you get progressives like I was (INAUDIBLE) or somebody like that who says we want to have this fight, let's have this fight. We think we can win this fight on the merits and in the polling and everything like that. And you have Nancy Pelosi who needs to flip 24 seats, some of which come from plus two or plus three Republican districts who says look, I want to be speaker again. Does anymore have said the same exact thing?

Chuck Schumer kind of had this question yesterday as well. They're looking at the potential for majorities not the potential of a Democratic primary in 2020.

I think the most interesting element by far is that either side you talk to either polls, love it. Republicans NRCC, NRSC, everybody just hammering this today, throwing out digital ads, want to tie everybody to this issue that Democrats on the left and the far left are thrilled to have out there. So we're all in agreement.

Everybody is very excited today for single payer, both Republicans and Democrats. Not single payer for to play. But we're talking about this before. The details here matter an enormous amount. There's the top line Medicare for all, the single payer, the government run health care if you're a Republican. But the details of how you pay for it, how much it covers, what does it cover long-term? What does it cover? Those are crucial.

KING: As we had the conversation, I just want to put up polling numbers here. If you look at these polling numbers, the debate, the American people, you ask them should the government be more involved in your health care? Do you want a bigger government role in your health care?

If you look at the numbers from 2000 to 2017, you get essentially pretty static lines there. That graphic up there might be having a problem with the machine. But that's pretty static. There it is right there. If you go back and look at 2000 and you look at 2017, support for having more government responsibility and coverage, it's said, vague question. It's not a specific question about how much you would pay your tax (INAUDIBLE). But, you know, that hasn't moved at all despite all the campaigns about Obamacare, despite Bernie Sanders now doing this. So, perhaps this is a debate the country should have to let the American people settle this.

ELIANA JOHNSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: You know, pulling back a little bit, I think that there's so much focus on the intra-Republican party disputes. But the fact is that the Democrats are as divides as the Republican Party.

KING: It mean to that, yes.

JOHNSON: And I think this is reflective of the larger battle within the Democratic Party that was showcased in the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, one that she laments in her new book. But I do think that people talked a lot how Hillary Clinton was the head of the Democratic Party and Bernie Sanders was the beating heart.

And this debate where you're seeing the future of the Democratic Party, people like Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, people who weren't aligned with the far left in the party, signing on to universal health care type bill really does reflect that this is where the party is going. But I do think there are going to be vicious fights about this.

It is about more simply than tactical midterm election calculations. It is about what is the Democratic Party going to represent in the same way that these fights about Donald Trump really are about who is going to control the Republican Party and what does the party stand for.

KING: I think a lot of these, we still have in the debate. Was Donald Trump a one-shot wonder or are both parties changing? On solid ground both parties changing. If you look at democrats, republicans and independents on this question, again, republicans support for single payer up a tiny bit. Democratic support for independence is moving up. The interesting question is independents. Again, if you say your taxes will go up, if you say the government will be making decisions what you can and can't get in your health care, the numbers may move. It appears that democrats have an opening with independents. The question is, can they will actually make the case, can they seal the case.

OLORUNNIPA: That's exactly the question that they're going to have to answer when this plan comes out when they have more details. The idea that you're just going to provide coverage for everyone and no one's going to get hit by, no one's going to get hurt, no one's going to have to pay more for it is sort of fantasy land. So once those details come out, you might see those numbers shift.

And I think what you're hearing from Bernie Sanders is that the American people are ready for universal coverage. He's compared with other countries that already have this. And he says that, you know, we're the wealthiest country on earth, we shouldn't have people going bankrupt because they don't have health care. And he thinks that's worth it and he thinks that once those details come out, that the American people will rally around it.

KING: My question is who emerges if most of the party goes this way in 2018, in 2020, who emerges in 2020 as the Bill Clinton of 1992 who said the party was too liberal, too anti-business, to behold into the labor union. It's kind of the same debate that could happen again. We'll see if somebody steps up and emerges.

We need to stop just for a moment here to add a note of sadness the program today. This is from Capitol Hill. The former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici just passed away from complications after surgery. He was 85. Senator Domenici's hometown paper the Albuquerque Journal called the six-term Republican senator a quote, bipartisan power broker, a species in short supply in today's Washington. That's certainly true.

As news of the senator's passing spread this morning, remembers just poured in, that was a common refrain. That Domenici was old Washington. A senator willing to work with whomever he had to if that (INAUDIBLE) to his district, responsibility of Domenici was well aware and he was quite good at it. "I'm not a Republican senator," he said in a 1996 interview. "It is not a Republican role. The facts are when I got elected, I got elected by a lot of Democrats."

[12:45:07] His family says Senator Domenici died surrounded by his loved ones. I covered him quite a bit in his days here in Washington. He's always a very -- a gentleman, shall we say, respected the town, respected the process. Pete Domenici dead at 85. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Welcome back. After just a day on bookshelves, Hillary Clinton's book on the 2016 election is already topping best seller lists and both online and in stores. Here's a few lines from a pretty classic New York Times review. "What Happened is a post-mortem, in which Clinton is both coroner and corpse. It is a feminist manifesto. It is a score-settling jubilee. It is a rant against James B. Comey, Bernie Sanders, the media, James B. Comey, Vladimir Putin and James B. Comey."

Clinton says she takes responsibility for her loss to Donald Trump but that's not stopping her from sharing some of the blame. Here's what she told NBC today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[12:50:09] SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, CORRESPONDENT, NBC NEWS: And if we put all those factors that you didn't laid out in a pie chart --

HILLARY CLINTON (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Right.

GUTHRIE: -- what's the biggest chunk? What's the biggest cause of your loss? What part is Comey, what part is Russia, what part is you?

CLINTON: Well, I think the determining factor was the intervention by Comey on October 28th. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That would be James B. Comey. It is interesting to watch. And we make light of this so we make some fun of this. But it's interesting to see and everyone she has no plans of going away. And some Democrats don't like that. She did as we were discussing, she did win the popular vote. She was the Democratic nominee. She was the secretary of state, she was first lady. There is nobody in the Democratic Party with the exception of Barack Obama who was President of United States who has a resume like that, her husband Bill Clinton.

She's not going anywhere. As she does this, is it helpful? Is it hurtful to the Democrats? Is it neither?

JOHNSON: There are two things that I'm really struck by. The first is that Donald Trump has taken a lot of flack for constantly getting up in public and talking about the electoral vote count and the fact that he won and how incredible it was. But Clinton does the same sort of thing where she continues to belabor the results of the election and the fact that she lost. And this really is -- I think there is sort of a national phenomenon about how incredible this election was and neither one of our nominees can stop talking about it. It really was an incredible event and both of our nominees I think reflect that.

And the other thing is that, you know, I think there's an unwillingness on her part to realize that her constant public presence may not be beneficial to the Democratic Party. It's something that George W. Bush seemed to realize when he left the public stage in 2008. He wasn't super sore at not being included in the Republican convention that year. And he really did disappear from public life. It's obviously harder for Hillary Clinton given that she wasn't president. But she doesn't seem to want to accept that most Democrats feel that way.

DAVIS: But the other thing is -- I mean, and we've heard Democrats say privately and otherwise that, you know, they wish that we could just get past this and, you know, it's not so great to have her out in public talking about all of this and writing about all of this. It is striking the degree to which this book is about her personally and not as much about the Democratic Party.

And there's a real debate going on which we were just talking about on health care and so many other issues about where the Democratic Party goes from here. This is not that conversation. This is a conversation that re-litigates what was a very extraordinary election that talks a lot about Russia and Jim Comey and misogyny and all of the other factors that may have played a part in Clinton's loss, but doesn't talk about how it could be that the entire Democratic Party establishment and much of the rest of the political establishment had this election so wrong.

KING: Right.

DAVIS: So in addition to not being all that self-critical, it's also not really an exploration of what some of the core issues are that the Democratic Party that's to grapple with going forward. So, I think that's part of the reason why we see some resistance from Democrats to the degree there is any. For them, this is about the future and how do we not be in this position again in four years.

KING: And the interesting issues out there promoting the book which is of course her right. She has something in common with Donald Trump. She may not like it to be put this way, but he talks about the fake news, he talks about the mainstream media being against him. Listen to Hillary Clinton saying that the media fell flat on its face in 2016.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I don't think the press did their job in this election with very few exceptions. Is it that people are really not interested or is it that it's just not as, you know, enticing to the press because the other guy's running a reality TV show which is like hard to turn away from. And whatever he says we think is kind of goofy but hey, it's good TV.

I think I can do it. And you know what? She's going to win anyway. So, let's cover the other guy because he's a lot more fun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: I think there's some truth to some of that especially early on in the Trump phenomenon, but the other guy did win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan by saying I'm going to renegotiate trade deals. I'm going to get those back to reopen up and to get your jobs. Now we'll see if the President of the United States delivers on those promises. But when you flip, big blue states to red states by having a what voters found to be a more compelling economic message, I don't think that's our fault.

OLORUNNIPA: It's easy to blame the media. We're an easy punching bag. But if you remember, at some point in Hillary Clinton's campaign, she didn't hold a press conference for like 200 days. And not going to Michigan, not spending enough time in Pennsylvania, those are part of the reason that she did not win. It wasn't necessarily because the media coverage was tough, and it was tough.

You know, there were some scandals surrounding her over the e-mails and everything else. And President Trump, then-candidate Trump did get a lot of coverage. They've got a lot of -- because he was a phenomenon. He was someone who was gathering thousands of people at his rallies. People wanted to hear what he had to say. He was pulling people who were not normal every, you know, four-year voters into the electoral process. And that was a phenomenon and the media covered it.

[12:55:10] And it's interesting that Hillary Clinton is upset at the media because if, you know, if you hear Republicans they'll say that the media was in the thank (ph) for Democrats. So, we get punched from every side.

KING: But we could take solace in the fact that she's more upset at James B. Comey. A reminder for our viewers, whether they elect or not Hillary Clinton is out there active giving interviews. Tonight, she sits down with CNN's Anderson Cooper. You can watch that interview if you want to watch that interview, 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Thanks for joining us on INSIDE POLITICS. Hope to see you back here tomorrow. Wolf Blitzer up after a quick break. Have a great day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us.