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CNN Obtains Audio Of Trump Discussing Classified Docs; Putin Praises Military For Stopping "Civil War". Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired June 27, 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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[09:00:21]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Former President Donald Trump on tape saying look at this, this. The this is a classified document that he says on tape he did not declassify and his body man who's also facing charges is about to walk into court.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Vladimir Putin claims his army just stopped a civil war a speech filled with pomp and pageantry and effort it seems to project strength but this morning, the mystery deepens. Where is the man who launched the revolt?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The stages are set for a major 2024 rivalry test, DeSantis-Trump holding dueling events in New Hampshire today, those stories and many more, all coming in on CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: Donald Trump in his own words and on tape, a tape that we know prosecutors leaned on and making their indictment, a tape that undercuts Donald Trump's publicly stated defense. But will it be allowed in court? CNN has exclusively obtained an audio recording of the 2021 meeting at the former president's Golf Club in New Jersey. On it, you can hear papers rustling is Donald Trump talks about having highly secret documents and also talking about how he knows he did not declassify them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like highly confidential, secret. This is secret information. See as president I could have declassified it. Now, I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: This is still secret. Trump's response to this taping released lashing out overnight accusing the special prosecutor of illegally leaking the recording. He also tries to argue that the audio is quote, actually an exoneration. Today we will see Donald Trump in New Hampshire on the trail. And in a courthouse very soon in Miami, we could see Walt Nauta. He is the aide that is charged alongside Donald Trump in the documents case. Walt Nauta is about to face arraignment and enter a plea. Let's get started on all of this with CNN Sara Murray. She joins us now. Sara, tell us more about what we hear now on this tape.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, this is damning evidence for Trump. And it's great evidence as far as prosecutors are concerned because it's Donald Trump on tape. He's in a meeting with biographers for Mark Meadows and two staffers, none of whom have security clearances talking about this document related to a plan of attack against Iran. And I want to play another portion of the tape where Donald Trump is acknowledging that this is not a declassified document. And that since he's no longer the president, he can't declassify it. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: This was done by the military and given to me. I think we can probably, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know, we'll have to see. Yes. We'll have to try to --

TRUMP: Declassify it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- figure out a -- yes.

TRUMP: See as president I could have declassified it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, now we have a problem.

TRUMP: Isn't that interesting?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: It's so cool. I mean, it so, look, her and I, and you probably almost didn't believe me, but now you believe me.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I believe you.

TRUMP: It's incredible, right?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, they never met a war they didn't want.

TRUMP: Hey, bring some cokes in please.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: And it's striking there when you listen to sort of how cavalierly they're talking about this document. You know, you hear a staffer say now we have a problem and everyone just starts laughing. And of course, Donald Trump has dismissed this. He said in an interview with "Fox News" that there was no document these are magazine and newspaper articles. But he says at other points in this tape when you hear these papers rustling? I'll show you an example. And these are the papers. Kate? BOLDUAN: Were investigators able to recover this document that we're talking about here?

MURRAY: I mean, this isn't an open question because we know that investigators subpoenaed the Trump team for this document. The Trump team was not able to produce it. We don't know if investigators were able to get it in the documents Trump returned to the archives if they were may be able to find it as part of their search at Mar-a-Lago. But we do know that prosecutors have been looking for a lot of corroborating evidence that they interviewed Mark Milley. They interviewed at least one of the staffers in that meeting.

And soon if not already, Trump's team is going to get the transcripts of the interviews prosecutors have done as part of discovery in this case. So pretty soon the Trump team is going to know one way or another if there were witnesses in this room who said, you know, yes, I remember seeing the document or were able to describe the document. Kate?

BOLDUAN: That's great point. Thank you so much there for kicking us off. Appreciate it. Sara?

[09:05:02]

SIDNER: This hour Donald Trump's right hand man will be arraigned in Miami Federal Court today in the classified documents case. Trump's valet Walt Nauta was charged on the same indictment as Donald Trump, not as facing six felony charges including conspiracy to obstruct justice and several counts of mishandling classified documents. The Justice Department says it has surveillance video of him moving boxes of the documents around the property. CNN senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz is outside the court in Miami. We understand that Nauta is on his way to court right now. What can you tell us about what will happen today?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Sara, a little bit later this hour, Walt Nauta is set to plead not guilty. That is what Donald Trump did two weeks ago. Walt Nauta was still lining up his attorney team here in Florida, and also his attorneys coming down again. So he's going to be back in court to do that. And then it is the start for him formally of the journey toward trial and a point in time where he's going to have to make his own decisions as a criminal defendant with his lawyer, whether he -- his interests will align with Donald Trump or not.

Now up to this point, let's remember who he is. He's not just Donald Trump's valet, his body man, his co-defendant. He's also a person who travels with Trump, very consistently. He's on the political team. He even left with Trump for a political stop after their arraignment two weeks ago. And so there is this situation where he's being charged not just because of who he is and what he did, but what he did at Donald Trump's direction allegedly moving those boxes. He's not charged with the retention of the 31 documents that Donald Trump is accused of having knowingly after his presidency.

But he is accused of obstruction and false statements trying to conceal those records from the Justice Department. Sara, those are hefty charges on their own, even decoupled from the retention counts. And so this man will be coming into court today. We expect it to be a little bit of a shorter proceeding in court so that he can enter that not guilty plea. But this is his own defendant. He is going to be have to be in court today with Donald Trump not at his side.

SIDNER: Right. And with the person who is being paid by the Trump Organization, his attorney. Katelyn Polantz you have done such great reporting out there. Thank you so much for this update. John?

BERMAN: All right with us now CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe and CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, former federal and state prosecutor. Gentlemen, just so we get another flavor of it. I want to play more of this tape that was obtained first by CNN last night you guys were both there when the story broke. I just want everyone to listen to this a little bit more.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: These are bad sick people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That was your coup, you know, against you. That --

TRUMP: Well, it started right at the --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Like when Milley is talking about, oh, you were going to try and to do a coup. No, they were trying to do that before you even were sworn in.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trying to overthrow your election.

TRUMP: Well, with Milley, let me see that, I'll show you an example. He said that. I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't it amazing? I'm a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look, this was him. They presented me this is off the record but they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Wow.

TRUMP: We looked at some. This was him. This wasn't done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff-pages long, look. Wait a minute, let's see here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh my gosh.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: I just found, isn't that amazing? This totally ruins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All sorts of stuff. He says this, this. Look at this pages long. You hear the crackling there, Elie, just big picture. What kind of evidence is this in a courtroom?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: This is a prosecutors dream. Tapes are the best kind of evidence you can have. And these tapes are even more powerful than normal for a couple reasons. First of all, you can hear it quite clearly. Andy knows a lot of tapes that get made, you sort of struggling, what'd he say there? This is crystal clear. It's visceral. It will put the juror right into the room as you're listening to that. Don't you feel like you're right in there, you can understand exactly what's going on. They were made by Donald Trump's team. So there can't be any accusation of a foul play or any motion to sort of suppress the evidence, as we would say legally.

And finally, these tapes go to the heart of Donald Trump's intent and knowledge. He knew we had the documents. He knew there about sensitive military plans. And he's freely showing them to others and he knew he did not declassify them. It's as good as evidence gets.

BERMAN: Andy, yes, Elie brought up the fact of the audio quality there. There's been a comparison by some overnight to the Nixon tapes. One of the things about the Nixon tapes of Watergate, you can barely make out what they were saying. I mean, you can hear every syllable and the breathing and the pages ruffling here also there is the clarity in what he's discussing and the fact that there were other people there i.e. Andy, witnesses. Why is that important?

[09:10:13]

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, that's absolutely right, John. So let's remember that in addition to listening to this pristine audio recording, which I would like, I think FBI technical folks should like listen to this as a goal as to what recordings should listen, you know, sound like. But in addition to that, you're going to have likely several witnesses who will take the stand and be asked questions like, is this what you heard in the room? They'll hear the tape. They'll agree. Then they'll say, what was he holding in his hand? Did you see what was what he was referring to when you hear that noise that the paper makes?

Did you see any markings on that document? Did the markings look like these classification markings? So the witnesses are really going to add levels of detail and depth and personal observation to this to this incident, and it's just going to leave an indelible impression on the minds of the jurors, it's really hard to imagine how they get out from under this.

BERMAN: Why Andy is it different than just the transcript?

MCCABE: Because it brings the whole thing to light. I mean, there's nothing more persuasive to a jury than a recording of the defendant, literally committing the crime that you've accused him with. And that's essentially what you have here, right? He has knowledge. He has possession of what is described by him as likely National Defense Information. He knows he has possession of it. And here he goes one step further, to essentially share it with everyone in the room, at least by description, and possibly visually, as he says things like, look, look at this, look here. He may have been pointing to sections of the documents. It's just absolutely devastating.

BERMAN: Elie, it does not seem that this the document, or whatever Donald Trump is referring to is part of the evidence that the federal government has right now. How important is that? And how could Trump defend himself here?

HONIG: So all things being equal. As a prosecutor, you would want to have that document. You would want to be able to show it to the jury and say, this is what he's talking about? And yes, it was classified. But you don't have to have it for a couple reasons. One, as Andy said, you can reconstruct it as best you can, using the context of that tape, the rustling that you see here, look, here, it sounds at times as if he's reading off that. He says confidential. It's mark confidential. It's mark secret. Those are security classifications.

The other thing is, you can reconstruct through the witnesses, as Andy said, what did you see? And the key thing is, even if there's no document, you argue that it goes to what he knew. It goes to his state of mind. And it shows you what his whole plan was here. Why is he keeping these documents? He's not selling them to foreign entities. We don't have any evidence that but he's keeping them. He's using them. And he's disseminating them to protect his own political narrative, his own standing for his own wildly improper use. So yes, you want to have that actual document. But if you can't, it's still a very valuable piece of evidence.

BERMAN: And in terms of defense, he could mount here?

HONIG: It's a great question. There could be the, he's just bluffing. He's just shuffling papers and puffing. We'll see what the witnesses have to say about that. And I guess there's a chance that defense could argue it's inadmissible. It has to be suppressed, meaning kept out of the trial. The problem, as I said before, it's Trump's own team made this recording, and it's clearly relevant. So they'll try that I'm sure you kind of have to as a defense lawyer, but I don't think they're going to keep this out.

BERMAN: You know, in terms of the actual crimes that Donald Trump is charged with here. What does this speak to quite literally? How does this get to that as evidence?

MCCABE: Well, as Elie just noted, we don't know specifically that the government has this document that's being displayed or used on the tape. However, if you look back at the indictment of the 31 counts related to the documents, at least 20 of those by my informal analysis, could potentially describe in very vague ways, this document or document very much like it, it's also possible that the government has the document or one that at least fits this description from the results of the search warrant or the documents that were already turned over by the Trump team.

Now it is true they serve a subpoena on the team for this specific document. And the Trump lawyers apparently responded that they don't have it. But that may have been an effort just to get the document in a form that the Trump team voluntarily turned over. So it is possible they have it. It's possible it comes within the description already included in the indictment. We'll just have to wait and see.

BERMAN: All right, Andrew McCabe, Elie Honig, thank you both very much. Sara?

SIDNER: This morning, Vladimir Putin addressing his military and praising them for stopping what he calls us civil war. First time we've heard that from him. This as Russia officially declares there will be no charges against the members of the Wagner mercenary group. We have a live report from Moscow for you.

Also dueling events on the 2024 campaign trail today between the Republican front runners, why it's causing major drama.

[09:14:57]

And two months after being shot in the head after knocking on the wrong door, a Missouri teenager is talking about the day his life changed forever. Coming up, what he's saying about his physical and emotional recovery.

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BERMAN: New this morning what appears to be a deliberate attempt to show unity and control, you can see the Russian President Vladimir Putin surrounding himself with military units there and he issued public praise for the response to the Wagner revolt. He also acknowledged there were Russian military casualties during the events. This as Russia made official what has been reported for days that they will drop charges against the Wagner mercenaries who participated in the rebellion and their leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Most critically though, as of this morning, we still do not know where Prigozhin is, he has not been seen since Saturday when he halted the Wagner advance on Moscow. CNN's Matthew Chance joins us from Moscow this morning where we continue to see more developments, Matthew.

[09:20:06]

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. But don't ask me to tell you where Prigozhin is because we don't know. I mean, there have been reports of a plane that's linked to him landing in Belarus next door to Russia. But it's not been confirmed that he was on that plane, although we're watching it very closely. Those images you're showing, though, of Vladimir Putin, addressing this morning, members of the Russian military, basically congratulating them for basically not taking the side of the Wagner rebels over the weekend, but instead defending the presidency, defending the Russian motherland, he said, and the Constitution. And of course preventing, and this is an astonishing admission, preventing a civil war, take a listen to what Vladimir Putin had to say to them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRE. VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIA (through translator): Real defenders of the motherland who took part in fighting as comrades against this chaos, the result of which inevitably, would have been chaos. You saved our people, our homeland, virtually, you stopped a civil war. In actual fact, you stopped a civil war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHANCE: I mean, this this is incredible, because this is an example of Vladimir Putin trying to claw back some of the authority that he lost during the weekend of mayhem and when there was a Wagner military rebellion against them. But of course, the problem is, is that it was not entirely true that everybody stood up for the presidency, everybody -- nobody supported the rebels, because we've all seen those scenes in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don in the south, with people cheering Wagner fighters and taking selfies with them.

And so that's really exposed a real kind of crack in in Russian society, which must be absolutely terrifying for the Kremlin.

BERMAN: Yes, and I'm just struck by the attempt to project power with the images that we just saw there. It seems to be something he wants to convey to the Russian people whether or not it's being bought or not is another matter. Matthew Chance, great to have you this morning. Thank you. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And as you guys were discussing, although we have now heard from Vladimir Putin today, and although we have also heard from Yevgeny Prigozhin himself since the insurrection was put down, we still do not know where exactly he is. Here is what we do know about this larger than life figure though, who created and led the Wagner group for years. Yevgeny Prigozhin was once a very close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. They're both from St. Petersburg, Russia and have known each other since the 1990s.

When Prigozhin ran a successful restaurant business, big catering contracts with the Kremlin, with probably the help of Vladimir Putin, earned him the eventual nickname of Putin chef, leading Prigozhin to join the ranks of the country's wealthy oligarchs. Prigozhin then went on to found the Wagner group in 2014, a private mercenary group known for its brutal tactics, operating outside Russia's military structure yet fully in support of Russia's interests around the world.

CNN has tracked Wagner mercenaries in so many places, the Central African Republic, in Sudan, in Libya, in Mozambique, in Syria, definitely, and also now, of course, in Ukraine, that critical relationship. So a big shift, though, in just the last few months when Prigozhin began openly criticizing Russia's military leaders on their war effort in Ukraine, those critiques turned into a full blown rebellion that we saw on full display this weekend as Prigozhin led what is now the greatest challenge to Putin his grip on power in 23 years. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Joining us now to discuss CNN national security analyst and former CIA chief of Russia operations, Steve Hall, and CNN political and national security analyst, David Sanger. I have so many questions, but I will try to control myself. I'm going to start with you, Steve. Putin has just spoken and he's used the word civil war, saying that his troops helped avoid a civil war. What do you make of his latest statements? We've never heard him say that. STEVE HALL, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: No, he's definitely in a in a position so that he hasn't been in in pretty much forever. I think we're seeing a lot of looseness, a lot of slackness in terms of, OK, so what do we do now? You remember, on Sunday, it was, you know, all the Wagner guys are going to be pardoned and Prigozhin, we don't have to worry about. Then on the next day, it was like, well, maybe they are going to be.

So it gets going back and forth, and back and forth. That's one indicator. The other indicator, of course is, you know, where is Prigozhin? Nobody knows exactly where Prigozhin is. And then of course, you've got all the stuff that we've seen before, you know, Putin, standing in front of the guys with the big hats. This is this is not something that he typically has to do this sort of press repair work, a PR work. This is not something that dictators normally do, they can normally just repress. So the fact that he feels that he's got to do all this stuff is I think, an indicator that he himself is concerned about his situation.

SIDNER: It's a real sign just what he has done the fact that and the way he did it coming out into the public trying to show us his strength that he isn't scared. I want to go to you David now. Biden has said publicly that he had nothing to do with this. United States had nothing to do with this infighting in Russia. But is there something that the Biden administration should be doing or could be doing? Because clearly, there is an issue here with infighting, and Putin has been in office for, what, 23 years now?

[09:25:30]

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's right. And this is risky territory that you saw President Biden try to navigate carefully, yesterday in what was his first and fairly sparse comments about the chaos that we've seen unfold. You know, his first message was, we had nothing to do with it. But that's different from saying we didn't know it was coming. And our reporting and "The Times" and CNN is reporting have indicated that in fact, they did have at least a few days notice that this was likely to unfold.

The administration made a decision not to go intervene on either side. And frankly, I don't see, Sara, they had any other choice. I mean, Prigozhin is a sanctioned, brutal killer. In fact, they've had to delay more sanctions on him in recent days. Putin obviously is not only sanctioned, but is running a war that the United States and the NATO allies are trying to go undo with the other end by supporting the Ukrainians.

So there was no percentage in Biden getting involved in this. However, I'm sure they're going to try to exploit it. You've already seen Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, go on the air saying, look, this was entirely Putin's own doing, right? Had he not invaded Ukraine, he wouldn't be in this situation. And in fact, he's right. I mean, this is the first challenge, as Steve said, that we've seen in 23 years, and it would not be occurring, had President Putin not entered into a war that his own troops couldn't execute on. SIDNER: He brought it on himself, Putin, because he went into Ukraine unprovoked. Steve, I want to ask you about Prigozhin. He has said and claimed, look, this was not a rebellion. This was a march of justice. But he took out three, you know, two helicopters and a plane, Russian military equipment. And now you're hearing that they're not going to charge him? Is that even close to a possibility? I mean, they might kill him instead?

HALL: Yes, yes, you know, we have to be careful not to look at it through a Western lens on this. So there's no rule of law unless you are in Russia, Putin is going to do whatever it is that Putin wants to do. The interesting fact of courses is that we still don't know where Yevgeny Prigozhin is. And there's a theory to that, that it might actually benefit Putin, to have some uncertainty about that. Is he alive? Is he dead? Is he both alive and dead? Nobody knows. It depends on who knows what the actual inner workings of that are. So Putin's inner circle, how many of those guys actually know where Putin is?

Does Putin know? But he might be trying to use that to his, you know, tactical advantage inside of the Kremlin because that's what he's got to do at this point to stay in the job.

SIDNER: You know, for someone to be in a dictatorial role. You need to have the people around you feel safe. Do they feel safe now?

HALL: No. But in the Russian context, that's -- there's a little bit of a different spin there because the Russians are so used to, you and I sit in a staff meeting, for example, right, I used to when I work for the federal government, right? You're all trying to collaborate trying to figure things out. Staff meetings in Russia inside the Kremlin, it's about who's saying what about who and how can I leverage that. And so that's what's going on right now in the -- inside the Kremlin.

SIDNER: It's so very interesting. We have not seen this in my lifetime, at least. Steve Hall, thank you so much and also to you David Sanger. I appreciate both of you coming in and giving your great analysis. Kate?

[09:28:47]

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, more help for Ukraine, the United States set to announce a big new aid package. The details on that, next.

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