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Critical House Vote For Speaker Johnson On Surveillance Bill; Trump & Johnson To Make Joint Appearance At Mar-a-Lago; VP Harris Expected To Call Trump The "Architect" Of Abortion Crisis; Axios: DNC Covered Biden Legal Bills In Special Counsel Probe; Lawyer Turned Key Classified Docs Witness Leaves Trump Legal Team; Biden To Forgive $7.5B In Student Loan Debt For 277k Borrowers. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 12, 2024 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

MATT EGAN, CNN BUSINESS REPORTER: Four-day work weeks probably not imminent. He thinks that, yes, companies are going to experiment here, but he doesn't think that this is something that is going to happen in the very near term. But there is some research out there in Europe and the U.S. It does suggest that four-day work weeks, they benefit worker wellbeing and productivity in the biggest trial in the world. It was held in the U.K.

After a year, the vast majority of companies that try the four-day work week, they stuck with it. A majority of those companies, they actually adopted it permanently. So, I don't know, Sara, what do you say? Should we just make it official here at CNN four-day work week? Do we have those powers?

SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: Is that even a question? I mean, everyone in here is like, go do it.

EGAN: So that's it, it's official.

SIDNER: Well that is four-day. It's done.

EGAN: Done.

SIDNER: Done. Let's make it a law across the land.

EGAN: OK.

SIDNER: We can all agree. Matt Egan, although, I heard you creep up to four and a half. I'm like, what is that?

EGAN: No, four, four.

SIDNER: No.

EGAN: We said four.

SIDNER: All right. I'm just making sure.

EGAN: Thanks, Sara.

SIDNER: Thank you, Matt Egan. Appreciate it.

A new hour of CNN News Central starts now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: All right, happening now, a crucial vote that will answer a key question. Does House Speaker Mike Johnson have any control over his own party? A senior Republican member just told us he has no idea how this vote will go.

A key Donald Trump attorney turned witness out how Evan Corcoran's exit from Trump's legal team could impact the former president's classified documents case going forward. In the Biden administration canceling more than $7 billion worth of student loan debt this morning. Find out who qualifies.

Kate is out, I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner. This very special hour of CNN News Central starts now.

SIDNER: Happening very soon in this hour on Capitol Hill, a key vote on a bill that is really important for two reasons. The FBI wants it to pass because they say America is absolutely unsafe from foreign threats without it. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants it to pass to avoid another embarrassing failure and try to keep his job.

Important context here. This same vote failed just 48 hours ago after Donald Trump on Truth Social told lawmakers to kill it. But now another vote is about to be underway and after that, the House Speaker will hop on a plane to Mar-a-Lago to proverbially kiss the ring on the first tightly gripping the Republican Party. That is, of course, Donald Trump, as he fights to keep his gavel.

And the confusion doesn't stop there. Once in Mar-a-Lago, Trump and Johnson are set to make joint remarks about something else -- the upcoming election. More important context, Trump led a failed effort to overturn results of the last election and Johnson tried to help him.

CNN's Alayna Treene has brand new details this morning about what is going to happen at that Florida event. But, first, let's get to Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill. Give us a sense of what is happening now. I know this has been in the making, Lauren. Is there a sense it may actually pass this time?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this morning, the House has just started voting on a series of procedural issues. This first one is something that typically happens pretty flawlessly. The next one is the one that we care about. That is because it is the vote to pass what is known as the rule up here on Capitol Hill. This is the vote that failed just 48 hours ago with 19 hardliners voting against it.

Now, we do not know if this is going to actually get them to pass and if this is going to get them to the debate, but we do know that there are many members who voted against the rule last time who are now saying that they are comfortable with the changes that have been made to this bill.

The key change is that instead of this being a five-year reauthorization of the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, it is now a two-year reauthorization. The reason? A lot of hardliners believe that if Donald Trump wins in November, he will then be the president and can make his own changes to this bill that he wants to see.

That is exactly why many hardliners are saying that they are comfortable with it this morning. But again, when it comes to these rules votes, we have seen before them fall apart on the House floor seven times in this Congress alone. So we're just going to have to keep a very close eye. Sara?

SIDNER: And I know you will, we will as well. We're expecting that vote happening during this hour.

I want to go to you now, Alayna Treene. Johnson's headed to Mar-a- Lago. Not talking about FISA, not talking about this, but something completely different that keeps getting relitigated. Give us a sense.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, that's exactly right, Sara. Mike Johnson is heading to Mar-a-Lago, in part, to emphasize his close ties to the former president as he faces this threat from some of his House Republican colleagues over, you know, to strip him of his speaker's gavel.

Now, I am told from some of Donald Trump's senior advisers that the goal of this event today is to really focus on what they are calling so called election integrity. And part of that is really this emphasis on state proposals and lawsuits that would allow ultimately non- citizens to vote in the election.

[09:05:18]

But I want to be very clear here, Sara. There is already a federal law in place that bans non-citizens from voting in elections. But this is really something we've seen Donald Trump and Republicans focus heavily on ahead of November. It's this idea, something that Donald Trump has claimed repeatedly in the past that undocumented migrants are coming into the country to play a part in the election to potentially vote for Democrats.

They're arguing Democrats want these immigrants to come into the country and play a role and impact the 2024 election. Now, again, I think really the message of this event today is to try to link this issue of election integrity with voters' real concerns over immigration. And again, something that Republicans are going to continue to try to do in the lead up to November.

Now, I do also want to point out that there is some nuance here. We do know that in some cities, non-citizens are allowed to vote in some non-federal elections. Places like the school board elections, for example. But that is not a widespread problem. So that's what we're looking at today. And I do also just want to point out that they are billing this event between Johnson and Trump as a press conference. However, it's still unclear if they're actually going to take questions. Trump's advisers say that they're going to, but as you know, they may say that it doesn't always mean they will. Sara?

SIDNER: Yes. They may be talking about election integrity, and over and over and over again, we know that there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election. But we know that Johnson is also worried about his job, so we'll have to see what happens there.

All right, Alayna Treene, thank you. John?

BERMAN: All right, this morning, Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Arizona after the state Supreme Court there chose to uphold an abortion ban written in the 1800s. In her remarks that she will deliver, she calls Arizona's choice, quote, "one of the biggest aftershocks yet from the reversal of Roe versus Wade." And she's going to try to place the blame squarely on Donald Trump, basically saying, Donald Trump did this.

With us now, Republican strategist, former RNC Communications Director, Doug Heye. Also, CNN political commentator and former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, Jamal Simmons.

So, Jamal, let me start with you. She is going to say Donald Trump did this. It's a subtly different message than what Democrats have been campaigning on in abortion for two years. How important is it to put this squarely on Trump?

JAMAL SIMMONS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it is important because it happens to be true. Donald Trump is the one who appointed the three Supreme Court justices who voted to get rid of Roe and make -- and undermine -- remove the right to abortion for women. So the Vice President has been very forceful about this.

I was in the White House when the Dobbs decision came out. I remember the day that this happened. I remember her anger really about this and the way she questioned the staff and really wanted to get her lawyers to figure out what all these -- what this judgment meant and what it was going to mean for people.

And so going down there is a continuation of two years from this vice president to talk about the real impact of Donald Trump removing the right to abortion for women and what it's had -- the impact it's had on women, whether they're being pursued for having miscarriages by legal authorities or they're being denied access to abortion care, even 10-year-old victims. So, this is something that she feels very vehemently about.

BERMAN: You know, Doug, that Trump, to an extent, feels vulnerable about this because he's doing everything he can to distance himself from it, isn't he? Saying he would not sign a national ban, criticizing the state Supreme Court decision in Arizona, or saying he thinks it will be reversed somehow. But do you think there is some vulnerability there that's saying Trump did this, can stick?

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think it can stick. And, you know, Jamal and I have many things that are not in common but one thing that we do, I also was in the White House the day the Dobbs decision came out. I was actually on a West Wing tour. And you could sense within the West Wing that the game had changed.

And, basically, there were a lot of closed doors. A lot of people were having very private meetings about what to do next. And you understood that the conversation might be changing here. And that sure has been the case. And what we saw in the special elections and in the midterms as well, and part of why this is a vulnerability for Trump is because we have a lot of footage of him saying, I alone can do, which he says on a lot of things, but I alone terminated Roe versus Wade.

I alone killed Roe versus Wade. So they're going to use that time and time again. I think it's smart for them and it's why you're seeing Trump try and talk about nuance, although Donald Trump is not a nuanced messaging guy. He is blunt force trauma, and that's usually it. But it demonstrates that Donald Trump does get that this issue is not a winner for Republicans right now. And that he wants to talk about this issue differently, and also talk about different issues.

[09:10:09]

BERMAN: So, Jamal, Axios got some interesting --

SIMMONS: You know, John, really quickly.

BERMAN: Go ahead.

SIMMONS: Yes, OK.

BERMAN: Well, I was just going to say --

SIMMONS: Well, I was just going to say --

BERMAN: Go ahead. You go.

SIMMONS: -- let's just talk about the raw politics for a second. But I think your question may be heading us in that direction.

BERMAN: Go ahead.

SIMMONS: Well, so the raw politics of the situation, just for a second, is we remember in 2022 when everyone was looking at the economy. Right now, we're talking about inflation and some of the questions on the economy. We remember in 2022, everyone was looking at the economy and saying Democrats are missing the ball by not talking about the economy enough.

What we found in the White House was that there was a cohort of voters who, while they were concerned about the economy, they were also concerned about the state of our democracy and what was happening in terms of how we were going to deny or keep the January 6 protesters at bay. And at the same time, they were concerned about abortion and how they were going to protect the right to abortion care for women and the men who care about them. And so I think we talked about that. The vice president talked about that throughout the fall. And what you saw was that Democrats did well in those elections and that Democrats and the pro-abortion position has won every time it was on the ballot.

So in states like Arizona, where you're going to see that on the ballot again, it puts the president in the game in a way just to be raw political about it. It puts them in the game in a way that maybe he was a little sliding a few weeks ago.

BERMAN: And it is important to note, this event in Arizona today for Vice President Harris. It is a campaign event, which means that it's very likely that she will, you know, not restrain her language in any way when she's down there speaking on this issue.

Doug, I wanted to shift gears to some new reporting out of Axios this morning, which reports that the Democratic National Committee helped pay President Biden's legal fees for the special counsel investigation into him and his obtaining or maintaining classified documents there.

A small amount compared to the legal fees like by -- paid by the RNC for Donald Trump, like a very, very, very small amount, but the fact that the party did pay for some of that. How much do you think that sticks to President Biden?

HEYE: Well, you know, we don't really reward consistency in our politics anymore, our political thought. But the reality is, Democrats have had not a field day, they've had weeks and weeks of field days on the RNC spending money on Trump's trials, on Trump's legal fees. I think most of those criticisms have been very fair.

But you have to then be consistent. Regardless of what the amounts are, they've been engaging in some of the same activity that they've criticized Donald Trump for. And if we're going to be consistent, again, not always rewarded in 2024 in American politics, then you can't -- if you're in a glass house, you can't throw stones.

And, look, "Glass Houses" is my least favorite Billy Joel album, and they're all actually my least favorite. But it's very true that if you're building that glass house, you can't throw stones, and this is a problem for the Democrats as we go into Trump trials and questions about the RNC funding. This now gives the RNC a talking point that it sure didn't have as recently as this morning.

BERMAN: It's all rock and roll to me. Doug Heye, Jamal Simmons, thank you both so much for being with us this morning. Appreciate it.

SIMMONS: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: All right. A Trump attorney in key witness in the prosecution's classified documents indictment has left Donald Trump's legal team. So how might that impact the case? And we're standing by for words from court where we expect a former U.S. diplomat accused of being a spy to enter a plea today. $7 billion in student loan debt to be wiped out this morning. Might you be one of the borrowers who will see relief.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:04]

SIDNER: A significant shake up on Donald Trump's legal team. A key attorney in the classified documents case, Evan Corcoran, is no longer representing the former president, according to sources speaking with our Katelyn Polantz. If the case goes to trial, prosecutors are expected to use Corcoran as a key witness.

Corcoran became a central figure in the indictment because of his meticulous notes and memos about his interactions with Trump concerning the classified documents. Word of Corcoran's departure comes just ahead of a hearing today for two of Donald Trump's co- defendants in the classified documents case.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz is with us now. Just give us a sense of why Corcoran's departure from Team Trump is a really significant issue.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Sara, this is the reality for Donald Trump as a criminal defendant. The lawyers he has around him taking him to trial in any of the cases, they are not the people who were shielding him or trying to shield him, protect him, work for him as lawyers during the investigations, the federal investigations around classified documents and January 6th.

Evan Corcoran was the lead attorney for him during those investigations, trying to hold off the Justice Department from getting access to material in the White House from what Mike Pence knew and what he himself as Donald Trump's lawyer had witnessed as the federal government was demanding national security records back from the former president.

The reason Evan Corcoran became a key witness and appears as Trump attorney one all over that Florida indictment in federal court related to the documents is that Trump misled him allegedly. In the indictment, Corcoran was compelled. He was forced by the Justice Department and the court to share what he knew and the notes he had kept of his interactions with Trump while the FBI and the Justice Department were seeking those records.

[09:20:02]

He had gone into Trump's storage unit at Mar-a-Lago in June of 2022 to collect everything that was there and to turn it back over to investigators that were coming down to get it all under the subpoena. And he interacted with Trump. Trump said to him, according to Corcoran's notes, did you find anything? Is it bad, good?

At the time, Corcoran had found about three dozen classified records and put them in an envelope. He was going to hand back over and then Trump looked at him and made, according to Corcoran, a plucking motion and said, "Why don't you take them with you to your hotel room? And if there's anything really bad in there, you know, pluck it out."

Ultimately, Corcoran did not know the extent of the classified records that were still at the property of Mar-a-Lago. Those were records that were later found by the FBI in a search in August of 2022. And now he's geared up to be a key witness at a trial against Donald Trump.

SIDNER: Katelyn Polantz, thank you so much for that. Appreciate it.

We are going to continue this conversation with Defense Attorney Shan Wu, who is joining us now. Thank you so much for being here this morning. You know, when you look at who Corcoran is, he is a former attorney. The attorney-client privilege was pierced. How important is his potential testimony to prosecutors if, and it's a big one at this point, the case goes forward?

SHAN WU, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: If it goes forward, he is an absolutely critical linchpin because of, as Katelyn was reporting, who he was and what his role was. Being right there, having that face to face interaction with Trump, it's an extraordinary position for an attorney.

I know Evan, we were colleagues for many years, and I have always felt that he was in an impossible position and needed to have withdrawn from the case ages ago. Somehow, for some reason, he managed to stay on, trying to navigate this minefield, first, trying to assert the privilege that was pierced.

Now, at this point, it's quite obvious that he's in a position where he can't possibly stay on Trump's legal team, really, in any manner whatsoever, because he's not just a witness, he's a critical witness. And the courts have determined that Trump cannot shield him from this testimony. So it's really an extraordinary position. And, frankly, I feel badly for any attorney in his position.

SIDNER: Yes. He -- and we should be clear, he wasn't an attorney for Donald Trump on the classified documents case because of what happened here. But he was still an attorney for Donald Trump on the January 6th case, the federal one. So it is fascinating to sort of watch how this happened. And just about everyone we've talked to said, it's just no way for him to thread that needle and stay on Team Trump.

I do want to get your thoughts on what you make of Donald Trump saying no, no, no. He's still, you know, the spokesperson saying, hey, he's still my attorney.

WU: Yes. Right. I'm not sure what the spokesperson is trying to say there, but yes, maybe they can keep them on the payroll and still pay him to be an attorney. There's nothing improper about that, but his position is ethically compromised. I mean, he's being called as a witness. He can't possibly continue to give zealous advocacy and that shield's already been pierced.

I mean, neither he nor his client can trust in that shield to preserve the future of their confidential communications. So he really just can't be truly involved in strategy. Nothing says you can't keep him on the payroll. But he can't really do substantive defense work at this point.

SIDNER: Shan Wu, appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here.

And in another case --

WU: Thanks, Sara.

SIDNER: -- the historic first criminal trial of former President Donald Trump begins with jury selection in New York City, that is on the hush money case. Watch CNN for Special Live Coverage, The Trump Hush Money Trial starts Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. right here on CNN and streaming on Max.

All right. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson fighting for his job. He's hoping a meeting today with Donald Trump might help. But could House Democrats step in? Will they step in to save him?

Plus, the Biden administration is forgiving more than $7 billion in student loans. Who will see their debt potentially wiped away?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:29:03]

BERMAN: A new round of student loan debt cancelation this morning. This time, President Biden canceling $7.4 billion. Also today, Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Arizona after the state Supreme Court there reinstated a near total ban on abortion from the 1800s.

CNN's Arlette Saenz at the White House this morning. A lot of activity there, Arlette.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. And President Biden is trying to offer a bit more relief to borrowers who are saddled with high student loan debt, an issue that's of concern for many voters heading into November's election.

This morning, the Department of Education announced that it is canceling -- using an existing program to cancel about $7.4 billion in student loans. That would impact around 277,000 individuals. In total, this brings the entire amount that Biden has canceled so far to $153 billion for nearly 4.3 million borrowers. The most that's been canceled in student debt by any president in history.

Now, this announcement today comes just a few days after President Biden rolled out a sweeping new proposal to reduce or wipe out student loan.