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Trump's Defense Strategy?; Trump Due in Court Thursday. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 02, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Welcome to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

Right now, Donald Trump is preparing to face a federal judge in Washington, D.C., as the nation and American democracy face a critical test. The former president is scheduled to be in court tomorrow. Last night, federal prosecutors charged him with four separate counts in a sweeping indictment.

The special counsel is alleging that Trump was central in the plot to overturn the 2020 election, and has charged him with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

This historic indictment says that Trump -- quote -- "enlisted co- conspirators" to assist him in his criminal efforts. It repeatedly references six unindicted co-conspirators. CNN has been able to identify five of those six, and we will be breaking down what roles they allegedly played in the effort to overturn Joe Biden's win coming up here in just a moment.

First, though, CNN's Paula Reid is with us now

Paula, what more do we know about these new charges that Trump is facing?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, this was very much expected, because these were approximately the charges that the former president said were in the target letter that he received in recent weeks.

So, there are not a lot of new details and a lot of new charges or surprises here. And let's go through these. I mean, you have conspiracy to defraud the United States. That's sort of a catch-all charge there. You just have two people who are working together to defraud the government. You don't even have to be successful.

You can even be charged if you join the conspiracy at anytime. Then you have conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. There, of course, they're talking about the congressional certification of the electoral results. You have obstructing or attempting to obstruct official proceedings. These are both pretty straightforward. The one charge that was a bit of a surprise when we learned about it

from the target letter was the conspiracy against rights. I mean, this is a civil rights charge, arguing that he allegedly tried to interfere with people's ability to exercise their right to vote.

Now, that is a little-used statute. So that could be one of the more challenging ones for prosecutors. But they put together a very dense, detailed indictment supporting these charges. Now, I also want to read one quote from the indictment.

They allege that -- quote -- "For more than two months following Election Day, the defendant spread lies that there had been outcome- determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won." And they sort of preempted his defense in the court of public opinion, which right now is that he has a First Amendment right and they're infringing on his First Amendment right.

In the first few pages in the indictment, they say that, look, you have every right to claim fraud, to claim that the election was stolen, but you can't then go and attempt to steal it. And these are the charges that they're using right now to pursue that. And, Brianna, there could potentially be additional charges added going forward.

KEILAR: Very interesting. And we will be looking for that.

Paula, thank you for taking us through all of that.

Special counsel Jack Smith says the January 6 Capitol attacks, that they were fueled by -- quote -- "lies" told by Trump. The-45 page indictment lays out some of them in detail

And CNN's Daniel Dale is joining me now on that.

Daniel, what are some of the lies that prosecutors are zeroing in on here?

DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER: So, I counted 21 listed in that indictment. You could probably go from 18 to 25, depending on how you classify them.

Regardless, it's a pretty staggering list. I will take you through a few of them I think are especially important or revealing. The first one is the lie that Vice President Mike Pence did have the right to reject Joe Biden's electoral votes. I think it's important, because of how brazenly antidemocratic it is.

The president was asking his vice president to unilaterally cast aside the wishes of the people. It's important because of its obstructive quality. This is a lie he was using to try to obstruct the government process of certifying Joe Biden's victory, how dangerous it was. This is a lie that put the vice president's life and that of his family in jeopardy on January 6.

And I think it's also notable because Trump was repeatedly told by Vice President Pence and others that it was wrong, and yet he persisted, as he often did, with the lies laid out in his document. The second one I want to talk about is the lie that the Justice

Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the 2020 election. This is notable because we know that Donald Trump says a lot of stuff, he tells a lot of lies, and people sometimes dismiss his rhetoric as just a guy talking or ranting or what you call it.

This was different. This, according to the indictment, was a lie that President Trump tried to get the Justice Department to tell in a letter to targeted states under the signature of the acting attorney general, so trying to get the Justice Department, a respected arm of the federal government, to itself promulgate these lies trying to overturn the election.

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And I will note there's another related lie listed in the indictment, and that is when Trump allegedly said, "Just say that the election was corrupt," he said to DOJ officials, "and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen."

The third one I want to mention, Brianna, is the Dominion lies, the lies that voting machines around the country had switched votes from Trump to Biden, relayed the lie that Dominion was involved in -- quote -- "massive fraud." This is important because it's an example of how Trump kept saying absolute nonsense even after it was debunked to his face in conversations in meetings with him.

The indictment alleges that his attorney general, then his acting A.G. and deputy A.G., all told him it was wrong. We know that his cybersecurity election security arm did the same, but he kept saying it nonetheless. And I just want to note that this was far from the only case where we had this kind of thing.

Another example was the so-called Georgia suitcases full of ballots from under the table thing we have heard so much into this year from former President Trump. He was told directly by the Republican secretary of state of Georgia and his top Justice Department officials that this was wrong. He kept saying it. He said Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than voters.

He'd been told that was wrong by a top Justice Department official, but kept saying it. This nonsense about vote dumps, the late-night dumps we heard so much about in Detroit and elsewhere, Attorney General Barr and others told him that was nonsense, that was just votes being counted as normal.

And yet, again, he persisted, kept telling the lie.

KEILAR: Yes, it is a litany, that list of lies spelled out in this indictment.

Daniel Dale, thank you for taking us through that. We do appreciate it.

So much here, Jim, to go through. This is quite a lengthy indictment with a lot of references to co-conspirators as well.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: No question. It references six co- conspirators, in fact, that Trump -- quote -- "enlisted to assist him in his criminal efforts."

That's what the indictment read.

Our justice correspondent, Jessica Schneider, here to break that down, what we're learning about them.

Let's begin. And, first of all, here are the six of them, as we know them, John Eastman, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark, Kenneth Chesebro, Rudy Giuliani, and a six unnamed political consultant, to be clear, none of them charged at this point.

Let's begin with Rudy Giuliani, perhaps the most well-known, personal attorney to Trump, pushed baseless fraud with the Arizona House speaker, without evidence, we should note, also left a voice-mail for Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville asking him to -- quote -- "slow it down," it being the certification of the election.

What is his significance in here?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he was really the one pushing and at the forefront of these false election claims.

I mean, the way the indictment put it, they said he was willing to spread knowingly false claims. That kind of language really could be key to potentially charging Rudy Giuliani in the weeks or months to come, because all of these co-conspirators, it's possible they could be charged.

SCIUTTO: Good point.

SCHNEIDER: Now, Rudy Giuliani's spokesman, though, he's pushing back big time on this.

I mean, he says this indictment eviscerates the First Amendment, and he's really slamming this entire indictment here. But Rudy Giuliani was the one that we saw out front giving those press conferences, multiple press conferences, talking before state lawmakers and arguing this in court.

SCIUTTO: Well, making the argument, in effect, that they have a right to lie.

Co-conspirator No. 2, John Eastman, he circulated this two-page memo for Vice President Pence making the case, they claimed legal case, to overturn the 2020 election. This was central here, because this was central to the former president's plans to reverse the vote.

SCHNEIDER: Yes.

And he's really seen as the lead architect in this whole plot to use fake electors to submit their fake certificates and then use the former vice president to try to overturn the election results, which, obviously, the vice president never ended up doing here.

SCIUTTO: He did not. And, by the way, he testified in the special counsel's investigation, something he didn't do to the January 6 Committee, and one of the advantages that the special counsel had in making these charges.

OK.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHNEIDER: I will note just one thing. Eastman's attorney did respond to this, notably saying he's not participating in any plea talks with prosecutors.

SCIUTTO: Right. Yes.

SCHNEIDER: He plans to fight this at trial and even on appeal as well.

SCIUTTO: Exactly, to take away the idea that perhaps this was a pressure campaign on some of them to flip and turn state's evidence.

SCHNEIDER: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Co-Conspirator No. 3, Sidney Powell, of course, again, one of the most visible proselytizers, if you want to call it that, of these baseless election claims, she filed a lawsuit against the governor of Georgia, falsely alleging massive election fraud through voting machine companies, software, and hardware.

Of course, one of the most essential parts of this whole thing, the whole idea that the voting machines were somehow flipping votes here. Of course, FOX News famously lost a giant court case related to that, but tell us what we know about her significance.

SCHNEIDER: And, in this indictment, it says that Trump even acknowledged that her theories were -- quote -- "crazy." It says it in the indictment.

Sidney Powell did file four lawsuits in four different states, one of them being Georgia. She had all these crazy theories, saying that Chinese software engineers and Venezuelan officials had hacked into voting machines in several states, all of those theories debunked by the courts.

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We actually heard recently from a former Georgia state senator talking about how Sidney Powell, John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani were trying to push this on state lawmakers. So here she is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FMR. STATE SEN. JEN JORDAN (D-GA): But the people who were actually here who made misrepresentations, who lied, right, to officials here in Georgia with the intent to overturn the election, they were Rudy Giuliani. They were John Eastman. They were Sidney Powell.

So all of the unindicted co-conspirators that you all have been able to identify thus far, right, were the folks who were actually -- they were like the soldiers that were sent into the battleground states to actually implement the plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: One thing we should note, we call these crazy theories, but the fact is, these crazy theories have still held sway with a large percentage of the voting populace, Republicans who still believe the election was stolen.

There are three more co-conspirators. One, Jeffrey Clark, alleged that he attempted to use the Department of Justice to overturn the election, Clark proposing sending letters to several states about identifying significant concerns about the vote, of course, those debunked as well.

Co-Conspirator No. 5, Kenneth Chesebro, he sent Rudy Giuliani an e- mail memo about this fake electors plot, central to the plan, again, to overturn the election. Final co-conspirator, as yet unnamed, this one a political consultant who helped implement a plan to submit fraudulent slates of electors to obstruct the certification proceeding.

The indictment also alleges that this person sent Giuliani an e-mail identifying lawyers in the six swing states who could assist in the fake elector plot.

I think one point that comes across with all six of these is that this was not just about one state. It was about several states, as well as, of course, the national procedure, well, the vote on January 6.

SCHNEIDER: Yes. And this isn't over. The special counsel was clear to say that this investigation is still ongoing when he spoke briefly yesterday after this indictment was handed up.

So these co-conspirators, they could be facing pressure to cooperate with investigators, something that Eastman's attorneys have said he won't do. But maybe others are eying that possibility.

SCIUTTO: It's a possibility we will continue to watch closely, six states, as well as that national vote to certify the election -- Brianna, quite a broad-ranging conspiracy as alleged by the special counsel.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly is.

Let's talk more about it now with Jamil Jaffer. He's a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security.

Jamil, thank you so much for being with us here.

When you take a look at this indictment, how strong do you think the DOJ's case is? Do you see any weaknesses here? JAMIL JAFFER, FORMER SENIOR COUNSEL, HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE:

Well, I mean, they have a decent case, if they can prove all the facts in the indictment.

I think the challenge they face is twofold. One, they don't go -- they come right all the way up to the line of thinking about an insurrection charge. They don't charge it, right? That seems to be a defect, right?

Jack Smith talked about it yesterday at his press conference. He starts out talking about the heroism of the Capitol Police, but doesn't directly charge that offense in the indictment. On top of that, these questions of free speech, the indictment itself says the president can say these things, tell these lies if he wants to.

But, apparently, it says he can't go further and then conspire to obstruct an official proceeding or defraud the United States with his lies. That's a gray line and the tough area, not one that's clear what the Supreme Court might do with.

KEILAR: Because a lot of critics looked at what Trump said that day and said he incited people, he prompted people to go up there.

But, in your view, is Jack Smith seeing this as too much of coming into clash with the First Amendment that he feels that just may be a path that he won't succeed along?

JAFFER: Well, that's the hard part, because we know what Cassidy Hutchinson told the committee.

Now, maybe Jack Smith isn't sure he can rely on that testimony. But what she said was, the president knew that people in the audience were armed. He said, let them come in. They're not here to harm me. But is the question, who were they're there to harm, right?

And then he says to those very people who we understood were armed, come to the Capitol, I'm coming with you. We're going to solve this thing, right? I mean, if that doesn't amount to insurrection, right, what does it amount to? So you got to ask yourself, well, if it's OK to bring up the First Amendment concerns with defrauding the United States, why not raise the insurrection point? What's going on here?

And if he's got a weak First Amendment case, how does it not undermine his defrauding case as well?

KEILAR: The indictment says that in a conversation on January 1, the then-Vice President Mike Pence told Trump that he didn't think there was a constitutional basis for the vice president changing the election results, doing what Trump was pressuring his vice president to do.

In response, Trump told Pence -- quote -- "You are too honest."

How beneficial is that to prosecutors, as they're trying to prove that Trump knew all of this, that it was lies?

JAFFER: Well, it's all of these things. It's not just what Pence told him. It's what Pence his counsel told the staff.

It's what his campaign officials told the president over and over again: You didn't win this election. There was no fraud.

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Multiple state officials, Republican state officials who supported and voted for Donald Trump told him, there is no fraud in our states. And yet he kept going out publicly saying, there's fraud, talked about the Pennsylvania voters, talked about the Georgia voters, right, dead voters and the like.

He knew, at least based on what he was told by Republican officials in all those states and the vice president, he didn't like a stand on. The vice president wasn't with him. And yet he tweeted out right before the certification votes, the vice president and I agreed he can act.

KEILAR: But that "You're too honest," that implication of I'm not being honest, that doesn't -- you're saying that doesn't necessarily matter?

JAFFER: Well, I mean, I think that people understand that Donald Trump has a different version of what facts are. And he said it. He's told people.

We all know that Donald Trump plays fast and loose with the facts, right? That should come as a surprise to nobody. He largely admits that himself all the time.

KEILAR: Jamil, thank you so much. Really appreciate it -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, Trump and his team are reacting in much the same way that they reacted to the first two indictments, only, this time, now invoking Nazi Germany, also saying Trump's actions are protected under the First Amendment, including the lies.

Plus, GOP lawmakers are attacking the DOJ, accusing the Biden administration of a two-tiered justice system. We will be live on the Hill with new reaction, what they base that on.

And special counsel Jack Smith has praised what he calls the heroes who defended the Capitol on January 6. So what does this indictment mean for those officers?

We're going to discuss ahead on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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SCIUTTO: Former President Trump's team is defending against another federal indictment, this one perhaps the most significant so far, based on his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

We know Trump and his allies worked ahead to prepare a coordinated public response to roll out as soon as the indictment became public.

CNN's Alayna Treene is near the former president's New Jersey property.

Alayna, some quite aggressive messaging, we're used to that, perhaps less used to him invoking Nazi Germany in his defense.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right.

And I think many people came out to criticize him, including the Anti- Defamation League, which said it was completely inappropriate. But I think what you're seeing from Donald Trump and his team is exactly what you would expect. They are framing this latest indictment as entirely political.

And they're also arguing that these latest charges, in addition to the past two indictments that were handed down earlier this year, arguing that they're part of a broader scheme to interfere in the 2024 presidential election.

And I can tell you, from my conversations with Donald Trump's team and his advisers, that they're very competent in that line of defense. They are pointing to the fact that, despite the unprecedented nature of his legal troubles, he is still the leading contender for the Republican nomination. His polling puts him ahead of his 2024 rivals, and his base and his supporters are very much still behind him.

Now, also, just pointing back to that election interference argument, a key thing that they will be focusing on as well is trying to delay any potential trial until after the 2024 election. And one of Donald Trump's attorneys, John Lauro, spoke to that during an interview with Kaitlan Collins last night.

Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN LAURO, ATTORNEY FOR FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I need to look at what so-called evidence is going to be presented.

I could see this trial lasting nine months or a year. But it's going to take -- Mr. Trump is entitled to a defense. The government has had three years to investigate this, and now they want to rush this to trial in the middle of a political season.

What does that tell you?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: And, Jim, another key argument that John Lauro laid out during that interview as well was that Donald Trump was protected by the First Amendment and by free speech when he was peddling the claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

But if you look at that 45-page indictment from special counsel Jack Smith and his team, they note that Donald Trump knew that the election was stolen, but continued to spew those lies anyway. They also note that, yes, Donald Trump did have the right, like any other American, to challenge the election results, but he did not have the right, according to special counsel Jack Smith, to try and engage in a conspiracy to defraud the United States, nor to obstruct the January 6 proceedings.

SCIUTTO: Right.

Do they see any contradiction between the election interference argument today and the former president's very clear and public attempts to interfere in the counting and -- of, for instance, the votes on January 6 or his pressure on multiple state officials in the last election? Do they acknowledge any contradiction there?

TREENE: Well, that is the contradiction, I think, that they're very much paying attention to.

And their argument is that Donald Trump genuinely believed that the election was stolen. Of course, though, again, if you look at that 45- page indictment...

SCIUTTO: Yes.

TREENE: ... you can see that, despite many of Donald Trump's allies, including many people in his own government, were telling him that he did not win the election.

And yet he continued to go to his co-conspirators and talk to them about the claims that the election was in fact stolen.

SCIUTTO: Yes, or that comment to Mike Pence, "You're too honest."

Alayna Treene in Bridgewater, New Jersey, thanks so much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: And, Jim, I know you're not surprised that none of this really changes anything when it comes to the former president's most ardent supporters on Capitol Hill, which is where we find CNN's Melanie Zanona. She's been talking to folks and working her sources.

If anything, Mel, it seems as if the ones who have been supporting him all along or are just upping their support for him.

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MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes, that's exactly right, Bri.

And, in fact, Republicans have actually been preparing their response for weeks now. And, in some cases, they have been coordinating directly with Donald Trump himself about how to best defend him.

In recent days, Trump has spoke to some of his top allies on Capitol Hill, including Elise Stefanik, about strategy.

I'm also told that he sent talking points to Capitol Hill to help shape the messaging piece of this. And a lot of that messaging, as Alayna was alluding to, has focused on to really frame Trump as a victim of a political persecution, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy saying this is just an attempt to attack the Republican front-runner, Elise Stefanik calling it a dark day in America, and Jim Jordan saying Trump did nothing wrong.

But you will notice most of these Republicans are not actually addressing the substance of the charges, even though they were firsthand witnesses to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.

But our colleague Phil Mattingly pressed Congressman Michael Waltz -- he's a Florida Republican -- about Trump's behavior surrounding January 6. Let's take a listen to how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MICHAEL WALTZ (R-FL): Trump believed he was driving towards the truth, believed the election was -- was being tampered with, that the Democrats changed the rules under the guise of COVID.

It's not as though someone walked in on President Trump holding a gun over a murder victim or he was caught selling secrets to the Chinese or Russians. These are incredibly complex legal theories that a lot of people are going to debate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZANONA: So, clearly, no signs of his supporters banning him, at least on Capitol Hill.

In fact, Marjorie Taylor Greene said, "I will still vote for Trump even if he is in jail," which is quite a remarkable statement.

But we should point out that it has been a slightly different story in the Senate. We have seen a much more muted response from Republicans. Still have not yet heard from Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell. He has been silent throughout all Trump's indictments and legal troubles. And we are not expecting that to change this time around, Bri.

KEILAR: All right, Mel, thank you for the very latest.

Pretty -- I don't know, pretty eye-opening, even so, to hear what Republicans are saying up there -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Up next on CNN NEWS CENTRAL: Special counsel Jack Smith, who has prosecuted in his career Republicans and Democrats, is facing fierce attacks from the right. We're going to have more on the man behind the indictment.

And, later, a significant sentencing decision in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial. We're going to explain the jury's decision in the case coming up.

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