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Women for America First Lied to Interior Department; Judge Denies Motion to Toss Trial; Abbott Signs Bill on Illegal Immigration; Jewish Institutions Face Bomb Threats. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired December 19, 2023 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:30:15]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: There's new fallout now from the January 6th insurrection. A group formed to support Donald Trump called Women for America First, they are accused in a new watchdog report of lying about their intentions on January 6th. The report says that the group, quote, "intentionally failed to disclose information" about a march to the Capitol that day.

CNN's Marshall Cohen has much more on this.

Now, Marshall, this has to do with their permit application. What's going on here?

MARSHALL COHEN, CNN REPORTER: Kate, good morning.

There were a lot of lies on January 6th, and you can just add these to the list. This is according to the inspector general at the Interior Department about the permitting process for that rally. This pro-Trump group, Women for America First, intentionally and repeatedly lied to federal officials during the process of obtaining that permit when they said there were no plans to march from the Ellipse, right by the White House, down the National Mall and to the Capitol. The lie, of course, was that that was the plan all along.

And this report points out that there were real consequences to these lies. It affected the security posture and the positioning of law enforcement on The Mall and at the Capitol that day and how they were prepared for the attack.

So, brazen lies, Kate, but you don't have to take my word for it, or you don't have to take the watchdog report for it either. Let me read for you a few text messages from the organizers themselves. The proof is really in the pudding here. This is a text message, January 3rd, from a White House liaison to a January 6th rally organizer. Quote, "POTUS expectations are intimate and then send everyone over to the Capitol." It's right there in black and white.

Another text message, January 4th, two days before the rally, from a January 6th rally organizer to a potential speaker. Quote, "we are having a second stage at the Supreme Court after the Ellipse. POTUS is going to have us march there/the Capitol. It can also not get out about the march, because I will be in trouble with the National Park Service."

Kate, they knew - they knew that this would be a problem if they had revealed the full extent of their plans to the National Park Service. Of course, they withheld that information and we all know how it ended that day with a deadly, violent insurrection at the Capitol.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: There's not a lot of gray area in those text messages that's for sure.

Marshall, thanks so much for bring us the reporting.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, the star witness in Donald Trump's New York civil fraud trial, which was Donald Trump himself, has, quote, "lost all credibility" the judge overseeing the case has determined. Judge Arthur Engoron slammed Trump's accounting experts while denying the latest motion from Trump's team to have the case decided in Trump's favor.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is following this story for us.

The judge is really giving us a bit of a hint as to the way that this case will be decided. What did he say?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a judge that repeatedly has refused Donald Trump's attempts to dispose of this case quickly. And that was what this ruling was. There were several times through the course of this weeks' long fraud trial, civil fraud trial, before Judge Arthur Engoron in New York, where Trump's team was trying to get a judgment in their favor and the judge came back yesterday writing out this order and did not mince words at all. Said, you know, you guys put experts up as your witnesses. That does not mean that I have to believe those experts. And he was quite harsh about one of the experts, saying that that person had lost credibility being on the stand.

He also spelled out that there are things that Trump is still appealing, wanting to appeal, challenging the New York attorney general from even bringing this case. But at the end of the day, Judge Engoron said yet again the court of appeals will look at this and I believe that they will believe that what Trump is doing is frivolous here.

So, a lot of these things are not changing what is happening in this case. Every time this judge is weighing in, he still is looking at the damages, how to assess them. He still had already made determinations in the case. And so at this point in time, he's just signaling how he viewed what Trump was doing during the trial. We don't have a final order yet on exactly what the outcome of that trial is as far as the damages that Judge Engoron will assess. But it's not looking particularly positive for Donald Trump, especially because of those expert witnesses he had put on to help try and support Trump's side of the case. SIDNER: Absolutely. And that's a $250 million and he could end up

having to pay depending on what the judge decides.

Katelyn Polantz, thank you for following this story.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, the Texas governor taking matters into his own hands again, or at least trying to, in cracking down further on the border.

[09:35:08]

What's behind this new state law? We'll take you there.

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BOLDUAN: Senate talks have hit a wall and are now hard up against a holiday deadline. The negotiations over more aid to Ukraine and Israel tied to new border security measures, they do continue. But one top Republican put it bluntly to CNN, saying there is no way a vote will happen this week.

And there's only about two weeks left then before the White House warns current U.S. aid bolstering Ukraine's defenses against Russia will run out.

[09:40:04]

At the border, the Texas governor just took another step to take matters into his own hands, signing off on a new law making it a state crime to enter Texas illegally from Mexico.

CNN's Rosa Flores is at the border crossing in Brownsville, Texas, with more on this angle of this much bigger story, much bigger crisis.

Rosa, what is the governor trying to do with this new law?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, he's trying to do exactly what you just mentioned, Kate, he's taking the border situation into his own hands. And what this really equates to on the U.S. southern border is this collision of a broken federal immigration system that has thousands of migrants entering the U.S. illegally every single day and facilities overwhelmed, and a state that's trying to fix it with state powers. Now, there's a lot of questions about whether Governor Greg Abbott is going to be able to do that, but here is what we know about what's going on right now on the U.S. southern border.

We just got information from U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar, now he's a ranking member of the Homeland Security Subcommittee. That's how he knows this information. He tells us that in Eagle Pass, Texas, right now, there's about 8,000 migrants who are in that area either in custody or waiting to be transported to a border patrol facility.

Now, just to give you a sense, in El Paso, there's about 4,500 migrants in custody. In Tucson, about 4,000. And here in the Rio Grande Valley, where I am, about 4,000 migrants. But overall he says that there's about 23,000 migrants in custody along the U.S. southern border.

Now, I talked to the U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens just over a week ago and he told me specifically that border patrol has capacity to hold about 10,000 migrants. So, do the math, that's more than double. So, what is happening here in the state of Texas is the governor is trying to fix this situation with this bill that he signed yesterday, SB-4. And what this bill does is it creates a new state crime for the illegal entry into the state of Texas. It gives police officers the power to arrest and judges the power to deport individuals, violators, to Mexico.

Now, there are a lot of concerns about this law because it is written in a very vague way. It also does not have guardrails for -- against, excuse me - it has no guardrails against racial profiling, which is making a lot of Hispanics in this state, which make up about 40 percent of the population of the state, very nervous about being racially profiled. Now, some individuals are saying that they're going to start carrying their passports.

Take a listen.

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RAMONA CASAS, ARISE ADELANTE: It be more difficult for people they look like Hispanic because they can thinking that offices we don't have legal documents.

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FLORES: Now, Kate, here's the other problem with this bill, it doesn't appropriate money to train police officers, local police officers, because after this bill goes into effect, any peace officer in the state of Texas will have the power to enforce this law. I asked Governor Greg Abbott that specific question, this bill doesn't have appropriation to train officers, how are you going to make sure that they have the tools. He said, all officers in the state of Texas have the tools. I followed up with, but are they going to be specifically trained on this law. He did not answer my question.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Many more questions to be asked.

Rosa, thank you so much.

SIDNER: And for more on this let's bring in CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig, mahomi (ph) is also his title.

All right, first of all, this is a state law.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

SIDNER: Usually the federal government oversees border issues, immigration. Is this constitutional? Will this end up going eventually potentially to the Supreme Court, or at least being appealed? HONIG: No, this is not constitutional. Easy answer there. This is day

one of constitutional law. Issues like immigration, foreign policy, foreign affairs are specifically and only reserved to the federal government. Makes sense. Imagine if every state could have a different immigration policy, enforce it differently, it would be wild.

SIDNER: Have a different law.

HONIG: And it's important to understand, the legal question here is not, is this a good policy or bad policy, smart, unwise, it's who gets to make it. It's not the states. Texas has to know that. It will get struck down in the federal courts at some point.

SIDNER: But there has to be a case brought.

HONIG: Yes.

SIDNER: So, in the meantime, everything that is done under this law in Texas is legal technically?

HONIG: But here's what I expect to see happen. DOJ, in all likelihood, is going to go into court and challenge this. That's the way it's happened in the past. You have some - have to have someone who has standing here. And DOJ, as the representative of the federal government will, I believe, go into federal courts at some point soon and ask for an injunction, ask to stay the law, basically put the law on pause while it's being litigated through the federal courts. That's happened in the past. And we've seen very similar laws in other border states, including Arizona, struck down within the last decade and change by the Supreme Court.

[09:45:04]

We saw a case involving Arizona in 2012. Went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court struck it down. And I think we'll see the same result here.

SIDNER: I couldn't help but ask this. So, knowing that, I think it was 2012, you're talking about the Supreme Court saying, no, no, no, this is the federal government's purview.

HONIG: Yes.

SIDNER: So, this appears to be not necessarily legal but political.

HONIG: Right.

SIDNER: If you know that the Supreme Court has again and again reaffirmed that this is the federal government's job.

HONIG: Yes. Yes. I think it - there's good - there's legitimate questions about whether this is a law passed in good faith or bad faith. You are entitled to test the courts.

SIDNER: Sure. HONIG: You are entitled to pass a law. I'm sure that there are arguments, and we've heard sort of weak versions of this argument coming from certain Texas legislators who voted for it arguing, well, it's different from the Arizona law.

SIDNER: Right.

HONIG: I mean it's not word for word identical, but the constitutional flaw is very much identical. And that's why I'm quite confident. I don't even think this will be your 6-3 type division. I think you're going to see most of the court, including some of the conservatives, join with the liberals and strike this down, if and when it reaches the Supreme Court. It may not, by the way. The court of appeals may strike it down. A federal district court may strike it down.

SIDNER: It may never make it.

HONIG: But it won't survive.

SIDNER: All right, Elie Honig with the - you -- this is the most definite you have been.

HONIG: Yes.

SIDNER: You lawyers sometimes do this thing where you're like if and when. This was a no on constitutionality.

HONIG: We know how to hedge. I'm not hedging here.

SIDNER: OK.

HONIG: All right.

SIDNER: Thank you, Elie.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, convicted, then fired. Actor Jonathan Majors gets dropped by Marvel right after being found guilty of assault and harassment. An update there.

And hundreds of bomb threats being made against Jewish facilities across the United States and just in a matter of days. Officials say that they're all hoaxes, but really they're creating real fear.

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[09:50:38]

BOLDUAN: Also on our radar this hour, Google has agreed to pay $700 million and to allow greater competition on its Play app store. This is coming from a settlement after an anti-trust lawsuit brought by state attorney's general and consumers. And as part of the deal, Google will now allow app developers to charge consumers directly instead of being billed through Google where the company was taking - could take up to a 30 percent cut. Around 102 million consumers stand to benefit from this deal, though some consumers will receive only $2 in a payout in this settlement.

At least four people are dead after the powerful storms and the flooding that swept across the East Coast. The rain and the wind washed out roads in New Jersey and in Connecticut. In Maine and New Hampshire, crews worked for hours, we are told, rescuing people from the high waters. It really - it got dangerous very quickly. The storm system also knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people. And right after this, temperatures are set to plunge across the northeast.

Actor Jonathan Majors was dropped by Disney's Marvel almost immediately after a New York jury found him guilty of reckless assault and harassment of a former girlfriend. Now Majors, he was a rising star in the Marvel brand with a high-profile role featured in current and future productions. That has all now changed. And the actor now faces up to a year in prison for the assault conviction.

SIDNER: All right, the Anti-Defamation League is reporting a surge in safety concerns among the Jewish community following bomb threats aimed at more than 400 Jewish institutions over the weekend. The Secure Community Network, another non-profit monitoring threats to Jewish communities, previously reported more than 200 bomb threats and swatting calls against Jewish institutions. Both the network and the ADL deemed these recent threats as hoaxes.

CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller is joining us now.

You know what, a hoax or not a hoax, it's terrifying when you get a call, especially in the climate that we're in. Why does the ADL believe that these - these threats are just hoaxes?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, the threats come into multiple institutions at the same time in - in a - in an email form where, you know, on the two line they'll have for or five different places and they'll say, you know, there's multiple bombs set to explode. You have to evacuate. Clearly they are meant to cause disruption and - and stoke fear.

SIDNER: It's - it is terrifying. Any time you get any kind of threat, but this is very specific and very particular to the Jewish community.

What does law enforcement have to do when something like this happen and you've got these swath of different places getting this same kind of threat?

MILLER: So, law enforcement first encourages every place that gets them, you know, regularly check your emails so it's not sitting in there, you know, in some box that nobody's watching. Then please report it to law enforcement. The ADL says the same thing. Talked to Oren Seigel (ph) yesterday there and, you know, he said they fit the same pattern, they come from the same places.

There was a recent spate, before this latest one, that were actual phone calls coming from voiceover IP accounts, hard to trace, hard to get a handle on them, where the person would claim, I'm in the actual named institution, wherever it was, and that I'm either going kill myself or I'm going to kill others, which, of course, was an entirely different kind of fear generating thing that was targeted at places that livestream services -

SIDNER: OK.

MILLER: You know, so that they could actually sit back and then watch their handywork as maybe it had to be evacuated or interrupted for a search. Of course, all of these calls bring a police response which causes a hazard. What do you do when unexpectedly a SWAT team arrives. The ADL has put a lot of work into trying to get in front of these where if they can get in the right channels they can warn the institution the threat is coming, warn the police at the same time and slow things down.

SIDNER: That is the real nature. We have seen issues with swatting in other cases were people are hurt or even possibly killed -

MILLER: Yes.

SIDNER: Because it makes it a very dynamic and dangerous situation.

[09:55:02]

MILLER: And this races back to mostly kids, some young adults, meaning teenagers to mid 20s, who are these people who sit at their gaming consoles all day and play in groups and not necessarily all in the same country, and then the loser is given the task, OK, your penance is you have to do a swatting call or one of these bomb threats. How did it get to target Jewish institutions? I suggested, you know, well, you've become the flavor of the months. And you know what the ADL said, no, we've become the flavor of all time now.

SIDNER: This is such a damn mess and it's ridiculous.

MILLER: It's very sad.

SIDNER: Thank you so much.

MILLER: There are arrests being made.

SIDNER: There are?

MILLER: There was a case last week where they arrested a teenager in California. They expect to make more arrests either in this country or others in that and perhaps in these latest things they can get to somebody, too. It's important to show that there's going to be consequences.

SIDNER: As my grandmother would say, "knock it off." This is awful.

Thank you so much, John Miller.

MILLER: Thanks.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, new reporting on the ground game strategy Donald Trump is deploying in Iowa. Why his team is now hoping that they have found the winning model for the general election.

And, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, she will be laid to rest today in Washington. President Biden will be speaking during the funeral service. We're going to bring it all to you live when it begins.

Stay with us.

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