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Trump Administration Orders Pause to All Federal Grants and Loans; Trump Administration Orders Removal of Career Government Prosecutors Who Previously Investigated Donald Trump; Trump Administration Possibly Pursuing Investigation of Investigators into January 6th Capitol Hill Rioters; DHS Secretary Noem Joins Federal Agents on Immigration Crackdown in New York City; ICE: Over 1,100 Arrested in Immigration Enforcement on Monday; Greenland is Back. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 28, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Potentially trillions in federal grants and loans and aid as the clock winds down on it all being halted. This could impact millions of Americans and millions of people overseas, from disaster aid to small business assistance to support for charities and food assistance programs.

Bottom line, a lot remains unclear this hour about just how sweeping the impact could be, how far this could reach, and how long it could last. What is clear is that changes are coming.

The White House laid it out like this in a memo overnight. "The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism, and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve." Green New Deal is not a thing. It has not been passed.

CNN's Alayna Treene is live at the White House for us. Alayna, what more are you hearing about this today?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, Kate, I mean, this is the latest stunning use of power from President Donald Trump's White House with just eight days into his new administration. In this internal memo circulated by the Office of Management and Budget, it makes clear that they are directing agencies to pause all federal grants and loans effective at 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

Now, as you mentioned, this could impact, or this could potentially lead to trillions of dollars in this type of funding being paused and impact millions of Americans. Now, the freeze on federal assistance, as I said, is slated to take effect at 5:00 p.m. today. That means that a lot of these organizations were given less than 24 hours notice of this pause.

And one thing that is clear is that the White House is saying that it's targeting these organizations that they believe may not align with the Trump administration's views. As you just read from that internal memo, they said that they described some of these grants as a, quote, "waste of taxpayer dollars." Now, we did hear from the national, the leader of the National Council of Nonprofits. They called this a five alarm fire, saying, quote, "From pausing research on cures for childhood cancer to halting food assistance, safety from domestic violence, and closing suicide hotlines, the impact of even a short pause in funding could be devastating and cost lives."

Now, we've also heard top Democrats on Capitol Hill ring the alarm on this as well. This is what we heard from Senator Chuck Schumer. He said, quote, "If this continues, the American people will pay an awful price."

Now, I do want to be clear here, Kate, that the memo does specify that Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as individual grants and payments to individuals, will not be impacted. But again, it's very clear that this is just the latest move by the Trump administration to exert control over federal funding, even when Congress has already appropriated some of these funds. That is something we've also heard lawmakers on Capitol Hill call into question, whether or not this is legal and whether or not Donald Trump has the authority to do this.

Now, we also know that today at 1:00 p.m., the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has her first press briefing. This is going to be, I think, one of the major questions that she is faced with to answer, try to clarify, what is the scope of this, what is the scale of this? These are things that we're hearing from a lot of experts kind of questioning right now, as well as, again, what is the authority that Donald Trump, the president, has to carry this out. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Even if it -- even if it is the prerogative of the administration to examine and reevaluate where aid goes, knowing the timeline of how long a halt, how long is a pause should be something that the White House can answer before they roll something like this out.

It's good to see you, Alayna. We'll see. John?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, this morning, an unprecedented move against career government officials. The Trump administration ordered the removal of a dozen career prosecutors, essentially for doing their jobs, in this case, that was investigating Donald Trump. CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz joins us now. Good morning, once again, to you, Katelyn.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: John, Donald Trump said he wanted to fire Jack Smith. That didn't come to pass because smith left the Department of Justice. So Donald Trump and his acting attorney general, James McHenry, they got rid of everybody who was working for Jack Smith, the special counsel, on those two criminal cases against Donald Trump.

Now, this is highly unusual because these were career prosecutors, people who had worked in the department long before Smith came into existence as the special counsel, worked on many, many cases, the yeoman's work of line attorney investigations, prosecutions, criminal trials at the DOJ, in the U.S. attorneys' offices. Those people are fired now. There are more than a dozen of them affected from what our sources are telling us. And what the memo that was sent to them yesterday from the acting attorney general said, it underlined how this was both personal and political.

[08:05:04]

The quote, "You played a significant role in prosecuting President Trump. I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president's agenda faithfully." So the type of career employees in the Department of Justice who would have left a special counsel investigation and gone back to their home offices, even in the previous Trump years, that's what happened after the Mueller investigation, those people no longer will be working with the Justice Department.

They will have the opportunity to challenge this firing on an adjudicatory board, the merit systems protection board, or perhaps they will consider bringing a lawsuit. But this is highly unusual and something that many people in the legal community believe may not be justified, if even a viable option for the administration to take against career employees.

BERMAN: Katelyn, the Trump administration is taking a different new action vis-a-vis January 6th as well. What's that?

POLANTZ: Yes, this all broke within about an hour of each other yesterday. There was the firing of the Smith prosecutors who remained at the department. And then just before that, the U.S. attorney in Washington, so the person who is serving as the interim head of the office that brought more than 1,500 cases against Capitol rioters, he announced a special project, an investigation into the use of a felony charge against those people who were prosecuted by this Friday. The interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Ed Martin, said that he wanted files, notes, emails, documents to be sent over to some people in that office so that they could review the use of that charge.

This looks like an investigation of the investigators, but how thorough it can be with just a few days notice for the dozens of people that worked on these cases as line prosecutors in this office, that remains to be seen. But this clearly is another message politically, that Donald Trump and his administration and his Department of Justice are having a zero tolerance toward January 6th investigations previously. John?

BERMAN: It does send a message. All right, Katelyn Polantz, thank you very much.

Kate?

BOLDUAN: So joining us right now to talk more about this is CNN's senior law enforcement analyst, former deputy director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe. Andy, thank you for coming in. Let's start with the firings of, the firings of the career federal prosecutors. First, just break them into two parts, if you will. What's your reaction to the firings?

ANDREW MCCABE, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Kate, you know, I think we've got to stop thinking about these things in terms of being unprecedented or unusual. They are clearly that, but they are much more than that. This is -- this is damaging to the Department of Justice and can undermine its ability to do justice in criminal cases for the United States of America. These, our DOJ functions in ways that we just take for granted. In this post-Watergate era when we have civil service protections for prosecutors, we have, over those decades and decades, cultivated a group of entirely professional, apolitical experts who can who spend their time not working for high paying law firms, but rather prosecuting crimes, national security matters, drug matters, human trafficking, sex against children, all sorts of heinous crimes. And they are protected in their jobs because they simply follow the law and the facts where they are required to go.

This is a complete undermining of that system and essentially a return to those pre 1970s days where government jobs were filled by political hacks who simply did the will of the administration. That's clearly where the Trump administration is trying to take the Department of Justice.

BOLDUAN: It seems very -- it seems quite straightforward. They're not, like, hiding or cloaking the intention or the reason behind the firings as well. I mean, one, the bit that sticks out from the acting A.G. writing, "Given your significant role in prosecuting the president, I do not believe that the leadership of the department can trust you to assist in implementing the president's agenda faithfully." You're talking about kind of, that it's impossible, Andy, to take this as a singular event. It is a bigger -- it is a bigger thing. What is the real impact more broadly on the department, other career federal prosecutors who are walking into the building today?

MCCABE: Yes. So, I mean, obviously this is an opportunity for President Trump to kind of exact retribution on the prosecutors he blames for his miseries of the last four years. But as you said, it's much broader than that. These sorts of actions spread like a virus through the organization. It's a -- there will be a chilling effect that impacts every other prosecutor in DOJ.

[08:10:04]

And it enters into their minds for the first time questions about how they should be pursuing their jobs, who they should be investigating, what cases they should be trying to prosecute, and specifically, what will happen to them if they pursue some target of an investigation who happens to be a friend or an affiliate of someone in the White House? What's going to happen to my career if I open a political corruption case against this Republican congressperson or this politician someplace else in the country? Those are not considerations right now for federal prosecutors, or they haven't been until these sorts of decisions have started happening. And I would suggest that that is not the Department of Justice that best serves the United States of America.

BOLDUAN: Really quickly, on the other element of this, as Katelyn Polantz said, it came within hours of each other. This special project that the interim acting U.S. attorney Ed Martin launched, a probe into the January 6th prosecutions of the rioters. This could very easily be seen as this U.S. attorney is going after to investigate the investigators, which we had heard from Donald Trump, which we had actually heard declared publicly by the incoming attorney general of the United States as a goal, even though she walked that back in confirmation hearings. What do you think of this?

MCCABE: Yes, well, here you have another action, as it were, in the same basic campaign. The effect here is to strike fear and concern in the hearts of these prosecutors, thinking that, wow, the decisions I make in an individual case, somebody is going to wind back the time machine and take a look at why I applied a particular statute, and whether or not that could be grounds to fire me or prosecute me criminally. I don't think that there's a realistic option of either of those two things happening. And Mr. Martin knows that.

The application of this statute under these circumstances was the policy of the Department of Justice. It was done under the supervision of these folks supervising attorneys. It was entirely consistent with the law when they brought these cases. The law was later changed by the Supreme Court.

But again, this is an effort, it's a shot across the bow to our federal prosecutor service in this country that says, you better line up with what the White House wants, not what the law says, not what the facts presented in front of you demand, but with what the White House wants before you start making any decisions in a prosecution.

BOLDUAN: Let's see what today brings. My goodness, Andy McCabe, it's good to see you, Andy. Thank you very much

John?

BERMAN: All right, quote, "as many as we can arrest and deport in the next year," the new goal from the border czar as ICE raids heat up around the country.

And new details this morning about who could be the first foreign leader to visit the president in the White House since he took office.

And new data this morning showing some cracks in President Trump's base. Details on the one issue where they may disagree with him.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:50]

BERMAN: All right, we have brand new video just in to CNN. It was released by Homeland Security Secretary -- the new secretary -- Kristi Noem and it shows her presence at an immigration raid in New York City overnight.

In her words, a criminal alien charged with kidnaping, assault and burglary is now in custody. Again, she put out this video. With us now is former acting director of ICE, John Sandweg. Thank you so much for being with us. This video released by the Secretary, the orders that we reported yesterday that people involved in these raids have been told to wear your jersey so people can see. We want this to be very much visible.

Why such a public display, John?

JOHN SANDWEG, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, US IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT: You know, it's very interesting. I mean, first of all, obviously, the reason why is I think the administration wants to draw a lot of attention to these raids and these operations. But what's interesting, John, is traditionally, you don't want to draw attention to these operations until the operation is complete. And there are two very good reasons for that.

The first is officer safety, especially when you're targeting individuals who, you know, who should have a nexus to public safety. You don't want to do anything to tip them where they might be lying in wait for an officer, especially if somebody is doing harm. So, one of the real cardinal rules of these types of operations is you don't do the publicity until it's complete.

But the second reason is, it reduces the effectiveness of the operation. As word gets out that you're targeting individuals with a nexus to the criminal justice system, those individuals tend to disappear.

So, during the Obama administration, when we ran these similar operations. What happens is over time, you start missing more and more of your targets because those individuals are no longer in the location that you expect them because they caught wind of the operation.

So, surprising in a way, from an operational perspective that they're putting this much publicity on these operations. But politically, I think it makes a little bit of sense why they want to do that.

BERMAN: So, I think in the last year of the Biden administration, there were an average of about 300 apprehensions each day. It was a slow start in this new Trump administration, but they're now at about a thousand a day and that's their target.

Besides the difference in the numbers, John, what do you see as the biggest differences in approach between the two administrations so far?

[08:20:03]

SANDWEG: Well, the biggest difference is clearly the targeting. This administration has lowered the threshold for when -- you know, prior to one of these operations, a lot of work goes in behind the scenes. The agency is running records from the criminal justice system, probation and parole records, cross-referencing that against immigration databases to try to identify the targets.

This is a tactic that was done throughout ICE's history, the Obama administration and the Biden administration included.

But what happens is, when you're doing that, you set a threshold. What type of crime is a serious crime that we're going to prioritize? Are we going to arrest what we call collaterals, individuals that we encounter when we are going after the criminal who may not have any nexus to the criminal justice system?

So, the Trump administration has lowered the threshold, including individuals charged with less serious offenses like traffic offenses or people who have not been convicted.

Secondly, they've been very clear that when they when they go to a house, if they find anybody who's undocumented there, everyone will be arrested, regardless of whether or not they have any nexus to the criminal justice system.

BERMAN: Well, talk to me more about what you just called collaterals, because Tom Homan said, "You know, I don't think we arrested any families. We've arrested public safety threats and National Security threats, bottom line."

SANDWEG: Yes, I mean, often times when you're doing these operations, you go into -- you knock on a door and you're looking for a certain individual, you may or may not find that individual there, but you often find that someone's living with other undocumented people. So, group homes are very common where you have multiple families living in the same house or you might find that person's family unit there.

Traditionally, during the Obama administration, ICE would be -- we would direct ICE that unless the individual you encounter has a nexus to public safety, you don't take them into custody.

You know, this administration has been clear. They are arresting collaterals.

John, look, in the coming weeks we're going to see that data related to who was arrested in these raids. And it will be very interesting to see what types of crimes that people were arrested for and how many individuals were arrested without a nexus to any, you know, any criminal history at all?

Just knowing how ICE operations work, knowing the limited number of high value targets that there are, I'm very confident that we'll see a lot of individuals who are arrested after having been charged with or maybe convicted of what would commonly be considered lower-level offenses. And a lot of individuals with a lot of these collaterals were arrested, individuals with no nexus to the criminal justice system at all.

BERMAN: And you think we'll see that data?

SANDWEG: Yes, I think, look, historically, ICE does release that data, including during the Trump administration. And again, it's just very illustrative.

If you look at the Trump administration data, you know, in 2019, prior to COVID, they arrested something like 63,000 individuals who were just charged with or convicted of traffic offenses.

And the bottom line, John, is, again, there's just not that many of these good targets out there. But really, that raises another question, which is, what's next?

And you heard Tom Homan say, this is going to continue, we want to continue at this tempo through the full year. And I'm going to be very interested to seeing what type of targeting, who they start prioritizing after they exhaust this criminal population.

This part of it is the low hanging fruit of the system in a sense, because you can you can just run these records and get good leads of individuals who've been charged with or convicted of a crime, but that's the natural place you start.

The question becomes, what do you do next? And I saw Tom Homan say that maybe they're going to focus on fugitives. But you have to remember the fugitive in the immigration context is different than the criminal. This is not someone who's been charged with a crime, but someone who's been ordered to leave the United States by an immigration judge and didn't leave, typically not a criminal population at all.

BERMAN: All right, John Sandweg, as always, you give us such great information and context. Appreciate your time this morning.

So, this morning, a key vote in one state on a new rule that would allow schools to track the citizenship status of students and their parents.

And just tragedy, awful, at a high school track meet when a parent in the stands was accidentally struck and killed by a hammer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:14]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning. Greenland is back. This morning, Denmark is boosting its military capabilities in the arctic and President Trump keeps pushing his desire to take control and purchase Greenland, a Danish territory.

Plus, the European Union is firmly rejecting Donald Trump's interests, saying it will not negotiate on Greenland.

So what do Americans think about this whole issue, that is not going away? CNN's Harry Enten is here. He's running the numbers on it. What are you seeing?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: What am I seeing? No, no, no. Awful, awful, awful. Pressure Denmark to sell us Greenland. The US should do it, just 16 percent; 58 percent -- we should not. We should not be pressuring Denmark to sell us Greenland.

I looked at all the polling data. None of it shows anywhere close to a majority of Americans who think that we should buy Greenland from Denmark.

Look, there are a lot of issues on which the American people are with Donald Trump. On this particular one, they're not even in the same universe as Donald Trump.

Basically, uniformity against this. When you just get 16 percent of the American public agreeing on an issue, you know, it's an unpopular stance to be taken.

BOLDUAN: No poll has found that we should buy Greenland.

ENTEN: Yes, very simple. Now, I like to make it simple sometimes.

BOLDUAN: It's very straight and I appreciate that.

ENTEN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: So, that's overall, what about among Republicans?

ENTEN: What about among Republicans? You might think that the Republican base would be with Donald Trump. Not on this question, not with this particular polling question. Pressure Denmark to sell us Greenland: Among Republicans, only 30 percent say we should; 42 percent say the US should not.

So, the plurality of Republicans are against this. When you get the plurality of Republicans, the majority of Democrats, the majority of Independents, you know, you've got an issue in which the American public are on one side. And on this issue, they are on the side of us not pressuring Denmark to sell us Greenland.

BOLDUAN: So, do I even need to ask? Has this changed over time?

ENTEN: Has this changed over time? You know, I was interested to find out that, in fact, this question has been asked before. You know, back in the mid 40's, there was has this idea that we should buy Greenland from Denmark. Back then --

BOLDUAN: Harry, as before, in 1947, I mean, that's like --

ENTEN: Yes, yes -- I mean look, but again, when you're dealing with a very different situation. And these are actually, you know, sometimes these numbers get flipped. This should be flipped.

[08:30:33]