CNN’s Bernstein: ‘We Have Seen Some of the Greatest Reporting of the Presidency in the Last 50, 60 Years’

STELTER: Let’s add to the conversation Carl Bernstein and Jake Sherman. 

Carl, first to you. We saw Governor Chris Christie on Jack Tapper’s “STATE OF THE UNION” this morning saying he’s concerned about the leaking here, that the leaking could be illegal. Are you also concerned? The fact that we know these charges are happening, is it in fact an illegal leak? 

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No. First of all, I would doubt very seriously that it comes from Mueller’s office, that we have some 20 lawyers involved in these matters who are talking to Mueller’s office. 

There are many possible sources of information. I’m not going to go to where they might be or what I might know, but that’s another red herring. We seem to be looking at lots of red herrings, including the president of the United States this morning again trying to make the question here not about what the Russians did in our campaign and whether he or people in his campaign had any kind of foreknowledge of what they were doing, but to make the conduct of Hillary Clinton the issue just as he’s tried to make the issue of the press rise above the question of what did the president know and those around him and when did they know whatever it was. 

BERMAN: And we’re going to get more into the Hillary Clinton piece of this and that campaign of confusion a little later on in the program. But, Carl, I noticed you said on Friday night on I think Don Lemon’s show that this is a deadly serious matter. Do you think journalists are meeting the moment and taking this as seriously as it should be? 

BERNSTEIN: Yes. I think we have seen some of the greatest reporting of the presidency that we’ve seen in the last 50, 60 years by “The Washington Post,” “The New York times,” some by CNN, by “Mother Jones”. We’ve seen that there is an attempt by the White House and the people around the campaign and the president to try and keep investigators from learning whatever there is to learn here. 

And, incidentally, I have talked to many lawyers involved in this who believe that at unlikely that Mueller will come up with evidence of, quote, collusion or necessarily foreknowledge by the White House. They don’t know but they think it’s possible, and knowing Mueller, they believe that if he doesn’t find anything, he’ll be imminently fair to the president of the United States and those around him and make a report that would exonerate the president of the United States and those around him. 

I think we need to have cooperation, respect for Mueller’s investigation, and I do go back to Watergate here. Donald Trump keeps talking about this is like Watergate. If it were really like Watergate, the Republican Party, the president’s party would be as in Watergate encouraging this investigation, cooperating with this investigation and saying we now have the mechanism to find out what has happened here. Republicans, let’s sit back, not accuse Hillary Clinton of various crimes. 

If there are things that involve Russia and Hillary Clinton here, you can be assured, I believe, that Mueller would take a look at it and it would come up. But the issue here is not Hillary Clinton. The issue is the Trump campaign, what the Russians did in our election, and so far the president of the United States who seems utterly disinterested in whatever the truth of that matter is.