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Combs Jury Resumes Deliberations After Reaching Partial Verdict; Interview with Rep. Lloyd Doggett: House Takes Up Senate Version of Trump's Massive Agenda Bill. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 02, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

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COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR (voice-over): The 8,000 acre Biltmore estate is the largest privately owned home in the country. Founded by George Vanderbilt, it helped put Asheville on the map.

STEVE WATSON, CEO, BILTMORE COMPANIES: You're basically doing time travel. You're going back into a time in the 1890s with the gilded era. It has 75 fireplaces and 250 rooms.

WIRE (voice-over): You can tour the luxurious home and even stay overnight.

WIRE: Wow.

WIRE (voice-over): Outside you can bike hike and discover the ancient art of falconry.

WIRE: What is falconry?

JEFF CURTIS, FALCONER, BILTMORE ESTATE: Falconry is actually hunting with birds of prey. We don't use a rifle or a shotgun or a bow. The bird does the killing.

We're never this close to birds of prey. To have someone handle them, they look at these birds differently.

WIRE (voice-over): Heading into town, we took a scenic detour on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's been gradually reopening after Hurricane Helene. But before that, it was the most visited national park unit in the nation.

CAROLYN WARD, CEO, BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY FOUNDATION: It's 469 miles of uninterrupted motor road. This park was designed by landscape architects that thought if I come around this corner, what would be a beautiful vista to see? And so there was a lot of thought that went into what that total experience would be like on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

WIRE (voice-over): In town, there's no shortage of great places to eat and drink. We checked out Potential New Boyfriend, a new lounge that perfectly captures Asheville's eclectic vibe.

DISCO, OWNER, POTENTIAL NEW BOYFRIEND: It's a hi-fi listening lounge, dessert bar and wine bar. This is the busiest, most popping place we've been. The idea was to create a space that would feel like you're going to your friend's living room for like a dinner party where you're going to meet some good friends, maybe meet some new people.

WIRE: Cheers, Disco.

WIRE (voice-over): After a day in Asheville, we barely scratched the surface. But if you ever find yourself here, your best bet is to just take the plunge.

WIRE: Oh, my god, I feel alive.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: The jury reaches a verdict in four of five counts in the sex trafficking racketeering case against media mogul Sean Combs. In just an hour, they will be back at it, trying to work towards a verdict in that final count. We're live outside court. Is today the day Combs learns his fate after seven weeks of trial.

And it's the House's turn. President Trump's mega bill passed the Senate, and now the House is feverishly trying to find a way to pass it on deadline. It's not just Democrats, but some Republican House members lashing out at the Senate's version, while others are scrambling just to get back to Washington, add weather delays to their troubles.

And Elon Musk once again lashing out over the president's huge domestic policy bill. Turns out that's not been so good for business. Tesla investors taking hit after hit.

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, happening now. Verdict watch in the trial of Sean Combs. I should say final verdict watch. We're in the middle of a moment of high drama in this case that has lawyers on both sides on edge. The jury returns to court any minute now after telling a judge late yesterday they had reached verdicts on four of five counts, including sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

We do not know what they decided on those counts, but they told the judge they had decided something. They were deadlocked, though, they said on the racketeering conspiracy charge. The judge said, keep at it, which they will shortly.

Let's get to CNN's Karis Scannell live outside the courthouse in this sort of dramatic moment of limbo that we're all in care.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is, John. I mean, as you said, the jury has reached a verdict on four of five counts, but they are unable, as they put it. They have unpersuadable opinions on both sides of the racketeering conspiracy count.

In that charge, the jury needs to find that Combs had an agreement with someone else and that they committed two crimes within the past 10 years of these predicate acts -- As it's known. It includes bribery, witness tampering, kidnapping, sex trafficking, transportation for prostitution. And that is where the jury appears to be struggling to reach a consensus and unanimity that Combs had engaged in some of those acts and that he did it with someone else. That this is the most complex of the charges.

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But the jury has already reached a decision, which, as you said, we don't know what it is on four of these counts after deliberating for just over 12 hours after hearing six plus weeks of testimony. So the jury has done a lot of work here.

And yesterday, when this word of the note came in, the mood in the courtroom snapped to heightened awareness. It was very tense. Combs was meeting with his attorneys at one point when he came into the courtroom.

You knew it was different than any other note because they were not having a more relaxed conversation. They were very intense. They circled Combs.

He had this look of confusion on his face, but also of seriousness. Then when he sat down, they formed a tight circle around him. His lawyers were animated as they were discussing with him what this was.

And then when the judge got on the bench, it became clear to everyone else in the courtroom just at what a serious moment this was in the trial. That Combs is so close to learning what is possible faith is. But both the prosecution and the defense wanted the judge to encourage the jury to continue to deliberate to try to reach a verdict on this outstanding charge.

And they -- they have differences of how they wanted the judge to go about it. The judge told the jury to go back to deliberate and reminded them of their duties and their obligations. And they will reconvene at 9:00 a.m. and start these deliberations again. The prosecution has signaled that they would be open to an Allen charge. That is a bit more of a firmly worded statement to try to get the jury to bridge any gaps that exist between them to come to unanimous verdict. But that Comb's team said it was far too early for that.

Of course, we'll see what happens today as this all plays out, John.

BERMAN: Yes, all plays out very shortly. So we're on high alert for this. Kara Scannell outside the court. Please keep us posted as to what you see in here. Thank you very much for that -- Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And more of the breaking news this morning. About an hour from now, a major showdown is set to begin on Capitol Hill. House lawmakers are headed back to Washington to vote on President Trump's massive tax cut and spending bill before his self imposed Friday deadline.

The House already passed one version. Then the Senate made changes, and now they'll have to vote on it again. Many House Republicans do not appear, though, ready to rubber stamp the Senate's version.

Some moderates are bulking at the steeper cuts to Medicaid in the Senate bill. Some conservatives are bulking over the nearly $1 trillion more it would add to the deficit compared to the House version. And then there is, of course, the ever present challenge of how razor thin the Republican majority is.

Speaker Johnson can only afford to lose three votes. Still, he says he's confident that the final vote will happen today or tomorrow, though bad weather is getting in the way.

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REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), HOUSE SPEAKER: Well, we're having weather delays getting everybody back right now, but assuming we have a full house, we'll get it through the rules committee in the morning. We'll move that forward to the to the floor, and hopefully we're voting on this by tomorrow or Thursday at latest.

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BOLDUAN: CNN's Arlette Saenz is at the Capitol for us again this morning. Arlette set the stage. What are we about to see?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, the fate of President Trump's domestic agenda bill still remains up in the air as lawmakers are two days away from that self imposed deadline to get this to President Trump's desk. We anticipate that the House will gavel in around 9:00 a.m. just overnight. The House Rules Committee passed a rule advancing the president's bill.

At some point, the House is expected to hold a first vote on the rule before they can get to final passage. But it's unclear when exactly that might take place. They are dealing with some travel issues as lawmakers are still making their way back to Washington.

But it all comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson is really trying to hold together a very narrow GOP majority to push President Trump's bill through. It's unclear right now whether they will, in fact, to get those votes. As you mentioned, there's concerns among more moderate members when it comes to Medicaid cuts.

There's concerns that this does not do enough to cut spending. There's a handful of GOP lawmakers who have indicated that they may be no on final passage of this bill. So there's still a lot of more work that needs to be done, and they want to make sure that they can get this to President Trump's desk as is.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise warned overnight that they can't see any changes to this bill because that would send it back to the Senate. Take a listen.

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REP. STEVE SCALISE (R-LA), MAJORITY LEADER: Every change you make on one side of the bill to appease maybe one group of people can impact the group negatively for 20 other members on the other side of the bill. So it's not as easy as saying, hey, I just want one more change because one more change could end up being what collapses the entire thing.

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SAENZ: So that highlights a bit of the work that GOP leadership in the House has to do as they are trying to muscle this bill through. We will be keeping an eye on the timing for these votes, as House Speaker Mike Johnson has said that he wants to do it today, possibly tomorrow. Those weather delays, the cancellations and flights could be a major factor, something that they have to keep in mind as they're trying to get as many members back here as possible.

BOLDUAN: Which is all the more important with the razor thin majority when the Republicans are looking at.

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Thank you so much, Arlette. All happened this morning -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. According to a senior White House official, President Trump is working the phones to ramp up his pressure campaign to convince potential holdouts in the House to get on board, calling for Republicans to unite and get it done.

CNN's Kevin Liptak is at the White House. What more are you learning on this front this morning?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, there's an enormous amount of confidence inside this building that this bill will eventually pass. And in fact, we heard from President Trump yesterday saying that he thought passage in the House would actually be easier than it was in the Senate, despite this opposition that we see bubbling up. And I think the gamble that they're making is that President Trump's arm twisting his pressure tactics will ultimately convince these Republicans to get in line.

And they do have history on their side here. There are not a lot of examples, at least in recent memory of House Republicans denying President Trump from what he wants. And certainly this is something that he very much wants.

The White House says that that Friday deadline is still operable, despite the president saying that he was somewhat flexible on that yesterday.

One point that you continue to hear from White House officials is that they have been talking to House Republicans for weeks about this bill. You know, they're not just starting the whip process now. They have been sort of in constant conversation, even as the Senate was making changes. We did hear yesterday from Russell Vought, who's the president's

budget director, about some of their efforts to get Republicans in line. Listen to a little bit of what he said.

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RUSS VOUGHT, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: If you were to take any part of this bill and just debate one part of it, you would have overwhelming support by all Republicans generally. It's all put together. And so we're trying to continue to educate on how much is being done and then the extent to which this is a part of a plan to get to a balanced budget over time.

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LIPTAK: So you hear him there use the word educate. We've also seen the president threaten Republicans with primary challenges if they don't come in line. This morning, he's been on social media talking about this bill, saying that our country will make a fortune this year more than any of our competitors, but only if this Big, Beautiful Bill is passed.

As they say, Trump's been right about everything, and this is the easiest of them all to predict.

Republicans don't let the radical left Democrats push you around. We've got the cards and we are going to use them.

So the president really putting hard press on members of his own party to come in line behind his signature piece of legislation.

SIDNER: All right, Kevin, Liptak, thank you so much for your reporting this morning --John.

BERMAN: All right, with us now is Congressman Lloyd Dockett, a Democrat from Texas. He serves on the House Budget Committee. Congressman, great to see you this morning.

So Russ Vought from the White House said that there are a number of things in this bill that he believes are very popular. Some of those would include, I imagine, you know, a reduction of taxes on tips, a reduction on taxes for seniors on Social Security, an increase of the Child Tax Credit. How do you feel about those measures?

REP. LLOYD DOGGETT (D-TX), WAYS AND MEANS COMMITTEE: Well, I think the Senate accomplished a near impossible task. They took an ugly bill and they made it even uglier. So I'm concerned about the 17 million Americans who lose their access to a family physician, the 17 percent increase in energy costs that we will have and the largest cut in food assistance, as well as the fact that after they do all that, they leave us with trillions of dollars of new debt.

These little flourishes that were added, like no tax on tips, are issues that are designed to cover the horrible job that they're doing. And I think you need look no further than the comments of some of the Republican senators. Senator Tillis calling it a betrayal by Donald Trump.

Lisa Murkowski saying that this bill is not ready for prime time and the House should make more changes in it. And of course, their buddy Elon Musk condemning it as the largest increase in our nation's debt in history.

BERMAN: So the increase in the debt is one thing. The question of whether or not it will benefit some say in the middle class is another. What benefits do you think would be accrued by the middle class in this bill?

DOGGETT: Very little compared to the cost of this bill. I think the estimate is that those at the top will get 390 times the benefit of those who are in $50,000 a year or less. Those people at $50,000 or less will get pennies a day in terms of tax benefit.

You know, in the Ways and Means Committee, I offered an amendment to address these concerns, and that was to say, let's give those people that earned more than $400,000. Let's give them the same tax rate they had under George W. Bush. It's not a big increase. And let's give those under $400,000 everything in this bill, including many provisions I don't like, the ones you referenced and some others, good, bad and ugly.

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And if you do that compared to the House bill, 98 percent of Americans get the benefits of the bill. 2 percent don't. But we cut the cost of the bill in half. There are reasonable steps that could be taken. Maybe that's what Senator Murkowski had in mind, though her vote for the bill was strange in saying it's not ready for prime time.

There is a way to address these concerns, not see Americans lose their health care, not engage in this fiscal irresponsibility that has been condemned by so many observers.

BERMAN: And to be clear, she did vote for it. The president put out a new statement just --

DOGGETT: Yes, she did.

BOLDUAN: -- a short time ago. The president said just a short time ago on social media, nobody wants to talk about growth, which will be the primary reason that this Big, Beautiful Bill will be one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed. This growth has already begun at levels never seen before.

What do you think about that?

DOGGETT: Well, of course, there have been some -- there had been some people that have talked about growth, and they've said we'll get practically none. One estimate is we'll get, I think it's four-tenths of a percent of growth out of this bill, not enough to make up for the huge cost of the added debt. And that's why independent observers, whether it's the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Tax Foundation, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and their DOGE buddy, Elon Musk, have said this can take us to a near-debt crisis in this country and could jeopardize the solvency of Medicare and Social Security because it's so fiscally irresponsible.

BERMAN: So what now? Do you feel like you're a potential influencer on this in the next 24 hours, or just a bystander?

DOGGETT: Well, we're going to do all we can to influence and to expose the dangers of this bill and to call out Republican colleagues on this. I hope some of them will be inspired by what they saw from Senator Tillis, that he was courageous enough to put his own job on the line in order to speak out against the injustice of this bill.

I think that the first people in the country who were intimidated by Donald Trump were not immigrants or poor people. They were my Republican colleagues. They are fearful, as Senator Murkowski expressed a few weeks ago, but we have to appeal to their better side and hope that they will do the right thing here but make it very clear that they will be held accountable in an election next year.

All those people that are out there saying we need to do more to stop Donald Trump, there is one way to stop him, and that is at the ballot box.

And I believe these Republicans who choose to vote with him and yield to his intimidation instead of standing up for the health care and the fiscal sanity of our country will pay a big price at the ballot box.

BERMAN: Congressman Lloyd Doggett from Texas, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you -- Kate.

DOGGETT: Thank you, John.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, new satellite images appear to show ongoing work at Iranian nuclear sites, less than two weeks after the U.S. strikes there.

And Waffle House announcing it will now drop its surcharge on eggs.

Plus an hours-long delay for passengers on an Australian flight after a stowaway snake was found in the cargo hold of the plane.

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SIDNER: Right now, we are on Verdict Watch. Sean Combs' sex trafficking and racketeering trial resumes in less than an hour, just under 40 minutes. The judges order to the jury to keep deliberating after they signaled they were stuck on just one of the five counts against the music mogul, but a big one, the RICO conspiracy count, which carries the harshest punishment.

The eight men and four women have reached a verdict on the four other counts against Combs' -- sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. Here now to discuss, Joey Jackson, CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney. Good to see you again, Joey. Joey, we don't yet know what the verdict is on those four counts, but I'm curious from your experience and from what your gut tells you, is it likely that at least some of those charges are guilty now considering that they are at the time deadlocked on that RICO count?

JOEY JACKSON, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Sara, good morning to you. It really does. And let me tell you why I don't think it's speculation.

I think it's predicated upon some reason judgment as we look there at the counts. Here's why I say this. You have this RICO charge and we know what you have to prove for RICO. You have to prove that he was running a criminal enterprise, that he was engaging in some type of illegality with one or more parties in his organization, and that they were engaging in that over 10 years or more. And there were predicate bad acts like kidnapping, like arson, like bribery, like sex trafficking, et cetera. It would seem to me to be illogical if you have a camp there.

Remember the note they indicated that is the jury -- that there's a camp that believes he's guilty of RICO. And there's a camp that believes he's not guilty of RICO. So would be -- it would seem to be to be logically inconsistent that you have a group of jurors who believe he's a racketeer, he's running a criminal enterprise, but with respect to the other charges, there's nothing to see here and he's not guilty.

Again, that's just my assessment. But if you read in essence, what they're saying is you have a number of jurors who firmly believe he's guilty of RICO.

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And it would seem to me to be suggestive of the fact that they may also believe that he could be guilty of one or more of the other counts that exist.

SIDNER: Yes, and I'm curious what levers can the judge use to try to get the jury to agree on that last count, the RICO charge?

JACKSON: Yes. So what happens, Sara, is that you have something called an Allen charge, which is a dynamite charge. And so jurors, you know, look, they've sat there throughout this seven week period of time and in sitting there, what they end up doing is you formulate your opinions during the trial, of course, but you're not allowed to talk about them.

So now comes the point where you're now deliberating and people are entrenched in their positions. With respect to the Allen charge, what you say to the jury is essentially this, ladies and gentlemen, there's no other juror in the world that could have been as conscientious as you. You've sat here throughout the testimony. You've heard the testimony. We're not asking that you change your views or your conscientious beliefs. What we're asking is that you reevaluate them in good faith and you try to reach a determination because this case then would have to be retried again. So go back to the best you possibly can. Don't sacrifice what you truly believe but really attempt to reach a verdict. And that, of course, is the final step.

And if come back after that saying, Judge, we just can't do it, then the jury would be hung as to that specific count and that specific count, which would be RICO, Sara, would then could be retried if the government would want to do that.

SIDNER: So you're saying that the judge can simply accept a verdict with four of the five counts and say, OK, you're hung on this particular count, but we can go forward on the others.

JACKSON: Yes, without question, what will happen is, of course, it's to everyone's interest, particularly a trial of this magnitude over this course of time to reach some finality, to reach a conclusion. If you don't, as to that count, it could be retried. But I think after that, if they go back, that is the jury and in good faith attempt to negotiate and deliberate and they don't reach a consensus. They have to be unanimous -- all 12. They'll come back with a note saying, Judge, we can't do it.

And thereafter, at that point, the judge will say, OK, right, you can't do that. We will declare a mistrial as to that. But then the judge will take a verdict as to the remaining four counts to, of course, relating to the coercion issue for sex trafficking of Cassie Ventura, one of the counts, the other count Jane. Right. And then the other two relating to two counts relating to transportation to engage in prostitution. We could then hear a partial verdict as to those.

SIDNER: All right, Joey Jackson, it is always a pleasure. Thank you for your expertise this morning, John.

BERMAN: All right. The president threatens to arrest the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York. And now we have a new response to that threat.

And it is roughly 8:27 a.m. on the East Coast. What's the latest whip count on the president's huge tax and spending bill that could come to a vote today? Weather permitting. He can only afford to lose three votes.

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