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McCarthy Changes Debt Bill Amid Struggle For GOP Votes; Trump Lawyers: Foreign Leader Briefings May Be In Docs Taken From WH; Testimony Underway In Battery, Defamation Case Against Trump; Sheriff: One Escaped MS Inmate Believed Dead After Police Shootout. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired April 26, 2023 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:00:20]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A GOP scramble, House Republicans think they have the votes to raise the debt ceiling and slash spending with their bill, but with the President already threatening to veto it, are we all just racing towards disaster.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And she just told a jury that Donald Trump raped her E. Jean Carroll taking the stand in her defamation and sexual battery case against the former president. Why she says she waited 27 years to bring these charges.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: The World Health Organization is warning of a potential humanitarian crisis now in Sudan. Hospitals at only 16 percent capacity and that laboratory seized by militants is now entirely without power. Diseases such as measles, polio, cholera in worst case scenario could be leaked. We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: We begin this hour on Capitol Hill, where overnight House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made a series of concessions on the Republican debt ceiling bill to appease far right members of the House. He is hoping to pass that legislation as early as today. President Biden says he's willing to meet with McCarthy, but with one condition. Here it is.

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm happy to meet with McCarthy, but not on whether or not the debt limit gets extended.

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KEILAR: So this comes as the U.S. is hurtling towards a potential financial disaster. There's really no other way to put it here. Experts predict the United States could default on its debt as early as June.

CNN's Melanie Zanona is joining us live from Capitol Hill. Mel, walk us through the changes right now.

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes. So Brianna, there were two major changes that leadership made at the 11th hour to this bill. The first one is that they agreed to a faster timeline to implement some of these new work requirements for Medicaid.

Now, instead of starting in 2025, they are going to start in 2024 under this proposal. That was a change that was designed to win over conservatives like Matt Gaetz, who had made that as one of his conditions in order to support this bill.

And then the second change that was made was that they agreed to nix a provision that would have repealed a trio of biofuel's tax credits. That was something that Midwestern Republicans who represent ethanol- producing states had expressed concern over.

But leadership in a closed door meeting earlier today really tried to downplay these concessions. They framed them as just technical changes, because leadership had been insisting up until the very last minute that they weren't going to change this bill.

But clearly, they realized that they needed to make some changes in order to win over the votes. And really, the central pitch during that conference meeting today from Kevin McCarthy was this bill is not going to become law, but he needs it in order to get to the negotiating table with President Biden.

And indeed, if this bill is going to pass, it is going to be dead on arrival in the Senate. Just take a listen to how Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Leader talked about the bill.

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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): If anything, this revised bill is even more extreme, more radical, a more radical version of the Default on America Act. Let me be clear, Democrats cannot and will not allow the Republicans' DOA Act to ever become law.

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ZANONA: So again, this is just the opening offer from Republicans that they're hoping to get across the finish line in order to begin the even tougher process of actually figuring out how to solve this crisis before a potential debt default this summer, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. An opening offer poison pill is how Democrats clearly view this.

Melanie Zanona live for us on the Hill. Thank you.

Let's head down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and our CNN Chief White House Correspondent, Phil Mattingly.

Phil, is the White House feeling any pressure here to wiggle around on that no negotiation stance that the President's been taking? PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, based on what the President said, responding to shouted questions just a few moments ago, reiterating this position that they've held from the very beginning and underscoring it just at the moment where House Republicans are moving towards a possible vote. Their bill doesn't seem like there's a lot of wiggle room here and I think that's intentional.

There's two parts to this, which is one, they don't believe that they should negotiate. They believe it sets a bad precedent and they feel like, to some degree, it's a level of hostage taking, when they're more than happy to have a longer term discussion about fiscal priorities or potential cost savings or debt deficit issues.

[15:05:01]

I think the second as well is they believe that they hold most of the political cards here. They think that their members on these issues benefit from this fight. They feel like Republicans will eventually have to come to the table, particularly as markets start to shutter and in terms of how industries may respond to it. We'll see if that's actually the case. I think a lot people are skeptical right now. But that's definitely driving a very, very firm position the White House currently holds.

KEILAR: Phil, we're old enough now that we're watching reruns, right? We're watching reruns of this thing that is happening here in Washington, so remind us how this ended last time.

MATTINGLY: Yes. I mean, there's been a number of them, but I think the one you're probably referring to, we're both kids, running through the halls of the Capitol.

KEILAR: Twelve, thirteen ...

MATTINGLY: We had our whole lives in front of us, probably hanging out on 18th Street. It shows you and I think this is where - this is why there's a lot of trepidation right now. Obviously, we talk about this often. There's been several of these fights. This is most closely reminiscent to 2011, I think where it was so clear that the possibility of going over the edge was so real and vivid that not only was the United States downgraded, but President Obama at the time was preparing his treasury secretary or telling his treasury secretary he needed to prepare for that reality.

Now, that ended in a way that might be instructive to some degree. Then, Vice President Joe Biden working with then-Senate Minority - Majority Leader Mitch McConnell or Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and crafting together a proposal that they could get across the finish line by scraping together enough Democrats in the minority in the House along with the Senate Democrats and some Republicans as well and getting it over the finish line.

Nobody was particularly happy with it. Republicans in the new majority in the House certainly didn't like everything that they got and I would note, most of the Budget Control Act, the caps that were put in place ended up getting blown through repeatedly year after year after year.

However, there's kind of a model there that would, though, require the White House to start negotiating, which they have made clear they don't want to do, not because they don't feel like it's necessary, but they - because they want to take this threat off the table that we've had so many times since we were young, happy and stupid in 2011, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. In those scary, scary times that tested everyone. Phil Mattingly, thank you.

MATTINGLY: Yup.

KEILAR: Boris?

SANCHEZ: Now to new CNN reporting about what types of materials may have been a part of the classified documents taken from the Trump White House. Fifteen boxes were returned to the National Archives a year after Trump left the presidency and a new letter from his lawyers is revealing what may have been in them.

CNN's Paula Reid has been following all of this for us. Paula, Trump's lawyers are telling the Department of Justice to stand down.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And this letter comes from Trump's top defense attorneys and it is addressed to congressional leaders with responsibility for oversight of the intelligence community. And they say they want those lawmakers to tell DOJ to stand down on their ongoing investigation into the possible mishandling of classified documents at Mar-A-Lago.

Now, Boris, of course, Congress doesn't have the power to do that. But here, the Trump lawyers, they use this letter to make their case for why they believe these classified documents were mishandled. They believe this is a systemic problem that extends to other former presidents and vice presidents, including President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.

And they say they believe the Justice Department has mishandled this probe and this should not be handled as a criminal investigation, but should be something for the intelligence community. But in their letter, they also reveal new details about the classified document investigation, including this.

They now believe that classified briefings of phone calls with foreign leaders were among "all manner of documents that were handed over in that initial batch of 14 boxes that was returned to the National Archives about a year after Trump left office."

And they described what they believed happened, which is just that people swept all of these documents off of a desk and into boxes where they remained. Now, of course, Boris, we know that several months later, the FBI searched Mar-A-Lago after they allegedly received information that the former president may have directed the moving of some of these boxes. They found over 100 additional classified materials. Here the Trump lawyers say that the Justice Department has not told them anything about this classified materials and whether they are still classified or not. Now, this is a pretty big broadside against the Justice Department, Boris, here. They describe the ongoing criminal probe as "misguided, ineffective and botched."

Those are pretty strong words when you have a client currently facing multiple investigations by those same prosecutors.

SANCHEZ: Yes. And a client whose attorney had to testify to his dealings in this classified documents case. A judge deciding that attorney-client privilege did not apply there.

Paula Reid, thank you so much for breaking down all of that for us. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, back at the Capitol, we are learning that a bipartisan group of senators, a pair of them, plan to introduce legislation for new ethics standards on the Supreme Court.

CNN's Jessica Dean is following the story.

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Jessica, of course, this comes as we're hearing big questions about not one, but two justices, financial dealings, those that were disclosed and not disclosed. So interesting to see Republican or Republican and Democrat working together on this. What are the prospects?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it sure is, Jim. And I think it's worth reminding everyone just from the outset that the Supreme Court has no formal code of ethics. That's generally a surprise to a lot of American people who think that like the lower courts, they adhere to perhaps some sort of code of ethics, but they don't.

And so this legislation would push to put in place some ethics measures that would apply to the Supreme Court. It would allow the court to do investigations, if they think that a justice or a staff member has violated any sort of conflict of interest or law or anything like that. It would also provide for them to put all of those rules on a website so people could access them, understand what they are.

It would have an official that it kind of oversees all of the complaints, and then it would require that official to then publish a report. Again, these are all things that don't exist. This is from Angus King, a senator from Maine, who's an Independent that caucuses with Democrats and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who's a Republican from Alaska.

And Jim, you noted there have been a couple of instances that have come to light and really garnered a lot of attention in the last several weeks surrounding Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch. Justice Thomas with these trips, vacations, real estate deals with a GOP super donor and Justice Gorsuch with a real estate deal that, again, has all come under scrutiny.

And it's worth noting as well, Jim, that Sen. Dick Durbin who heads up the Judiciary Committee had invited the Chief Justice John Roberts to come testify and Justice Roberts declining that invitation yesterday.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that was notable. He said it - he seemed to frame it as a separations of power - separation of powers issue, but we'll see where this effort goes on the Hill.

Jessica Dean, thanks so much. Boris.

SANCHEZ: Testimony is underway right now in the civil battery and defamation trial against Donald Trump. Today, E. Jean Carroll took the stand and described to jurors in chilling detail the alleged sexual assault by the former president. She alleges that Trump raped her in a dressing room at a New York department store back in 1996 and then defamed her years later when she went public with the allegations. Donald Trump has repeatedly denied those claims.

Let's go now live outside the courthouse to New York and CNN's Kara Scannell.

And Kara, E. Jean Carroll saying that this isn't just about what happened in 1996, but then what she has endured for decades.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: Yes, Boris, that's right. I mean, E. Jean Carroll has been on the stand for more than two hours today, really taking up much of the day of her testimony, telling her version of these events. And she described it, as you said, in chilling detail, the graphic rape that she said occurred in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman's - the department store here in New York City.

She said it began as a flirty encounter. She ran into the former President Donald Trump. This is in 1996 when he was just a real estate tycoon. They were looking for a possible gift, he said, for a woman. They looked at hats, they looked at pan bags, and then they went up to the sixth floor, the department store she said. That is where she claims things turned violent.

She said the former president pushed her up against the wall in the dressing room. She slammed her head against the wall. She said that he pulled down her tights and he raped her. And then she said that since then she's reported to friends.

One friend told her she needed to go public, go to the police for this. Another friend cautioned her against that, saying that she believed that the former president would be - would bury her, would just destroy her reputation.

And that is where Carroll said that this impact has really played a part. She said that she has not been able to form any romantic relationships since the alleged assault. She claims that she's not been able to look any man in the eye in order to engage in a relationship going forward. That she says is some of the damage.

But right out of the gate, she really underscored why she was here today. And here's what she testified to: "I'm here because Donald Trump raped me. And when I wrote about it, he said it didn't happen. He lied and shattered my reputation. And I'm here to try to get my life back."

Now, she's been on the stand for most of the day. Her attorneys had just begun to get into some questions about her political views. She said she's a registered Democrat, but she said she's not motivated by politics in bringing this case.

They have not yet gotten to the part of how this has harmed her professionally. That ties into some of this defamation claim. A lot of the testimony today so far been focused on battery. She's still on the stand right now and there's little less than two hours of court left in the day. Her attorney thought that he might be able to wrap up her testimony.

Then, once that does occur, whether it's later today or tomorrow, that will be Donald Trump's lawyer's chance to cross-examine E. Jean Carroll. They've already signaled they're going to go hard at this. They say this attack never happened and she is motivated by money and politics. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Yes. Trump's attorney, Joe Tacopina, saying that that cross- examination is going to be key for their side of the case.

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Kara Scannell live outside of Manhattan courtroom. Thank you so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: Still to come, a manhunt in at least two states right now after four inmates escaped from a Mississippi jail. We'll have the latest on that search.

Plus, the mouse strikes back. Disney is now suing Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, accusing him of weaponizing his government against them.

And the situation in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating. We'll talk to a U.S. veteran desperately trying to get people out of the country.

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SANCHEZ: New developments this afternoon in a manhunt for four escaped jail inmates in Mississippi. A short time ago, the Hinds County sheriff announced that one of these fugitives is believed dead after a shootout that left a deputy wounded. Police believe it is Dylan Arrington, the second man from the left, who was also suspected of shooting and killing a man in Jackson before stealing his truck.

[15:20:02]

Also new today, local authorities have identified that victim as a local pastor, Anthony Watts. Watts was actually trying to help Arrington. He was trying to be a good Samaritan when he was shot. The inmates broke out of their cell Saturday night, and police believe they climbed onto the roof of the jail and then split up.

CNN's Amara Walker joins us now live with the latest. Amara, bring us up to speed with what happened during the shootout with police.

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Hey there, Boris. Well, authorities believe that 22-year-old Dylan Arrington, one of the four escapees from the Raymon Detention Center just outside of Jackson, Mississippi, died in a shootout with police this morning and from a fire that broke out inside a home that he was believed to be in.

Now, I want to show you some of the images that were tweeted out of the scene from the Hinds County sheriff, Tyree Jones. He says that local and state law enforcement were actually searching the Leake County area as of late last night after someone said that they had spotted him in the neighborhood.

And so this morning, police were in that neighborhood and they say that a neighbor came running out of a home saying that they believe Arrington was inside their residence. That's when police surrounded that home. A gunfight ensued. An officer was struck in the leg. We are told he is now in stable condition. But as we understand it, the situation had unfolded over two hours. Here is the sheriff talking about the situation.

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SHERIFF TYREE JONES, HINDS COUNTY, MISSISSIPPI: We're just not able at this particular time to confirm if it's Dylan Arrington, but there was someone inside of the residence that we believe to be him at the time of the fire and at the time of the exchange of gunfire between the individual inside of the residence and law enforcement.

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WALKER: Now, Sheriff Tyree Jones there of Hinds County also said that Arrington was considered to be the most serious of the detainees, and that is because Arrington is believed to have shot and killed a man, as you mentioned Boris, in Jackson on Monday night, a couple days after he and the three others escaped from this detention center.

Apparently, Arrington was in some kind of motorcycle accident. And when a good Samaritan pulled over to help him, well, police say Arrington shot and killed the man and then stole his red truck. So now this man, this victim has been identified as a local pastor, Reverend Anthony Watts of St. Mary Missionary Baptist Church. And a church member confirmed his death to CNN, Boris.

SANCHEZ: So sad. So Arrington has been neutralized. What about the other three escaped inmates? Any clues as to their whereabouts?

WALKER: So the search does continue. The manhunt continues and it's focused in two states right now. Mississippi and in Texas. A second suspect believed to have escaped to Texas. They found a public works vehicle about 400 miles away in Spring Valley Village, Texas, just outside of Houston.

The two other escapees are believed to still be in Mississippi. They were last seen heading toward a neighboring Rankin County, which also they say these men are also in a stolen vehicle. Remember, we are on the fourth day of this manhunt. All four escapees escaping on Saturday at 8:30. Officials at the detention center didn't notice that they were missing until four hours later, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Officials in that area are concerned residents should stay vigilant.

Amara, great to see you, my old partner from Weekend Mornings.

WALKER: Good to see you.

SANCHEZ: Take care. Jim?

SCIUTTO: When it comes to the feud between Ron DeSantis and Disney, there will be no fairytale ending. In fact, there may not be an ending at all for quite some time because today Disney sued the Florida governor. They say that in his move to strip the company of its special tax district, it unleashed a campaign of government retaliation that trampled on Disney's right to free speech.

CNN's Steve Contorno, he's in Florida. He's been following the story.

Steve, of course, this began with the steps that DeSantis took against Disney. Disney already won something of a battle here by getting around some of his moves and now they're going to court. So tell us what happens next.

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: That's right, Jim. And this lawsuit that they filed today in court is going to a federal district court and it alleges that essentially DeSantis and his political allies on this new state oversight board engaged in, in an effort to stop their free speech and trample on their constitutional rights just because they spoke out against a law that many people across the country had a lot of issues with.

And let me read you directly from the lawsuit because the language is pretty striking here. They accused DeSantis of "a targeted campaign of government retaliation - orchestrated at every step by Gov. DeSantis as punishment for Disney's protected speech - it now threatens Disney's business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region and violates its constitutional rights."

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And this lawsuit is now asking a judge to step in and undo DeSantis' attempt to take power over this district, leaving in legal limbo this question of now who is in charge of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District.

Now, DeSantis administration is not backing down. They, of course, have escalated the fight all the way to this point and they don't show any sign that they are willing to give up. In fact, in a statement that they just gave to us a few minutes ago, they said, "We are unaware of any legal right that a company has to operate its own government or maintain special privileges not held by other businesses in the state."

So Jim, this will continue. We are going to see this fight in court. It doesn't - it's not clear how long this can take. It could be years before this is settled. But, obviously, that's where we're headed now.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's interesting for them to use the freedom of speech argument, one that you might have heard from Ron DeSantis on a number of issues prior.

Steve Contorno in Florida, thanks so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: We have just learned that the death toll in Sudan has grown to more than 500 as foreign nationals are trying to escape. We're going to talk to an American veteran trying to help people make it out alive.

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