Trump says Manafort pardon is 'not off the table'

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Trump says Manafort pardon is 'not off the table'

Is President Trump considering a pardon for his former campaign chairman? Reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," November 28, 2018. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

SEN. JEFF FLAKE, R-ARIZ.: We have already seen the forced resignation of the attorney general a day after the election. It is clear, therefore, that something has to be done to protect Mr. Mueller's investigation.

SEN. CORY BOOKER, D-N.J.: This is about the legislative branch asserting a commonsense check and balance on presidential overreach.

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY.: This is a solution in search of a problem. The president is not going to fire Robert Mueller.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: Three Senate Judiciary Committee members today taking to the floor to try to force a vote on the bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller. This happened before news broke of a New York Post article, piece in which the president is quoted, asked about pardoning Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman. It, pardoning Manafort, "was never discussed, but I wouldn't take it off the table. Why would I take it off the table?" That prompted a lot of response on Capitol Hill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)

FLAKE: That is par for the course, I guess, to hold that and dangle it out there.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, D-CONN.: The real danger there is a pardon, which is in Trump and Manafort's interest, but it would be solid evidence of obstruction of justice.

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I am not aware of any conversations for anyone's pardon involving this process at all.

(END VIDEO CLIPS)

BAIER: So it is like a four-alarm fire up on Capitol Hill over this today. Let's bring in our panel: Charles Hurt, opinion editor for The Washington Times; Amy Walter, national editor for the Cook Political Report, and Hugo Gurdon, editorial director for the Washington Examiner. Amy, thoughts?

AMY WALTER, COOK POLITICAL REPORT: That is not the only four alarm fire that's going on.

BAIER: There's a lot of them.

WALTER: There's the Saudi Arabia question, what we are going to do there in the war on Yemen, and should we continue to give support to Saudi Arabia. And then of course you have Mueller, and then you have judges. All of those trying to get squeezed into the next week, week and a half, these guys would like to get on. Oh, and we also have a lame duck session where we need to pass the numbers of very important bills. So this seems to be one of the many things that Congress is juggling.

I don't know that there is going to be an answer to whether or not we're going to get a Mueller vote right now. It seems like Flake is out there a little bit on his own in terms of being the one Republican that could make this happen. To me, the question is whether or not --

BAIER: I guess Corker is there.

WALTER: Right, that is true, but Flake is saying I'm not going to support any judicial nominees that come through unless I get this vote, and whether or not that has enough leverage to get that vote to the floor, on top of the other votes rebuking the president, one of which happened today on Saudi Arabia. How many of those can McConnell really continue to hold up?

BAIER: Hugo?

HUGO GURDON, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: The president does have a way, as Jeff Flake was saying, of dangling things, or another way of looking at it is expressing things in a way which poke the hornets' nest. By just suggesting he is not going to take it off the table, it suggests to the Democrats who have been saying he wants to pardon Manafort that that is what he is going to do.

But it works in the Democrats' favor to try and pass this resolution to protect Mueller, because even if the president has no intention of doing this, and as the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, is saying this is a solution in search of a problem, it allows them to keep stoking the idea that the president is going to try and do this. I think they would have a tough time proving obstruction of justice if the president exercises his constitutional powers and actually does the pardon.

BAIER: There are people up there today saying just by saying what he said, it's already obstruction of justice. The snowball just goes down the hill very quickly here, Charlie.

CHARLES HURT, WASHINGTON TIMES: Welcome to the next two years of Washington, and in particular in Congress. The good news for the president, though, is that because of the elections, the GOP, the Republican caucus is going to be a little bit more Trumpier. People like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake won't be there sniping from the Republican side. It will mostly be Democrats that are playing these games.

But in terms of the issue of pardoning, once again, it's a situation where you have Trump saying something -- it's that he dangles something. It's that he actually enunciates it. Everybody knows that this is the sort of thing that pardons have been used for forever, and we can say whatever we want to about Paul Manafort, and it's great that he has been found guilty of crimes that he committed, but of course he committed them a long time ago. And the only difference between why federal prosecutors didn't go after it back then, that remains to be answered. But the only difference between that and what ended up happening is the fact that he got involved in politics and specifically -- and that by definition is a political prosecution.

BAIER: It's important to note that we don't know what we don't know. I say that all the time about the Mueller investigation.

HURT: Yes, absolutely.

BAIER: We do know that there have been some stories that have just really fallen apart that got a lot of traction. Yesterday there was a "Guardian" report that said that Paul Manafort met with Assange in London and talked about the WikiLeaks emails. This is the "Washington Times." Paul Manafort's passports don't show that he entered London in all the years claimed by the Guardian newspaper when it said he met secretly with WikiLeaks Julian Assange. "The Guardian" said he met with Assange in London in 2013, 2015, 2016. A review of Manafort's two passports show he entered Heathrow airport since 2008 on two occasions, 2012 and on another time where the customs stamp years was blurred. It appears to say 2010 or 2016." The point is, that is in court records from his trials, and it kind of falls apart. And it took up a lot of airwaves yesterday.

WALTER: Yes, though it was notable that no other news organization was able -- they said we can't confirm this.

BAIER: We can't confirm this, but here's --

HURT: And they walked it back.

GURDON: And "The Guardian" intro said, "The Guardian has been told." They were not even standing by their own story. They said, we have been told this, but --

BAIER: My point is, in the vacuum of information --

WALTER: Of course, that takes up a lot of -- absolutely. But here's the thing, why would -- to your point about the prosecution is all political -- why would Mueller be cutting a deal with Paul Manafort if he didn't have anything to give him? He would have just prosecuted, this would be over. So there is clearly more that they wanted to get from him that --it's not over.

BAIER: It's not over. They've got something.

WALTER: So they've got something. So the idea that they could just prosecute him and let it be done --

BAIER: Or they think they have something. We just played Jerome Corsi, who is also facing a charge of lying. He was on our channel last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME CORSI: I never met Julian Assange, I have never spoken with him. I never emailed him. I've had no contact with Julian Assange whatsoever. I have been a loyal American. I have no contacts with Russian intelligence. I have no business interest in Russia. I have nothing to do with Russia. I have never been to Russia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Hugo, these denials are pretty straight. Who is telling the truth, who is not? We don't know what Mueller has. He obviously has a lot of investigative months behind him, but it seems to be coming to a head here.

GURDON: It certainly does. These are as categorical denials as one could possibly get. The falling to pieces of the deal that Paul Manafort had with the prosecutor is another sign that this has come to -- I think that Manafort does look like he is looking for a pardon. I think it does raise questions of why the president would want to give him a pardon. All of that, the question of a pardon, the question of a prosecutions, it's all coming to a head, as you say.

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