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Trump Civil Fraud Bond Reduced to $175 Million; Trump Hush Money Case to Start April 15. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 25, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:11]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're tracking breaking news on CNN NEWS CENTRAL. I'm Boris Sanchez alongside Jessica Dean in Washington, D.C.

We're tracking a legal doubleheader for Donald Trump in New York,a pair of cases that go right to the heart of the former president's campaign and business empire. We are standing by as the former president is outside of 40 Wall Street right now, set to make remarks to cameras.

We're monitoring his entrance as we speak. You're looking at pictures of Trump in court today for his Manhattan criminal case centered on alleged hush money payments tied to his first presidential run. We now have a trial date set, because, in the last hour, the judge rejected Trump's motion to delay or dismiss that case, jury selection now set to start on April 15.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Now, Trump did get a win today in his separate civil fraud case.

He was on the hook to pay roughly a half-billion dollars in bond money today or face the potential seizure of his assets. But the appeals court trimmed the bill by more than half. It now stands at $175 million, and it gave him 10 additional days to come up with that money.

Let's start first with the hush money case. That's the criminal case.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins, Paula Reid and Kara Scannell are outside the courthouse.

And, Kaitlan, just a reminder of how we got here. Today was supposed to be the first day of this trial.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: Yes, it was.

And now they have just confirmed, the judge, inside that courtroom that this trial will now begin in three weeks. And Trump's attorneys had walked into that courtroom today hoping to get that delay extended even further from what it was initially expected to be, which, of course, a start date of today that was delayed after some issues with the discovery and how documents were turned over to Trump's legal team.

But the judge today rejected any effort by Trump to say that that warrants a further delay in this trial or even a dismissal of the case outright. And that is something that stands in stark contrast with what we have seen happen with every other criminal trial that Trump was facing, where the judges have gone along with delays on some of the issues.

This one is different. This is going to be Trump on trial and three weeks from now with that jury selection beginning on April 15.

And we have a team here with us. We have got Paula Reid and Kara Scannell.

Kara, you were actually inside the courtroom as all of this was happening. And it wasn't clear that we were going to get this date from the judge while they were all still inside the room. How did Trump respond when the judge said, nope, you're going to trial April 15?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, when the judge had found -- made his initial findings saying that the district attorney's office wasn't at fault, so -- which was the prelude to him ultimately saying we're going to trial on April 15, Donald Trump shook his head from side to side, looking annoyed by that.

And then, as he was just about to leave the courtroom at the end of it, he twisted his face in a way of just looking frustrated, before he then walked out of the courtroom, so clearly not happy with the outcome in this case today, because he was hoping to get a delay in the trial by a couple more weeks, if not longer.

And the judge at one point earlier, before he came to this conclusion, said he didn't even really understand why we were here today, because he felt like the facts were the facts and Trump's team was misreading these facts and was misleading the court about the actual details of this -- of the turning over of documents from federal prosecutors.

COLLINS: And so this is notable because, in that brief period, the 45-minute recess where the judge was making this final decision before he came out and told us publicly what he had decided, the Trump legal team also got some other unexpected, some welcome news...

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

COLLINS: ... which is, when it comes to the bond that Jessica was referencing there, that he had to put up half-a-billion dollars.

It was through -- the 30-day grace period ended today. And that appeals court made a rare ruling on a Monday saying that he could actually pay a smaller bond and he's got more time to come up with a way to front that.

REID: Yes, win some, lose some today for the Trump legal team here in the state of New York. This is a huge win, because just a few hours ago, when Trump entered

this courthouse for this morning's hearing, he was facing the possibility that, by the end of the day, if he couldn't post that $464 million bond, that the attorney general could begin the process of seizing...

COLLINS: And Donald Trump is walking in right now. He is hosting a press conference with reporters. We heard from him briefly walking into the courtroom and now he is expected to speak to reporters, take a few questions at 40 Wall Street. Let's listen.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: ... Biden-run things, meaning Biden and his thugs, because I don't know if he knows he's alive.

And it's a shame. It's a shame what's happening to our country. This is election interference. They are doing things that have never been done in this country before. We have never had anything like it, certainly not at this level, but we have really had nothing like it that I have been able to find.

It does happen a lot in Third World countries, banana republics. If you look at what we just left, you had a -- have a case which they're dying to get this thing started. The judge cannot go faster. He wants to get it started. The judge cannot go faster. He wants to get it started so badly. And there's tremendous corruption.

[13:05:14]

You have Pomerantz, Mark Pomerantz, who was Hillary Clinton's lawyer, Democrat National Committee's lawyer. He worked in Paul, Weiss. He walked in and he took over the district attorney's office -- nobody's ever seen anything like that -- to prosecute Trump.

And then they wouldn't do what he wanted to do, and they -- and he goes out and he writes a book long before any decisions were made. He writes a book about it. And the book gets published. And everybody's reading his book. And the judge said there's nothing wrong with that.

And if you look at Bragg, Bragg had a fit over that. Bragg said, this trial is now dead. We can't do the trial. Well, that was one of the problems. And the judge should have allowed that to happen. And you had other instances like Colangelo.

Colangelo is a radical left from the DOJ who was put into the state working with Letitia James and then was put into the district attorney's office to run the trial against Trump. And that was done by Biden and his thugs also, because they can't win an election because of the borders, because of energy prices, because of inflation, because of Afghanistan, the worst and most embarrassing day in the history of our country.

He can't win because of Russia, Russia, Russia, because of all the problems, because of Ukraine being attacked by Russia. And he can't win because of the October 7 attack of Israel, which he should have never allowed to happen. Would have never happened if I were president. Ukraine would have never been attacked if I was president.

And you wouldn't have inflation if I was president. We didn't have inflation, so all of these things. So what they do is, they do election interference, which is court cases and let's try and tie him up, and let's take as much of his money as possible.

I respect the Appellate Division for substantially reducing that ridiculous amount of money that was put on by a corrupt judge named Engoron. Going to looked at, seriously looked at, especially what he did with valuations. He's the one. He's a fraudulent valuator, where he values Mar-a-Lago at $18 million, and people say it's worth 50 to 100 times that much, the biggest experts in the business.

So he ought to be looked at. And James ought to be looked at because she tried to get him. She's like the puppet master of the judge. And our state, this state, is losing tremendous prestige. It's losing its companies. It's losing its people. They're fleeing.

And violent crime is flourishing. And we can't have that. We can't have that. No city should have that. And it's happening in other cities, but not with the lawfare. The lawfare that they're doing is incredible. So they could have done this, in the case of the trial that we just left, one of the many that are going -- every single one of them is run by Biden and his thugs, the only way they think they can get elected.

And I think so far it's backfiring, because the people of this country understand it. It's backfiring. But they're being run and they're running all of these different cases, so ridiculous, the cases. Every one of them is ridiculous.

You take a look at any one of them and you say any one of them, it wouldn't make any difference. This is all weaponization of DOJ and FBI. They raided my house, in violation of a thing called the Fourth Amendment. Not allowed to do that. They raided my house in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. No notice, no nothing. They raided it. I can't believe it. Nobody can believe it.

And we will see how that all works out in the end. But it's illegal what they're doing. It's criminal what they're doing. And it's never been done before in this country. You can't have an election in the middle of a political season. We just had Super Tuesday and we had a Tuesday after Tuesday already.

And we had Louisiana the other day, a couple of days ago, and we won in a record number, the highest number ever recorded. And -- but we're in the middle of an election right now, and we're fighting crooked Joe Biden, who's the worst president in the history of our country, by far. He's let this country go to hell, the borders, millions and millions of people coming in from prisons, from mental institutions.

They're terrorists, many people coming in from prisons and mental institutions, think of it, and terrorists are coming into our country. And this guy's just letting them come in by the millions. I think we have 15 million people already.

SANCHEZ: We are going to continue monitoring the remarks from former President Donald Trump just moments after leaving court, a judge deciding to move forward with his hush money criminal case one-month delayed. It was supposed to start today. Now it is set to start on April 15.

[13:10:00]

Trump there laying out a plethora of falsehoods, perhaps the most blatant one, that all of these criminal cases were orchestrated by President Biden. There is no evidence to support that. Just about every single one of the criminal cases went before grand juries that then elected to indict the former president.

But, of course, he is using this moment, Kaitlan Collins, as an opportunity to campaign, as we have often seen him do before.

COLLINS: Yes, some of the classics there, including his claim that he repeats on a near daily basis about other countries emptying out their mental institutions and sending those people across the border, something his campaign has never been able to provide any factual basis for.

But on the task at hand today, which is these criminal cases and the fact that his first criminal case is going to be starting in three weeks with that jury selection after that decision made here in the courtroom behind us by Judge Juan Merchan.

Trump was criticizing that and criticizing Alvin Bragg, the district attorney who has brought that case. Mark Pomerantz, the person he was citing, is an attorney who used to -- a prosecutor used to work in that office and then detailed a book about the investigations that they had been potentially pursuing against Donald Trump, including that they once considered bringing a racketeering charge against him.

Trump did not mention that part of Mark Pomerantz's book. But, clearly, his anger here is at the judge and the fact that Judge Merchan did not allow this trial to get delayed any further than what it already was, which, I should note, it was supposed to start today. So there is at least a three-week delay.

He was saying the judge cannot move fast enough on this. What the judge has made clear here is something we have kind of seen in stark contrast to the other criminal cases that Trump is facing is that he does not play into this delay strategy that we have seen from Trump's legal team and said that what they brought today does not warrant any further delay from this court and that that case will go forward, Boris.

DEAN: All right, Kaitlan, stand by. We're going to come back to you.

Let's go now to our fact-checker, Daniel Dale.

And, Daniel, as Boris mentioned, over and over again, we heard these baseless claims that all of these criminal prosecution, that all of these trials, civil and criminal, are tied back to Joe Biden and the DOJ. There is, again, no evidence to support that.

And I'd like you to just walk people through, because these claims are just simply not supported by any evidence.

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: They're not supported by any evidence.

So let's look at the two cases we're talking most frequently about today. We have the civil fraud trial, in which Trump needs to put up all this money. Well, that resulted from an investigation launched in 2019 while Donald Trump was still president, not Joe Biden, by the state attorney general of New York, Attorney General James.

She filed a lawsuit that led to the trial in which he was found liable in 2022, before Trump even launched his campaign. So the idea that this was some Joe Biden-launched thing, that Joe Biden timed this for the sake of election interference does not hold water.

Then, this case, the criminal case in which a trial date has been set, brought by a local district attorney, district attorney Bragg, over whom Joe Biden simply does not have jurisdiction. This is a local matter decided by a local official. But Trump tried to bolster his false claim by saying, oh, Biden put Matthew Colangelo there, an official from the Department of Justice.

And, yes, a senior DOJ official did go work for DA Bragg, but this was his own personal job decision. He had a preexisting relationship with DA Bragg. He had worked with him in the state attorney general's office, decided to go over to help with the Trump case.

There is no basis for the claim that Biden or other DOJ officials put him there. And I just want to add that I think we're so used to former President Trump making these broad allegations of, he said, illegality, criminality, and corruption, accusing specific individuals of corruption, calling the investigations illegal, criminal.

There is no basis for any of that. And I think it's just what he does, so we tend to brush it off, but I think it's important to address it when he says it again.

SANCHEZ: Absolutely.

And, Daniel, please stand by, because he did continue talking after we moved away from him, so there's probably going to be more to fact- check there.

DALE: Yes.

SANCHEZ: Stand by, Daniel.

We want to go to Kaitlan Collins again.

Kaitlan, this is effectively a preview of what we're going to see as these cases play out, Trump coming before cameras and not only defending himself and what's happening in the court of law, but also trying to present himself to the public and the court of opinion as someone who's being wronged by state and federal officials.

COLLINS: Yes, even though his Republican challengers in the primary would disagree and say, actually, the indictments and their arguments of people like Ron DeSantis, they believed helped him.

And just to note, obviously, you're seeing Donald Trump speak right now. The dark -- that man with the dark hair that you were just hearing from, that's Todd Blanche.

He was the attorney that was being pressed by Judge Merchan inside that courtroom behind me earlier today as they were seeking to try to delay this. The judge asking him multiple questions about what kind of documents it was that they were trying to delay this over. Unable to get a specific unable to get a specific number from Todd Blanche there.

[13:15:11]

And Paula Reid and Kara Scannell are both back here with me.

I think one thing that's also notable from what Trump said there is, he was basically implying that he believes Judge Engoron and the attorney general of New York, Letitia James, who brought the civil fraud trial case against him, should be investigated for what they do. So, he's essentially arguing that this is election interference, that he's being unfairly targeted.

But then he's calling for those officials to also be investigated simply for investigating him and overseeing a trial where his businesses was looked at.

REID: Yes, something he does a lot, right? He's also called for investigations into DA Fani Willis down in Georgia. Pretty much anyone who tries to investigate him or successfully brings charges, he is going to call for them to be investigated.

But this trial will start in about three weeks now. Jury selection will get under way. It's expected to last for around six weeks. That's getting into the heart of campaign season.

I think this is exactly what we can expect from the former president throughout this trial, using any opportunity to address the microphones and suggest that this is not a legitimate criminal investigation, that this is instead an effort to interfere with the 2024 election, which is notable because the...

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Well, one second, Paula. We're going to listen now that he is taking questions.

TRUMP: It's the fraud. He created a fraud in order to help his narrative and her narrative, because he does whatever she wants.

And the judge is really -- what he's done is fraudulent. He made Mar- a-Lago -- you know it very well, Maggie. He made Mar-a-Lago into $18 million. I had many offers. They said, I will give you 19. OK? You could take the -- half of the living room is worth more than that. So it's worth anywhere from 50 to 100 times that amount.

And he stays with it. So he's either whacked out or dishonest, one or the other, or both, probably both. But he's a disgrace to the system. And I think that New York state was helped a lot today by the decision. I will give you an example. TRUTH Social is doing very well. It's hot as a pistol and doing great.

And it's going public. And the New York Stock Exchange wants to have us badly. And I told them, we can't do the New York Stock Exchange. You're treated too badly in New York. We don't want to do the New York Stock Exchange. And the people at the stock exchange are very, very upset about it. The top person is mortified, can't believe it.

He said, I'm losing business because of New York, because people don't want to be in New York and they don't want to go on the New York Stock Exchange. So you can ask them about it. But how can you do that? I'd love to go on the New York Stock Exchange. It was always -- it would be a big thing to go on the New York Stock Exchange. It would be nice.

But people aren't going on the New York Stock Exchange now because of what's happening in New York, because they don't want to be attacked by a thug like this horrible attorney general that we have in New York, the worst in the whole country. So we will decide about TRUTH Social and what we do with it.

But there's just an example of how this is hurting New York and New York state.

Yes.

QUESTION: Can you give us a little bit more detail about the timing of when you plan to secure the bond and how exactly you're planning to pay for the bond?

TRUMP: Well, as I say, I have a lot of cash. You know I do because you looked at my statements. I mean, you have been examining my statements for a long time.

And I have much more than that in cash. But I would also like to be able to use some of my cash to get elected. They don't want me to use my cash to get elected. They don't want that. They don't want me taking cash out to use it for the campaign. And they looked at it and this judge looked at it. And he's part of the whole deal and why he's such a disgrace for this city, again, the most overturned judge.

There's never been that we can find a -- just a case where a judge has been overturned now five times. It was four times. Now it's five times been overturned. But I have a lot of cash and a great company. I mean, to think they want to go after a company. This is a great company, a company that's doing very well.

I have got very low debt on buildings, like this building. I have very low debt on this building. Most buildings, I have no debt. Most clubs, I have no debt. You took -- look at my greatest assets. I have no debt. I didn't even include, like, brand value. And the brand value is -- I became president because of the brand, let's say.

But the brand value is, it's one of the most valuable brand values. I think it's -- I wouldn't swap it for any other brand in the world. Trump. I don't even put anything down for it. I had very conservative statements. And the way they made them look bad is by valuing Mar-a- Lago at $18 million, instead of what the real value is, which was at least 50 to maybe 100 times more.

Think of that. This is the fraud. They're creating a fraud, and they're hurting the state so badly. And then I can't go into the New York Stock Exchange because I can't do business Because I don't want to do -- not because I can't, because I don't want to do business in New York.

And the people at the New York Stock Exchange, I can tell you right now, and they're very fine people, they're not happy.

[13:20:02]

Yes. You were going to say something.

QUESTION: Mr. President, you mentioned the cash you had. You said on Friday you had something like $500 million.

TRUMP: Yes.

QUESTION: You intended to put some of that in the campaign.

Now that the bond's been reduced, are you going to start putting money into your campaign?

TRUMP: Yes. Yes.

QUESTION: You haven't done that since 2016.

TRUMP: Well, first of all, it's none of your business, I mean, frankly.

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: But I might. I might do that. I have the option.

But if I have to spend $500 million on a bond, I wouldn't have that option. I'd have to start selling things. I don't have to sell anything because I'm a -- it's a phenomenal company. Look, I built a phenomenal company. Someday, they will actually report that. I built a phenomenal company that's very low leverage, unbelievably low leverage with a lot of cash, a lot of everything else.

Why should I let a crooked judge make a decision to give $450 million? That allows me to spend very little money on my campaign if I so choose. I will be spending money on my campaign. I might spend a lot of money on my campaign, but I should have that option. A crooked judge shouldn't say, we're going to have you post a bond and take all of that money that I could be spending on a campaign or other things if I want to do other things. So we were gratified by the professionalism of the opinion today. I

thought it was a very -- I think it's a very important opinion for New York. But the only thing that's going to really solve that problem is when I win, because you're going to have to win, because no company is going to be coming to New York if I don't win that case. That case is a scam, it's a sham, and it's a hoax.

(CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: Would you ever accept money from a foreign government to pay the bond or your clients or...

TRUMP: No, I don't -- I don't do that. I mean, I think you would be allowed to possibly. I don't know. I mean, if you go borrow from a big bank, many of the banks are outside of this -- as you know, the biggest banks, frankly, are outside of our country. So you could do that.

But I don't need to borrow money. I have a lot of money. I have a lot of -- I built a great company. But I don't want to have a crooked judge named Engoron and a crooked, horrible, the worst -- the worst, I would say without question, attorney general in the country, the most obnoxious and the worst attorney general in the whole country. And she did it for political reasons.

Go back and take a look at her ads. We will stop Trump. Well, she knows nothing about me. I never heard of her. She was advertising and she took ads and saying, we will stop Trump. We will stop him, stop him. Vicious. I said, boy, that's a bad one. Then I looked, she got elected.

But then she tried to do it with the governor. And it didn't work. She went after the current governor, who's much more talented than she is. She went after the current governor. She was very nasty and she polled at about 3 percent. She polled at nothing. And after six weeks or seven weeks, she pulled out of the race.

She ran for governor on what she was doing to me. She thought that would work. It didn't work. I just think that it's very important that -- you know, this is a time when businesses have a choice to go to a lot of places, including other countries. They don't have to stay in our country, but they can certainly go also to a lot of other states, a lot of people going to Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, a lot of -- South Carolina.

And you have a lot of competition. You shouldn't be persecuting people that have done a great job. I paid $300 million approximately over the years in taxes here, $300 million. That's a lot of money. And you're going to lose those people that pay all that money. And you're not even going to have a state anymore. They just won't be able to do it.

Yes.

QUESTION: But back to the trial is here in three weeks, do you plan to testify? And are you concerned...

TRUMP: Which? Which hearing?

QUESTION: The trial here.

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I don't know that you're going to have the trial. I don't know how you can have a trial like this in the middle of an election, a presidential election.

And this is -- again, this is a Biden trial. These are all Biden trials because Colangelo worked for Biden. Can you imagine? They take a guy out of DOJ and they put him into the attorney general's office and then into the Manhattan DA's office to go after Trump.

These are all Biden trials. So I don't know that you're going to have it. I think we're going to get some court rulings.

Yes, please.

QUESTION: But will you testify if that trial goes forward?

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: I would have no problem testifying. I didn't do anything wrong.

QUESTION: And would you be concerned that a conviction, if you are convicted in that trial, could cost you the election, given what Todd said voters...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, it could also make me more popular, because the people know it's a scam. It's a Biden trial. This is a Biden -- there is no trial. There's a Biden trial.

Colangelo, a man who stood up, had the nerve to actually stand up and take over -- he's been sitting in the background for the last year. Today, he went right up front, because they figure he buffaloed the whole public and the writers, including you people.

SANCHEZ: So, as the president is answering questions from reporters, more falsehoods from former President Donald Trump, again, repeating this false claim that President Joe Biden is behind the slew of legal issues that he's facing, not only criminal, but also civil as well.

Notably there, there was a specific attack on Judge Arthur Engoron, President -- former President Trump saying that he created a narrative, that he's a puppet, effectively, for district attorney Letitia James, also claiming that he undervalued Mar-a-Lago.

[13:25:14]

There are a number of times that Trump has now referenced having enough cash, having enough money to pay for the bond that was set in the civil fraud trial that had originally been set at more than $460 million, today a judge reducing that to about $150 million, giving Trump 10 extra days to pay it.

Trump was asked when he would pay it, and if he would take in perhaps foreign money to help him cover that bond. He said he would not take in foreign money, but he didn't specify when he would pay, though he said -- quote -- "I have a lot in cash, but I'd like to use it to get elected," again, repeating the refrain that this is all politics.

We want to bring in CNN's Kristen Holmes to fact-check that.

Because, Kristen, when Trump first made that claim on social media last week, saying that he had enough money to cover at the time the $460-plus million bond, his attorneys quickly came back and tried to clarify that, saying, yes, he's not exactly that liquid, right?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

Look, he actually is liquid enough for the $175 million. As far as we can tell from every assessment we have seen of his finances, all the records that he's had, he has roughly $300 million to $400 million. A lot of that is still not completely liquid, but it would likely cover this $175 million.

The other part of this is the underwriters who said that they would only qualify -- they would only underwrite a bond for $100 million, a lot of that because of precedent. People did not have or had never underwritten a bond that was half-a-billion dollars. That is an enormous amount.

What I want to specify here and point out, one of the things we have been talking about, about this New York civil fraud case for the last several months has been how critical this is and how much this really plays to who Donald Trump is. The reason he's been there is because it goes to his identity, his core, his brand.

You have never heard him be so personal, so angry, and so public about that until today, today over and over and over again saying that he was rich enough, that he built a great company. One day, someone will report great his company is, saying he had so much cash on hand, how good his brand was, several times saying how many different properties he had, how in New York he had built up an entire conglomerate.

He is defending what he believes is the core of his identity and being. It is what he ran on in 2016. It is what helped propel him to the White House, this idea that he was this billionaire, this wealthy businessman, and you heard him tripling down on that today. That is the kind of stuff.

We are reporting that he is privately angry, that he has been ranting about this. What you saw today was that. He just was so upset by the fact that people were talking about that he wasn't wealthy enough, that he couldn't pay that $464 million bond.

And just to remind you, not only, as you said, did he come out and say, actually, I do have the cash, then his lawyers had to say, no, he doesn't, this is an impossible amount, no one is that liquid. But it was almost as though he could not stand the fact that people

were saying that he didn't have that cash. Now, the other part of today, he is clearly very angry that this trial is going forward. You heard him saying that he doesn't even know if there's going to be a trial. There is no indication that there's not going to be a trial.

And I will tell you, from talking to his team, they thought the trial was going to start today. They were surprised and pleasantly so that it was delayed even as far back as to April 15. They are planning an entire campaign around the fact that he is likely to be in court, meaning he's going to have campaign events on Wednesday and Saturdays.

Those are the days he's out of court. But talking about that campaign, whether or not he's going to actually give money to his campaign, you heard somebody ask the question there. You keep saying you want to give that money to the campaign. Well, now that the bond is lower, will you give money to your campaign?

First, he said yes. Then he said it's none of your business.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: Reminder, he has not given any money to his campaign since 2016.

SANCHEZ: Right.

HOLMES: We had no indication he's going to. And he had no indication from other people outside of his campaign.

Remember, he's been spending the last several weeks fund-raising to get money for his campaign because they have had some issues with their finances, because they have come in significantly lower than President Joe Biden. So the idea that somehow this is complicating things or making it impossible for him to finance his own campaign seems comical, at best, or a falsehood, just given the fact that we are -- we had no indication that he's going to.

And even now, he didn't answer the question sincerely and straightforward whether or not he would.

DEAN: Right. All right, Kristen, stay with us.

Let's go back out to Kaitlan Collins.

Kaitlan, just going off of what Kristen was explaining there, he was asked how he's going to pay for this now-reduced bond. And he talked -- he was asked if he would take foreign money. He said no, but then he talked about how some banks are outside of the U.S. and maybe you use those banks.

But -- and, again, it just, like, hits.