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Harris to Lay Out Economic Plan in First Major Policy Speech; Trump Rails at Harris in Another Falsehood-Filled Press Conference; Mayor Eric Adams (D-New York City, NY), Others Issued Federal Grand Jury Subpoenas. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 16, 2024 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Today is the day Kamala Harris starts laying out her economic agenda. And we have new details this morning about what her plans include, tax cuts for some, housing help for others, and a price gouging battle.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Millions in crypto, investments in gold, bars, and did Trump really just make $300,000 for endorsing a Bible? The stunning new financial disclosure that we're seeing.

Plus, new details after multiple arrests in connection to Matthew Perry's death. Two doctors, his assistant, and a woman known as the ketamine queen accused of trying to profit off of his addiction.

I'm Sara Sidner with Kate Bolduan. John Berman is out today. CNN News Central starts right now.

BOLDUAN: So today's a big day for Kamala Harris and her quest for the White House. She has faced near constant criticism from Republicans that she has been policy light, has been slow to roll out policy proposals and plans, hasn't yet faced questions about her change on other policy positions from the past.

Today, that changes itself. Harris is set to roll out her economic vision in a now much anticipated speech in North Carolina. This morning, we have new reporting on some of what she's going to say, including proposing tax cuts for middle and low income earners. That includes expanded tax cuts for parents and frontline workers. She also wants to keep generous subsidies for health insurance premiums under Obamacare. Harris is going to roll out this -- also roll out a plan to tackle the cost of living, plans to drive down costs on groceries and also housing.

Harris' pitch comes with just days to go until the DNC kicks off in Chicago. And as polls show, the economy remains the top issue and top priority for voters.

CNN's Isaac Dovere joins us right now with much more on this. Isaac, what more are you learning about the speech?

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, Katie, it's going to be full of some specific proposals, a number of which you just mentioned, $25,000 credit for first time house buyers, an expansion and renewal of the child tax credit that was there for a couple years in the early years of the Biden administration expansion of the earned income tax credit. So, it's that sort of stuff as well as a crackdown on price gouging in supermarkets.

It's a lot of proposals. We don't know exactly how many of these she would be able to get through or the details of what they would actually look like. That's what governing would be like were she to win. But this is the stage of the presidential campaign that we usually get much earlier, of course, when candidates are starting much earlier. Now, three and a half weeks into her campaign, she is starting to roll out what her economic vision would be.

BOLDUAN: And, Isaac, this is the first major kind of policy that we're going to be hearing from her. So, what does this tell you about where this campaign is going?

DOVERE: Well, like it they are moving very quickly, right? We are still, as I said, just three and a half weeks into the Harris candidacy. But it says I think a lot about the way that Harris looks at what policy should do, which is to not talk about things in big terms and macroeconomics, things like Bidenomics that you heard from the current president when he was running, but to talk really about how it's going to affect people's lives and what it does in the dollars in their bank account directly.

It's Harris trying to show also that she feels the pain, feels the connection to people who have been complaining for the last couple of years, that inflation has been hitting them hard and that their costs have been going up.

Obviously, Donald Trump was talking about that yesterday himself. That's how the candidates are trying to prosecute this case here.

BOLDUAN: Yes. It's good to see Isaac. Thank you so much for the reporting. Sara?

SIDNER: All right. As for Donald Trump, he says he is very angry at Harris and is, quote, entitled to personally attack her. Two things several of his Republican allies were likely not excited to hear as Trump posted another rambling press conference yesterday, riddled with insults and falsehoods, all this amid new stunning revelations about Trump's finances, including crypto, gold bars, and the Bible.

CNN's Steve Contorno joins us now. First, what exactly did he say about Harris yesterday during that press conference?

STEVE CONTORNO, CNN REPORTER: Sara, he started off pretty much on script. In fact, he was reading straight from a binder as he stood in front of all these household goods that have gone up in price over the last four years, sticking closely to that message on the economy and inflation. But that soon shifted to more of these personal attacks, especially when he took questions from reporters. And in fact, our colleague, Alayna Treen, asked Trump what he made of Republicans saying his strategy isn't working and that he needed to stop with the personal attacks, take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm very angry at her that she'd weaponized the justice system against me and other people. I'm very angry at her. I think I'm entitled to personal attacks. I don't have a lot of respect for her. I don't have a lot of respect for her intelligence.

Whether the personal attacks are good, bad, I mean, she certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird. He's weird. It was just a sound bite. And she called J.D. and I weird. He's not weird.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CONTORNO: Now, Trump also obviously very much still uncomfortable with this change in the political landscape that he is facing. At one point, he actually lamented that he, quote, should have gone easier on Biden in the debate, saying that maybe then he would still be facing him in this election, Sara?

SIDNER: That says a lot about where his head is at. Steve, you also went through Trump's financial disclosures that are out there. You went through these detail by detail. What did you learn?

CONTORNO: Yes. This is really our first glimpse into his financial situation in more than a year. And it's a large look at his investments, his real estate business, the income streams for both him and former First Lady Melania Trump. And it's quite interesting. It's 250 pages long, so it was quite expansive. Let me go through some of what we found.

Interestingly, a vast majority of his wealth is tied up in the $115 million shares in the company that owns Truth Social, the social media website he started. Those are worth about $2.7 billion. He also made more than $500 million from his golf clubs and resorts over the last year. The disclosures also include the liabilities in, quote, excess of $50 million dollars for the various judgments against him in New York in the E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit. We also found that he's got about $7.2 million for selling digital NFTs, that's non fungible tokens, those trading cards with Trump on them. He got $300,000 from the Greenwood Bible that he now sells for $60. He also has about one to $5 million in cryptocurrency, Ethereum, and, interestingly, six figure investment in gold bars, Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Steve Contorno, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Breaking overnight. New York City's Mayor Eric Adams subpoenaed in a long running federal investigation into corruption and illegal campaign donations.

And there's also this, new details about the five people arrested in the death of Friends star Matthew Perry, including a woman known as the ketamine queen. We have much more detail on what we've learned about that.

And new overnight, Usher postponing several shows, just ours before opening night of his new tour.

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[07:10:00]

SIDNER: This morning, sources telling CNN New York City Mayor Eric Adams faces a grand jury subpoena in a federal investigation into his 2021 campaign. The months-long investigation first came to light last year when the FBI raided the home of his chief fundraiser, Brianna Suggs. Investigators are looking into possible corruption and foreign influence.

Neither Adams nor Suggs are accused of any wrongdoing at this point. And the mayor and his legal team say he has always followed the law.

Joining us now is CNN's Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller. All right, so we talked about how long this has been since this raid. What does this signal now, this potential grand jury?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So a fresh round of subpoenas tells us two things. One, the investigation is still very active and going on. It's a little bit of a volcanic eruption, but it tells us that they're continuing. And, two, they don't have everything they need because they're still seeking more phone records, more text messages, more material from city hall and the mayor and the people around him.

SIDNER: Do we know exactly what this case is all about, what the illegalities are here?

MILLER: So, it's a secret grand jury investigation being carried out by the FBI and supervised by the U.S. attorney. So, we're not supposed to, but we do get clues. And the clues come with what they are asking for in terms of material.

So, we know that they raided and did a search warrant at the home of an airline executive from Turkish Airlines.

[07:15:02]

We know that the mayor took a lot of trips on Turkish Airlines. He's talked about it publicly. And there are discussions that he received upgrades on many of those trips to first class or premium class.

We know that they raided the home in Westchester of the head of a Turkish-owned construction company, and that construction company's employees gave contributions to the mayor, which the FBI believes may have been bundled and actually paid for by the company, which would be a campaign finance violation.

And, as we round third base there, we know that the mayor's office allegedly pressured the fire department to get a CFO for the Turkish mission to the U.N. in time, despite the fact that their fire safety equipment wasn't finished for the Turkish president to do a ribbon- cutting because he was coming to New York.

So, the clues you get are, it's somewhere between, is there a foreign influence campaign being managed by Turkey to take care of the mayor in return for favors, and does the mayor get anything out of that?

Let's circle back to what you said in the lead-in. Fabian Levy, the mayor's spokesman, has told me and many others that the mayor's mantra is follow the law, there haven't been any charges. And remember full disclosure here, I worked for this mayor and the mayor before him as deputy police commissioner, Mayor de Blasio was also investigated by the FBI for a period of about two years, lots of subpoenas, lots of grand jury activity. And at the end of that, there was no charge brought.

These are complex investigations, because you can't just show that favors were expended, contributions were made to the campaign. If you don't show the exact print quid pro quo or that money went into somebody's pocket, that's largely considered under the law, just the machinations of politics.

SIDNER: Follow the money, but that takes a lot of time and effort. And now we're seeing, though, the big thing here, the investigation clearly still underway and very active.

MILLER: No doubt about it.

SIDNER: John Miller, you're the greatest. Thank you so much for coming out really early this morning for us.

All right, ahead as rent prices surge around the country, apartments are staying on the market for longer and landlords offering some sweet deals to get tenants to sign on the dotted line. The new CNN reporting up next.

Also Kamala Harris set to give her first major policy speech of her campaign today. We're also getting new details about how she's prepared for the debate. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

BOLDUAN: Some signs that renters are starting to gain the upper hand on landlords, one month free rent, free parking. Even though apartment rents are still expensive, there's now a shift in the market that summer analysts describe as a landlord race for tenants.

CNN's Matt Egan has been looking into this. He joins us now. So, Matt, what is happening here? Why are renters all of a sudden getting the upper hand?

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Kate, Happy Friday. It's so nice to be here with some good news, at least for renters.

BOLDUAN: I'm waiting for the but, but keep going.

EGAN: Not really. It's really mostly all good news. Look, I think just like everything else, this all comes down to supply and demand. So, there's been a building boom of apartments in America and all of that new supply has made it harder for landlords to fill units. So, yet, they've been forced to throw in some incentives to get people to sign leases, like free parking, weeks or even months of free rent. Zillow found that one in three units on their platform are offering incentives. That is up from one in four units a year ago and one in five two years ago.

Here's how one Zillow comments put it to me. He said landlords are basically in a race right now to get tenants. So, they're throwing in a bunch of deals and perks to sweeten the pot. I spoke to a grad student in Arizona who told me that every single apartment that her and her boyfriend looked at was offering concessions. She ended up getting half a rent -- half of a month off rent free.

Another woman, a teacher, also in Arizona, said she got the whole month for free. And you don't need to live in Arizona. Zillow said that in six cities right now, you're finding a lot of apartments with concessions, Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Nashville and Austin. All of them have more than half of the apartments that are on the market right now with incentives.

So, look, there's always this balance of power between tenants and landlords. And right now, tenants have some negotiating power.

BOLDUAN: Pendulum swinging towards tenants for the for the moment.

EGAN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: What does this mean for rent, though? Does it mean it's going to come down?

EGAN: So it may mean that rent could start to come down. It's not yet. But what we are seeing is that rent is up 5 percent from two years ago, so up but not through the roof. That's basically in line with historical norms. And it's actually an improvement from the prior two years, where rent was spiking more than 20 percent. So, this is a step in the right direction.

BOLDUAN: Well, when you add in -- you're paying more for everything else. Does that make this -- does that 5 percent make it feel more painful?

EGAN: Definitely. Because, you're right, you're paying more at the grocery store, you're paying more for daycare, everything else. But look, at the day, everything is negotiable, right? If you're in the market for an apartment right now, you've got to realize that you have more leverage than you did a year ago, two years ago, certainly three years ago. So, you got to use that to your advantage. It's like my mother-in-law always says, you don't know if you don't ask.

And, look, one last point here, mortgage rates. They're coming down because the Fed is preparing to start cutting interest rates. That could actually help renters, too, because some people who might otherwise be renting are going to go into the housing market, because they've been waiting to get in, and that could help everyone else who is still renting.

BOLDUAN: Literally all connected. It's good to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Also this for us police and Secret Service ramping up security ahead of the Democratic Convention in Chicago next week. The extra steps that they are taking now, after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

[07:25:00]

And breaking overnight, arrests have been made in the killing of General Hospital star, Johnny Wactor, what police are saying this morning.

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SIDNER: We're just three days away from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and the stage is set, literally. The DNC releasing brand new images of the setup at Chicago's United Center, ready for Kamala Harris to formally accept her party's nomination for president.

Local authorities are working around the clock to make sure it is a safe convention, which includes preparing for expected protests from pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

[07:30:05]

CNN's Whitney Wild is live in Chicago with the very latest for us.