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Election Interference Grand Jury Convenes in D.C.; Massive Tornado Leaves Path of Destruction in North Carolina; Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) Won't Budge on Blocking Military Promotions. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired July 20, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

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RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, all eyes are on Washington, D.C., a federal grand jury meeting behind closed doors as they investigate former President Trump's role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. They could vote as early today on criminal charges and a possible third indictment for the former President Trump.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: On Capitol Hill, not budging. High ranking military promotions on hold and new calls from top military brass and even a briefing from the Pentagon officials is not persuading the lone senator holding it all up. Now, Senator and Iraq War Veteran Tammy Duckworth is speaking out about Tommy Tuberville's latest moves.

SOLOMON: Also an EF-3 tornado tore through parts of North Carolina injuring several people, also flattening buildings, including a major Pfizer plant. What officials are saying about this could impact the nation's ongoing drug shortage.

We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: Will the 45th president of the United States become the first to be criminally indicted for a third time? You may get the answer to that as soon as today. Right now, a federal grand jury is meeting in this Washington, D.C., and those jurors would be the ones to hand up a criminal indictment against former President Trump over efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Today is also the last day for the former president to respond to the special counsel's target letter to appear and testify before that grand jury. That is the thing that is least likely to happen today.

But in the face of this growing trouble, Donald Trump is now expanding his legal team, adding Criminal Defense Attorney John Lauro to the roster. CNN has also learned this man, Will Russell is his name, he's a special assistant to Donald Trump, he will testify to the grand jury for a third time today.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Paula Reid, they're standing by for us to start us off this hour. Katelyn, I want to go first to you. You are outside the courthouse. Last hour, when we checked in, proceedings, the grand jury was really just getting seated and things were just getting under way. So, what's happening right now?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Kate, we are now watching and waiting for activity. That grand jury is behind closed doors at the federal courthouse here in D.C. with at least one prosecutor of the special prosecutor's office that we've seen so far. And they have work to do today.

The reason we say that is because we know there is at least one witness coming in to testify today, a man named Will Russell, a personal aide to Trump, someone who also worked in the White House, who has testified to this grand jury twice already at least, and so has provided evidence. He is due to be coming back here today with his attorney today to talk to them one more time.

We don't know exactly what it would be about, but he would just be adding to much of the evidence that the grand jury has already heard over several months from the witnesses both known and unknown to Donald Trump, now that Donald Trump expects to be indicted.

And you mention that additional lawyer added to Trump's team, John Lauro. He would be a defense attorney that has worked with witnesses who are attorneys for Trump on the documents case in Florida, that separate indictment brought from the special counsel's office. But he is getting involved on the January 6th case, because there's a lot of work to do when you something this sprawling, when an indictment is expected in this way. There's a lot of coordination that has to happen both on the legal side as well as just understanding the amount of witnesses, the amount of evidence that has already been presented to that grand jury and may make it into the indictment at this point. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Katelyn, stay close.

Paula, what are you hearing from the sources about the timing of a possible indictment?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know from the target letter the former president says that he had until today to appear before the grand jury. As have noted, we don't expect that to happen, but we also don't expect that he's going to give a formal notice that he does not intend to testify. So, that lends itself to some ambiguity around when we could see a possible indictment.

But based on what we've seen with these letters in that past, what we're hearing from our sources, it appears that there might be a beat before we see this indictment, or maybe at least a few days built in before we see anything.

But we also know even if the former president is charged in the coming days, the investigation will continue. We know that there are witnesses scheduled well into next month coming before the special counsel.

[10:05:00]

They will continue their work even if Trump is indicted.

And, Kate, that speaks to strategic choices by Special Counsel Jack Smith. One of the few things he has said in public is that he wants a, quote, speedy trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. And here, it was likely that he would also want a speedy trial, to try to bring this case before jury, before the election. If he wants do that, he needs to move quickly.

Now, the other choice he appears to be making is to allow the former president to really tell the story here. He also did that with the Mar-a-Lago documents case. A lot of the breaking news we've gotten on these indictments has come from Truth Social, the former president releasing it himself and really being the one to tell the story. And that Jack Smith could certainly avoid that by unsealing indictments, providing more details. But here, that appears to be a strategic choice, so there is a lot pressure on him to move this along quickly.

BOLDUAN: Paula, I know this is now going to be a third or at least the second time that we are talking about the special counsel if and when an indictment does come down, but remind folks all of this has been happening behind the closed door and closed door proceedings. How are people going to learn of the indictment? What are people going to see?

REID: Well, that is a great question, because, initially, there was a lot of pressure on the special counsel, especially from reporters not to let us learn about things again on social media. The hope was that we would learn about it from an unsealing, right? The grand jury would send up the indictment. It would be unsealed. And even if the former president's lawyers got a few minutes heads-up that we would learn about it at the same time. But that's just not the way this has transpired.

A lot of what we've learned is when the former president announces, right, that he has been informed, that he's a target, or he's been informed that he has been indicted and then there's been a lag before we actually got the indictment.

Now, the Mar-a-Lago indictment, Kate, was very detailed. We learned a lot there. And it's unclear if that choreography, right, that rollout will be the same here. We find out from Trump, he's been informed that he'll be indicted, and then we have a few days before we actually get to see the details that support the charges.

And I reiterate, this is a choice by the special counsel. I mean, he is giving the former president, defendant of the Mar-a-Lago case, potentially here the opportunity to tell the story before the facts are known to the public.

BOLDUAN: Yes, that's a great point. It's great to see you, Paula. Thank you. Katelyn Polantz outside of the courthouse in D.C., thank you so much as well. Rahel? SOLOMON: All right. Kate, thank you.

And in the target letter sent to former President Trump, according to The New York Times, the special counsel noted that Trump was being investigated under Section 241 of Title 18 of the United States Code.

With me now to talk more about that and more is Nick Akerman. He is former assistant Watergate prosecutor and former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Nick, great to have you certainly on a day like today.

I want to start there, Section 241 of Title 18. It basically says it is a crime to deprive U.S. citizens of any legal right or privilege. How do you think the special counsel applies that here?

NICK AKERMAN, FORMER ASSISTANT U.S. ATTORNEY, SOUTHER DISTRICT OF NEW YORK: Well, he applies it here because what he is going to charge is a conspiracy to deprive the American public of their right to vote, their right to have handed in their votes which elected Joe Biden as president of the United States. It is a very compelling jury argument to be able to argue that what Donald Trump did was basically to try and deprive all of you of your right to vote in the 2020 election.

And I might add that this is really kind of the same central theme of the indictment that was filed in New York by the Manhattan district attorney. If you look at paragraph one of the statement of facts in that indictment, let me read from that, it alleges the defendant, Donald J. Trump, repeatedly and fraudulently falsified New York business records to conceal criminal conduct that hide damaging information from voting public during the 2016 presidential election. In essence, what they are saying in New York is that you have also deprived the voting public of their right to know very material information that would have a bearing on how you would vote.

So, you have got in New York a charge that basically sets up Donald Trump as having deprived voters in the 2016 election of material information and you've got now the current indictment which may likely charge Donald Trump with having conspired to try and deprive the voters of their vote for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

SOLOMON: So, Nick, based on what we know, do you agree with the charges as far as we know at this point? Would you be charging it the same way?

AKERMAN: Well, we don't know what the same way is. I mean, I think this particular charge on Section 241 is compelling and a powerful jury argument, because you can look the jurors in the face and say what this defendant was to try and deprive you of your right to vote in an American presidential election.

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That is a very compelling jury argument.

SOLOMON: Nick, I want to pick up on something my colleague, Kate Bolduan, talked to Paula Reid about the indictment and how much detail there could be in the indictment. We know with Mar-a-Lago there was a lot of detail. Do you expect something similar if an indictment does actually come down?

AKERMAN: Yes, I do. I think there is no requirement, like there isn't a civil case to particular lies, fraud and to get into specifics. But I think here, it is extremely important that the government do that, just as it did in the Mar-a-Lago indictment because the public really has to know what the evidence is. Because when you read the Mar-a-Lago indictment, you walk away from that knowing that this is a real criminal charge, that there are serious matters at stake. And I think we're going to see the exact same technique applied with this next indictment.

SOLOMON: Nick, from your POV, what are some possible defense strategies? Let's say, hypothetically, you were representing Trump, you're part of that team. What's a possible defense?

AKERMAN: There's not much of a defense here because, I mean, my sense is it's going to be like the Mar-a-Lago indictment. It's going to be facts that are almost indisputable. I just don't see that there is a real valid defense here other than trying to deflect from the evidence.

But it seems to me when you've got the vice -- your former vice president testifying against you, that you tried to get him to basically throw the election by putting it back to the states using phony electors, it's kind of hard to get around that.

And you're going to have lots of testimony like that, not only from the former vice president but from the governor of Georgia, the governor of Arizona. You're going to have very substantial people, all of whom are Republicans, testifying against Donald Trump.

SOLOMON: We shall soon see. Nick Ackerman, great to have you. Thank you. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up, more than a dozen injured and homes destroyed after a tornado just tears through North Carolina. Just look at these images, devastating over and over again. Now, so many people are having now to start picking up their pieces today. We're going to take you there.

Plus, Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville refusing to back down on blocking military promotions over his objections to the Pentagon's abortion policy, that is despite warnings from really all over this blockade is hurting military readiness. Iraq War veteran, Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth says he's jeopardizing national security. She is our guest.

And fierce backlash now after Florida school officials approve new standards for how black history is taught in schools.

We'll be right back.

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SOLOMON: Welcome back. In Eastern North Carolina, they are cleaning up today after a massive tornado. It touched down Wednesday afternoon in Nash County, east of Raleigh, and then traveled more than 16 miles to Edgecombe County. Its peak winds, 150 miles per hour, carved a path of destruction and left 16 people injured. The National Weather Service says, at its strongest, this was an EF-3, the first time such a strong tornado has hit this region since July -- in July, rather.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher is in Dortches, North Carolina, with the latest. And, Dianne, we're learning that some of the worst damage was at a Pfizer plant. What more are you learning? What can you tell us?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Rahel. And I'm going to show you that damage from the Pfizer plant in just a moment. But, first, I want to focus here in Dortches, it's in Nash County, North Carolina, where you can see that EF-3 tornado just ripped through.

I'm going to have Wes walk with me just a little bit here, the town hall, you may be able to hear the chainsaws, they're currently working on this.

This tornado came through about lunchtime. Wes, watch out because we do have a lot of lumber and nails out here right now. It's a disaster area. Miraculously, no one was killed.

And if you take a look at what this home back here looks like, there were men inside there at the time. They survived that. There were 16 injuries. Wes, we're going to walk this way just a little bit to show you the expansiveness of this here.

Now, you see there's been a lot of traffic this is normally a pretty slow road, I'm told, but we've had a lot of people looking and a lot of people coming out to help.

We don't want to get too close because, again, the contents of people's homes are just sort of scattered along their lawns right now trying to pick up and figure out what they're trying to do.

But this is not something they've experienced in July. According to the National Weather Service, they've never had an EF-3 tornado in North Carolina in this month. And according to the people that we spoke with, this just kind of came out of nowhere. They said that it happened very quickly.

In this home across the street here, there was a family with small children in there. No injuries, believe it or not, although a four- year-old did tell his grandmother he has a small scratch on his foot and is now a survivor of this.

But there was a lot of concern at this point. And, Wes, it does appear, it's clear right now. Not just yet, sorry, still more cars coming. But is the fact that the largest employer, one of the largest employers in Nash County, is that Pfizer manufacturing plant. It's one of the largest manufacturing plants for sterile injectables in the entire world. And there is substantial damage at this point, according to county officials, it is closed indefinitely. Pfizer says it is still assessing the damage.

But, look, there is concern among supply chain experts because this particular plant supplies more than a quarter of sterile injectables to hospital across the United States, Rahel.

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So, there is concern going long term about what this may mean for the supply chain.

Again, Pfizer still assessing the damage there, but people here in Nash County are not just picking up their own homes but also concerned about what that might mean for employment going forward here.

SOLOMON: Yes, certainly. It seems like the impacts of this could stretch beyond that area there. Dianne Gallagher, great to have you, thank you. Kate?

BOLDUAN: On Capitol Hill, despite another call with the defense secretary, despite a briefing by Pentagon officials, there is no sign Senator Tommy Tuberville will be ending his month-long protest anytime soon blocking approval of high-ranking military officials.

Now, the Alabama Republican opposes a Pentagon policy that covers travel costs for service members who must cross state lines for reproductive health care, like abortions.

Tuberville is a man alone in the Senate really at this moment. Most others say blocking the military promotions, not the right way to go about it, and also could endanger national security.

Tuberville says that he spoke to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin twice in the last week, still nothing.

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SEN. TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R-AL): Both conversations were very cordial. We had a good conversation, respectful, but they were very brief. There was absolutely no offer. There was no offer of a compromise. It's their way or the highway.

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BOLDUAN: Joining us right now, Democratic Senator, Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth, who also sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Senator, thank you for coming in.

Tuberville said that from, said all of that from the Senate floor last night, he also said that the more Joe Biden attacks me, the more I'm convinced I'm doing the right thing. He's not backing down. So, how is this going to end?

SEN. TAMMY DUCKWORTH (D-IL): Well, we keep offering him all sorts of options. We offered him a vote on the defense budget, the NDAA, which is the authorization for the National Defense Budget, on Senator Joni Ernst's amendment, which is actually far stricter than what he's asking for.

He declined that vote overnight last night. I believe Majority Leader Schumer offered Senator Tuberville a vote on the floor when the NDAA comes to the floor for a vote on an amendment that would repeal this policy, exactly what he says, he wants to be done, but he's rejecting that vote.

So, I don't know where he's going with this. I think President Biden is spot on when he says that Senator Tuberville's actions are bizarre, because he's been given all sorts of options and he turns every single one of them down.

I think that his motives are much more insidious than that. I think it's bizarre when someone claims to put America first, and unless I get my way on every political issue, I'm going to make it hard of our military to keep this country safe. I mean, even Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, has come out and said this is wrong, and yet he's still pushing for it. And for the first time in over 100 years, we don't have a commandant of the Marine Corps.

BOLDUAN: Tuberville says that Pentagon officials, Pentagon staff, briefed members of the Armed Services Committee yesterday, he called the briefing, his words were that it was a debacle. I want to read you what he said.

He said the briefers essentially confirmed that the policy was not based on facts, meaning the abortion policy. It was based on an extreme political ideology, is what Senator Tuberville says. And he also says that he asked them for evidence about military readiness and the impact of it. And he says that the Pentagon, the staffers have provided no evidence that removing the policy impedes readiness. Is that what happened in this briefing?

DUCKWORTH: Not at all. And, by the way, the briefing was open to the public, so you can actually see it online if you want to.

Listen, he should be talking to the folks who have said this is hurting on military readiness. The incoming commandant of the Marine Corps who can't be confirmed has said this is hurting military readiness. I don't know how much you can hurt military readiness and not to have a commandant of the Marine Corps. The incoming chief of the Army can't be confirmed because of that.

We have troops who are in harm's way right now. We have troops who are helping our Ukrainian friends to fight and repel Russia from their sovereign soil. We have all sorts of things going on, and yet we don't have leadership who can actually make and give commands because they're only in acting positions. I can't think of a better description of hurting military readiness than that.

BOLDUAN: The way around Tuberville's hold is to vote on each nominee one by one. That would take time, for sure. You're talking about more than 200 promotions here. But if national security is at risk and Democrats control the Senate, are there conversations about holding off on going on August recess to get started on these approvals?

DUCKWORTH: Well, then you fall further and further behind because the number of nominees keeps growing. By the end of the year, it will be over 800.

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So, basically, what you're saying, we could not move fast enough to confirm them one by one because for every one that we confirm, there's two more added to the waiting list. So, it would be a never ending process and we could not get anything else done.

For example, we would only be confirming military promotions, which has always been done in a bipartisan way, unanimously, without any objections. We couldn't vote on the defense budget. We couldn't vote on a supplemental to send more money to help Ukrainians. We couldn't vote on an FAA reauthorization that's going to keep Americans safe during the summer when we're flying on commercial aircraft. There's all sorts of things we could not do if all we did was just military promotions, which is why it has always been bipartisan, and it still is, except for one senator who's stopping everything because of his own personal agenda.

And, by the way, this is a policy that exists not just for those who are seeking abortions, but it's for those who seek IVF. If you need health care where the location where you're stationed does not be able to provide the health care that you need, and you need to travel out of state, the DOD pays for that travel expense. That's especially important for our lowest ranking military men and women who have the least resources and must get permission to travel even more than 50 miles away from their duty station.

So, as President Biden says, this is bizarre what Senator Tuberville is doing. And for him to continue to say that there's no evidence that this is hurting our military readiness just shows how out of touch he is, because he's been told by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, by the secretary of defense, by all of the individual chiefs of each of the branches have said to him, this is hurting military readiness. If he doesn't believe them, who is he going to listen to?

BOLDUAN: You mentioned the FAA reauthorization. You are one of the key senators negotiating the bill. There's a hold up on this right now. One of the sticking points is over the pilot shortage that folks have been reporting on and talking about all over the country and the proposed fixes to that.

What's been put out as a potential fix includes changes to the 1,500- hour rule, which is the minimum of flight hours required for pilot training, to broad-strokes it. You have said reducing those hours. People are -- if those hours are reduced, if that 1,500-hour rule is changed, that people are going to have blood on their hands because an accident is inevitable.

The rest of the world, flying world, requires far fewer hours than what we see in the United States in terms of the FAA. How do you fix a pilot shortage then without changes like this? DUCKWORTH: Well, you know, if there were not enough doctors in this country, and I'm going to paraphrase Captain Sullenberger from the Miracle of on the Hudson, and he said if there were not enough doctors in this country, it's a solution to say, okay, let's just make medical school two years long and we'll just graduate you after two years. Now, you can go and operate on patients. No, that's not the answer.

The answer is not to reduce the safety of our flying public. The answer is to invest more in pilot training, which is why I've included in this FAA reauthorization, in a bipartisan way, by the way, with Senator Moran, who's my ranking member, a tripling of the funding for the grant program to train new pilots, a tripling of the funding program to train new mechanics. And even there is additional creation of a funding mechanism to train technicians and technical experts in other things, like unmanned aerial vehicles.

BOLDUAN: Is there a compromise in this, not like taking the 1,500- hour rule to 2-hour rule, but somewhere in between that you that you think there's some kind of compromise here?

DUCKWORTH: I would not support reducing the number of hours it takes to become a pilot of a commercial aircraft, because I don't think our flying public wants that. We've had, in this past year alone, just this year, seven near misses, seven, the worst of which was in Texas, where we had a Southwest Airline flight come within 100 feet of a cargo aircraft. And the only thing that has stopped those near misses from happening has actually been pilots, pilot training. That is absolutely critical.

So, the solution to our pilot shortage is not let's just put more inexperienced pilots into the front of the aircraft to fly the flying public. The answer is what can we do to increase more pilots in the pipeline. Let's add more pilots into the pipeline so we can address this issue.

Listen, we've not had a single aviation fatality due to pilot error in the ten-plus years since we've had the 1,500-hour rule. Now is not the time when our air traffic is absolutely maxed out. Now is not the time to decrease the experience of the people flying the aircraft that you and I and our children and our loved ones riding all throughout the country, especially now that we're getting into the summer travel season.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And this reauthorization, I think, it's every five years. This is another important one on the lap of Congress right now, another important thing that needs to get done.

Senator, thank you for coming in.

[10:30:00]

DUCKWORTH: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Rahel.

SOLOMON: All right, Kate.