Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Trump Says He's the Target of January 6th Investigation. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired July 18, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:30:35]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, welcome back, everyone. I think we have some breaking news that former -- one second, the control room is speaking to me. We have some breaking news coming in. Former President Donald Trump putting out a statement saying that he is the target of an investigation and -

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I - I think it's the January 6th investigation.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: January 6th investigation.

BOLDUAN: That would be good if people -- yes. We need some more information.

BERMAN: And I think the issue here is Donald Trump is making the statement that he has been -- he is the target of the January 6th investigation. What we don't know, and need to find out very quickly is if he has received a target letter.

SIDNER: Correct.

BOLDUAN: Right.

BERMAN: Identifying him as a target. Because that means something very specific. We don't know if Trump is using specific language or being widely general here.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

SIDNER: This - yes.

BOLDUAN: We - we - do we have Katelyn Polantz?

SIDNER: If he has - we have Katelyn Polantz. If he has received a target letter, it gives you some idea that this case is going further, quicker. Let's go to Katelyn Polantz.

BOLDUAN: Let's go to Washington right now.

SIDNER: Katelyn, what can you tell us about, number one, what Trump is saying and, number two, what you have heard about this supposedly him getting - or him putting this out, that he is the target of the January 6th investigation?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, guys.

So, we have been watching to see what's bubbling behind the scenes because it's felt like something has been ripe in this January 6th investigation being conducted by the special counsel's office for some time now. And indeed we are getting this statement from Donald Trump, posting on True Social, also sending out a statement, saying that the Justice Department, the special counsel, Jack Smith, has sent him a letter stating that he is a target of the January 6th grand jury investigation. So that's a federal investigation that has been for months looking into both his actions in the White House, other actions that he may have taken after the 2020 election, as well as actions of others around him, fake electors, all kinds of different schemes that were to support Donald Trump and overturn his loss in the election. Those things have been investigated, and he is saying he has received a target letter giving him four days to appear before a grand jury. We believe that grand jury would be in Washington, D.C., if he would choose.

And I should step back and explain what a target letter is because it is one of the things that the Justice Department does at the very end of an investigation. It lets someone know, yes, we are looking at potentially charging you. We are very close to a charging decision. And we want to make sure you have your rights preserved. And that if you want to come in, as the target of this investigation, as someone who could be charged, very likely would be charged, if you want to come in and explain yourself on the record to the federal grand jury that has been looking at you as the potential target, as the person possibly charged, you have the opportunity to.

And so Donald Trump is saying that he received this notice on Sunday night and is being given the four days to consider whether he wants to come into the grand jury. Like I said, one of the last things that typically happens in an investigation like this. A very similar thing played out in the weeks before Donald Trump was indicted in the southern district of Florida in a separate investigation in that documents investigation that we're also watching for activity on today.

But this is the January 6th investigation. One where we've watched the grand jury closely. It appears it is coming to an end. And now this very firm signal from the Justice Department, from the special counsel, that Donald Trump may be indicted related to January 6th, his actions after the 2020 election, and giving him a final opportunity to come in and speak to the grand jury if he chooses.

He did not choose to do so in the Florida investigation. Also conducted by Smith's office, related to the documents held at Mar-a- Lago after the presidency.

It does not appear that he is happy with receiving this news. He's quite offended, saying it's horrifying news and that it happened on Sunday night when he received notice from his attorneys. He was with his family. And so, at this point in time, there isn't really an expectation Trump would go in and speak to a grand jury. But we are going to be watching very closely what happens in the federal courthouse in Washington in the coming days.

[09:35:03]

We know that there's a grand jury meeting today that has been investigating Trump and January 6th. And it sounds very likely that they also may be meeting this Thursday and could be looking at a potential indictment of the former president for actions he took at the end of his presidency to hold on to power.

BOLDUAN: Katelyn, thank you so much for bringing us that.

Just to recap the big news that we're laying out in this social media post, Donald Trump says Sunday night he received a letter from the special counsel saying that he is a target of the January 6th grand jury investigation. And now, obviously, as Katelyn is laying out, very big questions of what this means going forward.

BERMAN: Let me read -

SIDNER: Yes. Yes. This is interesting.

BERMAN: Let me read the Truth Social post here so people can figure out what exactly was said.

Again, this is said by Donald Trump. At this point he is the source of this information. He wrote, deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden's DOJ, sent a letter -- again it was Sunday night -- stating that I am a target -- and "target" is in all caps - of the January 6th grand jury investigation, and giving me a very short four days to report to the grand jury, which almost always means an arrest and an indictment.

That again was the statement posted by Donald Trump himself, who is right now the source of this information, that he is a target of the January 6th investigation, which is a major development if so.

SIDNER: Yes.

BERMAN: Let's go to Paula Reid. I understand we have Paula Reid, who is in Florida, who can weigh in on this.

Paula.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: It is incredibly significant because special counsel Jack Smith is conducting two separate investigations into the former president and some of his associates. One of those is into the possible mishandling of classified documents. That's why we're in Florida today. There is a hearing. The first hearing before the Trump appointed judge who's going to oversee that case.

In court today we expect them to talk about a trial date, which is significant because at the core of Trump's legal strategy is an effort to delay this trial, at least until after the 2024 election. Now, he's also under investigation for efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And it was not clear -- it was just not clear if he would be charged. But as he indicates in this statement, which we have not verified independently with the special counsel's office, he suggests that he has received a target letter, which he is correct usually means that an indictment is going to be coming soon.

Now, he has the opportunity to go before the grand jury. It is unlikely he will do that. He did not do that after receiving a target letter in the Mar-a-Lago investigation. But it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few hours here because his legal team, they're expected in court here in Florida in just a few short hours. Likely going to face a lot of questions from reporters who are here to cover his other ongoing criminal trial.

BERMAN: All right, Paula Reid, in Florida, stand by. Much more from you in just a moment.

SIDNER: All right, let's go to our Elie Honig, who is here to give us some sense of what all of this mean.

First of all, Donald Trump making very clear this is his statement. We have not confirmed that this actually has happened yet, but saying he's received this target letter and that it definitely means he's going to be arrested and charged. Is he correct?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: He's mostly correct, assuming that this is true, assuming that DOJ has actually sent a formal target letter. What that means is that DOJ believe Donald Trump is a, quote, punitive, meaning a very likely defendant, and that DOJ has evidence linking him to a crime.

You do not have to send a target letter at the Justice Department, but it's common practice. And we know Jack Smith sends target letters because within a week or so of the Mar-a-Lago indictment, Jack Smith did, in fact, send a target letter to Donald Trump. So assuming that has happened again here, this is a very telling moment into this investigation.

BOLDUAN: What's the process now?

HONIG: So, the process is, Jack Smith has sent this letter. Donald Trump will, again, assuming the truth of this, be given four days to appear in the grand jury if he wants. He will not do that. That would be incredibly self-damaging to do that.

Jack Smith now can control if and when the grand jury votes on an indictment, assuming he gets to a point where he believes, I've given the grand jury my evidence. Jack Smith can then go into the grand jury with a draft indictment saying, here are the defendants I propose to charge, here are the charges I propose to bring, and then instruct the grand jury as to the law, and then take a vote from the grand jury. And assuming they vote yes, which grand juries almost always do, then we will have an indictment. Now, it could be sealed for a while, meaning there could be a moment in time where we know that there's an indictment but we don't actually get to see it. So, that's what we're looking at. And again, according to this, on a fairly short timeframe.

BERMAN: In the Mar-a-Lago documents case, he received a target letter, he was indicted.

HONIG: Within days.

BERMAN: Within days. In this case, he is saying he received a target letter. That is why there is an expectation that he could be indicted. In the Mar-a-Lago documents case, his lawyers also went in to meet with Justice Department lawyers to basically talk about, you know, charging, which is what happens. We don't know if there's been that meeting. Would that happen before or after a target letter, typically?

[09:40:03]

HONIG: So, there's no rule on that. You typically would give a person's defense lawyers a last chance to come in and try to talk you out of it. That did happen in the Mar-a-Lago case.

We don't know that's happened here. It's possible that that happened and we don't know about it publicly. It's possible he did it by a phone call or a Zoom or some locations that we weren't able to spot it. But both of those things, given Jack Smith's tendencies, would signal end game to me.

BOLDUAN: All right, stand by, Eli.

Let's get back over to Katelyn Polantz with some more content and a little background on all this with this investigation. What were all of the aspects of this special counsel investigation into January 6th, Katelyn?

POLANTZ: You know, Kate, there have been so many different aspects here. But when you put them all together, you can see how prosecutors really have been throughout trying to find exactly what Donald Trump was saying, doing, thinking, the record around him after the election. And so some of the aspects here that have built this investigation to this point where Donald Trump gets a target letter from the Justice Department saying he could be charged with a crime, a federal crime related to January 6th and the 2020 election, some of that includes prosecutors bringing in his vice president, Mike Pence, not just to talk about what Pence experienced generally on January 6th, but to talk about communication Pence had directly with Donald Trump, that Trump was trying to block him from sharing.

Trump also had gone to court to try and block from this grand jury probe conversations he had with his White House counsel, conversations with others around Pence, conversations with his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. And at the end of the day, all of those people and more in the West Wing had to testify about not just what they witnessed on January 6th and this Capitol riot, but specifically about what Trump was saying to them directly. So, that's a piece of it.

There's also a financial part of this investigation we picked up hints of. That was ongoing. Unclear how that will shake out, if that's some sort of charges the Justice Department would still be considering. But we also know there was pressure within the Justice Department for supporting Trump even though there was no evidence of election fraud that could overturn the election. That was part of the investigation. It resulted in the seizure of many materials related to Jeffrey Clark, a Trump administration official that Trump wanted to install as attorney general at the very end and was blocked by his top advisers.

We also know there was a fake electors scheme across the country. These seven battleground states where electors were brought in, and organized, apparently by the Trump campaign, to put in false information to the federal government saying that Trump won their states when he had not. And so there's been a question for some time, would Trump be the person ultimately charged when they - when the Justice Department looks at things like conspiracy, false statements, obstruction of the congressional proceeding. And the hints throughout this investigation is that not only have those potential crimes been looked at, Donald Trump himself has been the subject of a great abundance of grand jury testimony, leading prosecutors, apparently, to where they are now.

BOLDUAN: All right, Katelyn, thank you for that. Stick close.

BERMAN: All right, let's go back to Florida. CNN's Paula Reid is there.

Paula, obviously Trump's got a lot of lawyers who have been talking about a lot of different things in a lot of different cases. What are the likely defenses here?

REID: So, we don't know what the actual charge will be in this case, but we can guess at the legal strategy. Well first up, though, even though the former president is really a lawyer full employment act, he will likely need to bring on additional lawyers if he is facing additional criminal charges related to January 6th. We know when he was charged in the classified document case, here in Florida it was a little difficult for him to find additional attorneys to bring on to his team.

Now, it's difficult for him to find lawyers for a few reasons. One reason we've been told is that some lawyers are a little bit nervous about taking him on as a client, concerned they may not get paid. But I am told that he will likely be able to find defense attorneys down here in Florida as long as he pays them up front.

But there's also a political cost to taking on former President Trump. Lawyers have told us that they are worried about alienating some of their current clients by representing him in this ongoing criminal trial. And it will likely be similar up in Washington. We know he has had trouble over the past few years finding prominent D.C.-based attorneys who are willing to take him on as a client.

But no matter who he hires as a lawyer, we can expect that he will likely try to delay any possible criminal case until after the 2024 election. And we know that because that's already the strategy that they're taking down here in Florida.

[09:45:00]

They've made it clear to the judge, while the special counsel says they'd be ready to take this Florida case to trial in December, the defense attorneys have said it's premature to even think about a trial date and that they would like to litigate. A lot of different constitutional questions, many unprecedented, before taking this to trial. So, it is expected, if the former president is charged, and it appears that he likely will be because he's received this target letter, he will have to take on additional lawyers because he's lost most of his legal team that's handled that case over the past few months. Once he's able to find those lawyer, we can expect that they will try to delay, delay, delay.

BERMAN: All right, Paula Reid, again, stand by. Find out what else you can. We'll be back to you in a second.

SIDNER: We just heard from Paula, you know, there could be many different kinds of charges. What could some of those charges potentially be in this case?

HONIG: Yes, so this is one of the big challenges that Jack Smith surely is facing right now. There's so many evidence, as Katelyn and Paula just laid out, that he's got to go through and figure out, how exactly do I charge this criminally. You can't just say, well, January 6th, or all of this stuff, all the stuff in the January 6th committee report with the hundreds and hundreds of pages.

Here's what I see as potential federal charges that could apply here. First of all, obstruction of an official proceeding. Meaning, if the effort here was to stop Congress from counting the rightly cast electoral votes, that is a crime. In fact, that charge has been brought against over 300 people who actually stormed the Capitol.

SIDNER: Right. Right.

HONIG: So that's one possibility.

The broadest statute here, the broadest position Jack Smith could take is a conspiracy to defraud the United States of a free and fair election, which is a charge that has not been brought many times, it's not been charged against any of the actual Capitol rioters, but Robert Mueller actually did charge it in relation to Russian attempt to interfere with the 2016 election.

You could also see more specific charges relating to false statements, if we get into the submission of false electors certificates that are tied to Donald Trump or others.

And I think another possible charge that strikes me as unlikely is incitement of the insurrection based on Donald Trump's speech at the Capitol. But that gets into First Amendment issues, free speech issues, political speech issues.

So, I think that's probably the universe that Jack Smith is looking at right now.

BOLDUAN: This is all again couched and Donald Trump says that he has been issued this letter, that he is a target of this investigation.

HONIG: Yes. BOLDUAN: This special council investigation.

This -- all along it has been viewed -- it was Donald Trump was under investigation, as well as those in his orbit, related to the 2020 election.

HONIG: Yes.

BOLDUAN: If he is indicted, do you think that necessarily is going to mean, given the - given what Katelyn Polantz lays out as the various aspects of this investigation others are going to face charges as well?

HONIG: So, it's a great question. One of the things I think we ought to watch for is, are other people receiving -

BOLDUAN: Yes.

HONIG: Or have other people received target letters, again, assuming the truth of what Donald Trump is saying here.

BOLDUAN: Exactly.

HONIG: But, again, that's another important question for Jack Smith. Do I charge dozens and dozens of people? Legally, he can. Do I charge just the ringleaders? Do I charge only Donald Trump? But I think there's other people hearing this news who have to be worried right now. We know there were people who were involved in this with Donald Trump. This was not a one-man show.

BOLDUAN: Right.

HONIG: He definitely was at the top of it. But there's other people who we know have received subpoenas, have been asked questions, have been asked questions about who I think have to be very nervous at this news.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

BERMAN: Look, I think it's very possible, if not likely, that there are others who received target letters. But one thing we should make clear is, we don't find out about that because of a statement from the Justice Department or announcement.

SIDNER: Right.

BERMAN: It is the people who ultimately would become defendants who release that information. Trump has chosen to release that information.

BOLDUAN: Right.

BERMAN: If there are other people, which I think is a great question, are there other people -

SIDNER: Yes. BERMAN: We'll only know if they tell us they received those target letters.

One other point I want to make here before we come back to Elie here, how would you like to be Ron DeSantis right know -

SIDNER: I mean -

BERMAN: Who is waiting to do an interview with Jake Tapper today at 4:00, running against Donald Trump. This information comes out. This just has such a big impact on the primary election that the leading Republican presidential candidate now could face likely charges having to do with the last election. We'll get back to that in just a second here.

These final days, Elie, between the target letter and a possible indictment, what happens behind the scenes?

HONIG: Well, at DOJ you're just trying to polish up your indictment. You will - first of all, let's be clear, Jack Smith has to get Merrick Garland's approval before he indicts anybody.

BERMAN: Do you think he had Merrick Garland's approval before sending a target letter?

HONIG: I think, yes. Yes, he would.

BERMAN: OK.

HONIG: Because the special council regulations say that you have to let the AG know of any substantial or significant steps. Sending a target letter would definitely qualify.

BOLDUAN: OK.

HONIG: And I think Merrick Garland has made clear through his statement, or lack of statements, that he intends to follow the regulations, which says that he has to give great weight to what Jack Smith wants to do. It strikes me as very unlikely that Merrick Garland would overrule Jack Smith.

So, you have to get your internal approvals if you're Jack Smith. You have to make sure that your indictment is pitch perfect.

[09:50:00]

You have to make sure that your evidence is all there. You have to make sure that you're ready to instruct the grand jury properly. And then you have to have an operational plan, right? You -- Jack Smith knows what day he's going to indict this, if he's going to indict this. And then you have to be ready to think about, when are we going to unseal this indictment, whos' going to make arrests, are we going to ask people to surrender voluntarily, which is what happened in Mar- a-Lago You have to think about the logistics of this as well.

COLLINS: Yes. SIDNER: Can I quickly ask you, Elie, Jack Smith, looking at what he did with the documents case, which is going to court today, and a decision will be made by the judge as to potentially when this trial starts, looking at that case, what does it tell you about what he's going to do potentially on this case, very, very pointed. Are we not going to see a whole bunch of different things but things that he is very sure that he feels he can prosecute?

HONIG: Yes, what Jack Smith has shown us so far is that he likes to chose the most strongly supported, most narrow, most specific charge available, but that may be hard to do with January 6th because the conduct is so broad. And you raise another good point, we're headed towards a traffic jam here of trials.

I mean just so people are oriented, we have the Manhattan DA case relating to hush money payments. That's already scheduled for trial end of March 2024. We have the Mar-a-Lago case where we may get a trial date today. Then we may have this case, if it comes to fruition on top of that. That will make three different cases all vying for position to be tried before or after the election.

SIDNER: Wow.

BOLDUAN: Stick with us, Elie.

Let's get back to Katelyn Polantz in Washington for us to talk more - you're working some more reporting, Katelyn, on what else is going on behind the scenes right now.

POLANTZ: Well, that is a huge question because this January 6th investigation, for much of it our understanding has been that it is around Trump, but it's been around others too, that there were many other people that he was collaborating with, that he was talking to, that were supporting his efforts to overturn the result of the 2020 election and put pressure on Mike Pence, put pressure in this space, rally his supporters. And so there's a question now that if one of the charges that could be considered here is conspiracy, which is one of the things that the Justice Department has said before in some of their court filings related to others who took part in Trump's efforts after the election, that if there is a question of conspiracy, are there other people receiving target letters or receiving some indication that they could be charged alongside Donald Trump.

Now, the person who often comes to mind here about being at Donald Trump's side and pushing the false claims of election fraud after the 2020 election often is Rudy Giuliani, but Giuliani has a really interesting story here in that our colleague, Paula Reid, is just receiving information that according to his lawyer he has not received a target letter. And, in recent weeks, we've reported that Giuliani went in and spoke to investigators for two days, voluntarily, about what he had seen. And so that is a huge question mark is, what is happening with Rudy Giuliani? Has he flipped on the former president? Has something else happened with his situation?

Although, I should say, it wasn't just a four-day period in the documents case that Jack Smith previously charged Donald Trump with from the time he got the target letter to the time he was indicted. There were a few weeks there. And after Trump was told he was a target of that investigation, it took actually another week for his co- defendant, Walt Nauta, ultimately his co-defendant, to learn that he too was a target. And so there was a bit of a lag of time in that. That, too, was a conspiracy case involving the two of them. And so a big question now is, what happen next? How close are we to the end? And is this case - a case potentially against Donald Trump himself or others, and how many.

BOLDUAN: Yes, a lot more. Keep working your sources. Katelyn, thanks so much for bringing that to us.

BERMAN: Rudy.

SIDNER: Yes.

BERMAN: Rudy was talking to federal prosecutors for about eight hours. You and I have discussed this. That's an awful long time to be in front of them. Put that in conjunction with what Paula Reid is just reporting, that Rudy's team says, at least as of now, he hasn't received a target letter.

HONIG: So, it's a really interesting development because that was the first name to came to my mind. It's hard to think of Donald Trump doing a lot of these things without Rudy. A lot of the conduct here ran through Rudy.

But it's also consistent, the fact that he's not received a target letter with the fact that you do not bring in, as a DOJ prosecutor you do not bring in a target for a voluntary interview unless you warn that person first. And as Rudy and his defense lawyer, you would never bring him in if he was a target. So -

BERMAN: Allow him to go in, right?

HONIG: Right. So it makes sense to me that he's not received a target letter in that respect.

Now, what is Rudy? Well, they interviewed him for eight hours. Could he be a witness. I still have a very hard time seeing a scenario where DOJ calls Rudolph Giuliani to the witness stand as a witness who they are offering to the jury as fully credible. I mean he has all sorts of massive credibility problems. But it's interesting that he's not received a target letter.

[09:55:03]

I mean he would be sort of 1A to Donald Trump's 1 in terms of who I - I would suspect would receive a target letter.

BOLDUAN: Yes. What - what does it look like - you were touching on this a little bit, but what -- do they impact each other at all, the fact that you will have these -- potentially have these kind of different -- different trials, different cases of -- that the president, former president, now needs to face, happening in tandem, in parallel, all kind of at the same time. HONIG: Yes.

BOLDUAN: How does this work?

HONIG: Yes, they are all going to be inextricably intertwined.

First of all, they're all going to want to get tried before the election.

BOLDUAN: Right. Yes.

HONIG: But a person can only be one place at one time.

SIDNER: That's - is that even possible? That's not possible, right?

HONIG: It's not possible. There's no way we're going to have - the three cases tried between now and the election.

SIDNER: Right.

HONIG: I - I just -- logistically, you're not going to be able to manage that. So, yes, there's going to be some jockeying for space. I mean it is possible, by the way, that DOJ chooses to charge Donald Trump alone in one indictment, and then perhaps others or follow-up indictments where they charge other people. You can split your indictments any way you want. And there may be strategic considerations at play here.

SIDNER: And Katelyn Polantz just mentioned that, that there was lag time between Walt Nauta and Donald Trump being indicted. So, we could see something coming forward.

Elie Honig, thank you, thank you so much for your analysis.

BERMAN: Yes, look, don't go far.

HONIG: Yes.

SIDNER: He's staying here.

BERMAN: Obviously there's a ton of breaking news developing right now.

Donald Trump says he has received a letter indicating he is a target in the January 6th investigation. That is a major, major development.

There is also breaking news out of North Korea, where a U.S. soldier has crossed into North Korea. We're getting new details about what happened there.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)