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187,000 Jobs Added in August; Trump's Georgia Trial Televised?; Proud Boys Members Face Sentencing. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired September 01, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:42]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: From Proud Boy to prisoner. A member of the far right group pays the price for violently trying to block the nation's democratic transfer of power and another sign of the legal fallout for other 2020 election deniers. We're following the walls of justice closing in.

Plus, on trial and on your TV. A Georgia judge rules the former president's fight in court will be as public as it can get. But can Donald Trump turn the courtroom drama into campaign gold?

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: And a trip to the Titanic has turned into a major legal battle. An expedition says they have the right to salvage items from the site of the Titanic shipwreck, but the feds are saying, not so fast. Why the government wants to stop the mission in its tracks.

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

KEILAR: Following major developments that are happening in federal and state courts, all tied to former President Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Soon, one more member of the far right Proud Boys group will be learning his fate. Prosecutors are asking a federal judge to sentence Ethan Nordean to 27 years in prison after he and three other Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the January 6 attack.

And just moments ago, a fifth member, Dominic Pezzola -- you see him here using a police shield to break a window at the Capitol on January 6 -- he was sentenced to 10 years in prison just moments ago. He was the only one convicted in the case, not found guilty of seditious conspiracy, but he was convicted on seven other charges.

And there are significant developments in the election subversion case in Georgia. We're awaiting a key ruling on Mark Meadows, of course, who is Trump's former White House chief of staff. Meadows asking to have his charges move from Georgia to federal court. In the meantime, we have learned that Trump's trial will be seen both online and on TV, assuming that it does indeed stay in Fulton County, Georgia. The presiding judge there saying all hearings and trials in his

courtroom can be livestreamed, can be televised, and that will also apply to Trump's 18 co-defendants.

Today, one of those co-defendants entered a not guilty plea. Attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the architect of the Trump campaign's fake elector plot.

First, we start, though, in Washington, D.C., where another member of the Proud Boys will be sentenced just minutes from now.

We have CNN justice correspondent Evan Perez, who is covering the story for us.

What more are we learning about Pezzola's sentencing, Evan?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, this is -- we're now about halfway through the five members of the Proud Boys who are going to be sentenced over the next few days.

And in the case of Pezzola, he, as you pointed out, is the only one of the five who was not convicted of seditious conspiracy. Prosecutors were asking for 20 years. He was seen in that now infamous video that you were showing just now. He was the one that broke the window and really helped lead the crowd into the Capitol that day.

We heard today a statement from -- that was read in court from Mark Ode, a police officer who was on duty that day and was being assaulted by the mob. And this is what he recounted from that day.

He said he was pinned down by multiple assailants, being pinned down by all of their weight, while simultaneously being choked by this chin strap of my helmet. He said he felt -- "I felt my life fleeing my body, the most vivid visual of my own funeral."

These are the words of Officer Mike -- Mark Ode, who, again, was read into the record there at the -- in the courtroom. Judge Timothy Kelly said that Pezzola was really, in some ways, the tip of the spear that allowed the people to get into the Capitol that day. That's one of the reasons why he gave a sentence of 10 years, not as harsh as what prosecutors have been asking for.

In many of the cases, Brianna, prosecutors have been asking for 30- plus years for some of these men, members of the far right group the Proud Boys. You pointed out Ethan Nordean is facing his sentencing in the next hour or so, also at the federal court.

[13:05:08]

He is a member from Seattle who was a leader of the group, again, one of those who was convicted of seditious conspiracy -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Evan Perez, thank you for the very latest on that. We do appreciate it.

MARQUARDT: All right, joining me now is CNN's Sara Murray and CNN legal analyst and former U.S. attorney Michael Moore.

Sara, let's start with today's not guilty plea by the attorney Kenneth Chesebro. He, of course, is the architect of the fake electors plot in the Trump campaign. So, how significant is this not guilty plea?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it would be surprising if he had decided to go ahead and plead guilty.

I mean, every signal from Ken Chesebro so far is that he is intending to fight this. He is the first person out of the gate who asked for a speedy trial in this case. And we have already seen another filing from his team essentially nudging the judge to encourage Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis to hurry up and start providing discovery in this.

So he's taken a very aggressive tactic when it comes to the timeline and approach to trying to fight these charges that he's facing in Georgia.

MARQUARDT: All right, Michael Moore, Chesebro is the first Georgia defendant to have a scheduled trial date. That's on October 23.

Now, today, his lawyer asked the judge to force the district attorney to speed up production of the necessary evidence. A trial date that's just seven weeks away, is that realistic?

MICHAEL MOORE, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: Well, I'm glad to be with both of you.

It's realistic because it's required by the law. He opted to take advantage of the Georgia Speedy Trial Act, which means that he has a right to have his case tried that term of court, the term after his indictment. The DA had nothing to do with it. The court had nothing to do with it.

If they did not set the trial, if the court had not scheduled the trial, he would have been automatically acquitted and adjudged not guilty. So the speedy trial is what it is. The motion that he's asking for about discovery, he still has a right under the Constitution to have this information, and he has a right to have his lawyers, under the Sixth Amendment, be in a position to be prepared to provide an effective defense for him.

So, this is basically a nudge to the court saying, OK, we told the DA we're ready to go. She cannot get outside of our obligations to give us this discovery material in time to prepare. So, that will have to be turned over. It's going to be a lot of documents.

But, again, he opted for this right to have the case tried quickly. And so now it's just going to be an expedited process to go through pretrial motions, the turning over of discovery and that type of thing.

So we will see it, I think, in the next few days.

MARQUARDT: And now we're learning that these Georgia proceedings are going to be televised.

The Fulton County judge, whose name is Scott McAfee, he says that he's following precedent in terms of allowing those cameras into the courtroom.

Michael, do you think that the judge is on solid legal ground if that is challenged by Trump or one of his 18 co-defendants?

MOORE: He is on solid legal ground.

We have had cases in Fulton County, a murder case I can think of right now, that was aired completely from beginning to end. And so there's no prohibition on having these proceedings televised. Remember that this kind of cuts both ways for Trump.

On the one hand, being on TV every day sitting in a courtroom would remind people that he's a defendant in a criminal case. On the other hand, it gives him essentially, from a political angle, an ongoing campaign ad, because we know, just at looking at public polling and things, that his numbers seemed to go up with the indictments.

And think about this too. Remember the pageantry of his arrival to surrender at the Fulton County Jail. I mean, it almost looked like an inauguration parade as he was going in there. And he's maximized that. So it cuts both ways.

I don't think you will see any success if somebody tries to say, well, you know, we don't want to have this thing on TV. There's good precedent here, and, pretty much, it's up to the judge here in the case to make that decision.

MARQUARDT: And to that point, Sara, do you expect the Trump campaign to make hay out of this?

I mean, we saw -- before he even had this Fulton County mug shot, they put out merchandise with a fake mug shot, and then the real mug shot from Fulton County came along. They fund-raised off of that. So do you expect them to fund-raise off of images of him in the courtroom?

MURRAY: I think, if this does go to trial in state court, which is a big if, he would certainly be using the fact that he is on camera as a way to fund-raise and essentially as a way to campaign, because, when this does go to trial, if it were to go before we get through the presidential election, that would be another way to try to stay in front of his voters.

But, again, the big question here is whether this is actually going to go ahead for Donald Trump in state court. We fully expect his team to try to move this to federal court, and then we're back in a situation where, if he succeeds, we don't have cameras in the courtroom.

MARQUARDT: Of course, we see Mark Meadows, the former president's chief of staff, leading that charge to move it from state to federal court.

[13:10:03] Michael, some of the co-defendants alongside the former president, they're turning to public fund-raising efforts to help cover their mounting legal costs. And there's no sign that the former president is really helping or offering any financial help to them. He's even distanced himself from a number of them.

Do you think that that's a smart strategy for Trump?

MOORE: It probably is a smart strategy right now.

Sometimes, there's a benefit to having sort of the people stay together, and that is to say, well, I'm providing a defense, or there's a joint defense agreement, or we're going to fund it through this pact or whatever.

But in this case, because of the allegations, he's probably been told by his lawyers, step back. Let's not have the argument made to the jury that you're still controlling these people and their testimony and any actions. That's what they're trying to say anyway. And let's show that this is not an enterprise that's paying the funding, the legal bill for all of these folks.

I mean, they're trying to get away from the RICO statute. And part of RICO means that there's a criminal enterprise, a corrupt enterprise. And so they want to remove that stigma by maybe disentangling themselves from each other. And one way to do that is not have one person paying the legal bills for everybody else.

MARQUARDT: Without question, those legal bills are going to grow.

MOORE: Sure.

MARQUARDT: Sara, on Mark Meadows, we have seen this effort that he's trying to get his case moved out of Georgia into federal court. We are expecting a ruling, as you mentioned, from the judge, at any moment now.

Is there an expectation that, the federal judge, will side with Meadows?

MURRAY: I think Meadows has a good shot in this case. I mean, even reading through the district attorney's filings, they're making the best case they can that this should be playing out in state court, essentially, with the other defendants.

But even in those filings, they acknowledge that it's not a particularly high bar that Meadows has to meet in order to move this to federal court. They're still saying that they don't believe that he's met it, but I don't think that they would be surprised if Meadows prevails on this case.

But, again, it's up to the judge. He's had some questions about the law around this, and it's not entirely clear where he's going to fall.

MARQUARDT: And a reminder that he's arguing that everything he did was in the scope of his role as the president's chief of staff, not part of the campaign.

Sara Murray, Michael Moore, thank you both very much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Did the Fed just get the news that it needed to stop hiking rates? What a new jobs report is telling us about the labor market and what is ahead for this economy.

Plus, today, new information releasing on the number of people who are still missing after those catastrophic wildfires on Maui. Why the governor believes the number could fall from the hundreds now to double digits.

And a federal judge blocks a law in Arkansas that would have required age verification for social media users. It was supposed to kick in today, but will the hold last?

Stay with CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[13:16:55]

KEILAR: A highly anticipated jobs report just out this morning, and it shows the U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs last month. That is slightly more than was expected, but it's still a slowdown from the enormous growth that we have been seeing here over the past two years.

The unemployment rate actually increased by 0.3 percent. And, of course, this is all happening as the Federal Reserve is still trying to bring down inflation.

CNN business and politics correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich is with us now on this very important story.

Vanessa, what more do these numbers reveal?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: This is a robust report, a good report.

We're seeing jobs added, but at the historic rate that we had seen pre-pandemic. You're seeing jobs added across various sectors, but also, if you look at June and July there, those numbers were actually revised down; 100,000 fewer jobs were actually added in those two months than previously expected, so a softening over those two months.

The unemployment rate, though, ticking up to 3.8 percent, and that is because you have greater labor force participation, people in the market right now looking for a job. Here are the industries that added the most amount of jobs in the month of August. You have gains in health care, you have gains in leisure and hospitality and in construction.

The sectors that saw declines are sectors that have been in the news recently. In trucking, you saw a loss of 37,000 jobs. That's because a trucking company, Yellow Trucking here in the U.S., went bankrupt, out of business. That was a loss of 30,000 jobs for those employees. You see that factored in right there. And then the ripple effect of

the actors and the writers that have been on strike for so many weeks, you see that reflected, down 17,000 jobs in motion picture and sound recording.

And, Brianna, one thing that economists are really looking at here is wages. They wanted to make sure that they didn't see wage growth increase too much, because, if wages increase, people have more money to spend, and that ultimately fuels inflation.

In the month of August, we actually saw a decline in wages, which, of course, is not great for people's pocketbooks, but it's good for the fight on inflation, and the Federal Reserve, as you mentioned, Brianna, going to be meeting later this month. They're going to be looking carefully at this report to decide whether or not they're going to be raising interest rates in September or their next meeting of November of this year, Brianna.

One economist saying that this report might be enough to put a pause on interest rates. Of course, the Fed really targeting that 2 percent inflation. We are still above that at 3 percent. So, work to be done, but remains to be seen if that's going to be happening, Brianna, still this year because of this report.

KEILAR: All right, we will be looking for that. Vanessa, thank you.

I do want to bring in now CNN economics and political commentator Catherine Rampell. She is a columnist for "The Washington Post."

Catherine, I spoke to Jared Bernstein, the chair of the White House Council on Economic Advisers, yesterday, and he's saying that, when you look at these numbers, what they're seeing is people spending more and saving less because the job market is hot, not because of inflation.

[13:20:05]

But can the White House keep singing that tune, as we see some signs that the job market is cooling, including this unexpected rise in unemployment that we're seeing here?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There are a number of signs that the overall economy is cooling, and that's what the Fed wants, right? We want to see more sustainable levels of job growth, more sustainable, probably slower levels of consumer spending growth.

So I would anticipate going forward that we may see a slowdown in consumer spending, not only because you see a little bit less job growth month to month than we had seen in the past, as much as the White House loves to talk about continued job growth, but also because it's gotten more expensive to borrow, right?

That is the whole goal of raising rates. The reason why the Fed is raising interest rates is essentially to cool demand, to make it a little bit less likely that people and businesses and others will spend quite as much money. So, you will see those interest rate hikes take effect most likely within consumer spending, amongst other areas, as well as a number of other policies potentially weighing on consumer spending going ahead, for example, things like the restart of the student loan payments.

KEILAR: So let's look at the big picture that we got this week on job growth, unemployment, inflation indicators.

Is it likely the Fed holds off on another interest rate hike later this month?

RAMPELL: Certainly, markets seem to think so.

The Fed has signaled in its forecasts from a few months back that they were going to raise rates at least one more time this year, whether it's in September, November or December. If you look at where markets think things are, based on how treasuries are priced, they don't believe the Fed.

They think, essentially, that rates are going to stay about where they are through the end of the year, or the -- at least, that's the most likely scenario. And it may well be. As you have discussed, inflation has come down quite a bit. The job market remains relatively stable, slowing down, but not -- you're getting less of that mismatch between the number of jobs available and the number of workers available.

So there are a number of reasons to think that the Fed may, in fact, decide to pause on raising rates any further, especially since we don't know yet whether the rate hikes they have already put into place have fully worked their way through the system.

KEILAR: Well, that will be good news to many people who are looking to do things like buy homes or cars or the like.

Catherine, thank you so much. Always great to have you -- Alex.

MARQUARDT: Shortly after those numbers were released, President Joe Biden headed into the Rose Garden, where he said that these major gains are no accident.

He highlighted some recent accomplishments of his so-called Bidenomics plan.

CNN's Kayla Tausche is live at the White House.

So, Kayla, what is Biden saying today?

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alex, the Biden administration has been saying for more than a year that the red-hot economic growth that the U.S. experienced post-pandemic just could simply not continue. '

And yet, when, month after month some of these strong labor gains get posted, the Biden administration takes a victory lap and says that it is because of the policies that it's putting in place. Now, to be sure, the administration, top advisers and aides have been saying that slower and steadier growth is going to become the norm, even as the labor market and economic growth figures continue to be bright spots.

But even today, speaking from the Rose Garden, President Biden said that some of the less rosy parts of the jobs report, namely, the fact that the unemployment rate rose slightly, even that was because more people are feeling confident enough to look for work.

Here's the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic. We have added a million more new jobs.

More than 700,000 people joined the labor force last month, which means the highest share of working-age Americans are in the work force now than at any time in the past 20 years.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAUSCHE: And it's those 700,000 people who are now all looking for work after months on the sideline that are attributed to that slight uptick in the unemployment rate.

There are headwinds, to be sure. Today is the first day that student loan interest begins accruing for the first time in years for student loan borrowers. You have high interest rates on mortgages and cars, making affordability out of reach for many Americans.

And then you have the fact that there is a severe slowdown in the economy in China, which administration officials worry could start tipping over into Europe, and that could have an impact here in the United States. But, so far, there's no immediate sign of that, Alex.

And the administration says the labor market continues to be one of those bright spots.

MARQUARDT: All right, Kayla Tausche at the White House, thank you very much -- Brianna.

KEILAR: As Maui's mayor faces scrutiny over his response to the wildfires, he is now trying to clear up what his team did before and after the fires sparked.

[13:25:07]

Plus: Hurricane Idalia may be over, but extreme weather across the Southeast is expected to slow recovery efforts.

We will have details on that next.

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KEILAR: Investigators in Hawaii will be releasing some new information today on the number of people who are still reported missing in the Maui wildfires.