Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Trump Asks NY Appeals Court To Expedite Appeal Of Gag Order In Hush Money Case; Georgia Appeals Court To Weigh Disqualifying Fani Willis; Biden Draws Economic Contrast With Trump In Wisconsin; New Images Show Israel Operation Expands Into Rafah. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired May 08, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:00:49]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: As former President Trump prepares to return to a New York courtroom to hear more testimony from Stormy Daniels in his hush money trial, he's getting a major win in his federal classified documents case. The judge postponing the trial indefinitely, making a start date before Election Day highly unlikely.

Plus, President Biden taking more digs at Trump as he campaigns in battleground Wisconsin. How Biden is taking aim at his 2024 rival's record on economic development.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: And the U.S. hits pause on a shipment of bombs to Israel as a new report could reveal whether the U.S. believes Israel has broken humanitarian law as criticism grows over Israel's military actions in Rafah.

We are following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KEILAR: Right now, new developments in three criminal cases against former President Trump. In Georgia, an appeals court says it will review a lower court's ruling allowing Fulton County DA Fani Willis to stay on the 2020 election subversion case there. Trump and his co- defendants have been trying to disqualify Willis by alleging that she engaged in an improper relationship with the attorney she appointed to lead the investigation.

DEAN: In Florida, a federal judge there has indefinitely postponed Trump's classified documents trial. Judge Aileen Cannon citing significant issues around classified evidence that would need to be resolved before that case goes to a jury.

And in Trump's New York hush money trial, lawyers for the former president are asking a New York appeals court to quickly rule on their challenge to the gag order. And let's begin there.

CNN's Kara Scannell has been our eyes and ears in the courtroom every day of this hush money trial.

Kara, what more can you tell us about this appeal by Trump's legal team?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So Trump's lawyers had initially asked the appellate division if they would stop the trial so they could appeal the gag order. That was quickly denied. They did. They are now asking the appellate court, the whole bench, to weigh in on the constitutionality of this gag order. And so they filed a motion related to that today, according to sources familiar with it, because it is still under seal. But this is just the latest challenge to try to have the judge change the gag order. This, of course, comes after the judge found that Trump had violated the gag order for the 10th time this week, fined him a total of $10,000, and telling the former president that the next time he may be forced to put him in incarceration as any kind of sanction, saying that he seems that the $1,000 per violation fine is just not serving as a deterrent, guys.

KEILAR: And Kara, Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress and producer, is going to return to the stand tomorrow. We're told that Trump's defense team is planning to ramp up its questioning and maybe just continue sort of the line in which we saw them go yesterday with their cross-examination. Are they going to take even more time than expected? What's happening here?

SCANNELL: Yes. So the - part of the cross-examination always reacts to what the prosecutors do on direct examination. And prosecutors took a long time with Stormy Daniels, having her go through her sexual encounter with Donald Trump in 2006 and subsequent meetings all leading up to the ultimate $130,000 payment and then when that all became public.

So Donald Trump's attorney, Susan Necheles, started that yesterday. She spent about 90 minutes cross-examining Stormy Daniels. She was really starting to attack her credibility. That seems to be the main theme of this defense is that she should not be believed and that also she was motivated by money.

And so there was an exchange between Necheles and Stormy Daniels where she was focusing in on that and the - where Necheles said to Daniels, "My question was, you've been making money by claiming to have had sex with President Trump for more than a decade, right." And Necheles responds, "I've been making money," excuse me, Daniels response, "I've been making money by telling my story about what happened to me." Necheles says, "And that story, in essence, is that you say you had sex with President Trump, right?" Daniel says, "Yes." Necheles says, "And that story has made you a lot of money, right?" Daniel says, "It has also cost me a lot of money."

[15:05:08]

So I think we will expect to see this line of questioning continue. Necheles had said in court that she is going to focus on some inconsistent statements. We saw that a little bit. She was challenging Stormy Daniels with what she had wrote in her memoir and saying that that did not match what - some of her testimony has been in this trial and I think we'll continue to see a lot of peppering of questions and a lot of back and forth when this begins again tomorrow, guys.

DEAN: More to come. Kara Scannell for us, thank you so much.

And let's turn to a new development in Trump's election subversion case in Georgia. The Court of Appeals there announcing it will consider an effort by Trump and his co-defendants to disqualify District Attorney Fani Willis.

KEILAR: CNN's Sara Murray has been following this for us.

And Sara, this comes after a lower court had ruled that Willis can remain on the case. So what happens now?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, this is certainly a blow to the district attorney's office. They had hoped to move beyond this disqualification issue to focus on the meat of this election interference case against former President Donald Trump and several of his co-defendants.

And now it just looks like that's not going to happen and Georgia Court of Appeals has agreed to hear this question of whether Willis can remain on the case. Remember, Trump's team had argued that Willis should be disqualified both because of a romantic relationship she had with a fellow prosecutor on the case, but also because of comments she made publicly regarding the case.

And even though the lower court judge did not remove Willis, her fellow prosecutor, Nathan Wade, did step aside. Trump and other co- defendants saying that the judge got that wrong. Again, going to the Court of Appeals and saying, will you give this another revisit, and the Court of Appeals now saying yes.

Trump's attorney in Georgia, Steve Sadow, said he's looking forward to presenting his arguments about why Willis should be disqualified and why this whole case should be dismissed.

DEAN: And Sara, what does it mean for the timeline of when this case could go to trial?

MURRAY: It means it's probably not going to trial anytime soon. It's really unlikely that this case is going to make it over the finish line anytime before Election Day, guys. The judge in this case, Judge Scott McAfee, has not even broached the question of a trial date. He still has a presidential immunity issue in front of them.

So they're already kind of in a holding pattern when it comes to the Trump of it all, waiting to see what the Supreme Court decides over the summer on the presidential immunity issue. And it's hard to imagine that he's going to want to move full speed ahead with a case, with a trial involving Donald Trump, when there is still this huge matter of the disqualification hanging over everyone's head with the appeals court. And it could take - be months before we hear what the appeals court decides to do in this case, guys.

KEILAR: All right. We're looking for that. Sara Murray, thank you so much for that.

And we're also following developments in former President Trump's classified documents trial now postponed indefinitely, of course. But Cannon canceling that trial date set for later this month, citing issues around classified evidence that need to be resolved before the case goes to a jury.

DEAN: So let's bring in CNN's Katelyn Polantz. Katelyn, what happens now in this case?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, in this case, the classified documents case in Florida against Donald Trump, obstruction of justice, mishandling of National Security records, Trump and two co-defendants headed towards trial. In this one, there also isn't even a likelihood anytime soon of us getting a trial date because Judge Aileen Cannon has pulled the trial date off the calendar and says she has to work through eight substantive motions that are already before her. And then she is going to be setting a schedule out into July of dealing with issues in this case, primarily around the handling of classified documents and classified information that may be part of the case, especially part of the defense's review of the case, preparations for trial and what they might want to present to the jury.

All of that is so complicated and so dense that Judge Cannon says she'll set a trial date once she gets through a bit more in the coming months. So there is no way that this case will be able to go to trial or even have a trial date set in the next couple of weeks. And very unlikely that we even see when a trial could be possible until late July at the earliest.

KEILAR: So how is the Special Counsel responding here, Katelyn? I mean, what are Jack Smith's options?

POLANTZ: Well, the options for the Special Counsel and the Justice Department are the same as any lawyer in this sort of situation. At - as of right now, you follow the judge's orders. You follow the schedule that she set and you show up for the hearings and for the deadlines that she has set for motions.

But one of the things to highlight just how this process has played out in this case is that back in February, everything was argued in full about whether there could be additional hearings over a motion by the Trump team to dig into the prosecution of the case, to try and claim and maybe try and get more evidence into the record if they could find it, that the Biden administration was targeting Donald Trump unfairly somehow.

[15:10:08]

The Justice Department fought against that. Judge Cannon just now, as of yesterday, is saying, okay, let's have a hearing on that in late June. That's on the calendar now. So it has been months just for that issue to blossom to the point of the judge saying, okay, I'll have a hearing. And clearly that hearing was not something that the special counsel's office saw to be legally correct. But they are going to have to face that whenever the time comes in late June to have that hearing. DEAN: All right. Katelyn Polantz for us, updating that case. Thank you

so much. And despite court not being in session for Donald Trump's hush money trial today, the former president has no scheduled campaign events.

KEILAR: Yes, Trump has repeatedly complained that his courtroom commitments, which they are plenty, they're keeping him off the campaign trail, alas. CNN's Kristen Holmes is with us now.

Okay, so if he is stuck in this courtroom, can't campaign, you'd think Wednesdays are campaign Wednesdays, and yet, no.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We have had one campaign Wednesday since this started. We went to Michigan and Wisconsin last Wednesday. But the Wednesday before that, he went to Bedminster and played golf. And now, again, he is not out on the campaign trail.

Instead, we are told that yesterday, after that salacious and at times uncomfortable testimony from Stormy Daniels, he got on his plane and flew down to Palm Beach for a dinner that he's having with supporters who bought multiple NFTs. Some of these NFTs, of course, being the mugshot photo of Donald Trump, and he had promised this in an email, but it turns out they are doing it.

Now, as senior advisers say, that this was a dinner that had been planned weeks in advance. But I will tell you one thing. None of the money that he has made from these NFTs goes towards the campaign. This is all for personal gain. But again, that is how he is spending the day. He is, of course, going back to New York and then will be back in the courtroom.

I will note he has a rally in New Jersey on Saturday. A little bit surprising, given the fact that New Jersey is certainly not a critical battleground state.

KEILAR: Yes.

DEAN: That is not one of the top swing states that we often go back to. How is the campaign reacting to Stormy Daniels' testimony?

HOLMES: It was just as much of an uncomfortable moment for the former president as they thought it was going to be. There was nothing that was revealed that was new to the campaign. But the biggest problem for the campaign is they just don't know how this plays out in a general election. Of course, seeing Donald Trump in court, him being indicted, arrested, all of that helped him in a primary when it came to fundraising, when it came to actual poll number increasing.

When you're hearing salacious testimony like this, how does that actually impact the voters that Donald Trump is trying to reach? Because if you talk to either the Biden campaign or the Trump campaign, both sides believe that this election is going to be chosen by a very narrow amount of voters in the middle, people who are not sure where they're going to go.

That select group, how they react to hearing about this alleged affair with a porn star and these kind of nitty-gritty details, that's what the campaign has to worry about moving forward.

DEAN: That is the most important question and the political takeaway of all of this. All right. Kristen Holmes, thanks so much.

HOLMES: Yes.

DEAN: Still ahead, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirming the U.S. withheld a shipment of bombs for Israel over concerns about civilians in Rafah.

Plus, President Biden hammering his predecessor over his promises on the economy as he looks to win over voters in a critical swing state.

KEILAR: And Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is not backing off of her threat to try to bring down House Speaker Mike Johnson unless certain conditions are met. What she's demanding coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:07]

DEAN: Today, President Biden is stumping in Wisconsin and a new poll was just released showing him there with a slim lead over Donald Trump. The Quinnipiac University survey of registered voters has Biden leading Trump 50 to 44 in a head to head matchup, not counting third party candidates.

Of course, Wisconsin helped deliver the White House to Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2016 for that matter. But his margin of victory was incredibly small. It was the same back in 2016, very small margins of victory.

KEILAR: That's right. And that's why Biden is there for the fourth time this year. And he's arguing that he can deliver what Trump could not, a huge high tech factory to create thousands of jobs.

CNN's MJ Lee is on the scene there in Racine County. MJ, what's the president's pitch there in Wisconsin?

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, the President just made a big economic announcement here in Wisconsin that Microsoft is going to be investing some three point three billion dollars for the building of a new artificial intelligence facility here in Racine that they are saying would create some 2,300 construction union jobs initially for just the creating of that facility and that ultimately it will result in several thousand permanent jobs whenever that facility is finished being built.

The president made a direct comparison between that announcement and the famous failed Foxconn announcement from former President Donald Trump. That, of course, was the announcement that a Taiwanese electronics company would be building new factories here, also pouring in billions of dollars and creating thousands of jobs. Those promises, of course, never materialized.

And what the President said in his remarks earlier was that he basically saw that as a con job from the former president. And he made clear that he believes that his record, especially when it comes to the economy, is a stronger one than what the former president had. Take a listen.

[15:20:08]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: During the previous administration, my predecessor made promises which he broke more than kept, left a lot of people behind in communities like Racine. On my watch, we make promises and we keep promises. We leave no one behind.

Unemployment rate has hit a record low in Racine. Racine has seen some of the strongest new business growth in all of Wisconsin, and it's only just beginning. We're seeing a great American comeback story all across Wisconsin and quite frankly, the entire country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEE: And the president just finished up a campaign organizing event stop where campaign officials are training volunteers on voter outreach. And in particular, the president was engaged there with black volunteers and black voters. That is going to be a group that the campaign is going to be very much focused on reaching out to. And so important because as you noted at the top, this state is expected to be very close.

Back in 2016, this is a state that President Trump won. In 2020, as we know, President Biden ended up winning the state, but by a very close margin. So this is a group that the campaign knows is really important to sort of get out there. And the last thing that Democrats want here is for black voters in Wisconsin, particularly around the Milwaukee area, to be unmotivated and unenthusiastic by the time November comes around.

Of course, that was a big problem for Hillary Clinton back in 2016.

DEAN: Yes. MJ Lee for us there in Wisconsin. Thanks so much for that reporting.

And a quick programming note for everyone, tonight on OUTFRONT, Erin Burnett's exclusive one-on-one interview with President Biden. He's sitting down to talk to Erin about the economy, his plans for a second term. This interview airs on Erin Burnett OUTFRONT. It's tonight at 7 Eastern here on CNN.

KEILAR: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirming to lawmakers that the U.S. has paused a shipment of bombs, big bombs, to Israel. A U.S. official telling CNN the hold is over concern that these bombs would potentially be used in Rafah.

DEAN: Also today, the State Department said its report on whether Israel is violating international law will be late. It was due to Congress today, officials saying it will be released in what they say are the coming days. CNN's Oren Liebermann is joining us now from the Pentagon.

Oren, let's focus on this shipment for a second. Help us understand exactly what's in it. Brianna mentioning big, big bombs. What more the Defense Secretary say about it?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: This is a very specific shipment that was paused last week. In it are 1,800 one-ton bombs, some of the most powerful conventional weapons in the U.S. arsenal, as well as 1,700 500-pound bombs. So significant weaponry here that's been paused. This was to be shipped to Israel effectively imminently for use in the war.

The reason this was paused was because of U.S. concerns over Israel's promises that it will conduct a major ground operation in Rafah. Israel and the U.S. have been in touch over this. The U.S. has clearly stated its opposition to such an operation, and the U.S. has pressed Israel for answers on how it would handle the more than million Palestinians who are there and make sure it doesn't turn into a humanitarian catastrophe with civilian casualties. According to a U.S. official, the answers from Israel have not been satisfactory, and so this shipment of bombs has been put on hold because of the concerns over what a 2,000-pound bomb could do if dropped in a heavily populated area.

But Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made clear in a hearing earlier today that this does not mean that the U.S. is in any way backing off of Israel's defensive needs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We're going to continue to do what's necessary to ensure that Israel has the means to defend itself. With that said, we are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of unfolding events in Rafah.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIEBERMANN: Now, what happens with this shipment is it simply send in the near future or sometime down the road or is it outright rejected? That the U.S. is still very much looking at. Meanwhile, in the longer term, the U.S. is also evaluating sales or transfers of JDAM kits, which turn unguided bombs into precision weapons.

So there's a lot of review here, and you can see this is clearly a concern about what would happen if Israel conducted a major ground operation in Rafah.

KEILAR: And Oren, tell us about this State Department report that is supposed to have some sort of determination about whether Israel has violated international humanitarian law that was due to Congress. Why is this being delayed?

LIEBERMANN: It was a self-imposed deadline, essentially, to get it done today. The State Department now saying it should come within the coming days, and they're working to get this done.

[15:25:02]

So we do expect it here sometime in the short-term here, in the near future.

The question, of course, is what does it say, and the State Department has kept this very tight. There was a National Security memorandum issued from the White House in February, which said that countries receiving U.S. weapons must assure they're using them in compliance with international law.

Israel has given the U.S. that assurance. The question is, what does the U.S. make of that and that's what this report will look at. Does the U.S. find it to be a credible and believable assurance, or does it find that Israel is in violation of international law?

This has led to some deep divisions within the State Department, and we have seen complaints both internally and some externally about concerns over Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza. And that's why this is so critical. It doesn't automatically trigger restrictions on weapons, but given the pressures on the White House, it could very much lead in that direction with restrictions on what the U.S. is providing to Israel.

KEILAR: All right. Oren, live for us from the Pentagon, thank you for that report.

And let's talk a little bit more about all of this with retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He's a CNN military analyst. He served as the commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and the 7th Army.

All right. General, first, we know and we've seen the effects of it, of these 500- and 2,000-pound bombs that Israel has used, at least hundreds of them in Gaza. Tell us what these usually do, what the objective that can be achieved on the battlefield of these bombs is and what cannot be.

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes. Well, first of all, Brianna, it's a great question because when you're conducting either a counter insurgency or a counterterrorism operation, you're not using the kind of weapon systems that would blow big holes in things or destroy big buildings.

Now, Israel is put on a conundrum because a lot of the terrorists' headquarters and infrastructure is built underneath some of the big buildings that Israel has been going after. But these bombs, especially the thousand, 2,000 pounders and even the 500 pounders in some cases, will basically destroy a building. It will knock it down. It will eliminate it from the landscape.

So when you're talking about going after individual terrorists or terrorist cells, you want precision in counterterrorism or counterinsurgency operation. And precision is something that the Biden administration and the secretary of defense has been asking Israel to do for about four months now, as they saw the initial implications of attacks into northern Gaza. And it finally came to a point, I think, about a week ago, I was on a

program with, I think, you and said that, yes, this is sending a signal. And then the Department of Defense said, well, wait a minute, not really. Now, Secretary of Defense Austin has said, indeed, it's sending a signal. We are not shipping you weapons that can basically knock down large buildings. You've got to be a little bit more precise and surgical than that.

KEILAR: Yes, because these big bombs have been blamed for a number of the civilian casualties, the collateral damage in this war that has been so huge.

I do want to ask you as well, CNN just obtained satellite images that show Israel has expanded its Rafah operations from airstrikes to the ground with a significant amount of bulldozing, specifically in an area near the Rafah crossing with Egypt. What does that tell you?

HERTLING: It tells me, first of all, they've had - Israel has put two brigade-sized forces into eastern Rafah, into an area that they believe intelligence is driving them toward. That's where some of the headquarters are and perhaps where some of the captured civilians are, the hostages.

We have seen, the 401st Brigade, it's called the Iron Tracks Brigade, and the Givati Brigade has gone into that area of operations. So when you're talking about large brigade operations, you're talking about several thousand people with a lot of equipment. It's not just tanks and armored personnel carriers. Its bulldozers and earthmovers and artillery pieces.

So what you're seeing right now, and the picture shows it, is they have - I would believe that Intelligence has given the Israeli defense forces some targeting in that area. They think because of what they've achieved that they can go in there and more surgically strike some of the targets.

And in fact, all this afternoon, I've been monitoring reports. There is a continuation of Hamas firing rockets at the two checkpoints, Kerem Shalom and also the Rafah checkpoint. There have been multiple strikes just today on those two.

So I think what Israel continues to do is go after the terrorist cells in those areas. Hopefully, they will find some of the hostages, but they're also looking to kill or capture some of the Hamas terrorists that are in eastern Rafah.

[15:30:05]

KEILAR: Yes, so many families of those hostages waiting for some good news.