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U.S. Economy Added 209,000 Jobs in June; Special Counsel Focuses on Chaotic White House Meeting in 2020; Arizona Secretary of State's Office Subpoenaed in Election Probe; U.S. to Send Cluster Munitions to Ukraine; U.N. Inspectors Making Progress on Ukraine Power Plant Access. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired July 07, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:43]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: A new read on the health of the economy is just in. We're looking at a cooling off, but the labor market still running hot.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It may have been one of the most chaotic meetings the Oval Office has ever seen and now it is the focus of the special counsel's criminal probe. A CNN exclusive.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: A controversial weapon banned by 123 countries will soon be in the hands of the Ukrainians. Why the U.S. is including cluster munitions in their latest passage to Ukraine.

I'm Sara Sidner alongside Kate Bolduan and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BOLDUAN: The first summer jobs report is in and here is what we know, 209,000 jobs added in June. That is below what economists expected and the lowest monthly gain since December 2020. Hiring is slowing, but it is still the 30th consecutive month of gains.

CNN's Rahel Solomon here with a read into the numbers.

Take us into this report. What are you seeing here?

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: OK. So this was the first time as you pointed out that this was actually cooler than what economists were expecting. The expectation is closer to 225, 229 and as we can see the number came in at 209. I should say the prior two months were also revised slightly lower.

Taking a look at where we added jobs, U.S. economy added jobs in June, you can see government added 60,000, health care added 41,000. Health care especially interesting because this is an industry that continues to struggle to rehire after the pandemic. So part of that is happening here. And construction, which is really interesting because of what's been happening with mortgage rates.

BOLDUAN: Right.

SOLOMON: You would think that maybe construction would take a hit, but not in this report at least. We've been seeing a trend of that 23,000. June jobs report, that coming in for unemployment at 3.6 percent, that ticked down slightly from 3.7.

Kate, we've been in this range of under 4 percent for quite some time now, more than a year and a half.

BOLDUAN: That's -- yes.

SOLOMON: So this is a type of report that shows a normalizing, right? I wouldn't necessarily say a real cooling, but a normalizing because it is still strong, as you pointed out, the 30th month of job grains. One thing that the Fed probably will be discouraged to see in this report is wages. Wages ticked up slightly more than folks were expecting on a monthly basis, that is something that the Fed is hoping continues to cool of course because of its inflationary impacts. The concern that wages for workers could then feed into higher prices and on and on and on. So that's certainly something they're going to be watching really closely.

BOLDUAN: And this is one of the reports that the Fed watches very closely. I mean, it's kind of -- now the question does continue to linger out there amongst the smart minds of, are we looking at a recession is still more likely than not or are we looking at is the soft landing in the view now?

SOLOMON: You know, it's interesting. I spoke to the chief economist of ZipRecruiter this morning on the 5:00 a.m. program, Julia Pollak, and I asked her the same thing and she said, look, it is looking more likely that team soft camp might actually -- soft landing might actually get their wish, but, you know, we're still early days here. The Fed has indicated even as early as this week that more rate hikes are coming. And so more to come here, but still a strong jobs report normalizing.

BOLDUAN: All right. Here we go. Let's see what comes. Jonathan?

BERMAN: You were talking about questions of smart minds. I was upset that you were excluding me from that part of the conversation.

SOLOMON: You were never excluded. I was intentionally not looking your direction.

BERMAN: Exactly. Thank you very much for that.

All right, this morning we have a CNN exclusive on Special Counsel Jack Smith's criminal probe into Donald Trump and the 2020 election. Sources tell CNN that his team seems to be zeroing in on that chaotic December 18th Oval Office meeting that took place just four days after the electoral college declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 election.

During that meeting which was depicted in a House committee exhibit outside advisers pushed Trump to consider some of the most desperate proposals to keep him in power. Several witnesses testified to the committee about that meeting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office. I don't think -- I don't think any of these people were providing the president with good advice.

DEREK LYONS, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I mean, at times there were people shouting at each other, throwing insults at each other.

SIDNEY POWELL, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Cipollone and Herschmann and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president.

[09:05:08]

ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: I'm going to categorically describe it as you guys are not tough enough, or maybe I will put it another way you are a bunch of (EXPLETIVE DELETED).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Prosecutors are now focusing on three outside Trump advisers who participated in the meeting. Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, you just heard her right there, one-time National Security adviser Michael Flynn and the former overstock CEO Patrick Burn.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz was part of the team that broke this story.

Katelyn, what's going on here?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, that meeting screaming, insults, people running into the Oval Office. There was meatballs that were delivered at some point for people to enjoy late into the night. All of that is such chaos and we know that because of the House testimony, but the reason this matters to prosecutors is that this is the moment where the voices around Donald Trump on what to do after the election are all collected there.

There are the outsiders, Sidney Powell, Patrick Burn, Michael Flynn who get to the Oval Office and are talking with Trump one-on-one about what he could do, floating to him these ideas that he could appoint Sidney Powell as a special counsel, he could seize voting machines, he could harness the power of the presidency that he had to question the result of the election, and then there are others like Rudy Giuliani who still wanted something a little bit different, the fake electors.

He wanted to use that to pressure and he wanted to use the court system, even though by that time they had lost many of their court challenges after the election. And then there's others, top officials in the Trump administration who come into this meeting, and this is where they really had this eruption of the different sides, where people like Pat Cipollone, the former White House counsel who we just saw there commenting, is informing not just these people, but Trump himself, there is no fraud and it's time to let this go. And so now we know from our reporting team that there are multiple

witnesses that have been asked about this in the grand jury, in interviews for quite some time, but now is when the special counsel's office prosecutors are still making sure, zeroing in on what happened at this meeting. They're even talking to Giuliani himself about it since he sat for a voluntary interview over two days.

And so this meeting, this date, December 18th, is quite pivotal because it is a moment, according to the House and Congress, where Donald Trump made the choice that he could continue to push these ideas of election fraud or he could listen to his top advisers and give it up and acknowledge that he had lost the election.

BERMAN: All right. What else are prosecutors looking at right now as far as we know?

POLANTZ: Well, we do know that they are looking at that fake electors scheme. That's something that has kicked up a lot of grand jury activity in recent weeks. They have looked at a lot of things that Trump had done and said in the White House, but another thing they're looking at is the time period, John, that begins just a couple days before this meeting on December 18th. On December 14th, that's essentially elector day, not just Biden electors and the people across the country certifying that Biden had won their states, but also the fake electors submitting to the federal government that Trump won states that he had not won.

And we do know now that the prosecutors are looking at the time period beginning with that date on December 14th when those electoral college certifications come in and they are looking at it the whole way up into January 6th -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Katelyn Polantz, it seems like the pace of revelations is rapidly increasing. Keep us posted. Sara?

SIDNER: Speaking of which, John, Arizona's secretary of state says his office has now complied with a subpoena tied to the special counsel's investigation into the 2020 election interference. Investigators have recently been focusing on efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to use fake electors in seven states where Trump lost. Arizona of course was one of those states.

The Arizona subpoena comes days after former Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers revealed he had spoken with the FBI for a couple of hours as part of the investigation.

CNN's Zach Cohen joins us now with more.

What kind of information, Zach, is the special counsel looking for in this latest subpoena?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Reporter: Yes, Sara, we're learning that this subpoena, which was received by the Arizona secretary of state's office back in May, was seeking information primarily about two lawsuits that were filed in Arizona after the 2020 election, one was filed by the Trump campaign and the other was filed by the Republican Party chair in that state, Kelli Ward.

[09:10:01]

And they effectively claimed that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud, yet we know there was no evidence to prove that and almost all of the lawsuits immediately failed that were filed by the Trump campaign in the aftermath of the 2020 election. But, you know, take a listen to what the Arizona secretary of state told Erin Burnett last night about what he thinks this means about Jack Smith's investigation and what the special counsel is focused on.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADRIAN FONTES (D), ARIZONA SECRETARY OF STATE: It was just another one of the random, various and sundry, frivolous lawsuits that were filed all over the United States of America in the feeble and misguided attempt to overturning an American election.

I think the crux of what is being sought here is the same as what we're seeing across the United States of America. Was there interference, was there attempted interference, does it amount to a conspiracy across the country to overturn an election. I mean, all these things are consistent and what we're seeing here in Arizona is not inconsistent with what happened across the rest of the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So it's clear there that the Arizona secretary of state's read on what the subpoena was asking for is that the special counsel is looking at a multistate coordinated potentially criminal effort to overturn the 2020 election. You know, we know that the special counsel's office has recently spoken to state officials in other states like Georgia. Secretary of State in Georgia Brad Raffensperger sat down with the prosecutors recently and, you know, he obviously was the recipient of that infamous phone call from President Donald Trump where he asked for votes to overturn the election results there.

So really a lot of moving pieces here, but we do seem to be moving towards a charging decision, at least one part of the special counsel probe.

SIDNER: All right. Zach Cohen, thank you for that reporting. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Thank you so much.

Joining us now CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams for more on this.

So, Elliot, what we just heard from the secretary of state of Arizona, the special counsel going after information now related to two lawsuits that were filed in the state over the election. Why? What does that tell you?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. Lawsuits can be a trove of information, Kate, when pursuing an investigation because, number one, every time an individual files a lawsuit they're creating a very long paper trail of documents they're signing, affidavits, attestations, those kinds of things that are going to provide evidence, number one. And number two, whenever someone signs their name to a document in court, that document itself can be criminal evidence if that person lied on the document.

So there's a lot that they can gather here, at least with respect to what happened in Arizona, and also helping to establish whether the same conduct happened in Georgia and Nevada and other states. So it's quite valuable what they are pursuing there.

BOLDUAN: No, it is interesting. And then you have the CNN exclusive reporting that the special counsel is interested in -- well, and has been asking several witnesses about this Oval Office meeting before January 6th. If they're zeroing in on that as well in conjunction with the other details that we've seen coming out, who do you think could be most in trouble here?

WILLIAMS: Well, it seems likely and just based on the names that the reporting indicated, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn, among others, were people around the former president who seemed to be at the center of or pushing some of these claims. What's most notable about those Oval Office meetings is that -- the antagonists in the meeting were White House lawyers who were pushing back on some of the claims that the Trump campaign had been making.

And what I'd be curious to find out is, were they actually providing legal advice to the Trump campaign saying, you can't do that, or that will violate state law or federal law. If, in fact, the folks on the Trump team received information like that that could certainly act toward to the benefit of criminal charges because they were advised that what they were doing was unlawful or improper, you know, possibly violating state or federal law, or their law licenses.

All these people in the room were lawyers and if they were knowingly making pleadings on courts that could also subject them not just to criminal penalties but just losing their law licenses.

BOLDUAN: Which, remember, everyone, that still is a big deal. I mean, you know, obviously because the criminal charge maybe it feels a little different but losing your law license is still a big deal.

WILLIAMS: Right.

BOLDUAN: More broadly, Elliot, I'm curious, I mean, it is becoming clear that the special counsel with regard to this one of its investigations, it's investigating efforts now in multiple states. Obviously Georgia and now we learn of Nevada and now we learn of Arizona. Who they're talking to and what they're talking about, does that to you suggest a broader scheme is what they are investigating or something more narrow?

WILLIAMS: That's an interesting question. As we learned with the documents probe recently, we don't know what we know until we know it, and they could be sitting on more evidence. Frankly, it could be either. So let's unpack either scenario.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

[09:15:00]

WILLIAMS: Number one, if they are just investigating one state, say it's just Arizona, the evidence of misconduct in Georgia or Nevada can help support charges in Arizona because you could establish -- prosecutors could establish a pattern of conduct that was identical across a few different states and for whatever reason they just aren't able to charge them in those other states, right? Or conversely, they could just be amassing evidence of a massive nationwide scheme and charging it all in one jurisdiction.

Really what it comes down to is what are prosecutors confident not just that they know or are comfortable with, but what could they get into court. And sometimes things that you hear or see or even believe in your heart as an investigator or prosecutor for whatever reason just can't make it into court, either it's hearsay or it's not substantiated or not corroborated, whatever it might be. So it just -- it all depends on what they're able to gather.

BOLDUAN: It's interesting seeing kind of the range of options that we could be looking at here. Hard to tell, but more information obviously much more to come.

It's great to see you, Elliot, thank you. John?

BERMAN: A big and controversial decision from the White House, the U.S. sending weapons banned by many countries to the war effort in Ukraine.

Marjorie Taylor Greene gets the boot. The Georgia congresswoman is the first person to get kicked out of the House Freedom Caucus.

And a bizarre twist in the search for a missing Texas teenager who disappeared eight years ago. Turns out he was not missing at all. What his mother knew and allegedly did for years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:20:39]

SIDNER: More than 100 countries banned them including close U.S. allies, but the U.S. could soon be sending cluster munitions to help Ukraine in its fight against Russian forces. NATO last year condemned Russia for using the cluster bombs on civilians in Ukraine. Cluster munitions are reviled because of the risks they can pose to civilians for years, even decades after they're deployed. Still U.S. Defense officials say they will be included in a new military package for Ukraine.

CNN's Natasha Bertrand is following this from the Pentagon for us this morning.

What is it that sparked the decision for the United States to say, look, we're going to deploy these controversial weapons to Ukraine? NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Sara, it's

really the result of the changing battlefield conditions on the ground in Ukraine and the realities there of how the war is going. U.S. officials were not actively considering giving these cluster munitions to Ukraine over the last several months that Ukraine really had been begging for them but once that counteroffensive began and it was not going as quickly as U.S. and Western officials believed that it might, U.S. officials began to realize that Ukraine might not have enough artillery ammunition to last throughout the entirety of the counteroffensive if the U.S. did not begin to tap into its stockpiles of cluster munitions.

Now the U.S. began phasing out the use of cluster munitions on the battlefield in 2016 so it has a very large stockpile of these weapons and importantly the U.S. says that it is going to try to provide Ukraine with the form of munitions that it has in its stockpiles that have a lower than 2.35 percent dud rate. Now, the dud rate is important because, of course, that is what could cause this long-term risk to civilians if those cluster munitions land on the ground and don't actually explode. Civilians could encounter them years later.

Here is how Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, described it during a briefing yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIG. GEN. PAT RYDER, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: I will say that we have multiple variants of DPICMs in our stocks and the ones that we are considering providing would not include older variants with dud rates that are higher than 2.35 percent. We are aware of reports out there from several decades ago that indicate that certain 155- millimeter DPICMs have higher dud rates so we would be carefully selecting rounds with lower dud rates for which we have recent testing data.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: So this is partly how the U.S. is justifying its decision to send these munitions saying that, you know, the Ukrainians and the Russians have already been using on the -- been using them on the battlefield and the Russians have actually been using variations of the munitions that have a dud rate of as high as 40 percent.

And we are told that the U.S. has been trying to have conversations with allies who might be skeptical of the U.S. decision to provide these weapons because they are banned by over 100 countries worldwide and we are told the U.S. believes it has managed to alleviate some of those concerns and that it will not face significant push back by allies -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Natasha Bertrand, thank you for your reporting there. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Yes. So let's take a closer look at what you're talking about, the dangers there and why cluster munitions are so controversial. So when cluster munitions are dropped from the air or fired from the ground, quite honestly, the canisters open to then release dozens, even hundreds of smaller bombs called bomblets or submunitions. These smaller bombs, they spread out and essentially rain down on an area that can be as wide as several football fields which is valued militarily as one munition can destroy multiple targets.

They're fused together to explode close to the ground or on impact. You see a depiction of it here as it's playing out and you see all the bomblets spread out there and what it looks like when they hit the ground. But their indiscriminate nature is also very dangerous. We heard from the Pentagon about the dud rate, the numbers are that up to 40 percent of those bombs failed to detonate and have proven to cause horrible injuries and deaths among civilians, especially concerning children who find and pick up these duds that can then explode, and this can happen long after the fighting ends.

Back in 2008 most countries signed a pledge to stop using, making and even stockpiling cluster munitions, but the United States along with these nations, and quite a group to be amongst including China, Iran, Russia, Syria, Turkey, Ukraine, they did not sign on to the treaty.

[09:25:14]

Cluster munitions have long been used in Russia's war in Ukraine. Officials say over 108,000 miles of Ukrainian land has now been contaminated with explosive duds. That's larger than the size of Florida. 226 Ukrainian civilians have been killed by cluster munitions and that's in the month of March alone. Showing the real danger, but an interesting moment, battlefield conditions telling the administration they need to be sending these over -- John.

BERMAN: Look, we've seen how dangerous also sometimes how effective they can be.

BOLDUAN: That's the --

BERMAN: Which is the conundrum for the Ukrainians and the United States here.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: Kate, thanks so much for that. A really good explanation.

All right, new this morning the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog says it is making progress inspecting areas of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine but they have not yet been given access to the rooftops. That is where President Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian leader, has claimed that Russia has planted explosive devices.

CNN's Ben Wedeman is in eastern Ukraine this morning.

So, Ben, the inspectors have been there, but they haven't looked at the parts really in question. What's going on?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, these are these inspectors who are there on a permanent basis and, yes, what we know is that they were able to go see the cooling pools to the reactors, which two weeks ago ahead of the Ukrainian intelligence said had be mined by the Russians. And the statement from Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, said that they hadn't seen any indications of explosives or mines in those places.

Now, most recently other Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskyy, have said that the Russians had planted explosives on the roofs of several of the reactors. The intention, they believe, is that the Russians are going to simulate that the Ukrainians or claim that Ukraine had bombed or shelled the plant.

Now, they have not been given access to those areas as well, nonetheless, he did say there was some progress, but certainly if President Zelenskyy is correct when he said in the interview with Erin Burnett that we aired this week that there are only four inspectors at this site -- the site is huge, I mean, when you look at it, it's not just a factory. I mean, it is a massive plant. And four inspectors might not be enough to uncover everything that the Russians might have placed there -- John.

BERMAN: Yes. It is a giant complex. People could see this is just a fraction of the space that we're talking about here. They have to cover so much ground.

Ben Wedeman, thanks so much for being with us. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. Still to come, a smackdown between two billionaires, Elon Musk threatening to hit Mark Zuckerberg with a lawsuit a day after the release of his Twitter rival Thread.

And a bit later a colossal what was he thinking moment, a British tourist carves his name into one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and now he's facing a lot of heat, potentially legal action for what he did. That's ahead.

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