Transcripts For CNNW Anderson Cooper 360 20161213

From some very prominent republican senators, even raising questions as to whether or not he would be confirmed at all. As of now, trump advisers saying the president elect has not backed off the fielding that that is the direction he wants to go. But as everybody always cautions, hes the one who will make that final decision and that final decision will be announced tomorrow morning. The bigger question right now, i think, is what wont be annou e announced this week. As you note, it was how the president elect was going to handle conflicts of interest, clear conflicts of interest that arise because of his very real and very Large Business empire. He was the one, the president elect, that touted this News Conference, this decisionmaking, this legal structure to separate himself from his business. Now, there have been a lot of questions, not just externally but also internally, how the president elect actually planned on doing this. The reality is this, transition Officials Say the president elect has been focused primarily on personnel, cabinet picks and certainly the stream of people inside and out, anderson, of the building behind me makes that true. Also the reality is they are not there yet. This is a very complicated process, one lawyers have been trying to work through the legal thicket of over the last couple of weeks and they are not to a conclusive place yet. There are people inside the trump operation that are wary of how little the trump operation, or the president elect wants to separate himself from that business. So there are questions still and until those questions are answered, we will not find out how he plans on separating himself from the business. Right now, anderson, the president elect saying hes going to wait until january to make that announcement. What that actual date will be, still unclear. And we dont really know, i mean, theres thats the bottom line, we dont really know exactly what he means. He talked about removing himself from operational control but not ownership of the businesses, themselves. Reporter yeah, thats exactly right. Trump officials that ive spoken to have said that he wants to leave the operational stake but maintain an ownership stake and obviously wants to still have his children heavily involved in running the business. That just presents inherent conflicts of interest. No matter how far he steps away from the daily operations of the business, so long as he holds the stake in the business and has family members still operating that business, ethics lawyer on both sides of the aisle made clear conflicts will continue to present themselves. Thats whats drawn concern, anderson, inside the trump operation. Do they need to move further away from things so this isnt an issue that will hound them repeatedly over the course of the first year of his presidency . They dont have a final answer to that. Now the election, whether a foreign power tried to influence it. President elect trump says he doesnt believe russian computer hackers tried to sway the outcome on orders from the kremlin in his favor. Tonight, though, leading prublg can lawmakers in the house and senate joined the bipartisan call to lack into the cias assessment. We should point out the fbi doesnt at this point share the cias view on the question of intent, whether the hackers were trying to tip the election for donald trump in part because their job is proving cases in court beyond a reasonable doubt. Now all that said, the f president elect simply trashed the findings and to some by extension the Intelligence Community that reached them and keeping them honest, whatever you think of the findings his rebuttal includes a number of claims that are not factually true. Today he tweeted unless you catch hackers in the act, its hard to determine who did the hacking. Why wasnt this brought up before the election . Keeping them honest, the penetration of Democratic National committees Computer Network was first reported on june 14th during the election. The private Computer Security firm, crowdstrike, identified a pair of hacking groups cozybear and fancybear with alleged ties to russian intelligence. October 7th, the director of National Intelligence released the following statement, reads in part the u. S. Intelligence community is confident that the russian government directed the recent compromise of emails from u. S. Persons and institutions including from u. S. Political organizations. So keeping them honest, it certainly was discussed before the election. In a moment, what senior trump adviser Kellyanne Conway has to say about it. She joins me. First evan perez on the investigation that could be getting under way very soon. What are your sources telling you, evan . Well, anderson, the president elect may not be buying it just yet but theres wide agreement in the u. S. Intelligence community and Law Enforcement that the russian intelligence was behind the hacks and the release of these emails that were damaging to Hillary Clintons campaign. Where theres still a little bit of difference as you mentioned is exactly what was the motivation of Vladimir Putin to order this disinformation operation . The cia in recent weeks shifted its assessment and now believes that theres enough evidence to say that the russians were trying to get trump elected. Part of the reason for that is the hackers also got into some republican organizations, but we havent seen much yet released about republicans. The fbi isnt quite ready to go there just yet. They believe that theres a mix of motivations including that just simply underminding the u. S. Democratic systems. Now, this is the kind of thing that the russians have been doing in other countries. Right now in germany, for instance, which has an election coming up, anderson. And the cias allegedly developed new information in recent weeks. Do we know what that was . We dont know exactly what it was, but we know that even before the election, the cia was reed d ready to make this assessment that russia was trying to help trump. Were told they gained some new information from some of their sources and theres evidence that investigators have found, anderson, an army of fake social media accounts that posted negative stories about Hillary Clinton also had tieses to russia. Now, theres still a lot of investigative work to do, a lot of this is circumstantial evidence. We expect that congress will do some of these investigations as well. But democrats want a special Committee Like the ones that republicans used to investigate benghazi. Were not sure that thats exactly where theyre going to go right now. All right. Evan perez, thanks very much. Right now as we mentioned reaction from a top adviser to the president elect. I spoke to Kellyanne Conway just before airtime. Kellyanne, cnn now reporting donald trump is delaying his thursday News Conference on the future of the Trump Organization, going to make the announcement in january according to two transition forces. Im wondering a, can yuko you confirm that . The president elect made a big deal in scheduling this announcement. Anderson, it is true. The press announcement has been delayed until january. As the Trump Organization experts and other counsel are trying to decide which is the best organizing structure for the Trump Organization going forward. As you know, its a very unconventional situation. Normally we have politicians moving from political job to political job. This case, we have a very successful businessman whos brilliant and a billionaire who has assets and holdings all over the globe and that needs to have a fans ftransfer of power throu proper channels to his Adult Children, don jr. , ivanka and eric. Tiffany is involved in law school. Theres no reason to rush that if the procedures are not ready. So we expect a very minor delay owing to the fact there are holidays in between now and the end of the year as well. Sensitive to that. But the same questions that will be asked and the same answers that will be provided will just be delayed a few weeks. Does this in any way change his stated decision to step away from operational control or the operational running of his company but retain ownership which is obviously a Sticking Point to a lot of his critics . At the moment, it does not. What it does is make more clear how convoluted and complex many of these Business Holdings are. Meaning hes just a man whos been incredibly successful and has holdings all across the globe. So its everybody wants to make sure they get it right, and to get it right, you have to get proper legal counsel, accountants, lawyers, obviously other Corporate Officers involved. And his expectation remains that he will cede operational control of the Trump Organization to his Adult Children and other Corporate Officers whom he trusts and have worked for him for many years so that he can focus 100 of his time and attention on being president of the United States. All right. Lets move on. Donald trump yesterday, he called the cias report of russian hacking to benefit him in the election, or reports about that, ridiculous and said, it was just another excuse. He also said he doesnt believe it. Is the president elect unequivocally saying that russia had absolutely nothing to do with this election . Nothing to do with attempting to or hacking into to try to influence this election . What the president elect is saying, anderson, is there are many people out there who still, 35 days later, are trying to deny the Election Results and they were out in full force this weekend trying to conflate and draw a nexus between unsubstantiated reports, unsourced, unnamed, quotes in newspapers, and certainly whats been a rift between fbi and cia officials about the conclusions of this report, theyre trying to get people to think that russia intentionally interfered with the election and this is why Hillary Clinton lost the election. First, it was jim comeys fault, then were going to have a recount in three states which ended up in an embarrassing mess. Millions of dollars spe s spent all we did was gain more votes for donald trump then it was russian interference, then, of course, we give a plat tomorrow form to people weve never met who we denounced. Everybodys fault except Hillary Clintons, she was a terrible candidate. Does the president elect believe there was russianbacked hacking . Look, what he was asked yesterday that led to his words was do you believe they somehow upset the election result . And thats what they did. And he said no, he thinks its ridiculous, its an attempt to undermine what was a 306 elect r ral vote rout. Is he going to attempt what russias role was . He wont interfere with an investigation. Hes the president of the United States. The legislature can do what it wants. Lets make very clear that the cia in this case put out a press release, there is no report for you and me to read. There are leaks, very unfortunate leaks, what should concern us as americans. Leaks there a confidential closed Door House Intelligence Committee meeting where people are leaking, cia is leaking, somebody in the house is leaking and the fbi is coming back and saying theres not a consensus view, its, quote, fuzzy and ambiguous, its not at all clear. Yet people are supposed to be led to believe that somehow this caused the election result. We know what caused the election result. We know why she lost. The president elect tweeted this morning, said unless you catch hackers in the act, its very hard to determine whos doing the hacking. Why wasnt this brought up before the election . The fact of the matter was this was brought up before the election. Not like hes coming out of nowhere. We did stories about it. A press release on october 7th about election security. They said the u. S. Intelligence community is confident the russian government directed the recent compromises of emails from the u. S. They did say the russian government, they believe, is behind it. So it was discussed. Well, the reason they didnt say it was an attempt to support donald trump is because theres no evidence there was a and b, the partisans on the other side never expected that he would win. And so they didnt even care. Its like anything else just arrogantly dismissing a bunch of wrist flickers arrogantly dismissing anything that they could have used to say, wait a second, i need to raise the alarm bells. President obama was on the stump many days for Hillary Clinton. He chose what to talk about as president elect, wouldnt he, as president , why is he so convinced that russia had nothing to do with it . Is again, im not saying about whether or not russia wanted him elected or whether it had any impact on the actual election. The elections done, you know, and Donald Trumps going to be the president. But doesnt donald trump want to get to the bottom of Cyber Security in the United States . And whether or not russia was absolutely, yes, he does and he wants to get to the bottom of all Cyber Security, not just that that seems to be overly pretty sioliticized at this mom. Anderson, this smells like politics plain and simple. We in the Trump Presidency dont want Foreign Governments interfering in our elections. Thats very clear. We also dont want intelligence interfering in our politics, but we certainly dont want what we have now which is politics interfering in our intelligence. It does sound like what youre saying, though, is that the plenty of people on the Trump Transition Team and also the president elect believes that politics is behind this. Do you believe, then, that the cia essentially is in some way opposed to donald trump as president or trying to in some way influence things now . I mean, it sounds like youre saying theyre politicizing intelligence or at least by leaking or whoever it is, putting out leaks. I would never paint with such a broad brush to implicate the cia. We have faith in the Intelligence Community. Donald trump was asked that question squarely this weekend, do you have faith in the Intelligence Community . Turned around and said, i do. He does. We all do. So were not talking about the cia here. Were talking about a few peo e people, apparently, who are leaking information to journalists, maybe to curry favor. And, you know, theres always going to be somebody in there that doesnt support, but i would commend to your viewers to read the newsweek article that was posted last night. No friend of donald trump, the president elects. Theyre even showing not too fast, rushing to judgment here, this needs to be done competently and cohesively, that all of these facts have not been knitted together yet sufficiently that would bring us to the conclusion many are making and many want your viewers to assume here which is it was russia, maybe jim comey, sprinkle in a little bernie sanders, how dare he won, russian interference, the altright. Its everybodys fault but Hillary Clinton. Im not going to allow them to confuse this. Right. You know what, you want to attack me, you want to attack the president elect, folks, go, but guess what, not going to allow you to undercut 62 millionplus voters who went to the polls because they believed in donald trump. I mean, i hear your argument that this is yet another in a long litany of things that democrats have come up as get over it already, guys. But, you know, you do have significant republicans, major republicans, calling for an investigation and obviously youre saying thats something the president will got stanot s the way of. You want to ask you about president elect trumps Intelligence Briefings. We talked about this briefly in the past. Hes getting them once a week, not a Daily Briefing briefing. I think the Vice President elect may be getting Daily Briefings. He said hes, quote, a smart person and doesnt need to be called the same thing every day. Congressman adam schiff tweeted today saying if trump was as smart as he claims to be, hed understand how little he knows and how much hell come to defend on the intel community. K why doesnt wow. People are really bold on twitter. We have a democratic congressman referring to the next president of the United States as not that smart . I think thats unfortunate. He should rethink that. At the same time, the president legitimate hpresiden president elect has access to all types of information and avails himself of that including the Intelligence Briefings. I dont have a topsecret clearance. Neither does adam schiff, certainly. Neither do people watching right now. They dont know exactly what hes receiving. Anybody who says otherwise, again, anderson, is leaking information. Can you say whether or not hes receiving daily Intelligence Briefings from the Intelligence Community . I wont comment on that. I will tell you that theyre available to him and he receives information regularly. We should be concerned about House Intelligence Committee leaks. We should be concerned about the cia and the fbi arguing about what is and is not true or is and is not proven through the press. I know people want to know and were going to be, and are, a very transparent transition and presidency, but at the same time, these are Intelligence Briefings. This is meant to protect us all. So im just very careful before i say too much about that. Kellyanne conway, good to talk to you as always. Thanks. Thank you, anderson. Our conversation covered a lot more ground. See the entire sbrir at ac360. Com. Breaking news about the president elect delaying his Business Announcement and Donald Trumps claim he does not need to get the kind of daily Intelligence Briefings other president s and president lengts ha elects have gotten for decades. More ahead. With advil, youll ask what bad knee . What throbbing head . Advil makes pain a distant memory nothing works faster stronger or longer what pain . Advil. Explore your Treatment Options with specialists who treat only cancer. Every stage. Every day. At Cancer Treatment centers of america. Learn more at cancercenter. Com experts it has long been called storm of tiny bubbles, the champagne of beers. If youve got the time welcome to the high life. Weve got the beer miller beer the breaking news, president elect trumps announcement on conflicts of interest with his Business Empire delayed to next month, supposed to be later this week. One of his top advisers just moments ago explaining why. Does this in any way change his stated decision to step away from operational control or the operational running of his company but retain ownership which is obviously a Sticking Point to a lot of his critics . At the moment, it does not. What it does is make more clear how convoluted and complex many of these Business Holdings are meaning hes a man whos been incredibly successful and has holdings all across the globe. Everybody wants to make sure they get it right and to get it right, you have to get proper legal counsel, accountants, lawyers, obviously other Corporate Officers involved. And his expectation remains that he will cede operational control of the Trump Organization to his Adult Children and other Corporate Officers whom he trusts and have worked for him for many years. So that he can focus 100 of his time and attention on being president of the United States. So theres that. Weve also just learned president elect trump will announce or says hes going to announce his secretary of state tomorrow morning. Want to bring back our political panel, cnn political analyst, david gregory, author of hows your faith an unlikely spiritual journey. Guys written a little bit about new things, words for the president elects disdain for the truth. Cnn political analyst Carl Bernstein joins us. Trump supporter Kayleigh Mceneny is here. Democratic strategist jonathan tecini. Trump supporter Alice Stewart johns us along with radio host and democrat, bill press. This announcement, donald trump tweeting out hes going to announce secretary of state tomorrow. Weve seen such a cavulcade of potential nominees. Seems like the exxonmobil Ceo Rex Tillerson is the leading candidate at this point, also raises the questions about what was that stuff about mitt romney, that was for real, was that Something Else . I suspect that was for real. There may have been some aspect of it to extract a certain amount of graveling from romney. I think he was going about this in a pretty rigorous way thinking about how he wanted to be represented around the word, who he wanted around him. Rex tillerson is a very unconventional, but interesting choice. An excellent businessman, somebody with a lot of experience and global experience. Global experience with a lot of foreign leaders whos traveling the world, who knows Vladimir Putin well. And in fact, that good relationship, that close relationship, which is not to suggest that somehow hes chummy with putin but understands the power dynamic with putin and has been critical of the Obama Administration, thats going to be a real lightning rod among republicans and democrats, going to be a unifying area of criticism for tillerson, not to mention the fact that democrats are thinking about, okay, where are you going to oppose some of his nominees . On tillerson, its not just russia, its also Climate Change. Hes been a little more evolved on Climate Change than other energy ceos. Theres going to with a lot of flak. The only aspect of watching trump on this, is he perhaps watching to see what the reactions been the past few days and what it could be on the hill and maybe he makes a lastminute other choice . Doesnt appear to be that way, but he put it out there and hes waiting a few days before you already have some republican quhs who raised conc about tillerson, about potential relationship with Vladimir Putin, whether hed stand up to putin if necessary. I think this is go toing ing looked at in the context of all the National Security appointees together and if somehow tillerson can project that he is going to ride herd on some of the more, quote, radical decisions that the president elect had made about who he wants as his National Security team, especially mike flynn who is uniquely unqualified for the job and most people on the hill, i think, at this point, believe that, that maybe tillerson can be convincing that he can bring some order and some substantial knowledge to this process that right now is looking very shaky. I would think as david says, theres going to be some real opposition because, look, look at what we just have heard about the russians and what they have been doing in our elections. And well talk more about that denial by the Trump Campaign of not even wanting to know what happened and i think the attitude that we see by the appointment, by the appointee is going to have a lot to do with how he does. Tillerson has told people, anderson, he thinks the key to dealing with putin is toughness. So i dont think the signal is chumminess. I think its toughness which he thought was lacking in the obama team. Its also interesting because, you know, for donald trump i think a lot of his views on the world are transactional. Its, you know, looking at trade deals, its rethinking nato relationships, its rethinking deals, you could argue tillerson is an interesting choice because he does come from a business background and, again, many of those relationships are transactional. Theres no doubt about it, the one issue that needs to be resolved, if donald trump wants do be reelected, is trade. This is the reason wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania broke for republican and they havent broken that way since the 1980s. Its because people are so badly hurting in this area. If you want someone who can navigate a relationship with china, a thicket with russia, can kind of hammer out new trade deals like nafta, renegotiating nafta, not engaging in tpp, Rex Tillerson is the guy. He knows trade. He knows economics. And to davids point, i think david is absolutely right on the russia issue, hes going to be tough with russia, understands the dynamic there. I dont think people need to worried on that front. He was recommended by Condoleezza Rice and bob gates, hardly prorussian figures. I just want to pick up on the point that david made around Climate Change which is something we sort of avoid often when we talk about secretary of state. Remember, john kerry played a very big role in negotiating the global Climate Change agreements. It is troubling to me that first of all you have a president elect, donald trump, who i consider to be a deranged individual who is a climate skeptic, not skeptic. Hes a denier. He does not believe that Climate Change is a result of human activity. So youve got him appointing the head of the Third Largest oil and gas company in the world. You match that with the guy who hes going to appoint to be the head of the epa, whos hostile to the actual mission of the epa and all then you come to a conclusion is our planet is in great danger if you connect those three people. Trump who doesnt believe in Climate Change, tillerson who runs the Third Largest Energy Company and pruitt. Let me ask you about donald trump not receiving Intelligence Briefings or not receiving them daily as past president elects. Does that concern you at all . Does it surprise you . I think right now clearly his focus is on building his cab depende cabinet, building his administration with the top and best qualified he hasnt given any indication thats going to change as president. He said, look, im a smart guy, they can change me if something changes, they can have a direct line to me but i dont need this stuff every day. Clearly hes going to have his top people in those Daily Briefings and alert him if the situation arises. As he indicated yesterday, hes one minute away if they need to phone him for information or to advise him on something. He will be is that good enough . One thing about, to davids point on trying to be chummy with russia, look, we learned that was a mistake when Hillary Clinton tried to hit the reset button when barack obama shunned mitt romney with his concerns with russia. We know with tillerson, he has a great relationship with putin but that is as a ceo, selling goods and services. Hes going to wear a different hat in this role. He will be americas diplomat. And he understands the complete difference in the two. Fair enough. Bill . Ill pick up on a trump about tillerson, i think hes a good man in the wrong job. Look, weve learned businessmen the idea you take a guy whos successful to business and put him in a Public Service position, government position, it doesnt always work. Remember robert mcthat mancnama otherses and making business deals is not the same American People seem to disagree with you because they elected donald trump. Anderson, the American People disagree with me i knew you were going to say that. On the briefings, look, theres no more important job than the president than to keep us safe. Thats his number one job. He finds out about the threats all over the world in those Daily Briefings. What concerns me, i think should concern all of us, that theres so much that we dont know about threats all over the world. He hasnt even taken the time yet to get up to speed on what those threats are and now hes not going to well talk to our panel more about that also including president elect trumps break with decades of tradition about these president ial Daily Briefings. Well be right back. R a mortgag, that newly listed ranch will be gone. Or, you could push that button. Sfx rocket launching. Skip the bank. Get approved in minutes. Lift the burden of getting a home loan with Rocket Mortgage by quicken loans. whisper rocket wont replace the full value of your totaled new car. The guy says you picked the wrong insurance plan. No, i picked the wrong insurance company. With Liberty Mutual new car replacement™, you wont have to worry about replacing your car because youll get the full value back including depreciation. And if you have more than one Liberty Mutual policy, you qualify for a multipolicy discount, saving you money on your car and home coverage. Call for a free quote today. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. [ cougshh. I have a cold with this annoying runny nose. Better take something. Dayquil liquid gels doesnt treat a runny nose. It doesnt . Alkaseltzer plus cold and cough liquid gels fight your worst cold symptoms including your runny nose. Oh, what a relief it is vo its the holidays at verizon, and the best deals are on the best network. With no surprise overages, you can use your data worry free and even carry over the data you dont use. And right now get four lines and 20 gigs for only 40 per line. Youll even get the Samsung Galaxy s7, the pixel phone by google, or the motoz droid for only 10 per month. Hurry, these offers end soon. Get the best deals and the best network, only on verizon. On top of the breaking news on the secretary of state pick and the delayed announcement of what becomes of the trump Business Empire, were talking tonight about computer hacking. Alleged russian involvement, alleged attempts to sway the election. Later well look at the growing tension with china. It adds up to a potentially dangerous world, certainly a fastmoving, fastchanging world. With all that as bill press mentioned before the break, donald trump said he doesnt need to do what every president and president elect has done for decades, get a daily intelligence briefing. Back now with the panel. Carl, how big a deal do you think this is . Trump supporters will say, look, different people consume information in different ways. Kellyanne conway says he has it available to him if he wants it, and he gets information from a lot of different areas. This whole attitude is a huge deal because the president of the United States demonstrably is not interested in the truth. I just watched kellyanne. I was on a program with her, the two of us the other night, and she steam rolls as a propagandist without going to the question of truth. We need to know what happened. We need a president of the United States who wants it know what happened with the russians. Hes shown no demonstrable interest in a truthful, contextual picture of almost anything that he has pronounced himself on since the election. Well and but, no, lets really look at what this is factually. This is a filibuster. This is saying, no, while Mitch Mcconnell, john mccain, republicans, democrats, say we need to find out, why doesnt the president elect of the United States want to know . This is not about making excuses for Hillary Clinton and why she lost. She lost. They won. Why cant these people, kellyanne particularly, be magnanimous in victory . Alice . This is part of the equation. One of the things with all due respect, he never said he didnt want the investigation with regard to hacking. He never said that. He pushed back. The point is, i think its very important were all cautious not to reach a conclusion before we have the investigation. A couple points she said they wont stand in the way, not saying he embraces it, wants to work with is. The fbi has said theres not a universal view between the links actually, no, what the fbi said, its a question of motive, whether they we trying to influence the election for donald trump but there does seem to be agreement, again, a lot of this comes from leaks, that russia was involved. I think you asked about the president ial briefings. Were talking ant the hacking. But in general, he seems to not be interested as carl pointed out in actually understanding the facts of the world and you go back to, it was now a week or two ago when he made the call to taiwan, all of those kinds of things you would understand in president ial briefings and Intelligence Briefings, especially, remember, he has had he knew what he was doing that was premeditated. Hes had no experience in this. Weve had these probably going back to ronald reagan, the you had a governor, clinton, who had no experience who consumed those kinds of Intelligence Briefings. When they came in. And in order to understand what was happening in the world. I want to say what i think is important, certa important, several things can be true at the same time. This kind of investigation can so easily become politicized and i think youre exactly right, alice, you cannot draw conclusions but when Kellyanne Conway tells you this smells like politics, know, in fact, it smells like an attack on the country. Thats right. This was an act of war. Senator mccain says that. No, no, thats an objective truth. This is a Foreign Government interfering. We dont know to what end. We just know there was interference. It should be investigated. Sounds like trumps on board with that. This should not be drawn out to get into a political fight, therefore, he wanted him to become president. You can look circumstantially and see Vladimir Putin probably prefers to have donald trump for a host of reasons. Thats a separate issue. Any president has to respect the institution to know that this kind of intrusion is something that could very much come to hurt the United States. What about that . Donald trump says, look, you know, they respect the cia and the Intelligence Community yet at the same time hes not getting these briefings and they put out a statement, the transition team, saying remember wmd, Intelligence Community, cia said there were wmd in iraq. Weve seen a historic level of politicized arms of government that are not supposed to be politicized under this president starting with the ira bullying tea party groups, going all the way. We found out a Congressional Task force, this is fact, put out two months ago a report showing sentcom actually falsified intelligence reports to try to placate the president and make it seem that there was a rosy picture of isis. There have been real troubling questions that weve seen go on under the Obama Administration. And this has become politicized. Not because of donald trump but because of the democrats. You have john podesta sending out a letter saying electors deserve to be briefed on this, russia did not meddle in machines. Russia did not change votes on the election day. The American People had their say and they chose donald trump david you have the editorial page of the wall street journal and the democrats saying why not just why not make public what their findings are . I agree with you, but can quickly become politicized. What im saying is as a president elect you got to go bigger here. Anyone will rule the day if they think this is a political argument and ignores the interference. Heres what concerns me and i think should concern all americans. Lets focus on what weve got here. It is war. It is cyber warfare. Thats what this is happening here. We know the russians were hacking into the democratic system and into some republican sources as well. We know that. The Obama Administration knew it in the summer and did nothing. Congress knew it in the summer and did nothing. And now donald trump is putting out all this baloney saying democrats are releasing this. It didnt come from the Democratic Party. It came from our intelligence agencies. 17 of them agree that russia was doing this hacking. To blame it on the democrats and say its all political is just Mitch Mcconnell wants this. Hes hardly a great friend were going to have much more ahead on this subject. Also were going to dig deeper on just what kind of information is in a president ial daily brief . Ill talk to two former Intelligence Officers ahead. Dont let the food you eat during the day haunt you at night. Nexium 24hr. Shuts down your stomachs active acid pumps. To stop the burn of frequent heartburn. All day and night. Have we seen them before . Banish the burn with nexium 24hr. Thosthey are. Sses . Do i look smarter . Yeah, a little. Youre making money now, are you investing . Well, ive been doing some research. Let me introduce you to our broker. How much does he charge . I dont know. Okay. Uh, do you get your fees back if youre not happy . dad laughs wow, youre laughing. Thats not the way the world works. Well, the worlds changing. Are you asking enough questions about the way your wealth is managed . Wealth management, at charles schwab. Keeping the power lines clear,my job to protect public safety, while also protecting the environment. The Natural World is a beautiful thing, the work that we do helps us protect it. Public education is definitely a big part of our job, to teach our customers about the best type of trees to plant around the power lines. We want to keep the power on for our customers. We want to keep our community safe. This is our community, this is where we live. We need to make sure that we have a beautiful place for our children to live. Together, were building a better california. As we were talking about, a Bipartisan Group of lawmakers is calling for an investigation into russias role in the u. S. President ial election. A move sparked by the cias conclusion that Russian Hackers intervened to help donald trump win. President elect trump dismised the cia assessment calling it ridiculous. In an interview on fox news sunday, he said he doesnt need daily president ial Intelligence Briefings. I dont have to be told, you know, im like a smart person, i dont have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years. Could be eight years, but eight years. I dont need that. But i do say if something should change, let us know. Now in the meantime, my generals are great, are being briefed and mike pence is being briefed who is, by the way, one of my very good decisions. Hes terrific. And theyre being briefed and im being briefed also. According to a u. S. Official, mr. Trump has been getting the president s daily brief as its called once a week on average. Its one of the number of departures from protocol hes made. Joining me, correspondent jim sciutto. What is the latest on this . Anderson, not to use the word unprecedented, but the president ial daily brief, the pdb, has been a product that the Intelligence Community produces for the president expressly and every president since jfk has been taking advantage of this every day. And we did a special on this last year, you have 16 u. S. Intelligence agencies that gather all the latest information about all the threats facing the u. S. , from terrorism to war, to cyber hacking, you name it, and their intention every day is to bring new information every day. And keep in mind, you have the country at war in two places, afghanistan and iraq, you have cyber attacks, you have the terror threat. And their intention in this product is to be updating the president every day, not repeating old information. So past president select have taken advantage of it much more. To be fair, the Trump Transition Team said as they get closer to inauguration day, he will take advantage of this more often, but to this point, its unprecedented how seldom he takes advantage of the pdb. You got new information about the Intelligence Community is russian hacking that it was reporter thats right. To be clear, listening to the panel earlier, theres no disput in the Intelligence Community, fbi, democrats or republicans, that it was russia that did the electionrelating hacking. The only question is what was the intention of this . Was it just to disrupt the process or was it to give an advantage to either candidate . Theres not conclusive evidence but what im told is theres growing confidence inside the i. C. , the Intelligence Community, that this was intended to help donald trump in part because of this new information we have, that in addition to hacking the dnc and Democratic Party officials, that Russian Hackers also hacked gop house members, gop party organizations, gop thought leaders, but they didnt release that information or at least not most of it and because they did release on almost a daily basis information targeting the Democratic Party, but not information they gleaned targeting the republican party, thats adding to the Intelligence Communitys confidence that the intention was to help trump and weaken Hillary Clinton. All right. Jim, i appreciate the details. Lot to discuss. Joining us, cnn counterterrorism analyst, former ci, and fbi official phil mudd. Cnn intelligence and security analyst, former cia officer bob baer. Phil, how big a deal do you think it is the president elect is not getting daily president ial briefings . I dont think its a huge deal. I think thats the wrong question. Theres a variety of avenues a president can get information, written product, briefing product as the president elect, himself, said, his Vice President is getting this information every day. Lets hope there are filters putting information to him, whats happening in aleppo today, attacks in the middle east over the weekend, theres a political crisis in south korea right across the border from north korea. I think the question is about trust. Going forward when youre looking at things like russian involvement in ukraine, russian involvement in syria, whats happening with the Iran Nuclear Deal that the president opposes . Does the president trust what hes getting or is he going to step back and say my advisers will give me what to think, i dont want to hear from the cia. Is is it a danger if he doesnt trust what hes getting . Its absolutely a danger. He already said im going to filter information through people i advise. Those are political advisers. Your sensors, antenna are going to go up at the cia because theres one message theyll hear in langley, virginia, as soon as we get a filter going to the oval office, that fit facililte going to have an interest. That filter is going to weed out what we say and color the intelligence. Thats a problem. Bob, in your oopinion, the daily intelligence briefing, how important is it . Well, for this president , absolutely crucial, anderson. He doesnt understand foreign policy, he doesnt understand the nuances, he doesnt understand the players and he doesnt understand how important the pdb is and he needs to catch up and hes not right now. Let me give you an example, when i was in the field once, there was a threat, they were digging revetments for missiles, surfacetosurface to hit american ships. I sent that report in. That went in the pdb. The president , himself, decided to pull a ship off the shore because he didnt want to go to war, he didnt want to test this. Thats the kind of detail he would be getting in the pdb which hes doesnt seem interested in now and i think this is going to lead to a serious, serious crisis that hes not free paprepared for. You know, phil, earlier when i talked to Kellyanne Conway, she sort of intimated this is being politicized, the whole notion of the russian hacking, whether it was an attempt to support donald trump in the election. That the leaking of it, politics is behind it, she smells politics in this. Is that a possibility that the cia is responding to political pressure or has some political ideas of their own . Boy, let me fig wrure this o anderson. We went through eight years of president bush. Last i checked, a cardcarrying republican candidate who supported the cia time and time again and whose father was once a cia director. Right. When he came into office, his father said one thing you got to do, you got to listen to the cia daily brief. I dont understand how you can look at a cia that said we will help a republican president save america from another catastrophic attack then years later say, well, the cia is antirepublican, theyre out to get us. I dont get how you can make that leap. Theyre there to kent keconnect dots on facts, not to support a political party. Whether there were russian hacks connected to the elections, i guess the two distinct questions are, you know, what happened, how did it happen, also what was the motive . That seems to be what the difference is between right now the fbi, according to public reporting, and cia about what the motive was. Was it to help donald trump or not . Is that the way you see it . I think the motivation was, russians tell me this, i do believe the russians did hack hillarys emails and podestas and that was to simply weaken her and they never considered that trump would be elected and ultimately they were going to use more emails and they do have more against hillary when she became president maybe for a special prosecutor, bring up some financial stuff. I think the russians were as surprised as everybody else he was elected president , but theres no doubt the person they wanted to go after was Hillary Clinton because of the ukraine, because of georgia and on and on and on because they considered her the enemy of russia. Question is, we just have to get this stuff out. We need to see the forensics on this in what the russian russias were and unless we do, its going to hang over our heads. Yeah. Trump presidency is legitimate. Phil, whatever the motivation, clearly just moving forward, one wants to know the details on this so it doesnt happen again. Thats correct, but this is an area where i would support president elect trump and be sideways with the cia. Lets be clear about the difference between what happened and why. My experience in the intelligence business is you can say the russians were behind it. As soon as you transition to say i know whats going on in the heads of the people in the kremlin, im as skeptical as the president of the United States, or the upcoming president. I think hes right to say, maybe the russians had motivations we dont understand. On the other hand, wrong to say that we dont know what happened. We do. The russians were at it. Phil mudd, bob baer. Just ahead, ill talk to garry kasparov. Who wrote in his book about the threat Vladimir Putin poses. Well have more ahead. [ crowd noise ] whoa. [ gears stopping ] when your pain reliever stops working, your whole day stops. Try this. But just one aleve has the strength to stop pain for 12 hours. Tylenol and advil can quit after 6. So live your whole day, not part. With 12 hour aleve. As weve said, president elect trump says he does not believe the russian hack terse tried to sway the president ial election in his favor. Hes called the idea ridiculous. Prodemocracy advocate, it makes total sense. In his book, why winter is coming, he warned against the dangers of appeasing putin. And garry joins us now. You have no doubt russia is behind this. And do you believe you have no doubt about what their motive was . No, thats lets stick with the facts. Vladimir putin, global propaganda machine, help trump to be elected. Look at social media, the factors of trolls, theyve been actively promoting trump and trying to undermine Hillary Clinton, both in english and in russian. Probably in other languages, but i dont read them. Now, we can also see the pattern. In many european companies, we have warnings from intelligence communities, like in germany, sweden, and in many other places, about russians trying to undermine the democratic properties and to steal secret documents from prospective governments. It hasnt just been targeting the United States. No, no, no, its across europe, and thats why if you undermine cia and fbi agent, you should also, you know, undermine reports from intelligence communities across europe. Obviously, putin wanted trump to be elected, and in russia, because russian domestic propaganda has been presenting trump as someone who would change dramatically the relations, bashing obama for centuries and expecting trump to leave sanctions and build personal relations with putin. I think putin could also sense that trump would essentially be an agent, someone who could make a deal. Who would undermine nato and other, you know, international institutions. In favor of, you know, meeting directly with Vladimir Putin. Whether putin had something tangible with trump, we dont know. But probably, today, we should ask for more than ever to see whether there was a amount of russian money, bankruptcy 2008, 2009. When you read that winter is coming, obviously, im a game of thrones watcher, i know that the white walkers in game of thrones. Whats that mean in Politics Today . History goes in cycles. And its not a Climate Change. Its something thats happening. And i have to put all the blame on the Obama Administration by being soft on putin and right to appease putin, which didnt work before. You think putin senses weakness . Absolutely. And obama, i believe, had responsibilities to actually prevent this from happening. And unfortunately, while collecting this data, he was too soft. And too indecisive. And thats, you know, convinced putin that he could do whatever. And now, you know, were all expecting, you know, Rex Tillerson to be announced as secretary of state. And you know, that will be putins number one pick. Because of their prior relationship . Absolutely. You know, this is the man who has close ties directly with Vladimir Putin and putins righthand man. So put tillerson as the american top global diplomat means that, you know, trump will probably walk away from the traditional alliances and put putin in head of relations with all countries that have been working with american for decades. Do you think donald trump, in his public statements about russia, do you think hes been sending encouraging signs to he kept rejecting, you know, any fact of russian interference throughout the elections. He had many opportunities, during the debates, or his interviews, to denounce Vladimir Putin and to reject all accusations of putin helping him. You know, he, which was quite unusual for trump, who flipflopped on many issues, except one. It was very consistent throughout the whole campaign, and, you know, as president elect, for if not praising putin, but definitely defending putins record, and denying any involvement of kgb in the process. We saw that wikileaks served as a kgb branch, had been dumping all this data on hillary, on dnc, while collecting data on trump and republicans. And as i predicted six months ago, they would collect this data to sort of have something on them, in case if trump won. The book is winter is coming. Garry, thank you so much. Thank you for being with us. In the next hour of 360, more breaking news about the delayed announcement of trumps Business Empire that was supposed to take place this week, now not going to happen until next month. And the man believed to be the frontrunner, the Texas Oil Man who has onned for exxon for 40 years. More details ahead. If youve got the time welcome to the high life. Weve got the beer miller beer vo its the holidays at verizon, and the best deals are on the best network. With no surprise overages, you can use your data worry free and even carry over the data you dont use. And right now get four lines and 20 gigs for only 40 per line. Youll even get the Samsung Galaxy s7, the pixel phone by google, or the motoz droid for only 10 per month. Hurry, these offers end soon. Get the best deals and the best network, only on verizon. I am a First Responder tor and iemergencies 24 hours a day, everyday of the year. My children and my family are on my mind when im working all the time. My neighbors are here, my friends and family live here, so its important for me to respond as quickly as possible and get the power back on. Its an amazing feeling turning those lights back on. Be informed about outages in your area. Sign up for outage alerts at pge. Com outagealerts. Together, were building a better california. G