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Soon: Giuliani Expected To Testify In Defamation Damages Trial; House To Votes To Formalize Biden Impeachment Probe; Dow Soars After Fed Decides Not To Hike Rates. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 14, 2023 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:23]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Right now, Rudy Giuliani is in court where he stand -- says he intends to take the stand in his defamation damages trial after days of emotional testimony from the two election workers who say their lives were ruined because of him. We're live outside the court with the very latest.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: After House Republicans formally launched their impeachment inquiry into President Biden, will they move now to hold his son in contempt?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, markets soaring, the Dow reaches a new high, big retail sales numbers just in beating expectations. Stock futures pointing up again this morning, how much further can it go? I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner. This is CNN News Central.

SIDNER: Just moments ago, we watched as Rudy Giuliani arrived at court in Washington, D.C. after saying he intends to take the stand in his defamation damages trial in a move to counter emotional claims from two election workers who say his lies and conspiracy theories after the 2020 presidential election turned their lives upside down.

Over the past two days, the court heard gut wrenching testimony from former poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss. They describe how Giuliani's life spun a flood of racist messages and even death threats that forced them to leave their jobs and homes, cost them some friends and made them feel so unsafe. They were too afraid to even use their own names.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is live outside the courthouse in Washington today. Katelyn, we heard Giuliani earlier in the week spewing lies again outside the court. What can we expect today in court?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, today the big question as does Rudy Giuliani take the stand in his own defense go under oath and testify in front of this jury about why he was saying the things he was saying after the 2020 election about these two women Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, Georgia election workers. He's saying that he intends to take the stand and testify. His lawyer even told me as he was exiting court yesterday, that that is the plan Giuliani is planning on testifying.

What is happening here in court though is this is a trial of emotional appeal and a lot of emotional weight. And so if Giuliani is taking the stand, it is about him convincing the jury that they shouldn't saddle him with millions of dollars in payments to owe to these women for the emotional distress, the reputational damage that they felt. But yesterday Ruby Freeman, one of the Georgia election workers, the mother of Shaye Moss, a volunteer after the election counting absentee ballots in Georgia, she created a scene in the courtroom that was so intense, you could hear a pin drop.

It was so emotional. She was wailing at times about how she had lost her name. She was afraid to introduce herself to people. She was afraid to use her name, her I.D. This is about defamation and the reputational damage of her name. And she also spoke about how deeply disturbing it was to get taunting racist voicemails over and over again, so much she had to go to the police in person and then multiple times calling the police to help her after the election because of the harassment that she felt having to leave her home.

That is something that the jury witnessed her speak about from the witness box, just feet away from them with Giuliani in the courtroom as well. And so now, the plaintiff side they're done with their case, the jury comes in at 10:00 a.m. So in just about an hour, and that's when Rudy Giuliani's lawyer will stand up before the judge and tell the jury whether or not the former mayor of New York, the former lawyer for Donald Trump and his campaign is going to be testifying as well.

SIDNER: These two women were literally doing their civic duties and have had their life blown apart by the lies from Rudy Giuliani. He's already been convicted of death -- he's already been found to have defame them. Now, it is about whether or not he has to really pay for that monetarily. Thank you so much, Katelyn. We will be back with you in a bit as things go on. John?

BERMAN: All right. Joining me now is former Manhattan prosecutor Jeremy Saland. And counselor, again, we're waiting to see if Giuliani takes the stand. We'll know in a few minutes if he does so. Can you take a step back here and can you explain to me in a defamation case like this particularly one where he has already been found to have defamed the plaintiffs here. What is the jury determining? What do they have to find? How does it work?

[09:05:09]

JEREMY SALAND, FORMER MANHATTAN PROSECUTOR: Well, they don't have to determine the defamation whether it happened or not. We know that's already there. This is about the damages. But did he make these untruthful malicious statements, and he knowingly made them and ultimately damaged them and hurt them? So we have these two elements, if you will, at this point already resolved. Meaning that there were these statements, the judge already said that, that there were these wrongful accusations that they cheated and took these ballots and we counted them? And that what does that mean? How badly were they hurt? What is that worth? That's what we're deciding now. BERMAN: Now, as he takes the stand, how can he help himself?

SALAND: I would be more fearful if I was his attorney that he will hurt himself. Remember, we have a RICO case in that same state of Georgia that have very similar elements of election fraud. So if he goes out there, and he's already been told by the judge, you're not allowed to protest. This has already been a finding in terms of what actually happened. If he goes out there and testifies and consistently, pardon me, there was a risk that that could impact his RICO case. I don't know whether he not he actually will testify. I would not be shocked if he backed himself out like Trump has.

BERMAN: Let me show you something that Giuliani said this week, even after the trial started after the first day. Let's listen to this.

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RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Course I don't regret it. I told the truth. They were engaged in changing votes. There's no proof of that. Oh, you're damn right there is. Stay tuned.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You're damn right there is. Forgive me here. It seems as if Giuliani wants to say he ordered the Code Red, right? And he was admonished for those statements from this judge.

SALAND: Absolutely. He goes outside the courtroom, ala Trump says these things. And let's see if he says it in the courtroom. And he shouldn't be saying that in the courtroom. And that's not going to work well for him because the issue is not whether he said it, and whether he did it, although what his defense is arguing is what's the Nexus? What's the connection? We heard about postings on the internet, worried about how many times these things were viewed? But what's that nexus in connection? So there could be some argument there, but he has to run a tight rope here and be careful.

BERMAN: Now he is a defense witness, if you are the plaintiff's attorneys on cross, what do you try to do to Giuliani?

SALAND: You try to get him flustered, you try to get him to make admissions. And he is such a hot person, sort of, again, sort of like Donald Trump, that it's not inconceivable that he will make that mistake, and he will say something that will dam him both in this civil case, and it's not their job to help the criminal case, but there as well to make admissions as to what he said and did. If he goes out there and says, I'm telling the truth, these people committed frauds, that just going to blow up on his face.

BERMAN: I want to shift gears here and talk briefly about Donald Trump and the federal election case against him. You know, Tanya Chutkan has put it on pause while the immunity issue whether Donald Trump gets some kind of presidential immunity goes through the system. But an even perhaps more consequential thing happened yesterday was the Supreme Court stepped in and said it's going to hear a case about whether the obstruction of Congress charge can be used against really any January 6th defendants. How much does this muck up the federal case against Donald Trump?

SALAND: Well, you know, what's going to happen now, it can be delayed because ultimately, if the Supreme Court decides to hear this case and hear this appeal, and mind you, Trump's attorneys have the ability to challenge that if so -- if they want to and stay in the circuit, then it's going to delay this case, it's going to muck it up in the sense that it could push it past March 4th. So it's very reasonable that if this gets delayed too long, that we may not see a trial before the election.

BERMAN: All Right. Jeremy Saland, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Also, this morning, Joe Biden is waking up facing a formal impeachment inquiry now. Now the eighth president to face such an investigation. House Republicans voted unanimously in support of the move, you can see how the vote count landed there. Democrats voting unanimously against it. The investigation is already months long. And it continues now despite showing no conclusive evidence that Joe Biden ever personally benefited from his son's questionable business dealings. Here's what the White House had to say today about that vote last night.

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IAN SAMS, WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON: They're just making up lies to attack the President in a relentless smear campaign that frankly has been going on for four straight years now. We went through an impeachment in the last administration, over the same made-up allegations. And Republicans in the House are just rewinding the tape and running it again to try to score political points against the President instead of doing their actual jobs for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Now, House Republicans are moving forward with their look into Joe Biden and are also vowing to hold Hunter Biden in contempt for defying their congressional subpoena to have him come testify behind closed doors yesterday.

Joining us now is Democratic congressman from Illinois Raja Krishnamoorthi. He sits on the House Oversight Committee. This is one of the Republican led committees that spearheading the impeachment inquiry.

[09:10:09]

Congressman, thanks for coming in. So President Biden is now formally facing this impeachment inquiry. You have called it absurd. Do you think there is a chance here, that they will come up with anything concrete, they'll uncover anything concrete that will make you reconsider how you are describing it today?

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): I don't think so. I think we've looked at so much, quote unquote, evidence that the Republicans have put forward. And even Republicans like Mitt Romney and others say there's not a shred of evidence implicating the President in any wrongdoing whatsoever.

BOLDUAN: What I keep hearing from Republicans is that this is an impeachment inquiry. And that does not equal actual impeachment. Let me play Republican Chip Roy, for you on this.

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REP. CHIP ROY (R-TX): This is an impeachment inquiry, that's all. What are my Democratic colleagues afraid of if there's nothing to see there?

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BOLDUAN: What do you say to that?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, I think I would just inquire why there's an impeachment inquiry vote when we have so much other business to do. And I think the reason is, they need something to bring the caucus together, which is other otherwise fractured on funding the government or doing any of the other things that our constituents want them to do right now, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Do you think that argument that we hear often from all sides, we can walk and chew gum at the same time, are you saying that you do not think that the Republican majority in the House will be able to walk and chew gum at the same time when they kind of go now full speed into this impeachment inquiry?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, I'm -- we're not able to take up anything substantively in the House to do. Yesterday, believe it or not, the signature vote, in addition to this impeachment inquiry vote was whether or not we should allow whole milk in schools for our children to be drinking. That was the substance of the proceedings yesterday. And so we're really at a loss right now as to how we're going to fund the government. How are we going to take care of aid to Israel and Ukraine, taking care of border priorities and so forth.

BOLDUAN: I have seen, you know, over the years, I've seen many statements from your office, many e-mails from your office, and from you and statements from you, talking about just in general, and I'm not talking about when it comes to the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, but in general, the need for people and institutions to comply with congressional subpoenas, even though you think this investigation is absurd. Should Hunter Biden have complied with a congressional subpoena to appear in private?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Well, he actually did one better than that, Kate, you know that. He actually said, I will appear for a deposition as long as it's in the open. And I think that, you know, Republicans stand on shaky grounds when they say that he is refusing to appear to answer their questions. All he's saying is in light of their distortion of private deposition testimony, and the fact they're selective leaking, he just wants to make sure that not only can they and we hear his answers, but the American people can too.

BOLDUAN: There is always a negotiation over coming to there often, I should say, in coming to appear before a committee. But by the letter of the, quote unquote, law, if you will, didn't he defy a congressional subpoena?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I don't think that a court is necessarily going to say that he defied the subpoena when he said I'm going to appear. But I'd like to do so in the open in light of past abuses of the process. I think he said, I'm not going to appear at all. I'm not going to produce any information. That would be another issue altogether, similar to what President Trump did when he was being subpoenaed in past Congresses.

In this case, the Biden family has produced tens of thousands of records, 10 -- at least 10 witnesses have appeared from the Biden administration. I think it's probably a stretch to say that they're not cooperating with the House at this point.

BOLDUAN: You were talking about the substance that occurred or lack thereof, in terms of congressional action yesterday on the floor. Also happening yesterday, the House did pass a bipartisan resolution denouncing anti, the troubling rise in anti-Semitism on campuses and also the congressional testimony of three of the university presidents about test -- the anti-Semitism on their campuses.

The vote breakdown was 303 supporting the resolution denouncing it, 126 voting no, 84 Democrats voted for this resolution, 125 Democrats voted against this resolution denouncing this congressional testimony, you voted against it. Why?

[09:15:02]

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I condemned the testimony. But one sentence within the resolution call for basically, they're firing by the universities. I think that's within the province of the universities and not something that Congress should be doing. I think that what they said was important, and I totally disagree with the way they approached the line of questioning.

BOLDUAN: Congressman, thank you for coming on.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Thank you so much.

BOLDUAN: John?

BOLDUAN: All right, Kate. I'm getting a live look at stock futures right now. Look at that. Those numbers, green arrows pointing up. Big retail sales figures just in beating expectations. The markets open in just a few minutes. Will this epic rally continue?

Donald Trump's not a conservative, he's an authoritarian narcissist. Those words from a person who was once the most prominent Republican in America. So how will Donald Trump respond this morning?

And remarkable reporting, CNN's Clarissa Ward gets inside in Gaza for the first time since the war began without an IDF escort.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): No sooner does our tour begin when --

WARD: And this is what you hear all the time now?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. At least 20 times a day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[09:20:41]

SIDNER: In just 10 minutes, we're going to hear the opening bell on Wall Street after the Dow soared to a record high. The Federal Reserve decided not to hike rates Wednesday for its final decision of the year and it projects three rate cuts in 2024. It comes as a bit of a relief of course for Wall Street. And a lot of Americans after almost two years of aggressive rate hikes aimed at staving off a recession. Let's bring in CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich. You are watching all this. Does this tell us the economy is now going to avoid the R word as in recession?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So in the words of Jerome Powell, it is too soon to declare victory yet.

SIDNER: Bah humbug.

YURKEVICH: Bah humbug. However, I'll give you this, we're moving in the right direction. Wall Street clearly liking the Feds decision yesterday, a pause in rates but also baking in three interest rate cuts next year potentially, and the Dow reacting closing at a record high, beating it what it did two years ago. And so for the Fed essentially, they're signaling they could be done with rate hikes, possibility of three next year. But Jerome Powell always saying the work is not done yet.

Inflation is still too high. Prices are still too high for Americans. So nothing is off the table. But in terms of rate cuts next year, this is encouraging for Americans because when you cut rates, that means that mortgages become more affordable. We just heard from Redfin this morning that says that the daily mortgage rate average dropped below 7 percent. We had been between seven and eight. So now we're below seven.

Also, it makes it more affordable. If you have student loans paying interest on student loans, car loans, credit cards, we know that Americans are putting a lot of money on credit cards right now. But the big question is, does this track, does -- do these encouraging signs track with how Americans feel? Because we have seen that people still don't feel great about the economy.

In a CNN poll from November, we saw that Americans, most Americans are still really worried about the economy. And the big question is, is will this news translate to how people feel. You can't capture that in data. You have to do surveys and polling. And of course, President Biden ultimately is not going to want to see those numbers. He's going to want to see better numbers. So will this turn the tide for how people feel? Will it turn the tide politically? We just always have to caution that things can change at any moment.

SIDNER: It's true. I think --

YURKEVICH: We really need to be careful about that. This is good if things can change quickly.

SIDNER: Yes. And a lot of people feel like they were in the hole. So digging out of that hole is different than, oh, look, the economy looks like it's doing well. Personally, it may not feel that way to you.

YURKEVICH: Right. Exactly, exactly. Because People want to make sure that they are feeling good about their finances. And clearly right now they don't. But let's see. 2024 is just about a couple of weeks away.

SIDNER: Dow up, gas prices down.

YURKEVICH: Yes.

SIDNER: Going in the right direction.

YURKEVICH: Right direction right now.

SIDNER: All right. Thank you, Vanessa. Appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, Joe Biden's National Security Adviser meeting right now with the Israeli war cabinet.

And a CNN exclusive, U.S. intelligence finds nearly half of the Israeli munitions dropped on Gaza are imprecise dumb bombs, as they're called. And CNN is the first U.S. news organization on the ground in Gaza without an Israeli escort. What we're hearing from those inside and at a field hospital there.

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[09:24:16]

WARD (voice-over): The world isn't listening to us, she says. Nobody cares about us. We had been dying for over 60 days, dying from the bombing. And nobody did anything.

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SIDNER: We're just getting this for you right now. Breaking news, Rudy Giuliani who said he was going to testify will not testify today. A spokesman for the former New York Mayor confirming this to CNN just a few minutes ago, Giuliani originally said he was going to testify in his own defense at the defamation damages trial stemming from a case brought by two Georgia election workers in federal court in Washington, D.C. We are following all of these updates. We will bring you all that we can as soon as we get them. John? BERMAN: Yes. That's a really interesting development updates on that shortly. In the meantime, this just into CNN, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is in Israel at this moment. We are told behind closed doors meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of the war cabinet.

Also new this morning we are getting a rare look inside Gaza as CNN is the first Western media outlet to get access into southern Gaza and report independently. This is an extraordinary visit to a field hospital where doctors are treating young patients. CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward was in southern Gaza that now is an Abu Dhabi Clarissa tell us what you saw.