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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Judge Says, No Evidence Trump Admin is Following Orders In Garcia Case; White House Tells Harvard To Apologize After Rejecting Trump's Demands; Palestinian Student Detained Visiting Citizenship Office; Some Democrats Call For Insider Trading Probe On Trump's Tariff Pause. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired April 15, 2025 - 18:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Lead. I'm Jake Tapper.

This hour, President Trump's new threat to Harvard University and the White House's demand for an apology, is President Trump trying to control one of the most elite privately-run colleges in the world but just one way that President Trump is testing the limits of presidential power?

[18:00:15:]

Plus, in his very first T.V. interview, a government whistleblower sounding the alarm, hear why he believes DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, took sensitive data from his agency. And hear about the disturbing threat he received at his own home.

Also, I'm going to speak with the Democrat calling for an investigation after President Trump's Truth Social post last week that came a few hours before he paused most tariffs. He is suggesting that Trump intentionally benefited from the surge on Wall Street that followed. We'll ask him why he thinks that.

And we're going to give you a little teaser of my conversation with actor George Clooney, which is going to come on The Lead tomorrow here, about his new Broadway project, the importance of journalism, and the Reaction to the uproar he caused after he called for Joe Biden to drop out of last year's presidential race.

We are going to begin this hour in our Law and Justice Lead, President Trump attempting to bend the justice system to his liking. This afternoon, a federal judge in Maryland rejected the Trump administration's latest argument about bringing a Maryland man, Abrego Garcia, who was in this country illegally but mistakenly deported to El Salvador back to the United States.

CNN's Priscilla Alvarez is in D.C. And, Priscilla, this was, you tell us, quite a tense hearing. Tell us what happened and what comes next.

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A tense hearing and yet another hearing where the federal judge was clearly frustrated by the answers or lack thereof that she was getting from the Justice Department about what they are doing to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia. The resounding message from the federal judge was, where is the evidence? Show me the evidence of what exactly you are doing. She said at one point, quote, I do need evidence in this regard because to- date, what the record shows is nothing has been done.

Of course, this happening after that Supreme Court decision last week where the Supreme Court said that the administration must facilitate the return, but stop short of requiring his return, sending it back to the lower court to define how to effectuate that.

Now, the Justice Department over the course of this back and forth did point to the Oval Office meeting between President Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele that happened yesterday, but the federal judge said, well, that's not enough. What she wants to see is the documents submitted to the court, the record to be shown. She said, quote, I don't consider what happened yesterday as really evidence before this court yet. And she also ordered an intense discovery, meaning she wants to see this over the course of the next two weeks.

Now, the Trump administration is arguing here that in addition to that emphasis on deference of foreign affairs, that they also have to remove domestic barriers, well, the federal judge not buying that, saying that this is not so cut and dry and saying that she may order or expand her definition of the word, facilitate. Jake?

TAPPER: And, Priscilla, President Trump is not backing down on this idea of deporting American criminals to El Salvador. Is that even legal?

ALVAREZ: Well, let's be clear here. You can't deport U.S. citizens, but what he has been entertaining is finding some way to send American criminals to El Salvador, who he has touted for the prison, that El Salvador has their notorious mega prison, the largest in the Americas.

Now, this as one source has described it to me is legally complex. But you can tell through all of this that the administration is keen on El Salvador, its prisons, not only for its immigration agenda, but also now entertaining this idea of U.S. citizens, which, of course, legal experts have cast a lot of doubt on. But here is what he told Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Could we use it for violent criminals, our own violent criminals?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: I call them homegrown criminals. I mean, the homegrown --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The homegrowns could be --

TRUMP: The ones that grew up and something went wrong and they hit people over the head with a baseball bat, we have -- and push people into subways just before the train gets there, like you see happening sometimes. We are looking into it and we want to do it. I would love to do that. (END VIDEO CLIP)

ALVAREZ: Now, Jake, there is a through line here with the Abrego Garcia case and this idea, because the question legal experts pose if there is a world where this can happen is what if the U.S. sends someone to El Salvador by accident and it's a U.S. citizen, will they be returned then? Jake?

TAPPER: All right, Priscilla Alvarez, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Also tonight, seeing crimson, President Trump threatening to tax Harvard as a political entity after Harvard University's president said he will not surrender the university's independence or constitutional rights following specific White House demands on key policy changes at the elite institution, including but not limited to, quote, the following eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs, or DEI, banning masks at campus protests, enacting merit- based hiring and admissions reforms, reducing the power of faculty and administrators.

[18:05:06]

That's just a short list from the long list. And now the university will not be able to access more than $2 billion in federal multi-year grants and contracts.

This afternoon, Princeton University's president expressed support for Harvard, standing with Harvard.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny is live for us at the White House. Jeff, the president clearly eager for a fight here with Harvard.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there's no question about it. This is just the latest in a series of institutions we have seen the president eagerly go after, even last week one day in the Oval Office, he said, what's wrong with Harvard? So, clearly, Harvard has been on his mind.

That list you were just reading there is just a partial list. You said of some of the demands the administration is placing on Harvard and some other institutions of higher learning. Now, most of these institutions, like a Columbia University and others, have essentially given into the administration. Harvard is not doing that. Perhaps one reason, of course, they have the biggest endowment of any university, $50 billion, so it gives them some more leeway. But the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said today the president is looking for something specific from Harvard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He also wants to see Harvard apologize, and Harvard should apologize for the egregious anti-Semitism that took place on their college campus against Jewish- American students. There were professors who said that he had engaged in discriminatory behavior against Jewish students. Of course, you had the former president of the university saying bullying and harassment depends on the context.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZELENY: So, this is just the latest example of, again, the White House and this president of flexing his presidential muscle.

But, Jake, it's a bit ironic because the president, as we have watched him for many years, has long held up Ivy League of students and graduates. He's hired many of them. But this is a sign of what this administration is trying to do to free some funding.

Now, we should point out, a lot of this is research for medical research and other things. It's not simply giving money to the university. But this is going to end up in a legal mess. There's no doubt about it. But Harvard is standing up to the president, unlike we've seen from anyone else. Jake?

TAPPER: Both the president and vice president are Ivy Leaguers, President Trump going to Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania, J.D. Vance having gone to Yale Law School, right?

ZELENY: That is correct.

TAPPER: Yes. CNN's Jeff Zeleny at the White House, thanks so much.

Let's turn now to Professor of Law at Harvard Noah Feldman. He is also a Bloomberg opinion columnist. Professor, you have a new column today in which you lay out the options for Harvard to fight this in the courts. You write, in part, quote, the strongest, legally speaking, is that Trump cannot rely on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to cut the funding, unquote. First explain what Title VI is and does and why you think that's the strongest argument.

NOAH FELDMAN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Well, that's the part of the civil rights laws, Jake, that says a university can't discriminate on the basis of race or national origin, and it can't let anybody else on its campus discriminate on that basis. But that law also says that if they're going to pull your federal funding for that, first, a judge has to find that you actually did do that. And the Trump administration, as usual cutting corners, hasn't bothered to even file a case, much less have a judge make that determination, so they can't cut the funding on those grounds alone.

And I would add the funding is being taken not just from ordinary everyday operations, but from scientific research labs that are fighting cancer and Alzheimer's and you name it. And they aren't even alleged to have done anything, even slightly discriminatory.

TAPPER: You're the author of a book titled, To Be a Jew Today, A New Guide to God, Israel, and The Jewish People. So, I am curious at the core of the Trump administration's argument about Harvard is this accusation that the university has not done enough to battle anti- Semitism on its campus. What do you think of that basic charge?

FELDMAN: You know, our president sent out a letter just yesterday explaining all of the things the university has been doing to fight anti-Semitism. And he said in the letter that he thinks that there is still some anti-Semitism on the campus, and maybe that's the case. But the university has taken multiple steps to try to fix that and to address it. And I think the argument now that's somehow there's an unchecked or untreated problem on the campus is just flatly wrong. That's not what I'm observing.

TAPPER: Big picture, the Trump administration is targeting international students by taking away visas, injecting uncertainty into federal student loan repayments, engaging the systematic targeting a federally funded university research. How worried are you as a member of the Harvard faculty about the future of higher education in the United States?

FELDMAN: I'm really proud that Harvard is standing up for the rule of law against the Trump administration. And so now what has to happen is the courts have to take our claim seriously, and they will, I'm very confident, conclude that the Trump administration's actions are unlawful, like so many other of their actions. And once that's determined, I'm very hopeful that the administration will actually listen to the rulings of the courts and then we'll get back to normal, which is doing our jobs, which is trying to study and teach and produce good results for the whole country.

[18:10:06]

That's what we do every day.

TAPPER: Do you worry at all that the previous president, President Gay, I believe what was her name, set the stage for any of this by not being more aggressive early on when there were visible anti-Semitic incidents on campus? Certainly not to the extent that we saw at Columbia University, but we all saw some ugly moments at Harvard. And I think, you know, there's Harvard Jewish alumni groups and current Harvard students. Somebody who spoke at the Republican National Convention last year, Shabbos Kestenbaum, I think is his name, talking about anti-Semitism at Harvard. Do you worry at all that the university set the stage for this by whatever deficits and leadership happened back then?

FELDMAN: That's not how I see it. You know, the encampment, the pro- Palestine encampment that took place at Harvard happened after President Gay was no longer president of the university. What the university has to do then and now is make it really clear that there's free academic speech for everyone to express their views and that there's a zero tolerance policy for any discrimination or harassment or bullying on any basis, and that includes anti-Semitism. And that's hugely important and that's what the university needs to do. And that's our policy and we need to make sure we enforce that policy.

TAPPER: Professor Noah Feldman of Harvard University, thank you so much. Good to see you, sir.

New video shows just how swift some of these immigration arrests have been. One man was just outside an immigration office, his ties to anti-Israel protests at Columbia University are coming under assault. And former President Joe Biden making a return to the public eye.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:15:00]

TAPPER: In our National Lead, a Palestinian student from Columbia University, a leader of the quite controversial anti-Israel protest on that campus, walking to an immigration office on Monday, ready to continue the process of becoming an American citizen, but as you are seeing on your screen, he left the office in handcuffs detained by immigration officials. Mohsen Mahdawi is the latest in a string of detentions and attempted deportations by the Trump administration, as the administration continues to crack down on participants of campus protests that allegedly veered from anti-Israel to anti-Semitic over the Gaza War.

CNN's Gloria Pazmino has been following this story in particular. Gloria, what else do we know about this student?

GLORIA PAZMINO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, we don't know of a crime that he's been charged with, but we do know that he was closely associated with the protest movement on the campus of Columbia University last year. In fact, he helped found the student -- the Palestinian Student Union, along with Mahmoud Khalil, the other Columbia student that has been targeted by the Trump administration.

Now, the Trump administration appears to be relying on this section of the U.S. immigration law, the Alien Nationality Act, which gives wide powers to the secretary of state. If the secretary deems that the person creates some sort of threat to American foreign policy, that person can de be deemed deportable. And it appears that the administration is going to rely on that same section of the law to target Mahdawi.

Now, as you said, he had showed up to an immigration appointment where he thought he was going to be taking his citizenship interview. You come in, you take a test, you're interviewed by immigration officers. But instead, as we can see in the video, he was taken into custody.

Now, he helped lead the protest, had a very prominent role last year, and he spoke to 60 Minutes about this during an interview. He spoke about the pro-Palestinian cause and also about anti-Semitism. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MOHSEN MAHDAWI, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDENT: (INAUDIBLE) is unjust, is unjust, and the fight for the freedom of Palestine and the fight against anti-Semitism go hand in hand because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

(END VIDEO CLIP) PAZMINO: Now, Mahdawi is in custody, but a judge in Vermont has ordered a temporary restraining order to prevent Mahdawi from being deported from the United States or from being moved outside of the district, like we have seen in so many other of these cases. So, it looks like for now, he will be detained there in Vermont.

TAPPER: All right. Gloria Pazmino, thanks so much. Attorneys for Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University student detained three weeks ago seen in this video, argued in court Monday that her arrest was unconstitutional, this as serious questions are being raised about the purported evidence the government is using to justify her detainment in the first place.

Carol Rose is joining me now. She's the executive director of ACLU Massachusetts, which is part of Rumeysa Ozturk's legal team.

Carol, The Washington Post published a story before this hearing about an internal State Department memo that showed no evidence of Rumeysa's support for Hamas, as was alleged by the government, beyond an op-ed, she co-wrote about the university's response to protest. I want to play a little bit of what about what Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters who asked about her case a few days ago after her detention, but before The Washington Post story. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: We're basically asking you to leave the country. That's why they've been detained. They can do so tomorrow, buy an airplane ticket and leave, no problem. But I would add to this that I would caution you against solely going off of what the media's been able to identify.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: It's tough to hear on that airplane, but it says -- Secretary Rubio says, I would caution you against solely going off of what the media's been able to identify. Do you know of any other evidence beyond this op-ed?

CAROL ROSE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ACLU MASSACHUSETTS: No. And, in fact, the government has produced absolutely no other evidence at all to suggest why she was picked up from the street, hop-scotched around three different states, and ultimately landed 1,300 miles away from her family, her community, and her legal counsel. She's not been charged with any crime. There's simply no evidence that they've been able to produce that she engaged in any kind of anti-Semitic activity. There's no evidence that she's provided any support for terrorist organizations.

[18:20:01]

And so, nonetheless, the government still revoked her visa.

So, all we can think is that it must be punishment for her protected political speech, which is a violation of her constitutional rights. TAPPER: So, The Washington Post story, it's interesting, they mention a legal caveat. They say, quote, as a result of the lack of evidence against her, the State Department said she could be deported using a different authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows for the revocation of a visa at the secretary of state's discretion. This is different than what Gloria Pazmino mentioned about the two Palestinian students from the university -- from Columbia University. How would this change her case if the State Department decides to go ahead under this other authority?

ROSE: Well, they can try to invoke that. But even under the other authority, they can't be -- use their discretion to violate her constitutional rights under the First Amendment right to free speech or the Fifth Amendment right to due process. So, there's no constitutional way in which they can invoke some kind of vague discretionary power to do that in ways that violate her constitutional rights.

TAPPER: So, we learned more about the conditions that Rumeysa has been enduring since her detention. She was denied medication for asthma, denied the ability to speak to an attorney. She had her head covering, her hijab removed. Do those violations play a role in her case, in helping her case?

ROSE: Well, I mean, absolutely. I think it's important for all of us to understand that her being picked up and nabbed off the street by, you know, unmarked -- put in an unmarked car, picked up by plain clothes police officer, she thought she was being kidnapped and that she was going to be killed. I mean, that -- and that's in her declaration that she's put in. And it's just so chilling for all these reasons. If the government has no has to produce no evidence to support their arrest, their transportation, and their detention of Rumeysa, it's only about an op-ed that she wrote, then that's something that they can do it to Rumeysa this time and are allowed to get away with it, then they could do it to other people the next time, including American citizens.

TAPPER: All right. Carol Rose, thank you so much.

And let me just reiterate for our viewers at home, CNN continues to ask the State Department and the Trump administration for actual, tangible, physical, or visual evidence of any wrongdoing by any of these students. If they provide it, we will share it with you. But so far, all we get is vague allegations with no specific evidence or no response, whatsoever.

Coming up, a government whistleblower says he has reason to believe DOGE, or the Department of Government Efficiency, took sensitive data from his agency, his claims laid out in his very first television interview. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:25:00] TAPPER: In our Politics Lead, a whistleblower is coming forward with claims that DOGE not only accessed data from his agency, but also took a substantial amount of sensitive data with them, according to a disclosure shared with Congress, quote, around ten gigabytes of data, or, quote, the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias worth if someone printed these files as hard copy documents, unquote.

Now, that data came from the National Labor Relations Board. That's an independent federal agency, then investigates allegedly unfair labor practices by private sector employers and unions and collections stores sensitive and confidential information in the process. It's the type of information the Democratic Senator Chris Murphy asked the head of the National Labor Relations Board if she would protect from Elon Musk during her -- oh, I'm sorry, asked the secretary of labor, rather, if she would protect this data from Elon Musk during her confirmation hearing in mid-February.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): And this is an individual who owns companies that have existing investigations. He has a direct interest in getting information about the seriousness of those investigations. He has interest in getting information about investigations against his competitors.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So, that's the reason why it should be protected among others.

Joining us now, Daniel Berulis, he's the whistleblower that we were talking about as well as his attorney, Andrew Bakaj.

And, Daniel, you're fairly new to this role. This is your first T.V. interview as a whistleblower, and also you're very fairly new to the role at the National Labor Relations Board, just under a year with the agency. How did you first deduce that there was a problem?

DANIEL BERULIS, NLRB WHISTLEBLOWER: So, I spent a lot of time in the private sector and you start to see these indicators of compromise sometimes and they kind of raise red flags. And so when you start seeing those, you put together the puzzle, and more likely than not, that's how you flush out a breach. And I saw those same indicators in my agency and started raising the flag.

TAPPER: So, in your complaint that you shared with Congress, you include this screenshot we're going to show. It shows a large spike in data leaving the National Labor Relations Board. You say that's extremely unusual because data almost never directly leaves the databases. How do you know what was being removed and is it possible you saw something that has a plausible explanation behind it?

BERULIS: I definitely would prefer that actually. I've tried to proof the negatives multiple times. It correlates directly with data that was exiting the database at the same time. There's a lot of corroborating evidence that points to it. That was the first thing I tried to do, is just rule out every other solution before I went this route.

TAPPER: We reached out to the White House about your claims, which obviously were made public when you came forward and went to Congress, you got this statement, quote, it is months old news that President Trump signed an executive order to hire DOGE employees at agencies and coordinate data sharing.

[18:30:01]

Their highly qualified team has been extremely public and transparent in its efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse across the executive branch, including the National Labor Relations Board, unquote. What's your response to that?

BERULIS: So, I believe that if that was true, we would have access to the code that they're running. We would be able to see these things that they're hiding. I don't believe that there's transparency, and that's all I'm asking for here.

TAPPER: And, Andrew, give us the view, the 30,000-foot view here, because, obviously, this data could be beneficial to others, either corporations or even a foreign actor with malign intention. How do you know that?

ANDREW BAKAJ, FOUNDING AND MANAGING PARTNER, COMPASS ROSE LEGAL GROUP: So we know that because the information that the National Labor Relations Board looks at are basically corporate documents and things that involve unions. So, there's a lot of sensitive corporate information that is included within this, which, yes, could, you know, be of interest to Elon Musk, but at the same time, they're of interest to our foreign adversaries.

I'd like to step back for a moment and talk about what the larger implication is here. So, this is happening at the NLRB, at the National Labor Relations Board, but, Dan is brave enough to come forward. And there are others within the government that I've talked to and that we've talked to who have seen something identical as this.

There are two data points that I want to point out that should put -- give everybody pause. The first thing, what Dan witnessed was that within 15 minutes of DOGE employees creating user counts, i.e. user names and passwords, within 15 minutes of those accounts being created, somebody or something from Russia tried to log in with the right username and right passwords, that is to say the right credentials, and that happened over 20 times.

The second data point, which is really critical, is that DOGE has also been using Starlink as a means to exfiltrate data. What that means is that from our understanding that Russia has a direct pipeline of information through Starlink, which means that anything going through Starlink is going to Russia.

We also know that this is not unique to the NLRB. This is happening government-wide. And then the other thing that I wanted to flag for everybody is that right now that, and I don't want to say that this is intentional, it could be variable, have been a mistake, is that critical infrastructure databases in many government agencies as we understand it have been exposed to the open internet, which includes critical databases at the Department of Energy, which includes a lot of our nuclear regulatory agency material.

So, right now, the real concern is that this is not unlike Chernobyl and all of the control panels lighting up after the meltdown. This is serious. And I just want to commend Dan for coming forward to bring this to everybody's attention because this really is the tip of the iceberg.

TAPPER: And, Andrew, how can you say how do you know that somebody was logging in from Russia in that 15 minute period?

BAKAJ: Dan actually saw that happen.

BERULIS: Yes. There's logs and records we keep that show they geotag based on latitude, longitude, where logins coming from. And we saw blocked ones from Russia using that account.

TAPPER: You also told our producer that shortly after sharing your concerns about a potential breach that you received a threat at your home, including photographs. What did the photographs show? And was there a message?

BERULIS: The message was clear, although poorly constructed it. It was to stop looking, stop reporting. The pictures were of me walking my dog from above, basically the --

TAPPER: Like a satellite photo?

BERULIS: No.

BAKAJ: No. It was actually taken by a drone. What's really disturbing about all of this is that we had somebody literally, either themselves or have somebody go to Dan's home and tape a threatening note, a menacing note that included a lot of personal information. There was a clear reference to his whistle blowing activities ahead of our filing, and with an image basically threatening him as he's walking his dog via -- and that image was taken via drone.

This -- we've taken this very seriously. And, by the way, I've done this for a number of years professionally, and this is something that really takes me aback. And it's only something that I've seen maybe one or once or twice in handling whistleblower claims, both public and private sector.

TAPPER: All right. Daniel Berulis and Andrew Bakaj, thank you both. I appreciate it.

BAKAJ: Thank you.

BERULIS: Thank you.

TAPPER: Just moments ago, former President Joe Biden return to the political stage. The issue that he's trying to put front and center is next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:35:00]

TAPPER: In our Politics Lead right now, former President Biden is giving his very first public remarks since his departure from the White House on January 20th. The speech is about protecting Social Security amid the Trump administration's rapid dismantling of government services, he says.

CNN's Arlette Saenz joins us now. Arlette, what are the highlights so far?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, President Joe Biden offered up his first criticism of this current president, Donald Trump, since leaving office, specifically criticizing his administration's approach to Social Security.

Now, so far in this speech that Biden is currently delivering in Chicago, he has yet to mention Trump specifically by name, but he did talk about the administration's efforts relating to the Social Security administration saying that they have been disruptive -- destructive. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Fewer than 100 days, this new administration has made so much -- done so much damage and so much destruction. It's kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon. They've taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: Now, it comes as the Social Security Administration has undergone a massive reorganization amid do's federal government cuts that they've been trying to make.

[18:40:06]

For Biden, this speech is coinciding with Democrats, congressional leaders, launching this day of action to try to preserve Social Security. But this also offers Biden an opportunity to step back onto the public stage. He has really spent a lot of the past few months out of the public spotlight. He's spent most of his time in Delaware coming to D.C. for a few meetings, also participating in some events. But this is really the first time that we are hearing publicly from Biden and he is willing to take aim at some of the policies that Trump has enacted since he has come back into office.

TAPPER: And, Arlette, how are other Democrats feeling about Biden stepping back into the spotlight?

SAENZ: Well, that's the big question, is how is this going to be received in the Democratic Party. Of course, right now, Democrats are struggling with a lot of their messaging as they're trying to counter Trump's actions. There are some who are welcoming Biden coming back, for instance, Governor Martin O'Malley, who had served as the commissioner of the Social Security Administration. But there are other Democrats who have questioned whether this is really the right moment for Biden to step forward and inject his voice in this fight.

Now, this is certainly a debate that will continue for quite some time in the Democratic Party, as there are some and many who place blame on Biden for Trump's reelection back in November,

TAPPER: Arlette Saenz, thanks so much.

And that, of course, brings us to the Pop Culture Lead. We're going to bring you a little teaser of my interview earlier today with George Clooney, the full interview we're going to air you tomorrow, but we did want to give you a taste of our time with the co-writer and star of the new Broadway play, Goodnight and Good Luck. It's about the legendary newsman, Edward R. Murrow and Murrow's coverage of the demagogic senator, Joseph McCarthy.

Calling out powerful people is not easy or fun, as Clooney himself might have learned last July, when he wrote that highly influential op-ed in The New York Times calling on President Biden to drop out. Of the presidential race,

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GEORGE CLOONEY, ACTOR: We're here doing this play because there was a standard set by a journalist who said, I'm not going to cave, and it will cost us our jobs. And he's not a dummy. He knew what he was up against.

And that's -- look, I respond, and most of the people I know respond to actual courage. And that's actual courage. This is a guy that was the first person into -- I think it was Auschwitz, but one of the camps broadcaster there, he broadcast from the tops of buildings during the London Blitz, brave man.

TAPPER: Yes.

CLOONEY: Great writer. And, honestly, to see him say we're going to -- and word for word, he said, you know, we're going to go with the show because the terror is right here in this room. And that's a courage that we all -- I certainly, you know, am attracted to and watching.

TAPPER: You yourself did something that a lot of people would call brave when you wrote your op-ed.

CLOONEY: Well, I don't know if it was brave. It was a civic duty because I found that people on my side of the street -- you know, I'm a Democrat. I was a Democrat in Kentucky, so I get it. When I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth, I thought that was time to --

TAPPER: Are people still mad at you for that?

CLOONEY: Some people, sure. It's okay. You know, listen, the idea of freedom of speech, you know, the specific idea of it is, you know, you can't demand freedom of speech and then say, but don't say bad things about me.

TAPPER: Right.

CLOONEY: That's the deal. You have to take a stand if you believe in it. Take a stand, stand for it, and then deal with the consequences. That's the rules. And so when people criticize me, they criticized me because of my stance against the war 20 years ago, and people picketed my movies and they put me on a deck of cards. And, you know, and that's the -- I have to take that. That's fair. I'm okay with that. I'm okay with criticism for my -- you know, for where I stand. I defend their right to criticize me as much as I defend my right to criticize them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: So, two notes. One, he dyed his hair for the role of Edward R. Murrow, just so you don't think that he's trying to pull that off, and, two, we're just trying to wet your appetite here because George Clooney had much more to say on politics and journalism and Goodnight and Good Luck, and a lot more.

Look for much more of our exclusive interview tomorrow on the lead, starting at 5:00 Eastern only here on CNN.

Next, tonight on The Lead, I'm going to speak with one of the lawmakers who's calling for an investigation into a puzzling post from President Trump last week on Truth Social just hours before a surge on Wall Street.

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[18:48:48]

TAPPER: In our politics lead, some Democrats are ramping up calls for an investigation into whether President Trump intentionally manipulated the stock market so that his allies and even some members of Congress could profit.

The concern stems from Trump's Truth Social post on April 9th, where about four hours before he announced his 90-day tariff pause, causing the market to soar, he posted, quote: This is a great time to buy, DJT.

DJT, those are the president's initials. It's also, coincidentally or not, the stock symbol for Trump media and technology group. When asked by a reporter last week whether Trump's Truth Social post was an attempt to manipulate the stock market, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett pushed back, saying, quote, I don't think that Trump ever had any other intent other than to get people to the table with serious policies, unquote.

And joining us now, one of the House Democrats raising concerns about all of this, Congressman Mike Levin of California.

Congressman Levin, have you seen any evidence of insider trading from either members of congress or President Trump's allies, instead of that, just general advice that Trump gave for people to invest?

REP. MIKE LEVIN (D-CA): Well, Jake, it's good to be with you. And to the extent we have evidence, it's circumstantial right now.

[18:50:01]

So, we know that President Trump had a number of conversations with members of Congress and with members of his administration, leading up to the decision to have the 90-day pause. And, for example, we know that there was a dinner the prior evening with Republican members of congress and the president. We know that he spoke with a number of people on the day of the decision.

And I think what we want to know is who traded both on the eighth and then pre-market on the ninth leading up to that post on truth social. At 9:37 a.m. and -- and that would be of most interest to me. And then, of course, who -- who traded between 937 and then 118 in the afternoon last Wednesday afternoon when the pause was announced.

Because of the STOCK Act, which is the law that governs all of this. We've got a very limited data set so far. A lot of that information will come out in 30 to 45 days. But a number of us are calling on Mike Johnson to have full transparency and accountability for all members to see what they traded between April 2nd and April 9th.

And, Jake, for me, it just reinforces the need to have a full ban on members of Congress trading stock at all. And I'm encouraged to see that Leader Jeffries and others are now fully behind the idea of that ban.

TAPPER: Yeah, that ban didn't happen when Democrats controlled the House and Senate. Why not?

LEVIN: Well, certainly, it wasn't for a lack of my trying. I've been calling for that straight through since I started running for congress back in 2017. My wife and I divested, and the individual shares of stock and put them all in mutual funds. And look, I think there is bipartisan support for this. In fact, President Trump himself, back in 2022, said he supported a stock trading ban.

I think there's a great deal of momentum. We've got a bill now that has several Republicans, in addition to many Democrats on board. And I think if a vote were allowed on the floor of the House, I think it would pass the House and would pass the Senate. We continue to build momentum behind it, and I'm hopeful that that vote will occur.

If it can't occur in this Congress, because Mike Johnson doesn't have the courage to do it, then hopefully it will happen if Democrats retake the House after next year.

TAPPER: It would be great, obviously, if voluntarily, every House member disclosed their trades on the dates that you talked about -- any trade transaction between April 2nd to April 9th. Are there Republicans that are curious as well?

LEVIN: There are. And there are roughly 15 who are behind our effort to try to have a stock trading ban and who have expressed concern, at least privately. It's amazing what they'll tell you privately, Jake, but I think at the end of the day, the existing law only goes so far because we'll see, like I said, between 30 and 45 days from now, which members traded. But we won't get a time stamp.

So, in other words, well see if they traded on the eighth or the ninth, we'll know what they traded with rough ranges, but we won't get that level of granularity.

I know that my friend Adam Schiff has called for a similar investigation into what members of the administration may have done, and it's very simple. We should not be using our position, in which we often get access to material nonpublic information, to pad our pockets. We serve the people.

We shouldn't be serving ourselves in that manner. It's fundamentally wrong. And a broad coalition of people across the political spectrum agree.

TAPPER: I asked you earlier why Democrats didn't do this when they controlled the House, and you said it wasn't for lack of your trying. Without naming any Democrats who were against it, can you give us at least any sort of vague idea as to why you didn't do it -- Democrats didn't do it when you controlled the House?

LEVIN: Jake, I think that there are politicians of both parties that for too long have profited off the rules as they are. That's why it's very tough for us to enact campaign finance reform in the wake of the Citizens United decision. It's why -- it's very tough for members like myself who don't take any corporate PAC contributions. We're at a disadvantage often.

And when the system is working for incumbents, it's very difficult for those incumbents to want to challenge that very system. And look, I know that there's a certain degree of cynicism here, but I think this is so critically important and is so resonant with people across the political spectrum. When I speak to my constituents, I just had a town hall packed with people, and when I brought up the need for members of Congress to not trade individual shares of stock, that was probably one of the biggest applause lines that I got. And there were a lot of Republicans in attendance.

TAPPER: I don't know that it's cynicism if it's true.

Democratic Congressman Mike Levin of California, thank you so much, sir. Appreciate it.

We're back with our last leads, next.

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[18:59:17]

TAPPER: Our last lead start in the law and justice lead, family and those close to the suspect in the Pennsylvania governor's mansion arson, say that they tried to get him help for his mental health issues days before the fire. His ex-girlfriend told CNN that the man, Cody Balmer, was, quote, trying to eat batteries. Both she and Balmer's mother were told that he didn't meet the standards for involuntary commitment.

Now to the kingdom of Jordan -- Jordan, where an elaborate plot to carry out acts of sabotage with drones and rockets was foiled today, according to officials there. Jordan's government says 16 people were arrested. They allege they were working on a years-long project to manufacture deadly weapons and train operatives inside Jordan and outside its borders.

I have two books coming out next month, "Original Sin", about President Biden's decision to run for reelection and the cover up of his decline. And in October, "Race Against Terror", about the hunt to prosecute an al Qaeda terrorist who killed Americans was out to kill more. Check 'em out. Preorder 'em at jaketapper.com.

"ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" starts now. I'll see you tomorrow.