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Dockworkers Strike For Higher Pay, Job Protections From Automation; Helene's Devastation Could Halt Semiconductor Chipmaking; DOJ Releases New Evident In 2020 Election Case Against Trump. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired October 02, 2024 - 15:30   ET

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

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Earlier today, President Biden spoke out against the disruptive strike at U.S. ports as he was heading out to view some of the devastation left behind by Hurricane Helene. Watch this.

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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This natural disaster is incredibly consequential. The last thing we need on top of that is a man-made disaster that's going on at the ports. We're getting pushback already and we're hearing from the folks regionally that they're having trouble getting the product they need because of the port strike.

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SANCHEZ: President Biden had said he would not intervene in the strike, but that pushback he mentioned could make it difficult for him not to. The U.S. dockworkers are fighting for higher pay and for protections against automation, essentially robots taking their jobs. CNN's Allison Morrow is here with the details.

Allison, this is obviously a fight that is playing out across many industries. Where do things stand now?

ALLISON MORROW, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR WRITER: Yes, it's hard to overstate how big of a deal automation is, especially for these dockworkers who just for background, you know, they've seen this play before. It came for the autoworkers. It came for the mining industry. It typically comes for blue collar workers. When automation takes over, that means you need fewer human beings doing the job.

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Now, innovation isn't something that they're against, but they are saying we're not going to let you put robots in place of us without getting something in return.

So that's kind of the heart of the issue here. And I think it's important to understand the strike, but it's also really important to understand the broader dynamic of automation. You know, it's not just the labor industry.

It's also coming for office workers and for creative fields. You know, we've seen this with the Hollywood strike last year. For four months writers and actors were stopping work because of AI. So AI is the other automation factor that's coming in for the American worker. And that's what you're going to see a lot of fighting about in the next week, weeks, years, months.

SANCHEZ: Yes. And the reverberations could be enormous. Allison Morrow, thank you so much for the reporting -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: The town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina, population 2,200, was devastated by Hurricane Helene. But the small town's destruction could have serious implications globally. Spruce Pine is home to mines that produce a key component needed for much of the technology that we use every day.

CNN's Clare Duffy is following this story for us. All right, Clare, walk us through exactly what this means.

CLARE DUFFY, CNN BUSINESS WRITER: Yes, Brianna, this is a really niche industry, but a really important one for the global economy. This material called high purity quartz is an essential component for the microchips that we put in many of our devices, our smartphones, our cars, artificial intelligence systems. And this town of Spruce Pine is home to these two mines that produce 80 to 90 percent of the world's high purity quartz.

Those mines have been shut down since last Thursday. And experts are saying that if these shutdowns go on for another week or two, that that could really disrupt the global supply chain for these microchips, which could lead to chip shortages, price hikes.

And just to put this in perspective, I think many people remember back in 2021 when new price new cars briefly became really expensive. That was because of a chip shortage. Car manufacturers couldn't make new cars because they didn't have the chips to put in them. And those kinds of shortages, price hikes could play out across lots of different kinds of consumer devices if we see another chip shortage.

Now, the companies that manage these mines say they're working to bring them back online. But it's not clear how long that's going to take, in part because they need people, they need employees to run these mines. And those folks have just seen their lives washed away. I mean, you see those pictures, people's homes destroyed.

So really, there's a lot of pressure on both these companies and the federal government to bring these mines back to production and ensure the employees are in a position to start work again.

KEILAR: Yes, the damage is like so many places in North Carolina staggering there. Clare Duffy, thank you for that report.

Still ahead, the world waiting to see how Israel responds after Iran's huge ballistic missile attack yesterday. Is the region already in a full on war and what should America's role be? We'll be joined by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his insights.

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KEILAR: We do have breaking news. A federal judge has just released never-before-seen evidence in Special Prosecutor Jack Smith's election case against former President Donald Trump. This is a 165-page filing, so it is a lot to go through. And our team is going through it as we speak. I want to bring in CNN's Paula Reid and Katelyn Polantz here with us. Paula, tell us about this filing.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: So we are just one month right now, of course, from the election. And a federal court here in Washington has just released what is expected to be the most comprehensive look so far into the 2020 election interference case against former President Trump.

As you said, our team right now is going through this. But some of the things that we're looking for are potentially never-before-seen evidence. Like, for example, what former Vice President Mike Pence or former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told investigators. But this is really unusual.

Of course, though, this is an extraordinary case. Back in July, the Supreme Court ruled that former President Trump does have some immunity from prosecution. And tasked the judge overseeing this case, Judge Tanya Chutkan, with trying to decide which parts of this case survive that decision.

So the special counsel, Jack Smith, he recently submitted a roughly 200-page filing laying out what he believes his case looks like after that Supreme Court decision. Because, remember, the Supreme Court decision was not only about the types of charges you can bring against a former president, but also the kinds of evidence that you can use. So right now, they are making what kind of looks like an opening statement that you would make in trial to the court, trying to convince them that a large portion of this case should survive even after the Supreme Court's ruling.

Now, former President Trump's lawyers have opposed releasing much of this. But right now, we are going through to see what new evidence or new details from this case are going to be revealed in this highly unusual and historic filing.

SANCHEZ: Katelyn Polantz, over to you. What are you seeing in this filing? Obviously, a lot of information to get through, but what are your initial takeaways?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, one of the things here that you're seeing is the Justice Department not laying out their full case against Donald Trump in this filing. But they also have to be very specific about the things that the Supreme Court says. We're not sure if there's immunity. The court has to figure this out. One of those things is the interactions that Donald Trump had with

Mike Pence, who was his vice president. So in one way, there could be immunity.

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But in another way, Mike Pence was the president of the Senate on January 6th. And so the Justice Department is digging into interactions that Trump had with Pence or around Pence. And I haven't been able to read that much of the filing yet. We really just got it just a couple minutes ago.

But one of the things that I'm seeing is discussions about how Donald Trump and others, conspirators, co-conspirators with him, were trying to pressure Mike Pence. So there's discussion of Donald Trump sitting in the dining room in the White House sending a tweet about Mike Pence. Also having a private attorney that is very likely John Eastman, an attorney that worked with Trump after the election as a private advisor, pressuring Pence.

And all of that, the way the Justice Department is doing this to back it up is they're using people's grand jury testimony, as well as interviews people gave to the FBI and also search warrants, things that they did like search Donald Trump's Twitter account. And so when you put this all together, you get evidence we have never actually seen before. Mike Pence did testify to the grand jury.

But Boris and Brianna, we have no idea what he said in there because he's never testified publicly about this before.

KEILAR: Yes, very interesting. Paula, so what is ahead here?

REID: So I think what you're going to see is this is going to go from the court of law to the court of public opinion. And I would expect that the former president, as his attorneys have, he will try to argue that releasing this is some form of election interference. Again, this case is not expected to go to trial anytime soon.

If former President Trump is reelected, this case is expected to be dismissed by his attorney general. So the idea of releasing a long narrative like this from prosecutors, highly unusual. And his lawyers have argued, as they really have in all of his criminal cases, that any effort to release additional evidence is an effort to interfere with the election.

Now, look, there's no precedence for this. I mean, this is just this is just such an extraordinary circumstance. But I think that's what you're going to see next.

The former president is going to argue that allowing even a redacted version of this filing to be released to the public is going to potentially hurt him in the election. And that this is part of this larger conspiracy that he alleges by judges, by prosecutors to hurt his chances in November.

So I would expect that after initially we look and find the new details. I think that this is absolutely going to be used again in the court of public opinion to once again try to frame the former president as a murder or a victim of the justice system.

SANCHEZ: Since Evan Perez is also with us, Evan, obviously this is notable given the longstanding DOJ policy around prosecutions on figures that are on candidates close to election time. But this isn't exactly a new prosecution. Right.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Right. Exactly.

And by the way, we're coming up just a few more days before essentially the Justice Department is supposed to go quiet. They have a 30-day unwritten rule, a 30-day quiet period that begins effectively on Saturday. Right.

Because you're about a month away from the presidential election. And so the Justice Department really would not be able to release any of this, you know, in the next 30 days. However, this is something that a judge, Judge Tanya Chutkan, has decided is appropriate for the public to see.

Obviously, there's a lot of information. You can look at some of the pages in here that are redacted. There's details in here that will not be public.

But one of the things that is notable in here already, just from reading just the first few pages of this document, is you can see the emphasis that the prosecutors have made on the idea that what Donald Trump is accused of here in this case has to do with private conduct. That it is not what he did as the then sitting president of the United States. That what he was doing was in his private capacity, in his personal capacity, trying to essentially steal the election that he had lost.

And so that's one of the things that you see already in some of the language that is written in this filing that the court has now released. Again, just a few days before the Justice Department's 30- day quiet period goes into effect, guys.

KEILAR: Paula.

REID: So right now we're reading through this, and as you can see, we're reading around redactions. Certain names are blacked out, so we'll have to put those pieces together.

But here you see prosecutors painting a picture of someone who's trying to subvert the results of the election even before it happens. On page 5 of this, they talk about how the then president was talking to his campaign advisers about how the election may not be final. The results may not be final on Election Day.

Concerns about mail-in ballots that they believed would benefit Biden.

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And that they decided, quote, that in such a scenario, Trump would simply have to declare victory before all the ballots were counted and any winner was projected. So this is just one of the details in this. Something that we have heard before, certainly.

But these are the kinds of details. This is how the special counsel is telling its story, explaining sort of its narrative on the case against former President Trump after the Supreme Court ruled that he does have some immunity.

Now, I want to note, again, if Trump is reelected, this case is going to be dismissed by his attorney general.

But if he is not, this case is expected to very likely go back before the Supreme Court. Because the reason this was filed is because Judge Tanya Chutkan has been tasked by the justices with assessing the charges in this case and the evidence in this case against their decision in July, granting him some immunity and deciding what remains. And I'm sure no matter what she says, one side is not going to be happy and they're going to appeal.

And both -- lawyers on both sides of this case have told me they do expect this to go back to the Supreme Court. There was sort of an implicit invitation that the justices extended. They said, look, here's our decision on immunity. Let's go back and reassess the January 6th case and then maybe come back up if there are any additional questions.

So if this case goes to trial, it's still going to be a long road. And this is definitely the last opportunity that voters have to see what prosecutors gathered in this multiyear investigation. Because, of course, again, this case is not going to trial anytime soon.

SANCHEZ: And Katelyn, you've been reading through this 160, 180 page filing and you found a specific detail about an attorney. What did you find?

POLANTZ: Yes, this is not an attorney. Someone described as an assistant to the president. So somebody who was working in the White House from August 2020 on and that the Justice Department says to the court, this person is important in this case because even though they were working in the White House, they were there to serve as a conduit of information from the campaign to Donald Trump, the defendant.

This person is not named. It is person nine in this. But this is the sort of person who would be a very key grand jury witness and then who would very likely be a key witness at trial.

If Donald Trump were to go to trial as a defendant, some of the details that they're laying out here that they believe, the prosecutors believe Judge Chutkan needs to know as she decides whether there is immunity around Donald Trump. And they're trying to convince her there isn't. Because what Donald Trump was doing was part of his campaign, his political effort and not his official duties as president.

One of the things they're saying is that this person was having conversations with Trump, saying these fraud allegations about the election could never be proved in court and that it was B.S. what was happening here. And then at the same time, Trump was talking to that person about putting an outside attorney in charge of the legal effort to try and undermine the election. That person ultimately becoming Rudy Giuliani.

But person nine is one of those many, many witnesses in this investigation who are anonymized in this document, but who the Justice Department is telling the court, look into this. This is the evidence we have. And this is the type of witness we would have to go before a jury at a trial to say that Donald Trump was acting in an illegal way. That should never have the protection of the presidency around it, that it was campaign activity, even though person nine worked in the White House.

KEILAR: Yes, that it was a private criminal effort is the quote used here in this filing. And let's bring in former U.S. attorney Harry Litman to talk a little bit about this.

Something else to read from this filing with someone who's anonymized here, Harry, talking about how while tabulating votes on November 4th, P5, person five, a campaign employee agent and co-conspirator of the defendant, tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF center in Detroit, Michigan, looked unfavorable for the defendant, Donald Trump.

There, when a colleague at the TCF center told person five, quote, we think a batch of votes heavily in Biden's favor is right. Person five responded, find a reason it isn't. Give me options to file litigation, even if it is.

When the colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, person five responded, make them riot and do it.

What do you think about these kinds of details and what this is going to mean in this case?

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: They are incendiary, but it's not just what it means in the case. It's what it means in the campaign. Trump filed a very strident brief yesterday telling the court, please don't release any of this. It will harm me in the election. And Chutkan, without hearing anything further, went ahead and did it.

And you have 90 pages here of chapter and verse.

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As you're saying with person five, the race will be on who is who. It may be John Eastman who was working up there or it maybe Ken Chesebro. But the big point here is they've laid their case, their cards on the table, laid them bare and will be mining it for weeks. And it's all going to be a problem for Trump who tried hard to keep it from going forward. That's the first thing.

If I can note one other thing, because I'm just so excited about this, you know, reading this quickly as is Katelyn.

They give their theory starting on page 90 for why Mike Pence should be admissible, even though the Supreme Court mentioned the possible immunity there. They say the assumption of immunity is rebutted because Pence is basically acting as a vice president -- excuse me, as a president of the Senate, a legislative role and the executive branch or the president has no role saying who should open votes and who shouldn't. So that's their very important argument about Pence, which will now be joined.

But the big fact of this today, I think, is that it happened. The genie is out of the bottle.

KEILAR: Yes, it is a big day. And our coverage of this breaking news will continue next on "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper after a short break.