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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Clinton, Sanders Reach Campaign "Kumbaya" Moment; Trump Focuses Solely on New York Now; Trump Camp Adjusts For Delegate Battle; Paris Suspect Abrini Arrested, According To Belgian State TV; Trump Hits Cruz On "New York Values" In New Video; Sanders To Visit Vatican Days Before New York Primary. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 08, 2016 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

BERNIE SANDERS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We were colleagues in the Senate and on her worst day she would be an infinitely better president than either of the Republican candidates.

[12:30:11] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's qualified.

SANDERS: Of course.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: I don't know, maybe the best word here is Kumbaya.

Let's go over to the GOP side. Let's see how things are working out over there. We are expecting to hear from John Kasich at any moment this hour. Things are warmed up in Fairfield, Connecticut.

Live pictures from the governor's event. There is holding a town hall in Connecticut before returning to New York and changing the attention to New York.

And then there is Trump, right? We always know the headline is going to go there at some point, Republican front-runner overhauling his schedule to go effectively all in on the empire state. You all ready for this? You can hear that, right? In the background, I'm making a joke.

He has scrapped some pretty important travel plans that we're going to take him all the way over the west coast, California. And he also scrapped something else, Colorado's state convention. And if you don't think that's a big deal, I'll give you 37 reasons why it is, because 37 delegates are slated to be selected this weekend.

And Mr. Trump is not shaking any of their hands.

Joining us now with why this matters, as if we didn't know that 37 is important. Jeremy Diamond who also does math on a regular basis because now we are all compelled to do math.

Colorado is lovely this time of the year. Donald Trump thinks New York is nicer at this point. Explain.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yeah, he is absolutely, you know, he canceled all of his plans to go to the west coast. He's going to stay here in New York and focus his attention here.

He just announced on event Sunday in Rochester, New York. And he's really focusing on winning as many of the 95 delegates as he can in this state. You know, that's a lot of delegates to pick up of course.

And to get them, you don't just, you can't just win statewide you have to clinch a majority of the votes state wide and also in congressional districts or keep your opponents from getting to 20 percent.

So there is some -- there are some opportunities for John Kasich and Ted Cruz to potentially kind of come in and steal a little bit of Trump's advantage in this state and steal some delegates away. But for now looks like trump has the advantage. The question is, how many of those 95 delegates can he win?

BANFIELD: Yeah, here's what so funny about what you're saying. It is not the first time I've heard this. There had been other states up until now, where critical thresholds have been needed for Donald Trump. And yet, he didn't seem to give much of a hoot about that. And now, all of a sudden he gives so many hoot, has hired a really important guy. And that really important guy comes in the name of Paul J. Manafort. I have mentioned his name for a week now, as being the one to watch. So we've got him on New Day today to talk about why this matters.

Let's have a quick listen to it.

DIAMOND: Yeah.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAUL MANAFORT, DONALD TRUMP'S CONVENTION MANAGER: There be comes a time when winning isn't enough. But it's how you win and how much you win. And he recognized this was the time and he reached out to some people who suggested me. We got together -- I've known Donald since the 1980s. And we talked about it and he felt I could help him as I felt. And he made the changes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: It almost sounds like (inaudible) announcement to the American Olympic team when they were about to fight the Russians, you know, and it went really well for him.

DIAMOND: Yeah.

BANFIELD: This guy means business. He is good at what he does. He was there for '76 the last contested convention which went very well in his favor.

DIAMOND: And he has run conventions in all kind of different campaigns, Reagan, Ford, of course Bush.

BANFIELD: Is he now effectively the boss of the Trump campaign?

DIAMOND: I wouldn't go so far as to say that. But we did see in this New Day interview this morning. One thing was very clear. Was he said I report directly to the boss and the boss is Donald Trump, the boss is not Campaign Manager, Corey Lewandowski.

Of course they did put a press release out the other day when they announced Manafort was going to take on these expanded rules within the campaign saying that he's going to work closely with Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager.

But definitely what we're seeing in this campaign is shifting in to overdrive on this delegate-focused strategy. You know, they're acknowledging that this is likely the way that it's going to go. Is that they're going to have to come very, very close to the needle on this 1237 number. So they are shifting to that strategy. They're putting, you know, a strategy in place in New York to get as close to 95 as they can. They say that they're going to get 95. And that's now the path forward for this campaign, just as message driven strategy.

BANFIELD: I hear Donald Trump watches the news on his plane all the time. He watches the news. We're supposed to be his advisers apparently, because he hasn't lose those advisers. He's not going to like this.

Hillary Clinton once said it takes a village and that is applicable to the campaign.

DIAMOND: Well, we're seeing the campaign grow.

BANFIELD: We are indeed. And in the ways that many have tried to explained to him, he need. You got to mind the delegates. It's just a critical part.

Jeremy Diamond, thank you. Appreciate it. Nice to see you, by the way off the campaign trail.

DIAMOND: On the set.

BANFIELD: In person. All right, thank you so much.

We -- I told you earlier, that we are basically following the news ticker out of the Belgian State Prosecutor's Office because we expect any moment that they will tell us whether one of the people they hauled in over the last 24 hours in a massive arrest in relation to those attacks at the airport in the subway station in Brussels might just be this guy, Mohamed Abrini because if it is him, they got a huge one. Waiting for confirmation.

[12:35:07] We're touching this next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BANFIELD: I want to get back to breaking news out of Belgium right now. There are some brand new arrests to report to you in connection with the horrifying Brussels attacks.

The Belgian media are putting out reports right now that this man, in the highlighted circle in the center of the screen, Paris attack suspect Mohamed Abrini, is in fact one of the people that's been swept up in that net of arrests.

This has not been officially confirmed by the police there. It is the broadcasters who are saying this at this point.

Joining me now, CNN Justice Correspondent, Pamela Brown and CNN International Diplomatic Editor, Nic Robertson who joins us live joining from London.

[12:40:06] Pamela, I think so many people who see a big name like Mohamed Abrini, and they see those highlighted pictures of his face. We want to know if it's in fact the man in the ...

[12:40:06] Pamela, I think so many people who see a big name like Mohamed Abrini and they see those highlighted pictures of his face want to know if it is in fact the man in the tan jacket. The man in the tan jacket who's been plastered all over the media a in Europe, whether the grainy picture from the airport, or this one where we saw him walking side by side with the suicide murderers or if it's the recent video, the surveillance video that they've just sent out to the media showing him walking away from the airport and the route he took for many minutes afterwards. Do we have any idea what it is him?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Ashleigh nothing is for certain right now but I can tell you some in the intelligence and law enforcement communities here in the United States do believe that there is a link between the man that we see in that surveillance video and Mohamed Abrini.

Some believe that Mohamed it is him. There isn't a consensus. But I can tell you earlier in the week Ashleigh I was hearing for my intelligence sources that they have possible I.D. for the man in the white as well as the sec person they were looking for, connected to the metro station bomber.

And I'm being told that possible I.D. is Mohamed Abrini. They have been able to summon the U.S. government believe that based on, you know, process of elimination, intelligence gathered, backtracking, looking at connections between the suspects they know about and their ties to other people and putting this web together they were able to hone in more on Abrini as the person in the airport.