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Supreme Court Rulings Favor GOP Issues; January 6 Committee to Resume Public Hearings in Mid-July; Authorities Investigate Deaths of 22 Young People at Party. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 27, 2022 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:30:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: This just in to CNN. The attorney general of Mississippi has confirmed that she has certified the state's trigger law regarding abortion. That means it will effectively be banned in ten states now in that state and ten states. In that state, ten days from now.

It is latest from the Supreme Court ruling that abruptly altered life for millions in this country, the court also restricting state's abilities to regulate guns, last week, as you saw in the Bruen decision on Thursday, another decision with sweeping consequences.

Joining me now, CNN Legal Analyst and Supreme Biographer Joan Biskupic, and Jake Charles, Executive Director for the Center for Firearms Law at Duke University Law School, who also clerked for a judge on the Fourth Circuit. It's good to have you both.

And, Joan, I do want to begin with you on actually the legitimacy of the institution of the Supreme Court at a time when only one in four Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in this court. We heard Justice Sotomayor in the oral argument in the abortion case in Dobbs, asked the question, will this institution, she said from the bench, survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

And it was 1992 when the three justices, O'Connor, Kennedy and Souter wrote in the majority opinion in Casey overruling Roe central holding would seriously weaken the court's capacity to exercise its judicial power and to function as a Supreme Court of a nation dedicated to the rule of law.

Big picture, whether you agree with this decision on abortion or not, big picture, where does the court stand now in terms of legitimacy in the eyes of the public that it is the independent institution that Roberts so wants people to see it as?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN LEGAL ANALYST AND SUPREME COURT BIOGRAPHER: You know, Poppy, those three justices from 1992, all Republican appointees, all conservative in different ways, although David Souter certainly drifted to the left, they had it right. This court's capital is its reliance on precedent, the trust that people have that the law will be stable and not change simply because the personnel changes.

We've talked a lot about the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood versus Casey and how that went out the window with Roe v. Wade from 1973. But as recently as two years ago in 2020, the Supreme Court relied on both Casey and Roe in 2020 when it struck down a restrictive Louisiana abortion regulation.

So, in the law, there were expectations that things would stay the same, irrespective of what was happening in the states and politically with the Republican Party. But the message we're seeing and the message that raises these questions about legitimacy is the court is a political institution, and the fact that there are three new Trump appointees right now is what's making the difference.

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And there's no way to get around that. And I'll just mention that today's earlier decision allowing more prayer at school and lowering the wall between church and state reinforces where this conservative super majority is, Poppy.

HARLOW: And, Jake, you tweeted a series of things over the weekend that I think are really important because people are grappling with this. And Jim rightly referenced to it earlier in the show, you basically said in your tweets it's going to be really hard for people to understand that if they read the Dobbs abortion decision back to back with the Bruen guns decision that came on Thursday. Explain why.

JAKE CHARLES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR FIREARMSN LAW AT DUKE UNIVERSITY: Right. So, when I was reading the decisions back to back, a couple of things stuck out to me. One of which is the Dobbs opinion is really in favor of returning a controversial hot-button topic to the elected branches. It says that's where the majority of decisions and a democracy should be made, especially ones that are so deeply felt, none of that in Bruen. The Bruen decision does not defer to legislative majorities, doesn't invoke any deference to the elected branches to regulate guns. So, that's one thing that stuck out to me.

Another is that the majority in Dobbs faulted the Casey standard of undue burden because it didn't give guidance to lower courts, where the Bruen decision itself announced a new -- a brand new standard for Second Amendment and itself did not give guidance to lower courts on how to interpret that. So, those are a couple things looking at the opinions back to back that really stood out to me as just two days apart these opinions and they go in opposite directions.

HARLOW: Yes. Joan, just to this broader point, I thought your piece over the weekend, this was just so spot on. Is this John Roberts' court anymore? I mean, any hope for moving incrementally seems to be out the window.

BISKUPIC: Well, it's interesting. What I've tried to say in this moment about John Roberts is that he lost the defining case of his generation. That's the abortion rights case. You know, he dissented from the part that overturned Roe v. Wade, although he would have upheld -- and he did -- vote to uphold the 15-week abortion ban. But just think of how John Roberts plays a role that's more than just abortion rights, and we saw it again on religion. He is with the conservative super majority against racial remedies in voting rights, against affirmative action, against for lowering the wall separation between church and state, as we saw last week when he wrote the opinion on public funding for religious schools, and then today to allow more school prayer.

So, where he has lost his court, Poppy, is exactly on the phrase you just used, incrementalism. He would move slower. He wants to get where the others are, but he would move slower, and that is a pattern that is now gone.

HARLOW: Jake, finally, to you. Even bigger in terms of implication for the country than the court striking down New York's proper cause law for guns is the new framework that they set up. And I fear that may be missed by some. It is an entirely new way to judge whether laws restricting guns in this country are legal or not. They say, look at history. They also have the ability to look at certain parts of history and ignore certain parts of history, and that is what we have seen happen.

So, my question is to you is how do you assess the gun law if it wasn't around -- if there was nothing comparable at the founding era, whether it's guns on planes, whether it's ghost guns, 3D-printed guns, AR1-5s, there isn't that history, so then what?

CHARLES: That's right, Poppy. One of the hard things about the tests the court announced is that no lower courts have ever applied this kind of test, so there's no track record of what it would even look like in practice. The court rejected the test that had unanimously been adopted and applied for a dozen years in the federal courts of appeals. And what the court says to do is to reason by analogy when we look to history, to look to what laws would be relevantly similar to a modern regulation.

And as you suggested, it's really hard to know what that looks like when you're talking about modern regulations, regulations on ghost guns or guns on airplanes. What is relevantly similar in 1791 or in 1868 to these types of laws? And I fear that the test is going to be just what sounds right to the judges who are assessing a particular challenge, that they're going to look to some history as persuasive and they're going to chop other parts of history off when they don't find it persuasive.

As opposed to at least the lower court's prior test had been transparent about what the government interest was and what evidence the court was saying satisfied that standard, whereas now the judgments about what history is going to be persuasive and what history is not are going to be made underneath the surface and not transparently in the opinion.

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HARLOW: Jake Charles, thanks so much, Joan Biskupic, great to have both of you on for the big picture. Jim? JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A quick note, CNN's Dana Bash will sit down with Vice President Kamala Harris to speak about the White House response to these Supreme Court decisions. Don't miss it today at 4:00 Eastern Time right here on CNN.

Still ahead, the committee investigating the January 6th attack on the Capitol and the broader attempt to overturn the election previews where the high-profile hearings will go next, who they want to testify. We speak with former counsel to President Nixon, John Dean, coming up.

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HARLOW: The January 6th committee is set to resume public hearings on Capitol Hill in mid-July. The committee is now reviewing new evidence, they say, fresh information from the National Archives, also calls coming into the panel's tip line. Congressman Adam Schiff says he sense a change at the Justice Department.

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REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): It certainly seems that the -- there's a greater sense of urgency than I've seen before. At the same time, I have yet to see any indication that the former president himself is under investigation.

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SCIUTTO: Joining us now, John Dean, former White House Counsel to President Nixon. Good to have you on, sir.

You, of course, so central to probably the only prior comparable situation to the one we're seeing right now. I wonder, based on what the moves you've seen from the DOJ so far, including searching the home last week of Jeffrey Clark, who was part of the president's attempt to overturn the election, do you see the DOJ, and, again, I know this is reading tea leaves going so far as to charging the former president, or others involved in his attempts to overturn the election?

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it could be an array of things. I do see a department that's moving forward at its own pace. The professionals in that department, Jim, those line prosecutors, they're just not going to let this pass. So, I don't know where Merrick Garland is but I can be quite comfortable of the management of the criminal division and the U.S. Attorney's Office is proceeding. How far they are, I don't know. I think they're also pushed by the fact that Georgia is moving at a very rapid pace.

HARLOW: Let me ask you, John, also about Pat Cipollone, former White House Counsel. I mean, the chairman of the committee, Bennie Thompson, says the committee has not made any progress in getting him to testify. His position has been, look, I told you guys enough behind closed doors, I gave you enough to have the information you need. You, though have, continued to call on him to testify in public.

Explain to people why that's so important, you think, still at this moment, especially with the new revelations and what you think it means if he doesn't.

DEAN: Well, post-Watergate, they clarified the rules of ethics for attorneys. And one of the things they did is made it very clear in the rules that a lawyer has a representation of particularly a public institution has responsibilities, and to come forward and to take the initiative in some of these things. But on top of that, Pat is somebody who has sworn an oath of allegiance to the Constitution on three occasions, twice when he was admitted to two different bars, and when he took the present job. So, he has a moral obligation to testify.

SCIUTTO: There have been so many questions throughout this as to whether, John Dean, the U.S. system can sufficiently police something like this. A former president, at the time, of course, he was sitting president, as well as people in senior positions of government who, the evidence seems to show, were attempting to overturn the election, whether that's legal or illegal, I'll leave to the Justice Department. But do you believe the system has proven itself capable of imposing consequences for those involved?

DEAN: The mechanics and the machinery of the system is certainly in place to do the job. The question is whether the people who are running the machinery will do it. And I think that they -- again, they're damned if they do, they're damned if they don't. But the more costly route is to do nothing. And if they do that, then democracy is going to become very frayed, very weak, and a president will be above the law.

HARLOW: John Dean, thank you very much, as always, good to have you at this moment.

Still ahead, of course, the mysterious deaths of 22 young people at a tavern in South Africa, the youngest victim 13 years old. What we're learning about the investigation, next.

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SCIUTTO: Authorities in South Africa have shut down a pub in the city of East London where 22 teenagers died this weekend. What caused those deaths remains a mystery.

HARLOW: Larry Madowo joins now. Do the authorities have any answers as to what could have caused this many deaths? I mean, one of the victims is 13 years old.

LARRY MADOWO, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. That's right, Poppy and Jim. Authorities are not speculating at this stage. What South Africa's police minister did say yesterday is he ruled out the possibility of a stampede or natural causes of deaths here. That's just not consistent with the bodies of these children that he had seen at the morgue.

It's not clear exactly what happened, so some of the working theories here is did they inhale something? Did they consume something? An investigation is under way. They're carrying out autopsies and they're also taking samples to have proper toxicology reports to understand exactly what could have caused the death of these children aged between 13 and 17. They have just closed school in the Eastern Cape, and so one of the possibilities is they could have been celebrating the end of the school semester and end of their exams.

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The owner of the tavern, this night club, said he was not there at the time, and he also threw another theory into the mix, the possibility of the use of pepper spray. This was also his apology.

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SIYAKHANGELA NDEVU, OWNER OF ENYOBENI TAVERN: It's not something as a businessman I expected that to have happen there, but things like this happen unexpectedly. But I'd like to convey my condolences to the families that lost their loved ones and say that we will look into what happened.

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MADOWO: The South African liquor board in the province of the Eastern Cape has shut down that pub and says it will be preparing criminal charges against the owner of that tavern after investigations are complete. But truly a stunning scene in this East London pub, and a lot of heartbreak but also outrage about how something like this could have been allowed to happen. Jim, Poppy?

SCIUTTO: Goodness, 22 young people at one party. Larry Madowo there in Kenya, thanks so much.

And thanks so much to all of you for joining us today, yet one more consequential day in the nation's highest court and for all of us as a result. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: And I'm Poppy Harlow. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

At This Hour with Kate Bolduan starts after this.

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