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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Clinton Releases 2015 Tax Returns; New Presidential Race Polls; Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired August 12, 2016 - 12:00   ET

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


[12:00:00] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

We're going to begin with some breaking news in the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton has just released her 2015 tax returns as promised after repeatedly challenging her opponent, Donald Trump, to do the very same thing. Still waiting on that.

Joining me now from Washington, our chief political correspondent Dana Bash, and here in New York our business correspondent Alison Kosik, who knows her way around a tax form.

What are the highlights from the big release, Alison?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: So I'm right now going through the release, but the effective federal tax rate that Hillary Clinton paid in 2015 was 34.2 percent. I am waiting to see what her income was. But if you look at what her income was in 2014, it was somewhere around the number of $27.9 million, paying $9 million in taxes. That was 2014. Once again, we are trying to go through 2015, which is being released as we speak.

This is interesting because you're seeing Hillary Clinton in this political season make a big deal about obviously Donald Trump not releasing his taxes, but she's also in her economic plan, as she announced this week, looking to tax the wealthiest people in the country. And you know what, that includes her. She is included in that multi-millionaire bracket of making more than $5 million a year. And that means that on top of paying the effective tax rate, she's also going to be taxed, if she is president, another 4 percent surcharge. So in this way, once she actually presents this federal income tax report that she's ready to give you, she could basically say, look, I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I'm one of the wealthy, but I'm willing to chip in and pay a lot, too.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: All right, let me sort of switch to the politics of all this because no good deed goes, you know, unanalyzed, so to speak. So, Dana Bash, that's why you are squeezing in the middle here. And that is this move - it's not unexpected. The Clintons have released, I think, 38 years, I could be off a little bit, of their tax release - of their tax returns.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Since 1977. BANFIELD: When you and I weren't even born, right?

BASH: Of course.

BANFIELD: But - so to speak. Maybe you. But this is cornering a guy. I mean it's really pushing him into a corner because this is going to take the narrative and it's going to demand the answer once again. And the - and, you know, Hillary Clinton has some strong people in her court, too, like Warren Buffet, saying, I'm under audit, I could release my tax returns. Talk about the strategy of this.

BASH: Well, it's really right here in black and white in the press release that went along with these tax returns. And I'll read you part of it. They say - her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, says, "in stark contrast, Donald Trump is hiding behind fake excuses and backtracking on his previous promises to release his tax returns. He has failed to provide the public with the most basic financial information disclosed by every major candidate in the last 40 years." And then asking, what is he trying to hide?

So, you're right, that this is standard operating procedure for the past - and they are right, for the past 40 years, but releasing it now and making such a big to do about it and putting this statement in the press release, there's no hiding why they're doing it. I mean they are - they fundamentally believe that this plays to the voter's questions about, do we really know who this guy is? You know, he hasn't been vetted, if you will, the way other politicians have because he's not a politician. He has been until now a private citizen. And we don't know a lot about his financials because his company is private. So there's no question that is a main reason why they are doing this.

Now, having said that, there's no evidence that Donald Trump is being punished by voters for not releasing his tax returns. And I think if he were, and if they had any data to back that up, it might be more likely that he does release them. It certainly makes clear -

BANFIELD: But he - but make no mistake, Dana, he has only used that excuse as to why he's not releasing them, I'm currently under audit.

BASH: Yes.

BANFIELD: And the advice I'm getting is - is that I can't do that. And then Warren Buffet, you know, who's a financial genius, saying, no, I'm under audit and I could do it.

I have another question for you but I can't ask it until I know a little bit more about the financial technicalities of all this, Alison, if you could answer this. That effective - that effective income tax rate at 34.2 percent, if you add it to Hillary Clinton's effective state and local tax rate -

KOSIK: Right.

BANFIELD: It's 43.2 percent that was paid.

KOSIK: That's exactly right. Yes. BANFIELD: That sounds super high to me, but, you know, super rich people have fancy ways of doing taxes. Put that in perspective. Is that really, really high for someone who makes in the multi-millions in income?

[12:05:07] KOSIK: That is a huge percentage, yes. But if you look through her tax return from 2014, because right now we still are going through the 2015 return, she's, you know, done more than just been in government. She's written several books. She has been a consultant. And she has had other - other ways of getting income. So that's also part of what you're seeing there.

I just have to see, as we go through this, her 2015 return, interesting to see, to compare it. Her income was only about 10 million in 2015. Compare that to 2014 where she made $27.9 million. Looks like she did fewer speeches, she had fewer speaking. Obviously, she was on the campaign circuit so she would, you know, take in fewer speaking fees. That was part of it. But her income significantly less between 2014 and 2015, Ashleigh.

BASH: Ashleigh, can I just add one thing because -

BANFIELD: Super quick, yes.

BASH: As we're - as we're talking, our producer, Abigail Karchfield (ph), is going through these numbers. Since 2007, both Clintons, because they're filed together, $43,885,000 and change. That's how much they've paid in taxes.

BANFIELD: That's a lot. That's a lot.

BASH: That's a lot.

You know, let me - let me bring Chris Frates in here as well because the - I think we have to think about that year, Chris, it's 2015, that tax year, and 2015, if you're Hillary Clinton, is a campaign year. I mean you're not making any moves. You're not buying a Starbucks without the idea that this is all going into the tax return I'm about to release as part of my campaign. So you could almost imagine any smart person running for president is going to do some financial campaigning along that year as well with her taxes, right?

CHRIS FRATES, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's exactly right, Ashleigh. And if you look at the Clintons going back to 1977, because that is the amount of information that we have about the Clintons' tax returns, so it's almost 40 years of tax returns here, they have put them all out on public record and you can look through them. So this is not just something she's going to do because she's running for president this year. The Clintons have always put out their tax returns and their whole tax history is available to the American public. That's a huge amount of information.

And they have essentially kept things pretty even as they've gone through the years. The tax rate that we saw this year is about the tax rate that we had last year, for instance. You know, she paid 36 give or take in federal taxes, 36 percent in federal taxes last year. You know, that's about what she paid in 2015.

So we see a lot of kind of things evening out. But as Alison pointed out, a lot more income last year. She had about $28 million in income, about $10 million this year. So you can see that in that way the campaigning really has taken a toll. You know, less than half of what they made last year - well, in 2014, they made about half of that in 2015. Of course, they were campaigning in 2015. A little bit busy to do the speeches, to do some of the other things, to write books, to do some of the big income generators for Hillary Clinton. She was a little sidelined campaigning for president, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Yes, all right, Chris, thank you for that. Dana Bash, as well, thank you, and Alison Kosik, all great work, especially so speedy because we had to get that together very quickly to make the - this noon deadline show.

So right now I just want to sort of dig into this and find out the implications. If I can, I want to bring in CNN political commentator Errol Louis and "Washington Post" political reporter Philip Bump to discuss this further.

OK, guys, you were waiting with baited breath for this - these facts and figures. Does anything stand out? Is this what you expected? Is it a ho-hum day or is this going to be the new cycle and you can see it as black or white anyway you want?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's part of the news cycle, as it should be. I - one thing that stands out for me is, like anybody else who has had to go through this process, you realize that there are, within the tax code, all kind of places where you can find deductions and credits and ways to reduce your tax liability, and it looks like, as you suggest for political reason, Hillary Clinton strategically avoided all of those, at least in the year 2015. She could have bought a farm. She could have bought some rental property. She could have made, you know, spectacular amounts of donations to charity. She didn't do any of that. And so -

BANFIELD: But, wait a minute, I - I beg to differ because I think 10 percent of charitable - of your income in charitable donations is a lot of money, you know?

LOUIS: They tell me that in church every week and that's - that's the number.

BANFIELD: And I - that's why I'm saying that. I -

LOUIS: I mean, that's the number. I -

BANFIELD: (INAUDIBLE).

LOUIS: I - I can't claim that I always meet that number, but - but it is - you know, there again, it ties back to something. It's something that is explainable. You could call it sort of politically structured if you want to, or at least in keeping with what the tax code urges. And that, to me, again, is very striking, that she could have taken far more of her income in investment income. That's really the main thing, which tends to be taxed at a lower rate or tends to be basically not taxed at all.

[12:10:04] BANFIELD: As we all got that lesson when Mitt Romney released his tax returns and we discovered he was -

LOUIS: The 14 percent.

BANFIELD: The 14 percent federal, I think, federal effective income tax rate. For a very wealthy guy, you think, wow, you know, I pay upwards of between 30 and 40. How does a guy like that, with so much more money, not pay the same?

So, what about the headline for you and how do you think this will be spun, because it has to be spun in some way for her opponent?

PHILIP BUMP, POLITICAL REPORTER, "WASHINGTON POST": Right.

BANFIELD: What will Donald Trump do or say? Will this at all push him to do the same thing?

BUMP: It won't push him to do the same thing. I think that's pretty clear. I think one of the things this makes us - this reminds us is that this is a very weird year. Like normally we would get these documents, we would look at these tax returns. I went back actually just yesterday and looked at the history of this thing and the last time someone didn't release a full tax return was Gerald Ford in 1976. So we have - we have this tradition of looking at this and seeing what sorts of investments were made, what sorts of charitable donations were made, and we can't do that contrast now. Donald Trump has made the calculation that voters don't care that much. It has paid off so far. I think what he's going to come out and say about this is, look how much they paid. My strategy is to pay as little as possible. I'm not going to say how much that is. But look how much they paid. I'm going to do - I'm going to, you know, make the most of your money, America, in a way that the Clintons aren't.

BANFIELD: Philip, that is "Alice Through the Looking Glass." In any other year -

BUMP: Yes. Right.

BANFIELD: Somebody coming out and saying, look, I paid my fair share.

BUMP: Right.

BANFIELD: I don't try to, you know, get around it. Could actually be looked at as not skillful in your financial management -

BUMP: Right.

BANFIELD: Which I could see Donald Trump saying, you can do better than that, Mrs. Clinton, just ask me. I could be your H&R Block.

Guys, I have to leave it there. Thank you so much.

But I do want you to stick around. I've got a few more questions for you as the news cycle continues. Donald Trump, if he's such a straight shooter who tells it like it is, then why is it that the media, and me, and so many other people have so much trouble understanding what he's saying when he's shooting so straight? Do you get the sarcasm there? Sarcasm is the headline today. I'm going to explain that controversy in a moment.

But a quick reminder, you can watch LEGAL VIEW at any time, cnn.com/go is the place to go. You can also find me on the Twitter, keep it clean. Go to FaceBook as well. I'm cnnashleigh and I'll be back right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:16:02] BANFIELD: Got a little bit more breaking news for you. You know, honestly, every day everything I do seem to be breaking news at the 12 noon hour, but this is really, really breaking, and that's because when we get new poll numbers in, most people stop where they're walking on the street and look up at the big monitor in Times Square because they're dying to know where we are just 88 days from voting when it comes to how Donald Trump is doing and how Hillary Clinton is doing and those very key swingy states that could actually make the choice for us.

So you want to know how those states are doing? My own personal drumroll. I have four of them for you, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. They're all very important and there's some headlines here. In Colorado, Hillary Rodham Clinton is leading by 14 points. In Florida, she's leading by five. In North Carolina she's got him by nine. And in Virginia, she's got him by 13. So that's a big old deal any way you slice it.

And I think right now what Athena Jones is trying to do is figure out how it's going to be sliced. She's our correspondent on the story today. She joins me live now.

I - I think the headline here is North Carolina. We - we were getting an idea of the other ones, but North Carolina seems to be the surprise.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Hi, Ashleigh. I mean we know that President Obama won North Carolina back in 2008, but then he lost it in 2012. It wasn't necessarily going to be a top target in terms of a gettable target for the Democrats, but it's looking a lot more gettable right now, and that is a big deal. In fact, if you take these four states that were released today, add them to the other three battleground states, Iowa, Ohio and Pennsylvania that - from this poll that were released earlier - or several days ago, we have Hillary Clinton in the lead in every single one of them. The closest race is four points in Iowa, her being four points ahead of Trump. And this means that at least as of right now it's looking as though Trump's path to the White House through the Electoral College, the state by state oasis he has to win, is looking more and more narrow.

Here's the thing, though. I just spent several day in Virginia looking at that - Virginia as a battleground state. And I had one top Democrat tell me there that it's really important that Democratic voters don't get over confident, don't get complacent, but this - anything could happen. And we know that anything can happen in this - in this news environment. But as of right now, there's certainly quite a bit for the Clinton team to celebrate, at least at the moment, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: I think you're right. I mean those numbers are great. But we've been hood winked by polls before and I think that's a lot of times what the comment is when you ask, when you put those numbers to a politician who's not looking so good at the moment.

OK, so then there's this, Athena. Donald Trump insisting that those comments that he made over and over and over again in the last 24 hours, maybe more actually, that President Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS, he is saying that he was misunderstood. He's saying it in a couple of different tweets.

So, here's the first one. "Ratings challenged CNN reports so seriously that I called President Obama 'and Clinton,' the founder of ISIS and MVP. They don't get sarcasm?" I - I get sarcasm. I do. I do, Athena. I use it all the time. But there's a problem with it because for the last 48 hours, in fact, Donald Trump has repeatedly made that claim at rallies, in interviews. In fact, he was even given a bunch of off ramps to walk it back. So I'm going to do this for you and for our viewers, this chronological look, the order of him saying these things over and over so that you can judge for yourself whether it was meant sarcastically or literally. Have a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He is the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of ISIS, OK? He's the founder. He founded ISIS.

He was the founder, absolutely the founder. In fact, he gets the - in sports they have awards. He gets the most valuable player award.

[12:20:03] HUGH HEWITT: Last night you said the president was the founder of ISIS. I know what you meant. You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace.

TRUMP: No, I meant he's the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player. I give him the most valuable player award. I give her too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.

HEWITT: But he's not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He's trying to kill them.

TRUMP: I don't care. He was the founder.

I call President Obama and Hillary Clinton the founders of ISIS. They're the founders.

Barack Obama is the founder. He is the founder in a true sense.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, these are the founders of ISIS. These are the founders of ISIS.

As far as I'm concerned, and I'll say it and I'll say it to anybody that wants to listen, he is a founder of ISIS. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: That was a lot of dings. OK, my ears are ringing. Do you think that's why there's all this talk about an RNC meeting that's planned with Donald Trump? Is it talk? Is it actual? What's the status between how the RNC's feeling right about now, these polls, these comments, and everything else that's come before them?

JONES: Well, I can tell you there is an RNC meeting that's going to be taking place today in Florida, but not with the top folks, not with Donald Trump himself, not with the RNC chairman, Reince Priebus. We are told by my colleague, Jim Acosta, tells us that this was a pre- planned meeting and the whole idea is just to go over the campaign strategy in Florida.

But, more broadly, to your larger question, there is a lot of concern within the RNC and among Republicans broadly speaking in the U.S. about the direction the Trump campaign is taking. They do not want to see him continue to make these outrageous comments that he has to then later walk back. They want him to stay on message, target Hillary Clinton and President Obama, but not in this outrageous way. And so there is concern that he's just not doing enough to broaden his appeal beyond that group of hard core supporters that voted for him in the primaries. He's going to need a lot more millions of votes in order to have a real shot at the White House. And so these kinds of statements are not - are not serving him well.

And, by the way, I should tell you, you know, this whole sarcastic thing, we've got to discuss now what the meaning of the word "sarcastic" because he certainly didn't sound sarcastic in all those clips. He told CNBC, yet another clip from yesterday, that he was just being a truth teller. And he's done this before. A couple weeks ago when he was under fire for saying that the Russians should hack Hillary Clinton's e-mails, he later just said he was just being sarcastic. So the question becomes, you know, how many do overs do you get.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Yes, especially when a guy like Hugh Hewitt keeps asking you over and over and over again if you're being, you know, metaphorical or if it's just hyperbole and you say, no, no, no, I mean it.

You know who else doesn't get sarcasm, by the way, if he doesn't think CNN gets it? King Jong-un. He doesn't get sarcasm either. So you've got to be really careful with people like that when you use words.

Athena Jones, thank you for that. Appreciate it.

JONES: Thanks.

BANFIELD: Nice to see you. Have a good weekend.

Coming up next, will Hillary Clinton releasing her tax returns put any kind of pressure whatsoever on Donald Trump to dust his off of that giant pile that he talks about and bring them out? And does it matter an iota? More conversation next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:27:49] BANFIELD: We are continuing to follow the breaking news of this hour. Hillary Clinton just releasing her 2015 tax returns. And the Clinton camp is hoping that that move is going to put some pressure on her opponent to do the very same thing. But Donald Trump has said he's not going to do it because he's under audit. Others have said that doesn't matter.

I want to discuss with senior advisor to the Trump campaign, Boris Epshteyn, and also with us, Basil Smikle. He is the executive director for New York state's Democratic party.

Welcome to the both of you.

BORIS EPSHTEYN, TRUMP CAMPAIGN SENIOR ADVISER: Thank you.

BANFIELD: So let's start right off the bat with the numbers. Before you came on the air, Boris, the analyst sitting in the chair before you said, somehow this will come out spun by Donald Trump as something negative, this - this tax release that shows she paid a lot of taxes. You know, upwards of almost 40 percent in income taxes. Most people would say, wow, that's a really good thing. Is it?

EPSHTEYN: Well, that's really up to her and her family how much they pay. We'd like to see more information on the just released - and I'll have to pour over the tax returns. Also we'd like to see the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative tax returns, which they had to restate (ph) for four years because they didn't disclose sovereign money from foreign governments that went in there. So they're putting these tax returns out now. They're going to have to restate these tax returns. You don't know (ph).

We'd also like to see the 33,000 e-mails that supposedly didn't have anything state related in them, but we all know they did, and the other e-mails that she's hiding. So she's -

BANFIELD: So we're going to go from the tax return story, we're going to get on the Clinton Foundation -

EPSHTEYN: Well, she's -

BANFIELD: And the e-mails and that will be the narrative?

EPSHTEYN: If she is being transparent, then she should be transparent about everything. So we'd like to see the e-mails.

BANFIELD: That's fair. And just quickly, before I go to you, Basil, I do need to get some reaction, Boris, from the Trump camp on these recent numbers. They are not good. I mean, honest to God, in four states that your guy has got to win, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, respectively, Hillary is leading 14 percent, 5 percent, 9 percent, and 13. There's just North Carolina right there. NBC News/"Wall Street Journal"/Marist poll. And there you have Colorado, 46 to 32. These numbers are stark and they're - EPSHTEYN: Well -

BANFIELD: In some sense walloping.

EPSHTEYN: NBC has always had Trump lower than he's performed, including in the primaries. He's outperformed the NBC polls -

BANFIELD: "Wall Street Journal" and Marist.

[12:30:00] EPSHTEYN: That - that specific poll had him lower, 87 days to go, Dukakis was down by 17 nationally coming out of the - Dukakis was up by 17, I'm sorry, nationally, coming out of the Democratic National Convention.