Famed journalist Carl Bernstein on Tuesday schooled former Donald Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller after Miller tried to dismiss the ongoing investigations into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign as “a wild goose chase.”
After Jeffrey Lord argued that the multiple connections between Russia and Trump officials “all happened in sort of disparate connections,” insisting. “It’s not as if [the Trump campaign] had like, a log, about what everybody did so they could just lay that out.”
“Do you buy that?” host Anderson Cooper asked Bernstein. The Watergate reporter—who played in integral role in exposing Richard Nixon—remained unconvinced.
“Well, the most significant thing that we have seen is the attempt by the president of the United States, and those around him, to impede and obstruct the investigations,” Bernstein explained. “Instead of saying, ‘Hey, here’s everything we know—here are all our logs, here’s everything that we know. Here’s where I, the president of the United States have said to my campaign officials and to my family, go down there, tell those committees everything you know.’”
“That’s not what has happened,” he continued. "Trump keeps saying that people are trying to delegitimize his presidency through these investigations. He is the legitimate president of the United States and the only thing … that is delegitimizing his presidency are his actions in trying to inhibit and impede these investigations. Because he’s calling into question—for Republicans and Democrats alike—why not open up and show us what is truthful here?”
Asked specifically by Cooper about a report Monday that Blackwater founder—and brother of Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos—Erik Prince met with a Russian operative to establish a backchannel between Moscow and Trump, Miller tried to downplay Prince’s associations with the president
“Number one, that this was—Mr. Prince had no role with the campaign, no role with the administration,” Miller began, adding “there are a lot of people who came into Trump Tower.”
“If the fundamental point of this investigation is to get to some supposed coordination between the campaign and some foreign government, then immediately upon leaving that meeting, Mr. Prince would have had to have walked out, gotten into his Blackwater time machine, gone back months and then hatched some devious plot to influence the election,” Miller argued.
He then deployed a frequent Trump loyalist talking point—that “not one piece of evidence” proves the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.
“At a certain point this is just a wild goose chase,” he argued.
“Let me just add one thing to contradict that,” Bernstein jumped in. “I know beyond any doubt, from people who worked with the Trump campaign in national security areas, that indeed Erik Prince was a part of the campaign, did see president-elect Trump—“
“Who said that?” Miller demanded.
Bernstein, the legendary Watergate reporter, refused to divulge his sources.
Watch the video below, via CNN:
