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Supreme Court Rules 5-4 to Keep DACA; Justice Clarence Thomas Pens Scathing Dissent on DACA Ruling; Bolton Book Details Unflattering Portrait of Trump; Atlanta Officer Devon Brosnan Turns Himself In to Fulton County Jail. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired June 18, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The prime minister wanted schools open by the end of July. It's not going to happen until September.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: OK.

ROBERTSON: France, a little more successful at the moment -- Poppy?

HARLOW: Yes, it shows some of the challenges though that we could face.

Nic, appreciate your reporting. Thank you so much.

And thanks to all of you being with us this morning. I'll see you back here tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.

"NEWSROOM" with John King starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody. I'm John King, in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing a very busy news day with us.

Very big breaking news right here in Washington. The Supreme Court rejecting a signature Trump administration challenge on immigration.

The high court ruling the president did not follow the law or government procedures when he tried to end legal protections for the DACA recipients, some 700,000 immigrants brought illegally into the United States when they were children.

The decision was settled 5-4 on big core issue of the case. The traditionally conservative Chief Justice John Roberts siding here with the four liberals on the bench to preserve, for now, an Obama-era legacy.

The president can try again to deport DACA recipients if he wants but this loss at the high court means he won't be able to keep his 2016 promise to do so before voters decide this November whether he deserves a second term.

Let's get straight to CNN's Jessica Schneider outside the high court for this important decision.

Jessica, what did the justices do and what did they not do?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: John, for the second time this week the Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the liberals, ruling against the Trump administration in this case, writing the opinion that blocks the Trump administration from rolling back DACA.

It's that program that President Obama enacted in 2012 that protected about 700,000 DACA recipients from deportation. These are children who were brought here when they were children, when they were young and now who continue to live here, work here. They applied for the DACA renewals every two years.

Now they will be protected because of the decision authored by the Chief Justice John Roberts.

Now, John Roberts is not saying that the Trump administration is powerless to roll back DACA. But it -- instead, the Trump administration has just rolled it back the wrong way. So there's still the possibility that the Trump administration could end this program but not now. And, of course, we're just a few months from the election.

So John Roberts saying in this opinion that, "We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission or sound policies. The wisdom of those decisions is none of our concern. We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation."

He then went on to talk about the hardships that DACA recipients would face if this program was rolled back, which it will not be.

Now, the conservative justice, Justice Thomas, he issued a really scathing dissent here saying. I'll read that, saying, "Today's decision must be recognized for what it is, an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision. The court should have made clear that the solution respondents seek must come from the legislative branch."

So Justice Thomas saying that it is Congress who should be worried about the DACA recipients here.

And just in the last few minutes, the president responded, in part, to this decision. He re-tweeted "The Daily Caller" report that talked about Justice Thomas' dissent here. We haven't gotten any direct comment or reaction from the president or the White House.

But for now, the 700,000-plus DREAMers in this country are rejoicing. Some of them have gathered in front of the Supreme Court steps here. It is a far cry from the hundreds who gathered outside to see the arguments when they played out before the Supreme Court in November.

John, I talked to some of those DACA recipients back in the fall. They said that despite the fact that they were born in another country and brought here as children, they feel just as much American as you and I.

One woman I spoke with came here at the age of 14 from Ecuador. She lives in Long Island, has two young children. She works. She pays taxes. And she was pleading with the justices to really deal with this in a humane way.

Which it seems has exactly been done by Chief Justice John Roberts telling the Trump administration, you do have authority to roll this program back but you didn't do it in the right way, therefore, DACA remains in place, and these so-called DREAMers remain protected -- John?

KING: In place and protected as we go now towards the election.

Jessica Schneider, outside the Supreme Court, thanks for keeping your cool amid the celebration. Appreciate that very much.

Again, this decision now 5-4, the Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four liberals on the bench.

Let's get perspective now from our CNN legal analyst, Joan Biskupic.

Joan, the chief justice is your wheelhouse. You are a biographer and the like.

It's a very interesting decision here. And you get the sense from it, in the Clarence dissent. Clarence Thomas essentially saying, you know, deal with the politics. The chief justice saying the administration gave me a reason not to because they didn't follow the rules.

[11:05:03]

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Yes. There are a couple of messages here from the chief justice. And one is, do it right. Do it right. We're not against you. We would be with you if you would just follow the procedures here and do it correctly.

The other thing that you have, John, is sort of a message of when the chief justice is going to flip over to join with the liberals. And in this case, it was another one of those politically charged disputes involving tensions between two administrations, the Obama administration and the Trump administration. And it's in his interest to defuse those tensions.

And I think that's where we see him edging over, and we also see him edging over to say, we're not going to take you out of your lane. We're going to actually keep you in your lane as the administration to do this correctly or have Congress do it.

And in response to someone like Justice Clarence Thomas, who says that the chief is essentially legislating here, he says, no, we're putting a check on other branches but we're leaving the real policy to those other branches themselves.

KING: And, Joan, for somebody who has watching all week, saying there are -- there have been two big decisions going against what the president wants. On both of them, the chief justice has voted with the liberals.

On one of them, Neil Gorsuch, the president's own appointee, not only voted with the liberals but wrote the decision saying you cannot fire someone because they are gay or transgender in America.

Two very different cases. Though explain, in terms of the discrimination ruling, that has roots. That's a big landmark Supreme Court decision. This is more you didn't follow the rules. If you want to, try again, right?

BISKUPIC: Right, John. And that's the way I think a lot of people should understand these.

First of all, I think we have a pattern, for sure, of the Trump administration being smacked down when it pushes too far. That's a consistent theme in these cases. And it will probably be a consistent theme forward.

But then, in terms of who forms the coalition for the majority, I think that will always evolve. It will depend on the particular case.

We had, as you mentioned, a very important civil rights case on Monday that played to a Textualist reading that Trump appointee, Neil Gorsuch, was going to take. That was very distinct to Neil Gorsuch, to the way he wrote that opinion.

Now, granted, the chief justice signed on. But I think the chief justice realized, once there was a majority for this very important decision having to do with a statutory interpretation, he would be with it. He was not with the Supreme Court when it voted in 2015 to support a fundamental right to gay marriage.

So the chief is going to come on when it will appear a narrower ruling, something that's within the -- the limits of a statute, as we have here, the requirements that the Trump administration faced to actually do the DACA rescission properly, were not followed through. So we had that.

And I think going forward, John, in the next crucial weeks, as the Supreme Court finishes what's been just a -- a very unparalleled term, unprecedented to time in American history, we will probably see other surprises.

But we'll have to take them one at a time and dissect them, just as you're doing one at a time, because the pattern, again, even though it involves smacking down the Trump administration from going too far, does not involve a lot of consistency among particular justices. Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, the Trump appointees, they dissented here.

KING: I suspect you may be back tomorrow or the day after as we get another one of these big decisions in this big week.

Joan Biskupic, thank you so much.

BISKUPIC: Thank you. KING: With me now to share their reporting and their insights, Maggie Haberman, of the "New York Times," and Dan Balz, from the "Washington Post."

I'm grateful that you both take time on this important day.

Maggie, I'll start with you.

We don't know what the president will do. We do know a little bit about what he thinks. He retreated this "The Daily Caller" tweet essentially talking about the Clarence Thomas dissent, an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision. We know what the president wanted here.

The question is now: What will he do? Will he ask the DHS, go back and follow the road map the Supreme Court laid out or will he back off knowing there's an election just down the road?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK TIMES": Right, John. We don't know what he'll do. But I would argue, we don't really know what he wanted out of this decision, right?

What we know is, at the time that Jeff Sessions was announcing they were going to rescind DACA, the president was saying to some of his own advisers, how do I get out of this. The president was all over the map on this decision.

And I think what you saw him re-tweet there in terms of re-tweeting a paragraph about the dissent, suggesting this was a politically dangerous but legal sound move by administration, is something of what he's going to do.

The courts said this wasn't true, if wasn't fair, liberal activists, liberal judges and so forth. And I think he'll use that to punt until we get past the election.

[11:10:00]

Because, if not, you are looking at a circumstance where the president could be deporting a lot of people, who were brought to this country not of their own volition, four and a half months before an election, and up until that point. And I don't think that something that the president or most of his advisers want to be dealing with at all right now.

KING: To that point, Dan, had he won that case and he had the authority to start the deportations, his base would have demanded he do so. So in an odd way, is this legal defeat -- I don't know if political victory is the right word -- but a political pass for the president through the election?

DAN BALZ, CHIEF CORRESPONDENT, "WASHINGTON POST": It's political some breathing space, I suppose. But on the other hand, it's a rejection of something he had tried to do.

I think Maggie is right. He's always been uncomfortable with aspects of this. And we've seen him try to make a deal on DACA to get his border wall funded and things like that. He's always held that out as a possibility of making a deal.

But I -- I'm just struck by the fact, that, you know, it was eight years ago about this time that President Obama made this decision to protect the DACA kids and flummoxed then-presidential nominee, Mitt Romney. Now you've got the Supreme Court flummoxing the incumbent president over the same issue.

It's a politically difficult issue for him four and a half months before the election. And my guess, as Maggie says, he'll likely try to punt.

KING: And, yet, I'm going to read you a treat that the president issued since we've been on air, which is unfair because you haven't had a chance to read it because you're paying attention here. This is interesting.

"These horribly and politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or conservatives. We need more justices or we will lose our Second Amendment and everything else. Vote Trump 2020."

So here you have, again, the president, by the end of the hour, if not by the end of the day or the end of the week or the end of the month, could change again because he often does.

But this is his reflex, trying to turn this into, let's make it about judges and the conservative base. Let's make it about something I know works for me. At a time, of course, we know whether we're looking at racial unrest in the country, looking at the coronavirus response, the president's numbers are politely in the tank.

Maggie, what do you read into that, that he's trying to make it about judges? He doesn't even mention immigration in the tweet. It's clearly what it's about.

(CROSSTALK)

HABERMAN: John, I think your read is exactly right.

I think we've seen the president suffering some softening in his support, particularly among evangelicals and amongst some conservatives, not just in the last couple of weeks of racial unrest but even before that when he was doing the coronavirus briefings that were basically, as many of his advisers have acknowledged privately, an act of self-sabotage.

So I think that this is him taking another opportunity, as he has many times, to try to remind people who are conservatives, this is why you like me. This is why you took a chance on me in 2016. I gave you judges. This is this deal that we have made together and this is what you keep with me going forward.

I expect you'll hear him focusing on that a lot, and a lot more than on the immigration aspect of this.

KING: And, yet, Dan, he's the incumbent president so we have to always remember that the election is about him. Do people decide if they like this and do they like it enough to give him four more years?

I want to go back in time. Remember how important immigration was in 2016? He was going to build a wall and Mexico was paying for it. They are making progress on the wall. Mexico is not paying for it. The American taxpayer is.

But let's listen to the president on this particular issue is DACA.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When somebody is terrific, we want them back here.

(CROSSTALK)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Will they have to leave?

TRUMP: Look, it sounds cold and sounds hard. We have a country. Our country is going to hell. We have to have a system where people are legally in our country.

Most of them are DREAMers for other people. I want the children that are growing up in the United States to be DREAMers also. They are not dreaming right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Now he has to decide whether to take a different position or stick with his history on this issue, Dan.

BALZ: Well, he does. I mean, the problem for him on this issue is that there's probably no more popular immigration program than DACA. I mean, there's overwhelming support among the American people to allow DACA kids to stay in the United States.

And most of them aren't kids anymore. They are young adults who are leading productive lives, going to college, working, et cetera, who are fully assimilated into the fabric of this country.

That's what he is pushing against if he tries to say they should -- we should have a system in which they would not be allowed to stay here.

KING: Just moments ago, the question I'm going to ask on other side of this is, do we know how much this matters in the sense that, you know, there's a new Bolton book that we'll talk about momentarily. We're in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. We're in the middle of a racial reckoning in the United States.

And now we get this Supreme Court decision that, again, puts the immigration question, and essentially the humanity, how do you treat 700,000 to 800,000 people who came into to country, through no power of their own -- they were children when they were brought illegal into the country.

Most of them children, most of them have never lived anywhere else or at least not during their formative years, anywhere else. They consider themselves Americans.

[11:15:03]

Here's the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and her read on the Supreme Court.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Two-quarters of -- a large number of Republicans, Independents, over 60 percent of people who support Trump, support the DREAMers.

So this is really -- we were really in such dread about what could possibly happen at the court up until last night, just if it goes this way or if it goes that way. But this way is the American way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This way is the American way. And, yet, please, both of you laugh at me.

Maggie, we'll start with you.

In the sense that the president could, if he wanted to send a unifying signal at this moment of divide in America, say, you know what, let's get this over with. Let's pass legislation allowing them to stay.

If you've not committed a crime, if you're eligible for DACA, which means you've not committed a crime, and you were bought here by your parents or some other family member, you had no role in that decision, you were too young, you're paying taxes, you have a job, you might be serving in the United States military, you can stay.

The expectation that he can do that is what? Zero?

HABERMAN: Nothing is always zero with him because all of these transactions are open. But that's not the posture that people in his administration have been taking, particularly, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who he has tasked with trying to come up with some broader immigration deal.

The way that Jared Kushner has described this to people is Democrats will have to come to the table now, if we lose on DACA, and that's really on them. That's not how Democrats see it.

So I understand that that's how they are going to try to telegraph this or at least potentially try to telegraph this. I don't think that that's how this is going to go.

I also don't think that this president, who, we noted earlier, has seen a softening among his conservative base support, I don't think he'll be in a rush to say, yes, let's do a deal. He needs all of his voters to turn out. KING: That's the key point. We know in recent days -- you mentioned

evangelicals -- we've seen other question marks with his base. When that happens, the one thing he's consistent on is his reflex in that regard.

Maggie and Dan, stay with us.

When we come back, the stunning new claims from President Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:21:24]

KING: John Bolton, now the latest one-time Trump insider out with an eye-popping book. He says with President Trump, it's Trump first, not America first.

Among other things, John Bolton says the president asked the Chinese for re-election help and has said he would intervene, try to intervene in legal cases to help friendly dictators. Not to mention, Bolton says, encouraging concentration camps for China's Uighur Muslims. And not knowing that Finland is an independent country or part of Russia.

This is Bolton's verdict in what he saw up close.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don't think he's fit for office. I don't think he has the competence to carry out the job.

There really isn't any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what's good for Donald Trump's re-election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The president says Bolton is not to be believed. The president tweeting this morning the book is, quote, "a compilation of lies," and, quote, "pure fiction."

We're back with Maggie Haberman, of the "New York Times," Dan Balz, of "Washington Post."

Dan, there's a lot of insider books written in Washington. There's a lot of people very close to this president to have done so.

John Bolton, known as a loyal Republican staffer throughout the years, also known to have differences with this president on policy and on temperament issues but this is a wow.

BALZ: Yes, absolutely, John. And we knew we had differences and that they didn't get along in many ways.

But nonetheless, we've not seen something like this from past administrations. We've not seen this from current administrations. There's been looks of books about the dysfunctionality in the Trump

White House and the problems with the president but never from somebody who had, A, the up-close view that John Bolton had and, B, somebody who is known through every administration as a copious note- taker and contemporaneously doing so.

So here we have from, you know, the bird's-eye view, a devastating portrait of the president of the United States.

KING: Maggie, there are so many things. And you can decide, depending on what your personal or political interests are. You read this book different things might grab your attention.

Examining President Xi, for example, according to John Bolton, you know, can you start buying a lot of crops, farmers are critical to my election. Can you help with soybeans? Can you help with other agriculture products?

This one jumps out, for any American president, whether his name is Donald Trump or President Barack Obama or go back through history.

This is in the book: "Xi had explained to Trump why he was basically building concentration camps in Xinjiang. According to our interpreter, Trump told Xi he should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do."

An American president telling the Chinese dictator it's the right -- exactly the right thing to do to build concentration camps for the Muslim minority in China. If that's true, it's mind-blowing.

HABERMAN: It is, John. It's an unbelievable piece of information that John Bolton is putting his name to and saying that this happened.

The president, while he's sort of broadly dismissed the book, has not gone piece by piece, other than a piece this morning to say he was upset at John Bolton for upsetting Kim Jong-Un, which is something, a couple years ago.

I will say the criticism of Bolton has been, in this book, he's very, very negative about House Democrats, who were attempting to impeach President Trump, that they didn't go far enough.

So he sat on this piece of information about concentration camps and saved it for his book. And then he's criticizing Democrats for not knowing it. That's a lot of chess.

So I think -- I agree this is a pretty unusual book. It's extraordinary book for the fact that he had so much proximity to the president and he's willing to talk about what he saw.

But I think there are going to be limits to how many commendations he's going to get for how he handled this.

[11:25:03]

KING: That's an excellent point. So the question is: Does it get more attention? Does it get more

credibility with people out there?

We have to remember, in the context of an election, some people have already decided they are not open to changing their mind. For those who might be open to changing their mind.

Either way, either way, Dan, John Bolton joins James Mattis, John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Anthony Scaramucci; Omarosa Manigault Newman.

They are among the people who have been very close to this president, who have later, either in books or other interviews or both, painted incredibly damning pictures about how the president operates.

They all call him selfish. They all call him Trump first. They all question whether he's informed enough, whether he studies enough and reads the brief.

Will it matter that so many people -- this president, he criticizes them now. He brought every single one of them into the administration and praised them when he did so.

Does it matter that there are so many?

Again, we get tell-all books in every administration. We can always question the interests of the person writing the book. They're trying to sell books and advance their career.

But so many, especially, you look at so many people with such credibility, history, like Bolton, Mattis, Tillerson, et cetera.

BALZ: John, it will be up to the individual voter to render a final judgment on what they are hearing about the president that makes him unfit for office, as John Bolton says.

But it is extraordinary, when you think about it, that the top level of his national security apparatus, and not just in the first year but now continuing through Bolton, has basically, in the aftermath of their service, said he is unfit to be president of the United States.

The portrait that John Bolton paints in this is similar to what we have heard from Jim Mattis or General Kelly, Rex Tillerson. The reality is that every person who has been around him has come away after their service with a very bad taste in their mouth about the way he operates.

People will have to process that and make their own decisions about it. But we've never had a president who has had that kind of judgment rendered by the people who have worked closest with him.

KING: And part of the president's argument now, Maggie, played out last night on "Hannity." Remember, John Bolton, for a very long time, was a frequent contributor on FOX News. So if the president is trying to convince people who might like, respect, believe, view John Bolton as credible, that's one place to do it.

Listen to the president's take last night on this book.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voice-over): They broke the law, very simple, I mean, as much as it's going to be broken. This is highly classified.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The administration is trying to go to court to block all this. But so much of it is already out there, is that also a moot legal challenge?

HABERMAN: I don't know if it's a moot legal challenge because I'm not familiar enough with how the law could play out here.

But in terms of the public-relations challenge, you're absolutely right. This is not going to slow the spread of information that John Bolton is offering to share in this book.

And as Dan correctly says, this is all a piece of the portrait that we've seen from other officials over time.

I think that it will be up to individuals to decide whether they care or not.

But I think for people who voted for President Trump in 2016, taking a chance because they didn't like Hillary Clinton or didn't like President Barack Obama or whatever their reasons were, who told themselves that Donald Trump was playing a part in 2016. I think the aggregate of these portraits make clear that this is who he is. And what you see is who he is.

And how they decide that factors into their vote remains to be seen.

But I don't think that the administration is going to successfully stop people from knowing what is in this book.

KING: Maggie Haberman, Dan Balz, I'm grateful for your help on both of these big stories today. And we'll continue to watch as this plays out both legally and book sales, I guess.

Maggie and Dan, thank you.

Other important breaking news now. One of the officers charged in the Rayshard Brooks shooting in Atlanta has turned himself in.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher joins us with that breaking news -- Dianne?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. Just a few moments ago, Officer Devon Brosnan, who is the original responding officer to the incident that led to the death of Rayshard Brooks, turned himself into the Fulton County Jail, according to his attorney. He's currently being processed as we speak.

Brosnan was facing three charges in the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks. The first one being aggravated assault because the district attorney says that Brosnan stood on Rayshard Brooks' shoulders while he was still on the ground fighting for his life there at that Wendy's in the parking lot. The other two were violations of his oath of office.

Now, the attorneys for Brosnan had said that there's a mischaracterization when it comes to the standing on the shoulders of Mr. Brooks.

They said that Brosnan actually sustained a concussion during the scuffle with Brooks on the ground and that he was disoriented and he was unaware at the time, according to Brosnan's attorneys, that Brooks had been shot by Rolfe and that he didn't know at that point in time.

[11:30:07]

And if you remember, yesterday, during this press conference with the district attorney --