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Judge Rejects Trump's Effort to Keep January 6 Documents Secret; Biden on Inflation Report, Reversing This Trend is a Top Priority. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 10, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN NEWSROOM: Trump says he will appeal, this after the federal judge rejected his claims of executive privilege overnight.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: It was a scathing decision. In her explanation, Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote, quote, Trump's position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power exists in perpetuity, adding, the judge did, presidents are not kings and plaintiff is not president.

As Trump ramps up his legal fight, the committee working full steam ahead, issuing ten subpoenas to more of Trump's inner circle. The latest batch includes high-profile figures, such as Adviers Stephen Miller, former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany as well.

The Justice Department now awaiting a decision to help enforce those subpoenas. Attorney General Merrick Garland still silent on whether he'll prosecute Steve Bannon for his continued refusal to cooperate.

Let's begin in Washington. CNN Law Enforcement Correspondent Whitney Wild standing by.

So, Whitney, very active period of time for the committee both as they watch the legal decisions but also continue to issue subpoenas. So, how much pressure is the former president feeling right now?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: Probably a lot, and for a list of reasons that you lay out. First, many people within his inner circle now facing subpoenas. Additionally, there's this ticking clock on the pressing issue, which is this National Archives document dump.

So, here are the ten people that they are hoping to get information from. These are people who the committee believes, and based on records that we have explored here on CNN, they are publicly available for people to peruse for themselves, people who were at the very center of this effort by the White House to use the Trump administration's Department of Justice to overturn the election.

There are a list of names here. Let's zero in on one of them, Molly Michael. She appears in these documents as sending information to top officials at the Department of Justice with email lines that say, from POTUS. In an email, that was December 14th, that subject line, from POTUS, contained talking points and alleged information about alleged voter fraud in a county in Michigan.

Then later, about two weeks later, she sent another email to other top members of the Department of Justice, including the solicitor general, with basically this draft appeal to the Supreme Court to try to overturn the election in six states. So, these are people who are very familiar, according to the documents we've seen, with the president's mindset and efforts to try to overturn the election.

Now, turning toward the even more intimate details, these National Archive records, this is 700 records that the committee is searching, seeking out to try to get into the mindset of the people within Trump's inner circle leading up to the riot and the mindset of the president on the day of the riots.

So, these are extremely important pieces of information for a list of reason. The first is that if the committee actually ends up getting these documents, they can ask the most informed questions of the list people they've subpoenaed.

Further, if it happens that these people continue to delay or, for whatever reason, blow off the subpoena altogether and fail to actually appear for depositions, the committee has a little more flexibility to still generate fact-based information about what happened within the White House in those critical days.

Practically speaking, there are a lot of hurdles to overcome for the House committee to actually get these documents. You were guys talking about this earlier, worth repeating, that the Trump camp is asking for a stay. Whether or not the district court judge issues a stay on her own order remains to be seen.

Sometimes judges do that contemporaneously with their own order but we didn't see that here. They are very likely going to try to delay these attorneys and the Trump camp probably not getting any sleep for the next two days because the timeline is ticking, again, these documents due on Friday.

SCIUTTO: Well, it raises real and continuing questions about Congress' ability to investigate the executive branch. We'll see where it lands. Whitney Wild, thanks so much.

We're joined now former FBI Special Agent, CNN Legal and National Security Asha Rangappa, and CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Good to have you both on.

Asha, the next potential step here is, beyond the court of appeals, a Supreme Court decision, and whether it decides to take it up and make a broader judgment about the true extent of executive privilege. We had Joan Biskupic on in the last hour. So that may very well go but she does not expect the court to rule in a way beneficial to Donald Trump here, right, with his expansive view of executive privilege. And I wonder if you share the same expectation.

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, I don't. I mean, when you have a case of executive privilege, which is a separation of powers principle, a tug of war between the executive branch and Congress, I think courts are reluctant to make sweeping pronouncements because that will essentially affect the parameters of the executive branch for any party occupying that office.

And what the district court said here is, look, we have a situation where the current steward of the presidency, the current president, is in agreement with Congress.

[10:05:07]

In other words, there's even less of a reason for the court to come in and wade into this political battle. What she says is this is really a tug of war, not between the executive branch and Congress, but between the current president and the former president, and in such a case, the current president is going to win.

And I think that's a principal that you really need just for the effective functioning of the government. And I don't want expect any court to really disagree with that principle. Otherwise, we would basically end up with gridlock every time there's, you know, any kind of investigation by Congress that involves the former president.

HILL: As we watch that play out and see where it goes, also that question of a stay, what will ultimately happen with that, there are these new subpoenas. And, Dana, I just want to get your take on those.

So, these ten new subpoenas which were issued on Tuesday, including Kayleigh McEnany, Stephen Miller, as we look at those, what is the likelihood that any of those folks are going to cooperate?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Not high. Not high likely at all. And you've seen the pushback among the players who got the first round of subpoenas at the higher level, higher-ranking Trump officials from inside the White House, from Mark Meadows to outside the White House, Steve Bannon. They're laying the groundwork and sort of showing the ropes to others.

It's not to say that some of them won't feel compelled to go, but most of them likely will follow the lead of the others. Then there's also the possibility that they could follow the Jeffrey Clark example, which is saying yes, I'll show up, but then show up and not say much.

What they understand more than anything is the calendar. And the calendar right now is a year until Election Day, a year until the balance of power will once again be determined by the voters in what is already a very, very narrow margin by the Democrats, and Republicans are hoping and expecting that that goes away and that they take control. And as soon as that happens, this select committee, which is not a commission, because Republicans blocked that, will almost surely go away.

SCIUTTO: Asha, you have all the individual battles here over, for instance, the documents on Friday, but you also have the broader war, if you want to call it that, to properly investigate January 6th and hold people to account. Dana mentions the political calendar. You see that the folks who voted to impeach the president being targeted by the Republican Party, many giving up their political careers altogether.

Big picture, who is winning the battle over January 6th, right? Do you see genuine accountability coming for the people who led -- who were behind this really at the senior levels, not the folks who walked in the Capitol, but people at the senior levels who really pushed this?

RANGAPPA: I do, Jim, and here is why. First, a year plus some change is actually a long time. And from what we know, the January 6th committee has actually been moving at a pretty fast clip. They have interviewed 150 witnesses, even apart from these documents that they are trying to get from the National Archives, they have voluminous documentation. All of these subpoenas that they sent out to these witnesses, these aren't fishing expeditions. They have specific lines of inquiry on what these people knew, what they witnessed, what their actions were, so they already have a lot of information.

I think that the challenge here is, number one, that they're going to have to put this into some kind of public forum, whether it's a report, which I think would be less effective than actually having maybe some more public hearings with individuals who can testify to this, but putting something out there in the public before the next election. And I think also the Department of Justice having some teeth and enforcing these subpoenas when people defy them without any grounds. And so I think that that's going to be a test for the Department of Justice, which, again, they have a year. Hopefully they'll do that sooner.

HILL: Which sort of keeps coming back to that. And all these subpoenas, is that adding more pressure on Merrick Garland? We'll see.

Meantime, Dana, I know that you were at an event last night with a member of that committee, Representative Liz Cheney, who was very candid about where things stand right now within her party.

BASH: She sure was. I am still in New Hampshire where she came and spoke at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, which is very noteworthy because that is a place that we have seen over the decades, countless candidates for president come and speak.

[10:10:06]

She is not that, at least not yet. But she is banking on the fact that, whether she runs or not, there is an opening, there is an audience for the kind of facts that she is putting out there about what happened on January 6th and how her fellow Republicans in the House especially are treating the former president.

Listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): Political leaders who sit silent in the face of these false and dangerous claims are aiding a former president who is at war with the rule of law and the Constitution. This nation needs a Republican Party that is based on truth, that millions of Americans have been tragically misled by former President Trump, who continues to this day to use language that he knows provoked violence on January 6th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now, being in the room, talking to a host of Republicans who they were obviously a self-selecting crowd, they came, they wanted to hear from Liz Cheney, and they said that there is a lane for somebody who talks like that in the GOP, whether, again, it is on a presidential level or just out speaking and making people in the Republican Party, voters aware that there is an alternative way to look at things, a more traditional, conservative way to look at things than the former president.

But I have to say, she said a lot of that in Washington. Saying it here puts a whole new layer of intrigue on who she is and where she's going. And it seems as though that was the whole point of her visit.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Three years out, almost to the day from 2024, but watch those trips to New Hampshire. They might portend a future. Asha Rangappa, Dana Bash, thanks so much to both of you.

Still ahead this hour, President Biden relates to the troubling inflation news this morning, prices of everyday goods rising at a higher rate than this country has seen in 30 years.

HILL: Plus lawsuits mounting over the tragedy in Houston this weekend. Investigators say they are looking into every detail, as one lawyer says, maybe they should look at whether performers were under the influence of any drugs.

And a bit later, Kyle Rittenhouse, the now 18-year-old accused of murdering two people in a violent Wisconsin protest late last year may take the stand himself to testify. We're live at the courthouse.

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[10:15:00]

SCIUTTO: There's no end in sight for higher prices, that is according to the latest U.S. inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over the last 12 months, prices climbed 6.2 percent, that increase the biggest in this country in 30 years.

HILL: And this comes as President Biden is heading to Baltimore next hour to tout his infrastructure bill by upgrading ports and strengthening supply chains.

CNN's John Harwood is live from the White House. The president already reacting to these numbers. What is he saying this morning, John?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: What he's saying, Erica, is that inflation is a top priority for him to address. He's touting good news as well as the bad news on inflation. The good news being claims for new unemployment benefits are down, or continue to be down, way down during the course of his administration, but the price spikes are real. They've persisted through much of the year, and they're going to persist into next year.

What he's trying to do with this trip to Baltimore is argue that both in the near term and the long-term, he's working on this problem. Near term, the administration has got a supply chain disruption task force to try to smooth out some of those supply chain issues, which will help temper inflation. Longer term, the infrastructure bill that he's going to be touting in Baltimore is designed to expand the productive capacity of the U.S. economy. And that along with the Build Back Better agenda, which he's trying to pass subsequently in this month or perhaps December, he also argues it would increase the productive capacity of the country and reduce inflationary pressures over the long-term.

Now, one challenge he has is that even as he makes that argument about long-term decrease in inflationary pressures, one of the holdout senators who has been resisting the size of the Build Back Better plan, Joe Manchin, put out a tweet this morning saying inflation is getting worse. He cited inflation as a reason to pare back the cost. That doesn't mean he's not going to support the bill, but it shows the challenge the administration has both with the moderates in the House who still haven't fully committed to the bill and the moderates in the Senate, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, trying to get them on board and pass both parts of the president's economic agenda.

SCIUTTO: Still trying to get Manchin and Sinema on board, I think I've heard that story before. John Harwood, thanks very much.

Here to discuss the big political picture, Senior Editor for The Atlantic and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ron Brownstein, also Chief Washington Correspondent for Politico and CNN Senior Political Analyst Ryan Lizza. Gentlemen, good to have you both.

Ron, if I could begin on the inflation news first because folks, of course, always exaggerating the president's ability to really move the dial on inflation. Big inputs here are pandemic economy comeback, supply chain issues, although you can make the argument all the COVID stimulus money went in, also juiced these figures, but on the flipside, what a president can do to hem it in, right? What can a president actually do? How does he manage the expectations so he's not blamed for this next fall?

[10:20:01]

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, he is blamed for this next fall, Jim, no matter what he does, I think. I mean, the reality is that the president owns the current conditions in the economy. In the late '70s and early '80s, when inflation got much more out of control than what we're seeing now, ultimately Paul Volker, Fed chair under Ronald Reagan, ended it essentially by engineering a recession and driving interest rates up. And, certainly, the Fed will be the critical player in deciding if the point has come in terms of prices up, which they have concluded not yet, that they need to race interest rates. This goes to the larger challenge that I've written about before, I think that Democrats face next fall, which is that people say that presidential elections are about the future. Midterm elections are about the present. They are about current conditions. And they tend to be dominated by how people feel things are going at that moment, rather than legislative achievement. And, obviously, Biden needs better sense of inflation, COVID, crime, the border are all under stronger control than they seem to be today.

HILL: If we're talking about the president, we know that Biden and his advisers have long argued that they need to bring back blue collar voters. And they're arguing too that these legislative efforts by the president, one, could soon be signed into law. We're waiting for everybody to come back to have a party.

Realistically, Ryan, as we look at that, how much will this infrastructure bill actually deliver when we're talking about jobs, and specifically blue collar jobs in this country?

RYAN LIZZA, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, there are few analyses out there that definitely point to the fact that this will -- the bill will create millions of jobs, pumping a huge amount of money into the economy, billions of dollars for roads and bridges and electric charging stations. All of that government money is obviously going to create many jobs.

Just to add one thing to Ron's point on inflation, it's really fair to point out that the White House is playing catch-up on this issue. Early this year, there were some very prominent Democratic economists who said, watch out, the signs of inflation are serious, Larry Summers most famously. And he said, you know what, Mr. President, you should take some of that immediate stimulus from the COVID bill that will risk juicing the economy and increasing inflation and put it into the long-term Build Back Better agenda that has less inflationary pressures.

The White House was extremely dismissive of that point of view and went for the biggest possible stimulus in the COVID bill. And they've sort of were dismissive for months, frankly, about the risks of inflation, and only when the polls started showing that it was a major political problem for the White House, and then in Virginia and New Jersey, a lot of exit polls showed this was top concern on voter's minds, they sort of got religion. And then reframing this BBB package as an inflation fighter, which, let's be honest, it was not designed to fight inflation. I mean, they can point to parts of it that arguably will have an impact but this is a -- they're playing catch-up right now on this issue.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Okay. So, the other issue, Ron Brownstein, with the Build Back Better, is that it does not appear that has the elements that voters are looking for, at least prioritizing in polls beyond inflation, issues with the supply chain crisis, which folks are worried about getting Christmas presents on time, that kind of thing. I mean, is there a way beyond rebranding it to make Build Back Better be a winner for Democrats or is it just not a winner for them as the midterms approach? BROWNSTEIN: Well, I think you have to look at the near term and the long-term. I think the elements in plan, as Ryan was saying, are actually quite popular, universal pre-K, expanded child care subsidies, health care subsidies, the possibility of Medicare negotiating lower prescription drug prices. There is analysis that 80 percent of the jobs that will be created by both the infrastructure and Build Back Better plan would not require a college degree. And in that sense, it does fulfill what Biden has called it, a blue collar blueprint to rebuild America. There are a lot of things in this plan that would make day-to-day life easier for many working class families, particularly white but even some Hispanics that have been drifting away from the Democratic Party.

I think the questions for 2022 is whether voters are going to feel those programs in time for it to make a material difference in their voting decisions. As I said, midterms tend to be very much about current conditions. And I think convincing the country it has a better handle on inflation, the supply chain and COVID is probably going to be a much bigger factor on what happens in 2022 even if, as history suggests, I think in other examples, like the Reagan tax cut, this program could be a significant asset for Democrats by 2024 but I don't think it's going to be the dominant factor in 2022.

SCIUTTO: Interesting, yes. And that date is coming fast, right?

HILL: It certainly is.

[10:25:00]

All right, Ryan Lizza, Ron Brownstein, good to see you both, thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, an attorney representing victims in the Astroworld concert tragedy demands an investigation into the performers. What exactly he's asking for, next.

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SCIUTTO: In Houston, officials still working to determine exactly what led up to last weekend's deadly incident at the Astroworld Music Festival.

[10:30:03]

Houston's mayor says they are investigating every angle as the Houston FBI --