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Judge: Trump Has Until Friday To Clarify Special Master Request; Judge: DOJ Must Submit Search Affidavit Redactions By Tomorrow; Study: Brian Stimulation Could Increase Memory; Teachers Strike In Ohio's Largest District As School Year Begins. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 24, 2022 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:31:43]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Key deadlines for the Justice Department and former President Trump are fast approaching.

Tomorrow, the DOJ must submit redactions to the affidavit that led to the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago.

And by Friday, Trump's team must clarify their request for a special master to review the evidence.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz joins us.

Katelyn, let's start with the judge's reaction to the Trump team request yesterday. She seemed to have a lot more questions than answers.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME & JUSTICE REPORTER: That's right.

This judge here, Aileen Cannon, in the Southern District of Florida, signaled, in an order yesterday, after Donald Trump's team came in and asked for a special master or third party to look through that evidence, that, what Trump had done in court so far seemed to be pretty inadequate from a legal perspective.

The judge was asking Donald Trump's attorneys to clarify quite a few things. She said, please tell us the precise relief sought. So "judge speak" for "I don't know what you're asking me to do here, can you please be more specific?"

The judge asking her why the court may have jurisdictions, what legal standards apply? So what's the law here? Please make some arguments that could allow the court to come in and add a special master if that's what Trump wants to do.

She also wants Trump to explain whether he wants emergency help, an immediate injunction. That's not something he asked for. You have to ask for emergency help if you want the court to step in quickly.

There are a lot of things that the Trump team needs to explain and needs to supplement in their filing. That's what we're watching for on Friday. We should be able to read that whenever it comes in.

GOLODRYGA: Waiting on the response from Trump's legal team.

Let's turn to the DOJ's redactions deadline. What's the latest there?

POLANTZ: That's the deadline tomorrow. It's a deadline where we might not each see when that document is filed.

There's going to be a filing under seal that the Justice Department will make proposing redactions to the affidavit.

So the affidavit is that narrative that would back up the search, the reasons for the search that the judge reviewed and signed off on saying why they needed to go to Mar-a-Lago.

This is a transparency fight where the Justice Department does need to explain a bit more on their end as well. We're waiting to see what happens there.

The big question is, will -- with this transparency fight, will that provide us a situation where the public, Trump's team, can learn more about what's happened in this investigation so far? It's possible.

We're already learning more from the National Archives. And we could always see things play into the public filings on Friday as well -- Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: A key 48 hours ahead.

Katelyn Polantz, thank you.

Joining us now is former Republican Congressman Will Hurd of Texas. He was also a CIA officer.

Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.

You said earlier this week on CNN that justice officials need to show a, quote, "level of transparency that they have never shown before." As this redaction deadline appears, what do you hope is not blacked out?

WILL HURD, (R), FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE FOR TEXAS & FORMER CIA OFFICER: The why they decided to go in, what evidence they had to suggest that there was more -- there was additional information that President Trump was hiding.

[13:34:59]

Understanding the motivation and the reasons behind it. A little more history on the back and forth between the executive branch and President Trump's folks.

I think some of the best transparency we've seen so far has been from my friends at the National Archives.

I also want to see us getting to a point where we talk about the counterintelligence impact of this information.

We know there was at least 400 pages of classified information. Who all had access to these boxes that was in the president's bedroom and in his hotel?

So my concern is the ramifications beyond just the legal ramblings that are going back and forth between President Trump and the executive branch right now.

GOLODRYGA: The information we got that you just noted from the National Archives came because we had a Trump ally reveal that just this week.

We now know, thanks to that revelation, that in January alone, more than 700 pages of classified information were retrieved from Mar-a- Lago.

That includes some of the highest-level classifications, such as SCI, Secure Compartmented Information, and SAP, Special Access Program materials.

Are these the type of documents that you would be comfortable sitting in somebody's home in a basement?

HURD: No, of course not. I was outraged when we had this debate. I was in Congress during Secretary Clinton's server in the basement, confirmation. We knew there was classified information on that.

I'm just as outraged by this. I was outraged by the Secret Service deleting texts. Just like I'm outraged by what is perceived as Hunter Biden abusing his father's position when he was vice president.

You know, all of this is about abuse of power.

And for me, as a former intelligence officer, you know, when I was recruiting spies and stealing secrets, there's a trust for that person that's putting their life and the life of their family on the line in order to give you secrets.

You make a promise that we're protecting them all throughout the chain when this information gets to the president. So when it seems like this was willy-nilly, this is inappropriate.

(CROSSTALK)

And I talked about the transparency that the DOJ needs to provide. President Trump needs to provide transparency as well. Why did he have this information? What did he plan on using it for? Who had access to these boxes? That needs to be clarified as well.

This notion that this is executive privilege, this isn't his information. This is the president of United States' information. It's a position.

And claiming executive privilege against another executive doesn't make sense. We're not talking about sharing this with Congress or anything like that. So there's a lot of implications here.

GOLODRYGA: Why do you think we're not hearing the same concern and exactly what you just laid out for me from the majority of members in your party that have spoken out about this?

It seems their concern has been at the unprecedented nature of the DOJ and the FBI officials going into the home of a former president.

I'm curious why that same level of concern, and even more perhaps, given that lives could be at risk, isn't leveled at the former president for doing something so unprecedented in taking these classified documents home from the White House?

HURD: The answer is actually quite simple. It's the same reason why you didn't see Democrats caring about this issue when Secretary Clinton was being debated.

When it's the person doing it shares the same color jersey as you, we sometimes are not ideologically consistent. I think this is --

(CROSSTALK)

GOLODRYGA: Would you compare the two, though?

(CROSSTALK)

GOLODRYGA: Would you compare what Secretary Clinton did and was accused of in that investigation with the level of this investigation and the scope of it and the potential consequences?

HURD: So, this -- to me, this is -- this is -- we don't know all the information that Secretary Clinton had because all that stuff was erased before there was an investigation. I think we'll have a better understanding of this.

I don't think SAP information was included in State Department servers. So SAP-related information, the Special Access Privilege information, is a little bit more significant.

But the question was about people protecting their own and not being ideologically consistent. For me, if you're outraged by one, you should be outraged by the other, rather than talking about a witch hunt and saying that this is the weaponization of the FBI.

I also said earlier this week on CNN that saying that the FBI is being weaponized is the equivalent to find the fact that a violation of law happened is equivalent of weaponizing a fire department to put out a fire.

The FBI, it seems, was doing their job. This was a back-and-forth opportunity. It didn't come out of the blue.

[13:40:01]

GOLODRYGA: Yes. There are real consequences. There's been more of an increase in a number of threats against the FBI as a result of this. Former Congressman Will Hurd, thank you very much for joining us.

Really appreciate it. Really interesting conversation.

HURD: Always a pleasure.

GOLODRYGA: Is electricity the key to charging your memory? If you're getting more forgetful as you get older, you're not the only one. A new treatment could help give your brain a boost.

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[13:45:16]

GOLODRYGA: Doctors may have a new weapon to help with memory. It's called brain stimulation. It sends noninvasive electrical currents to specific parts of your brain.

CNN chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, joins us.

Sanjay, I was excited when I heard about this study. It sounds really promising. Explain how it works.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you would be amazed how many emails I got about this today.

(LAUGHTER)

GUPTA: Everyone curious about this.

It's early days, but it is promising. It's interesting as well.

By way of introduction, doing things noninvasively to the brain has always been challenging because the brain is one organ encased by bone, a skull.

Over the past several years, they've been using different types of energy, Bianna, magnetic energy, sound energy and, as you mentioned, electrical currents to try and noninvasively modulate or stimulate the brain in some back.

So this particular experiment, they were using different types of currents. One in the front of the brain, in the prefrontal area, and another in the back in the parietal area, trying to stimulate and synchronize the waves in those particular parts of the brain with the hopes that it would improve memory.

Let me show you what the people went through. We just saw of the video. But essentially, they wore a skull cap. They did this for 20 minutes four days in a row.

While they were actually having this current applied, they were given words to remember. That was the memory recall. They said they may have felt some heat, pressure, but really no side effects otherwise.

Those are the types of waves that we're talking about that were actually being generated there towards the brain. Green is the gamma waves. That went to the front of the brain. Purple,

theta waves. That went toward the back of the brain.

So they did this. Again, 20 people in each group. And the basically tried to figure out, how well does their memory improve? How much does it improve as a result of this?

GOLODRYGA: It's incredible. Is it painful?

(CROSSTALK)

GUPTA: No. It's mostly that people experienced heat and pressure.

In fact, Bianna, they had a sham group, a control group, where those people also had the skull cap placed and they mimicked the heat and pressure but generated no current in that sham group. Those patients had no improvement in their memory.

Let me show you what happened in the groups that did get the current. What they found is people who were getting those gamma waves, those green waves, 17 of the 20 people, small study, had better, longer-term memory.

If you look at the theta group, the purple waves directed towards further back in the brain, 18 of 20 had improvement in short-term memory.

This is interesting. It's small still, but that's interesting that you can change the brain at all.

And again, when you did the sham experiment, the control experiment, there was no change.

This is not something where people are just sort of saying, hey, I'm having this thing done, my memory should improve, therefore it is improved.

There seems to be a difference made in the brain as a result of this

GOLODRYGA: It's preliminary and small but promising. I'll take that.

Sanjay Gupta, thank you.

GUPTA: You got it. Thank you.

Well, striking teachers in Ohio say conditions in their classrooms are so miserable that they won't go back until the problems are fixed. Students are spending their first day of school online today as teachers and the board hit the bargaining table. The latest on that standoff up next.

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[13:53:04]

GOLODRYGA: Today is the first day of school in Columbus, Ohio, but students are starting the year online. Teachers in the state's largest school system are on strike over what they're calling miserable classroom conditions.

Union reps for the teachers and the Board of Education are meeting with a mediator right now.

CNN's Lucy Kafanov is in Columbus.

Lucy, what are the teachers pushing for exactly?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Bianna. Instead of welcoming students to classrooms, the teachers have been hitting the picket lines.

You can see some of them marching around behind me. This is one of more than a dozen locations across Columbus, Ohio, where teachers are out front on strike.

Their demands? They want smaller class sizes. They want a more well- rounded curriculum that includes art, music, and physical education.

They want the school to fix the dilapidated classroom conditions, the air-conditioning and the heating, which do not work in the classrooms that make it a very difficult learning environment.

Mediators are currently meeting with both sides at a location as we speak. We don't know the outcome of that.

But we did catch up with a union rep earlier. Take a listen to what she had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REGINA FUENTES, SPOKESWOMAN, COLUMBUS EDUCATORS ASSOCIATION: I really hope they've been paying attention to the community, paying attention to the parents, because they are the most important element in all of this.

And if they have been paying attention, then hopefully their minds are changed and they understand this isn't a personal issue. This isn't about them as individuals. This is about our schools and making our schools better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: Now, unless a new contract is agreed to, students will continue learning remotely. They'll be relying on substitute teachers.

And a lot of parents say this is an increased burden on them after two years of the pandemic, where a lot of classes were already remote, they now have to deal with their kids being at home again.

Despite this, some parents say their children won't be logging on. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) LAKHIYA WASHINGTON, PARENT: Well, he's going to be at home with me again while I'm at work making all that noise. But what really went through my mind is that he wasn't going to have that interaction with the classroom.

[13:55:04]

KELLEY FREEMAN, PARENT: Kindergartners aren't going to do well with virtual learning. They need to be around other children for social and emotional health and growth.

And I think that the teachers asks are reasonable. And we're not going to be participating in virtual school. That's not an option.

It's not only an unacceptable option for learning but I'm not going to cross the picket line.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: The two sides have met 22 times since March. They have not been able to work out a deal. It remains to be seen whether this 23rd meeting will do the trick -- Bianna?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA: Hopefully, they can get things resolved so students can get back to the classroom.

Lucy Kafanov, thank you.

Well, that does it for me. I'll see you back here tomorrow.

Until then, don't go anywhere. The news continues right after this break.

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