[Don Lemon, Cnn:] Hello, everyone. This is CNN Tonight. I'm Don Lemon. And this is something a lot of us never thought that we'd hear, the president of the United States publicly denying that he's ever worked for Russia, the president of the United States. That comes as the transcripts of closed-door congressional interviews reveal details of how a half dozen senior FBI officials opened an investigation into whether President Trump was following the directions of Russia in the aftermath of the firing of FBI director James Comey. Trump called FBI officials scoundrels and dirty cops. And there's more. We've learned President Trump actually took away his interpreter's notes after a July 2017 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Hamburg and warned the interpreter not to discuss the meeting with anybody in the administration. That's according to a former State Department official. The president says meetings with foreign leaders are routine and not a big deal. In fact, it is a very big deal when there are more and more questions being raised about why this president seems to be putting Russia's interests ahead of our own. It can be hard to keep track of the developments in the Russia investigation. We know that. It is the cloud that hangs that has hung over the White House since before the president took office. Many of the president's own actions and statements raise even more questions than answers. So tonight, we're devoting the entire hour to trying to get those answers. So let's begin by taking a closer look at President Trump's relationship with Russia's president. Here CNN's Sara Murray.
[Sara Murray, Cnn White House Correspondent:] Don, President Trump wanted to make sure his meetings with Russian President Vladimir were super-secret in 2017. At the same time, the New York Times was asking questions about that now infamous Trump Tower meeting from 2016. Was it all a coincidence? A private dinner-time chat between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in 2017 sparking new questions about what exactly the two men discussed. As Trump geared up for meetings with world leaders, the White House received an unwelcome inquiry. The New York Times had learned that Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower in December 2016. Trump's lawyer had known of the meeting for weeks, but now the Times was doing a story and needed a comment. That afternoon Trump and Putin met for two hours.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] It's an honor to be with you. Thank you.
[Murray:] Seeming to hit it off even as Putin denied meddling in the 2016 election.
[Rex Tillerson, Former United States Secretary Of State:] There was a very clear positive chemistry between the two.
[Murray:] Then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had been in the room along with translators. But a former State Department official tells CNN the president confiscated the American interpreter's notes and insisted the staffer keep the details of the conversation secret. The White House insists that's outrageously inaccurate. That evening in Germany, Trump sought out Putin at a dinner for world leaders. The two men spoke for roughly an hour. The meeting, which was eventually confirmed by the White House, wouldn't become public for more than a week.
[Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group:] No one attended that from Trump's side. There was no translator there. There was no adviser there. It was just Trump. For him not to say then afterwards, oh by the way, let me give you a quick debrief on the meeting I had with Putin, that's exceptionally unusual.
[Murray:] Trump's meeting came soon after Justice Department officials had moved to open a probe into Trump for potential obstruction of justice. An investigation that included trying to answer a disturbing question, was Trump making moves designed to benefit Russia or was he merely an innocent party? There's no indication Trump knew at the time that he was under investigation. After Trump's double face to face with Putin in Hamburg, he headed back to the U.S. Aboard Air Force One, Trump and his advisers hashed out a statement to respond to the New York Times. According to the statement, in Donald Trump, Jr.'s name, we primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children in the 2016 meeting with the Russian lawyer. Days later, it came out that the lawyer had actually promised dirt on Hillary Clinton. As the carefully crafted statement fell apart, Trump was still talking up Russian adoptions, insisting that's what he and Putin discussed over dessert.
[Trump:] I actually talked about Russian adoption with him, which is interesting because that was a part of the conversation that Don had in this meeting.
[Murray:] Now, among the people who are questioning this interesting timing was Andrew Weiss. He's a Russia expert at the Carnegie endowment. But it's not just him. Democratic lawmakers are saying, you know, now that we know just how secretive President Trump was trying to be about these meetings with Putin, we really need to find more information about what exactly happened. Back to you.
[Lemon:] Sara Murray, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Let's bring in now Susan Glasser, Renato Mariotti, and Garrett Graff, the author of " The Threat Matrix Inside Robert Mueller's FBI and the War on Global Terror." Good evening. Susan, I'm going to start with you. Number one, you have some good information on this. And number two, it's your birthday, so happy birthday to you. We appreciate you coming on tonight and being with us. You know, you'll get this tonight because I want to talk about the overlap between the president's meeting with Putin at the G20 meeting in 2017 where he confiscated the interpreter's notes and the Times is reporting about Don Jr.'s campaign meeting with the Russians. It's concerning, right?
[Susan Glasser, Cnn Global Affairs Analyst:] There's no question it's concerning. Again, I keep coming back to first of all it's basically the second anniversary of Trump's inauguration in August. If we had known then what we know now about his dealings with Russia and the Russians extensively, not only before he was president but while he has been president, we would have just been blown away by it. And you pointed out this Hamburg meeting, the G20 meeting, in which the Post has reported he ordered the interpreter's notes confiscated. He then subsequently, of course, had the Helsinki one-on-one summit meeting, which by the way was according to, I think, very reliable reports I've heard personally requested by President Trump. The Russians themselves have said this was not Putin's idea, it was Trump's idea to have the one-on-one meeting. We still don't know what was discussed there. I believe that ultimately the Helsinki meeting, the private meeting, not just the sunny public comments, will come to be a key part of whatever the Mueller investigation finds. But to go back quickly to your question about the original G20 meeting and the dictating of the statement the next day, President Trump echoes Vladimir Putin's talking points. For me, as a Russia watcher, that has been the thing that's been so striking. Talking about adoption of Russian babies is a Russian talking point. It's not about adoption of Russian babies. It's about lifting sanctions on Russia that were imposed on Russia in retaliation for which Russia banned the adoption of babies by Americans. This is a Vladimir Putin talking point that President Trump personally wrote into the statement that was issued on behalf of himself and his son about the Trump Tower meeting. So yes, it's very, very significant.
[Lemon:] Basically, co-opting a Russian talking point. Listen, Garrett, so many questions here. What did President Trump and Vladimir Putin discuss? Why are there all these examples of the president trying to conceal what's going on? What is going on?
[Garrett Graff, Cnn Contributor:] And that's actually one of the really interesting points in this, which is the main reason heads of state get together to talk is to work up policies and compromises and have discussions that then they bring back to government and implement. That you you know, one of the reasons you go into these meetings with staff is sort of there's people to follow up on the work afterwards. You know, part of what is just so strange is that Donald Trump is having these lengthy private meetings and there's no public sign about what is coming out of them. You know, we're not seeing the State Department leap into action immediately afterwards to, you know, follow through on this brave new peace plan that Trump and Putin have cooked up between the two of them. You know, what we're seeing is that these conversations sort of appear to happen in some sort of black hole or parallel universe where there are no fingerprints left publicly on the U.S. government. And that's troubling in and of itself because you sort of have to imagine that they're not sort of getting together and talking about Manchester United's season this year. And in fact, as Susan is talking about, one of the things that's weird is that we're continuing to see the president amplify obscure strange Russian talking points up to just within the last couple of days we've seen the president talking about sort of this incredible revisionist history of the Russian invasion the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to go after terrorists, which is a view not held by any member of the foreign policy historian or establishment press.
[Lemon:] Yes. Renato, I want to know why the big laugh in that. Let me ask you the question. There's reporting the president supposedly took possession of his interpreter's notes following that July 2017 meeting with Putin. Could that action be part of an obstruction case against the president?
[Renato Mariotti, Cnn Legal Analyst:] Well, he certainly appears to me like he's trying to obstruct the counterintelligence investigation against him. Keep in mind we also learned recently, Don, that the FBI has got a counterintelligence investigation to determine whether or not he's working as a Russian operative or asset. And here, it looks like he's trying to cover up his communications with the Russians. I've got to say, Don, a lot of times I've been on your program and I've come up with all sorts of potentially innocent explanations for conduct by Trump's associates. And I have a lot of trouble explaining any innocent giving any innocent reason for this one. It is really hard to explain why the president of the United States would meet with an adversary and then try to hide the details of that conversation from his own government. I mean, there's really no explanation. And I think you're right that that's something that would be of interest to the FBI both on the counterintelligence side to determine whether or not he's involved with or working with the Russians but also as you point out on the criminal side.
[Lemon:] Let me ask you about the Democrats, Renato, because they're weighing whether to subpoena the president's interpreter, but is it possible that Mueller has already spoken to this person because one question now is where are the notes?
[Mariotti:] I think it is very possible. I, frankly, think that Mueller should be, if he hasn't already. But I will say as a citizen I want my elected representatives to look into this. I called on Twitter for the House to do that. And I was glad to see that Adam Schiff said that he's going to be subpoenaing the interpreter. Because remember, much of what Mueller's investigating may not reach the public. Even if he issues a report, and you know, we heard today the new nominee saying he'll make it public, the details of that meeting could be classified, but it's important for our elected representatives, who are going to evaluate, you know, whether or not, for example, the president should stay in office, for them to have that information and get to the bottom of this for the sake of the country.
[Lemon:] Let me ask you something, Susan. Is President Trump giving Putin exactly what he wants given everything that we have seen and learned?
[Glasser:] Well, it's interesting. You've seen a certain note of exasperation creep into some of the Russian commentary. There was initial jubilation after Trump was elected. Remember, he ran a whole campaign of sucking up to Putin inexplicably. We'll presumably find out a lot more about why that was when the report is issued. But you know, Russians have somewhat soured on him because American policies have not changed drastically. And of course, that's also what you hear from President Trump's defenders here inside the United States when confronted with some of the evidence that we're talking about, the president's continuing public affinity for Putin, his mysterious parroting of Putin's talking points, the strange and obscure reasons for his private undisclosed meetings. What they tend to do, his defenders here in the U.S., is to say, well, basically, never mind, pay no attention to that president behind the curtain and just look at the policy of his administration, never mind the fact that Trump himself is often at odds with that policy. And interestingly, you hear a version of this in Moscow as well essentially saying, well, you know, Trump left to his own devices would be our best friend but he's really constrained by these evil neo con hawk advisers inside his administration and so and by the politics of it here in the United States, which they blame on Democrats. So, in a sense, we still see President Trump acting in concert with the Putin government. And again, you pointed out Trump's latest comments about the FBI, about the investigation. I can't underscore enough how I continue to be amazed and stunned by this. The president of the United States is at war with his own government, with his executive branch, using terms we have never heard from a president. Yes, he denied, under pressure today, that he was acting as an agent of the Russian government. It's a statement that will go down I'm sure with Richard Nixon's I am not a crook, perhaps with Bill Clinton's equivocations about what exactly the nature of sex is and is, is.
[Lemon:] What is, is. Right.
[Glasser:] That's what I thought about this morning.
[Lemon:] Yes.
[Glasser:] But it's still let's not lose our sense of shock and dismay that this is how the president is speaking about the rule of law and about the FBI in this country.
[Lemon:] So, Garrett, we know what the what Mueller was tasked with, right? The Russia this investigation and anything that comes up, right any crime that comes up. So, I'm just wondering, he's assembling a timeline. We gave a timeline at the top of our show that showed all these things that are happening, the people surrounded by Trump, people who lied about their contacts with Russians. He's assembling a timeline of all these interactions between Trump and Putin, his campaign and Russia, also the Trump organization. So, then how far back does this go? Does it go back into his business dealings from long ago with Russia to make some sort of tie-in to now? How far back does it go?
[Graff:] It goes back as far as is necessary to tell the narrative, whatever that narrative ends up being. You know, it certainly appears that business deals were part of this. We know that from the Michael Cohen guilty plea, that the Trump Tower Moscow project was under way, that the president while a candidate and while the presumptive nominee for the GOP was out there trying to change the GOP's policies to soften them toward Russia, trying to compliment Vladimir Putin on the campaign trail while trying to do business with Vladimir Putin, while, at least according to what BuzzFeed's reporting is, while trying to give Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse in Trump Tower Moscow.
[Lemon:] Right.
[Graff:] So, this is you know, I don't think there's going to end up being a clear line between where the Trump business deal ends and where Trump's collusion with Russia begins because it's Donald Trump himself who has erased whatever line might have existed between the two. Now, that being said, you know, sort of one of the interesting theories that we've seen come out over the last couple days is the idea that sort of the and Benjamin Wittes' law firm has been writing about this
[Lemon:] Right.
[Graff:] that the obstruction could be the collusion, that's sort of the way the president has been trying to stymie the Russia investigation is the thing that he's doing on Russia's behalf.
[Lemon:] Yes. Thank you all. I appreciate your time. And happy birthday to Susan.
[Graff:] Happy birthday, Susan.
[Lemon:] Yes. We'll be right back.