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Attorney Tells Judge Trump Plans To Testify But Can't Be In Court Tomorrow Due To New Hampshire Primary; Trump, Haley Battle For NH Voters In First-In-The-Nation Primary. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 22, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: Donald Trump's civil defamation trial to be unexpectedly adjourned for the day. But before leaving court, his attorney confirmed, the former president still plans to testify.

On the campaign trail, Nikki Haley, making her final pitch to voters in New Hampshire ahead of tomorrow's primary. Haley finally making a full throated attack against Donald Trump.

And could we finally have a fast and easy way to screen for Alzheimer's? A new blood test may make that one step closer to reality, details on the potential medical breakthrough ahead. I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Already this morning, Donald Trump arrived in federal court and Donald Trump left. His next stop New Hampshire. Everyone was waiting to see if Trump would take the stand today in his defamation trial, but then court was abruptly adjourned. So now he'll leave the courtroom campaign to head to the actual campaign trail in the final hours there before polls open in New Hampshire. Now Nikki Haley is out talking to voters already this morning. And as we've just heard, is taking it to Donald Trump. Here she was just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: When you hear Trump speak, what's he talking about? Grievances, the past, he's talking about vendettas. Today, he's in court. Biden is talking about investigations. Neither one of them is talking about the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: We have live coverage for you this hour. CNN's Kristen Holmes is in Manchester, New Hampshire, CNN's Kara Scannell is in New York. Kara, court was abruptly canceled just a short time ago. What more are you learning about what happened?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kate. So there was a delayed start to court. And once the judge got on the bench just around 10 a.m., he informed everyone that a juror on his way into the court had told the judge she wasn't feeling well. The judge said the jurors should go home and test for any potential COVID exposure. So then he raised us to the parties and asked them if they wanted to continue with just eight jurors, Carroll's attorneys said that they would. Trump's lawyer, Alina Habba, said that they didn't want to.

She also had already informed the judge that she was exposed to COVID three days ago when she had dinner with her parents one of them had tested positive. So she had tested negative today and was in court. But she was arguing that they wanted to delay, they wanted to come back tomorrow and continue with the court proceeding. E. Jean Carroll is still putting on some of her case, but she is expected to rest and then Donald Trump is expected to take the stand.

It was at that point that Trump leaned over to Habba whispered to her. And then Habba said, your honor, my client just reminded me that tomorrow is the New Hampshire primaries. He wants to testify in this case. So can we come back to court on Wednesday. So the judge would not rule on that right now. Instead, he said he wanted to have all the jurors test him, the party's test for any potential COVID exposure. He also told them that he wanted them to keep evidence of their test, because the court would want to check for any potential positive cases.

And he said that they would look and see where things stood tomorrow morning with the jurors testing the party's testing. But he said to them that he was not willing to delay the trial another day. Even if Trump wanted to be in New Hampshire, he can testify here and go to New Hampshire as well. But the judge saying that he wasn't going to rule that circumstances, may give Trump what he wants with another day off but he said they also may not. Kate?

BOLDUAN: So Kristen, on this question of Trump is now saying that he would like to testify on Wednesday, that would be the day after the New Hampshire primary, this kind of collusion of the courtroom campaign and this -- the actual campaign calendar. We've seen this before. How is this going to work?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, look, when you talk to his political team, take all the legal part out of this and just focus on what they're trying to do here, which is suck all the oxygen out of the 2024 race. Today, they were trying to do that with him in court, the day before ballots were cast. And when you look at Wednesday, whether or not the judge allows him to testify, that's just something that they're going to play off of either way, if the judge says, no, you have to be here in court to testify or you don't get to testify at all, and we're not moving anything to Wednesday, his team will paint that as election interference, that they wouldn't let the front runner go to New Hampshire ahead of the primary.

If he does testify, another way for them to take control of the media narrative to, again, suck all the oxygen out of this race. So that's the politics of the legal. And now let's talk about the politics of the politics here in New Hampshire, because there's been a lot of questions as to what exactly Ron DeSantis dropping out of the race means for Donald Trump. And in terms of actually votes cast or votes counted, Donald Trump's team doesn't really think it helps him in any way because they were already viewing this as a two-person race between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley.

However, when it comes to Ron DeSantis's endorsement that allows Donald Trump to paint this as the party unifying behind him, allows him to say that it's time for Nikki Haley to drop out because you're seeing all of these various people, including his opponent or one's opponent who he attacked viciously now getting behind him. This is what he said about this last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[11:05:19]

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Get your neighbors, get your family, get everybody, you got to vote because we have to win by big margins. We have to let them know this is a movement Tomorrow I go to that, I do the court thing. Then I come back and I make a speech tomorrow night. And hopefully that should wrap it up because we are so far ahead. It's incredible. We have to win on Tuesday. You know, Vivek, just came with us. And now Ron just came with us. They're all coming with us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Now, I will note that Trump on "Fox" after he was promoting the endorsement said that it was probably unlikely that Ron DeSantis would even serve in his administration. So yet another blow to Ron DeSantis who Trump spent an entire year attacking then Trump wrapped it up after his endorsement saying he probably wouldn't be part of any administration Trump had.

BOLDUAN: Kristen Holmes in New Hampshire, Kara Scannell, outside federal court, thank you so much. John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: The polls open in just a few hours. With us now the busiest man on earth. David Chalian, CNN political director. David, one of the questions is what would success in New Hampshire be for Nikki Haley. Chris Sununu, the governor there, says she doesn't have to finish first. And someone in the Sununu camp just told us that she doesn't even need to get necessarily, well, he said if they can keep Donald Trump below 60 percent or 50 percent. That would be good for Nikki Haley. You will see the highest margins in competitive Republican primaries before, Ronald Reagan was the only one to get over 50. So how do you judge success?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, first of all, if she were to win the New Hampshire primary, I would consider that success. I think anything short of that, John, is her campaign, her allies and others putting their best spin forward to try and set expectations for everyone else. She -- if she over performs where most of the polling has her and I let's say she's within five points of Donald Trump, do I think that she might be able to get some momentum, some continued funding and rationale for moving forward? Sure, I'm not sure how long lasting that will be looking into the rest of the calendar.

But I -- here for Nikki Haley, where we are because of Donald Trump's overwhelming victory in Iowa because everyone else has dropped out because of the coalescing around him because of the math in the upcoming events, an outright victory here is really what will define success for her. BERMAN: Let's talk about what happens after tomorrow. I'm going to put up the schedule here, roughly. This is the primary calendar people can see it right here. Let me pull out so they can see the whole map here. There are a smattering of early contests. Nikki Haley is not competing in the Nevada caucuses. South Carolina is on the 24th of February, Michigan's on the 27th. And then everything in green here is Super Tuesday on March 5th. So what is this mean, as we look at this for Nikki Haley?

CHALIAN: Well, it also matters I think what kinds of contests are being held in the States, John? So about half of them, I think, are going to be contests where either there's no registration in the state and the election could be open to independents, as well, or half of them are close to just Republicans only, which has not been her strong suit if you look at the Iowa entrance polls, if you look at the pre- election polling here in New Hampshire.

So if you start looking at the delegate math, and what will Nikki Haley need to do to be truly in a viable position for the nomination, she would have to start showing strength in areas of the electorate conservatives, Republicans, that she hasn't yet shown. That's number one. And then number two is I think the question for the Haley campaign is, what does this look like as a campaign going forward? If much of the party is coalescing around Donald Trump, assuming he has a substantial victory tomorrow night here for the purposes of this conversation? Is this a bit of a zombie campaign? Is she just sort of waiting it out to see if something happens in court in the month ahead with Donald Trump and so that she's just sort of standing there as a vehicle for all the Never Trump or somewhat anti-Trump or I'm open to moving away from Trump Republicans in the party, which by the way, do not seem to be the largest share of the party thus far.

BERMAN: Yes, look, just a few points on that. If you look at the favorability ratings right now, out of New Hampshire in our poll, David, and you pointed this out to me, Donald Trump's favorable ratings are positive, you know, 20 percent positive. Nikki Haley is actually underwater with favorably which leads me to my question of, not so much even the calendar, David. But what's life like for Nikki Haley, if she stays in after tomorrow. There's a lot of time in this one on one and race where she's just going to be attacked relentlessly everyday.

[11:10:03]

Nancy Mace by the way Republican congresswoman from Nikki Haley's home state of South Carolina just endorsed Donald Trump. That's the kind of thing she'll be facing.

CHALIAN: Right. Joining with her former lieutenant governor, joining with the two U.S. senators from the state, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, may have served and was twice elected as governor in South Carolina, that doesn't necessarily mean she has a leg up in a Republican primary there. And so I do think you noted there's like a month now, before that South Carolina primary. The reason those favorable and unfavorable numbers are what they are, John, is because of the pummeling that Nikki Haley has been taking in the last couple of months since she started having some momentum from Trump and his allies. That is only going to continue.

And so she's going to have to find a way to tell donors and explain to voters that there is a viable path for her to the nomination. Once nobody in the donor class or voters start believing that and buying into that, she's going to be left on an island. And that is no place that a candidate wants to be especially if they're trying to avoid an embarrassing loss in their home state.

BERMAN: Yes, look, we've been circling and pointing out things on the map. I just wanted to circle a couple of things on the calendar. Look at all these days at the end of January, where there's nothing. And again, Nikki Haley is not competing in Nevada. So what you really have here is three full weeks. That's a lot of empty real estate for a campaign that may not have momentum after tomorrow might. But if she doesn't have the momentum, hard, those are four hard brutal weeks to stay in. David Chalian, great to see you as always. Thanks.

CHALIAN: Thanks John.

BERMAN: Sara?

SIDNER: All right, joining me now CNN senior political commentator and former Congressman Adam Kinzinger. And senior columnist for The Daily Beast, Matt Lewis. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Congressman, I want to start with you. You, yesterday, I think, just yesterday, put out an ad on Twitter, urging independents to go to the polls in New Hampshire. Are there enough independent undeclared voters to swing the state for Nikki Haley, as opposed to Donald Trump's numbers look really good polling wise?

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I mean, I think there are. It's, you know, it's New Hampshire. It's -- it has this history, this tradition. I mean, John McCain won it in 2000. It likes to do things a little bit differently. And so I think it's -- I think Nikki Haley probably has substantial GOP support there. Maybe not if it was only restricted to Republicans voting. She may come in underwater to Trump but with the independents there. I think they can make a significant difference in New Hampshire likes that. They like to be able to say that they're more than just kind of your typical, we're stuck in only Democrats or only Republicans, we'd like to do things differently.

So we can make a difference. I think she's suffering a little from expectations, which is everybody is kind of expecting she's going to win. And if she doesn't win, it's going to be seen as a disappointment. So it'll be interesting to see how this goes.

SIDNER: All right, Matt, now to you, some -- you did some really good reporting on DeSantis. DeSantis done. His presidential campaign over. He announced that over the weekend. He was sort of touted as the -- at the beginning as the better alternative to Donald Trump. What happened?

MATT LEWIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think a lot of things went wrong. You know, I was thinking just today, we shouldn't really be talking about Nikki Haley and New Hampshire. This should be Ron DeSantis and New Hampshire. And I think it could have been. He made a lot of mistakes. But I think maybe one of the fundamental mistakes was that Ron DeSantis, didn't try to get me and Adam, on his part -- as part of this coalition.

I mean, there's a scenario where Ron DeSantis runs against Donald Trump. And he basically tries to become a hybrid who brings in Republicans who don't like Donald Trump, and also Republicans who voted for Trump, but are ready to move on that he could have tried to be a hybrid candidate. That would have essentially, I think boxed out Nikki Haley, there's no reason for Nikki Haley to run if Ron DeSantis becomes a candidate who is at least minimally acceptable to non-Trump Republicans.

Instead, DeSantis tried to become Trump light. Now, if you're already voting for Trump, why would you vote for Trump light? So I think he started off with this fundamental, flawed strategy. And then when it didn't work, what did he do? He decided, let's go after the Elon Musk vote. Let's go after the even like rarer, weirder, kind of, you know, right wing edge lord Twitter very online vote.

And so, look, yes, I think that there's a scenario where Ron DeSantis could have, in fact, gotten in this race early, gotten in January, instead of waiting till the summer, he could have run aggressively. And who knows, I think we'd be talking about him instead of Nikki Haley.

SIDNER: I'm curious, Congressman, when you look at this race, if Nikki Haley pulls out a second here, or if there's the possibility she comes out ahead of Donald Trump. I mean, if she doesn't do that, is this basically over for her?

KINZINGER: Yes. And by the way, Matt is right. I just want to say quickly on that with DeSantis because look I think his calculation was Donald Trump is going to go down with all of his, you know, legal challenges and stuff, and I'll be the heir apparent, not a bad play if that actually happens, but when you're not part of like telling the truth to the base about the fact that Donald Trump is corrupt, you can't expect everybody else, you can't expect Matt and I to go do it, you know, put us down and then wish we would have actually been more successful.

[11:15:26]

So in terms of Haley, I think maybe a very close second place, you know, point or two maybe keeps her in the running through South Carolina. She probably stays in the running for South Carolina regardless. I hope she does, because this needs to go on. But if she wins, it's going to drive Donald Trump batty. And I think the hope here is we'll see yet again how insane he is, because he's going to go apoplectic about it. And she may gain some in that.

I do think for her to be competitive through the longer primary season though, she actually has to win tomorrow. I think anything short of a win. They can obviously spin as really good. And it probably would be. But the expectation are, she has to -- is that she has to win New Hampshire because that's her only opportunity at this moment.

SIDNER: Right. And you have South Carolina coming up after that. That is her home state. And already there's been some endorsements from some of her fellow lawmakers in her state that have gone to Donald Trump if she loses that. It's -- that's hard for a candidate to come back from. I do want to ask you, Matt, you know, DeSantis is out. Where do those votes go? I mean, you said he's trying to out Trump, Trump. That's kind of what's his pitfall, his downfall. Those votes just kind of go over to Donald Trump from those who are going to vote for DeSantis? Or do you think there's a chance Haley can snag some of those?

LEWIS: Look, I think that probably 80 percent of those votes will go to Donald Trump and only because we've seen that, as part of the polling. DeSantis did kind of run more as a mock candidate. And then he endorsed Trump, and then he attacked Nikki Haley in that endorsement. So I think most of those votes will go to Donald Trump. It will hurt Nikki Haley. What she needed was Chris Christie to get out. She needed Vivek and DeSantis to stay and that would have been very helpful.

If we're looking for a silver lining, I would say I think that anything that shakes things up right now because I don't think Nikki has provided enough excitement, you know, we didn't have the debates in New Hampshire that we normally have. So anything that shakes things up, maybe that helps her in some sort of weird vibe way. But if we're looking at the numbers, if we're looking at math, I think it's a net loss for her.

SIDNER: Yes, I mean, we've been listening to her this morning, and she's been more sharp in her attacks against Donald Trump than I think we've heard this whole time but it is 24 hours before people vote. Adam Kinzinger, Matt Lewis, thank you, gentlemen so much for that conversation. Appreciate it.

KINZINGER: You bet.

BERMAN: And tonight on Laura Coates live, a CNN exclusive, Vice President Kamala Harris talks with Laura about the state of the race and how she and President Biden plan to win a second term that is tonight 11:00 p.m. right here on CNN. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Chaos inside as the Israeli parliament, as protesters are demanding the release of hostages still being held in Gaza by Hamas. Why the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he is rejecting the latest terms and conditions proposed by Hamas.

And a potential medical breakthrough, a new blood test that could screen for Alzheimer's. We'll be back.

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[11:23:05]

BERMAN: All right, just a short time ago, court was abruptly adjourned for the day in the defamation damages trial against Donald Trump, adjourned because of a sick juror. Now there is a question about whether Donald Trump who says he wants to testify in this case will have to do so tomorrow, the day of the New Hampshire primary. With us now, CNN chief legal affairs correspondent Paula Reid and former Trump White House lawyer Jim Schultz. And Paula, I should say there are already Trump allies yelling and screaming about this. Talk to me about what's really happening.

REID: So here a juror was dismissed because this person was sick, they were allowed to go home for the day. The judge then gave both sides the option to proceed with eight jurors. E. Jean Carroll's attorney seemed open to that. But Trump's lawyer Alina Habba requested an adjournment. Then subsequently, she brought up the fact that her client does want to testify, but can't do so tomorrow because of the New Hampshire primary.

Now he can, she said, testify on Wednesday. The judge said look, I'm not going to decide on that right now. This is significant, though, because so far, this judge has not been very amenable to working around Donald Trump's schedule. Last week, they tried to get court adjourned on Thursday for his mother-in-law's funeral. And the judge said, no, you have a right to be here and be represented by counsel or by yourself. But we're not going to adjourn court.

And it is likely that the judge is going to tell him about tomorrow. You've known about the New Hampshire primary for a while, we are not going to move court or adjourn court because you want to be in New Hampshire, particularly when he has spent so much time, right, in this courtroom and not campaigning. You also have this issue of sickness though, right. I mean, there's an easy way for the judge to resolve this, delay court one more day, say look, we have someone who's sick, we want to give them full time to recover and you avoid the fight with Alina Habba which is really what they want. And everybody hopefully comes back healthy on Wednesday. We'll see. I don't know.

BERMAN: Look, if someone's sick, you know, it's going to decide the whole issue, period. If there is or when sick then it becomes a bit of an issue what Donald Trump is forced to testify. Jim Schultz, he won't be forced to testify, chooses to testify. The fact that Donald Trump's allies Elise Stefanik are already yelling and screaming about political interference on Twitter. In this case, where Donald Trump doesn't even have to be in the courtroom, what does this tell you about how he's using this entire trial?

[11:25:20]

JIM SCHULTZ, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE LAWYER: Look, I think that's just political noise, right? The judge doesn't have to listen to the political noise, isn't that -- he controls that courtroom, the judge can make those determinations. And judges can make those determinations as they see fit. Clearly, they're going to continue to beat the drum that this is election interference, political interference, trying to impact the outcome of this New Hampshire primary, which, you know, looks pretty good for Donald Trump at this point in time.

I think you're going to continue to hear that throughout all of these cases. And, you know, in places like Georgia, right, they're not helping themselves with some of the problems that they're having down there. And some of the other cases as its planned -- as they play out, you know, kind of feed into this theory that the -- to the, you know, the table pounding of the Republicans on this thing, because of all the other outstanding issues. The Jack Smith case kind of just plugs along, while these ancillary cases just create political opportunities for the Republicans.

BERMAN: Paula?

REID: What's unusual about New York is it's a lot of manufactured drama, right? He's in court. He's been disrupted while witnesses on the stand. So if you and I were sitting in federal court, you can't be disruptive while someone is testifying. His lawyer has to use the Federal Rules of Evidence to introduce evidence. These are the kinds of things that give rise to disagreements with the judge.

It is manufactured controversy, and then they're trying to frame it as election interference when you do have some legitimate things to work with. Like, you know, Jim just mentioned, what's going on down in Georgia or the larger constitutional questions in the federal cases. It just -- it's odd that there's so much effort to manufacture fake controversies, when you have other legitimate questions that are arising in other cases.

BERMAN: Jim, to that end, how far do you think Donald Trump will push or tear up the envelope if and when he does take the witness stand in this case?

SCHULTZ: So look, you know, he's never been someone who's going to mince words, right? So I don't think, look, I don't think it's beneficial for him to testify over his lawyers, I probably wouldn't have him testify. You know, he's kind of -- he's a witness who has shown time and time again, that he says what he wants to, he doesn't really take lawyer's advice as it relates to that. So I think you can expect a lot of political showmanship there, and probably not a lot that's going to advance the interests of the actual case.

BERMAN: Jim Schultz, Paula Reid, thank you both very much. Sara?

BERMAN: All right, coming up, another health scare for the royal family. What we're learning about the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson's new diagnosis.

And protesters in Israel demanding action from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after he outright rejected a proposal for the release of hostages still being held in Gaza. Details on that ahead.

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