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Homeland Security Secretary Testifies to House Panel Today; White House Rejects Request for Security Clearance Documents; Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 06, 2019 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: When asked, what -- what do you say about all of these people coming forward? He says, they are lying. And so that, I think, is going to be his defense going forward.

Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, different women that don't know each other coming forward with these stories.

Sara, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

And thank you all so much for joining me AT THIS HOUR. "INSIDE POLITICS" with John King starts right now.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Kate. And welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you for sharing your day with us.

Fireworks on Capitol Hill. The Homeland Security secretary says there is an emergency, a chain of misery, she calls it, at the U.S.-Mexico border. Secretary Nielsen says a border wall would help. Democrats disagree.

Plus, new CNN reporting that the president personally intervened to get his daughter, Ivanka, a security clearance over the objection of the experts and his top aides.

And Democrats wrestle with the language of the resolution designed to rebuke anti-Semitic remarks by freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Republicans delight in the debate about prejudice and tolerance that this time is across the aisle.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R), MAJORITY LEADER: So now the House of Representatives seems -- seeks to distance itself from this member's remarks and will apparently send a vote to condemn anti-Semitism for the second time in just a few weeks. Well, I hope this time the message is clear, support for Israel isn't about the benjamin's, it's about the hearts and minds of the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Back to that story in a moment.

But we begin the hour on Capitol Hill, where the Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, is making the case for the president's national emergency declaration, and warning things at the border, in her view, are getting even worse. Secretary Nielsen says new numbers from Customs and Border Protection back the administration's case. Those numbers, more than 76,000 people apprehended crossing illegally or without proper papers in February. That's the highest number of so- called encounters in any February over the last 12 years.

Secretary Nielsen says the United States on track to encounter close to 1 million illegal migrants at the southern border this year. And she says, yes, this is a true crisis and emergency.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Make no mistake, this chain of human misery is getting worse. Yesterday we announced that the numbers of apprehension at our southern border have spiked again substantially. Our capacity is already severely restrained, but these increases will overwhelm the system entirely. This is not a manufactured crisis, this is truly an emergency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: With me to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Abby Phillip, Paul Kane with "The Washington Post," Michael Shear with "The New York Times" and Elana Schor with "The Associated Press."

She's trying to make the case. The Democrats are saying this is not an emergency, or if it is, it's an emergency of the president's making. The first time she's been before the Democrat-controlled House. Are we -- what are we learning that's new?

MICHAEL SHEAR, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "THE NEW YORK TIMES": Well, look, part of what she's stressing is the new numbers that were released actually yesterday, which you -- which you talked about. And there's no question that the numbers have increased. And, historically, the migrant crisis gets worse in the spring, which we're now going into. So the likelihood is that the numbers will get greater.

I think what's -- what is somewhat -- what the critics will say is that she's being duplicitous about not only the kind of crisis that it is. Yes, there is a -- there is a -- a huge number of problems with the immigration system. There are backlogs in the courts. There are -- there are problems at the port which can't accommodate the number of people. The question that the critics would say is, is the president and the president's policies and her policies doing things to make it actually worse by -- by squeezing down the number of legal immigrants that they're willing to process through the ports of entry, which are pushing illegal immigrants to other parts of the border, and the idea of a wall, which is intended to keep out people who are trying to sort of come into the country illicitly, not people who are presenting themselves and claiming asylum, and how do you deal with that as a country. There are definitely illegal -- there are definitely immigration problems. The question is, is the president doing something to make it worse or something to make it better. And that's the -- that's the debate that's going on.

KING: And just that she's there is significant in its own right in the sense that people thought the president had --

SHEAR: Right.

KING: She had fallen out of favor with the president. Now she's on his side making the case that this is a true national emergency. In the context of this we know that the Senate, within days, is going to join the House in saying, no, Mr. President, we disagree.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Right. She has won back the favor of President Trump by how she's dealt with this wall debate over the last several months, how she's dealt with the border issue. The president feels, at least at the moment, that she's tough enough for him on this issue.

But the problems for the president on the wall issue specifically persist. That this national emergency declaration is probably going to be sort of rejected by Congress next week and he will likely veto it after that because there are Republicans and Democrats who don't feel that a national emergency is the right tool to address the border problem and that the president ought not to take the power of the purse away from lawmakers in order to build the wall.

[12:05:09] And I think what this hearing is going to sort of demonstrate, Democrats are pressing her on a couple of issues. One being the family separation issue at the border and, two, as -- as Michael pointed out, the nature of the problem. Like, what is the nature of the problem? Is it that family units are coming over the border? And does the wall actually solve that? And if this problem is acute at this very moment, does it really help to engage in this month's long process of fighting a legal battle over building physical barriers in a very small portion of the border, or should there be other things done right at this moment to deal with the push factors that are bringing people to the border. And also what happens once they're here. How do you deal with families? Where do you keep them and how do you keep children, young children, from being separated from their parents in some cases potentially on a permanent basis, people being deported without their children?

KING: And the Democrats are frustrated in the sense that she has the numbers to say there's an emergency. Look at all these encounters. It's going to hit close to a million this year. Her case has crisis. Democrats, to your point, wanted to ask about family separation policies that they view as callous and they view as not well administered. And some press -- press by the chairman of the committee for some numbers there, and Secretary Nielsen had this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. SHEILA JACKSON LEE (D), TEXAS: Do you have a consensus of all of the children that are being detained in the various facilities, both the ones at the border and others, that are in partnership with HHS? Do you know how many young people are detained?

KIRSTJEN NIELSEN, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: Yes, ma'am. I don't have that number in front of me. We have all of the numbers --

LEE: Would you provide that for me?

NIELSEN: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's Congressman Sheila Jackson Lee there. The chairman of the committee also pressed for similar issues about the numbers and the Democrats are frustrated, saying, you knew you were coming up here. You knew we were going to ask you about this. You had the numbers -- you have the numbers to make your case. You don't have the numbers for the things we want to talk about.

ELANA SCHOR, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": Absolutely. And, I mean, especially on family separation. This hearing is giving Democrats multiple bites at the apple to remind, frankly, voters that the family separation policy was unpopular, that Secretary Nielsen had lost favor with the president because she got up there and said incorrectly that it didn't exist. I mean this is a really interesting choice by them that I think is potentially at least backfiring in the court of public opinion because of the family separation issue.

KING: And one of the issues as we go forward here is that while the true national emergency, in my view, someone who's been in town a while is here in Washington, D.C. And it's not just limited to the Trump administration. I mean this is -- this is, you have, that Democrats want to talk about family separation. The president wants to talk about his wall. Will there -- where is the adult conversation? Where has it been for the last 25 years about how this is a pretty complicated issue and the president's right, we need border security. The Democrats are right, you need to have a better policy for asylum seekers and so on and so forth through guest visas and guest workers and everything else.

PAUL KANE, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": I think her biggest role this week might have been when Secretary Nielsen appeared yesterday before the Senate Republicans in a closed- door caucus and they're trying to hold down the margins of this vote next week. They know that it's going to pass. Abby's right, they've got at least 51 votes. But the higher the number of defections among Senate Republicans, the more divided that the whole party looks on this issue, on the president's declaration, and they really want to try to show some form of unity on what's been a divisive issue for Republicans.

KING: And where does -- where does it go from here? Is this just going to be testimony at each other or is there any possibility that they can agree on anything?

SHEAR: No, look, I think -- I think the -- you know, there may have been a moment at some point in the last year or so where the parties might have come together. That moment is long past. And I think both parties are looking more towards the election and how do they use this? I mean it's almost certain that the declaration emergency will get tied up in the courts. So that's a long-term issue that's not going to go away in a sense, but it won't be present for, you know, for a decision. And that will leave both parties to sort of figure out, how does this play best to their base? And the president will, you know, demagogue and say that there's this crisis and the caravans are coming and the Democrats will talk about family separation and the public is going to have to try to figure out where they are on all of it.

PHILLIP: This is just the beginning. I mean what's extraordinary is that their -- we have two more years of what is going to be this kind of environment in which the president and his administration are going to resist coming before Congress for this kind of oversight. These hearings are going to be just sort of people talking past each other on these issues. And it's just a window into what we have coming down the pike.

For a long time it seems that the White House was trying to resist having their cabinet heads come before Congress in general. Now they've figured out that they can do it. But her strategy here in only answering questions on a slate of issues she wants to talk about and sort of stonewalling on other things is a window into what we can see going down the pike.

For the White House, though, the problem with looking callous on family separations is, I think, a real one. They can talk about a crisis at the border, but if they seem cold to -- something that I think penetrates to regular people, mothers being separated from their children, that can be problematic, too. Not having an answer to those questions is not going to last for long in terms of whether or not the administration is going to get a public blowback for just looking like they just simply don't care.

[12:10:25] SHEAR: But I can -- but I can just add really quickly that that this -- that will not deter this administration, this president and the people around him from pushing aggressively on really hard core immigration policies. That's what brought him to the presidency and they're going to continue to do that.

KING: (INAUDIBLE) and to your point about the secretary going to see the Republicans. We know this resolution will pass. We also know as of now there seems to be no prayer that you can override the president's veto. So the first veto of the presidency will come on this national security -- border national emergency issue. Rand Paul says he thinks it could be as many as 10 Republicans. Is your math in that ballpark?

KANE: I've got a list in this notebook. It's already filled up. Really nasty. At least ten to 12 that are in that realm. Now, are they all going to vote against the president? Probably not. So, you know, eight to ten would be a right set, the over under.

PHILLIP: A veto wouldn't be a bad thing for the president on this issue. I mean, to Michael's point -- SHEAR: From a political perspective.

PHILLIP: From a political perspective, saying, I -- the first veto I issued was on this issue because I feel so strongly about it. That's not a bad argument for him to be making ahead of 2020.

SCHOR: And, frankly, it's not a bad thing in the Democrats in the Senate for this to happen as well, most of whom are running for president these days, right? So it allows them to show a little bit of force against the president and claim a bipartisan win. So it's kind of good for everyone in a way.

KING: All right, a quick break for us. When we come back, up next, new CNN reporting that the president personally intervened, overruled his staff to get his daughter a security clearance. That's sparking a new fight between the White House counsel and House Democrats.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:55] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We're not going to comment on security clearances. That's the policy of the White House, and that continues to be the policy of the White House. We're also not going to get into comments and a back and forth over things that are currently dealing with the oversight.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A familiar line, meaning a familiar non-answer from the White House today after new report raises questions about the first family, their truthfulness and their potential exposure to blackmail or coercion. Sources telling CNN, the president pressured his then White House chief of staff, John Kelly, and then White House Council Don McGahn to ignore the recommendation of security professionals and to give his daughter, Ivanka, a security clearance. Kelly and McGahn told the president no.

Now, the president proceeded to grant clearances to both his daughter and his son-in-law Jared Kushner anyway. We should note, the president has the final authority on security clearances. But this revelation guarantees a fresh fight or an extended fight anyway between the new Democratic majority and the White House. House Democrats want documents from Kushner and Ivana Trump's investigative files. They want to know what so alarmed officials tasked to keep national security risks away from government secrets. The White House Council says those files fall outside of the scope of congressional oversight and that the White House has no intention of handing them over.

CNN's Pamela Brown, part of this reporting, joins the conversation.

The president said he doesn't get involved in this stuff. That's what he's on the record saying. But clearly the reporting shows he did get involved and he overruled the experts who made their recommendation. Then the chief of staff of the White House Council said, don't do this, sir, and he did it. PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, for

both his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as we learned from "The Times" last week, and now we're learning through our reporting, me and Kaitlan Collins, that it also had to do with his daughter and senior adviser, Ivanka, that he pressured Don McGahn and John Kelly to grant Ivanka her security clearance after concerns were raised by the White Hhouse Personnel Office. And, as you know, the president does have the authority, but most of the time these decisions are made by the personnel office. And then if there are concerns, then they would go -- they would go to White House Council and the chief of staff.

And what we are told is that the president had pressured them to be the ones to grant the clearance because he didn't want to be viewed as tainting the process in his family's favor. And once they made it clear that they weren't going to be the ones putting their names on the line giving her the clearance, that is when he finally did it.

Now, we should note, John, that it is feasible Ivanka Trump did not know about this. As you recall, three weeks ago to ABC, she said her father didn't intervene at all. Obviously, according to our reporting, that's not true. But we're told it's feasible she didn't know. We spoke to someone close to her who said that she didn't seek outside counsel because no red flags were raised. And typically with security clearances, you're told either you have the clearance or you didn't get it. You're not brought in through the process if red flags were raised. So that is a possibility.

But what it doesn't explain is the president denying repeatedly that he ever intervened and even saying he didn't know if he had the authority to do so to "The Times" a few weeks ago.

KING: Right. He knows he has the authority to do so.

To that point about the ABC interview, let's just listen to it again and then we'll talk.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IVANKA TRUMP, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S DAUGHTER: The president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband's clearance. There are literally close to a million people in the federal government who are in the pipeline to get their permanent clearance and are on temporary status.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So no special treatment?

TRUMP: No.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: OK. So let's be careful and let's be fair. Based on the reporting it's feasible that she did not know. So then her father exposed her to saying things in public that are not true. This is the part about this I don't get. What's in the files? What's in the files? Which is what Congress wants to know. Because if the president decides to do this, he could have said, OK, I read the files, I get it, I respect the professionals. Jared and Ivanka are important to me. I'm approving this. I'm going to tell ethics officials to keep an eye on them. Be public about it. Be transparent about it. We're not having this conversation.

The president plays dumb and says, oh, I don't even -- I don't get involved in this stuff. I don't even know that I'm the guy who could do it. When we now -- in two cases, "The New York Times" and now CNN, Jared and Ivanka, the president does it. Why?

PHILLIP: Well, obviously, the president was sensitive to the fact that he thought that it would look bad if people knew that he did it. He was sensitive to that when he told -- when he told McGahn and Kelly to grant the clearances. And he was sensitive to it when he told "The New York Times" that he didn't do what he actually ended up doing. So he understands the contours of what's happening here. And a bit of context, you know, this --

[12:20:20] KING: So lying about it's a better choice?

PHILLIP: Yes. And a bit of -- I mean what -- leading up to this, the reason we kind of got to this point was because of the Rob Porter scandal, which forced the White House into this come to Jesus moment about their clearance process. And, you know, John Kelly, at that time, was under fire for how he dealt with Porter's security clearance. He tried to sort of reform aspects of the process. And by the time it was time for the president to weigh in on Ivanka Trump's clearance, Kelly didn't want his hands in that fire. And I think that just shows how high the stakes were for people at the White House. They were no longer willing to be burned by a situation that was already a mess, that had been a mess for a long time. But the president for -- and according to Pam and Kaitlin's great reporting, believed that his daughter and his son-in-law were going to leave the White House. So he thought maybe it wouldn't matter anyways.

KING: And now -- I'm sorry.

BROWN: Oh, go ahead.

I was just going to say what you were saying, it -- based on our reporting, it didn't appear that the president understood the significance of granting someone a security clearance after concerns were raised, because as you pointed out, we are told he would say things to West Wing officials like, it's no big deal, just grant them the security clearance. They'll probably go back up to New York this summer. Sort of downplaying why this would be important.

Also really quickly, the contradiction he told "The Times" he didn't know he had the authority. Remember back then when he said, look, I have the authority but I'm going to leave it to Kelly.

PHILLIP: Yes. Yes.

KANE: Yes.

KING: Yes. And I'm sorry about the learning curve part of it. For the first few months, the guy had never been in politics, I was willing to give some grace on the learning curve part of it. I think we're well past that at this point.

Which gets to the question, you mentioned the come to Jesus moment about Rob Porter. Now there's a come to Congress moment because the Democrats are in charge. And Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, says the White House appears to be arguing that Congress has no authority to examine decisions by the executive branch that impact our national security. There's a key difference between a president who exercises his authority under the Constitution and a president who overrules career experts and his top advisors to benefit his family members and then conceals this actions from the American people.

Can the chairman make a case to the White House Council, or are we going to end up in court or an extended fight or in subpoena world over, we need to see those files?

SCHOR: Well, I'll tell you what we're not going to end up through -- sorry -- is an impeachment debate. See, this entire storyline tells me that Democratic leaders are going to have a lot of rope to stave off an impeachment debate that they don't want to have through these oversight lines that have been great. The one we're talking about now. There are three or four others that we've reported on in recent weeks, you know. There's a lot of pressure from the left to start using the "i" word, right? But these sorts of investigative avenues give Democrats more time to build potentially a case.

KANE: The question, though, is how long can the White House legally stave this off and they're going to get into executive privilege type of arguments, I assume, and you could end up in the courts. We went through this 12 years ago when the Democrats took over and Henry Waxman and the Oversight Committee wanted to get into Karl Rove's personal e-mails and they went back and forth and it took months and months and months, well into 2008 to resolve. So that's going to be their play, and the White House play, is to delay, delay, delay.

PHILLIP: And to be fighting over the letter of the law. Not the intent of the law, but the four corners of the law. That's a very -- it's a very strict argument and it's going to be very tricky for them, but that's what they're trying to do on, not just this, but on virtually everything else that Congress wants to have oversight on. They're saying the president has the full authority to do this, which is true, but to what end?

KING: To what end. We'll watch it play out.

Up next for us, House Democrats divided over how to take action against one of their own.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:28:29] KING: Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisting today the media is trying to stir infighting among House Democrats and that a resolution clearly designed to put one new member in the harsh spotlight the speaker says is no big deal. Smart spin, perhaps, but the debate and the divide is hardly a media creation. At issue, plans for a vote on a resolution denouncing anti-Semitism. The vote is -- was delayed to add language that also chastises anti-

Muslimism bias. Now Democratic leaders aren't even sure when it will come to a vote, if it will this week. It was going to happen tomorrow, but we'll see.

The language about anti-Muslimism bias was added at the insistence of progressives who feel Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is being singled out or held to a different standard. Amending the resolution is proof of the internal Democratic unease the speaker suggests doesn't exist or is being hyped.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D), WASHINGTON: We also want to make sure that we don't allow Republicans and others to try to divide us as a caucus. Representative Omar is under a microscope in a way that many Republicans have been able to say things and get away with them that are also anti-Semitic and yet they haven't necessarily been called to the mat. We have, as I said, already passed a resolution around anti- Semitism. You know, I'm not sure that we need to continue to do this every single time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The complaint Omar is being treated unfairly come mostly from younger progressives. Some see a double standard. Others see an effort to stifling any criticism of Israel. The leadership, though, says Omar or any member is free to complain about Israel's policies, but that the resolution is necessary because of Omar making anti-Semitic statements after promising to choose her words more carefully.

[12:30:08]