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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Clinton Speaks In Atlantic City Amid Email Controversy; Clinton Slams Trump And Chris Christie In Speech; Clinton Accuses Trump Of Intentionally Running Up Debt And Defaulting In Atlantic City Business Deals; Clinton Hits Trump For Foreign Product Production. Aired 12:30- 1p ET

Aired July 06, 2016 - 12:30   ET

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HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: ... and a shop keepers who better be a small businessman, whose hard work sent me to college, I have a special place in my heart for the contractors, the craftsman and shopkeepers who built this city and keep it going.

[12:30:19] Now, it is no secret that Atlantic City has gone through some tough times. But the people of A.C. are determined to turn things around. You've got a city council and a mayor working hand in hand. And if your governor would start doing his job, instead of -- instead of following Donald Trump around, holding his coat, maybe we could really get New Jersey's economy moving again.

Now, here in Atlantic City and across America, we've got to create more good-paying jobs with good wages. We've got to make the economy work for everyone, everywhere, not just those at the top in some places. And that is just one reason why this election is so important. And as the people of Atlantic City know better than anyone, Donald Trump cannot do the job for American workers and businesses.

Now, let's just look at this for a minute. Donald Trump says he is qualified to be president because of his business record. Now, three weeks ago, he said, and I quote, I'm going to do for the country what I did for my business.

Now, you know, when he says things like that, he's probably hoping nobody will check up on what he has said. Because what he did for his businesses and his workers is nothing to brag about.

In fact, it's shameful. And every single voter in America needs to know about it. So we don't let him do to our country what he did to his businesses.

Now, that is why I'm here today. We're standing in front of the old Trump Plaza casino and hotel. Donald Trump once predicted it will be the biggest hit yet. Now it's abandoned. You can just make out the word "Trump" where it used to be written in flashy lights.

He had the letters taken down a few years ago. But his presence remains. And not far from here is the old Trump Marina Hotel Casino. A few years ago, it was sold at a huge loss.

Just down the boardwalk is the Trump Taj Mahal. Donald once called it the eighth wonder of the world. It filed for bankruptcy in 2009, things got so bad, the new management canceled workers' health insurance and pensions. And now those workers are on strike. And we should all support them in getting a fair deal.

Now, ask yourself, according to the Donald, isn't he supposed to be some kind of amazing businessman? So it's fair to ask, since he is applying for a job, what in the world happened here.

Now, his excuse for all of this failure is that Atlantic City just went downhill, that it's not his fault. But don't believe it. His businesses were failing long before the rest of the town was struggling.

In fact, other businesses here did worse because Donald Trump acted so irresponsibly, he calls himself the king of debt. And he earned that title, right here in A.C. His bad decisions hurt the whole city. And here is what he did.

[12:35:12] He intentionally ran up huge amounts of debt on his company's hundreds of millions of dollars. He borrowed at high interest rates, even after promising regulators that he wouldn't. What came next? He defaulted on those loans. Didn't pay them back. And in the end, he bankrupted his companies, not once, not twice, but four times.

And here is what he said about one of those bankruptcies. I figured, he said, it was the bank's problem, not mine. What the hell did I care? I'm guessing many of you have had debt at some point. Student loans, mortgages, credit cards, you couldn't just tell the bank that you didn't feel like paying, could you?

And here is an important thing about how Donald Trump operates. He doesn't default and go bankrupt as a last resort. He does it over and over again, on purpose. Even though he knows he will leave others empty-handed, while he keeps the plane, the helicopter, the penthouse.

He convinced other people that his Atlantic City properties were a great investment. So they would put in their own hard-earned money. But he always rigged it so he got paid no matter how his companies performed.

When this casino collapsed, because of how badly he managed it, hundreds of people lost their jobs. Shareholders were wiped out. Lenders lost money. Contractors, many of them small businesses, took heavy losses and many themselves went bust. But Donald Trump, he walked away with millions.

And here is what he says about the whole experience. He actually brags about it. Atlantic City was a very good cash cow for me for a long time. The money I took out of there was incredible. Think about it. The money he took out of here. That says everything you need to know about Donald Trump. It's not about what he can build. It's about how much he can take. You know, he did it again this morning. He went on Twitter and said,

"I made a lot of money in Atlantic City and left." Well, he got rich and got out. And he thinks that's something to be proud of. He didn't just take advantage of investors, he took advantage of working people as well.

Donald Trump has been involved in more than 3,500 lawsuits over the past 30 years. That's one every three days give or take. And today's Wednesday, so he is due for another one.

Now, here in Atlantic City, you may know about Vera Coking, the widow who's house on Columbia place right over there, Donald tried to seize it through eminent domain, and turned it into a parking lot for limousines.

Thankfully he lost that fight, but there were thousands more. And many of those lawsuits were filed by ordinary Americans, who worked for Donald Trump and never got paid. Painters, waiters, plumbers, people who needed the money they earned and didn't get it. Not because Donald Trump couldn't pay. But because he wouldn't pay.

Hundreds of liens have been filed against him by contractors, going back decades. And they all tell the same story. I worked for him, I did my job. He wouldn't pay me what he owed me. One person after another, after another.

We just heard from Marty Rosenberg, his company was called Atlantic Plate Glass. They were hired to do a big job for the Trump Taj Mahal. They worked really hard on it. But at some point, Donald Trump just stopped paying. In the end, he owed Marty's company nearly $500,000 for the work they did under the agreement they made.

[12:40:16] Marty's business barely survived. He did the same thing to a kitchen equipment company, a cabinet maker, a music storeowner. He owed $3.9 million to a company that supplied marble for his properties. That business had to shut down, and eventually the owner had to file for personal bankruptcy, the cost of doing business with Donald Trump.

Now, Donald Trump doesn't think going back bankrupt is a big deal. But it's devastating if you're someone who plays by the rules. I thought a lot about my dad in the last weeks as I've learned more about Donald Trump's business behavior.

My dad was a small businessman. If his customers had done to him what Trump did to these companies, he wouldn't have made it either. So this is personal for me. It is personal for a lot of people. It's not ancient history. If he is elected president, it is our future and the future of hardworking people across America.

Because I want you to understand what he did here in Atlantic City is exactly what he will do if he wins in November. Step one, give a huge tax cut to millionaires like himself. Step two, add trillions to our national debt. Step three, he suggested we can just default on our national debt, like he defaulted on his business debt. It is the same scam over and over again. And make no mistake. He's not asking for forgiveness. He's just hoping we forget.

The people he is trying to convince to vote for him now are the same people he's been exploiting for years. Working people, small business people, trying to support their families. And you know, this seems to be, this seems to be his one move, he makes over the top promises, and says that people trust him, put their faith in him, he'll deliver for them. He'll make them wildly successful. Then everything falls apart. People get hurt. And Donald gets paid.

Remember that, the next time you see him on TV talking about how America will win big if we elect him president. Those promises he is making at his rallies, they're the same promises he made to his customers at Trump University. Now they're suing him for fraud.

They're the same promises he made about another scheme, called Trump Institute. "The New York Times" reports that the lessons it sold for thousands of dollars a piece were plagiarized from somebody else. They're the same promises he made to his customers at Trump condos in Baja, California.

You should hear these people's stories. They handed over their savings then their calls stopped getting answered. The condos were never built and they never got their money back. The Newark Star- Ledger says, "he" and I quote, "excels at ripping people off."

They wrote, again, I quote, "as a result of his narcissistic destructive risk-taking with other people's money, his casinos posted huge losses while others thrived." And remember, remember what he promised. "I'm going to do for the country what I did for my business."

Well, we should believe him. And make sure he never has the chance to bankrupt America the way he bankrupted his businesses.

[12:45:07] So, I just want you to take all this information and tell everybody you can, because people need to make an informed choice. So when Trump says he's for working men and women of America, but Trump's furniture is made in Turkey, instead of Lakewood, New Jersey, that matters.

Trump's suits were made in Mexico, instead of Ashland, Pennsylvania. Trump lamps are made in China, not Altoona, Pennsylvania. If he wants to make America great again, maybe he should start by actually making things in America again.

And that's not all. Donald Trump actually stood on a debate stage and said American's wages are too high. He wants to get rid of the federal minimum wage. His campaign said let's sell off America's assets. Where do we start, the Statue of Liberty?

These bad ideas just keep coming. And he wants to wipe out the tough rules that we put on big banks after the financial crisis. He'd rig the economy for Wall Street all over again. So we shouldn't be surprised. Of course, he'd be for protecting a system where the rich and the powerful stick it to everybody else. He got rich playing by those rules and he wants to keep it that way.

He says he's a businessman, and this is what businessmen do. Well, as CNN has pointed out, no major company in America has filed Chapter 11 more often in the last 30 years than Trump's casinos. So no, this is not normal behavior.

Now look, there are great companies in America. Men and women who care about their workers and the people they do business with and want to build something that lasts. They're decent, they're honest. Some might even make fine presidents. They would never dream of acting like Donald Trump.

In America, we don't begrudge people being successful, that's part of the American dream. But we do if they get rich by destroying other people in the process.

So let's just make sure we don't put a person like this with his empty promises and his lifetime of selfishness in a position to destroy our lives. And this isn't about Democrats versus Republicans. This goes far beyond that. Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States.

So we can't let him roll the dice with our children's futures. We need to write a new chapter in the American dream, and it sure cannot be chapter 11. So let's prove that this fall, we believe in an America that values hard work, treats people with dignity, works to raise wages, not lower, them.

We believe in an America where small businesses are respected, not scammed. And I have a plan to make sure big businesses can't stiff suppliers and contractors, like Donald's been doing for years.

On this beautiful day in this historic city, we believe in an America where people of all religions and races get an equal shot, and our economy works for everyone, not just those at the top. So let's carry that message all across America. Let's fight hard and win in November. And then let's get to work delivering results for the American people. We are stronger together.

Thank you, all, so much.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Live in Atlantic City, Hillary Clinton, the presumptive democratic nominee, speaking to a pretty enthusiastic crowd. And the topic, it was exactly what we expected it to be, Trump's bankruptcies that did a lot of damage in that community.

For his part, Donald Trump has defended the business practice, and he has said, quote, "I have used the laws of this country, the bankruptcy chapter laws do a great job for my company, for myself, for my employees and for my family." Hillary Clinton outlining what to many people in that community felt very different for them, suggesting that, "He was not only responsible for multiple bankruptcies but stiffing contractors and spurring hundreds of job losses in Atlantic City. And then came the CNN quote that quote, "No major U.S. Company has filed for chapter 11 more than Trump's Casino Empire in the last 30 years." And the author of that, "Along with CNNMoney team" is -- one Miss Christine Romans, our chief business correspondent here at CNN.

[12:50:43] I want to welcome our viewers in the United States and from around the world as we continue our coverage. I'm also joined by Senior Washington correspondent, Jeff Zeleny who is live in Atlantic City, with the secretary watching that speech. And also, alongside of chief business correspondent, Christine Romans is David Gergen, our senior political analyst and Ronald Brownstein also our senior CNN political analyst and senior editor for the Atlantic.

Okay, so first to you, the author of the line --.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the CNNMoney team dug through bankruptcy filings and bankruptcies records and found that, you know, no major U.S. Company has filed for bankruptcy so often. Donald Trump almost a frequent flyer in bankruptcy proceedings, and he boasts about it, saying that he has used the bankruptcy for a process to fare well for his companies.

Let me show you what these four filings are. The Trump Taj Mahal in 1991, particularly painful for him. He had to sell off his yacht and his airline shuttle in that bankruptcy proceeding. And so then he sort of changed tactics a bit after that and sort of leveraging other people's money and debt, licensing his name so that his personal exposure was less, 1992, Trump Castle Associates Bankruptcy, 2004, Trump Hotel and Casino, bankruptcy, 2009, Trump Entertainment Resorts.

The imagery of Hillary Clinton in front of that Trump sign where the gutsy Trump word was taken down. That was a casualty of that most recent bankruptcy filing. He also often claims that you look at the pages of the "Wall Street Journal," and you see all these big important companies. They have used bankruptcy.

Well, the crack team of CNNMoney also took a look at that claim, and found that really about 20 percent of companies filed for bankruptcy at one time or another. What Hillary Clinton is trying to show is that the average American bankruptcy is a sign of failure, not a sign of success. Donald Trump is saying, no, he uses the bankruptcy laws to advance his own profits.

BANFIELD: So Jeff Zeleny, you're out there and you're with that crowd. It looks like a pretty receptive crowd. But, you know, there are a lot of Trump supporters in the northeast as well. And my assumption is in Atlantic City, there would be as well. But, give me the real skinny on the community there, and on the impact of Trump's businesses and his bankruptcy practices, particularly in Atlantic City. And why she chose that venue for this?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Ashleigh, this is of course a campaign event. So it was filled by the Clinton campaign, they have supportive Democrats here to watch her. I mean, this is set here in Atlantic City for a reason, as Christine was saying, directly, you know, in front of that Trump plaza sign there.

Well look, New Jersey is largely a democratic state, of course they have a Republican governor. And there are Trump supporters here, no doubt about it. What Hillary Clinton is trying to do is build a narrative, continue the narrative that Donald Trump would not be fighting for you, the American worker or the average American, but in fact, is in this for himself.

This is a period of, you know, one chapter, and a long story the Clinton campaign is trying to build. The question here is the credibility of the messenger. Is Hillary Clinton as credible as she hoped for voters to believe her?

Yes, Democrats are most likely to. But those voters in the middle, who may be open to hearing her message, she has enough challenges and problems of her own here, so this is coming a day after the FBI announcement yesterday. Not ideal for the Clinton campaign when they're trying to present this story here. But of course, Hillary Clinton not talking about that today, she is trying desperately Ashleigh, to keep the focus on Donald Trump and his long, long business record.

BANFIELD: Well, Jeff, those headlines are pesky, and they're not going away. And to make sure they're not going away, there is politicking going on today as well as that big, you know, campaign event that you're at. And let me just tell you, David, I'm going to get you to weigh in on this. So, either take a note or be really good with your memory. Because there's a couple of these I have to list out.

Just this morning, these are the announcements of investigations that are ongoing not only with the head of the FBI, James Comey who made the announcement yesterday, no charges forthcoming. But also the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, who has yet to announce anything, it is presumed she will go along with what the FBI's recommendations were, no charges.

So, to that end, Representative Jason Chaffetz, the Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says that Jim Comey will be testifying on Thursday. That's tomorrow. So he'll make that appearance and answer questions to that committee.

And then came the news that the Senator Ron Johnson, the Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee has also sent a letter to James Comey, asking for additional information about why he came up with his findings, so that's out there. And then along came the Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, saying the Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, is scheduled to testify again on this and other topics, but this particularly, on July 12th, which is next week. But she hasn't made her findings public yet.

So hopefully they're not jumping the gun on that. You can't get away from those headlines, even with the big glitzy fun, exciting Atlantic City news conference.

[12:55:36] DAVID GERGEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, listen, the one person you left out hasn't yet scheduled testimony or answering questions is Hillary Clinton herself. And what we had today is she gave a powerful speech, fiery speech here in Atlantic City. She made a very strong case against Trump. Not just of bankruptcies, but the sense of fraud and the sense of using people and the sense of squeezing the system in unethical ways. You know, this is a very strong speech. But while she was speaking, there was an 800-pound gorilla on the stage that she never talked about. And that is the e- mail controversy.

You know, as long as that's out there, there is a dissonance between she can't go on much longer sort of likely, trying to ignore what everybody sees. And that is the -- a need for her to address the discrepancies and contradictions.

BANFIELD: Hey, look what happened, Donald Trump I just had -- . My trustee associate producer over here handing me Donald Trump's reaction, "I have -- to what you just witnessed, I have built a tremendously successful business which has created tens of thousands of jobs. Out of the hundreds of businesses I've owned over the decades and hundreds of deals and transactions, I've used the chapter laws of our country in four instances. Much, as many of our country's elite businesspeople do, but nobody cares about that."

Those are his words in parenthesis. Christine Romans giving the characterization to that. Yes, the elite businesses do but that's about a 20 percent margin. So, the 20 percent businesses that do use that chapter 11, it means 80 percent don't.

But you just mentioned something that I need to add to as well. Along with that big list of investigative issues that are awaiting, the DOJ and Loretta Lynch as well, and the FBI.

Ron Brownstein, I need you to jump in on this if you can. Because the Speaker of the House today said on record, I don't think that Hillary Clinton, given what happened and the mishandling of this information, this classified information, I don't think that the Director of National Intelligence should be giving her classified briefings leading up to the election. Now, both of these candidates get them. So, tell me about the legitimacy of that

RON BROWNSTEIN, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Well look, I think Republicans are looking disappointed that the FBI chose not to prosecute, perhaps not surprised. They were looking for ways to keep this issue in the foreground through the election, and they will find many opportunities like that suggestion from Paul Ryan, which is unlikely to be implemented.

Look, we are likely to get to election day with two candidates facing unfavorable rating ratings from the majority of the public. This speech today was a reminder of just the many different kinds of vulnerabilities that Donald Trump faces, even as Hillary Clinton obviously faces significant vulnerabilities of her own, underscored by the FBI report yesterday.

You know, I thought the speech really kind of dramatized what Carl Rove really popularized. The idea that you have to go at your opponent's strength. And in this speech, you know, she really went at two different perceived strengths of Donald Trump. One is the business acumen, the business expertise, the idea that he's a private sector wiz who could bring that kind of, a knowledge to bear on the economy. But the other equally important was the idea that he stands with ordinary people against the elite. And she portrayed him both as a failed business person and really as a foe populous, someone who really doesn't have the interest of ordinary people at the core of his identity either in business or in politics. And I think both of those as just Zeleny said, these are the first chapters of stories that they're going to try to tell for a very long time.

BANFIELD: Well, and already, we're hearing from the speaker as well, that he's not ruling out the appointment of a special prosecutor in response to the question of whether or not they can deny those briefings.

So stay tuned, because the headlines just keep rolling in. Ron Brownstein, thank you for that, I appreciate it. And Christine Romans as well. David Gergen, I appreciate it, and Jeff Zeleny, who's out in the field in a very warm day in Atlantic City doing the work for us.

I'm going to breathe. Coming up, Ben Carson is going to join us live. And we're going get his reaction to what Hillary Clinton just said and to Donald Trump's controversial Tweets have been going out. You're going to hear both of those next. And also Bernie Sanders who's going to join my colleague Wolf Blitzer, all of this coming up right after a very after a quick break. Don't go any where.

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