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CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Source: Kilmar Abrego Garcia Will Be Returned To U.S.; Just In: Supreme Court Restores DOGE's Access To Sensitive Social Security Data; Trump To CNN: I Won't Be Talking To Musk Anytime Soon. Aired 4- 5p ET
Aired June 06, 2025 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JOHN SANDWEG, PARTNER, NIXON PEABODY: There are going to be immigration consequences on the back end of this prosecution.
[16:00:06]
And I wouldn't be surprised if the administration plans to try to again send him to El Salvador once this criminal case is over.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: All right, John, thank you so much. Just a lot of breaking news to follow.
DANNY FREEMAN, CNN HOST: A lot of breaking news and more to come momentarily on CNN. Sure.
DEAN: Okay. Thank you to all our guests.
Stay with CNN. We're going to continue our coverage of Kilmar Abrego Garcia being returned to the United States. There is more to come.
Our breaking news coverage continues with "THE ARENA WITH KASIE HUNT." That's next.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA.
We have breaking news just in to CNN. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man who the Trump administration admitted that it mistakenly deported to El Salvador in direct violation of a court order, will be returned to the United States.
Since March, Abrego Garcia has been held in El Salvador's notorious counterterrorism prison as the Trump administration fought numerous court orders to, quote, facilitate his return to the U.S.
A source in law enforcement telling CNN that Abrego Garcia is expected to face criminal charges relating to the unlawful transportation of undocumented immigrants.
Let's go to CNN's Kristen Holmes at the White House.
We also have Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former deputy assistant attorney general, joining us.
Kristen, I want to start with you. Tell us what we know at this hour.
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I do want to be clear here. The White House is not commenting --
HUNT: Hold on. Kristen, I'm so sorry to have to pause you there. Pam Bondi the attorney general just beginning her press conference. Stand by for me.
We're going to listen in now.
PAM BONDI, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: May 21st, a grand jury in the middle district of Tennessee returned a sealed indictment charging Abrego Garcia with alien smuggling and conspiracy to commit alien smuggling in violation of Title VIII USC 1324. We want to thank President Bukele for agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States. Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant, and they agreed to return him to our country.
We're grateful to President Bukele for agreeing to return him to our country, to face these very serious charges. This is what American justice looks like. Upon completion of his sentence, we anticipate he will be returned to his home country of El Salvador.
The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring. They found this was his full-time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips. The grand jury found smuggling people throughout our country. MS-13 members, violent gang terrorist organization members throughout our country. Thousands of illegal aliens were smuggled.
This is especially disturbing because Abrego Garcia is also alleged with transporting minor children. The defendant traded the innocence of minor children for profit. There are even more disturbing facts that the grand jury uncovered. It is alleged this defendant is part of the same smuggling ring responsible for the death of more than 50 migrants in 2021, after the tractor trailer overturned in Mexico. This is part of that same ring.
The defendant abused undocumented alien females, according to coconspirators, who were under his control while transporting them throughout our country. This defendant trafficked firearms and narcotics throughout our country on multiple occasions. They were using vehicles, SUVs with added seats in the back floors that had been ripped out, guns, narcotics, children, women, MS-13 members. That is what the grand jury found.
A coconspirator alleged that the defendant solicited nude photographs and videos of a minor. A coconspirator also alleges the defendant played a role in the murder of a rival gang member's mother.
These facts demonstrate Abrego Garcia is a danger to our community.
We want to thank the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, our state and local partners, our acting U.S. attorney Robert Maguire, and prosecutors from the Joint Task Force Vulcan.
[16:05:00]
Questions?
REPORTER: Attorney general, the traffic stop that we've seen video of from Tennessee, where Abrego Garcia was first identified by the local authorities at the time, the Homeland Security Department declined to take custody of him. What has happened in between that time and in between the time that the government has been arguing that he was not returnable from El Salvador, what has happened since in this investigation that brought you here?
BONDI: Yes. The question was in 2021, there was the traffic stop. And what has changed since then? What has changed is Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our borders are again secure.
And thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Abrego Garcia, this investigation continued with actually amazing police work, and we were able to track this case and stop this international smuggling ring from continuing.
REPORTER: These were recently found facts, right?
BONDI: Yes, recently found facts.
REPORTER: Can you just explain when this investigation was opened, the investigation in Tennessee, can you say when that investigation was opened?
BONDI: Well, the grand jury indicted on May 21st. This investigation has been ongoing.
REPORTER: The case has been hotly debated here in Washington. In your mind, does this resolve that issue in terms of his deportation? And should this be seen in any way as complying with the judge's order to return him to the U.S. and the Supreme Court, ruling that the U.S. government should facilitate the return?
TODD BLANCHE, DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, there's a big difference between what the state of play was before the indictment and after the indictment. And so, the reason why he is back and was returned was because an arrest warrant, which was presented to the government and in El Salvador. So, so there's a -- there's a big difference there as far as whether it makes the ongoing litigation in Maryland moot. I would think so. But we don't know that this you know, he just landed today.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jake, CBS.
REPORTER: I just want to confirm what you said earlier, that you're intending to prosecute him and keep him in an American prison if he's found guilty, and then would remove him after his sentence is over.
BONDI: Correct. Yes. He will be prosecuted in our country, sentenced in our country. If convicted and then returned after completion of his sentence.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Last one. Sadie, "Wall Street Journal".
REPORTER: Okay. I have two, one's on topic. Ones off topic.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but you were mentioning that he had some involvement in in a murder, you know, or was connected to groups that had, you know, involved with this other smuggling ring. But to be clear, the only charges he's facing right now are the, like, you know, human smuggling charges, just the --
BONDI: Yeah.
REPORTER: That's the one offense. But the other things that you have talked about are not actually in the indictment?
BONDI: No. Coconspirators allege that. And we were clear to say that. He is charged with not only very serious charges of alien smuggling. And again, there were children involved in that, you know, human trafficking, not only in our country but in our world is very, very real. It's very dangerous.
And as you saw recently in Virginia, the arrest we made of the ms-13 member, unrelated to this, we learned at that press conference, that's where they bring young children into our country, and they start grooming them at middle school age to become MS-13 full-fledged members commit violent crimes throughout our country.
It is highly organized. It is very dangerous, and they are living throughout our country, but no more because they are being arrested. They are being prosecuted and being convicted and deported when appropriate.
That's all for today. Thank you.
HUNT: All right. We have been listening to Pam Bondi, the attorney general, as well as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. They announced two charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They also said that he had landed today back in the United States from El Salvador.
We, of course, still have Kristen Holmes at the White House. Priscilla Alvarez also here in Washington. Elliot Williams, CNN legal analyst, former deputy assistant attorney general.
Priscilla, let me start with you. Just because this has been something that you've been following so closely. Can you walk us through what we learned here? There was apparently a grand jury impaneled to investigate this indictment came down on May 21st, according to the attorney general.
[16:10:08]
What's next?
PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this was a traffic stop, this traffic stop in Tennessee that the Department of Homeland Security had released footage of while his court hearing was ongoing. But it was the most that we knew was that he had a brush with law enforcement. And the footage of those police. And now, as you heard there from the attorney general, they had pursued that further. That ended with that grand jury indictment in late May.
But I think what's key here, Kasie, is the way in which they framed almost the entire set of circumstances here before indictment and after indictment, to remind viewers as to the before here. This was a case that began in March.
This was Kilmar Abrego Garcia was on one of the flights that was sent to El Salvador by the Trump administration. He had been accused of being a member of MS-13. However, he had been under withholding of removal, meaning he could not be deported to El Salvador. And it was the first time in this case that the administration had conceded that there was an error that he accidentally had landed on that flight manifest, and it is what was the center of this very fraught legal battle between the federal judge and the Trump administration, as they had found that the Trump administration was stonewalling the federal judge at almost every turn, turn and digging in their heels by saying he was not going to be returned to the United States.
If you also remember, Kasie, there was that meeting between President Trump and the Salvadoran president in the oval office where this exact issue came up, and both of them maintained at that time that he was not going to be returned. And the Salvadoran president one point saying that he would essentially have to smuggle him back in. But what we learned here from the attorney general is that this arrest warrant was presented to El Salvador, and it changed the circumstances to what now gets us to the after indictment. So, the way that they are discussing this now is that if he is prosecuted, he'll go to prison in the United States and then be deported.
And he could be deported back to El Salvador, because this will likely serve as the basis to remove that withholding of removal, to remove any status that allowed him to stay in the United States before to then take him back to El Salvador. So clearly, there's still going to be questions here as to what this looks like moving forward for him. But still an extraordinary development after weeks, both publicly and in the court, the Trump administration saying he was not going to be returned to the United States.
HUNT: So, Kristen Holmes, I want to ask you about the politics of this in just a second. But Elliot Williams, I just want to have your legal perspective on what the administration is claiming here in terms of bringing him back, because they're essentially saying, well, we couldn't -- we didn't follow you. They didn't follow the order in terms of facilitating the return before this indictment came down. Now they're saying, well, the indictment changes the circumstances.
Is that legally correct?
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: That is and it's legally, it's practically correct. Number one. Notice that El Salvador also had far more incentive to send him back to the United States. Now, now that he appears to be charged with a crime. Also, the United States is seemingly welcoming him back because he's been charged with a crime.
When someone is charged with anything in the United States and is overseas the country has an incentive to get that person back. Now, that can only be done with the permission or agreement of a foreign government. Now, sometimes that's in the form of an extradition agreement or some process to extradite the person back. Now, we know that the United States and El Salvador have been in near constant contact about this case and others.
And so, my suspicion is that, you know, we knew the charges were coming or the government knew that the charges were coming. They got in touch with the folks in El Salvador, said that we are going to charge him with a crime here in the United States. Please send him back.
And that process tracks with how other cases would happen. You'd get the person back in the country, try them in the United States, put them in jail in the United States. And then at the end of their sentence, then remove them to whichever country, they would naturally go back to.
HUNT: All right. Let's bring in CNN senior justice correspondent Evan Perez has made his way to a camera. He was in that news conference at the Justice Department.
And, Evan, you asked the attorney general directly, what's changed over the past few months? Can you explain?
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Look, I mean, we knew that this traffic stop where we've seen the video now of Tennessee state troopers who had stopped him and had questioned him. And there was a chance there for the Homeland Security Department to detain him. Again, the allegation that he was a member of ms-13 that was already known in the system, in the databases. And then, of course, in the last few months, they've been resisting, saying that they were never going to bring him back.
So I asked, what changed? And the answer from the attorney general is that there were new facts that have emerged as part of this investigation. Now, we knew that there was an investigation. The first inkling of this, just in the last few weeks when we requested some of that, some of this information from Tennessee.
[16:15:05]
And the local authorities said that there was an ongoing investigation, which we verified was actually happening in the middle district of Tennessee. This is in Nashville. And so that's what's where this investigation has lived.
And so, the question, obviously, that will -- will have to be litigated as part of this case is whether these new facts emerge, because there was political pressure to bring this case as a way to resolve this situation. It's always been the case, though, that that the Bukele government in El Salvador if Donald Trump called president and asked him to send him back, almost certainly he would have, right? They have that kind of relationship.
But the U.S. government just did not want him to come back. And presenting this case and presenting these charges and connecting him to some very serious allegations is the best way, obviously, politically, for this to be resolved.
And so, we'll see how these charges hold up in court. And all of the -- the attending other things that the attorney general mentioned, which he's not directly charged in, but he's -- what they're saying is that he's connected to a group that was involved in all these other cases, that all of that will be fought out in court when this -- when this case goes to trial.
HUNT: So, Kristen Holmes, that kind of lays out the political questions fairly well. I mean, clearly the Trump administration did not want to be seen caving on this. Bringing these charges has provided them with legal cover to have him back in the United States. This happened on May 21st.
The indictment, of course, now we know he's back here as of today. Presumably that's why they're doing it in public. But it is, you know, a Friday afternoon in the summer, the president has left the White House. He didn't say anything about this on his way out.
What do you take away from all of this?
HOLMES: Well, I really think Evan hit the nail on the head there. I mean, talking about how they could do this and bring him back without relenting, without giving up the argument that they have continued to make. This is how they ended up doing that.
Now, of course, we're going to see how these charges play in court. One of the things that we've heard from Donald Trump time and time again, in addition to the fact that he said that Garcia would never come back into the United States, we have heard from him and his allies. They painted him as a criminal. They have said that he is engaged in criminal activity, that the U.S. didn't want him back. Now, of course, they are saying we have the evidence to back it up. And you talk about that indictment dropping on May 21st.
I think we should also note that Pam Bondi was asked when this investigation started, and she did not answer that. She said it has been an ongoing investigation. So of course there are going to be questions here about if this was brought because of the political pressure that was put on the Department of Justice and really on the administration and Donald Trump as a whole, as they have tried to kind of walk this line, particularly when it comes to the courts, where they say that they value the Supreme Court, that they will always listen to the Supreme Court.
Well, the Supreme Court said that they should facilitate the return of Garcia to the United States. They were parsing those words over and over again, trying to say, facilitate. Of course, we're trying to facilitate. But as Evan said, Donald Trump has a relationship with Bukele. He could have called and had told him it was imperative that he bring Garcia home. And he did not do that. Now, Garcia will be back in the United States, and theoretically, they
helped facilitate that. But of course, they have these criminal charges here. It also goes to the narrative that they have been repeating and doubling down on that. Garcia is a criminal and that he had charges against him and that there were things in his past that they had not made public yet.
Now, of course, were seeing this in the big question is, do these hold up in court and we'll have to watch how this plays out.
HUNT: All right. Kristen Holmes, Evan Perez, Priscilla Alvarez, Elliot Williams, thank you all for jumping on this story.
And our panel is here now to discuss further, CNN political analyst, White House correspondent for "The New York Times", Zolan Kanno- Youngs; Chuck Todd, host of "The Chuck Toddcast"; CNN political commentators Xochitl Hinojosa and Brad Todd both joining us as well.
Thank you all for being here. It's wonderful to have you.
So, Xochitl, actually, let me start with you, because you were a longtime spokesperson for the Department of Justice, and our reporters have raised questions about why this case came to be in the manner that it did.
How do you look at it?
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I also have these questions, and mainly because charges like this would come out of the U.S. attorney's office and it would be part of an investigation run by career professionals. They would -- their recommendation would come up to the deputy attorney general's office and the attorney general would be briefed.
Here to me, what I don't understand is whether or not these charges came about because there was a demand and there was an order from a judge to bring him back, and the Justice Department had to scramble. So, did the charges come about because political leadership said that they needed to bring an indictment and said that this needed to happen, or did it come from career professionals in the normal course of doing business at the Justice Department?
[16:20:00]
We've seen over the last few months, a number of career professionals have resigned because the Justice Department has pressured career officials to bring charges they didn't want to bring. We saw that in the Eric Adams case. We've seen it in a few other instances. And so, you've had mass exodus at the Justice Department.
So I think what will be interesting to see is who signed off on it. Whether career attorneys in the middle district of Tennessee that signed off on these charges. And or was this a political decision from Pam Bondi because Donald Trump ordered her to.
BRAD TODD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: If he's guilty, it's not a political decision. If they have substantial reason to believe he's guilty which we know the traffic stop when it happened in Tennessee was a two hour traffic stop, the Tennessee media reported that the FBI was contacted. The FBI asked that everyone in the van have their picture made. So, this is a -- this is something that perhaps should have been done a long time ago.
HINOJOSA: The problem is, is that the Justice Department hasn't been forthcoming with the court from the beginning. They said they made an error. Stephen Miller then went, who was not a lawyer, went and cleaned it up and said, no, it wasn't an error.
Then they said, we have -- there's no way we can bring it back. We can't bring him back. And then, all of a sudden, these charges come from nowhere. It just --
B. TODD: Comes from nowhere. They came from a traffic stop where they traffic --
HINOJOSA: It came from a traffic stop. But why have not -- why have they not?
B. TODD: Because Joe Biden was president and the FBI --
HINOJOSA: It's not because of that. If there's a dangerous criminal on the street, the FBI, no matter what, will arrest that person.
HUNT: And certainly the department of justice is making decisions all the time about what to prioritize.
HINOJOSA: Absolutely.
HUNT: Prosecutions.
Chuck, what are the big picture political implications?
CHUCK TODD, HOST, "CHUCK TODDCAST": Look, I'm an Occam's razor person, which means, you know, simplest explanation.
HUNT: I agree. I also am.
C. TODD: A very simplest explanation. There are two things going on here, right? They were losing this fight in the courts. But they also had a problem inside the Justice Department of how this was handled. So they've been looking for a way to clean this up, and they weren't going to bring him back until they knew they had all this lined up.
Certainly seems obvious what they're doing. Now, there's going to be a little bit of obfuscation here. It's going to be hard to confirm some of these things. All this will trickle out, but it certainly looks pretty obvious to me that they're like, all right, we got to stop losing. We lost this fight in court. They have us on this one.
We're not going to give them everything they want. Let's make sure if we bring them back, that we can immediately have something that allows us to deport him for some reason. ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right, this appears to be an off-ramp from what was increasingly going to be a battle with the courts, right? The administration, the courts, had had ordered the administration to facilitate his return. Donald Trump at one point in an interview with ABC News, acknowledged that he could call Bukele if he wanted to. The administration did not want to. They are paying El Salvador at least $6 million to hold these migrants, so they had sway, but then they didn't.
So now people are going to point to this moment here and ask, okay, you issued an arrest warrant to El Salvador. Why couldn't you follow the court order beforehand and bring him to the United States to face due process.
B. TODD: They pursued all options through the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court said facilitated. But they also sent the case back down to the fourth circuit to ask for more instructions that way. So, they weren't out of options yet on the lawsuit.
C. TODD: But they didn't want to risk courts. I think they saw they were probably going to keep losing in the courts. This is a way to essentially, as you just called it, an exit ramp.
B. TODD: I thought they should bring it back the whole time and deport him somewhere else.
KANNO-YOUNGS: And remember, big picture, the administration was the one that admitted deporting Abrego Garcia was an error.
HINOJOSA: But I think the other problem here, and you heard it in Pam Bondi press conference just a minute ago is that they're also talking about activity that they did not charge. They don't -- this justice department does not have a problem with putting out information, law enforcement, sensitive information about anyone if they haven't charged them. They put out information where they thought that he was affiliated with MS-13, that wasn't associated with charges. They did it because they wanted to change the narrative.
B. TODD: Shocked that the Justice Department is leaking. Thats not the first time.
HINOJOSA: I worked at the Justice Department, and I'm sorry, we did not put information out unless they were part of charges.
HUNT: All right. So, this just in, and, Brad, I'll give you this to you because this really speaks to the politics. This is a statement from Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, about this matter. She says, quote, the Justice Department's grand jury indictment against Abrego Garcia proves the unhinged Democrat Party was wrong. And their stenographers and the fake news media were once again played like fools.
Abrego Garcia was never an innocent man. Abrego Garcia is an illegal alien terrorist, gang member and human trafficker who has spent his entire life abusing innocent people, especially women and children and the most vulnerable. She goes on to name Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen for defending
Abrego Garcia, and says the Trump administration will continue to hold criminals accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
Now, we have been talking, Brad, about the legal ramifications, the battle with the courts, what the administration was trying to do there. This is where they want the conversation. They want it to be us versus them. Democrats versus Republicans. You know, the polls had shown that it was a winning issue. But when it became a due process issue, not so much.
B. TODD: But 56 percent of the American public thinks we should deport everyone who's here illegally. And if ask the people who are criminals or human traffickers, that number is going to soar to like 80 percent.
[16:25:04]
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is going to go into a Tennessee courtroom, and I trust the people of Tennessee to give him a fair trial. If he's convicted of a conspiracy to transport people, we should all celebrate. Democrats today should be saying, let's let the courts decide. That's what due process is in this case, is to let 12 jurors in Tennessee decide if he's guilty.
HUNT: And, Xochitl, I mean, I take your point about the way that this may have gone through the system, but there is the reality that they did impanel a grand jury that returned the indictment back.
HINOJOSA: They did. They did impanel a grand jury. And I think that it's -- it'll be interesting to see what comes out of this over the next few months. And who was making some of the decisions in order to impanel a grand jury and to get charges back, you have to have some sort of argument to get them there, right? But you don't have to necessarily have all of the facts. And so it'll be interesting to see what happens in the months.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Kasie, you were asking about big picture politics and what this also allows the administration to do is something that the president loves when it comes to messaging, and that's link immigration policies to cracking down on crime as well. You now have the potential for a trial where he can continue to make that link, even if at times when they make that leap, they also don't present evidence to back their claims.
HUNT: Chuck, are you surprised the president didn't talk about this on his way out of town?
C. TODD: I guess mildly, but I don't, you know, this -- it's just interesting to me that they had this grand jury indictment on May 21st. What's today. Just checking.
HUNT: It's June 6th.
C. TODD: Right.
It is. This is a White House that certainly looks as if it has stuff on the shelf to deal with media firestorms whenever they want to do something different or do this right. The travel ban was ready to go. They just had to decide, when do we want it today?
Yesterday, I was just going to say it is given everything else where the -- where, of course, the president said he hasn't been thinking about Elon at all, and he had to tell every single network that he hasn't been thinking about Elon at all. That this would have been actually a good way to prove he wasn't thinking about Elon, and he chose not to do it. That's interesting.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Also, it's early. I mean, I wouldn't doubt if we hear from the president on this, you know, not today.
HUNT: Perhaps as he landed.
KANNO-YOUNGS: He could get off the plane and --
HUNT: Yeah, I was going to say.
B. TODD: Politically, though, I want to go back to the fact that --
C. TODD: But it is good politics for him.
B. TODD: This is a -- this is a consistent bear trap for Democrats. And they keep stepping in it. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not an innocent victim. More than likely. We're going to find out when he goes to court. But immediately, every Democrat immediately assumes he's an innocent victim of --
HINOJOSA: We said due process. And I think that's where Democrats have been as a whole. No one is saying that he's innocent. It's just that there needs to be a process free from politics.
B. TODD: But we have due process. We have a grand jury indictment. So, can we cheer that?
HINOJOSA: Well, it's interesting, the way the timing is happening is we are all pointing out.
HUNT: All right. Well, we are going to continue to ask questions about this as we cover this story.
But coming up here in THE ARENA, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin will join us.
Plus, is the billionaire blowup between Donald Trump and Elon Musk actually good news for the president's Big, Beautiful Bill? We'll discuss.
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HUNT: All right. Welcome back to THE ARENA where we have been covering the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the initially wrongly deported Maryland man who was sent to El Salvador. He's now been returned to the United States to face federal charges in
Tennessee. He's been indicted by a grand jury. And according to top officials at the Justice Department, was just returned today to the United States.
Joining me now to discuss, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. He is the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee.
Congressman, thank you so much for being here.
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): You bet, Kasie.
HUNT: Your first reaction to this news?
RASKIN: Well, it's about time. I think the guys been gone since March 15th. The government admitted immediately that this was an administrative error. He was erroneously deported from the country. And you know, if he is to be charged with anything, if he's a member of MS-13 or the proud boys or the Oath Keepers, bring the evidence to court and show the evidence. And charge him.
Otherwise, he has a status which is withhold deportation, because the court under the first Trump administration, the administrative law judge in the immigration system, found that he had left Salvador in fear of gangs and that he would have been granted asylum. But he got there too late. So that's what this weird withhold deportation category is that he was in.
HUNT: How do you understand? I mean, the timing of this. I mean, the Trump administration clearly did not under the initial set of circumstances, want to bring this man back to the United States. But this charge, of course, does change the legal circumstances here.
RASKIN: Yeah.
HUNT: Why do you think they did it this way?
RASKIN: Well, I think that's Trump's general attitude about this whole judicial counterattack against his reign of lawlessness, which is you can't make me do it or I'm going to drag my feet. I'm going to go as slow as possible. He didn't want to be told, even by a 7-2 ruling of the court, or a 9-0 ruling of the court, that he had to facilitate the return of this guy he had erroneously sent abroad without any due process at all.
And due process is really the heart of this whole thing. And due process are the two most beautiful words in the English language. Thats what separates our rights and freedoms from arbitrary governmental power. And that's what runs through almost everything that's happening in America today, whether we're talking about the rights of immigrants, we're talking about the rights of journalists, we're talking about the rights of federal workers. It's all about whether you're going to follow our legal process and the constitutional system.
And when Donald Trump got prosecuted for his assorted crimes in New York, he had every element of due process and more power to him, because I would defend and I did defend his right to have right to counsel, his right to testify, or in his case, he chose not to testify, his right to cross-examine witnesses, his right to a jury of his peers.
And he was convicted. He has dozens of felony convictions, but he had every element of due process along the way.
HUNT: The White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, of course, out with a statement criticizing Democrats and the media. She especially focused on the idea that Democrats defended Kilmar Abrego Garcia, even though he, of course, is alleged to have committed these crimes.
Do you think that Democrats risk politically playing into the president's hands by focusing on this case?
RASKIN: First of all, I don't know of a single Democrat who defended him specifically against any crimes because he wasn't charged with any crimes. He doesn't have any criminal history, to my knowledge, or a criminal record. And there were no charges outstanding when he got unceremoniously picked up and flown out of the country.
I mean, that's called a disappearance. That's what happens in authoritarian societies. They obviously want to make this about whether or not he ends up being a good guy or a bad guy, but it's not a moral question. It's a legal question. It's a constitutional question of whether the government can pick people up and take them out of the country.
And I think the Supreme Court has been fairly emphatic about this. Due process is for everybody.
Sometimes I hear my colleagues say, you're for due process for guilty people. Well, yeah, because we don't know if they're guilty or they're innocent until we've had due process. That's the whole point of due process.
HUNT: While I have you here, let's talk a little bit about another case that has come up today. And that's around January 6th. There are four members of the proud boys, including Enrique Tarrio, the leader there, who have sued the U.S. government, saying that their constitutional rights were violated when they were prosecuted for what happened on that day.
What is your reaction to that lawsuit?
RASKIN: Well, I can't wait to read their complaint. I don't see how you're convicted of seditious conspiracy trying to overthrow your own government, and then you sue the government for prosecuting you for that.
And again, these are guys who had every element of due process and a jury of their peers determined beyond a reasonable doubt that they did engage in seditious conspiracy or other crimes for 1 or 2 of them.
But in any event, there was a conspiracy to attack the U.S. Capitol and to attack the police. They bloodied, wounded, injured, hospitalized, disabled, disfigured more than 140 of our police officers, and now, they're going to come and sue us?
But I see where they get the idea. They get it from Donald Trump because he pardoned 1,600 rioters and insurrectionists, and he also saw to it that the ones that owed restitution to their victims, it was more than $3 million that they owed had that restitution debt nullified. And that's happened, not just with them, but with a lot of white-collar criminal defendants.
They're all coming, running to get pardons from Donald Trump so they don't have to pay the victims of their crimes. And we're going to be putting out a report on this next week about what's happening. But just like you know, Ashley Babbitt's family, they've arranged for a $5 million payment for her family, even though both a Capitol police investigation and justice department investigation found there was nothing wrong that the police officer had acted appropriately.
Even Speaker McCarthy said he did his job at the time. And yet, Donald Trump's organizing to get that money. And now who knows what kind of deal is being made behind the scenes with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers? I mean, this is --
HUNT: I was going to ask you, do you -- do you think that the Justice Department might settle with them? And if they did, what would that say?
RASKIN: It would be an absolute outrage and a scandal. You know, we've got police officers who were forced to leave the force like Sergeant Gonell. We've had police officers who are still physically injured or suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, from four or five hours of violence that took place on that day.
And not only have Donald Trump and Mike Johnson and the Republicans done nothing for them, they won't even hang the plaque that they are legally obligated to hang up. We passed a law saying there had to be a plaque memorializing the valor, the heroism, and the sacrifice of the police officers who defended us on that day that was supposed to have been up on March 15th, 2023. Mike Johnson has still not put it up.
I just put up a poster replica of it outside of my office. I'm going to be asking all of my colleagues to put up that poster and to have it up across Capitol Hill until Speaker Johnson complies with the law. But this attempt to engage in an astonishing act of historical revisionism has just gone way too far when they're trying to pass all of this money over to the people who tried to overthrow our presidential election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes, 306-232.
[16:40:12]
And yet, like the core theory of the MAGA movement, is that Donald Trump really won that election.
HUNT: Very briefly. Elon Musk, do you think that this back and forth with the president has made it more or less likely the president's agenda will get passed? And should Democrats be embracing Elon Musk right now?
RASKIN: So, first of all, the wretched, ugly, gargantuan bill that they're trying to drive through, congress will throw 14 million Americans off of their Medicaid and drive millions of Americans off of their SNAP benefits, which is nutrition, which is food for people. Elon Musk called it a disgusting abomination because of the fact that it also will add two and a half to $3 trillion to the national debt, right?
HUNT: And he's right about that?
RASKIN: And he's right about that, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It's going to be somewhere in that neighborhood. So, you know, I think it's all to the good that he is forcing members to really focus on what they're voting on here.
There's been this effort to jam it through in the middle of the night. We pulled two all-nighters the week before last back-to-back. I haven't done that since college, but they were trying to make sure nobody knew what was actually in the bill.
And now we have even Marjorie Taylor Greene saying, well, I wouldn't have voted for it if I had known that they were trying to nullify local governments power over artificial intelligence. There's a lot of stuff stuffed in there, so I hope that well be able to look at the bill for real.
And as for the tit for tat between Trump and Musk, all I can say is one says the other guy should be impeached. The other says the other guy's billions of dollars of government contracts should be suspended. And I think I agree with both of them.
HUNT: All right. You do?
All right. You heard it here first. Donald Trump should be impeached again, apparently. Jamie Raskin, thank you. I really appreciate it.
All right. We have to get to the breaking news just coming in from the Supreme Court.
CNN's senior Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic here with the latest details.
Joan, good to see you. What are we learning?
JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Well, the Trump administration has just gotten two wins from the Supreme Court, and both of them involved Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE. In the first one, the Supreme Court is allowing DOGE access to sensitive Social Security Administration information.
You know, Social Security Administration has so much personal information on all of us. Our Social Security numbers, our bank account numbers, all sorts of records, date of birth and DOGE had said that it needed access to this material for part of its efforts to modernize government systems, and a lower court had blocked that. And now the Supreme Court is lifting that block and allowing, DOGE to have access to that.
Three justices dissented. They were the three liberals, Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. And what Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote was, this will hand DOGE staffers highly sensitive data of millions of Americans.
Separately by the same 6-3 vote, Kasie, the justices also paused a lower court order that had allowed us access to DOGE materials under, like the Freedom of Information Act. There had been a watchdog group had was suing DOGE trying to get information about its people and its activities, and was seeking documents and discovery.
And the Supreme Court has paused that effort now, again, by the same split, with the three liberals breaking off and the conservative majority again handing Donald Trump a double win and DOGE a double win today, too, Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Joan Biskupic, thank you for getting us that reporting very quickly. Really appreciate it.
BISKUPIC: Thank you.
HUNT: All right. Coming up next, the latest on that very public breakup divorce. Call it what you want between Donald Trump and Elon Musk and why some Republicans feel like it's actually a good thing for the so-called Big, Beautiful Bill.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:48:26]
HUNT: All right. Welcome back.
It was the social media feud to end them all for a strange, not too brief period. It was all anyone wanted to talk about.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY FALLON, HOST, "THE TONIGHT SHOW": Things have taken a shocking turn with one of the hottest couples on love island. Of course, I'm talking about Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
STEPHEN COLBERT, HOST, "THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT": Is this Twitter war a Cheesy Gordita Crunchwrap Supreme? Because its dripping hot, messy filth and I'm eating up every sloppy bite.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, you know, today, we might have seen round two, but to hear President Trump tell it, he's already over it. In an interview with CNNs Dana Bash this morning, he said this, quote, I'm not even thinking about Elon. He's got a problem. The poor guy's got a problem.
Elon Musk himself has walked back some of yesterday's fighting words. Late last night, Musk withdrew his threat to decommission the SpaceX vehicle that provides critical service to the international space station. And when billionaire Bill Ackman tweeted that Musk and Trump should make peace, Musk replied, quote, you're not wrong.
So, let's not get ahead of ourselves. President Trump is, of course, not exactly known for being forgiving. Musk's pretty shocking decision to invoke Jeffrey Epstein was viewed by sources close to Trump as a real tipping point, and their shared allies have hoped that the two men would hash it out on a call today that is not expected to happen this morning, Trump told CNN, quote, I won't be speaking to him for a while, I guess, but I wish him well.
[16:50:02]
Chuck Todd, it does seem like there's a concerted effort to de- escalate things today, but what is the real impact here?
C. TODD: Well, I actually think this exposes actually a bigger struggle that I think Donald Trump has, which is the MAGA movement doesn't agree on a lot on some big picture things, because when you actually look at what Elon Musk was upset about in the bill versus what Josh Hawley is upset about in the bill versus what say Chip Roy is upset about the bill, it's different things.
And, you know, this to me is a reminder, right? And watching Steve Bannon sort of jump on Musk, right? Bannon totally distrustful of Musk, totally distrustful of that sort of big tech corporate world. And now he's got his "I told you so" moment.
So, to me, I think the bigger picture is that this is a reminder that this has been a coalition, right? And Trump put together an uncomfortable coalition. And the question was because the MAGA movement isn't big enough to govern on its own, right. It needs help. It needed money from Musk. It needed a little bit of the -- of the sort of the tech community to come on board, and they made a transactional decision.
But here's one thing I would remind people. The -- while it is true Trump doesn't forgive people if they're wealthier than him, there's always a way back in. Ask Jeff Bezos, ask Mark Zuckerberg, okay, these are all people that he went after and totally shunned.
There's always a price. You just have to pay the price. And Elon Musk knows what the price is.
HUNT: Brad?
B. TODD: Well, Elon Musk was also attracted because he's a disrupter and Trump is the disruptive candidate here. And I think in the end, I take his word for it. I think that his fault with the bill is that there's not enough disruption, there's not enough pushing us closer to a balanced budget.
But in many ways --
C. TODD: Oh, really? There's nothing to do with any of this EV. Pay no attention to Tesla impact.
B. TODD: I believe him on this because everyone should be concerned about our debt, our debt. So, I think that in the end, Elon has a skill. It is creating products that are irresistibly superior. And you can do that in a sort of a top-down way.
Donald Trump has a skill which is endless dealmaking and not worrying about the last deal. Moving on to the next deal. Well, just so happens when you're negotiating a big reconciliation bill. The deal making skill is the one you want the irresistible products.
There are no irresistibly good products in reconciliation. They don't happen. So, of course, Elon is not happy with it.
So, I think these two men have very different skills and Elon can't handle that dealmaking is what's in order here.
HUNT: Xochitl?
HINOJOSA: Well, I also think Elon Musk has spent a considerable amount of time with Donald Trump. He had access to the man on the airplane. Trump was somewhat taking care of Mar-a-Lago. He moved into Mar-a-Lago for quite a while.
He has had unrestricted access to Donald Trump for quite a while, and he knows a lot. He knows about the internal deliberations. He knows about what everything that Trump has is frustrated about.
He knows how to push his buttons. And so I don't think this is the end. I think that Elon Musk could potentially come out with more if he is -- if he believes that Trump is sort of out there and egging him on. And so, I think that this is just the beginning and we're in for a quite a few crazy years.
KANNO-YOUNGS: There's another reason why Elon Musk was angry here. And it's also because the president did eventually end up deciding to pull the nomination of his friend, Jared Isaacson, to lead NASA, which also would have benefited his company, in SpaceX as well.
Also moving forward for Elon, not just about his proximity to the president, but also does he continue to put pressure on Republicans who do end up supporting this domestic bill. He's already indicated that he would invest in potentially primarying some members of Congress as well.
HUNT: Yeah. All right. I do want to leave this here. Thank you very much for that conversation.
But I don't want to leave today without marking this, because 81 years ago today, Allied Forces stormed the beaches of Normandy. It was, of course, the first step in retaking France, breaking the Nazis iron grip over western Europe.
On that fateful morning, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of allied forces, offered these words to the hundreds of thousands of troops preparing to face unimaginable horror.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEN. DWIGHT EISENHOWER, SUPREME COMMANDER, ALLIED FORCES: The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave allies and brothers in arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: And of course, what followed was the largest amphibious invasion in history. As it unfolded, President Franklin Roosevelt led the nation in a prayer for the troops who were rushing into harm's way.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day, have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[16:55:01]
HUNT: More than 4,000 Allied troops sacrificed their lives that day, 2,500 Americans, among them. Eighty-one years ago, June 6th, marked the beginning of the end of World War II and of the Nazi's brutal domination of Europe.
And today, the remaining veterans of D-Day, the ones that we still have, they once again returned to the beaches of Normandy to remember the lives of their compatriots, those who made the ultimate sacrifice.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Freedom is everything. I pray for freedom for the whole world, for the war to end in Ukraine and Russia and Sudan and Gaza.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We may be old, but were young at heart, aren't we?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Jack, you got that right. Still young at heart.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Young at heart and free!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah, free.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After 81 years, we're still free.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: We are still free. Thanks to them for everything that they gave to us. Thanks to you for watching today.
Don't go anywhere. "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts right after this quick break.
