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Judge Holds Hearing on Trump's Request to Declare Special Counsel Jack Smith's Appointment Invalid; Trump Outraises Biden for Second Straight Month; Police: 2 Killed, 8 Wounded in Shooting at Arkansas Grocery; Putin Says He Could Arm N. Korea if West Keeps Giving Ukraine Weapons. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired June 21, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

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[15:01:04]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Will there ever be an actual classified documents trial for former President Trump? Today the judge in Florida is holding yet another hearing, letting the president's lawyers make the case for why Special Counsel Jack Smith shouldn't even be prosecuting him in the first place and leading to questions about how much longer that trial will be delayed.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: And a felony conviction seems to be paying off for Donald Trump. The former president's campaign raking in the dough since that verdict. We're going to break down the money race with just six days until the debate right here on CNN.

And in Paris, there are fears the river Seine won't be clean enough for competition. The mayor, though, says he has a plan to convince everyone it's safe by taking a dip in it.

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

KEILAR: More hearings, more evidence, more delays, former President Trump's lawyers are in federal court right now in Florida. They're trying to get the charges in his classified documents case dismissed, arguing that Special Counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutionally appointed. This is yet another pretrial hearing called for by Trump appointed Judge Aileen Cannon. And critics argue that this move is unusual and that it needlessly postpones the trial, most likely until after the presidential election. CNN's Katelyn Polantz is joining us now on this.

All right. Tell us what's happening here.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, about six hours, give or take, of arguments before Judge Aileen Cannon today, and it was an unusual argument and that it was a long time spent on a question that other judges have looked at and some didn't even hold hearings on. But Judge Cannon, lifetime appointee, she can do what she wants. She wants to have this hearing. She wanted to hear from outside parties, law professors, both on the liberal and on the conservative side about this.

And it boils down to this question, and this is what we're getting out of listening to those arguments today. It boils down where she keeps asking questions of how did this actually work with Merrick Garland appointing Special Counsel Jack Smith and how much oversight is there within the department of this special counsel.

Trump's team has argued a bunch of different things here. And some of those conflict at different times, that there's not enough oversight of Smith, that he's too much of an inferior officer, that it's not constitutional, that the money isn't correct for him. There's going to be more arguments on that on Monday.

But Judge Cannon has a lot of questions here. And if she does deviate from what other judges have across the country, that's possible. And she could theoretically nullify not just this indictment, but Jack Smith. Of course, that would very likely be appealed by the Department of Justice. But it's a hearing that raises really intriguing questions about the special counsel's office.

Donald Trump wants to really dig into how this works within the Justice Department. And Judge Cannon is asking questions of how much oversight, how - has there been actual oversight and what do you really mean about the oversight Merrick Garland has over the special counsel. A lot of stuff in court today, but no ruling.

KEILAR: Yes. I am curious about the answers to those questions. But there are some serious criticism, perhaps valid, about the process and how she's undertaking this, so we'll continue to follow it. Katelyn, thank you so much. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's try to get answers to those questions with National Security Attorney Bradley Moss. Bradley, the Trump team here arguing the Attorney General can't appoint a special counsel who wasn't confirmed by the Senate. The Justice Department obviously disagrees. Where do you come down on this?

[15:05:00]

BRADLEY MOSS, NATIONAL SECURITY ATTORNEY: Yes, this was the same argument that got raised during the Mueller probe in the Trump administration. There were numerous challenges to Special Counsel Mueller's appointment during that time. They all failed. And quite candidly, and this is, you know, kind of consistent with what Katelyn was just outlining for you, too, this should have and could have easily been dealt with on the papers without need of a hearing. It's been dealt with for years, for decades, actually, going all the way back to the Nixon era.

There was no need for this to be a day and a half long hearing. But this is what Judge Cannon, at her own discretion, has chosen to do. And even though I expect she'll deny this motion, it's the delay that matters and that's what Trump's team wanted, and that's what they got.

SANCHEZ: What is the benefit, if there is a benefit, to Judge Cannon having this hearing and having these three days of hearing all of these arguments?

MOSS: So if you're looking at it from just a jurist perspective, she wants to hear a full explanation of what is arguably, in some views, a rather abstract and philosophical set of arguments. They're arguing over the definition of particular words, you know, terms like inferior officer and what is official, what is employee. This gets into really abstract areas of statutory text.

It happens all the time when dealing with these kinds of cases. It's certainly not unusual. But a lot of judges don't tend to require this kind of extensive hearing on it, and they certainly don't generally bring in these friends of the court, these various amici, to submit briefs and to argue, as was allowed this afternoon down there in Florida. That's a particular approach Judge Cannon chose to pursue and allow, again, she has that discretion. I don't think most judges would have done that.

SANCHEZ: It's unique partly because rulings on special counsels akin to Jack Smith's role have been pretty consistent going back to the 1970s. I don't know that you heard some of the arguments in those cases that we're hearing from Trump's lawyers during the hearing. They argued that Smith's position amounted to a, quote, shadow government. They described him as one of the most powerful people in the country.

Judge Cannon apparently responded that, quote, "That sounds very ominous." What do you really mean? I'm wondering what you think that means and whether you think that from that statement, Judge Cannon sounds skeptical of the argument.

MOSS: Yes, I don't think she's ultimately buying it. I think she kind of likes to give up these little commentaries, extraneous remarks during oral arguments. We've seen that before on other hearings, and then she's still ruled against Trump.

But what the argument coming from the Trump team, as well as the amici that submitted briefs in their support, we saw some of those notes coming out from reporters this afternoon, was basically that the court's gotten it wrong since the '70s, that the special counsels can't be set up the way they've been throughout all those decades, that the Nixon ruling was wrong and everything that came after it was wrong, that even if the original independent counsels from the '80s and '90s were a little different, and those were permitted, that the ones that have come out recently, like Mueller, and Hur and Smith are all unconstitutional and that they should be thrown out.

It's not going to go anywhere in the end, even if by some chance Judge Cannon were to rule in Trump's favor on this. I absolutely expect the 11th Circuit would reverse. But again, it's the delay that mattered, and they got a day and a half long hearing out of what should have easily been resolved a month or two ago on the papers.

SANCHEZ: You sort of - you outlined that you thought this would go to an appellate court and that it would get overturned. But let's say for the sake of hypothetical, it's successful. What happens to Trump's case? MOSS: If that's thrown out, if Jack Smith's appointment and his use of authority here is unconstitutional, the case is dead. And arguably, it would impact the D.C. case as well, where Judge Chutkan already rejected this argument. But that would absolutely implicate both cases would ultimately go up to the Supreme Court if for any reason Judge Cannon and the 11th Circuit were to rule in Donald Trump's favor. I don't anticipate that will happen.

But look, there's been a lot of, we didn't anticipate these rulings over the last couple years. We're waiting to hear the immunity ruling any day. I gave up predicting with certainty of anything.

SANCHEZ: As many of us have. Bradley Moss, appreciate you joining us. Thanks for the time.

MOSS: Absolutely.

SANCHEZ: Brianna?

KEILAR: Trump's criminal conviction last month helped propel the former president to another huge month of fundraising. For the second month in a row, Trump campaign donations have topped Biden's. Trump hauling in a stunning $141 million in May, according to his campaign, and much of it coming right after his criminal conviction in the hush money falsifying documents trial. Biden and the Democratic Party, they fell well short of that, even though they reportedly raised a whole lot of money, more than $85 million last month.

[15:10:02]

We're also learning some new details about how the candidates are preparing for their upcoming debate and also some very important logistical details about that first presidential showdown, which will be next Thursday right here on CNN.

We have CNN's Kayla Tausche who's joining us now to talk more about this.

All right. This fundraising haul and the disparity, at least, in the - in this - the course of these couple of months, it's pretty big.

KAYLA TAUSCHE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It is pretty big. But the Trump campaign began leapfrogging Biden in April when the hush money trial got underway. And so I think there's a view from the Biden campaign that they believe that it's not sustainable, that that sort of thing is not going to happen every single month going into November. But, of course, only time will tell.

With that being said, they have $212 million cash on hand at the end of May. That may mean that they need to make smaller ad buys or have smaller outlays, depending on what the next few months look like.

Remember, they had a $50 million ad buy focusing on the criminal conviction of Donald Trump. That is just for the month of June across battleground states. So that is a very big number. But it also, Brianna, raises the stakes for the debate next Thursday, because President Biden is going to want to bring in a lot of donations on the back of his performance there.

KEILAR: How is he getting ready for it?

TAUSCHE: Well, he's - it's a familiar event. He's got a familiar playbook and a lot of familiar faces around him. Generally, they start with more informal discussions, going through binders of topics, materials, watching old clips, refining what they believe is going to be asked and discussing punches, counter punches.

And to do that, we've learned from sources that the president's personal attorney, Bob Bauer, is likely to reprise his role as a stand in for Trump. He has recently written that in 2020, when he served in that role, he was at his Trump worst. He really tried to act the part, study the character and really step into that role and aides expect him to reprise that role in Camp David this weekend.

But depending on how it goes, they're also reserving the possibility that the president travels straight to Atlanta from Camp David. So if you see him at White House events next week, that is going to tell you that they're feeling optimistic.

KEILAR: All right. We'll be looking to see if that's the case. Kayla, thank you so much.

Let's bring in Alayna Treene to talk about what's really a big fundraising surge by the Trump campaign.

Quite the haul here, Alayna.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: That's right. I mean, Donald Trump's campaign and his political operation has really erased or is beginning to erase the ones dominant advantage, cash advantage, I should say, that President Joe Biden's campaign has had over him. And that's really critical because we know that Democrats have really been able to outmatch the Trump campaign and advertising spending and ground game strategy. And over the next four months, that could really change how we see them operate on the campaign trail.

Now, I do want to just walk you through the numbers. So in May, Donald Trump raised $141 million. Now, 10s of millions of that figure was raised in the aftermath of his guilty verdict and his Manhattan trial. And really, it's the second month in a row that the Trump campaign has outraised the Biden campaign. Biden campaign only brought in $85 million in May.

And so this is definitely a drastic change from what we had seen earlier this year, where Donald Trump's team was trying aggressively to try and catch up what seemed to be Joe Biden's ever growing war chest. And so I can also tell you that just behind the scenes, you know, Donald Trump has really been working on raising money. Throughout his trial, there are a lot of questions about why he wasn't doing more rallies. Instead, he was hosting a lot of fundraisers and attending a lot of fundraisers with wealthy donors, including a ton of billionaires.

We also saw many billionaires give to one of Donald Trump's leading super PACs, MAGA Inc. They said they raised $68 million last month, 65 of which came from just three billionaires alone. One of them, Timothy Mellon, donated $50 million to MAGA Inc. He had previously given to RFK Jr., but clearly has switched some of his loyalties here and is now supporting the former president.

KEILAR: How is he preparing for the debate? And do we know how he feels about what's going to happen with the microphone situation?

TREENE: Well, look, Donald Trump has already publicly, and I know he's doing this behind the scenes as well, complained about the microphone situation. He does not want there to be any sort of cutoffs or any limitations to what he can say. We know back in 2020, he famously talked over Joe Biden and was very aggressive. And so that'll be different on the debate stage next week.

But look, as far as planning, unlike the Biden campaign, Donald Trump has no plans to do any mock debates or role-playing. Instead, he's been engaging in what his team is calling policy discussions. They've had a series of vice presidential contenders, senators, policy experts, people from his former administration, like Kellyanne Conway and Rick Grenell, briefing him and trying to sharpen his message on a few key topics they think he is most vulnerable on.

[15:15:07]

Now, one other thing, Brianna, I just want to point your attention to is the expectations game. So for months now, Donald Trump and his team have really been painting Joe Biden as this weak and feeble candidate, someone who is struggling with his mental and physical acuity. However, that's really lowered the expectations for Joe Biden. Now they're trying to switch that. Take a listen to what Donald Trump told the all out podcast yesterday.

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DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I watched him with Paul Ryan and he destroyed Paul Ryan. So I'm not underestimating him. I'm not underestimating him. I assume he's going to be somebody that will be a worthy debater.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So it's kind of rich to hear that from Donald Trump, where for months now, like I said, his team has really been doing what they can to paint Biden in the worst light possible. We also saw one of Donald Trump's spokeswomen, Karoline Leavitt, she went on Fox News yesterday and made a similar claim. She said that the mainstream media is the one who is - is the group of people trying to lower expectations for this.

And look, this is them that have done this. They have really tried to say that Biden can barely stand for the 90 minutes. Now they're a little bit more concerned about what that expectation setting will look like. And I can tell you, Brianna, from my conversations with the Trump campaign, it's definitely been talked about behind the scenes. And I think that's why you're seeing them try to message this and get out ahead of it before next Thursday.

KEILAR: Yes. I mean, Trump tries to make it out like Biden's comatose, so it might be a little late for him to try to reverse on that strategy. Look, you get what you do and that's what he's done. So we'll see here. Alayna Treene, thank you.

Coming up, a new threat from Russian President Vladimir Putin, how he'll retaliate if the West continues arming Ukraine.

Also ahead, the Paris Olympics. It has a pollution problem and it has left organizers racing against the clock to solve it.

Plus, the dangerous heat wave that is blanketing the U.S. It's about to impact millions more. We have those stories and many more coming up on CNN NEW CENTRAL.

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[15:21:32]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

SANCHEZ: We're following breaking news out of Arkansas. Police are on the scene of a mass shooting outside a grocery store in Fordyce that is just about an hour south of Little Rock. We have CNN's Isabel Rosales following this story. Isabel, give us an update on what you've learned regarding the shooting.

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Boris. We are gathering details as we speak. This is happening in Fordyce, as you mentioned, that is in Dallas County, Arkansas. A very small community of 3,700 people. And what we just got into the newsroom is a press release from the Arkansas State Police telling us that the situation happened at about 12:30 Eastern, so just this afternoon, at Mad Butcher grocery store.

So a small local grocery store where we are told nine people were shot, civilians. Two of them, sadly, have lost their lives. We also know that one law enforcement officer was also shot in this chaos, but we are hearing that they have non-life-threatening injuries. The shooter has been critically injured, we are told again by Arkansas State Police, after being shot by a law enforcement officer. They have been taken into custody.

We also have on social media, on X, a tweet by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas saying, "I have been briefed on the tragic shooting in Fordyce, and I'm in constant contact with State Police at the scene. I am thankful to law enforcement and first responders for their quick and heroic action to save lives. My prayers are with the victims and all those impacted by this horrific incident."

So Boris, clearly a lot is happening right now. We are making calls to the hospital, to law enforcement, to nearby businesses, attempting to gather details here and figure out what exactly happened.

SANCHEZ: Isabel Rosales, please keep us updated on the situation there. We'll keep following this breaking news for you. Brianna?

KEILAR: Alarming developments in the growing relationship between Russia and North Korea and its potential impact on Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is threatening to arm the North Koreans if Western nations continue to provide military aid to Ukraine. The Kremlin announcing this decision at the end of Putin's state visit to North Korea, which was his first in more than two decades. CNN's Matthew Chance is in Moscow with more. Matthew?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CHIEF GLOGBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: A warning to South Korea that it would be a big mistake to arm Ukraine. That's after officials in Seoul suggested that they may do so in response to a new strategic security pact between Russia and North Korea, agreed during Putin's recent visit to the country.

Speaking in Vietnam, Putin told reporters that Moscow would make decisions that were, quote, unlikely to please the South Korean government if Seoul decides to supply arms to Kyiv. Currently, Seoul supplies only humanitarian aid and some military equipment to Ukraine, but has always stopped short of sending actual weapons.

The Russian leader also warned that Moscow is willing to arm Pyongyang if the United States and its other allies continue to supply Ukraine with weapons. South Korea, in response, summed the Russian ambassador in Seoul, demanding that Russia immediately ceases cooperation with Pyongyang.

Well, the controversy comes at the end of the Kremlin strongman's two- nation tour of Asia, which saw him receive a lavish welcome in North Korea, which U.S. officials say has supplied Russia with arms and ammunition to fight in Ukraine.

[15:25:04]

And fueling concerns of a dangerous new phase in relations between Russia and its old North Korean ally. Matthew Chance, CNN Moscow.

KEILAR: All right, Matthew. Thank you for that report.

And ahead, a new CNN investigation into where the money for some religious schools in Arizona is coming from and how that funding is causing some of the state's public schools to close.

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