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Court Resumes Tomorrow With More Fiery Cross-Examination of Cohen; China, Iran Prepared Deepfakes to Influence Voters in 2020; Why Corporate Greed May Not Be Leading Cause of Inflation. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired May 15, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:13]

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: An explosive, profanity-filled cross examination of Michael Cohen and the defense is not done yet with Cohen. Did Cohen answer the big questions in Donald Trump's hush money trial?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And new this morning, an ominous change in the war in Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he is postponing all international events as Russia makes significant gains on the battlefield. CNN is on the frontlines.

And new bad news for Boeing, the Department of Justice says the company could be prosecuted.

Kate is on assignment. I'm John Berman with Sarah Sidner and this is CNN News Central.

SIDNER: Jury's don't have to like Cohen, they just have to believe him. Words from CNN's brilliant Political Analyst Stephen Collinson this morning as Donald Trump's historic criminal trial takes a scheduled break today after one of the most dramatic days of testimony so far. The only day that could prove more dramatic might be tomorrow when Michael Cohen gets back on the stand and faces more heated cross- examination.

Until then, Trump's lawyers will likely spend today sharpening their next questions for Cohen. Trump will spend his day still under that gag order, but on the campaign trail. And the jury weighing 34 criminal charges against Donald Trump will spend the next 24 hours waiting to hear more testimony from the witness who said Trump directed him to pay off a porn star before the 2016 election and then crafted a scheme to cover it all up.

CNN's Brynn Gingras is leading our coverage off this morning. Brynn, the defense waited a couple of days to finally get its chance. How did it start off and what did it seem like inside of that court?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm so glad you asked how it started off, Sarah, because it started off with the defense, Todd Blanche, using Michael Cohen's own words and expletive to describe Todd Blanche. So, it was like fireworks right from the beginning. Now, that's not the entire way the defense really did sort of what they worked on yesterday. I will say there were some, you know, measured moments and Michael Cohen stayed measured on the scene. But that was pretty much the approach, using Michael Cohen's own words from his books from his podcast to sort of describe how he describes the former president.

Some of the things that were said in court, Cohen describing Trump as a boorish cartoon misogynist, a Cheeto dusted cartoon villain, to which Michael Cohen responded essentially, yes, that sounds like something I would say.

And, of course, the defense here trying to paint Michael Cohen as, one, a liar, someone who just wants revenge against Donald Trump, even got him to admit that he would like to see him go to jail, and also as someone who has really profited off Donald Trump. He got him to admit on the stand that he has used Trump's name every single podcast showing the merchandise that he sells, like T-shirts and mugs, that he's really made a living off of Donald Trump after he has, you know, sought out this revenge and sort of turned on the former president, his former boss.

Now, before that all came up, though, they had about two hours of defense, but the prosecution really tried to get ahead of it, going through the motions of what Michael Cohen went through when he eventually, quote/unquote, flipped against Donald Trump, you know, how he lied in front of Congress, how he, you know, was arrested on federal charges and had to testify. And, basically, they were just trying to get ahead of what the defense was going to come at them with.

But they did bring jurors into the Oval Office into that key moment, which is at the center of this case, where Michael Cohen and Donald Trump essentially talked about those payments. And I want to read an excerpt from that.

Cohen says, so I was sitting with President Trump and he asked me if I was okay. He asked me if I needed money and I said, no, all good. He said, because I can get a check. And I said, no, I said I'm okay. He said, all right, just make sure you deal with Allen. And then the prosecution asked, did he say anything about what would be forthcoming to you? And Cohen says, yes. It would be a check for January and February.

Of course, that was one of the key moments, the crux of this case, where they are trying to prove that Donald Trump knew about these hush money payments, these reimbursements, back to Michael Cohen.

But, like I just said, the defense was just getting started. Cohen was on the stand for them for about two hours. We expect a full day of Cohen back on the stand, being in cross-examination when court resumes tomorrow.

[07:05:03]

And then it's very possible, Sara, that the prosecution -- we are expecting the prosecution to actually rest, possibly tomorrow.

SIDNER: We will probably also see redirect as well after those contentious back and forth between the defense and Cohen.

Thank you so much, Brynn Gingras. I appreciate it. John?

BERMAN: All right. Today, Donald Trump campaigns in Kentucky and Ohio fresh off a night. And look at this, where there were actually two presidential primaries overnight. And Nikki Haley, who's not even running against Trump anymore, still did pretty well. You can see nearly 18 percent of the vote in Nebraska, nearly 20 percent of the vote in Maryland. In both of these states, these are closed primaries, meaning only Republicans can vote, and Trump dropping nearly 20 percent in each state.

CNN's Alayna Treene is with us now with today's plans, Alayna.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: That's right. It's all about money today, and we saw that last night as well. Donald Trump is focused heavily on fundraising. He'll attend two fundraisers today, first, a lunch fundraiser in Cincinnati, Ohio. He'll be joined by J.D. Vance, a senator of Ohio, and someone who is very high on money on Donald Trump's V.P. list. And then later today, he'll be in Lexington, Kentucky, for a fundraiser with donors Barbara Banke and oil tycoon Jim Kraft, as well as former ambassador Kelly Craft.

But, look, this is a huge focus of Donald Trump's campaign right now. It's all about raising money. They are trying very aggressively to catch up to Joe Biden's ever growing war chest, a kind of a far off thing that they know that is ahead of them, and they're trying to raise as much money as they can.

And we saw them do this last night as well in Manhattan after court wrapped for the day. Donald Trump joined by a series of senators, congressmen, governors. He went to a fundraiser. I was told it was roughly 75 people in Manhattan last night.

And, look, this is all, I think, a sign of how many people are showing up around him right now. We saw in court over the last several days really an uptick in congressmen, senators, again, people who are also high on his list for V.P. coming up to New York and showing that they're standing in solidarity with him. We saw people like Rick Scott, Doug Burgum, Tim Scott, Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, several others appeared with Donald Trump outside of court.

And I think, again, this is really how we're seeing the veep stakes kind of pop up in the next few weeks. We know that Donald Trump is still far away from making his decision. He says that and his team says that he's not expected to decide who his running mate will be until closer to the Republican National Convention in July. However, we're seeing a lot of these people really try to tout their bona fides to Donald Trump, help him fundraise, and we're all seeing that come together now.

And I also just want to give you a little tidbit of what I heard from yesterday with Donald Trump remarking on all of the surrogates appearing with him while he was riding to the courthouse yesterday. He was riding in a car with Vivek Ramaswamy and Speaker Mike Johnson. I'm told that Donald Trump remarked in the car that he's getting more press attention from this trial than he would be if he was on the campaign trail and touting all of the people who are showing up with him. So, clearly something Donald Trump is feeling buoyed by this week. John?

BERMAN: Sort of a rolling audition for some of these characters who want to be the running mate there.

Alayna Treene, great to see you, thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. New this morning, a CNN exclusive, how Iran and China use deepfakes to influence elections in the United States.

And Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaking in Ukraine this hour, we will take you live to the frontlines where Russia is making significant advances.

And a dramatic and deadly attack to break out a prisoner from an armed convoy. Now, there's a massive manhunt for an international criminal known as The Fly. That's ahead.

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[07:10:00]

BERMAN: We have a new CNN exclusive this morning. U.S. intelligence officials have revealed efforts from China and Iran to influence the 2020 election. The National Security Agency found both governments prepared A.I.-generated deepfakes four years ago, though they never made them public. So, with A.I. easier to use than ever in the 2024 election, just months away, there is growing concern about similar foreign efforts.

CNN's Zach Cohen is here with this CNN exclusive. Zach, what are you learning?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yes, John. The intelligence that was described to us by our sources really does demonstrate concerns U.S. officials had even four years ago about foreign adversaries, in this case, specifically Iran and China, their willingness to use A.I., fake A.I.-generated content, audio or video, to try to target American voters during an election cycle.

And while this content we're told was never actually disseminated by the operatives working for the Chinese and Iranian governments, it does underscore why U.S. officials are sounding the alarm about the use of A.I. and deepfakes potentially by foreign adversaries to influence the 2024 presidential election.

There's actually a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing today where Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines will testify about efforts, foreign efforts to interfere in the upcoming presidential election, and we could hear more about this effort to use deepfakes. And, look, the reason there's so much concern now versus sort of tepid response to the intelligence in 2020 is because the technology around A.I. has advanced so much. It's so much easier to produce these fake A.I.-generated videos and audio. We saw an example of that in February with the Joe Biden robocall that mimicked Joe Biden's voice that was sent out to voters in New Hampshire.

And, look, the intelligence does sort of create a timeline about how these adversaries are focused on creating chaos around Election Day, and U.S. officials are already preparing for different scenarios. Our colleague, Sean Lyngaas reported recently that there was a Situation Room tabletop exercise where officials were tasked with responding to Chinese -- a scenario where Chinese operatives essentially created a fake a I video and the federal government is a little bit hesitant about how much they should be involved in responding to the same time being able to respond quickly once a fake video or a fake audio or like a robocall like what we heard from in New Hampshire. Once that's identified, how do you inform people that it is, in fact, fake? That's the challenge going forward.

BERMAN: Yes. There're so many challenges with it becoming all too easy to fake this stuff. Zach Cohen, great report, thank you very much.

President Biden says U.S. corporations have been playing you for suckers. He blames corporate greed for rising inflation numbers. But how true is that claim?

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[07:20:00]

SIDNER: Inflation remains stubbornly high, and, of course, it has become a hot topic for politicians and economists, some lawmakers blaming corporate greed for the sky-high cost of living. But what are economic experts saying about the cause of stayflation?

CNN's Matt Egan is joining us now. Matt, what are you hearing from experts?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Sara, there's been this long running debate over how much to blame greedflation, right, which is this notion that companies are taking advantage and their price-gouging something that progressives point to frequently.

Now, new research from the San Francisco Fed finds that, yes, there is evidence that some companies did jack up prices above their production costs. The so-called markups, we saw this in 2021 and 2022, especially in cars, gasoline, car repair and laundry.

But we know that inflation is a broader problem than just gas and laundry, right? This is economy-wide. And so the researchers found that when you zoom out and you really look at pricing patterns at the economy as a whole, there is no evidence that price gouging was a leading cause of inflation. They wrote, quote, rising markups have not been a major driver of the recent surge and subsequent decline in inflation during the current recovery. In fact, they found that the pattern of markups was really not unusual when you compare it with prior recoveries. So, in some, they're saying, yes, there's some evidence of price gouging. But, no, that probably was not the main issue.

Now, I don't think this is going to settle the debate. A progressive group, accountable.us, they responded to this research by saying, listen, it doesn't add up that companies can't just keep prices stable when they're paying their CEOs fat bonuses and they're sitting on record profits.

And we know President Biden himself. He's pointed to corporate greed is a reason why inflation hasn't come down more. Listen to what he told Erin Burnett last week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: No, it really is. And it's real. But the fact is that if you take a look at what the people have, they have the money to spend. This angers them and angers me that you have to spend more.

For example, the whole idea of this notion that Senator Casey talked about, shrinkflation, I think, you know, it's on your program.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Same price for a smaller bottle of juice or --

BIDEN: For example, Snickers bar, they did a thing. And it's like 20 percent less for the same price. That's corporate greed. That's corporate greed. And we've got to deal with it, and that's what I'm working on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

EGAN: Now, the White House told me that this research does support Biden's argument that record profits are causing inflation to stay higher than it should be, and that he's going to continue to call out corporate rip-offs.

Now, this debate comes as inflation remains stubbornly high. Look at this. This is consumer price index. The higher this chart goes, the more painful it is, of course, to consumers. And we can see that, listen, prices are no longer skyrocketing like two years ago, but some of this progress has really leveled out. And this is a major frustration for consumers. It's a political liability for the White House.

New numbers out next hour, Sara, are expected to show that inflation did take down just a bit in April, but probably not by enough to let the Fed to start cutting interest rates anytime soon,

SIDNER: And I noticed on your list of things where prices have been jacked up. Groceries wasn't on that list, and that has been a big contention for people going to the grocery store and seeing those prices just rise.

EGAN: That's been a huge pain point, absolutely.

SIDNER: Thank you, Matt Egan, I appreciate it.

EGAN: Thanks, Sara.

All right, just ahead. Boeing once touted as a sparkling example of aviation excellence facing more trouble now. The Justice Department says the airplane manufacturer broke an agreement to avoid criminal charges over 737 MAX crashes. What that might mean for Boeing's fate, coming up.

And a fiery crash into a prisoner transport convoy and then gunmen break out a prisoner. We have the latest on the manhunt for the person known as The Fly.

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[07:25:00]

SIDNER: New this morning, Boeing facing another huge potential problem. The airplane manufacturer could be prosecuted after the Justice Department says Boeing breached a safety agreement that allowed the company to avoid criminal charges for those two fatal 737 crashes.

CNN's Pete Muntean is joining us now with more. Pete, this comes as Boeing has been under intense scrutiny this year for a series of safety issues that the public has been seeing like, you know, doors coming off in midflight.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Everyone is aware of it. Everyone asked me about it. And this latest development could lead to criminal charges against Boeing, the latest in this mountain of bad press for this aerospace giant that once had a sterling reputation.

This really goes back five years, and it stems from the 737 MAX 8 crashes of 2018 and 2019. After that, Boeing reached a $2.5 billion settlement with the federal government to avoid a one-time charge of fraud, that they misled investigators on that Boeing -- the changes that Boeing made to the 737 MAX 8.

[07:30:05]

Now, the Justice Department says that Boeing violated that agreement.