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Trump Surrenders Today in Miami; Trump Greets Supporters Ahead of Arrest; Trump Changes Attorneys; Police Prepare for Trump in Miami; Identifying Threats Ahead of Trump's Arraignment; Donald Trump's Defense. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 13, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

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JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: History unfolding by the minute as we just learned new information about the personal aide also facing indictment. Trump keeping him at his side, even eating dinner with him last night.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The unprecedented arraignment expected to be met with crowds outside of the courthouse. Law enforcement on high alert for potential threats, declaring they're ready if protests take a turn for the worse.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, inside Trump's legal strategy. The possible defense plans his team could use. And could this all end up at the Supreme Court? All coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: That is the Miami federal court, where in just a few hours former President Donald Trump will surrender himself to the custody of federal marshals. We just learned intriguing, new information about the extent to which Trump seems to be keeping the other individual indicted, Walt Nauta, as close as he possibly can. He flew with him to Florida, even ate dinner with him last night.

At this moment, Trump is at his resort in Doral, just a few miles from the court. CNN has exclusive video of the president last night greeting supporters there. Later, the former president will be taken by car to the court. It is expected he will drive under the building. He will enter the courthouse from there. His appearance is scheduled for 3:00 p.m. this afternoon.

Once inside, Trump will officially be under arrest. It is expected he will be fingerprinted but not have a mug shot taken. Trump has maintained his innocence and is expected to plead not guilty to all 37 counts. Now, once this is finished today, Trump will head back to the airport and tonight he will speak at a fundraiser at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.

CNN senior legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid is outside the court.

It will be an eventful day there to say the least, Paula. PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning,

John.

It is also a solemn day. This is the first time a former president of the United States will be arraigned on federal criminal charges. This specific case, of course, having to do with national security. And as Special Counsel Jack Smith put it, this is potentially an issue of life or death connected to the alleged mishandling of classified information that could have put lives at risk.

Now, this arraignment is still several hours away, but at this point the former president does not seem to have his full legal team in place after the departures of mostly all of the attorneys who have been representing him so far in this investigation. We know today he will be represented by one of his attorneys in another case, Todd Blanche, along with Chris Kise. He is the former Florida solicitor general. Kise is not expected to be too involved in this case but he has the right licenses, he knows the state of Florida, so he can help usher them through this initial proceeding until they settle on a final legal team.

We know the former president has been talking to some local attorneys down here in Florida. But, historically, he has had difficulty recruiting new lawyers. There are concerns about him paying his bills. Firms have told us they worry about alienating clients and potential reputational damage.

But this is just the first step. In fact, today's hearing is even before a magistrate judge. So they still have plenty of time to get the team assembled before this case goes before the trial judge, Judge Aileen Cannon. Now, she is a Trump-appointed federal judge. And that is significant because she has already made one decision in a matter related to this case. It was roundly criticized by legal scholars and eventually overturned.

So, John, while usually the judge is not a big storyline in a trial, she likely will be. And every decision she makes will be scrutinized. But again, today, it's just the first step in what was expected to be a very long and truly historic case.

BERMAN: All right, Paula Reid for us at the courthouse. As we said, an eventful day, a solemn day, and an historic day. Thank you so much for being there. Please keep us posted on anything you see.

Sara.

SIDNER: Right.

Also today, busloads of supporters of former President Trump are riled up and planning to rally outside court this afternoon. Supporters are already outside Trump's Doral resort.

CNN correspondent Randi Kaye is there.

Randi, you were inside the resort as Donald Trump came out. We're looking at some of those pictures now. What are you seeing so far this morning?

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Sara.

We were inside the - Trump National Doral, when the former president arrived there in the afternoon yesterday. And then we were there when he came down to have dinner in the main restaurant at the resort.

[09:05:02]

We got exclusive video of him greeting some of his supporters. He was even taking some pictures with them. They asked if he could take pictures So as he went into the restaurant, he paused and did some of that. They were yelling to him, we support you. You're going to win this. We're behind you. And he gave them all a big thumbs up. Then he went into the restaurant to have dinner. His son, Eric Trump, was already in there waiting for him. We saw him earlier in the day and the evening as well. And then we understand, from sources telling our Kristen Holmes, that he also was joined at dinner by his co-defendant, Walt Nauta, and also some of his top advisors. We also saw his lawyers there as well.

His mood, Sara, seemed to be pretty upbeat. He seemed to be pretty cheery considering what an important day and significant day this is for him today.

We also know that he's going to leave here about 1:30 this afternoon. It's about a 20-minute or so drive to the Miami federal courthouse. And that's where he will be arraigned.

And we've also heard from the Doral police chief who was keeping a close eye on things, not only here at the -- Trump National Doral, where the former president is, but also at the Miami federal courthouse. And he doesn't have any major concerns about safety.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF EDWIN LOPEZ, DORAL, FLORIDA, POLICE: We've been on the scene here at the Trump in Doral for quite some time. And we've been monitoring the situation. And, to this point, the crowds have been calm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAYE: And here at the Doral resort, there are a few protesters and supports that are starting to gather. We've also seen, of course, the sharpshooters who are all around the resort this morning, as well as last night. And, of course, Sara, Secret Service is on hand to keep a close eye on the president. What they want to make sure of is that there isn't another situation like they had on January 6th, at the U.S. Capitol. No call to action. They've been monitoring all of that and they did determine no threat assessment as of now.

SIDNER: Randi Kaye, thank you for all of that, live from Doral, Florida, where the president spent the night. Randi, appreciate it. Rahel.

SOLOMON: And, Sara, with just hours until Donald Trump's arraignment, CNN has learned which attorneys are expected to represent the former president during his court appearance. This as Trump reportedly wants his legal team to take a more aggressive stance against the DOJ.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins live for us in Miami with the details.

Kaitlan, good morning.

So, what more can you tell us about Trump's legal team? What more are you learning?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF CORRESPONDENT: Well, you won't see new faces going into the courthouse with former President Trump today, despite his efforts to add someone before that 3:00 p.m. arraignment that is going to happen, of course, just a few hours from now. Instead, it is going to be Todd Blanche and Chris Kise, who are the two attorneys who will join Trump in this Miami courthouse behind me here today.

Todd Blanche, of course, is now the attorney who is taking the lead on this documents case that the former president has now been indicted on, that 37-count indictment that we saw unsealed last week. He is someone that Trump only added to his legal team back in early April. Chris Kise was added several months ago. He was initially set to handle this investigation but was pretty quickly sidelined from a majority part of it. He is going to be a second attorney who is there in the courtroom with Trump Today. Whether or not he remains there remains to be seen.

We know Randi and her team, and we've since confirmed, that one of he attorneys Trump is trying to add to his team, Ben Cooney (ph), who is a Miami-based attorney, was seen at Trump National Doral yesterday. It's not clear, though, that anything was finalized as of Trump is set to go into court today.

He is looking to add another Florida-based attorney to his team. He has not had success in doing so yet. That doesn't seem to be a big concern for Trump's legal team as of today.

But the bigger concern is that the top two attorneys who were handling this case resigned abruptly last week when they learned that Trump was trying to add another Florida-based attorney to the team, given they've been handling it ever since that search warrant was executed at Mar-a-Lago last August.

So, big questions about what the team will look like going forward. We do know what it will look like today though.

SOLOMON: That's a good point. And, Kaitlan, not just what we know about him potentially adding to the team, but also we're learning new details about how he wants his team to approach this case in terms of its stance with the DOJ. What more are you learning there? COLLINS: Yes, it's interesting. He - I'm told by sources that he has

been privately pushing for a more aggressive stance against the Justice Department. That's notable because it's already been pretty aggressive I would say. I mean you've seen what the attorneys had been alleging. They'd been claiming that there's prosecutorial misconduct. They went before the special counsel, Jack Smith himself, at the Department of Justice last Monday to voice their complaints about how this investigation has gone on. But the former president doesn't think that's enough. He wants them to take an even tougher stance against the Justice Department.

One interesting thing that I learned as I was reporting out on Trump's legal team is that when they got the target letter from the Justice Department saying that he was indeed a target in this investigation, notification like that from prosecutors, Rahel, allows the person who receives that letter to either present evidence to the grand jury or even go and testify themselves.

[09:10:02]

I am told that Trump expressed some interest in doing that. It's not clear how serious he was about it but it is something that he talked about when they got that letter. Obviously, he did not ultimately do so. We will see from him - see him today. We may not see him actually go in, but we know what he is expected to say in court today, and that is, of course, not guilty.

SOLOMON: Kaitlan Collins, live for us in Miami, thank you.

All eyes on Miami certainly for the rest of the day.

John.

BERMAN: No question about that.

And one of the things that all those eyes will be watching is the security situation on the ground. You can see why it would be cause for concern. And we do know the Miami Police, they're going all-in for the day.

CNN chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller is here.

John, you have sources everywhere. I mean how do they feel right now? You know, at 9:10 this morning, where do things stand?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So, Miami PD is very confident that they have what they need in terms of personnel and the help from other agencies. There's been a little tension in the background between the Secret Service and the local authorities in that the Secret Service knows that there's going to be demonstrators, there's going to be a crowd there. They like to have that locked down with, you know, barriers and so on. But the Miami PD says we have adequate personnel. There doesn't appear to be a giant threat to the former president from Trump supporters who are coming to support him. And they're very confident that their perimeter. They're going to shut down two blocks around the courthouse. The

president - the former president's motorcade is going to come in and go under the building into a garage. He is going to be brought up a freight elevator, which is the elevator that, a, you can get from the garage, but, b, that has enough room for the entire crew of people that are going to be moving with him in terms of Secret Service, FBI and so on.

The FBI will arrest him. Then, at the U.S. Marshal's office, a United States Marshal, appointed by President Trump, who is still in office there, they will go through a booking process that's going to require fingerprints, if they follow procedure for federal arrestees, a DNA swab. The mug shot has been kind of the dicey item here, which is, if you take a mug shot, front and side, of a former president of the United States, the collateral value of that, the risk of it leaking out, the fact that that would be against DOJ guidelines, is something that they've really struggled with. So what they're going to do is, there are plenty of pictures of Donald J. Trump. They're going to upload them into the system, in place of a mugshot, so that they will have a photograph, just to check that box, but it won't be the formal mug shot that we're used to.

BERMAN: We will never see him, as far as you know, outside or anywhere for that matter in or around that building.

MILLER: We won't - we -- he will be the invisible man today in that the procedure at the federal courthouse is, Secret Service is going to bring him in the garage, up the freight elevator, but that's a building where no cameras are allowed, there's no cameras in court, there are no phones allowed except by attorneys in court. So, we're going to get reporting on that and we will see courtroom sketches and we'll know what happened, but this will not be a TV event.

BERMAN: Look, there are still five and a half hours to go until this thing happens, until the process officially begins. Do they have a prediction of numbers? Yesterday we - you said maybe 5,000 people, as many as 5,000 people. Is that still what they're expecting?

MILLER: So, Chief Morales of Miami PD said, you know, we're prepared for 5,000 to 50,000. I think what they've built is the idea that they may get a couple of thousand people, that they're prepared for up to 5,000. They do have a model with 34 towns in Dade County where they can call in resources. They have an existing MOU, where they can call in resources from those other cities. And they've got the Miami-Dade County Police. So, they are - they have resources that they think are adequate and sufficient there, but they have a sliding scale to get more if needed.

BERMAN: John Miller, great to have you here. We know you'll be watching things very closely. If anything bubbles up, run here -

MILLER: Be here all day.

BERMAN: Run here and tell us what's going on.

MILLER: And all night. BERMAN: Thank you so much.

MILLER: Thanks.

BERMAN: Sara.

SIDNER: All right, across the country, FBI agents are on alert for any violent or threatening rhetoric surrounding today's hearing. How law enforcement is scanning online extremist channels for any warning signs.

Plus, his detailed notes recited in the DOJ's indictment. They contain some potentially damming evidence against the former president. The evidence against him from one of his own former attorney's during the FBI search. We look at the person the indictment calls Trump Attorney 1.

And Chris Christie unleashes on Donald Trump during a CNN town hall.

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CHRIS CHRISTIE (R), 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is vanity run amok, Anderson. Run amok. Ego run amok. And he is now going to put this country through this when we didn't have to go through it. And everyone's blaming the prosecutors.

[09:15:00]

He did it. It's his conduct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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SIDNER: The Miami courthouse isn't the only place law enforcement is watching for potential threats today. FBI agents assigned to domestic terrorism squads across the country are also working to identify potential threats but online.

CNN security reporter Josh Campbell has been reporting on this and he is with me now.

A lot of this is, of course, going on behind the scenes. But you've been down some of these rabbit holes. What are you seeing?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: There's so much vitriol out there. Obviously, you know, there are supporters of former President Donald Trump who are very angry that he's facing this federal indictment and we see them taking to a lot of these online forums that have been frequented by extremist groups. Some of them, you know, describing what's to come as worse than Waco. You know, obviously, one of the major events that a lot of these extremist groups look to.

But what's so interesting, in talking to law enforcement sources, is that it's not just what's in the public domain, they're concerned about what might be private. [09:20:00]

I mean you know, Sara, you've covered these extremist groups for so long, they adapt to law enforcement action. And so that is what has law enforcement concerned.

Nevertheless, they're working with the FBI at this hour to try to scan for threats, to look online, to see what's there. Interestingly, they're also trying to, you know, use their informant networks. As closed off as these groups think they are, many of t hem have actually been infiltrated by the FBI, as you know, and so they're trying to tap into those sources to try and figure out if there were any threats planned.

SIDNER: When you look at these threats, I mean when it comes to this particular case, there were a lot of threats before January 6th that a lot of the groups that look at extremism say they were ignored. Has that all changed?

CAMPBELL: It has. And, you know, this new post-January 6th environment, where law enforcement realizes it's not just about identifying the information but sharing it. I mean there was, you know, one FBI report from Norfolk, as we know before January 6th, that made its way through the system to where it needed to go but no one really flagged it as, hey, we need to look into this. So there are, I think, structural processes among law enforcement that have been corrected. But the great unknown is, what are they not seeing? And that, of course, has them concerned.

And I'll tell you, as we watch what happens today, one thing that concerns me is, we still don't know if, you know, you've covered so many of these protests and counterprotests -

SIDNER: Yes.

CAMPBELL: It seems that there might be a co-mingling of those various groups. And we know it only takes one rabble-rouser to set things off. So, that is something that both and, obviously, law enforcement will be looking at.

SIDNER: Lastly, just the courthouse itself, that's not the only place where there is a potential threat, right? I mean this is far larger than that.

CAMPBELL: Totally. And I would argue that the courthouse is not the major threat because, you know, you do an ordinary threat assessment among law enforcement, you know, people who are adherence to Donald Trump's message are not going to attack Donald Trump, right? He's in the courthouse. So - but to you point, I mean there are other federal facilities around the countries that could pose a challenge. We know the Department of Homeland Security just recently put out a bulletin warning that all of these other places could be the target of extremists if they actually move from plotting to actually acting. Something to watch for sure.

SIDNER: People up in arms about the DOJ, up in arms about the FBI - CAMPBELL: Yes.

SIDNER: Which has been fueled a bit by Donald Trump and some of his supporters. So, we'll be watching. I know you will be closely watching what's going an online and outside of that. Appreciate you coming on, Josh Campbell.

CAMPBELL: Thanks so much.

SIDNER: All right. Rahel.

SOLOMON: Sara, a lot to watch today.

Meantime, coming up for us, influx and racing against the clock. Trump's legal team trying to formulate a plan before they step into the courtroom. Just ahead, the legal options they may be considering with - now just hours to go.

Also ahead, how former President Trump's indictment now adding new fuel to the fire with the infighting among Republicans in Congress.

We'll be right back.

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[09:27:05]

SIDNER: Let's take a closer look now at a key quote in the case against Donald Trump. Here it is. Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here? That's what Donald Trump allegedly suggested to someone who could become a key witness in this state - in this case. A person described in the indictment as Trump Attorney 1.

So, who is Trump Attorney 1? Federal prosecutors say this is the person Trump suggested to hide or destroy documents after a grand jury subpoena on May 11, 2022. And while Attorney 1 is not named in the indictment, their actions directly mirror those of Evan Corcoran. Corcoran's own notes show Trump asked Corcoran on May 11th if there was any way to fight the subpoena, but Corcoran told him he had to comply with it.

Weeks later, in early June, Trump invites FBI officials to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve 38 classified documents Corcoran had found in a storage room. But according to the indictment, what Corcoran didn't know was that Trump had already directed Walt Nauta to move some boxes before he searched a storage room. When Corcoran was finished, the indictment says Trump asked Attorney 1, did you find anything? Is it bad? Good? Then they discussed what to do with a folder containing the 38 classified documents before handing that over to the FBI. Notes taken by Attorney 1 says that when Trump made a plucking motion, suggesting the attorney remove anything that was, quote, really bad from the folder.

Fast forward to this year, on March 25th, Corcoran testified before a grand jury, this after a federal judge ordered him to answer questions from prosecutors ruling that attorney/client privilege didn't shield his discussions with Donald Trump because the ex-president may have been trying to commit a crime by using his attorneys. Corcoran's own notes now represent what "The New York Times" described as some of the most potentially damning evidence in this case.

John.

BERMAN: All right, thanks so much, Sara.

So, what will the Trump legal strategy be?

With us now, CNN chief legal analyst and former federal prosecutor, Laura Coates, also defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Shan Wu.

Laura, I want to start with you.

"The New York Times" did a nice job laying out four possible avenues of defense for Trump. It's a good template for us. And they enumerate the number one is, the Trump team could say he had every right as president to take these documents when he left. What are the strengths and weaknesses of said argument?

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, the biggest weakness is, he's no longer the president. So the idea of this case hinging on the unlawful retention, not just the removal, but the retention of documents and obstruction following that as well. And so the Records Act, (INAUDIBLE) says, look, you're not able to keep these documents. They belong to the American people. These are not --

BERMAN: Laura, I'm now reliably told your microphone is not working. So, I'm going to -- we're going to get that - we're going to get that fixed right now.

[09:30:03]

My apologies.

There we go.

COATES: You actually want to hear me talk? That's important to you?

BERMAN: It's - yes. Yes.

COATES: OK. Well, that's (INAUDIBLE) -

BERMAN: Thank you very much.

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