Speculation Continues over Author of Anonymous Op-Ed in "New York Times" on Trump Administration; Michael Cohen Asks to Discontinue NDA with Stormy Daniels
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: -- as the writer. Is that a possibility?</s>SMERCONISH: Yes, that is a possibility. I'll see you next week. Thanks.</s>CHRISTI PAUL, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to Saturday. I hope it has been good to you so far. I am Christi Paul.</s>VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: I am Victor Blackwell. Good to see you. So, who wrote it, the anonymous op-ed criticizing the president from inside his own administration? Days later, the president still wants to know, and his aides say they have now narrowed the search to just a few people.</s>PAUL: A source close to the White House says the president is, quote, obsessed with finding out who it is, even chief of staff John Kelly tells him to let it go.</s>BLACKWELL: Now, after a week is a saw strong job numbers and a Supreme Court nominee a step closer to confirmation, President Trump says the anonymous op-ed writer may be a threat to democracy.</s>PAUL: And the president said this is a matter of national security, in fact. The question is, is he going to try to involve the Justice Department?</s>BLACKWELL: Joining us now live from the White House with more, CNN White House reporter Jeremy Diamond. Jeremy, what do you know?</s>JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Victor and Christi, the hunt is still under way here at the White House. White house officials informally scrambling to find out who this senior administration official who penned an op-ed in the "New York Times" really is. And Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, has offered some indication. She said she doesn't believe it's somebody in the White House. But here's what she said the president believes.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think that person is inside the White House?</s>KELLYANNE CONWAY, COUNSELOR TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: Most of us don't think that. The president just today said he believes it's somebody in national security. But what I do believe is that who has said that ought to come forward and say it, or ought to resign because the loyalty is not to the president only, or at all. It's loyalty to the presidency, it's loyalty to the constitution.</s>DIAMOND: And Kellyanne Conway there explaining part of the reason the president has been so upset in recent days over the op-ed, fuming about it both privately and publicly, calling the author of this article a gutless coward. And the president also saying that he has concerns about the national security implications of this. Listen to what he told reporters just yesterday.</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Supposing I have a high level national security and he has got a clearance, we talked about clearances a lottery centrally, and he goes into a high level meeting concerning China or Russia or North Korea or something, and this guy goes in. I don't want him in those meetings.</s>DIAMOND: And the president is now invoking national security, trying to go a step further. He really wants to escalate this informal investigation happening at the White House, turning it over to the Justice Department, saying just yesterday that he wants the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to investigate the author of the anonymous op- ed to uncover that person's identity. Of course, the president has yet to offer any indication of a crime that's been committed. And the "New York Times" is responding to that in a statement, saying "We're confident that the Department of Justice understands that the First Amendment protects all American citizens and that it would not participate in such a blatant abuse of government power." And as I mentioned, the president and the White House yet to offer allegations of a crime that occurs. That's typically what's required for the Justice Department to get involved. Back to you guys.</s>BLACKWELL: Jeremy Diamond for us at the White House. Thank you.</s>PAUL: Douglas Brinkley, CNN presidential historian and history professor at Rice University is with us now, as well as CNN contributor Michael D'Antonio, Donald Trump biographer and author of "The Truth about Trump." Thank you for being here. Douglas, I want to start with you. Do you see this situation putting Attorney General Sessions in somewhat of a precarious position? He already seems to be on thin ice with the president, and now the president of course calling for him to get involved in this.</s>DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: The Donald Trump-Jeff Sessions relationship is so dysfunctional at this point, one doesn't know what to make of their tit for tat game they play. We have a book coming out by Bob Woodward in which the president of the United States reportedly calls Jeff Sessions mentally retarded, mocks his southern accent. There are drumbeats on the right. All you have to do is watch FOX News and you'll hear the right drumbeat to get rid of Jeff Sessions because of his failure to recuse himself. So I think Donald Trump is just trying to divert people now. This is the week of the Woodward rollout. Instead he is hoping he could ferret out who anonymous is. He wants help from the Justice Department. Rand Paul is recommending maybe lie detector tests. He's shaking down staff any way he can. Instead of looking for Al Qaeda, in a segment we saw on CNN, he is doing the mad hunt for who wrote an op-ed piece because it wounded his ego so mightily.</s>PAUL: So Michael, he made such a good point. And coming off this week where there are great economic numbers to discuss, is the president essentially sabotaging himself by keeping this going?</s>MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, DONALD TRUMP BIOGRAPHER: I think he is. Your comment about him sabotaging himself is really apt. This is a man that's practiced self-sabotage most of his life, everything from his personal relationships to his business bankruptcies to much of what goes on in his presidency really boils down to Donald Trump sabotaging himself. And as I was listening to the opening to the program, I noticed that just about everything everyone said was the opposite of reality. So the president says that this is a national security problem. Of course, we know that it is not. Kellyanne Conway talks about disloyalty to the presidency, and it's not. Actually, this op-ed was an attempt to reassure Americans the presidency is under some watch, that there's somebody looking out for us at least preventing the most extreme things from happening. So this is all, as you say, deflecting attention not only from Bob Woodward's book but from the accomplishments or the good news that the president could be bringing to our attention.</s>PAUL: I want to run some sound here of Josh Rogin, we speak with him a couple hours ago on "New Day." And here's what he said about where this is going in terms of who is anonymous.</s>JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I have been getting contacts from White House official ever since the thing published, and every single one of them has floated the name of the person who they already had a grudge against, OK, and they're all different, OK. So just based on what I am hearing from many White House officials, they're all pointing fingers at each other in different directions. They don't know anything.</s>PAUL: Douglas, how much time can be spent on this and do some possible real damage?</s>BRINKLEY: Well, that's what I was intimating, that Donald Trump is obsessing over this and it's not good. He needs to follow the advice of General Kelly and move on. If you're going to spend weeks now doing a hunt for this person you very likely may come up empty handed. One thing I can tell you for certain is that the "New York Times" isn't going to reveal who anonymous is, so you would have to be basically interrogating your staff, creating a toxic environment in the White House that everybody sees a potential enemy, a trojan horse living amongst you. You can take the paranoia up to such a high level that it becomes radioactive, and Donald Trump has paranoia problems. So he is keeping exacerbating his problem, he's keeping the story alive. It's going to meld this week Bob Woodward doing 100 interviews. And instead of talking about what he could be, the economy and the fact that unemployment is what it is, there's many positives he can talk about, he's obsessing over this. I think in the long run it hurts him.</s>PAUL: I wanted to ask you real quickly about Nikki Haley, Michael. We just have a couple of seconds left here, but she, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. wrote of anonymous that, she said "As a former governor I find it absolutely chilling to imagine a high ranking member of my team would secretly try to thwart my agenda." She said it is cowardly. On the other side of that we have Norm Eisen who is senior fellow from Brookings who wrote in a CNN opinion that anonymous, he said "I believe the author is doing the ethical thing in resisting Trump from within and writing about it openly." He called anonymous an American hero. In your opinion is anonymous a hero, is he or she a coward?</s>D'ANTONIO: I think anonymous is a hero. I think Norm is correct. Nikki Haley is a normal public leader. She's applying a metric that doesn't apply here. Donald Trump is not normal, he's not up to the duties that he's assumed, and I think this writer is doing what he or she can do to alert us to the reality at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.</s>PAUL: All right, Douglas Brinkley and Michel D'Antonio, gentlemen, we appreciate you both taking time for us today. Thank you.</s>D'ANTONIO: Thank you.</s>BRINKLEY: Thank you.</s>BLACKWELL: President Trump's former fixer says he wants his money back. Michael Cohen says he wants to tear up the nondisclosure agreement he reached with adult film star Stormy Daniels. This was in the months before the 2016 election. Revoking the agreement would require Daniels to payback the $130,000 she received to stay silent about an alleged affair with then candidate Donald Trump. So joining me to talk about this, CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Shan Wu. Shan, welcome back. Let's start here. Is it as simple as we tear it up, you return the money, we're good?</s>SHAN WU, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Definitely not, Victor. Although it is possible Cohen could use that money to pay his mounting legal bills, I don't really think that's the legal strategy at work here. This is part of a pattern that he is doing trying to drop some of these suits which could expose more information he doesn't want exposed. Obviously having to go forward with the suit in a civil situation you're going to have what's called discovery, you'll have depositions, and with regard to the president, there is some legal precedent dating back from Clinton days that the deposition, civil suits, might not be stayed. So all of that is the can of worms that he will want to avoid. In addition to that, of course, Cohen personally has the issues going on with the Justice Department's investigation and his criminal liability. All of these types of issues where he would have to participate exposes him to further jeopardy. He might have to take the Fifth Amendment. So it has become impractical for him to proceed on this or, for example, those libel suits they had against "Buzzfeed" as well. It is becoming an overwhelming dead end for him.</s>BLACKWELL: You remember, as our viewers will, an attorney, a friend of Mr. Cohen coming on and saying that every time Michael Avenatti or Stormy Daniels talked about the president or talked about the details to which this deal was made, was $1 million fine. They would have to pay $1 million and it's racking up. Whatever happened to that? Was that ever plausible?</s>WU: That does not seem plausible. While you can argue each instance of the alleged breach is another amount of damages, you'd have to quantify damages. And that's one of the big issues in civil lawsuits which are all about money as opposed to criminal, which is about going to jail. You have to have a damages expert establish what kind of damage arises from those individual breaches. And particularly if you're talking about a situation where someone like President Trump is trying to allege that damage arises from breach of a questionable NDA to begin with, he is already a public figure. There's so much back and forth about him that I think it would be very, very hard to establish what kind of damages he has.</s>BLACKWELL: We'll see where it goes next. Shan Wu, thank you.</s>WU: Thank you, Victor.</s>PAUL: Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos is going to spend 14 days in prison for lying to investigators about his contacts with people connected to Russia during the 2016 campaign. CNN's Jake Tapper spoke to Papadopoulos exclusively in his first interview, and he maintains that he doesn't remember telling anyone on the Trump campaign that he was told the Russians had Hillary Clinton's e-mails, but he also left open the possibility that it did happen.</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: There are going to be people out there that think there's no way George Papadopoulos didn't tell anyone on the campaign. Did you tell anyone on the campaign?</s>GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS: As far as I remember I absolutely did not.</s>TAPPER: You didn't tell Corey Lewandowski?</s>PAPADOPOULOS: As far as I remember I absolutely did not share this information with anyone on the campaign.</s>TAPPER: Not Sam Clovis?</s>PAPADOPOULOS: Anyone.</s>TAPPER: Dearborn, Mashburn?</s>PAPADOPOULOS: Anyone.</s>TAPPER: Walid Phares, none of them?</s>PAPADOPOULOS: I might have, but I have no recollection of doing so. I can't guarantee it. All I can say is my memory is telling me that I never shared it with anyone on the campaign.</s>PAUL: You can see the rest of that interview tonight in a CNN special, "The Mysterious Case of George Papadopoulos." That's tonight on CNN at 8:00 p.m. eastern.</s>BLACKWELL: Friends and family of the man killed by a Dallas police officer who shot him after entering an apartment she believed was her own say they want justice.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are people who are very angry. They're calling me, what are we going to do, we must take action.</s>BLACKWELL: We'll have some of the growing list of questions in this case ahead.</s>PAUL: Also, deadlines to register to vote for the midterm elections are coming up. So we're going to look at how people for some, it seems like a simple task can be made more complicated just because they cannot get their</s>I.D. BLACKWELL: And we are watching the tropics. Meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking a few storms out there.</s>ALLISON CHINCHAR, CNN METEOROLOGIST: That's right, not one but three tropical systems to keep an eye on. We'll talk about what impacts will be to the U.S. coming up.