[Lemon:] The White House ratcheting up the stonewalling, ordering two former officials to refuse to give documents to Congress relating to their work in the West Wing. Here to discuss, Phil Mudd, and Laura Coates, Matthew Rosenberg. Good evening to all of you. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Good to see you. So, listen, Matthew, the White House is directing the former White House official White House officials, I should say, Hope Hicks, and Annie Donaldson to withhold documents from the House Judiciary Committee. I mean, it's yet another no from the Trump White House. What's going on?
[Matthew Rosenberg, Cnn National Security Analyst:] I mean I think it's pretty clear that the trump President Trump and many around him have decided that with the Mueller report was the end of investigations, they are not going to play ball any more. They want the investigations over and they are not going to cooperate. And the question now is what is Congress going to do about it. They have issued a lot of subpoenas, we're talking about contempt votes. What will they do to enforce it? At some point, they do have to do something. They're going to look fairly weak in all of this. And I don't want to make it into a game, but, you know, at some point you issue all these subpoenas, they're saying no. What do you need to do to get them to say yes? Because it's pretty clear that they're not going to say yes on their own.
[Lemon:] That's a good question I want to ask Phil. Phil, you know, to Matthew's point, what would you do if you're conducting a legitimate investigation and this was happening.
[Philip Mudd, Cnn Counterterrorism Analyst:] Look, I think you need focus. There's questions about whether Barr comes up, whether Mueller comes up again to speak, whether Hope Hicks comes up, whether you get documents whether you get the unredacted Mueller report. If I'm sitting here, I'm saying there is only one thing that counts here. And that is can you get people like Don McGahn, the former White House counsel or Hope Hicks in front of a camera? Can you have people come to say what happened during the campaign, what happened when you're in the White House. All of this stuff about documents, all this stuff about unredacted Mueller report. I think there's a legal issue here. But I think in terms of the American public, until you get somebody in front of a camera to say the president impeded the investigation like Don McGahn, I don't think this game works. You've got to get people on camera in front of the Congress.
[Lemon:] Very interesting. So, Laura, is the White House even making an executive privilege claim and would that even hold up?
[Laura Coates, Cnn Legal Analyst:] No, it doesn't appear that they are, Don. It's just seeming to say no, we're telling you not to do this. And it's our prerogative that we're asking you to do this, and we're instructing you so. Because the thought is that perhaps some of the material may be content the president of the United States could assert privilege over. The problem with that, Don, is that he has not done so in all capacities. And so, if you don't assert the privilege you don't get to have it loom over the heads like sort of Damocles of people in case you might do it one day. If you don't assert it, you lose the privilege. And keep in mind, a lot of information are looking for aside from what Hope Hicks that has not been published perhaps, or from Donaldson, if things have already been contained and disclosed in the Mueller probe. And so, if you're trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube now, that's not going to be successful. And yet, still, there is still no moving of the needle away from Congress, saying, listen, we have to act on this, and there's contempt things that can occur and you cannot simply tell us you know what, I don't feel like it. It's not like Bobbi Brown here. It's not everyone's prerogative. You actually have to assert a privilege or put up.
[Lemon:] I respect anyone who can bring in a Bobbi Brown reference.
[Coates:] I can do what I want to do.
[Lemon:] It's my prerogative.
[Coates:] That's
[Mudd:] I want to drop Kim Kardashian. I want to drop it.
[Lemon:] Well, would she be because anyway, let's get back to this. So, listen, Phil, this is for you. The judiciary chairman, Nadler, rejecting the DOJ's demand a delay. They wanted to delay Barr's contempt vote next week. Nadler saying that he wants to negotiate with them, without those conditions. So, what's this stall tactic here?
[Mudd:] I think this the stall tactic is in DOJ to DOJ's advantage. They've got a couple of opportunities here. Number one, the conversation is all about documents. Again, going back to the difference between the law and politics, you can talk about documents all you want. I think most of the American people are sitting back, saying I don't really know what the heck you're talking about. There's one other issue nobody talks about, Don, that's important here. And that is eventually, the FBI and the Department of Justice are going to conclude the investigations to how this investigation itself was initiated.
[Lemon:] Right.
[Mudd:] I'm going to predict to you that that is going to go ugly early. In other words, the Democrats have a clock ticking. If they can't get things under way before the Department of Justice takes says here's our report and how the investigation was initiated, they're in trouble. Because the Department of Justice, I'm going to tell you is going to say when this thing got started about the Trump campaign, it was pretty ugly and then we're off to the races. The White House will have some real ammo.
[Lemon:] But this isn't making it shorter. Because they're saying no, he's calling they're bluff, Nadler.
[Mudd:] Sort of. But I mean, they're calling bluffs on documents. Again, to go back the rational point, if I were them, I'd say hold fire, all I want to see is somebody in front of a camera. Forget about the docs.
[Lemon:] Yes. Laura, why does this contempt threat seem to have a bit more leverage over Barr and the DOJ?
[Coates:] Well, because one of the reasons that the contempt proceedings is important is, there's two paths. The criminal contempt that would actually go through DOJ, the U.S. attorney in D.C. obviously, that's not going to happen. The boss is Bill Barr. But the other side of this is the civil side. And we've already seen two back-to-back opinions where the judicial branch has said, not even close and no cigar here. You actually have to have some legal basis to withhold the documents and some support for those things. If you do not have one, you simply want to flex a prerogative. You can't do that. So, I think they're concerned about those back-to-back legal opinions issued by a judge, who, of course, is that third coequal branch of government that also imposes a check and balance. Also, here, of course, remember, the idea of them trying to impose additional conditions on the negotiation process with Nadler. Remember where Nadler sits. It is the House that begins the articles of impeachment proceedings. It is the House that can have the power that can take it outside of the discussions and the gentleman's agreement and the handshakes and say if we were to begin, for example, an impeachment inquiry, well, we don't have to do things like prior legislative purpose, you don't have to go to the courts in the same fashion and we have more power than we did today. And so, they're concerned about the path to the judiciary and they should be.
[Lemon:] Matthew, let's bring you back in. Because you speak to people who are close to Christopher Steele, often. You know, Christopher Steele by the way is the ex-British spy behind the TrumpRussia dossier. What are you hearing about this reporting from the British newspaper The Times that he'll be talking to DOJ investigators? What do you know about that?
[Rosenberg:] What I've been told it's the investigators who are close to the inspector general investigation and that's who he's going to be talking to. I mean, he is incredibly concerned. And maybe obsessed that this investigation is going to throw him under the bus. And his view of this, according to people close to him, is look, I was working on this dossier. I think they're paying for. I saw things that the Democrats were paying for. I saw things that seemed frightening to me and alarming. I went to old contacts of the FBI to tell them. I wasn't a paid source in this case. That's his view of it. And that he was simply helping them out. And what they did with it, if they used misused it in a FISA, or whatever they did he had nothing to do with that. Which is to a degree true. He doesn't he's not part of that process. He was simply a source of information. And I think he's acutely concerned that he's going to be thrown under the bus here.
[Lemon:] Interesting. Why do you think that is? I mean that he's concerned that he's going to be thrown under the bus? But I just wonder and you say that this reporting about it, this reporting is
[Mudd:] Yes.
[Lemon:] going to go bad.
[Mudd:] I think
[Lemon:] Bad feeling about it.
[Mudd:] Let me give you one term from the intelligence business. Validation. So, I'm investigating Don Lemon. I find a bunch of information from various individuals. If you're conducting opposition research, somebody is paying me to find opposition information about Don Lemon. In the intelligence business, I've got to validate that. I need a second source, a third source. I need to confirm that my information on the intel side about Don Lemon is accurate. I'm going to bet a paycheck that when Steele gets in front of investigation investigators and they say, how can you confirm to us that the information you acquired in that dossier is true, that he is not going to be able to answer whether he had a second or third source?
[Lemon:] But wasn't he just supposed to gather the information and then the intelligence community is supposed to figure out whether it's true or not?
[Mudd:] No, he's supposed to gather the information and then the intelligence community is supposed to figure out whether it's true or not. Because No. He is supposed to gather the investigation and then the Republicans or Democrats use it in a political ad. This is an intelligence game.
[Lemon:] Yes.
[Mudd:] This is a political game.
[Lemon:] Well, I'm talking about the time it got to an investigation.
[Mudd:] Correct.
[Lemon:] By the time it got to
[Mudd:] Yes.
[Lemon:] That's not his job to do.
[Mudd:] That's correct.
[Lemon:] Yes.
[Mudd:] But they're going to say did you confirm that your stuff is true and I bet he's going to say no.
[Lemon:] That is very that is very interesting when it comes to what happens politically and what happens legally.
[Mudd:] Different.
[Lemon:] It's different, but still you can accuse people of things that they didn't do, and you know.
[Mudd:] Yes, but the White House is then going to have an opportunity to say, look, what I told you is true. The Steele stuff, nonsense.
[Lemon:] Nonsense. Thank you all. I appreciate it. So, here's a question. Why is John Dean getting ready to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee? He'll explain, next.