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President-Elect Trump Nominates Pam Bondi as U.S. Attorney General after Matt Gaetz Withdraws; Controversies Surround President- Elect Trump's Nomination for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth regarding Comments about Women in U.S. Military. : Sean "Diddy" Combs Back in Court for Bail Release Attempt; Ohio Officials Condemn Neo-Nazi Demonstration in Columbus. Aired 8-8:30a ET.

Aired November 22, 2024 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

ELISA RAFFA, CNN WEATHER ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: We have because they need that business. What he also told me was the community here has been so special and so moving, the neighbors really loving on each other at this difficult time. Sara?

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: It's a beautiful thing to hear, but it's also hard to look at those pictures from the drone to see just how widespread the damage is there. And you can bet for folks looking for Christmas trees, that the prices are going to have to go up because supply is clearly been knocked way down.

Thank you so much, Elisa Raffa, from a very snowy Newland, North Carolina.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Out with the old, in with the new. The president-elect moving quickly to put up a new pick for attorney general after Matt Gaetz bows out over his controversies. Now adding new pressure to the controversy surrounding another of Trump's picks, Pete Hegseth.

And this morning, Sean "Diddy" Combs will be back in court as his lawyers try for a third time to get him released on bail. What makes this bail hearing different?

And six tourists, including one American, are dead after drinking alcohol suspected of being tainted with methanol. One person now detained in connection with the deaths.

I'm Kate Bolduan with Sara Sidner. John is out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

The fate and future of the President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet this morning, cabinet 2.0, is facing its first big shakeup, hiccup, whatever you want to call it. Matt Gaetz is out and Pam Bondi is now in as Donald Trump's pick for attorney general. What is clear right now is that Bondi's path to confirmation appears far less -- far more stable and far less controversial among Republican senators than what they saw in Matt Gaetz. Some expressing relief to CNN in hearing that Gaetz pulled his name from consideration, aka, he saw clearly that the math was not there for him to survive confirmation.

This raises new questions about the math for some of Donald Trump's other nominations marred by controversy and facing allegations that have previously not been made public. CNN's Alayna Treene, she's got much more. She's tracking all of this for us. And Trump quickly did move to name Pam Bondi as now his nomination for attorney general. What happened behind the scenes?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, there's a few things. One, just to get back to the Matt Gaetz of it all. I mean, Donald Trump, after Matt Gaetz had been with J.D. Vance on Wednesday going around the Senate, meeting with the people who would be crucial to getting him through his confirmation hearings, many people reported back to Donald Trump that it was clear that the writing was on the wall, and that he likely would not have the votes to make it through. We've learned now that Donald Trump called Matt Gaetz on Thursday morning, telling him that the math was not there, but leaving the decision up to him to pull out and withdraw his own name, which he did do, of course, later that day. I'm told Gaetz called up Donald Trump and J.D. Vance separately to tell them that he was going to be removing himself from consideration.

But to get to the Pam Bondi of it all now, I mean, you're right. He moved very quickly to announce a new attorney general. Part of that is because that role is the most important to Donald Trump. He really wanted to push aside all of the other confirmation, or excuse me, appointees that he had to make for different cabinet picks like Treasury, like Labor, and really figure out who would be his attorney general.

Now, part of the reason he selected Bondi, I'm told, is, one, he has known her for years. She did serve in his first term as part of his White House counsel. She represented him during his first impeachment trial. He also loves to see her on television defending him. That has been a key qualification we've seen with some of the other picks as well. And she also knows people in Donald Trump's orbit, including his incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles, who, of course, her herself has been involved in Florida politics for a very long time.

And you're right, Kate, that when I talk to people working on the transition process, those close to Donald Trump, they said that they were a little bit relieved that Matt Gaetz is no longer in the picture. That was going to be a very difficult battle for them to fight. Whereas they think Pam Bondi, of course, she still has a lot of questions that she's going to be confronted with by different senators, but they believe that she will have an easier time, I'm told, getting confirmed.

BOLDUAN: Great to see you, Alayna. Thanks for kicking us off this hour.

Sara? SIDNER: All right, with us now is Democratic strategist Julie

Roginsky and former Trump administration official Tricia McLaughlin. Tricia most recently served as senior adviser and director of communications for Vivek Ramaswamy's 2024 run. Welcome to the both of you.

Let's start with Pam Bondi. Not a household name, but she is, you know, the attorney general of Florida, the first female attorney general, and has a heck of a lot more experience than Matt Gaetz has.

[08:05:01]

Do you see, Tricia, this sort of sailing through? Because there are some issues, she's faced some scrutiny over payments that Donald Trump made to her campaign while she was overseeing that investigation of Trump University and her being a registered lobbyist at one point for Qatar.

TRICIA MCLAUGHLIN, FORMER SENIOR ADVISER AND DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS, VIVEK 2024: Yes, I think Republicans across the board are breathing a sigh of relief. Matt Gaetz was taking up a lot of media oxygen, but as well as political capital. She, Pam Bondi, really is eminently qualified. She served, as you said, as attorney general, the first female. She's been a prosecutor for 20 years. She oversaw the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

And I think a lot of Republicans also say, OK, Pam Bondi is going to get us back to the norms of the Justice Department. We will not be weaponizing the Justice Department like we saw under Merrick Garland, that unprecedented raid of Mar-a-Lago against Donald Trump, the unprecedented prosecution against a former president and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination. People are ready to get past that. And like Donald Trump said, he said success is going to be his retribution.

SIDNER: To be fair, the raid happened because there were classified documents inside of Mar-a-Lago that shouldn't have been there. Same thing that happened with, with Joe Biden. There were classified documents that the government should have.

I do want to ask you about Bondi, because you said something that Scaramucci, we just talked to, said. Look, she has said in interviews that she is going to prosecute the prosecutors inside of the DOJ, looking at the prosecutors who went after Donald Trump and saying that, you know, they are going to be investigated. So is this revenge? Is that the order of the day? And what does that mean to those working at the DOJ and to the American public?

JULIE ROGINSKY, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Of course it's revenge. I mean, Donald Trump said to voters I will -- his voters, I will be your vengeance. And he meant it. And this is what that means. He was never going to put anybody in there who was going to be a conventional attorney general, who was going to do the business of the United States and not the business of Donald Trump. And you see that today.

Look, what's going to end up happening is there's going to be a massive brain drain from the Justice Department. And that's going to be incredibly hard to put back together after Donald Trump is gone. These are people who worked there, who are apolitical, sometimes for decades, people who could have gone to major law firms and made a lot of money, but decided to serve the United States instead.

And what's going to happen now is that if she decides that her business is not to do the business of the United States, but the business of Donald Trump, and go after prosecutors who are doing nothing more than their jobs, one of two things is going to happen. Either nobody is going to want to work at the State Department unless they're full on MAGA, which is not great for the people, or they're not going to want to work there because they don't want to work for somebody like that. And what that means is effectively that we're not going to have competent, qualified people who have been there all along doing that.

Now, maybe that's Donald Trump's idea of draining the swamp, quote- unquote. But the truth of the matter is, it does not do any good for the people who put him there. And those are the people that the Justice Department is supposed to serve. They're not the president's lawyers. They're our lawyers.

SIDNER: Now that now that Matt Gaetz is out, do you see this sort of full focus going to Pete Hegseth, because there are these allegations that, sources have told us that the Trump team was unaware of, so apparently it wasn't disclosed. Do you see him having trouble getting through?

MCLAUGHLIN: I think that Pete Hegseth will be confirmed. I mean, he does have a strong background as far as he served in the military for 20 years. He has two Bronze Stars. But I will say we're already seeing the media shift to the focus on the Pete Hegseth investigation, which we should be clear that he was cleared of. And there were no charges pressed.

So yes, will he face more scrutiny? Will RFK face more scrutiny? Will Kristi Noem and will Tulsi Gabbard? Of course. But I think we're also going to see that the Senate is going to do their own investigations with these folks. And I think Pete Hegseth will be a great leader for the Pentagon. And he's going to focus on rooting out toxic ideologies.

SIDNER: Pete Hegseth technically was not cleared. He just was not charged. There is nothing in the 22-page report saying he was cleared. However, he has said he has not done it. He was not charged. But there is another line of concern that we heard from North Dakota's Senator Cramer. And the line of concern is when he said that women should not serve in combat roles in the military. With the military having such a deep problem with recruitment and with women coming forward saying that they've been sexually assaulted in the military what do you make of this line? And it being brought up by a senator who ostensibly will vote as to whether or not Pete Hegseth will get this nomination?

ROGINSKY: Pete Hegseth has many problems in addition to what you just said. Pete Hegseth, when he was at Princeton, published an article that said that women who are raped while they're passed out, actually, that's not really rape, because if they can't consent, if they're not aware of what's happening to them, that's not rape.

[08:10:00]

I mean, this is somebody who is going to be in charge of a military that has had massive sexual assault scandals. To be very clear, on both sides of the aisle, this is something that people have been looking into, senators on both sides of the aisle. It's a problem. And if you speak to women who have served in the problem, they say it's a question of not if but when they will be sexually assaulted.

To have somebody like this as the leader of our military, who, by the way, I think also, because of his own personal life and his failure to disclose certain details of that to the White House and to others, is really ripe as an intelligence compromised human being. I mean, the bottom line is this is exactly the kind of person that should not be serving in a national security capacity because this is the kind of person who has things that he doesn't want coming out that our enemies are probably already aware of.

Surely, Tricia, surely there is somebody in the Trump Organization and the Trump orbit who doesn't have sexual harassment issues that they can put into this job. It does not need to be Pete Hegseth.

MCLAUGHLIN: Well, I have to note, though our current commander in chief, Joe Biden, has sexual assault allegations against him. He is the leader of our country. He's the leader of the military. So we can go through this all day. But there's multiple people who face these allegations, whether they be true or not. We need to make sure that there's sound investigations without -- I mean, without coming to sweeping.

ROGINSKY: OK, but he didn't disclose. He did not disclose to his own people.

MCLAUGHLIN: You're saying he didn't disclose to the transition team.

ROGINSKY: He did not disclose to anybody. And that if I were the Trump administration, if I were Susie Wiles, if I were the whoever was doing the vetting on him, I would be furious. Why not disclose something? Why is it that that, apparently, Donald Trump had to find out, along with the rest of us, that there is a credible allegation of sexual assault?

And by the way, I think we all know that sexual assault is incredibly hard to charge. It's incredibly hard to prosecute for reasons that are obvious. One person says a, and another person says b. As a result of that, you can't really figure out what happened.

MCLAUGHLIN: As Tara Reade did. As Tara Reade --

ROGINSKY: OK, Tara Reade is now -- Tara Reade is now living in Moscow working for Vladimir Putin. So I think we understand where that's coming from.

But look, this is a Republican woman at a Republican conference who accused Pete Hegseth of this. This is not some Democratic deep state plant --

MCLAUGHLIN: Where there are no charges, and this was eight years ago. It must be --

ROGINSKY: Listen, I worked -- listen, I worked with Pete Hegseth at FOX. And let me tell you something, Pete Hegseth has issues above and beyond this that need to be examined, because Pete Hegseth has a problem where he goes out and he gets drunk, and that's also not something that we need necessarily need in our Department of Defense and the person leading our military. So I would just say I like Pete on a personal level. Surely there are people who are more qualified than he is.

SIDNER: Julie Roginsky, Tricia McLaughlin, thank you both for talking through that with us.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: This morning, Sean "Diddy" Combs will be back in court. His lawyers are now accusing prosecutors of altering evidence that they leaned on to keep him behind bars. Much more on that.

And also new overnight, more strikes in Ukraine as the Kremlin blames the west for its use of a new missile capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

And is a turf war underway between rival hate groups in Ohio right now? How the city of Columbus has gotten caught in the middle of it and preparing now to fight back.

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[08:17:26]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Today, Sean "Diddy" Combs will be back in court for his third attempt at getting released on bail.

And in a new court filing ahead of this hearing, his attorneys are now claiming that prosecutors altered the video of Combs attacking his then girlfriend, Cassie Ventura in 2016. A warning when we show you this video again, this video really is disturbing.

It's the surveillance footage first obtained and reported by CNN, showing Combs grabbing Ventura by the back of the neck, throwing her to the ground in a Los Angeles hotel, and then dragging her.

Combs' legal team now says an edited version of that video was used by prosecutors at earlier bail hearings, and they argue those edits omit some footage and changes the order of events.

Joining us right now is CNN legal analyst, Joey Jackson.

Joey, what do you think of this new argument that Combs' team is going to be making, we've seen it in filings, to try to get him out on bail?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: So, good morning, Kate. I think a lot of it and here's why, right?

BOLDUAN: YES.

JACKSON: Courts do not like to be misled and what happens in the relevance of this, Kate, is that this was used, that is the video in the bail hearing to evidence sex trafficking. That's what prosecutors suggested, that this was a sex trafficking video, that he was otherwise bringing her and dragging her back as part of this common scheme.

Defense has said that this is evidence of a consensual relationship and domestic dispute. It doesn't make what we saw on that video any more right. But the reality is, is that if you're going to have an indictment and claim someone was sex trafficking, and if you're the government and going to use this critical piece of evidence to show that, and you're going to edit the video, number one, number two, take it out of context, number three, reorder the series of events, that's troubling.

And when you use it in a bail hearing to say he cannot be trusted, he's a danger to the community. He cannot be released and then we learn about this. It's problematic and troubling. And I don't think a court will take too kindly to that.

BOLDUAN: Even if the -- and we have to see, of course, what happens in court and what is presented and said in court. But if that video, if the order of events are reordered how is it that -- could it, how does a judge then see that he's any less the third time around, any less a threat to society just by a reordering that.

JACKSON: Yes, so here's what they're saying. Everything, Kate, the defense's argument has a context, right?

BOLDUAN: Exactly.

JACKSON: And context matters, what specifically happened? Does it justify hitting her in any way, shape, or form? No, but the defense is arguing that you prosecutors were using that to show that this was a sex trafficking and a freak off event. It was not -- It was merely a domestic dispute.

And if the core of your indictment is the whole sex trafficking, prostitution, racketeering issue, you misled me, will say a judge. And that's how it could alter events.

They're saying in fact, Kate, that they used the CNN video right in court as opposed to the actual video and that's troubling.

[08:20:22]

BOLDUAN: What happens to the overall criminal charges he faces if this what the prosecutor -- what Combs' defense team is trying to allege here is true?

JACKSON: So, a couple of things to keep in mind, right. So first, this is simply a bail hearing, right. And that's an argument as to why he should be released, that's number one, okay. This is only a bail hearing.

BOLDUAN: Right.

JACKSON: To your question, in the event we get to trial, right, and there is no resolution prior, it is going to be predicated upon the facts.

What the defense is arguing is that this was, again, a consensual long-term relationship that had nothing to do with sex trafficking and this is the only witness in that allegation of the sex trafficking portion of the indictment.

The defense is arguing, Kate, that there's a victim, victim two, that's nonexistent. So, it goes to the factual issue at trial of whether it was sex trafficking or something else.

BOLDUAN: Okay. On bail, how is after two -- how is third time a charm? How does it -- how is it different? Is this what we were just talking about, this allegation from the -- his team, is that so much of a game changer that it would change a judge's view third time around on bail?

JACKSON: So, it could be but there's a -- it could be and here's why. Number one, it's not only what we've been talking about, right? But it's the other issue and that's this: Could he defend himself in court and prepare with his team?

A lot of the defense papers are predicated upon him having the ability to be adequately prepared for trial while he's in a jail cell.

And when you're raiding his jail cell --

BOLDUAN: And then come in that brig.

JACKSON: -- taking notes, et cetera, you're monitoring his phone calls. You're limiting his ability to have access to counsel. You're listening to everything he's saying that's troubling. And then you try to use that information against him.

You need to be able to prepare with your lawyers. If you don't have the ability to do that, then it impedes your ability, right, to have a fair trial and therefore a judge could say, hey, if you guys are going to be going in his jail cell taking out these papers, maybe he should be out preparing as opposed to -- and with you peeping on everything that he's doing, so that's --

BOLDUAN: So interesting. It's so interesting because you'd think a third bail hearing, it's you know, same thing is going to happen, but there has been a lot that's happened since that second bail hearing that were just talking about that this hearing today could be really an interesting one in the long road to -- in the criminal charges that he faces overall.

It's good to see you, Joey. Thank you.

JACKSON: Always. Thanks, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Kate.

This morning, why tourists are being warned about drinking alcohol and not for the reasons you might think. Six people have been poisoned. Details on that ahead.

And an unexpected twist in the story of a missing kayaker who was initially believed to have drowned in a Wisconsin lake on a fishing trip. It turns out, he's alive, but he's living in another country. So, what the heck happened? That story ahead.

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BOLDUAN: The ADL, the leading anti-hate organization in the world says that there is a turf war underway in Columbus, Ohio right now, a turf war between hate groups.

This all started last week when we saw that march that took place in broad daylight, people carrying flags with swastikas and spewing hate like this.

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BOLDUAN: The ADL says those people are part of the Hate Club, a newly formed White supremacist organization, and they believe that was the group's first march and the way they put it is, it appears to have been an intentional effort to antagonize a rival, White nationalist supremacist group called Blood Tribe.

Well now, local officials, Jewish advocacy groups, Civil Rights leaders, they're all vowing to try and fight against this hate and these groups before it gets any worse.

Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine, he said this: "There is no place in this state for hate bigotry, antisemitism or violence, and we must denounce it wherever we see it."

Joining us right now is the city attorney for Columbus, Zach Klein. Thank you very much for coming in.

So the ADL thinks what happened in your city may have been the beginning of a hate group turf war. Is that what you think is happening?

ZACH KLEIN, COLUMBUS, OHIO CITY ATTORNEY: Look, I think that tensions are high in this country. And these radical groups that spew hatred are trying to take advantage of America.

But I can tell you one thing about being an American, it's the love of one another and the rejection of hate and that's exactly what we're doing in Columbus, Ohio.

We're rallying together, the folks that come up to me on the street, and I've talked to pastors, I've talked to faith leaders. You know, they are -- we are all standing together, united to reject hate.

And we want to love our neighbor, and that's frankly what makes Columbus so great, it is our rich culture neighborhoods, why our economy is so strong because of our strong LGBT community. The embracing and what we have going on in all of our wonderful neighborhoods.

It's because of our cultural differences that make us so great. So it's easy for us and the right thing to do to stand together in a unified way to reject hate.

BOLDUAN: And Columbus is a fantastic city which is why when seeing this, it was so depressing and demoralizing to see this happening in Columbus in broad daylight.

How do you all stop this from exploding and getting worse? What can you do?

KLEIN: Well, I think there's two major things. There's the rallying together as a community to reject hate. And that's bipartisan. It's apolitical. It's working with our faith leaders. It's working with our labor leaders, you know, getting in the trenches with our allies in the LGBT community, the Jewish community and that's exactly what we're doing this weekend.

We're having a peace march, an anti-racism march in the Short North, the same place where these Nazis walked last week. There's dozens of congregations that are set up to stand together to march against hate.

And the second is, drawing a line in the sand and calling out the darkness that this is. And as a prosecutor, ready to pounce the moment that they move from free speech and the conduct moves to criminal law, I'm ready to prosecute.

We draw the line in the sand in Columbus, Ohio and as a prosecutor, if the facts are there and we're able to prosecute these individuals, we will do it because we will not tolerate this conduct.

It is anti-American, you know, taking a step back and thinking about what Nazi-ism is, you know, Nazi-ism isn't just White supremacy, it's White supremacy and the elimination of Black, Brown, gay, LGBTQ, Jewish people to eliminate them from earth. Like, this is such a radical dangerous thought. It is anti-American.

And people that are pursuing, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nazi-ism is anti-American because it eliminates 70 percent of America. That is not what we stand for in this country.

We have to rally around and love our neighbor. I think we get away from that sometimes. Remember that we can embrace each other and support each other, and we can do it in the rejection of hate.

[08:31:13]