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Judges Slam DOJ for Listing Lindsey Halligan On Court Documents; Netflix Announces Deal To Buy Warner Bros., HBO For $72 Billion; Testimony In Brian Walshe Murder Trial Wraps For Today. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired December 05, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All of these folks be looking at this.

SCOTT LINCICOME, VICE PRESIDENT OF GENERAL ECONOMICS AND TRADE, CATO INSTITUTE: Well, the president has started to, I think, at least behind closed doors, take the affordability issue more seriously. You know, they cut some of those tariffs recently on food items.

Ideally, I would love to see them cut a lot more of those tariffs, right? I seriously doubt the president's going to do that. And for that reason, there aren't so many levers that you can pull at the federal level and especially quickly to bring down prices. That's what Americans want.

They want lower prices. They're still dealing with, you know, epic inflation of a couple of years ago. Inflation's still elevated now.

But the Congress can't fix housing prices. They can't fix a lot of these things. They can affect trade policy, but I don't think the president's going to be going as far as I wish he would to pull that lever.

KEILAR: Not enough to feel it enough. Scott, great to have you. Thank you so much for coming in.

Coming up, federal judges are lashing out at the Justice Department over a certain name that keeps turning up on court documents that they say shouldn't be there. We'll have that next.

[14:35:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: CNN has learned that several federal judges in Virginia have lashed out at the Justice Department for continuing to list Lindsey Halligan on court documents.

Some have gone as far as to strike her name from paperwork from the bench, saying it shouldn't appear on new criminal case filings because of a judge's ruling last week that her appointment as U.S. attorney was invalid.

CNN crime and justice correspondent Katelyn Polantz is here with more reporting on this. Katelyn, tell us what's happening here.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bri, we are in a legal twilight zone. Nobody knows who is right because we've never been in this situation before. There was a prosecutor in court on Tuesday who had been doing this job for 35 years who said, I just don't really know.

What this comes down to is that the Justice Department says Lindsey Halligan is still the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. They want her name on new criminal case filings, indictments, guilty pleas. And the judges in the Eastern District of Virginia, they're saying, wait a minute, what about that ruling we just had in the Comey case and the Letitia James case, saying she's not the U.S. attorney?

Devin Cole and I here at CNN, we got a lot of transcripts from court this week looking at what judges were saying. One judge, Magistrate William Fitzpatrick, he said filings under Ms. Halligan's name at this time are, quote, simply not acceptable. And then he said the law in this district right now is that she is not and has not been the United States attorney.

So the Justice Department they're trying to make sure that things are still done legally by putting other leadership names on case filings. And they believe that the ruling in the Comey case and James case, it only applies to that case, whereas the judges there are saying this judge was brought in to look at this and should have decided it for everyone. And the prosecutors in this district, they're stuck in the middle, getting very little guidance from the top echelon of the Justice Department on what to do.

But the judges are telling them, here's another quote from one, you're in a terrible situation. You have to stand here and take the brunt of this. And that's patently unfair.

KEILAR: It does seem that there can't be alternate realities for different cases about who the attorney is. Right. So that does seem like this needs to get worked out here.

But how is this impacting a grand jury's decision not to reindict Letitia James, the New York attorney general for mortgage fraud?

POLANTZ: Well, first and foremost, we didn't see Lindsey Halligan in the courthouse in Norfolk, Virginia. The first time that Letitia James was indicted, it was done just by Halligan. Same thing with the Comey case.

Halligan was the prosecutor who went to the grand jury, got those indictments, signed them. Even if her name is still on new indictments, whether it's another one that they could try again for Letitia James, a grand jury said no to that yesterday, the Justice Department might try again. Even if she were to be indicted again, if others are indicted, her name's still on filings.

But she herself is not the person doing it because the Justice Department wants to make sure that they don't run into this problem again.

KEILAR: Very interesting. All right, Katelyn Polantz, maybe you'll be back to tell us when this is all sorted out. Soon?

POLANTZ: It is up to the court to sort this out.

KEILAR: All right, Katelyn, thank you -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Let's discuss this with a former Trump administration official during the president's first term, Miles Taylor, who is chief of staff to former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. He's also the founder of Defiance.org. Miles, thanks so much for being with us.

So three judges telling prosecutors that Halligan's name should not be on new criminal case filings. Just from a logistical standpoint, what would it mean to actually remove her name?

MILES TAYLOR, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Well, look, I mean, this is a very easy thing for the administration to do. And so, Boris, there's almost no other conclusion you can come to here other than the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to thumb their noses at the courts. And I got to be honest with you, put everything else aside about the controversies here, I am not sure it's the best strategy to go win cases to piss off federal judges.

But that is what they are doing here. And of course, the reporter that was just before me demonstrated that.

[14:40:00]

But the quote here was so damning is one of the judges originally in that decision had said Halligan was, quote, never lawfully appointed and she lacked the authority to bring these indictments.

It's not a matter of interpretation. This is black and white. And so the Trump Justice Department has made a decision.

They're going to pretend that was never said. This is the type of thing, Boris, folks have been worried about is the administration just starting to defy the orders of the courts. Now, folks may think this is a small one because they're defying the order of a court about the appointment of one person to a job.

But that's a slippery slope. And my fear is it leads to other defiance decisions of court orders.

SANCHEZ: And what could it mean for the cases themselves if they do it, as you put it, anger these federal judges by keeping her name on?

TAYLOR: Well, the cases themselves, I think it actually increases the likelihood that they will get thrown out by these judges. But the problem here, Boris, is still that the process is the punishment. So if the president's loyalists is hardcore political loyalists are put in these jobs to bring obvious revenge prosecutions, then they are still able to upend these people's lives, blacklist them, force them to spend money on lawyers, force them to spend time in court.

They can destroy people's lives before you even get to the point where a judge says, hey, we told you guys this person wasn't lawfully appointed. We're throwing this case out. That's a big deal.

And I know that this Justice Department thinks they can still do that.

SANCHEZ: The Justice Department hasn't actually provided a formal explanation about why they think Halligan can remain in the job. Do you imagine that's at some point going to come to a head or are they going to be forced to provide an explanation?

TAYLOR: Yes, I think they will. I mean, look, they're either going to respond to the fact that they keep losing cases with her name on the masthead and decide it's just not worth it anymore, or judges are going to have to issue follow-on orders that put the administration in the position of having to affirmatively defy the courts right there or end up complying with those court orders. And look, I think that what you just saw with Letitia James is going to be another forcing function, is we've got a person that's accused of breaking the law here, but who apparently isn't breaking the law, Letitia James.

It looks to me, personally, more like it's people at the Justice Department breaking the law. And here's what I mean by that, Boris. We all see what's happening here with these cases.

To me, these are very obvious revenge prosecutions. The president sent his own person into that office to make sure that an adversary got prosecuted with something. They've just tried again to bring that case.

The grand jury swatted it down. And you know what? The reason I said it might be people in the Justice Department that should be worried about committing crimes is that it's not legal to do that.

It's not legal to selectively and vindictively prosecute someone. And already, we've got members of Congress saying they are eventually going to investigate this Justice Department's decision to go prosecute these cases. So I would say to those prosecutors at DOJ, you guys need to stop.

You need to take a break, because every time you try to bring one of these revenge prosecutions back and it's not accepted, you are creating a paper trail that you might be doing this for illegitimate purposes. So I think the worry should not be Letitia James and her family. I think the Justice Department and those prosecutors should be the ones who are worried about legal liability.

SANCHEZ: I mean, to that point, Miles, the Justice Department is vowing to try to charge James again, even though a grand jury declined to bring charges against her a second time. I mean, what would be different with just having a new set of jurors might bring about a different outcome?

TAYLOR: Well, it seems like they tried that is that they were hoping that a different group of folks might bring this back to life. They were unsuccessful in that. That's also, by the way, Boris, virtually unprecedented.

You don't hear about cases where federal prosecutors, maybe at the state level, but federal prosecutors are trying to indict someone for a crime and they don't get that indictment. I know viewers are tired of hearing that that saying from former prosecutors that, you know, you can have a grand jury indict a ham sandwich, but we are seeing these grand juries pushing back. That's very, very significant.

That should be a five alarm fire for democracy here that the justice system in the eyes of some of these people, including grand jurors, is obviously being abused for political purposes. Why else would they not be able to successfully bring these charges? But again, folks may try to take comfort in the fact that grand juries are acting as a bulwark and preventing these obviously political prosecutions from going forward.

But the process, once again, is the punishment. They still can do a lot of damage to the lives of people like Letitia James, James Comey and others by threatening to prosecute them and forcing them to lawyer up.

[14:45:00]

SANCHEZ: Miles Taylor, thanks so much for joining us.

TAYLOR: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: I had an announcement that's jolted Hollywood, Netflix, agreeing to buy Warner Brothers and HBO. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Warner Brothers Discovery, the parent company of CNN, has agreed to a deal to have Netflix purchase its TV and movie studio along with its assets, including HBO Max. Netflix announced this multi-billion dollar deal this morning following a weeks-long bidding war.

[14:50:00]

There is still a long road ahead, but if the deal goes through, it likely reshapes the entertainment world by putting two streaming giants and Warner Brothers vast library all under one roof.

CNN Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter joins us now live. So Brian, how is this going to shape the industry?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA ANALYST: This is something that's a blockbuster deal, and it's coming from the company that helped put Blockbuster Video out of business. You know, we're talking about Warner Brothers, HBO, other entertainment assets, all becoming a part of Netflix. The company that, you know, 20 years ago was selling DVDs through the mail and slowly but surely built a subscription juggernaut and is now the biggest streamer of them all.

But Netflix is saying today it needs to get even bigger. It looks at Google's YouTube. It looks at Amazon.

It looks at these big tech players as big threats and rivals, and it wants to grow by adding HBO brands like Game of Thrones, by adding the Warner Brothers and TV library, by adding a big studio to its arsenal. So that's the plan, but it's going to take a long time to get this through government regulators in America, in the U.S., but also in the U.K., the E.U. and other markets.

SANCHEZ: That is expected to be a long process, and one notably that Netflix competitors, specifically Paramount, pointed out.

STELTER: Yes, and this is something that, you know, you sometimes see where companies get gummed up, they get delayed by the review process, by the regulatory review process, and can actually slow down the pace of growth and change. We saw this about a decade ago when Time Warner, which owned HBO and Warner Brothers, was slowed down by the Trump administration. Eventually, the regulatory review ended, the lawsuits ended, and AT&T was able to buy the assets, but Netflix was able to grow in the meantime.

Anyway, now Netflix is the streaming king. Now it's going to go through this, and there are other bidders on the sidelines for these assets that may still try to bid. Paramount, for example, may come back with a higher bid, so this is just the beginning of a long process -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Brian Stelter, we know you'll be watching it for us. Thank you so much.

Still to come this afternoon, the matches are set, and we now know Team USA's opponents at the FIFA World Cup.

Stay with us.

[14:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Testimony in the Brian Walshe murder trial resumed today, with the defense highlighting text messages and other data found on Walshe's phone before and after the death of his wife, Ana. Massachusetts State Trooper Connor Keefe was back on the stand today. He told jurors about location data placing Walshe's cell phone near a dumpster where his wife's clothes were found.

CNN's Jean Casarez is following all of the developments here. Jean, court is done for the day. What testimony stood out to you?

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think today was very interesting because we think about all of this, and we say, OK, well, he's going to be convicted. Well, the defense is fighting hard, and one of the challenges for the prosecution is premeditation, because there is no direct evidence that he premeditated a murder. Circumstantially, they've got to put it together.

But on cross-examination today with Connor Keefe, who you were just talking about, who was the forensics investigator for the Massachusetts State Police, the defense went into text between Brian Walshe and Ana that were very close in time to the end of the year when her life ended, either by sudden death or by murder. I want you to listen closely to this investigator brought out by the defense of Brian Walshe and Ana Walshe and their communication, what they were saying to each other. One thing I've got to say before I got to set it up.

Ana Walshe wasn't feeling well on that day. She was working from home. She said, I need a plunger.

And it goes from there, OK, because he said, OK, you get the plunger. I'll get you a Porsche. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's a text comes from the phone assigned to Brian Walshe says, love you. Correct.

Could you scroll down a little further, please?

Page 16, timestamp 7:15, 15 a.m.

CONNOR KEEFE, MASSACHUSETTS STATE TROOPER: Yes, correct.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then immediately thereafter, there is a text page 16 immediately following that text coming from the phone assigned to Ana Walshe. And she says, love or the phone says, love you, too.

KEEFE: Correct.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The phone assigned to Brian Walsh says, I will get you a plunger. Correct.

KEEFE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Next text from the phone assigned to Brian Walshe, and a Porsche.

KEEFE: Yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CASAREZ: All right, well, she had wanted a Porsche. And so she had told him, look, I'll get the plunger. You get the Porsche.

And then she went on to show him listings for townhomes and other properties in Washington, D.C. that were investment properties that she was thinking they could get. So all of this was focused on the future, whether it's getting a new car or getting a townhouse.

And he participated in that. And they told each other they loved each other. So that is that strong evidence that was brought out by this cross-examination.

But I think also the focus is the cause of death and who was on the stand today was and ended -- he's going to be back on Monday -- but it's from the medical examiner's office. And he was to determine if there were any forensic particles that were found in any of the debris from the home.