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Capitol Hill Chaos Amid Mayorkas Impeachment Trial, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) Job in Danger; Judge Says, Opening Statements Could Begin as Soon as Monday; Report Shows Russia-Linked Hackers May Have Carried Out Cyberattack on Texas Water Facility. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 17, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

LEAH WRIGHT RIGUER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST AND HISTORIAN: Donald Trump over really the last eight to ten years is that he has used the presidency as a grift.

[07:00:05]

And so Truth Social is just another grift. We know that it's tied, particularly with it going public, that it's tied to Trump receiving essentially a windfall of cash, that he can't touch, can't touch it for five months. But we know that that was part of the deal that went into it.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: And he needs it to pay off the E. Jean Carroll suit, the defamation suit.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: But it makes you wonder who's investing in this company and can they afford to buy all that stock?

RIGUER: Right.

ACOSTA: Take that up another time. Guys, great panel, thanks for being with us this morning. Thank you for joining us. I'm Jim Acosta.

CNN News Central starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I am not resigning, that's the message from the Republican House speaker this morning as chaos unfolds on the Hill, his plan now for aid to Ukraine and Israel, and his strategy to not lose his job in the process.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So, with a jury rapidly taking shape, opening statements in the New York criminal case against Donald Trump could come as soon as Monday. New reports of Trump getting drowsy in the court, and new reports the judge offered a stern warning after an outburst.

And did Russia do it? New details on the cyber attack that left thousands of Americans without water.

Sara is out today. I'm John Berman with Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central. BOLDUAN: Revolts, turmoil on Capitol Hill, just a regular Wednesday you might be thinking, but this is a special brand of chaos today, one that now includes an impeachment trial in the making for the Homeland Security secretary.

Alejandro Mayorkas is facing a Senate trial that could begin today after House Republicans got the ball rolling back in February, the same House Republicans who are currently upside down and inside out over their own leadership. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson fighting to hold onto his job, declaring that he is not resigning, calling it an absurd notion.

But it's a real possibility as the reality he faces is a Republican rebellion sparked by his plan to finally move forward on billions of dollars in foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and other American allies.

The rock and hard place Johnson finds himself between is especially unique this time as he may have to rely on House Democrats to not only get the foreign aid bills over the finish line, he may have to rely on Democrats to save his speakership.

CNN's Lauren Fox has more on this. Lauren, what is happening? Where do you want to begin?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a lot going on on Capitol Hill right now, Kate, and, specifically, all of this really escalating for Mike Johnson yesterday after Thomas Massie in a closed- door Republican conference meeting basically asked the speaker to resign.

The speaker said that that was not what he was going to do, but Massie announcing in front of the whole conference that he was joining Marjorie Taylor Greene if and when she brings forward that motion to vacate, that effort to oust the speaker that could come at any time.

Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene has an outline if or when she's ultimately going to move forward with that, but she is indicating that moving forward with Ukraine aid for the speaker could potentially end his job as the speaker of the House.

Now, on Friday, Mike Gallagher, a Republican, he's going to step aside from his seat. That means at that point that Mike Johnson has a one- vote margin. He can only lose one Republican unless he can get some Democratic votes. And that remains true when it comes to saving his job.

Donald Trump, who has a lot of sway in the Republican conference, he was asked yesterday if he would step in to help Mike Johnson. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Mr. President, how do you plan to protect Speaker Johnson?

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, we'll see what happens with that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: Obviously not a bode of confidence there from the former president of the United States. Of course, Trump and Johnson just met on Friday at Mar-a-Lago. There are also some questions looming about what Democrats would do.

If there was an effort to oust Johnson, two Democrats have already said that they would be willing to vote on a procedural step to basically put that to the side and help Johnson out.

It's not clear Johnson wants Democratic help. In fact, he told our colleague Manu Raju yesterday he wouldn't need the help, but if you do the math, it looks like he's certainly going to need it if he wants to keep the speaker's gavel. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And then you have the impeachment of the Homeland Security secretary. They walked over the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

[07:05:00]

Now what? What is going to happen there today?

FOX: Yes. There's sort of this pomp and circumstance that happens around impeachment proceedings in the United States Senate. So, at 1:00 today, senators are going to be sworn in as jurors.

Now, after that, the question becomes, is there a trial? How big, how full is that trial? Some conservatives are pushing Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to hold a full multi-day trial. But the reality is many Democrats view what House Republicans did as really just a political protest against the Biden administration's policies on immigration. They argue that that is not an impeachable offense, and therefore, the expectation is they're going to try to get rid of this rather quickly. That likely would come in the form of some kind of motion to table or motion to dismiss.

Now, all eyes are going to be on a handful of moderate Democrats who are running in red states, people like John Tester, people like Sherrod Brown, Bob Casey, who is running in Pennsylvania, a swing state. What are they going to do? The indication we've gotten from Casey is that he's happy to quickly dismiss this, where all eyes are going to be on John Tester and Sherrod Brown.

But if this is just a vote from Republicans and Democrats and everyone stays on party lines, this could be over rather quickly, Kate.

BOLDUAN: All right. A lot is going to happen today, that's for sure. It's good to see you. Thank you so much, Lauren. John?

BERMAN: All right. This morning, we could be just days away from opening statements in the New York criminal trial of Donald Trump. Jury selection is moving at a brisk pace, with seven jurors seated already. The judge told him to be ready to go on Monday. For a second straight day, courtroom observers saw Donald Trump getting drowsy and maybe nodding off, but it was his mutterings that earned him a rebuke from the judge who warned, I will not have any jurors intimidated.

CNN's Zachary Cohen here this morning with the very latest. Zach, where to things stand?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, John. We're more than a third of the way through jury selection. Seven jurors have been sworn in. We need 12 jurors plus about 6 alternates. So, five more jurors need to be seated for us to move forward in this trial.

And as you said, the judge wants opening statements to take place as soon as Monday. Of course, he did shrug when he suggested that that was his timeline. So, we'll have to see how long the rest of the process takes to play out.

But I do want to note that, you know, watching this process play out has been really interesting so far. Trump's attorneys, prosecutors and the judge all seem to be laying the foundation for a fair trial here, the questioning of potential jurors and making sure that they are able to be impartial and render a fair verdict now.

Now, of course, Donald Trump is the one who does seem to think that his ideal juror would be someone who renders a verdict in his favor. Take a listen to what he said when asked about whether or not he thought the jurors that are seated now can be fair.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: What kind of a juror, in your mind, is an ideal juror in this trial?

TRUMP: Anybody that's fair.

REPORTER: Do you believe that the jury, the jurors seated today can be fair?

TRUMP: I'll let you know after the trial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So, as you mentioned, the judge actually had to admonish Trump at one point yesterday, according to the pool reports, because Trump was audibly and physically reacting to what one of the jurors was saying when being questioned about their social media posts.

But, look, at the end of the day, both sides have four more strikes left. They need a total of ten throughout this entire process, and these strikes, they can essentially eliminate any juror for any reason, so really winding down the amount of, like, say, that each side gets in this process.

I want to go into a little bit about what we know about these seven jurors that have been seated already, though, because it's a really interesting cross-section of New York and of Manhattan. The foreperson is originally from Ireland, is married, reads the news, gets their news from The New York Times, the Daily Mail, watches some Fox News. That's a consistent theme, and one that jurors were asked a lot about their media consumption habits. So, you'll see a lot of them are very well read and do get their news from various sources, conservative, middle and left.

One of the other jurors is, you know, a Puerto Rican man described as an older Puerto Rican man who's married with adult children. When he was asked about his hobbies, he said, quote, I guess my hobby is my family. He called Trump fascinating and mysterious when he was asked during jury questioning his thoughts on Donald Trump. So, it would be interesting to see how that juror sort of views the evidence, and they insisted that they could be impartial and fair.

And the last one was really interesting because this juror was the only juror of the 18 questioned yesterday who had not heard before yesterday that Donald Trump was charged in other criminal cases.

So, a really wide variety of jurors have already been seated. We need five more plus alternates, and we'll see how long that process takes.

BERMAN: Yes, we will. Zach Cohen. Thanks very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: This just in Russia, possibly behind a cyber attack on a water facility in Texas. And that wasn't the only target. We have new reporting in for you.

Also new this morning that, quote, Israel is making the decision to act in response to Iran as the U.S. plans brand new sanctions.

And an Italian restaurant is giving out free bottles of wine.

[07:10:02]

Do I have your attention now? What you'll have to give up, though, just for one.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: New details this morning about who carried out a cyber attack on a public water system in Texas.

Now, this happened back in January and now it's believed a hacking group with ties to the Russian government may have been behind this attack in a small Texas town.

[07:15:00]

CNN's Sean Lyngaas has this reporting for us. He's joining us now. Sean, tell us more about what you're learning.

SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: Well, Kate, there's a lot of claims that made online from hackers that I spend my day trying to verify, and a lot of them don't pan out to be true. In this case, there was truth behind it. In January, a small town, Muleshoe, population about 5,000 in North Texas, had one of its water tanks at the water facility that treats drinking water overflow, an unusual event.

And they investigated, and they found out they were indeed hacked. They took the system offline, replaced it, and were able to mitigate any damage. There wasn't any threat to the drinking water, but it was alarming for a small town like that to experience that.

Fast forward to today, we're learning that a Russia-linked hacking group was behind that. Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm, tells us that a Russian group that is linked to the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, known for sort of sabotage in Ukraine, sponsored the social media channel that claimed credit for this attack.

Now, we don't know if it was actually the Russian military or one of their proxies that carried this out, but it's still a significant escalation, potentially, in targeting U.S. critical infrastructure.

So, we've had the FBI investigating for several months. The White House has been on the phone with the state of Texas and others to try to get to the bottom of this. But the bottom line, Kate, is that water facilities across the U.S. are strapped for cash and personnel to deal with these kind of hacking threats.

There's been an ongoing push at the EPA, the White House, others to try to support them. But it's very much a work in progress because the same people that are helping protect the water facility are also keeping the lights out in the town and doing other things. So, it's very much a question of resources, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. It's not just the concern of one public water system in one small town, it's the access, the capabilities and what this shows in terms of weakness and infrastructure that this is really highlighting.

It's good to see you, Sean. Thank you very much. John?

BERMAN: All right. Happening now, futures for Trump's media stock sliding ahead of the opening bell, this after huge drops the last several days. Donald Trump has lost billions on paper.

And would you put down your phone for a free bottle of wine?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BERMAN: All right. Happening now, futures for Donald Trump's media company are lower this morning after near free fall in the last few days, down 14 percent Tuesday, down 18 percent Monday, it's now down more than 70 percent from an all-time high set on March 26. Those numbers not generally good when you're dealing with the stock market.

President Biden took a jab at the falling stock price during a campaign. President Biden took a jab at it during his speech in his hometown of Scranton. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: You know, I have to say, if Trump's stock in the Truth Social, his company, drops lower, he might do better under my tax plan than his.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Right. CNN's Hadas Gold is with us this morning. What's causing this drop?

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, there is some speculation this is sort of a meme stock and that there's not a lot of actual financial value behind this. But what's interesting is that this stock failure came as they announced this new streaming service that they want to launch.

That's a little bit light on the details. What they say is that the streaming contest will focus on live T.V. They're saying everything from news networks, religious channels, family friendly content, including films and documentaries, they're saying anything that is at risk of cancelation they want to have on this streaming service.

But not a lot of details, including on the personalities or the shows, things that you might typically hear of when you're announcing a streaming service. They only say this is going to come out in three phases before it comes to your streaming T.V.

My big question, though, is how will this streaming service work? It costs a lot of money. It takes a lot of work to make a streaming service successful. Think about Disney. Disney has a streaming service and it has a gold mine of content, and even they are not profitable yet.

So, I don't understand exactly how this streaming service where we don't even know who will be on it, how it's going to make money.

Now, obviously, there's a lot of competition already in this space. You know, the Trump audience, it's a smaller slice of a broader audience. There're places like OAN. There's Newsmax that already have a streaming service out there. So, how will they be able to capture the audience and make the money?

Now, after this streaming announcement, it did not help the company stock. We can pull up that graph again just to see that freefall from that high in early March.

Now, this freefall of the more than 60 percent, pretty much more than 70 percent valuation drop, that has erased more than $5 billion in market capitalization.

Keep in mind that Trump, he's the majority stockholder in this. He has 60 percent stake in the company. So, this drop, that's actually affecting his own personal net worth.

BERMAN: Yes, he's still in the black, but on paper at least, he's lost billions since the high on March 26. It continues to drop, and the market continues to say, you know, we don't like what you're telling us. We don't like these plans. We don't like you issuing more stock. We don't like the idea of a streaming service there. You mentioned family friendly content. I imagine then the New York criminal trial wouldn't be aired given the subject matter there, not exactly family-friendly.

GOLD: Yes, a big question about how, you know, Trump's won't marry up with this streaming service.

BERMAN: Hadas Gold, great to see you. Thank you very much.

So, a new warning from doctors, if costs for inhalers do not come down, Children could be left without life-saving medication.

And then the heaviest recorded rainfall in one country's history. Now, the world's second busiest airport submerged in floodwaters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

BERMAN: Happening now, House Speaker Mike Johnson's job hangs in the balance, aid to Ukraine hangs in the balance, all of Congress not at all in balance, rather it is in full chaos. As of this minute, there's still no legislation that the speaker promised to provide aid to Ukraine and Israel this week. Is he backing off in the face of pressure from those in his own party threatening to oust him?

[07:30:00]

With us now is Democratic Congressman from New York, Tom Suozzi. Congressman, thank you so much for being with us.

Before we get into the speaker's job, I want to talk about aid to.