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Astroworld Investigation; Kyle Rittenhouse Trial Continues; Trump Continues Efforts to Stop Document Release. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired November 11, 2021 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:38]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Hello, and thank you for joining us on NEWSROOM. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

Time is running out for Donald Trump's team to stop the release of records connected to January 6. Trump's lawyers just asked a federal appeals court to step in after a federal judge ruled that hundreds of pages of documents can be handed over to the January 6 Committee by tomorrow's deadline.

BLACKWELL: And after lawmakers subpoenaed more than a dozen members of Trump's inner circle this week alone.

The committee is now focusing on those closest to former Vice President Mike Pence.

CNN's Kara Scannell is following the developments for us.

It really could be an important shift potentially, a game-changer in the investigation, what we hear and see tomorrow.

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Victor.

I mean, as you said, the former president's lawyers have now gone to a federal appeals court, asking them to step in and briefly stop the National Archives from turning over records to the House committee investigating January 6.

But Trump's lawyers, as you said, had been fighting this. They have lost. They're 0-2 to in courts. And that's why they're going to the appeals court, saying, can you step in and pause this release? The deadline for these documents to be turned over is tomorrow by 6:00 p.m.

They're asking the court to do this. They're also seeing in their filing that they have an agreement with the House for expedited briefing, which means that they could be fully briefed on this issue by early next week. And then the appeals court could rule on it.

So that has fast-tracked things somewhat if the appeals court takes us up. If not, National Archives could turn over these documents tomorrow. Now, within these documents, former President Trump has said that he has executive -- he wants to assert executive privilege over them. That includes White House visitor and call logs, drafts of speeches, as well as three handwritten memos by Trump's former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, all of this very central and critical to January 6 -- Victor, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

Kara, let's talk about Mark Meadows, because it sounds like the committee is getting frustrated with him. I mean, they have been trying to, it sounds like, negotiate with him or talk with him since September. So what's the status?

SCANNELL: Well, we just learned from my colleague Zach Cohen -- he's reporting that the White House has informed Mark Meadows' lawyers that President Biden will not assert executive privilege or immunity over these documents that they wanted.

So this kind of brings us right back to this same issue. And Meadows' attorneys are saying that this is now before the courts, they will let the courts decide. But when the court does decide this matter, I mean, this whole delay by many of these allies of Trump's is because they're hanging on the issue of executive privilege.

If the court rules that the former president cannot assert it, as the lower court has, then we could see that defense break down very quickly -- Victor, Alisyn.

BLACKWELL: All right. Thank you so much.

Let's now go to CNN legal and national security analyst Asha Rangappa. She's a former FBI special agent. And CNN White House correspondent John Harwood.

Asha, first to you on what we're learning about Mark Meadows, essentially giving the same explanation we heard from Jeffrey Clark last week to the committee, I cannot and will not participate until this decision of executive privilege is decided.

I'm going to come to you with I guess the obvious question. Any more legitimate than it was when we heard it from Jeffrey Clark a couple days ago?

ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: No.

I mean, there's a -- maybe a notch more legitimacy than, say, Steve Bannon, because these were people who actually held positions and were giving advice. But here's the deal, Victor. The executive privilege exists to protect the core functions of the presidency, of the office of the presidency, the official things that a president does, head of state, national security, these kinds of things.

Preventing the peaceful transfer of power is not a core function of the presidency. And so beyond whether they qualify for the executive privilege as kind of a threshold matter, the substance here is really potentially criminal activity, illegal activity, which I can't imagine the privilege would cover regardless. So, this is just thin ground in an attempt to delay the inevitable, in

my opinion.

CAMEROTA: John, let's talk more about what might be in these documents that we might see tomorrow if the appeals court doesn't stop it.

One of the things that I think sounds innocuous, but maybe I'm wrong, are the visitor logs. I mean, what's so -- what's the bombshell in the visitor logs that Donald Trump wants to block from getting out?

[14:05:07]

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we will find out when we get the information.

But you had a situation where Donald Trump was working with people, both within the administration and outside the administration -- remember that war room at the Willard Hotel -- to plan for and anticipate the events of January 6.

We don't know the full extent to which President Trump was involved in actually making the specific events of January 6 happened. But, obviously, he participated in the rally. His people were involved in setting up the rally. And you had outside people like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon operating out of the Willard trying to foment this rebellion, which Steve Bannon was forecasting on his -- on a radio show 24 hours before it happened.

Now, we don't know exactly whether he is specifically protecting these documents or would protect all documents. But what we know about Donald Trump is, he doesn't care about the truth. He doesn't care about the law. And he doesn't care about American democracy. What he cares about is power.

And so he's acting in a way to try to preserve that. That attitude filters down to people who worked for him in the White House, to people within the Republican Party, voters out there, his -- the most intense parts of his base. And that's why January 6 happened in the first place.

BLACKWELL: Asha, we just put up on screen what's in these documents, handwritten notes, internal memos, call logs, draft speeches, a daily diary.

Judge Chutkan said that she would not look through these documents individually, would not second-guess the administration's decision here. Is that relevant, that she didn't look through them, on appeal?

RANGAPPA: No.

The appeal is based on -- the appeal for and the request for a stay pending the decision on the merits is really based on four factors. This is whether he's likely to succeed on the merits, whether he will suffer irreparable harm, the harm to the other party, in this case, Congress, if they don't grant -- or if they do grant a stay, and the public interest.

And what the judge was saying here is, executive privilege, again, is really about the interests of the office of the presidency. And the person who's best suited to do that is a person who is sitting in the Oval Office, which right now is President Biden.

So what she was saying is, I'm not going to second-guess this by go -- second-guess the president by going through this document by document. But on the bigger issue, what Trump is really arguing is kind of a crazy legal theory.

If you remember the character Pig Pen from "Peanuts" that had a little cloud of dirt around him...

BLACKWELL: I do, yes.

RANGAPPA: What Trump is saying is that he has little cloud of executive power that just kind of follows him wherever he goes which is equal to or greater than the sitting president.

And so he's very unlikely to succeed on that. And he doesn't have a personal interest in these documents. They're presidential documents, not personal documents. So it's really hard for him to show harm, whereas the harm to Congress in not fulfilling its constitutional role is quite high.

(CROSSTALK)

HARWOOD: Where's Lucy in this story?

(LAUGHTER)

BLACKWELL: And what is the football?

CAMEROTA: Well, yes, there's so many questions about that analogy.

But the Pig Pen one, I really get. It's quite visual.

John, if the appeals court does step in, in the next 24 hours, and stops these from being released, what does the committee do next?

HARWOOD: Look, the committee has got to and has apparently decided to go full-bore as fast as they can on as many fronts as they can, because they know that all they're going to get from Trump and his allies are resistance.

They are trying, as you guys have indicated, to run out the clock. They know that it is likely that Democrats will not control the House of Representatives in 2023, after next year's midterm elections, and they're trying to gum up the works of this investigation.

What the House committee is going to do is try to get as many people, but I think, more importantly, because you can't necessarily count on the Trump people to either provide information or provide truthful information, it's going to be the documentary evidence that I think is most likely, that is, e-mails, the logs that we were talking about a minute ago, that is most likely to provide a -- or furnish a road map that would tell us exactly what happened and who participated in it.

CAMEROTA: All right, we will see what happens in the next 24 hours.

Asha Rangappa, John Harwood, thank you both.

Now to Kenosha. Kyle Rittenhouse's defense team called a use of force experts today, who testified in detail about each shot the teen fired last August, killing Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber. Gaige Grosskreutz was also shot, but survived.

[14:10:02]

BLACKWELL: CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is in Kenosha.

So, the judge told the court that it would be ideal if the trial finished tomorrow. Tell us more about that.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

So initially, yesterday, the judge told the jury that he was thinking that the trial would end by Monday or Tuesday. Today, he came into court and said, well, I was kind of confused about the day of the week. But now I'm thinking that this perhaps could wrap up tomorrow.

And what exactly that means is unclear to me. Perhaps we would have closing arguments tomorrow, then he would send the jury home, charge them on the law, and maybe deliberations would start on Monday. So it's not entirely clear.

The defense is really pretty much wrapping up their part of their case, and they could rest some time this afternoon. They have called three witnesses. One of them, as you said, is a use of force witness who was talking about the sequence of events, the timing in between the shots that Kyle Rittenhouse fired.

There was a police officer who testified about shell casings that she herself found. And then, finally, there's a witness on the stand who took some video, and there's some issues about the video that he took.

The other thing that's been happening in court is sort of you could still see this and feel this tension between the prosecutor and the judge over what happened yesterday. There was a brief exchange over an objection, where the judge had something to say about the way the prosecutor was looking at him. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDGE BRUCE SCHROEDER, KENOSHA COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT: I'm a little bit challenged when you say -- is there something that I'm seeing that drives the face that you're making?

THOMAS BINGER, KENOSHA COUNTY ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY: I...

SCHROEDER: Go ahead. Say what you want to say.

BINGER: I have to say, Your Honor, yesterday, I was the target of your ire for disregarding your orders. Today, the defense is disregarding your order.

As I said, I was under the court's ire.

SCHROEDER: No, I don't want to talk about -- why don't we just...

BINGER: Well, I think it's a fundamental fairness issue, Your Honor.

SCHROEDER: All right, say what you want to say.

BINGER: If I'm being held to obey the court's orders, I'm asking that the defense be held to that too.

This is something we litigated at a Daubert hearing. We spent time on this.

SCHROEDER: I am going to interrupt you, and then I'm going to let you talk again.

But I was talking yesterday about the Constitution of the United States, and how the Supreme Court has interpreted it for 50 years. That's not what we're talking about here today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And so really, guys, that was the only time that the prosecutor and the judge really addressed what happened yesterday. There's been no other mention of it.

Court is expected to resume shortly and then perhaps, within the next few hours or so, the defense will rest their case. We may see a rebuttal from the prosecution. And that would perhaps be it, and then we'd be set for closing arguments, perhaps maybe as early as tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: That dynamic between the judge and the prosecutor has been intriguing and exhausting, I think, to watch.

(CROSSTALK)

PROKUPECZ: The judge has been really interesting in all of this, right? So...

CAMEROTA: On every level.

Shimon, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

BLACKWELL: Thanks, Shimon.

CAMEROTA: Let's bring in CNN legal analyst Areva Martin and CNN civil rights attorney Charles Coleman

Great to have both of you.

Areva, can we just take a 30,000-foot view here of what's happened in this trial? And by that, I mean the prosecutor dove in to such minutiae yesterday that I think in some ways that people watching lost the thread of, had Kyle Rittenhouse not brought an AR-15-style rifle to a protest, one that he wasn't legally allowed to have, none of this would have happened.

But was the prosecutor leaning into that enough, or is there a legally relevant reason he wasn't?

AREVA MARTIN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I think, Alisyn, he did get lost in the weeds at certain points during his cross-examination.

But, overall, I thought it was pretty effective. What he wanted to do, I think, as importantly as make that big picture argument that you just laid out, which is this kid who didn't have legal rights to be in Wisconsin at this time period, he was violating the time frame that someone should even be on the streets, he had a gun that he wasn't legally allowed to carry.

He entered himself -- he put himself into these situations that proved to be really violent and volatile. But he also wanted to show I think a juxtaposition in the attitude. We saw that emotional breakdown on direct examination by Kyle Rittenhouse.

But then we saw, during cross-examination, a very defiant Kyle, a very rehearse Kyle Rittenhouse, who kept using these phrases over and over again about he was trying to protect himself against threats. He kept making that statement over and over again, as if, if he said it enough times, the jurors would believe it to be true.

So I think the prosecution wanted to draw this cross-examination out to give the jurors some sense that this is not a choir boy, this is not some confused kid, but this was a teenager that had a very specific purpose for being in Wisconsin that night, and it was not a noble purpose.

[14:15:07]

BLACKWELL: And, Charles, Areva brought up that moment of sobbing that actually prompted the judge to call for a break yesterday. We all watch that together.

As it relates to showing remorse, we don't know if that's what it -- that was, but what role does remorse play in getting an acquittal for a defendant like Kyle Rittenhouse?

CHARLES COLEMAN JR., CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: Well, legally speaking, Victor remorse doesn't matter at all.

I think that, in terms of what we're talking about with the jury, and I think that's why you saw the theatrics and the crocodile tears there we saw from Kyle Rittenhouse yesterday, the reaction there is about getting the jury to connect with you. And some of it is just about theatrics.

It's not necessarily about whether they believe the facts, but can you connect with them emotionally? And if you recall, not only did Kyle Rittenhouse start crying, but almost on cue right after that his mother who was sitting in the gallery of the courtroom also began to cry as well. Both of these things were seen by the jury. That matters. And it

matters because the defense has one job in this case, and that is get one or two or maybe three or four jurors not to believe the prosecution's case beyond a reasonable doubt, and you win.

And, ultimately, when you do something like that, you don't need everyone to believe you. You just need enough people to believe you so that you can cast reasonable doubt as to your frame of mind in that moment, so that you can secure an acquittal. And that's what that was about.

CAMEROTA: Areva, as you well know, the judge doesn't want the two men who were killed being called victims. He thinks that that's prejudicial.

But -- and maybe we could put up their photographs as we talk, because do you think that there's been enough talk of who they were during this trial?

MARTIN: Yes, just as, Alisyn, Charles talked about the defense's job was to humanize Kyle Rittenhouse, and that's why we saw that the theatrics, that's why we saw the crying both from him and his mother, I think the prosecution did have -- could have done more to humanize the two men who were killed.

Whether they were allowed to call them victims or not, they were human beings. There's somebody's son, somebody's brother, nephew. They matter. Their lives matter. And I'm not sure the prosecution spent enough time letting the jurors know that. And we will see how that plays out when the juries go back -- the jury goes back to deliberate.

But I do think there may have been a misstep with respect to humanizing those individuals that were killed by Kyle Rittenhouse.

BLACKWELL: We actually heard from one of those victims, one who survived, shot in the arm, Gaige Grosskreutz, in which he responded to what he saw in the courtroom yesterday.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GAIGE GROSSKREUTZ, SHOOTING VICTIM: To me, it seemed like a child who had just gotten caught doing something that he wasn't supposed to, more upset that he was caught and less upset about what he had done and what he had taken, and the numerous lives that he affected through his actions that night.

I think the most important thing to remember is that Kyle Rittenhouse was an active shooter. He murdered two men, and he attempted to murder me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Charles, your reaction to what you heard there from Gaige Grosskreutz? COLEMAN: Well, the first thing that I reacted to him more than anything else is that the fact that Kyle Rittenhouse has been shielded by the media, by the judge, by a number of people by being cloaked in sort of this infantilized notion that he was this young 17-year-old young man who essentially was more or less a Boy Scout.

Even that gentlemen as the victim referred to him as, he reminded me of a child. And a lot of the treatment that we have seen by the judge has been almost coddling him in the way of being a child. That does not bode well for the prosecution. But it also speaks to a larger issue about how we process these things.

I want viewers to consider something. When Trayvon martin was killed, he was 17 years old. The national conversation became about whether he should have had on a hood, whether he had smoked marijuana, what his grades were like, whether he had used racial epithets.

Kyle Rittenhouse is a 17-year-old young man who walked into essentially a chaotic protest space with an assault rifle. And yet and still, we have these references to them even by some of the victims themselves, referring to him as, he reminded me of a child.

And I think that, psychologically, that plays a part into why we are seeing things play out the way that they do, and the different parallel in terms of how these cases play out in different ways, given the race of some of the defendants or the race of some of the parties involved.

And that point just has to be understood by the people watching.

BLACKWELL: Yes, certainly something to consider. And you have told several times the role of race in this case certainly must be remembered as we watch what happens inside that courtroom and the reaction outside the courtroom.

[14:20:10]

Charles Coleman, Areva Martin, thank you.

MARTIN: Thanks.

BLACKWELL: Well, as dozens of lawsuits pour in, the red flags prior to the Astroworld concert, we keep seeing those now. We will take you to Houston next.

CAMEROTA: Plus, skyrocketing prices are hitting grocery stores and gas stations across the country. The nationwide sticker shock and what President Biden can do and how he's responding.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: More than 50 lawsuits have now been filed in the deadly Astroworld musical festival.

[14:25:04] And as investigators look into what caused the chaos, the president of the Houston Firefighters Association is blaming the company hired for emergency services.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARTY LANCTON, PRESIDENT, HOUSTON PROFESSIONAL FIREFIGHTERS ASSOCIATION: I know that our firefighters, there were four of them that were outside the perimeter monitoring six radios in sort of a support role, if you will.

And what they asked these medical people is, do you have a radio, so we can communicate if something goes wrong? And what they were given instead was a list of cell phone numbers. If you don't have radios to communicate in an emergency, I don't know that cell phones are very reliable when you have 50,000 or 60,000 people, especially when you have people that are dying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Also, a security contractor hired by the festival says he was so concerned by training and staffing problems leading up to the show that he walked off the job.

CNN correspondent Rosa Flores is in Houston for us.

So, Rosa, what caused this security guard so much concern?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the security guard says that he just didn't feel safe. He didn't feel that there was enough security and he was assigned to the front gate and he had seen on social media that people were planning to storm the gate. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN HOST: You guys are obviously Travis Scott fans. How much do you hold him responsible?

DARIUS WILLIAMS, WORKED SECURITY AT ASTROWORLD: I had overheard some other people mentioning online and in person that there was a plan to storm the gates. And I mentioned that to my superiors. But it seemed like it fell on deaf ears.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: So you mentioned that? You heard that online and mentioned it?

WILLIAMS: I did. I'm just glad I trusted my instinct, and that I listened to myself and actually left for the day. I never would have imagined anything like that would have happened.

But based on what I witnessed personally, I'm not surprised that an incident did occur.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Now, imagine when he learned that eight people had died. He says he was devastated.

And I checked today with a fire chief here in Houston. And he says that two individuals remain hospitalized, both of them in critical condition -- Alisyn.

BLACKWELL: Really interesting that we're hearing now there were more people ahead of time who are aware of the potential that something tragic could happen.

We're hearing from Travis Scott's team as well. What are they saying?

FLORES: Well, Travis Scott's attorney is saying that officials here in Houston, all they're doing is finger-pointing, sending inconsistent messaging and backtracking statements.

He goes on to say -- quote -- "It was reported that the operations plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis' crew. This also runs afoul of HPD's own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over five minutes back in 2019."

Now, about the backtracking of statements and him talking about officials doing that, remember what police said initially, that a security officer had been pricked in the neck and revived with Narcan? Well, now police say that that actually didn't happen, that the security officer was hit in the head and went unconscious.

So, Alisyn and Victor, no needles, no drugs, apparently, according to the police.

CAMEROTA: OK, that's confusing.

Rosa, how many -- do we know how many lawsuits now have been filed against Travis Scott and what they claim, the concertgoers?

FLORES: There's at least 58 lawsuits that have been filed. Many of these lawsuits claim negligence, gross negligence, in essence, saying that this concert was not a safe venue to attend. It was not a safe event.

On top of that they also claim emotional distress. That is the case of two brothers who spoke to our colleague John Berman this morning on "NEW DAY," the names Bryan and Jonathan Espinoza.

Bran saying that he can't even sleep. At some points, he thought he had a 50/50 chance of surviving. At another point, he didn't think he was going to make it. So there's a lot of trauma that these two brothers are still dealing with.

And about the finger-pointing, Travis Scott's attorney saying that officials, all they're doing is finger-pointing. Well, now Travis Scott's fans are pointing the finger at him. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You guys are obviously Travis Scott fans. How much do you hold him responsible?

JONATHAN ESPINOZA, ATTENDED ASTROWORLD FESTIVAL: Completely responsible, sir. You have the biggest microphone at everybody.

And I don't think it's crazy how poorly it was set up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: Alisyn and Victor, I talked to various people who were concertgoers after this tragedy, and they have told me that they're never going to a Travis Scott concert again -- Alisyn and Victor.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Hard to know when the next Travis Scott will ever -- concert will ever happen, and if it will.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Rosa Flores, thank you very much for all of that.

[14:30:00]