Whistleblower complaint tees up new standoff between White House and Congress

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Whistleblower complaint tees up new standoff between White House and Congress

Intelligence community worker blows the whistle on President Trump over an alleged promise to a foreign leader; reaction and analysis from the 'Special Report' All-Stars.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," September 19, 2019. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

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REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF., CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: The Director of National Intelligence has made the unprecedented decision not to share the complaint with Congress. We do not know whether the press reports are accurate or inaccurate about the contents of that complaint.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, R-CALIF., HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: I know the media always wants to rush when they think something sensationalist. This is not something I'd ever see the president doing, and I would, instead of jump to conclusions, actually get the facts first.

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BRET BAIER, HOST: Story came from "Washington Post" report about a whistleblower who allegedly told the inspector general the intelligence community about concerns -- urgent concerns -- he had about the president. According to the report, "Trump's interaction with a foreign leader included a promise that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community. It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver. One former official says the communication was a phone call."

The president tweeting about the story. "Another Fake News story out there -- It never ends! Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be many people listening from various U.S. agencies, not to mention those from the other country itself. No problem! Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially "heavily populated" call. I would only do what is right anyway, and only do good for the USA!"

So let's start there with our panel, former White House press secretary, Ari Fleischer, Leslie Marshall, Democratic strategist, and Jonah Goldberg, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. OK, Ari, your thoughts on this story?

ARI FLEISCHER, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Bret, mark me down as curious but highly skeptical. And here's why. When a president makes a phone call to a foreign leader, there's a team of people in the Situation Room of about four or five intelligence officers who are typing every word the president and his counterpart say. That's how a transcript gets created. And that transcript then is shared around the administration as widely or as narrowly as the call requires for people to know that the president talked about.

If there is something indeed that scandalous, that morally objectionable that the president said, it would have leaked. Somebody along that line would've said something before. And the fact that only one intelligence officer has seen this enough to file a whistleblower report and none of the others who have seen it filed a report, it just makes me highly, highly suspect, especially all the other false accusations against this president before. This sounds like another one.

BAIER: Leslie, we saw some early reporting in President Trump's administration about phone calls he had with various leaders about the specifics of those phone calls from transcripts or actually hearing those calls. So this, I guess, falls into that line.

LESLIE MARSHALL, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Yes. So when the president talks about fake news, this is very different than some of the other fake news accusations he's made. There is a transcript. There are written assists to the conversation. We don't know how many certainly within his country. But the statute is very clear.

There obviously seems to be a disagreement between the acting director, Maguire, and the inspector general, who did find this of an urgent nature. And the statute is clear, if that is the case, then he, acting or otherwise, is supposed to provide that information to Congress. So in a sense, he has broken the law. And if there is nothing so damning here, then why isn't Congress being provided with this information right when they requested it? That would be the proper chain of command. It's unprecedented that this is happening, and it's perverting the process, not to follow the process as it has been laid out in the statute and been followed prior.

BAIER: To Leslie's point, here is Adam Schiff on privilege, again, trying to be used by the White House.

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REP. ADAM SCHIFF, D-CALIF., CHAIRMAN, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I don't know whether the White House is directly involved because we can't get an answer to that question. Given that it involves something that the I.G. has already found to be serious and credible and evidence of wrongdoing of one kind or another, there is no privilege that covers that.

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BAIER: Jonah?

JONAH GOLDBERG, CONTRIBUTOR: Well, that's debatable. I believe both the Bush administration and the Obama administration also contested this idea of the statute actually compelling the disclosure of executive privilege stuff. There is, according to a lot of constitutional scholars, a solid argument that the president could have done something absolutely terrible or said something absolutely terrible, and he's still within its constitutional prerogatives to keep that secret. So the law is going to be disputed in all that.

And I take Ari's point, and I generally agree that we should be very skeptical about all of this. There are a lot of people who rushed to judgments or always want to win the race to be wrong first in all this, but there are in fact two people who think this allegation is significant enough. One is the actual whistleblower, and one is the I.G. That should be of concern.

First of all, the president's tweet is odd in that it actually confirms the story. There's nothing that he alludes to that says the story is fake. He actually confirms that this happened basically. The question is whether or not the actual substance of what he said was so terrible. And we just simply do not know. And the problem is that just as President Trump is not exactly a reliable defender of himself on this, he says inappropriate things all the time and has a long record of it. Adam Schiff isn't reliable either. He's gotten way ahead of the facts for the last two years on the Russia probe and lots of other things, and I think we do have to wait for the facts to come in.

BAIER: Ari, what about the concern that presidents should be able to have conversations with foreign leaders without getting out?

FLEISCHER: Absolutely. That's paramount. That's of vital importance for presidents, no matter what your party is, no matter what era you're the president. And presidents need latitude. They need the latitude in a conversation with a foreign leader to be able to say things that they think might move a foreign leader in America's interest, in their direction.

So take for example, as a hypothetical, Bret, let's say he was talking to the North Korean leader, and he said if you were able to make peace, you're going to be the richest guy in the world. We can make you rich because all that business is going to come in. Is that an inducement, is that a bribe, is that something a whistleblower would say you can't do that, or is that a legitimate use of presidential diplomacy to try to achieve a goal for our country? Presidents have an enormous latitude when it comes to intelligence-sharing and diplomacy, properly so.

BAIER: We'll see where this goes. We need more facts. We'll bring them to you here.

Next up, Canada's prime minister in brownface, Israel possibly facing another election. We'll bring you that.

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JUSTIN TRUDEAU, CANADIAN PRIME MINISTER: Darkening your face, regardless of the context or the circumstances, is always unacceptable because of the racist history of blackface. I should have understood that then, and I never should have done it.

ANDREW SCHEER, CANADIAN CONSERVATIVE PARTY LEADER: Wearing brownface is an act of open mockery and racism. What Canadians saw this evening is someone with a complete lack of judgment and integrity, and someone who is not fit to govern this country.

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BAIER: No, it's not the Commonwealth of Virginia and its governor. This is the Canadian prime minister dealing with his own brownface-blackface issue. The pictures, that one an Arabian Nights party, where he was Aladdin. And then we have him dressing up as Harry Belafonte. The prime minister on his second round of apologies. We are back with the panel, start there. Jonah, thoughts?

JONAH GOLDBERG, CONTRIBUTOR: I don't know. Look, there's a reason why we get so many stand-up comedians from Canada. It's just a great net exporter of comedy. I know I'm supposed to be scandalized by the blackface, but once you get past the hypocrisy issues and all of that, it's just -- it's one of the most sanctimonious world leaders who is famously a poster boy for sort of woke social justice stuff being hoist on his own petard. I just have popcorn. I don't have anything profound to say about it.

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: Leslie, to that point, Meghan McCain tweeted out today that at a town hall recently the Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau chastised a woman for saying "mankind" instead of "personkind." And yet here he is dealing with this today.

MARSHALL: I don't want to get on Jonah's bad side, just remind me of that in the future, OK, Bret? With the popcorn there.

(LAUGHTER)

MARSHALL: Look, I included in this group, many of us have done very stupid things in college. But there's a difference between stupid and offensive. He admits what he did was wrong, it was offensive, it is for the Canadian people to decide. I think that the prime minister today -- I would hope -- is a very different person and he was then. I think that we all are. So I think when he says it's personhood, it's personkind, not mankind or womankind, he's speaking not only to the sensitivities of certain people in the community in Canada but throughout the world. And I believed his apology, and we'll see if the voters in Canada do.

BAIER: Election upcoming. Let's turn to something more substantive, Ari, and take a listen to Bibi Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, and they are tied essentially in Israel, and there may be another election. Take a listen.

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BENNY GANTZ, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER CANDIDATE (through translator): I want an intent to set abroad a liberal unity government headed by me, a government that will manifest the will of the people and our promises to the public.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): Benny, it's up to us to form a broad unity government today. The people are expecting from both of us to show responsibility to work together. And therefore, I tell you, Benny, let's meet today and any time to move this forward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: So the challenge, Ari, is to form this government, and just talk to somebody about the importance of what this means, if this leadership changes, or what it means for the U.S.

FLEISCHER: Well, two points, Bret. Number one, in terms of Israeli politics and what comes next, it is now a game of maneuvers. In order to get 61 seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, you start cutting deals with everybody left, right, center, up and down. And political ideology in Israel becomes real flexible. People start forming alliances with groups that they hate if it will get them there 61 votes, and that's what's happening behind the scenes now. Both parties are doing it, Blue and White among with Likud, Netanyahu's Likud, Benny's Blue and White.

In terms of what the implications are, especially in America, if anybody in America is thinking getting rid of Netanyahu is going to lead to a different Israeli defense policy or foreign policy or security policy or that they will renegotiate the deal with Iran or they will be a coming out for a two-state solution, forget it. There is little difference between Benny Gantz and Benjamin Netanyahu when it comes to security positions. Bibi is seen as tougher, he's been reviled by the press. But any American who expects a big difference on those foreign policy issues, this election is not about that.

BAIER: Netanyahu is not, Jonah, coming to the U.N. General Assembly, obviously trying to form this coalition government and stay the leader. Meantime, President Trump was asked about it and said the U.S. is friends with Israel, even after a very close friendship with Bibi Netanyahu.

GOLDBERG: I think his exact statement was our relationship is with Israel and not just Netanyahu, and I think that's the exact correct thing for Donald Trump to say. And one of the reasons why I agree with almost everything Ari says about this, one of the reasons why this is so hard, though, to form this coalition is that the Blue and White Party is actually basically just an anti-Netanyahu coalition. It is not really -- it is still -- it's got liberal members, but there's a broad consensus around a lot of these policies in Israel. There's just an enormous amount of Netanyahu fatigue. We don't see that in America because Bibi Netanyahu, particularly among Republicans, is very, very popular, but he's been around for an enormous amount of time in Israeli politics, longest-serving prime minister, and a lot of people are just sick of him. He's got some corruption issues. I think some of that is unfair. And so it just makes it very difficult for Benny Gantz to agree when his singular issue was getting Netanyahu out of their to serve under another Netanyahu prime ministership.

BAIER: Leslie, I owe some time next time.

MARSHALL: OK.

BAIER: Panel, thank you very much. When we come back, you are never too old to follow your dreams or relive the good old days.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BAIER: Finally tonight, one jump at a time, you're never too old to jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you ready?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: World War II veteran Tom Rice is another step closer to his goal of leaping out of planes at the age of 100. The 98-year-old caused a sensation in June by parachuting into Normandy for the 75th anniversary of D-Day. This time his landing zone was in the Netherlands, and he described the jump as perfect. Look forward to more jumps on the way to 100.

Thanks for inviting us into your home. That is it for this “Special Report,” fair, balanced, and unafraid.

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