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DOJ Charges 3 People in Thwarted Iranian Plot to Kill Donald Trump; Trump Allies Jockeying for High-Powered White House Roles; Interview with Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) about Control of House of Representatives; Harris Campaign Officials Ask Colleagues to Avoid Bashing to the Media. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired November 08, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: I mean, it's just the beginning of so many unprecedented old is new again developments in our world.

Alex, thank you so much for bringing us that reporting.

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"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: We begin with breaking news this hour. The Department of Justice has announced federal charges against three people in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill former president Donald Trump and president-elect before the presidential election. This is a newly discovered plot and two of the people charged are U.S. citizens.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: We have CNN's Evan Perez following the story. Also with us is CNN military analyst, retired colonel Cedric Keighton.

And first to you, Evan, what more are you hearing from the DOJ?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know that two of these people are already in custody. These are people who were working with what the prosecutors say is an IRGC operative essentially, somebody who recruited these folks when he was serving time in U.S. prison, and the leader of this alleged plot, according to prosecutors, his name is Farhad Shakeri. He is 51 years old. He is back in Iran. He's obviously not under arrest.

And according to prosecutors he was tasked with recruiting people who would be able to carry out assassinations in the United States. People who were on their list of enemies. One of them, of course, is somebody who was a dissident, someone who was a critic of the Iranian regime. We don't know the name of that person. That person is not identified in here. But according to prosecutors they -- these two men followed this person and were essentially trying to figure out ways, comings and goings, their comings and goings to make making sure they knew where exactly they could carry out this assassination.

Now the most -- the one that obviously sticks out to all of us is a plot that they were -- Shakeri was tasked with on October 7th, according to prosecutors, to try to carry out an assassination of Donald Trump. Obviously this is before the election. It's not the first attempt by the Iranians according to the FBI to do an assassination against Donald Trump. Also on the list were two Jewish U.S. citizens, according to prosecutors in New York. Again he was trying to pay $500,000 to carry out these assassinations.

And also Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka were on the IRGC list. Again, all of this according to prosecutors part of a broader effort by the Iranians to target dissidents, people, enemies that the Iranians have on their list. Of course, you remember back in the summer there was a Pakistani man who was arrested -- who was arrested and he was sent here specifically according to the FBI to try to find people to carry out an assassination against Donald Trump, against other people including people inside the current administration, and to do surveillance essentially, information collecting, for the IRGC. w

SANCHEZ: Colonel Leighton, what stands out to you about this news and how do you think the effort by Iran to sort of recruit or outsource this effort would have worked? Would that have been an efficient plan.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Maybe not the most efficient plan but it's very typical of the Iranians, Boris. And one of the things that they do is when they go after certain targets, you know, like a prominent politician or, you know, somebody who is, you know, on their target list like Israeli tourists, they're going to find others to do it, just basically the same method that they used with Hezbollah and with Hamas, use proxy forces.

So this is a microcosm of that. What they're trying to do on the Iranian side is they're trying to go in and in some ways have plausibility deniability, at least initially when it comes to assassination attempts like this. But it's also, you know, as Evan was mentioning, these are intelligence collection efforts with a purpose, with a goal in mind. They're basically preparing the battle space, so to speak, for these actions.

They want to know movements, they want to know who's going where, what their targets are doing. And when they do that kind of thing, there's a lot of intelligence that they have to collect in order to be successful. And these particular suspects are ones that would have been recruited by the Iranians. Probably have an ideological bent that favors the Iranians and they're using that in order to actually go after these targets.

So if they were to be successful with that, of course, it would have a major implication for U.S. policy in the Middle East, would have major implications for a military force posture, and many other things.

KEILAR: This can be traced back to the targeted killing of Qassem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander, back in 2020 I believe it was? LEIGHTON: Actually yes, 2020.

PEREZ: Just before Trump left office.

KEILAR: Just before he left office. Just a few weeks before he left office.

[13:05:01]

And Iran, I don't think we can overstate it, I'm sure for a lot of Americans Soleimani was not a household name but for Iranians he was. And so this is something that Iranians, the Iranian government, they feel every day. They feel constantly this thing that America did, and yet, are you surprised that it has resulted in this reaction?

LEIGHTON: Not at all.

KEILAR: Really?

LEIGHTON: Because, and the reason I'm not surprised, the Iranians have a lot of memory and now that Trump is once again the president-elect, he is even more of a valuable target to the Iranians, and in essence what they're trying to do is they're trying to seek revenge. Killing Soleimani would have been like killing Colin Powell. It's something like that on that level of magnitude and the reason --

KEILAR: When at his apex of power in government?

LEIGHTON: Exactly. When he was at his apex of power in government. And if you do something like that, you know, Trump, you know, ordered that killing, and the Iranians see that as being, you know, something that he is responsible for and as result of that not only was Trump on the target list but people like former national security adviser Bolton was also on that list, and has protection to this day because of that.

So those are the kinds of things that the Iranians, you know, are continuing to look at. They're seeing this as being a, you know, continuation of their policy. They are using asymmetric warfare on us in many different ways. This is one aspect of it. There are other aspects including cyber activities and of course some proxy activities that Hamas and Hezbollah have been conducting for years in militaries.

PEREZ: And keep in mind, I mean, obviously, you know, a lot of people focused on Russia and China as the biggest adversaries to the United States but the Iranians are quickly trying to catch up and they are doing things including as you just pointed out, I mean, during the recent election they were targeting the Trump campaign. They hacked into the campaign. They tried to get documents out, disseminate them to try to embarrass the campaign.

Not only are they trying to kill people associated with the former Trump administration but also people associated with the current administration, with the Biden administration, and a lot of it is this view of retribution for what they view what the United States has been doing and what the Israelis have been doing in Iran and in the region. So that's part of what the story here is, and they've said publicly, by the way, that they are planning still to seek revenge for the killing of Soleimani. They said they haven't gotten it and they will keep trying. And so that's the issue here for the FBI is that these things they know will keep happening.

SANCHEZ: And putting this out there now at this time while the Secret Service is undergoing somewhat of a renovation or reimagining to some degree is notable. It sends a message.

SANCHEZ: It does. I mean, look, for the Secret Service, for the FBI, you know, the fact that he is now president-elect changes the way they protect Donald Trump. It's already changed. He's going to have military assets now to help protect him. So there are -- there is a lot more protection for Donald Trump. It was already changing after the second attempt on his life, and so obviously when he's president you have even more protections.

And that is going to change forever how they protect Donald Trump because they know as you pointed out, the Iranians have a long memory. They're not going to let this go and as the former president, you know, he has said that he wants to go after the Iranians in their pressure campaign. That's going to be part of his foreign policy when he takes office.

KEILAR: All right. Evan, Colonel, thank you so much for both your insights in this very important breaking news. A newly disclosed plot that marks yet alleged attempt on President-elect Trump's life by Iran's regime.

Also happening right now, as President-elect Trump prepares to hit the ground running, finalizing plans to dramatically reshape the U.S. government on his first day in office, we're learning new details about an increasingly tense battle that is playing out at his Mar-a- Lago resort in Florida.

SANCHEZ: Allies are now maneuvering publicly, making calls, forming alliances and hoping their loyalty to the president-elect is rewarded with top spots in his second administration.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is live for us from West Palm Beach near Mar-a- Lago.

Kristen, what's the latest there?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, the wheels are moving very quickly right now. The transition team is having regular meetings with the former president as well as a lot of these candidates for these potential positions. And one, I want to note, we talked a lot attorney general yesterday. But one thing I'm hearing on the ground is a lot of the tension behind potentially secretary of state.

One of the people that we know is on that list is Marco Rubio. We know that he has been -- his name has been floated a number of times, but I do want to throw back a little bit to what happened during the vice presidential fight for that position. That was that Don Jr., who is a noted adviser of Donald Trump's, he has said multiple times he wants to be part of the transition.

He wants to help vet people, actually put a pretty explosive statement out on his Rumble TV show about Marco Rubio slamming him, saying he was going to -- he would turn his back on Donald Trump if Donald Trump chose him to be his vice presidential pick.

[13:10:08]

We'll see how that plays out between these two factions as this goes forward but it is a little bit notable here because you're already seeing these clashing relationships unfold as Donald Trump is trying to figure out who's going to be his cabinet members, who is going to be in his administration.

KEILAR: And Kristen, tell us a little bit more about Susie Wiles, his new chief of staff pick.

HOLMES: Yes. Susie has been a fixture with Donald Trump for the last several years. She's outlasted almost every other adviser that he's had. It's actually a remarkable feat that she was able to be his campaign manager for the whole cycle because we know how Donald Trump is. What we had learned yesterday from our colleague Steve Contorno was that Susie Wiles was open to this idea of being the chief of staff.

However, she had some stipulations. And one of them was essentially that she would be able to control who came into the White House and when. The quote directly was that the clown car wouldn't be able to enter the White House at will. The reason why this is so important is if you look at what Susie Wiles did on the campaign part of the reason that she was able to outlast all of these other campaign managers is that early on she told people that she understood the idea that she couldn't control Donald Trump.

He was going to go out there and at times he was going to put his foot in his mouth, but what she could do or at least try to do was control the chaos around him. And that's what we saw with her when she was managing the campaign. She often tried to keep a tight grip on people who were allowed to be near to the former president, maybe those words, the clown car, whether or not they actually had access to him.

Now of course seems as though because of the fact that she accepted, he offered that he agreed, Donald Trump, to these terms. One thing I do want to point out that first term, part of the problem that we saw with a number of chief of staffs as well as the number of times Donald Trump got into controversies was because of the people who were allowed to have access to him in the Oval Office.

She is now putting her foot down, saying that that is not going to happen if she is chief of staff. We'll obviously wait and see how it plays out. One of the things we know is that she wasn't always successful on the campaign.

KEILAR: Yes, very good point. Kristen Holmes. thank you.

Let's talk more now about how the Trump transition is playing out with Lindsay Chervinsky. She is the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and author of "Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedence That Forged the Republic."

Thank you so much for being with us, Lindsay. I wonder based on the first Trump term, do you really see a chief of staff making a difference?

LINDSEY CHERVINSKY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY: Well, thank you for having me. As you said, Trump had a lot of chief of staffs in his first term. He went through them relatively quickly and John Kelly was the one that lasted the longest and was able to assert the maximum amount of control. But even then compared to other presidents he had far less control over who was in the Oval Office, who was coming into the White House, and how the president was spending his time.

So I suspect that unless there's been a pretty radical shift we will see a similar situation where sometimes Susie Wiles is able to assert control but then sometimes Trump will do whatever he wants to do as is, I should say, his right as president.

SANCHEZ: On the point of doing whatever he wants to do, just given the way that things are trending right now specifically in the U.S. House, CNN and others have yet to call it, but it appears that at this point it's trending towards Republican control. What would it be like for Donald Trump to have control and Republicans more broadly of all three levers of power if you're talking about the executive branch, Congress and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court?

CHERVINSKY: Well, I think we would see a pretty significant shift from his first term in office. Now of course, the first two years of his first term he did have control of all three branches, but there were a lot -- that opposed his efforts even from within his own party. And he hadn't learned really how government worked. One thing we see with all presidents, and Trump is no exception, is that they learned how the functions of government operate and they get better at it.

And so he has made very clear in his statements that he plans to surround himself with people who are both more loyal to him but also more able to get things done, and he has people in both Houses of Congress who are positioned and willing to do so which is not to say they will get everything they want. No president does. But I do think we're likely to see Trump able to achieve more of his goals than he was in the first term.

KEILAR: Yes. Historically there are many examples where the president does not control the entire legislature or certainly not to a degree that is significant, and I wonder, there's also a guardrail sometimes within a party of there being people who disagree and there's certainly going to be fewer Republican Trump detractors in Congress than during his first term. What's the effect of that?

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CHERVINSKY: Well, you're right. There are internal guardrails especially when it comes to things like raising the debt ceiling or passing a budget or passing the military expense fund or even as we get closer to the midterm elections, the concerns about sort of electoral prospects are absolutely going to play a role. And if the Senate does keep the filibuster in place, and that is a big if, then legislation will not be possible without some Democratic buy-in.

So there are some guardrails still in place. But the thing about guardrails that I think is really important for people to know is that if they've already been tested and then they haven't been strengthened they are inherently weaker than the first time around. And there were a lot of I think efforts to strengthen guardrails in the last four years but most of them at least through legislation did not pass. And so I think our guardrails are weaker than they were in 2016.

KEILAR: Yes. That's a very interesting point.

Lindsey Chervinsky, thank you so much. We appreciate your time.

CHERVINSKY: Thank you for having me.

KEILAR: While the president-elect works to fill positions at the White House, Republicans are confident as they close in on control of the House of Representatives, and one of the House seats that is poised to flip for Republicans is in California's 47th District in Southern California now represented by Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter.

Republicans are hoping that former state assemblyman Scott Baugh can hold on to his lead over Democratic state senator Dave Min. Right now that race is still too close to call. Porter had vacated her seat to run for Senate, and she is joining us now.

Congresswoman, let's talk a little bit about this. Your seat could very well flip to a Republican as we mentioned. I wonder why you think that is and if you have any regrets running for Senate rather than for re-election in your House seat?

REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): I'm very confident that Democrat Dave Min is going to win this seat and go to Congress fight for Orange County families.

Look, I had the narrowest of margin in 2022 and eventually won that race. In 2018 I started behind, way behind actually where Dave Min is now. So the reality is we have thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even 100,000 ballots still to count and what we are going to see today at 5:00 p.m. California time, tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. California time, is Dave Min pull ahead, stay ahead and ultimately go to Congress.

People just don't understand how California election county works, and so we have the same kind of panic every year. But I am here to tell you as someone who's been through this three times I never got to celebrate on election day, and I always got to go to Congress. It's going to be the exact same thing for Dave Min.

KEILAR: OK. We'll be looking to see if that's true. Your brand in Congress has centered around being a working mom. Someone who actually knows the price of groceries. What is your read on why Democrats are seeing these losses with working-class Americans? PORTER: Well, first, I think it's important to remember the presidency

wasn't the only contest on the ballot. So Democrats actually did really well in a lot of state-wide elections including in states that Trump won. For example, getting the majority in Wisconsin for the first time. So -- and the House remains very, very, very close. I still think Democrats have a shot at controlling it.

So I think this is really a wake-up call it should be for everybody in Congress, regardless of their party, that they need to connect directly with the biggest challenges families are having. So that is housing, that is the cost of child care, that is the cost of college, the changes to our economy, the risks to jobs.

We need a strong economic message and the party that figures out how do that is going to be the party that is going to win back control in 2026. I feel very good that Democrats can do that. Vice President Harris messaged on those topics but it was an abbreviated campaign, and frankly with all the chaos Donald Trump created I think that message just didn't penetrate.

KEILAR: Talk a little bit more about that if you will, because, I mean, I was in North Carolina for election night where they actually made some gains. I mean, there's still a Republican majority there in their statehouse, but they were able to push through a super majority and Democrats made a lot of strides in those state-level races as you mentioned.

Is there a different thing that Democrats are talking about? Are they talking more about specifics? I've heard complaints from within your party that there are some achievements that Democrats, they're actually out of touch enough, some of them, that they don't even know about them. They don't know to talk to certain groups of people about certain achievements when it comes to job creation, with certain voting blocs to tell them what happened.

[13:20:06]

There actually, in some cases, they seem to be oblivious or not mentioning something that seems like an obvious positive to tout. Is that your experience? Is that what you're seeing?

PORTER: Well, I think Democrats know what we've done and we certainly know that the Republicans were incredibly unproductive in Congress when they controlled the House these last two years. I think the challenge has been, and I think we've seen this in a lot of races including in my Senate race, where Donald Trump ends up picking up a lot of the oxygen. People want to think about Donald Trump, hard-core Democrats, Democratic primary voters, established but Democrats.

That's what they want to talk about because he is an existential threat. He is a seriously chaotic poor leader, and we've already seen that. The problem is how do you connect that to what it means for people's lives. So I think the important thing on this campaign trail going forward is to explain to people that Donald Trump's economic policy is going to make your groceries more expensive. Donald Trump's economic policy is going to cost us American jobs. Donald Trump's economic policies are going to make it harder for you

to retire. But I think that's where we have to bring those two things together. I think this abstract talk about democracy, obviously it is the foundation of our entire government, so one can never minimize it but how you connect that to what's going on in people's lives, I think that's where our local candidates, our state candidates, our congressional House candidates really did I think a little bit of a success penetrating and getting through to voters probably because they're having more one-on-one small-group conversations. It's not all being fought out on media or social media.

KEILAR: There was also some ticket splitting on issues in candidates. We saw that in certain states and we should mention that Prop 36 overwhelmingly passed in California that would increase penalties for certain theft and drug crimes. How did you end up voting on that?

PORTER: Well, when it came down to Prop 36 I had to think really hard about what to do. And I think it was a flawed measure. I support the increased penalties for retail crimes. That's a problem here. We need to give more tools to our police officers, to our businesses to deal with that. At the same time, the drug substance use part of this we know that incarcerating people for substance use is incredibly expensive to taxpayers and doesn't actually heal people.

So in the end I voted yes for Prop 36 but with real reservations about the substance piece of it, and that is something that I think we ought to be focusing on going back and fixing in this legislative term.

KEILAR: And you answered that with an explanation. Vice President Harris did not when she was asked about it. She sort of punted on the question, said she hadn't voted yet. Should she have answered?

PORTER: Well, I can't speak for her. I could just tell you that for better or worse, I think sort of how I, Katie Porter, have navigated politics there's a willingness to stand on my two feet, tell the truth, be honest with voters, make space for them to disagree, and show respect toward them and is exactly how I won over Republican and swing voters while connecting with some of our most progressive voters.

And so I just, I think being direct is sort of my brand. It gets me in trouble sometimes, no doubt, but I think it's also allowed me to retain my energy and my sort of enthusiasm for politics even in a tough time for Democrats.

KEILAR: All right. Congresswoman, thank you so much. We will see what is your next chapter. We appreciate your time today.

PORTER: Thank you.

KEILAR: And ahead this hour on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, some new details about how the Harris campaign is trying to contain the fallout after Tuesday's loss while also attempting to figure out what the Democratic Party got so wrong.

Plus, a fast-moving wildfire in California has already burned through entire neighborhoods. It has forced thousands of people to flee. And look at these pictures. Unbelievable. It is still barely contained. We'll have the latest on the Mountain wildfire.

SANCHEZ: And Israel sending evacuation planes to Amsterdam after horrifying antisemitic attacks overnight. These important stories and many more all coming your way on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[13:28:02]

KEILAR: We do have some breaking developments on the Harris campaign after Tuesday's election loss. We're learning that some top members of the campaign are asking their colleagues to avoid criticizing the Harris team to the press.

SANCHEZ: Now that's according to a source who was on a call where that plea was made.

Let's get the latest from CNN senior White House correspondent MJ Lee.

MJ, take us through the details on this report.

MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you know, Democrats and the Harris campaign are still reeling and as they begin this sort of soul-searching process of answering the question of what went wrong here, this is clearly going to be a drawn-out process with a lot of different conversations happening across the party, and I am told that there was a Harris campaign staff call held yesterday evening and that leaders on the call had one specific request that they wanted to make to the staff.

And that was to avoid criticizing the campaign and its strategy to members of the media essentially their message was, this doesn't really help the situation at all. This is how one source who was on the call described the gist of what top officials on the call said to stop. They said everyone was, like, this sucks. Losing sucks. There's something bigger that happened than the campaign, and everyone worked really hard and everyone is proud of them and basically stop shitting on the campaign to the press.

Now, I am also told that the senior campaign officials on this call promised the staff that they are going to do everything that they can to help them find jobs. Obviously a very new reality for everyone on this campaign. Some of whom had very much hoped that if Harris were to win they could be headed to Washington, D.C. to look for roles inside the White House throughout the administration.

I'm also told that there was an acknowledgement on this call that Harris's loss had been sweeping. Now, you can imagine a lot of raw emotions right now coursing throughout the Democratic Party including as we have been reporting a lot of anger that is being directed at President Biden as well -- Boris and Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. END