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What Charges Could Trump Face in January 6 Criminal Probe?; Congress Investigates Hunter Biden Probe. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 19, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:37]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Whistle-blowers on the Hill, two IRS agents who say prosecutors slow-walked the Hunter Biden investigation facing lawmakers at any moment now in a public hearing. There will be politics, but is there truth to their claims?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Plus: bracing for a third indictment and new insights into the potential charges. New details on former President Donald Trump's target letter and what it could mean for his possible arrest and prosecution.

KEILAR: And why did he do it? What we're learning about the trouble that this young American soldier was facing before he willingly crossed into North Korea.

We are following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Any moment now on Capitol Hill, testimony will be getting under way from two IRS whistle-blowers. They are claiming that the Justice Department interfered with a yearslong investigation of Hunter Biden and that the president's son got preferential treatment leading up to his plea deal last month on two tax-related charges and a gun charge.

Republicans have dismissed that treatment -- that agreement as a sweetheart deal.

We have CNN's Zachary Cohen joining us now on this story.

Zach, you have reported extensively on this. What are we expecting from this hearing?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Brianna, this is the first time Democrats and Republicans will have a chance to publicly question these two whistle-blowers.

And my colleague Annie Grayer is hearing from a source that says they have a lot of questions. This hearing is expected to last over six hours today. So these witnesses are going to have a lot of back-and- forth. And, frankly, Democrats have a lot of questions for these two whistle-blowers who have previously testified behind closed doors to lawmakers.

And they have alleged, like, what you said, that the Hunter Biden investigation was mishandled by the Justice Department, this is another example of politicization within the Justice Department, and, frankly, that Hunter Biden, because of his last name, got unfair and preferential treatment.

Now, Democrats have pointed to parts of their closed-door testimony, both whistle-blowers, and said, look, this contradicts that claim. You even admit that this investigation was not atypical, per se, that a lot of times investigators and prosecutors disagree about whether to bring charges, which was really the core problem that these two individuals had.

Now, the big reveal is going to come at the beginning of this hearing, where the identity of one of the anonymous whistle-blowers known only as Mr. X will be revealed. So that's sort of the big pull-the-curtain- back moment, but, yes, a lot of questions as this hearing kicks off and, as you can tell from this video, a lot of interest from the public as well.

KEILAR: Yes, and we will be paying a lot of attention to this.

Zachary Cohen, thank you so much -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: The other big headline we're following this afternoon, we're now learning what type of charges Donald Trump may soon be facing now that the former president has been informed by the special counsel that he is a target of the 2020 election interference investigation.

Multiple news outlets, including "The Wall Street Journal," are now reporting the target letter mentions these three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States, deprivation of rights, and tampering with a witness.

Keep in mind, this would beat Trump's third indictment after the Manhattan DA charged him on 34 counts of falsifying business records in March and, in May, federal charges for mishandling classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

The big question now, is a third indictment coming and when?

With us to discuss, senior crime and justice reporter Katelyn Polantz and CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, who's also a former federal prosecutor.

Katelyn, let's start with you.

The last time Donald Trump got a target letter, three weeks later, he was indicted on those classified documents charges. What do you think the timing looks like here on a charging decision?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, this could be really fast, honestly.

In that last part of the other case, the Miami case, he got that target letter, and then there was the Memorial Day holiday, and then there was a meeting that his lawyers had with the Justice Department, with Jack Smith. Neither of those things are on the calendar ahead, as far as we can tell.

And so this is one of those things where it looks like the Justice Department has some more witnesses scheduled. We know of two people that are scheduled for Thursday with the grand jury. This grand jury often is meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And Donald Trump said himself that his deadline was Thursday to go into the grand jury and speak to them.

[13:05:05]

But then we're in the window. It could come as early as Friday, really. Of course, there would be a few days between the indictment being handed up in the court system and him actually coming into court, us seeing it. But we really are at a moment where it appears the Justice Department is ready to charge if they have not made that decision already.

And it just may need to go through the grand jury.

SANCHEZ: It is a good reason to stay tuned.

Elliot, on the question of the three potential charges...

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes.

SANCHEZ: ... there's one that caught my eye, and that is deprivation of rights.

We heard from one of Donald Trump's former attorneys on CNN talking about this being something unexpected. Let's listen to that sound bite.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIMOTHY PARLATORE, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: Going a civil rights route, I think, gets them into a lot more granular detail of kind of reexamining every single little claim of potential fraud and really relitigating the results of the election within this trial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Getting into granular detail. What would it take to prove deprivation of rights beyond a reasonable doubt?

WILLIAMS: Right.

What's interesting, it's a federal civil rights charge. It's a charge typically for police officers, wardens, and other individuals who are using their titles or their authority to deprive someone of something that they ought to do, from carrying through their affairs in public or even voting or whatever else it might be.

What's interesting here -- and this is -- this gets into the art of charging someone with a crime -- it's hard to know what exactly -- and who the victim is, right? Now, is it members of Congress, who, in the execution of their duties, were impaired by the president acting in his capacity as president?

Is it voters of a state who did not have or were seen as not being had their right to cast a vote, to be counted fairly or whatever else it might be? But what you would have to prove is, number one, that you have an officer of the United States. It's very straightforward. You have a former president.

And, number two, that he is depriving someone of something that the Constitution enables them to do. It's interesting. It's novel. I didn't think of it yesterday. The first-year law student and me died a little bit inside, because I didn't catch it when we were talking about it all day yesterday. But it's really an interesting charge, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they put in that indictment.

SANCHEZ: Quickly, on the question of lawmakers, is that what the witness tampering charge is about? Because it's sort of counterintuitive.

WILLIAMS: Right.

SANCHEZ: It doesn't actually mean trying to obstruct justice, but rather a procedure that Congress was going through.

WILLIAMS: It could be.

Once the former president or anyone else, anyone else who's accused of the crime, knew of an investigation and knew that a witness might be talking to law enforcement, any conversation they had trying to influence, delay, prevent, hinder, or get in the way of their testimony can be charged as a crime.

So, it all depends.

POLANTZ: It could also apply to documents, too, right, not just a witness.

WILLIAMS: Yes. Right, of course.

POLANTZ: And so, in the January 6 context, in a lot of the rioter cases, it's obstructing the actual carrying of the documents and having them approve the Electoral College votes themselves.

SANCHEZ: Katelyn, we're glad we have you, because we're learning that the special counsel has subpoenaed security video from an arena in Atlanta that was used as a voting location. Tell us about that.

POLANTZ: Yes.

And this really is speaking to what Elliot was saying about how there's so many building blocks here that the special counsel's office can choose from as they're building this case.

And one of the things they did in June is that they subpoenaed all surveillance video or security footage from the State Farm Arena in Atlanta on the day of the vote-counting, so November 3. And that was really an epicenter of disinformation after the election from Trump's team. Rudy Giuliani was down there accusing election workers of doing things that they were not.

There was a lot of discussion about, oh, they're counting mail-in ballots, they disrupted their vote. There actually was no evidence that there was any fraud taking place in the vote-counting that occurred there. But that is a piece of the evidence that the prosecutors have got, along with many other pieces of evidence and many witnesses across the battleground states, in the White House, in Washington, around Trump that they're going to be able to put together, as they choose exactly what they charge.

And so we're going to have to see how broad this conspiracy charge, the deprivation of rights charge, and the obstruction charge might be.

SANCHEZ: And you mentioned that they have interviewed people from all the battleground states where Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results.

One of them is Michigan. And, notably, yesterday, the Michigan attorney general charged some 16 Republican fake electors with falsifying certificates that Donald Trump won Michigan in the 2020 election. How might that play into the special counsel's investigation?

WILLIAMS: Oh, I think you might see some overlap, right, and because, based on what it seems that the special counsel has looked into, irregularities in Michigan and Georgia and Nevada and a bunch of other states, it's important for viewers and everybody to get into their heads that there are 50 states, each of which can charge crimes independently, and the federal government also can.

Some of them are going to overlap. And I would think that what Jack Smith and the special prosecutor's office, or what the special counsel's office are looking into are visa regularities and fake electors in multiple states. They can all be used to support charges at the federal level.

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That doesn't mean that they can't independently be charged both in Michigan and the federal government. They're two totally separate -- sovereigns is the word. But you might see some of the same fact patterns emerging in both types of cases.

SANCHEZ: And very quickly, Elliot, Katelyn mentioned that Trump has until Thursday to respond to the target letter, whether he wants to testify or present evidence before the grand jury.

WILLIAMS: Right.

SANCHEZ: Would that be a good idea for him to turn them down?

WILLIAMS: And most people don't.

Look, the prosecutors can't compel him to come in. That would be making him, in effect, testify against himself, like your Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent. He can come in and try to make his case, lessen the sting of the charges against him or say why he thinks he doesn't break -- why he didn't break the law.

Everything he says to a grand jury can be used against him. It's a bad idea. Most people don't do it, and I would think he wouldn't either.

SANCHEZ: Elliot Williams, Katelyn Polantz, thanks so much for the conversation.

WILLIAMS: Thanks, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Appreciate it -- Brianna.

KEILAR: For President Trump, there is a silver lining in getting a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith. He is fund-raising like mad off of it. But there is still big political fallout, and we will have more on that ahead.

Plus, the Pentagon says a U.S. soldier willfully entered North Korea during a private tour of the DMZ. So how does the U.S. get him back?

And it was so hot for passengers on a jet sitting on the Vegas Airport tarmac that emergency services had to be called. We're going to tell you more about what it was like inside of that cabin ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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KEILAR: Now that former President Trump has been identified as a target in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, sources tell CNN that Trump's lawyers and advisers are trying to figure out if there is evidence and witnesses they're unaware of.

In the meantime, that is not stopping Trump from speaking out publicly against the case and even fund-raising off of the special counsel's most recent letter that informs him he could soon be indicted a third time, or signals that, at least.

CNN national correspondent Kristen Holmes is live for us in Bedminster.

What are your sources telling you, Kristen?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, they're telling me that there have been conversations -- and this, again, is Trump lawyers and Trump advisers -- about whether or not there is more evidence or more witnesses than they previously knew in this case that would essentially bolster Jack Smith's case here.

And the reason is that when they saw that target letter, those potential charges, it seemed as though Jack Smith was going to be prosecuting a bigger case than what they had originally anticipated, so conversations about whether or not they missed something here, because you have to remember they have been watching this investigation very closely. Not only that, but so many of the witnesses who have appeared before

the grand jury or spoken to investigators are actually paid for out of Trump's orbit, so, again, keeping very close tabs on that. But while they work to figure, Trump, as you mentioned last night talking about this and clearly playing up the politics. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I didn't know practically what a subpoena was and grand juries and all of this. Now I'm, like, becoming an expert. I have no choice, because we have to.

It's a disgrace. If you say something about an election, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life. It's a disgrace. So they can cheat on an election, but if somebody wants to question the cheating, they want to call you a conspiracy theorist and all these other things. These people are sick.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: And, Brianna, one of the things that we have been reporting is that, essentially, his legal strategy and his political strategy are becoming one and the same.

And that is because, as these legal issues continue to mount, he is still in this third bid for presidency, and he is saying that this is all political, it's all because he is running for president. But, again, they are asking serious questions about this.

And while he does play to the politics of this, while his team does believe it helps with fund-raising and with poll numbers, at least in the short term, there are real concerns about what this looks like long term. And everybody is aware that this is completely unprecedented to have someone running for president, and a former president, no less, that has been federally indicted, once a state indictment, another time, and now had a target letter in a third investigation.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly unprecedented, Kristen Holmes live for us in Bedminster.

SANCHEZ: Let's discuss the political implications of all of this with former Republican Congressman Charlie Dent and Toluse Olorunnipa. He's a White House bureau chief at "The Washington Post."

Charlie, first to you.

Unprecedented is the best way, I think, perhaps to describe Donald Trump's political career. And it appears that he's going to be in the middle of this primary campaign with this court case lingering. What is that going to be like?

CHARLIE DENT, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, again, most normal people I know who've been indicted -- I know, unfortunately, too many who've been indicted or under federal investigation -- they usually drop out of the race, because an indictment is so unsettling to one's life.

It's disruptive. It ruins their lives. And in his case, it just seems to be another Wednesday. And so he's going to continue to carry on. The real question is, when are they actually going to try him? He's only running for office, it seems, to avoid facing justice.

That's why he's doing this. And he's hoping that he gets elected. Then he could perhaps pardon himself, at least in the federal cases. So I think I'm very cynical about this, and I think -- again, I know people who have been indicted, and it ruins their lives. They don't run for office.

So maybe he ought to think about dropping out of the campaign. I doubt he will, but he should.

KEILAR: I doubt he will as well.

Toluse, how do you think this interacts with the calendar? I mean, this is grueling once things get under way here at the end of the year and truly at the beginning of next year.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, this is not just one indictment, but this is one and two and three indictments, potentially four indictments, all with potential court cases, all with potential discovery and all the things that's come along with a court case between now and when we get to the Iowa caucuses in January and February.

And it does appear that President Trump wants to push this as far back as possible. He wants to delay these cases. He wants the calendar to be pushed back as deep into 2024 and maybe even into 2025, so that, in his mind, he can win an election, pardon himself, and get out of all of this legal trouble.

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But it doesn't appear that the judges are going to be on board with that strategy, because, if you have that, then you can have any other person who is indicted just say, I want to run for president and put off some of these cases.

And so it does appear that the judges want to try to move this along.

SANCHEZ: While Charlie talks about how indictments potentially ruin or throw off the course of someone's life, it appears that it's boosted Donald Trump when it comes to polling and fund-raising. His supporters are behind him.

OLORUNNIPA: His supporters are behind him, and his opponents are not attacking him on it. In the Republican primary, you're not seeing Republicans say that this is poor behavior from a candidate, this is something that we should be using to attack him.

Instead, they're saying that this is a part of the deep state, this is a part of Democrats weaponizing the Department of Justice, all of these things that are in line with what President Trump is saying, former President Trump has been saying. And so it makes it easier for his supporters to believe that he is a victim, as opposed to someone who was committing a crime.

And you also have President Biden not really wanting to engage on this because it is his Department of Justice. He wants to be very hands-off on this. And so President Trump has sort of a clear lane to be able to say that he is a victim and not have any people calling him out over it.

DENT: You know, most Republican officeholders I know think that Donald Trump is a disaster for the party. He's costing them very winnable seats. They want him to go away.

But by some of the top leaders standing up there and defending him and saying, oh, it's all part of the deep state, witch-hunt, they're really enabling Donald Trump. They need to stop. They just simply need to stop, because they all know he's going to cost them their majority in the House, in all likelihood, and perhaps the Senate, as he's already done.

So they need him to go away. But until they all stand up and say, enough, a third or fourth indictment, yes, OK, he's going to get his poll -- his polls bump up a little bit with the base, but this is killing Republicans among swing voters in swing states and difficult districts.

And if you want to be a governing majority party, you need to win there. Trump does not help them there.

KEILAR: There's no doubt that it works for Donald Trump with his base to have this incoming fire.

But I also think part of the allure for people who've supported Donald Trump is that he's fighting for them, right? That is the message that he gave off when he won the presidency. And I wonder if you think that's dampened when he's so busy fighting for himself and clearly focused on those grievances, instead of focused on the grievances of the people who are supporting him.

DENT: Well, of course.

These elections, they're not about me, the candidate, or Donald Trump, the candidate. They're about you, the people. It's about the future. It's about them, not him. And Trump makes everything about himself, his own personal grievances and his own personal challenges.

He's trying to make those issues their issues. But that's not a winning issue with most of the country. So, I mean, I think everybody understands that who's been involved with politics. And it's going to take another political train wreck for Republicans, I think, to recognize why following this man is terrible.

It's cost them in 2018, 2020, and 2022, right?

SANCHEZ: Yet those Republicans, at least that are running for president right now who have come out, Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie, and have been vocal condemning his actions, they're not really doing that great in the polls.

And those who are doing better than them, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, not as well as Donald Trump, obviously, they're not really benefiting by going after him directly, are they?

OLORUNNIPA: They're not. This is not a popular position within the Republican primary to be attacking the former president. It just isn't, especially on these issues of -- quote, unquote -- "weaponization" of the Department of Justice and his potential legal challenges.

It's not a popular position, and you don't see a lot of courage from a number of these Republicans. You heard Ron DeSantis yesterday say -- very lightly condemning former President Trump, saying he should have done more, he should have been more forceful in his condemnation of the January 6 protesters.

But you're not seeing them come out and make this a forceful part of their reasoning for why they should be the next person to win the primary, and not the former president.

DENT: By the way, if I had an opponent who was indicted in my election, I would be hammering them relentlessly on the indictment. I would be doing it.

I mean, there's -- or maybe you have to be silent, but hammer them, because it's a great issue ordinarily. I'm just stunned that more of these candidates are taking a hands-off position or even agreeing with Trump that this is the deep state coming after him. It's not helping their campaigns.

KEILAR: Sometimes, up is down and down is up, it seems, though, in this primary situation with Republicans.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: Such a big week here though. Charlie, Toluse, great to have you both and your perspective. Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still to come: new video appearing to show Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin greeting fighters in Belarus, as a top British intel official says that Vladimir Putin was forced to cut a humiliating deal with the mercenary boss. The latest from Russia and Ukraine in just moments.

Plus, CNN has just received a new image of an army private just before he willfully crossed into North Korea.

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The details on this stunning story -- when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Just in to NEWS CENTRAL, this image of the American soldier now believed to be detained in North Korea. This was moments before Army Private Travis King ran across the

demarcation line. It was taken by a tourist who witnessed King taking off.

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