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Trump Receives Target Letter in January 6 Criminal Probe. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 18, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:38]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: The most high-profile criminal target in the world.

Donald Trump says he's now received a letter from the special counsel and anticipates an indictment in the very near future. It marks yet another time the former president will make legal history of the wrong kind that threatens to collide with the coming presidential election.

I'm Anderson Cooper in New York. You're watching CNN's special live coverage, Donald Trump in legal peril.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: And I'm Dana Bash in Washington.

The Justice Department goes on record and informs Donald Trump he is a criminal target. The case this time is the sprawling investigation into January 6. The special counsel has examined question after question, whether the former president knew he lost the election, his pressure campaign on his vice president, Mike Pence, the fake electors scheme, that chaotic Oval Office meeting.

We have seen in recent weeks witness after witness go and testify in front of a federal grand jury right here in Washington. And there's no reasonable argument Mr. Trump can make saying he doesn't know these people. They are his people, his chief of staff, his vice president, his White House counsel, his son-in-law. And it goes on and on.

We're going to start with CNN's Katelyn Polantz.

Katelyn, what are you hearing from your sources this hour?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Dana, right now it is all hands on deck reacting to this situation where Donald Trump is announcing on social media that he received a target letter on Sunday from the Justice Department telling him, signaling that an indictment is very near.

That he is likely to be indicted by the special counsel's office for the second time in a different case related to January 6 and that sweeping investigation that the special counsel has done under the Justice Department's purview looking at what happened after the 2020 election, all of the various aspects of that pressure campaign, and the attempt for Donald Trump to hold on to power while he was president and outgoing from the White House.

But this target letter, it is showing that the grand jury not only has been focused on him, but is willing to hear from him, if he so chooses, to go in and testify to them on his own behalf, if he wants to do that, to try and convince them not to indict him. It's a secret proceeding. Right now. We don't expect Trump to go in and speak to the grand jury.

But the Justice Department sending him this letter is one of the last things that would happen in a situation like this where the Justice Department, the grand jury has been looking at a possible charge.

Of course, on the special counsel side, that's the Justice Department and its appointee, Jack Smith. Jack Smith is tight-lipped. He was spotted today by CNN going to Subway for lunch, picking up a sandwich, leaving and not saying a word, so no comment from the special counsel's office on whether they plan to indict Donald Trump and when that is potentially going to happen for the second time for a federal case.

But we do know that the grand jury is in today in Washington over at the courthouse. They are very likely to return potentially on Thursday, that day that Trump is invited, or he says he's invited to speak to them. And on the Trump side of things, he's been meeting with advisers, and they have been scrambling to figure out, has anyone else received a target letter and how much of a significant amount of trouble could he be in with this case, Dana?

BASH: Yes, and those are questions that we just don't know the answer to.

Thank you so much for that reporting, Katelyn.

And the panel is back with me.

John, it's important, I think, because people are now drinking from a fire hose of Donald Trump's legal issues, to separate this out from the others. And this is about January 6. This is about the run-up to January 6, his involvement in trying to undermine democracy.

And, as we talked about before, there has been a very open question about whether or not the people around him were going to -- that the -- any indictment was going to be limited to the people around him or whether they actually felt that there were criminal charges to bring against the former president himself from effectively undermining democracy, or at least trying to undermine democracy and stay in office.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.

If, as anticipated, now that the former president has received this target letter, we get an indictment, as we did, after he got the target letter in the classified documents case, we will see the case Jack Smith is trying to make.

But I think you do make a fundamental point. This is about a sitting president of the United States trying to steal an election, trying to stay in power after he knew he lost. We will see the particulars, what criminal charges they think they can make from that.

[13:05:02]

But this is about a conspiracy led by the president of the United States to now an active candidacy to get that job back to subvert the most fundamental principle of why we are all here, the American democracy. He lost. He asked for recounts. He sued. He lost more than 70 court cases, a half-dozen states where they appealed and recounted and recounted again. He lost.

And then he tried to stay in power. I will leave it to the smart lawyers and the investigators about the criminality, what cases you can charge there. But he did that in front of our public eyes. He had his people doing things, saying things in public that were simply not true. He brought people together all the way up from before the election.

That's the interesting part to me and why I'm fascinated to see what the special counselor brings forward. Understandably, you focus on January 6 because of the violence that day, because it played out, again, in an attempted coup right before our eyes.

But the case they are trying to make, if you listen to the witnesses, people who were at Donald Trump's side in the campaign, in the White House, in the weeks after is that this all actually started before the election, when they said, if we lose, we are going to say we won.

And so it's really interesting to see, how big of a case does Jack Smith want to bring? And just one last point. Jack Smith, remember when the classified documents target letter, when Trump announced that, there was a lot of commentary, is Jack Smith making a mistake here? Is he leaving this all to Donald Trump?

And then they released the indictment, and we all said, wow, wow. We read it. We saw the documentation. We saw the level of detail. Jack Smith going to Subway today is a message to Donald Trump. Donald Trump tries to intimidate people. He tries to bully people. He tries to scare you away. That was Jack Smith with no words and a simple $5 sub in his hand saying: I'm here. I'm not going anywhere.

BASH: Yes, the imagery was intentional and spoke volumes.

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It really is.

And you think about there's a bit of a leg up that Jack Smith has over other prosecutors for a variety of reasons, one being that you already have a judge having said it's likely that there was a crime that occurred between John Eastman particularly and Donald Trump.

You had congressional members who were pursuing an indictment following the insurrection who gave a list of potential charges you might want to look at and then handed over documents to him. Then you had people who now realize, well, it's one thing to have Congress knocking at my door. I'm not really fearful of going to prison if Congress, who has never been able to really in recent times have a successful contempt people have had in the past.

Now it's Jack Smith and the weight of the federal government knocking at my door. The list of people who have testified in front of the grand jury, from Giuliani, to Mark Meadows, to Kushner, and beyond, all tell a tale of what they knew when.

The big question will be going from here, how will this compete, if at all, with the other pending cases? I have to tell you, most judges are going to look at a case in their own jurisdiction exclusively and then worry maybe about what anyone else thinks. If Jack Smith is bringing cases, we don't actually know where it might actually come. We don't know where he might file the charges.

There are a number of possibilities, Washington, D.C., one. Arizona could be a possibility, of course. Georgia could be a possibility. If you're talking about, as you mentioned earlier, RICO...

BASH: Yes.

COATES: ... that talks about the notion of sort of using the interstate avenues and ability to do that. Everything is fair game right now.

BASH: What charges do you see?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, now, to be clear, there are about 5,200 crimes in the United States. And who knows what could be out there.

Now, something that's important to note along those lines, Dana, is that, as early as, I think, June 2020, the former president at least started making statements on the campaign trail about, there's no way I could possibly lose this election. There is fraud if I haven't lost this election.

And there are going to be conversations going back to that point, if not before, a year -- almost close to a year prior to January 20, but a bunch of different conspiracies, conspiracies to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct Congress, where someone -- there's a proceeding in Congress and someone tries to get in the way with it, and they form an agreement, obstruction of an official proceeding, not just a congressional hearing.

COATES: Yes.

WILLIAMS: All of these things where someone is working with other people to get in the way of actions of the government, they're all on the table, and all could happen.

BASH: So, this target letter, according to Donald Trump, went out on Sunday night.

In today's "New York Times," our colleague Maggie Haberman and her colleagues over there wrote a story with -- clearly with the help of people who support Donald Trump -- I mean, they were on the record -- about what he intends to do if he's president with the federal government, in particular, the executive branch.

And it sounded extremely authoritarian. And here's part of it.

"Trump intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has bide as the sick political class that hates our country."

I want to talk about the substance of this with you, Abby, in a second, but just the politics of what he's trying to do here.

[13:10:00]

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, this is no surprise if you, like me, covered the Trump administration, knowing some of the individuals who were named in this piece, Johnny McEntee, who is the head of his personnel in the White House.

These are folks who've left the Trump orbit, gone into these outside advocacy groups. They have been advocating in this Congress right now and planning for the next time around, when they're more organized and when they can execute a plan that, as the story states pretty explicitly, relies on dismantling the federal government.

And at the core of this, I mean, the part of this that Trump is the most interested in -- and we know this because he said so -- is the part about the Justice Department. Since the post-Nixon years, the Justice Department has been an independent entity, pursuing prosecutions without political fear or favor. That is supposed to be how it is.

And Trump has said, and these folks are coming up with a plan, they want to change that. This is a very important story, because I see it two ways. One, it's a sign of, yes, what Trump and people around him want to do. I also see it as something that's actually directed at Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis' argument has been: I'm more organized. I'm more serious. I can actually get this -- dismantle the administrative state. I can actually get that done. And Trump didn't do it when he was president.

I see this as an attempt to get right at that argument.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I think you're right.

And one of his arguments has been that: I can serve for eight years, that I don't -- it will take that long to get it done. And Trump has said: No, no, we don't have eight years to do this. Now, he knows sort of how the federal government works. More importantly, the people around him know.

And you mentioned Johnny McEntee. We covered the Trump administration, the first term, together. He was the central person. So a lot of what this story is just finishing unfinished business, what they tried to do, couldn't quite do. And this is a road map. I mean, once again, with Donald Trump, he often says the quiet things out loud.

So this is what he is campaigning on. That's why all of this matters. That's why this is a central part of this Republican primary campaign. That's why the burden of -- for all these rivals who are trying to defeat him who disagree with this, so will have to raise this or not.

But this is what the voters are weighing. So this isn't some academic exercise here. This is all happening in real time, and he's applying for his old job back.

BASH: Put into perspective what he's talking about and how, frankly, it applies to what we're seeing potentially today.

I mean, he is talking about, if he becomes president again, he will take control of a lot of agencies. The Justice Department is clearly one of them.

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Yes, so the contrast couldn't be more raw and relevant, right?

What he is proposing with this theory or this plan, however you want to characterize it, if he's reelected, is very simply the elevation of the presidency above the law.

For the first time in this country, we will have a president who cannot be held accountable, who does not respond to any sort of oversight, and who does so by populating the institutions of government with sycophants and people who are politically beholden to the president, rather than dedicated to the Constitution and the rule of law.

That should be terrifying to every American, despite what political side you find yourself on. This is not something that will simply provide Donald Trump with an enormous degree of protection from the many crimes he's been accused of, but will apply to every person who holds that position for the remainder of our republic.

So this is unbelievably serious. It kind of slides under the radar with all the news and certainly on days like today.

(CROSSTALK)

PHILLIP: One quick point, just touching off of that, we sometimes kind of beat around the bush about this stuff when it comes to Trump. We don't have to in this case.

Trump has said explicitly, with his own words, just a few weeks ago if he's elected president, he will direct the Justice Department to go after his political enemies, President Biden.

BASH: Yes.

PHILLIP: So he said that. And this is the road map that you just described about how he is going to do that. BASH: We're going to get to you in the next segment.

I got to go over to Anderson in New York -- Anderson.

COOPER: Dana, thanks.

The breaking news continues. Just ahead, how Trump world is reacting to the target letter against the former president.

More of our special coverage right after this break.

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[13:18:30]

COOPER: More now on the breaking news, Donald Trump officially the target of another criminal investigation.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is closely following how the former president is dealing with his growing legal jeopardy.

So you're getting word now of an urgent effort, I understand, to figure out if anyone else has received a target letter.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Anderson.

As soon as they got this target letter, they started making calls to lawyers, to allies, anyone involved in the January 6 investigation who might have an answer as to who, if anyone else, got a target letter.

Now, I am told, as of now, they have not identified anyone else who got a target letter. But, of course, they are still making the calls. The reason that they are doing this is, it's going to give them some sort of insight into what the evidence is against Donald Trump and what exactly a trial or charges might look like against the former president.

And part of this is because some members of his team were surprised at the timing of the target letter. Now, they have anticipated that he was going to be indicted several more times. But they were looking at the timeline for January 6, in terms of target letter and the movement there, being in the fall, not being right now.

I'd actually been talking to one lawyer who said they thought that things had cooled off in that investigation. So, a lot of calls going on right now trying to figure out exactly what this is going to look like, the timing on all of this.

And we do expect to hear from former President Donald Trump tonight. He is on the campaign trail, a reminder that he is again running for president. He will be in Iowa doing a town hall. We will obviously be watching that very closely to see what he says about this.

COOPER: All right, Kristen, appreciate it.

Joining me now in New York, Jamie Gangel, Van Jones, Kaitlan Collins Elie Honig, former Georgia Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan, and former White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah Griffin.

[13:20:06]

Elie, just on the target letter, would they send them out to anybody who was going to get one at the same time?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: You should, yes.

I mean, it's good practice. If you intend to indict a bunch of people together, you should notify them with a target letter all at once. And I think one of the big questions is, who else, if anyone else, has received these target letters?

And just to be clear, DOJ does not have to send out target letters, but they often do. And we know Jack Smith does because he did before the Mar-a-Lago indictments. And once you get a target letter, you are very likely...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: And the purpose of the target letter is to inform the defendant what's going to -- about to happen and also give them an opportunity, if they want, to testify before the grand jury?

HONIG: Exactly, or if the lawyers want to come in and try to make any other pitch.

So it's interesting that, as far as we know right now, Donald Trump's the only target letter we know of. And prosecutors have a lot of discretion in how they shape their indictments. Who do you charge in which indictment? Do you roll them out sort of seriatim, one after the other, or all at once?

It could be that they just want one big indictment to focus on Trump to minimize the distractions and the paperwork that will go with it, and then there's other people perhaps will be referred to as co- conspirators or perhaps will be indicted separately or later.

COOPER: Alyssa Farah Griffin, you're just joining us. What stands out to you today?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, looking at the politics of this, I mean, it's just stunning that we're now talking about a potential third indictment, second federal, of the former president, who still remains the Republican front-runner.

And I just -- somebody -- as somebody who spoke out the day after January 6 and has continued to since, I can't imagine how different the political landscape would look right now if Republicans stayed the course as they -- after January 6 with what they were saying, Nikki Haley condemning him at the RNC winter meeting, near every prominent Republican saying, we need to turn the page on Trump.

But because so many people flipped that language and did a 180 on him, he is polling ahead of anyone despite these investigations going. And I don't know that anyone can bank on the idea of him being in prison keeping him from winning the nomination.

COOPER: Geoff Duncan, you certainly wish that they had stayed the course as well.

GEOFF DUNCAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, absolutely.

I think it would certainly have our party in a totally different position than it is today. January 6 is the headline on all of this target letters and indictments that are out there, but this was a process that led up to January 6. And I think that's what's going to continue to unpack.

And I think we're just missing an easy opportunity to beat the least popular president, sitting president, in maybe U.S. history in Joe Biden, and we just continue to miss it and miss it and miss it. I hope we course-correct here. I hope we get to a pivot point where folks wake up on the Republican side and say, you know what, we have got real problems. Republican Party has real solutions, and we're going to move forward.

COOPER: Jamie, I know you're hearing from some Republicans.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: We got a statement from former appellate court Judge Michael Luttig, who became well-known for testifying for the January 6 Committee.

He played a critical role in advising former Vice President Mike Pence that he could not delay Congress. Let's just remember, before I read this statement, he is one of the most conservative Republicans out there.

And he says: "There is not an attorney general or special counsel of either party who would not bring charges against the former president for his efforts on January 6 to overturn the 2020 presidential election."

He goes on: "He," meaning Trump, "has dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ to prosecute him for his offenses on and relating to January 6 for two-and-a-half years. The former president has left Jack Smith no choice but to bring charges, lest the former president make a mockery of the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law."

I spoke to him a few minutes ago. He expects an indictment within days. He does not think Trump is going to go in front of the grand jury.

COOPER: And yet so many Republicans are not echoing that. So many Republicans are standing by the former president.

GANGEL: No question, as we just heard, whether they are scared of Donald Trump or whether they want his base to get elected.

His numbers seem to be going up every time he gets indicted.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: But we definitely need more of that. I mean, that's what you expect. I mean, if you had gone to sleep four

years ago, five years ago, woke up and it turned out that there was somebody who clearly on national television was allowing an insurrection to happen, didn't do anything about it, and this person was now being charged by the Department of Justice, you would say, thank goodness.

Thank goodness rule of law applies to everyone. Thank goodness somebody has looked into the facts here. Thank goodness. Instead, you hear this appalling silence and then people coming out and trying to excuse the inexcusable. We need more of that.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: But, also, look at how Trump is talking about January 6 even.

I mean, he's saying that Trump made a mockery of the Constitution with those efforts hurts and what he did that day. Trump still talks about January 6 all the time when he's at these campaign trail stops, when he's out there. He essentially is reframing it. He calls the people who were there that day breaking into the Capitol patriots. And you have not seen the rest of the 2024 field at all come out.

[13:25:02]

I mean, a high school student in New Hampshire asked Ron DeSantis about his thoughts on January 6 recently, and his first response was: I wasn't anywhere near Washington that day.

And, as Chris Christie said, was he alive that day? Did he have a TV? Was he watching?

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: I mean, everyone saw what was happening.

So I do think it's just a sign of that Trump hasn't veered away from talking about this. I mean, he's talking about pardoning the people who were convicted on -- for crimes related to January 6. So he hasn't really shied away from this.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Didn't he make an album with some of the prisoners?

JONES: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

COLLINS: He played their music at his rallies.

COOPER: Yes.

COLLINS: I mean, he's completely recast this as something entirely differently.

And so, I mean, that also speaks to the fact that -- if he is going to get indicted on this.

COOPER: So what happens next? I mean, from a legal standpoint, he -- how much time does he have to respond, or does he need to respond at all? When do you think an indictment will come?

HONIG: So, according to Donald Trump, he's been given four days from Sunday, which takes us to Thursday.

Really, at any point after Thursday, we could see an indictment. It's important to understand it is real quick and easy for a federal prosecutor to finish the process of getting an indictment. In the federal system, you are allowed to summarize.

So, I think what will happen is, a prosecutor will stand in front of the grand jury, say, here's a summary, here's a reminder of all the evidence that you have heard, all the testimony you have heard.

You can do that in an hour or so. Then you have to present the actual draft indictment. You have to say, here are the X-number of charges, and here are whoever the defendants are, and here are the elements of law that you have to find by probable cause, lower standard than ultimately they have to prove at trial, which, of course, is beyond a reasonable doubt.

And that's it. Then the jury -- grand jury votes, and then the indictment will be in the prosecutor's hands. Now, important to know, it may be sealed for some short amount of time, meaning the indictment may be voted on as an indictment, and then it will be filed, docketed with the court, but we won't be able to see it for some amount of time.

In fact, with the Mar-a-Lago case, there was a couple days or a day or so where we couldn't see it.

COLLINS: Trump told us.

HONIG: Yes.

COLLINS: That's how we found out he was indicted...

HONIG: Exactly.

COLLINS: ... because he told us.

HONIG: Exactly.

COOPER: Coming up, we will go live to Capitol Hill for more reaction to the Trump target letter. Are Republicans sticking with the former president as his legal troubles reach a boiling point?

Our special coverage continues in a moment.

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