Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Hawaii Wildfires; DeSantis Campaign Reset?; Secret Memo Lays Out Strategy to Overturn Election. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired August 09, 2023 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Detailing how fake electors, they thought, could swing the election. What those details now mean for the case against Donald Trump.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: Hurricane-charged winds sweeping flames through neighborhoods, people jumping into the water to stay alive. And, moments ago, officials told us, the fires, they are not at all under control.

BOLDUAN: And a CNN exclusive look at the Ukrainian troops tasked with bringing home the dead from the front lines and bringing some closure to grieving families.

I'm Kate Bolduan with John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

This morning, we are seeing for the first time new evidence that may be used against former President Donald Trump in the special counsel's 2020 election case. "The New York Times" has obtained this memo that has previously been secret. It was written by lawyer Kenneth Chesebro. He was named by prosecutors, you will remember, as Co-Conspirator No. 5 in the indictment, not -- unindicted -- in the indictment against Donald Trump, all of the co-conspirators so far unindicted.

The internal memo spells out in detail to plot to overturn the 2020 election with the help of so-called fake electors, and it also gives new insight into how the plot would unfold and what they really wanted to do it as it was unfolding.

CNN's Jessica Schneider is here with much more on this.

Jess, lay out what new is learned in this memo.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate, this memo dated December 6, it's known to prosecutors. It will likely be a key part of this case.

And it really lays out that even the man outlining this fake electors plot, Kenneth Chesebro, he indicates in this memo he knew it was far- fetched, knew it likely wouldn't get through the courts, but he kept pushing this plan.

And it's clear in the memo that Chesebro really wanted to create confusion, in the hopes that those fake electors could in fact be (AUDIO GAP) real electors for Joe Biden on January 6. This was a plot that he planned to execute through the vice president, Mike Pence, in his role as president of the Senate.

We obviously know that didn't happen. (AUDIO GAP) It's a six-page memo. He lays out the court challenges that were happening in the states. And then he even talks about the Supreme Court getting involved.

He puts it this way, saying: "Even if, in the end, the Supreme Court would likely end up ruling that the power to count the votes does not lie with the president of the Senate, Mike Pence, but instead lies with Congress, letting matters play out this way would guarantee that public attention would be riveted on the evidence of electoral abuses by the Democrats and would also buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation."

So, that was what this was about. This was about creating that chaos and confusion and then buying time, maybe past January 6 for Trump to win the election here.

And, Kate, and all of this, this memo coming out at the same time that we're seeing this case about the 2020 election fraud really moving fast in the courts. We got word last night that there will, in fact, be that hearing on Friday morning 10:00 a.m. about prosecutors plan to restrict which evidence Trump and his team can share once prosecutors have handed it over.

So we're seeing a very active judge in this case, Tanya Chutkan. She's taking control of this case very early in the process. We've already got our first hearing on Friday. We weren't expecting the first hearing until August 28, so things moving very rapidly.

And now we're getting a glimpse at this memo, a key part of the prosecution case.

BOLDUAN: Jessica Schneider, thank you so much.

BERMAN: All right, with us now is CNN chief legal analyst -- where's the camera? CNN chief legal analyst Laura Coates.

Laura, so important that we have to talk to you together here. Look, we hadn't seen this memo before, but we knew some of the details. Kenneth Chesebro, who is one of the co-conspirators, lists out the plot on fake electors.

Why is this legally significant?

LAURA COATES, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, that's going to be a meme, the "Where's the camera?" And I'm all here for it. I love the fact that it just happened. It was very, very wonderful. I know you're such a great guy.

(LAUGHTER)

COATES: But there's that -- the notion here when you think about why this is so significant, of course, is because, one, we did not have this information available to the public back during the January 6 congressional hearings.

We did not know about it. It was referenced in last week's indictment, which, of course, then titillated everyone to figure out, well, what is this about and where is this going? The real significance here is that one of the main defenses being floated by Donald Trump and his team is this notion of the advice of counsel, he was acting under the advice of counsel.

And you can, of course, ignore the fact that people like Attorney General Bill Barr and other really top prosecutors he had appointed gave different advice, but he seemed to be hanging his hat on this.

This seems to go beyond, though, the notion of, let's think about this within the confines of what is lawful. This appeared to be, as Jessica laid out, according to the memo, a notion of trying to buy time in a way that is not a genuine application or evaluation of what is possible under the law or according to the Constitution.

[11:05:05]

And the fact that he seems to be one of the co-conspirators outlined in this indictment, although not yet named, appears to contemplate that the Jack Smith special counsel team sees it as more than simply throwing something against the wall and seeing if it will stick, but, instead, part of an orchestrated plot to try to obstruct, to conspire and try to undermine the election results.

BOLDUAN: And, Laura, I'm fascinated with a couple elements of the memo in a couple different places where he -- I have been calling them caveats, where he writes like, "I'm not necessarily advising this course of action," and also saying in another place, "I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on January 6."

Do you think, does this protect Kenneth Chesebro? Does this offer cover for Donald Trump era with regards to this memo, or neither?

COATES: I mean, there ought to be a course in law school on the best ways to hedge, because that's all throughout this entire memo: I'm not saying this. I'm articulating it, nonetheless. This is something that might be controversial. I'm articulating it, nonetheless.

This is part of what it's going to be used as the defense here for the very reasons you say, because there are some who are arguing this is all a matter of scholarly debate. Any time you're in the Wild Wild West, and there is new information, and you do not have the factual predicate that we have had in the past with this new notion, it suggests that you will be able to say: I'm just opining about things. I'm evaluating this.

The biggest issue, though, is going to be how and to what degree it was followed. Is there corroborating evidence to try to suggest that there was more than that, that the language inserted in the memorandum was not about trying to give an objective analysis and evaluation, but, rather, a blueprint to criminal conspiracy and otherwise criminal activity? But the big thing in terms of Donald Trump will be, Kate, of course, does this suggest that he actually saw this memo? Memos written between counsel does not necessarily mean that it actually got to the underlying client. If he was able to rely on it, if he was aware of it, if he saw it, if he heeded it and followed it precisely, or was it something floating in the universe?

That will be part of what the burden of proof will be from Jack Smith and his team. But, again, that advice of counsel notion is going to be a part of it.

And it sets up a really interesting antagonistic dynamic between Donald Trump's attorneys and himself, because the last thing you want is to have your attorneys testifying against you about what they really said, did not say, or about what you knew, because then that whole privilege issue of the attorney-client privilege really can be pierced more readily.

BERMAN: Well, they got privilege out of the investigation. One would think they will make similar arguments at trial to try to remove that privilege.

Now, Laura, I want to go back to one thing you said, and I want to paraphrase both you and what is in this memo here. Basically, Chesebro writes, even if this gets overturned to the Supreme Court, even if it is not deemed legal, it buys us time.

Does this case come down to the "even if it's illegal" part there, him saying -- admitting that it might get overturned, but it's still worth doing because it will obstruct the hearing?

COATES: Well, two points. One, ethically, attorneys are owed and offer must provide a duty of candor to the court. And they must make arguments that are sound, that are legally sustainable, and that might have some nuance to it and things that you could actually discuss with the court about the parameters, but you ought not to ever be making things just to simply buy time.

It is unethical behavior on the one hand. And on the second hand, of course, if you have advised your client that there is something legally unsound or that it will not be sustained, not because it's something that you're not sure how the Supreme Court will rule or a lower appellate court or even the court before you in that instance, if you are already signaling that this does not have legal merit, but it can nonetheless be used to buy time and also to pique the interest of the electorate, that might fall under the conspiracy as alleged.

BOLDUAN: Laura Coates.

Great to see you, Laura. Thank you.

COATES: Nice to see you both.

BOLDUAN: In Ohio, a defeated measure about the state Constitution is a major win for abortion rights advocates, and it really wasn't close. More than three million people voted in a special election, with 57 percent voting no on what was officially called Issue 1, which would have made it harder to amend Ohio's Constitution.

If it had passed, it would have had a huge impact on the next step, which a lot of people knew exactly what this was about, which is a ballot issue coming up in November aimed at offering more abortion rights in the state, codifying abortion rights in the state.

CNN senior political commentator David Axelrod is joining us now.

[11:10:01]

David, how far can Democrats take this now? This was a huge win for them.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, Kate, you will remember the Kansas initiative back before the midterm elections, in which voters there affirmed abortion rights in that state.

And it really foreshadowed what we saw in the midterm elections, which was a much better performance for Democrats than had been anticipated by historical kind of measures. And so what this suggests is, this issue is going to live on into the 2024 election.

And it comes at a time when Republican candidates are sort of battling to get to the right on this question. So they're moving further and further away from where the electorate is. And I think this is going to be an issue in the campaign, if there are issues in the campaign and we're not just listening to legal analysts talk about what happened in court that day.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: I mean, Republicans can read the same newspapers and see the same data as Democrats, though.

They see what happened in Ohio and Kansas before.

AXELROD: Yes.

BERMAN: So what can they do?

AXELROD: Yes.

BERMAN: And what's the likelihood of them doing it to mitigate this?

AXELROD: Yes, the problem they have, John, is that this is kind of a split screen electorate.

And, on one side, you have the Republican electorate, in which voters are very comfortable with very strict abortion bans. And, on the other hand, you have the total electorate, in which people are not. And that's been the problem for the Republican Party for some time and for Republican candidates.

If you cater to the base, you make yourself less electable in a general election environment. And I think this is a huge problem. And I don't know what the way out is. I mean, on the one hand, you can't win a general election if you don't get nominated. On the other hand, the things you do to get nominated may make it very, very difficult to win a general election.

And that's the bind they have been in for some time.

BOLDUAN: Well, let's ponder this. Can you win an election without a campaign manager?

(LAUGHTER)

BOLDUAN: Ron DeSantis has now switch -- is now in part of the reset or the redo, whatever he's going to call it. The Ron DeSantis campaign now has a new campaign manager.

And John and I were talking before the show. As someone who was a chief strategist for a successful presidential campaign, you could say, what is happening here?

(LAUGHTER)

AXELROD: Well, look, I know what it's like when a campaign is not doing as well as it's supposed to do.

And there were periods in the Obama campaign. We made a strategic decision to focus on Iowa, because we felt, if we didn't win Iowa, we would not be the nominee of the party, that we threw all our chips there. And we, when we were losing some altitude in national polls, made donors nervous, made some other politicians who were supporting us nervous, and there were calls for my head and others.

But we had a plan. The candidate was comfortable with the plan, and he was comfortable with the team. The DeSantis campaign, I mean, it is a bad sign when the -- all the news you make has to do with reboots and staff shakeups. That's generally a sign that your campaign is not on the right track. And, obviously, the polling reflects that.

But, at some point, at some point, a rational question would be, is it the staff or is it the candidate? And you can't replace the candidate, so you replace the staff. We will see if that actually makes a difference for DeSantis. But I think he's got deeper problems than staffing. I think he's got message problems. I think he's got performance problems. I think he's got failed expectations problems.

And we will see if he can come back from that.

BERMAN: You know, there was a slogan, I don't know if you guys came up with it or it was someone else, but the no-drama Obama campaign.

Curious if there's going to be something like a slim chances or tough chances DeSantis, or is there something...

BOLDUAN: It's a harder rhyme.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: It's a hard -- it's very hard to rhyme, David, which is our problem here.

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: I think that he is...

BERMAN: Go ahead.

AXELROD: Yes, reboot Ron is the way I refer to him, but yes.

What -- you were going somewhere else.

BERMAN: No, it just -- it...

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: No, that was it. That was the whole thing.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: That was really the whole thing.

But it does speak -- you get to the point here, which is that the John McCain campaign, which ultimately you ran against in the 2008 general election, they changed campaign managers midstream. You can do this. It can be OK. But...

AXELROD: Yes. John Kerry did it as well.

BERMAN: But a campaign that is winning, that is going well never changes campaign managers.

AXELROD: Yes.

And I think the difference is that John McCain knew John McCain was. You know, there were tactical, maybe some strategic issues. But, at the end of the day, John McCain knew who John McCain was. He was comfortable in his own skin.

[11:15:11]

The problem, I think, for DeSantis, more than any other, is that he seems to be calculating all the time what the right political maneuver is in that particular moment. I mean, it took him months to acknowledge that Trump lost the election.

And, even then, he didn't really answer the question, which is, 70 percent of Republicans believe the last election was fraudulent, and do you agree with that? Do you believe that the election was stolen from Trump?

He never got to that. But he's always dancing around and he's shifting his messages a little bit. And he looks like a politician making calculations. Donald Trump, to his supporters, does not look like a politician. They think that he is a leader of a movement, that he stands apart from all the B.S. of politics.

And they come to him because of that.

BOLDUAN: It's good to see you, David. Thanks for coming in.

AXELROD: Always good to be with you guys.

BOLDUAN: Thank you.

Coming up for us: A wildfire fueled by powerful winds is wreaking havoc in Hawaii, even forcing folks -- we have seen reports of folks jumping in the ocean to escape the flame and the smoke.

And one winner, 1.58 billion reasons to never go to work again. That's not true. You go to work because you love it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:21:09]

BERMAN: All right, happening now, a state of emergency in Hawaii.

New video shows wildfires moving quickly across Western Maui. Hurricane-charged winds are making it nearly impossible to battle at least five separate fires, including one that did move through a Maui neighborhood; 911 service and cell service has gone down in parts of that island.

Officials describe a dire situation, as hospitals are overwhelmed with patients suffering burns and smoke injuries. Now, Kate spoke to a man who shot video of a fire encroaching on his West Maui town. He described it as a wall of fire engulfing buildings on both sides of the street. He said he does not expect his homes to survive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALAN DICKAR, MAUI RESIDENT: One of my houses definitely caught fire. The other houses are each a block away. And I did not see them burn.

But I recognize there is a very good chance that they are not there anymore. Both of them were completely covered in smoke. When I went -- after I started to evacuate, I went back to just check to see if the house was on fire or not. It wasn't, but I was standing at the street looking at my house, and I couldn't see my whole house because of the smoke.

But the smoke was coming from another property that was a few buildings away. And then I went down to Front Street right after that and wanted to check on my gallery. I have had a gallery in the center of Front Street for 23 years. And as I began walking that way, the -- there's a historic building on Front Street in Dickenson, the old Baldwin house.

The roof was on fire. And I started taking a video of it because I was amazed that there were -- there were no fire trucks there. And then, as I turned and looked down Front Street, Front Street exploded in flame.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Just remarkable pictures there.

And, earlier, we also spoke with a Hawaiian official told us that these fires are not at all under control.

CNN's Derek Van Dam, you can see him. He is with us now.

Derek, not at all under control. What hope is there to turn the corner against these fires?

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, we have got a tough 12 hours ahead.

My producers and I just checked on the current conditions on Maui. Winds are gusting to 66 miles per hour within the past hour, so, clearly, still funneling and fueling some of these flames. So, what you're looking at in the video you saw directly before me is from Lahaina on the western side of Maui.

You got to understand that this is the economic hub of Maui. This is where residents go. This is where tourists -- or residents live. This is where tourists go to vacation. With 20 percent of the island without power, this is a significant, significant event for the island of Maui. And it's not just Maui. It's also Hawaii.

We have learned just in the past couple of hours emergency declarations being issued by the lieutenant governor of Hawaii for the Big Island from that burn scar you start to see or this hot spot you see on this satellite imagery.

Also interesting to note you can see the direction of the smoke just pushing the wildfire smoke away from Maui and into the open ocean of the Pacific Ocean. This is showing you just how strong the winds actually are.

So, what's taking place here? Why are we getting these strong winds over the Hawaiian Islands? It's all thanks to this kind of pressure squeeze between the high pressure to the north and a passing hurricane to the south. That's Hurricane Dora. And it's putting the squeeze on the Hawaiian Islands.

And what that's doing is creating wind gusts in excess of 80 miles per hour. That's equivalent to a Category 1 Atlantic hurricane. Wind advisories and red flag warnings are in place for the entire or Hawaiian island chain.

[11:25:00]

And similar to what we experience in Southern California with Santa Ana winds, we are having this wind come up and over mountaintops, very simple thermodynamic processes at play here. As that wind rushes over the mountains and through the canyons, it dries out, it heats up, and it also increases the wind.

So, until this hurricane and this high pressure move away from the Hawaiian Islands, we will see these winds, these very dry hot winds that create these tinderbox conditions, continue -- John.

BERMAN: A tough 12 hours ahead, as you said.

Derek Van Dam, thank you very much -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us: President Biden taking his Bidenomics pitch out West. He's in New Mexico as he continues his three-day tour. What he's going to be pitching today.

And Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, she is back at home today after a fall that sent her to the hospital. We have those details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:30:00]