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Trump Meets with Jordan's King; Conflict of Interest for Trump's Top DOJ Officials; Shan Wu is Interviewed about Possible Constitutional Crisis Larry Summers is Interviewed about Trump Overhauling the Government. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired February 11, 2025 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Is not deceased. But they have a much longer way to go. And, I mean, I know this because we had similar cases in New York. One involving a similar suspect who left three men dead in various hotels in Queens. We had a more recent spate in bars in Manhattan where men were being drugged in drinks and then taken and robbed.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Right.

MILLER: So, we know the pattern here, but we also know the difficulty of proving these cases because you have to wait for the autopsy and find out what drugs are in the system. And that's the toxicology, which can stretch out a couple of more weeks.

SIDNER: Which takes a long time. Yes.

MILLER: Do they match any drugs found on her person at the time of arrest, or in his home - or in her home at the time of the search? If you charge her with this case, based on the fact that this may fit with her pattern of criminal activity, will they allow you to bring her prior arrests into court because those cases are disposed of?

SIDNER: Right.

MILLER: And that's not what she's on trial for. So, it's complicated.

But as Chief Connelly from the Kenner PD told us, you know, they are going through all of those things. They obtained the search warrant. They found - they found the credit card, the phone. They found a stolen pistol, allegedly. So, they're going slowly because they have to, to get it right.

SIDNER: Yes, there's a lot of details and information that you don't always see right up front that the public now knows about and that the police now know about. But so terribly sorry for his family going to do his job and ending up dead in his hotel room.

Thank you so much, John Miller, for being here this morning with us.

MILLER: Thanks, Sara. SIDNER: Appreciate it.

A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Standing by for the arrival of the king of Jordan at the White House. His first chance to respond in person to the president's plan to take ownership of Gaza.

One person killed, several injured in an airport collision, all caught on video. A plane owned by the Motley Crue frontman involved in this crash.

And then, I don't think he's a happy person. I feel for him. How the dripping scorn between tech titans and, yes, Elon Musk is one of them, could very well reshape the AI industry and, frankly, the world as we know it.

I'm John Berman, with Kate Bolduan and Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: We are keeping a close watch on the White House right now, where very soon President Trump will be welcoming the king of Jordan, a close U.S. ally and one that the that - that President Trump has now threatened, suggesting he would withhold aid if Jordan does not get on board with Donald Trump's plans to take over Gaza.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REPORTER: Would you withhold the aid to these countries if they don't agree to take in the Palestinians?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Yes, maybe. Sure. Why not? You mean if they don't agree?

REPORTER: Is that part of the deal that you mentioned?

TRUMP: If they don't agree, I would - I would conceivably withhold aid, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: And as we know, the president says he wants to move millions of Palestinians out of Gaza into Jordan and Egypt so that the United States could own Gaza and redevelop it. Jordan and Egypt have resoundingly and continuously rejected that. President Trump, though, doubled down on the idea in a new interview overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.

BRET BAER, FOX NEWS HOST: Would the Palestinians have the right to return?

TRUMP: No, they wouldn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: They would not have a right to return is what the president now says.

CNN's Alayna Treene standing by at the White House for us to start us off this hour.

Alayna, the king of Jordan is about to arrive. They've got a lot to discuss. What are you hearing about this?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I mean, of course, Kate, what he's been saying - what the president has been saying about Gaza, and particularly about wanting Jordan and Egypt and some of the other Arab countries to take them in, is going to be at the forefront of that conversation. Notable that this is also, you know, the king of Jordan, King Abdullah, is going to be the first Arab leader to come to the White House since the president was sworn in.

But again, this is really going to be central to those discussions. And I can't emphasize enough, you said it, but we have to say it again, both Jordan and Egypt have said that they flatly rejected this idea of being open to taking in any Gazans displaced. They argue that they already have done so and that they are not on board with the president's plan.

But despite that, when the president was asked about this in the Oval Office yesterday and said, would you even consider trying to force them to do this, and the possibility of withholding aid if they do not, the president said he was open to that idea. So, I'm hoping, you know, we are going to learn far more details about what the conversation between President Donald Trump and King Abdullah will look like today behind closed doors.

That's the thing I need to emphasize as well. Their conversation is going to be behind closed doors, so we're not going to have an opportunity to really try and glean anything from what King Abdullah is saying. We'll see if that changes. But this will not be similar to that bilateral press conference that the president had last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he was at the White House.

[09:05:10]

So, still standing by for all of these details. But we are set to see the king of Jordan arrive to the White House at around 11:30 a.m.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And the setup of it, I mean, as you know, but for our viewers to know, the fact that it is only behind closed doors, that does suggest how high the stakes are and how careful they want to be and how candid and tough this conversation may be between these two leaders is what you can read from that.

It's great to see you, Alayna. Much more to come this morning.

Sara.

SIDNER: All right, thank you, Kate.

New this morning, huge questions about a conflict of interest as the lawyers who spent months defending President Trump in various criminal cases now take the helm at the Justice Department. Those top officials have been tasked with leading the so-called weaponization working group, which is supposed to look into and identify prosecutors and FBI agents who investigated January 6th cases. In other words, who did the job they were tasked to do.

CNN's Evan Perez is joining us now.

As you're looking into this, what did your reporting find?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Sara.

Well, look, I mean, we can call this the department of conflicts, right, or at least the appearance of conflicts. We're talking about some of Donald Trump's former lawyers. And they've been chosen now to work for key jobs inside the Justice Department. Of course, some of them were intimately involved in his cases. Some of them were representing people who were accused and defendants in the January 6th attack.

Let's go through them.

Pamela Bondi is the attorney general. She didn't represent Trump, but she did file a brief in the case involving the classified documents case as seeking for it to be - for it to be dismissed back, you know, when she was in the private sector in the 11th Circuit appeals court.

There's also Todd Blanche, who is the incoming deputy attorney general. We're expecting his hearing later this week.

John Sauer, who's going to be the solicitor general, or he's nominated for that.

And Emil Bove, who is kind of the center of our story that we published today on cnn.com. He is the acting deputy attorney general. And one of the things we found is that he was intimately involved in helping design and helping some of the legal process that FBI agents used for dozens of cases back when he was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York. And that was back in 2021.

He joined Donald Trump's legal team in 2022, and now he is helping to oversee this weaponization. He's the one that has been sending memos, trying to get the names of all those 5,000 agents and analysts who worked on these cases.

There's also Ed Martin, right. He is the acting D.C., U.S. attorney. He actually represented January 6th defendants before now running the U.S. attorney's office in D.C., which did the bulk of these prosecutions. So, we've talked to experts - ethics experts who say, look, maybe

they're not violating the rules as they are established at the Justice Department, but the department does contemplate that if you have the appearance of conflict, you should recuse yourself. And that's the big question here.

We're, of course, waiting to see how these - this weaponization working group decides who may have violated some of the policies. But certainly for Emil Bove, if you talk to some of his former colleagues, they think he should be under review, not leading some of this review.

Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, good luck with that at this point in time.

Thank you so much, Evan Perez. Appreciate it.

John.

BERMAN: All right, this morning "The New York Times" has a quote from the dean of the law school at the University of California Berkeley that says, quote, "we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis right now. There have been so many unconstitutional and illegal actions in the first 18 days of the Trump presidency. We have never seen anything like this."

With us now is former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney Shan Wu.

Shan, nice to see you this morning.

One of the things this gets to is, you know, is birthright citizenship. It's the idea of firing inspectors general. But it's also this judge, this federal judge in Rhode Island, who told the White House, you got to start these payments up again, and now saying, you're not listening to me, you're not doing what I told you, you had to do.

So, what kind of a crisis does that create?

SHAN WU, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: The term constitutional crisis we're hearing so often these days, I think the issue is really - it's a test and it has been a test for quite some time with Donald Trump of how the system works. So, if you look at the crisis people are talking about, like J.D. Vance's statements about how the courts have no ability to interfere with the legitimate executive authority, that's sort of a self-serving circular argument Vance is making.

[09:10:01]

The important part that even he can't get around is the court's role, which is, that's exactly what the courts are doing is determining if the power being exercised is legitimate or not. So, that's happening right now. And that's an important part of the system actually functioning.

When we get to the enforcement part, John -

BERMAN: Yes.

WU: That's going to be the critical test there.

BERMAN: Talk to me more about that.

WU: If - if there's outright refusal to comply with the court's order, right.

BERMAN: So, so far - so far this judge has said that the White House, you're not doing what I said you had to do. Now, there are still several steps along the way here. And this judge isn't moving yet on contempt or whatnot. But what enforcement mechanisms are there?

WU: Well, contempt is the primary one. And then you get into some nitty gritty as to what kind of contempt. So, for example, the old notion of you haul the defendants into court. Do they show up? It seems like they're showing up.

And then, if you say, we're actually going to put someone representative of an agency, let's say, we're putting you in the back, will the U.S. Marshals do that when they actually are part of DOJ and answer to DOJ leadership?

Then there's the other part of contempt, which is typically fines. That, in some ways, is not that direct kind of, take someone into custody enforcement, but you can levy the fines every day the government doesn't comply, they just keep stacking up.

Eventually you get to the question of, you know, how are they going to collect the fines? But in the meantime, they can be levied sort of without somebody actually showing up with handcuffs.

BERMAN: Yes, but who even pays the fines? Is it DOJ? Are - is it the private individuals?

WU: No, it would be the agencies. So, for example, if you look in the past of when agencies have not been in compliance, judges will levy fines. They'll sometimes, you know, in the millions a day.

I mean there is litigation that went on, I think, for well over a decade or more about the way that the Bureau of Indian Affairs managed certain tribal issues, and those just kept on being litigated and fines kept piling up with that. So, it would be against the agencies, not against individual people.

BERMAN: That is interesting. Ultimately, the taxpayers would pay for the Trump administration's decision not to comply with court orders.

WU: Right. Yes.

BERMAN: I want to ask you very quickly about Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, and the Department of Justice leaning on the Southern District of New York to drop or suspend the case. And the justifications for it aren't, there's no case, the law is wrong here. The justifications seem to be something along the lines of, there is a mayoral primary sometime in the not too distant future, and we need Eric Adams to help us with immigration enforcement.

What's the precedence for something like this?

WU: Well, the election angle, you know, kind of smells familiar, right? I mean it's the idea that they used with Trump, that he was running. You know, anything you do would interfere with his election. That's kind of the analogy there.

It doesn't really have any precedent. I mean Trump's cases themselves were precedent making that way. It certainly does not have any kind of basis in precedent with regard to a local official like a mayor.

And this idea that, oh, we can't prosecute the person criminally because we need them to help us with our policy, that makes no sense whatsoever from a law enforcement prosecutorial standpoint. I mean that's the height of sort of transactional morality.

BERMAN: And what kind of precedent or signal does this send to any public official facing some kind of federal corruption, small c, charges? I mean, what do they have to do if they want to have their case pushed off?

WU: They need to follow the Eric Adams playbook, which is, it's obvious that they would need to cozy up to President Trump and his administration. And that's the way to go. And it really, terribly, terribly undermines any sort of trust in DOJ's independence. Not even its independence from the president, but its ability to actually look at criminal cases and decide, is this worthy of being prosecuted?

BERMAN: It is a new era of alleged - in alleged political corruption, one might say.

Shan Wu, thank you very much.

Kate.

BOLDUAN: Our democracy is under siege. The message now from five former Treasury secretaries about America's financial future. One of them is our guest.

And one person is dead, several others injured after a private jet crashes into a parked plane. We have the details on the investigation now underway.

And the bittersweet news about your box of chocolates this Valentine's Day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:19:14]

BOLDUAN: A federal judge is now calling out the Trump administration for ignoring their order. It marks the first time a judge has expressly accused the Trump administration of ignoring a court ruling. And this one has to do with the Trump move to freeze federal funds, halt payments for grants and other programs.

This also comes as five former Treasury secretaries are now speaking out together against President Trump's move to overhaul the government and slashed the size of the workforce, including Elon Musk and his DOGE team moving to access a sensitive Treasury Department payment system that's typically handled by non-political career civil servants.

The secretaries writing in part this, "we take the extraordinary step of writing this piece because we are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy."

[09:20:07]

Joining me right now is one of those former Treasury secretaries, Larry Summers, to talk more about this.

Secretary, thanks for coming in.

Elon Musk and his team having access to this payment system, what does it risk?

LARRY SUMMERS, FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY, CLINTON ADMINISTRATION: (INAUDIBLE) invasions of privacy. They are political appointees. It appears largely unvetted, untrained and with potential conflicts of interest. It risks breakups of necessary payments for people who depends on them. And it reflects - and it risks constitutional challenges if they use their authorities, as some statements indicates they intend to, to cut off or stop payments that were mandated by the Congress, that the president doesn't have the authority to halt. So, it's threatening to people, to livelihoods and to the constitutional democracy that we have.

BOLDUAN: Just earlier in the show, Secretary, I had the former Republican governor of New Hampshire on, Chris Sununu, and he campaigned against Donald Trump in the - in the campaign against Donald Trump. He was for Nikki Haley. So, he says he doesn't like him. But he now says that this does not worry him at all. He actually applauds Elon Musk's move going into Treasury and going into this payment system.

Let me play this for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS SUNUNU (R), FORMER NEW HAMPSHIRE GOVERNOR: Do you know how many people have your Social Security Number right now?

BOLDUAN: So, you're just saying, cool?

SUNUNU: I'm saying, I don't like it, but that's the society we live in. I mean it really is, guys. So many people that you don't know that have no security clearance have all that information. Don't be - don't fool yourself. BOLDUAN: But, you're just - just because of - just - just because of

the - you're just OK with it? You're OK with having them access Treasury Department information?

SUNUNU: I don't like it, but - I under that about a million people have access to my Social Security Number right now. And if you don't think that's the case, America, I'm sorry, it just is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: What the governor is saying is that what's needed is to overhaul the government and get government debt under control. And he likes that Elon Musk is doing this. What do you think of that?

SUMMERS: I - I've got great respect for Governor Sununu. And I think there needs to be a lot of reform. There are a lot of wasteful payments the government makes. The government's computer systems could be modernized and upgraded. But that's no excuse for abandoning the rule of law. That's no excuse for allowing the president to do what the Supreme Court rejected when Richard Nixon did it in terms of just cutting off payments. That's no excuse for not vetting the people who are doing it. That's no excuse for politicizing positions that have been held as non-political positions for the last 75 years.

So, look, I am not saying there isn't an objective here that we would all want to pursue. But when we allow a complete breakdown of what have been traditions for who gets to be appointed to jobs in terms of politicized people, when we allow things that federal judges are calling direct violations of their orders, something that really didn't happen appreciably even under President Nixon, who was impeached, then we're in a different place. And so, what we need for the country is to find the will to reform, but to do it in ways that are legal.

BOLDUAN: I want to ask you about something else and get your take on President Trump's tariff moves. I mean we now have a 25 percent tariff on - on all steel and aluminum coming in, 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods and TBD on the EU. They say it's coming. The White House says it's all going to be paid for by other countries. What's the impact tariffs are going to have on all of this?

SUMMERS: Think about it. If you buy a hot dog and they put a tax on the hot dog, do you think it's all bought by the - you think it's all paid for by the concessionaire? There is no evidence, zero, that that is the right way to think about the economics of a tariff.

[09:25:03]

When you put a tax on a good that people buy, they pay more for the good. Theres no reason why it would be eaten by the foreign producer. And what actually happens often is that, not only does the price go up for the Canadian steel we import, but the U.S. producer who has to compete with that Canadian is also enabled to raise their price. So, you get some higher prices without even there being any government revenue at all. So, this is, you know, economists disagree about virtually everything,

but there's essentially no disagreement among economists that this kind of thing is inflationary and, in some cases, hurts job creation. I mean I've got to say, Kate, that the steel and aluminum tariffs seem to me to be a particularly odd choice. There are 150,000 people who work between them in the steel and aluminum industries. But if you take cars, if you take construction, if you take packaging, there are 9 or 10 million people who work in industries that use steel and aluminum, all of which are going to be more expensive and less competitive because of the higher priced input.

So, even if you judged, purely in terms of jobs, we're helping tiny industries, smaller actually than the manicure (ph) industry, less than a 10th of all workers in the country, and we're really putting it to some of the largest industries in the United States with higher costs making it harder for them to compete. So, this seems to me to be an example of lose, lose economics.

BOLDUAN: Secretary Summers, thank you for coming in.

SUMMERS: Good to be with you.

BOLDUAN: John.

BERMAN: All right, this morning, Elon Musk has a major stake in space travel, social media, and it seems the federal government. Why he just offered up almost $100 billion to control the future of AI and the special insults that came with it.

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