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Redacted Mar-a-Lago Affidavit Could be Released at Any Moment; Fed Chair Speaks Amid Inflation and Recession Fears; Now, Pre-Launch Briefing Ahead of Monday's Artemis Lunar Mission. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 26, 2022 - 10:00   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: It's the top of the hour, good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

A very busy Friday morning as the clock ticks down to a deadline for the Justice Department, DOJ officials have two hours from just a few seconds ago to release a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago.

HARLOW: So, this comes after a judge agreed with the DOJ's redactions, noting portions of the affidavit should remain sealed in order to protect witnesses, law enforcement agents and uncharged parties. We are standing by to review that affidavit as soon as it comes out, which could be this hour.

Let's begin this hour with CNN Justice Correspondent Jessica Schneider. Jess, this affidavit could be released any moment, sometime between now and noon. Walk us through this whole process, what we will see, what we probably won't see.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, any minute now, guys. So, what's interesting about this is it's all been a relatively rapid process. You know, it was less than four hours after the DOJ submitted their proposed redactions that the judge ruled, yes, in fact, he would accept that proposal and it would be released to the public, like you said, in just two hours here.

And what's notable is that the judge seems to be agreeing with what the DOJ has proposed, despite the fact that what we saw in court just about a week ago was DOJ pushing back substantially against the judge, saying even if they issued a redacted version of this affidavit, they said that there would be so many redactions that it would render the document essentially devoid of content.

The judge at the hearing seemed to push back on that saying, no, there must be something in this affidavit that you can release. This is in the public interest. It needs to at least be out there in some form. So, yesterday, the DOJ submitted their proposal, the judge seemed to be satisfied with it and that's what we will see in less than two hours.

But here is what we won't see. The judge put out a two-page order yesterday agreeing that the DOJ really had to keep secret -- continue to keep secret many essential details in this affidavit and he laid it out. The judge saying that we really won't be seeing any information about identity of witnesses, law enforcement agents, uncharged parties, those people who could still be charged as part of this ongoing criminal investigation.

Other things you will not see referenced, the investigation's scope, direction, sources, methods and any grand jury information. Because the DOJ has repeatedly argued that anything that could get out there that would reveal how this investigation has been working, who has been talking to them, what sort of sources and methods they've been using as part of this months' long investigation, if any of that got out there, it could substantially derail this investigation.

We know it's ongoing, we know that Trump was just served with a grand jury subpoena back in May. So, the DOJ is saying, judge, we need to be very careful here, this is still ongoing. And this is actually pretty unprecedented. We usually don't see affidavits into an underlying criminal investigation unsealed until there are any charges.

So, this is a significant step for this judge, but the judge is saying this is in such the public view, in the public interest, we need to get something out there, and, in fact, sometime in the next two hours, we will see it. It might not be much. It might be significantly blacked out, but maybe we will see some procedural details that will give us some insight into what laid the foundation for this search warrant to be served at Mar-a-Lago about almost three weeks ago now. Guys?

SCIUTTO: Yes. Taken together there were calls for transparency after the search, since there has been public comment from the attorney general, the warrant and now at least portions of the affidavit. We'll see what it adds up to. Jessica Schneider, thanks so much.

Also new this morning, sources tell CNN that former President Trump has spent recent days meeting with his lawyers at his golf club at Bedminster, New Jersey. This as he faces a deadline to refine his request for a third party to review the evidence gathered at Mar-a- Lago.

HARLOW: Our Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins broke the news this morning. Kaitlan, give us a sense of how the Trump legal team is thinking and feeling right now about all of this.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUES CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Not a surprise they're getting together, they have a lot to talk about and to plot out given, of course, all the deadlines that are happening today, not just when it comes to this affidavit that we're going to see but also this deadline that they've been given by another judge, which is to refine their request for this third-party attorney to go through the materials that the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago when they conducted that search a few weeks ago. And so President Trump has been meeting with his attorneys at his club in Bedminster, I am told. [10:05:02]

And so a question there also has been centered around the legal team on whether or not he's going to add anyone to the legal team. There had been this search ongoing for someone who is experienced with Florida law, barred in Florida, no one has been added yet to this point from what we've seen that's been entered into court on Monday and in the days since, I'm told, still no one from Florida has been added to his legal team. Whether or not they ultimately do remains to be seen. It certainly has been a struggle to find someone that they think is willing to take the job but also that would fit on the team with this case, which is obviously of such vital importance to Trump because there is a concern of the threat that it could pose to him as it ramped up with this search, which caught them off-guard.

And so I will talk about the deadlines today. When it comes to this affidavit, this is not something that Trump's legal team has even seen. They are not required to be able to see this. They are given the search warrant, which was unsealed last week, they are given other details. They want more details on what it was that the FBI took when they went to Mar-a-Lago, a more detailed inventory sheet beyond what they got previously, but they haven't seen this affidavit, either.

So, when it does get released, even though there will be redactions, they will be looking closely as well. And we've seen some of his attorneys call for it to be released today, say they would like to see the witnesses' names even that are in there. But, of course, as the judge noted yesterday, that is something that they do believe should be protected at this moment as this investigation is ongoing.

SCIUTTO: Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much.

Joining us now to discuss the law around all of this, Paul Callan, former New York City prosecutor, and David Priess, he's a former CIA intelligence officer, knows a thing or two about the laws regarding classified information.

Paul, if I could begin with you. There are a few things we know the affidavit will not reveal with these redactions, you know, any identifying information about witnesses, certainly as well about any agents involved because concern that they would be threatened. Do we know what this might show us about how prosecutors believe Trump may have broken the law here? We know the laws they're filing this under, but will it reveal anything about how exactly they make that case?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, of course, the judge in his order talked about restricting references to sources and methods and he also talked about strategy, the strategy of the investigation. So, I don't know precisely what he meant by that, we will have to see when it gets released.

But just stepping back and looking at the big picture here, this judge is the same judge who issued the warrant. And so he's well aware and was well aware of what was in the affidavit because it persuaded him to allow a search of a former president of the United States' residence, an unprecedented act in American history. And I think that the judge feels there is other material that the public will see in this affidavit that will be very persuasive and will probably back up the judge's position and the Department of Justice position that the search was justified.

HARLOW: David, it sort of appears that this judge split the baby, in effect, because the former president said on his social media site that he wanted the immediate release of a completely unredacted affidavit that would never happen, especially in a moment like this. However, Jay Bratt, who went to the court and said, don't release any of it because it could threaten and chill witnesses in this investigation and other investigations, also didn't completely get what he asked for here. What do you make of that?

DAVID PREISS, FORMER CIA INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: Yes. What I make of that is we're going to get a document with a whole lot of black rectangles in it. There's going to be massive parts of this that simply can't be released and it's for all the reasons we've discussed. It's the investigation, it's the witnesses, it's also -- we don't know who the subjects are here. We don't know if it is the former president solely or at all, if it's people around him. That information must be protected for the integrity of the investigation.

On the other hand, I think we're going to be able to infer some interesting things from what is not redacted, things like the timeframe. If we get a 50, 60-page-plus redacted document, there's going to be some language in there that we're going to be able to see about when different steps were taken. And if we can find out that there are pages upon pages upon pages at different points in the time frame between January 2021 and now, we will learn a little bit about what investigators knew, when they knew it and it gives us a hint as to what they're doing to find the answers.

SCIUTTO: Yes, the timeline, the pattern.

Paul, CNN has learned some details about Trump's strategy, and that part of the reason he resisted returning these documents was he was advised by Tom Fitton, who folks may know as the head of the legal activist group, Judicial Watch, citing a 2012 case in which his organization sued for records from Bill Clinton's time in office, they lost.

Now, we should note those records did not include classified documents, as those kept at Mar-a-Lago do. Was that good legal advice from Tom Fitton to the former president?

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CALLAN: I think it's probably not very good advice to the president because, obviously, the public is going to react very poorly to him taking particularly classified material, and not only classified material, but, of course, that SCI material, which is the top level of classified material. And anybody who is advising the president that it's okay for him to hold on to that stuff in a storage room at Mar-a- Lago, I've got a problem with that advice. HARLOW: So, normally, and these are not normal times or nor is this a normal situation, David, but, normally, an affidavit would never be unsealed in any way, shape or form and only if and until charges were brought. It's very possible that charges in this investigation are not brought against the former president.

If that turns out to be the case, what happens with this affidavit? Because I think then you will maybe have an even louder drum beat of then what was the search for? Put it all out there, et cetera. Would it then be -- would there be any point when it would be fully unredacted and released?

PREISS: It could be but that is the entire reason why we protect the affidavit when it comes to potential subjects of the investigation. If charges are not filed you don't want to tar someone's reputation with information in an affidavit, which, remember, has to do with probable cause. It doesn't have to do with any proof beyond a reasonable doubt. This is investigatory material and you don't want to point the finger at somebody in public by releasing it and they don't have a chance to defend themselves in a court of law at the time. So, I think there will be a lot of redactions for that reason.

Now, down the road, could it be released after the investigation is complete? I think there's more of a public interest claim at that point, but there still will be people, possibly including the former president, who might not want this information out there because it has a whole lot of investigatory steps that they can't defend themselves against within that process itself.

SCIUTTO: David, another deadline, hard to keep track of all these deadlines, but a federal judge in Florida has given former President Trump on Friday to refine his arguments, this request for a special master to review these documents.

Now, we should note there was already a review team of a sort, a filter team, as it's known, that's going through these documents to see if there are those that fall into the category of attorney/client privilege here. I mean, Paul, do you see this in your experience as something that's going to go somewhere, that a special master may indeed be assigned?

CALLAN: I think this motion has been made way too late in the game. They waited two weeks before they submitted this motion to the court, and as you've said, this filter team, which is traditionally what's used to take out attorney/client privileged material and classified material, has already been at work on the document and has seen the entire document. So, I think the judge could rule, sorry, but you're too late with this motion, and I would be a little surprised if he grants the special master. But there's no other case like this case involving a former president, so anything could happen here, Jim.

HARLOW: That's for sure. Paul Callan, David Priess, thanks both, have a great weekend.

Still to come, a major step forward with plans to return to the moon as the Artemis mission prepares for Monday's launch. We will speak with NASA Astronaut Stan Love about how critical this flight is and their hopes to put the first woman and person of color on the moon.

SCIUTTO: Nothing I like talking about more than going to space.

Plus, the latest hints from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on what to expect next, this as the Reserve's favorite inflation benchmark just showed some improvement in the month of July.

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SCIUTTO: Right now, some comments we've been watching very closely, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaking at an annual economic summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It's a speech drawing extra attention as investors trying to gauge just how much the Fed could raise interest rates next month and after.

HARLOW: Let's bring in CNN Business Correspondent Rahel Solomon for the latest. What stands out to you from what the Fed chair just said moments ago?

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy and Jim, it was certainly a very short speech, just about eight minutes in duration, but I think investors heading into this and traders and economists around the world were looking for direction in terms of where are we in this inflation fighting effort from the Fed, and they got it. Chairman Powell was very aggressive in terms of where we are and where we're heading. Take a listen to some of the comments he made just a few minutes ago.

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JEROME POWELL, CHAIRMAN, FEDERAL RESERVE: Reducing inflation is likely to require a sustained period of below trend growth. Moreover, there will very likely be some softening of labor market conditions. While higher interest rates, slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.

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SOLOMON: So, what's he saying there? He's saying that the Fed expects there to be some softening in the labor market, i.e., joblessness, joblessness. He said that we're going to see inflation likely higher for longer. He said that we will also see, of course, borrowing costs continue to rise as the Fed raises its benchmark interest rate.

He also addressed the fact that we have started to see, including this morning, inflation reports that indicated some easing. And to that point, he said, look, the lower inflation readings for July are welcome but a single month's improvement falls far short of where the committee will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down, and my read from that, Jim and Poppy, is we are not there yet. They are not done with raising rates. And so we know we have a meeting in about a month, still unclear whether we will see the Fed raise rates by half a percentage point or three quarters of a percentage point. There are more meetings this year, but it is very clear from the Feds' messaging there is that we're not done, we are going to see rates continue to increase because we are not where we need to be according to the Fed in terms of lowering inflation.

SCIUTTO: Well, we will be watching the markets because, God knows, they were watching those comments closely. Rahel Solomon, thanks so much, as always.

All right, my favorite turn of the day, to space. Boeing is pushing back its Starliner spacecraft mission once again. Officials say they are now targeting early 2023 for the first crewed flight. It's intended to serve the same purpose as SpaceX's Crew Dragon Capsule and what they do, they ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

HARLOW: The Starliner though is already years behind schedule. NASA and Boeing are still working through several significant issues with the spacecraft, including software problems and hang ups for some of the spacecraft's thrusters. Launch officials will conduct a flight readiness review in February before send setting a firm launch target.

SCIUTTO: Yes, an alternative to taking Russian rockets up there.

We are just three days away from a major test flight for NASA. Right now, the space agency is holding a pre-launch briefing ahead of the Artemis 1 moon mission launch, as it's known. Monday's highly anticipated unmanned, at this point, mission is the first of the Artemis program. What's the goal? Put astronauts back on the moon.

HARLOW: It will also mark the first flight of NASA's most powerful rocket ever, the Orion spacecraft. Our Rachel Crane is covering all the details of the upcoming flight. You are obviously going to be covering the launch, as you always are. What's the significance of this?

RACHEL CRANE, CNN INNOVATION AND SPACE CORRESPONDENT: All right. So, this, the Artemis program that it is has now been dubbed, this is over a decade in the making, the SLS, the most powerful rocket that NASA has ever made. It will have over 8,000 pounds of thrust when it finally has liftoff, bigger than the Saturn 5, which is what originally brought us to the moon, and the Orion spacecraft on top.

Years delayed and billions of dollars over budget. And this is the first major step, this flight test that is set to happen Monday morning, 70 percent favorable weather conditions right now, so it's really looking good --

HARLOW: Fingers crossed.

CRANE: -- that it's going to take off. But they have to do this test launch to test the heat shield, which will experience hotter temperatures than any spacecraft NASA has ever flown upon re-entry, 5,000 degrees.

So, this heat shield, they need to make sure it can withstand those temperatures before they put human beings on that spacecraft. And it's going to be traveling over a million miles. So, this is really a test mission before they put human beings on board and that's all intended to finally put human beings on the moon in 2025. So, this is a major milestone.

And it's not just, you know, to test those major objectives, there's also a lot of science on board, Poppy. So, that's the secondary mission here, they have about ten cube sets, and they have been on that rocket for over a year. So, they're actually unsure if the batteries will work. That's because this has been so delayed. They expected that this test mission, Artemis 1, would have taken place a long time ago.

So, right now, Mother Nature is on our side but a lot of people are wondering whether or not this test launch will actually happen. That's because NASA, despite them saying that their fourth attempt at a wet dress rehearsal was successful, they never made it to the point that they were hoping to in the countdown.

Now, a wet dress is when they do everything with the rocket, they fuel it up, except launching it. So, that never -- there was, you know, leaks and there were valve problems. So, this has been a program that has been plagued by delays, as I said, cost overruns. So, a lot of eyes are on this, a lot is riding on this mission. And if, you know, there was a catastrophic failure or something, it would certainly delay that 2025 moon landing significantly.

SCIUTTO: Yes. The only downside is outpacing the Saturn 5, my favorite rocket. We have the Lego version at home. But there is a time to move on. Rachel Crane --

CRANE: Can you tell that Jim wants to go to space? Anyone?

SCIUTTO: Listen, you can't blame a guy for making his pitch. Rachel Crane, always good to have you.

So, let's talk to someone who actually goes to space, a man who knows a few things about it, NASA Astronaut Stan Love. He has logged just 300 hours. Stan, good to have you on this morning.

STAN LOVE, NASA ASTRONAUT: Likewise, happy to be here.

SCIUTTO: So, tell us about these Artemis missions. So, this one coming on Monday, scheduled for Monday, it's unmanned, but it's part of a step, right, to get folks back on the moon, but also even further, right, to prepare for a possible manned mission, manned and womaned mission to Mars?

LOVE: Absolutely true. This is the first step in a very long journey.

HARLOW: Can I ask, Stan, what might sound like a dumb question, and tell me if it is, but I think people at home might be also wondering this. It's been decades since we've put a person on the moon. So, why is it taking all of what Rachel talked to us about to go through and delays and all of this to get back there?

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LOVE: Well, when we put people on the moon in the 1960s and the 1970s, we were in what felt like a race for survival, survival of the United States of America against the Soviet Union. We had an existential threat and we were responding to that in a peaceful way, which I think is wonderful, much better than solving that problem with bombs.

So, that kind of existential fear can shake loose the, you know, $140 billion in present day dollars that you would need to do the Apollo program. So, when that fear went away, we lost the impetus to be spending that much of our national budget.

By the way, at the time of Apollo, we had ten times larger share of the federal budget than NASA does today. So, we concentrated on lower earth orbit, we developed and flew the space shuttle, we built an amazing space station, we're operating it today. We have had people rotating in and out, crews on the station now for 20 years.

And now that American industry is starting to start operations in lower earth orbit, NASA can do what it was chartered to do originally, which is to go out beyond where industry can go and prove out the technologies and the techniques so that industry can then take over. So, we are sort of handing over lower earth orbit to industry and we're going to go on to the moon and one day we will hand the moon to industry.

SCIUTTO: Tell us the importance of manned space travel, right? Because we are living in an age now, I mean, for instance, we're sharing regularly these images from the Webb telescope, right, an unmanned but tremendously capable piece of technology floating a million miles out there. What is the importance of establishing -- pushing those frontiers, as you say, of manned and womaned space travel to the moon and beyond?

LOVE: It inspires us as people. So, when a robot goes to Mars, we can thrill at the pictures and we can be impressed with the technology. But when a person walks on Mars and comes home safely, don't tell me you won't be excited to shake that person's hand.

I've seen this in-person when I visit schools. I visited a school one time along with an expert in one of the Mars rovers and the kids are interested in the Mars rover. But then the astronaut steps out in their blue suit and they just go berserk.

So, it takes people to inspire people. And that's what I think is one of the most important jobs of NASA is to inspire, and especially young people, to get interested in science and technology, to get interested in exploration, because it's the science and technology and the exploration that's going to create the future we all want.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, you've inspired me. Poppy knows that.

HARLOW: He's ready, by the way, if there is an open seat. I will stay right here.

LOVE: You will have to get past me first.

HARLOW: Thank you so much, Stan, we're really looking forward to Monday, to Rachel's coverage and to seeing all of this. Let's hope the weather hangs in there. Thanks again.

LOVE: You're very welcome.

HARLOW: Next CNN speaks to the people actually impacted by President Biden's student debt cancelation and some who disagree with the move. We will get into that debate ahead.

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