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Liz Truss Resigns; Trump Weighs Another Mar-a-Lago Search; Emails over Trump's Fraud Claims. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired October 20, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:20]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

We begin this hour with breaking news.

Embattled British Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned after just 44 days in office, making her the shortest serving prime minister in British history. Our team is following this breaking story.

CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour and CNN correspondent Bianca Nobilo joins us from London.

Bianca, let's begin with you. The shortest serving prime minister in British history, delivering a very short resignation speech, effectively saying, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected.

BIANCA NOBILO, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Yes, she's had to suffer the ignominy of now being the shortest serving prime minister, one- third the length of George Canning (ph), who was the previously shortest serving prime minister. And it was an appropriately short speech because, of course, she doesn't have a legacy to speak of. She pointed to two economic measures. But basically, her entire premiership has been mired by party division, controversy, taking policies too far, and not being in control of her party.

Let's take a listen to the moment where she acknowledged the political reality that she finds herself in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LIZ TRUSS, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: We set out a vision for a low tax, high growth economy that would take advantage of the freedoms of Brexit. I recognize, though, given the situation, I cannot deliver the mandate on which I was elected by the conservative party.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOBILO: Bianna, this has been a bruising week for a prime minister who, with all the MPs I've spoken to, ultimately had to face her political reality, which is that her position was untenable, there was no coming back, there was no recovery. And that's because basically as soon as she got into the job, she launched ahead with these deeply controversial economic policies.

And I say almost as soon as she got into the job because, of course, we had a brief reprieve from political activity when Queen Elizabeth II died on her second day as prime minister. But Liz Truss made no friends within the party with the way that she approached her economic agenda, by proceeding in a bullish manner despite not really having any mandate to speak of. She was elected on a slither of the conservative base within the U.K. That's less than 1.0 percent of the British electorate.

So, as calls for her departure increased, the political circumstances became even more uncomfortable for her. And the culmination, Bianna, were the chaotic scenes in the House of Commons last night. And that's when we had reports of conservative lawmakers and some members of Truss' cabinet manhandling other lawmakers to try and get them into the right voting lobby. That precipitated members of Truss' party to come out and say that they've never felt so ashamed and embarrassed of the position that their party is in today.

Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: And, Christiane, you can't overstate the shockwaves that her surprise budget really set off throughout that country, forcing the Bank of England to step in and intervene, causing the pension system there to nearly melt down in crisis.

Give us a check of what the situation is there internally amongst those who are dealing with the economic hardships as we speak, not to mention falling - you know, the fallout from the war in Ukraine as well and high energy prices.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, exactly. I mean the one thing that they have done is put a cap on, in other words, intervene to try to help people pay their skyrocketing energy bills because of inflation, because of the war, all of those kinds of things because of how Putin is holding the world hostage, because of how OPEC has decided to go into cahoots with Putin and increase demand. All of these things have been causing great pain to the British people, the cost of living, et cetera.

So they did do that. But then they said they were going to do it -- Liz Truss said we're going to do it for two years, and then said, no, no, no, we're going - we're not. We're only going to do it for a few months. So, there is a huge amount, and we've said it over and over and over again, of chaos with a real question about who is in charge and can anybody from this side actually try to stabilize this massive turmoil, this sort of - this sort of, you know, dishwasher speed of turbulence that's going on in this country.

I think, you know, you have to really -- you're a very seasoned business reporter, Bianna, you know about these thing, you know a lot and you cover the United States. You heard President Biden say not once but twice, actually, in the last few - few weeks since this budget that, first of all, you know, trickle-down economics didn't work in the United States in the '80s.

[09:05:05]

He didn't believe that it would work ala - ala, you know, Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, her chancellor. Again, this past weekend, he said the following while he was in that ice cream store, I wasn't the only one who thought it was a mistake of this mini budget and her tax plans. I disagree with the policy, but, of courses, it's up to Great Britain.

And we know that the Biden administration has been watching very closely because there's also a whole host of other issues that they're concerned about, via vis England, Northern Ireland, the peace process, how you deal with, you know, Brexit and free trade and all the rest of it. So, that's one.

I also talked to the head of the IMF. I mean two days before Liz Truss announced her mini budget. So, I spoke to the chief of the IMF, you know, in New York at the UNGA. Two or three days later, out comes this mini budget. The IMF chief, Kristalina Georgieva, told me that if Liz Truss does what she does, and she was trying to be diplomatic at that time because it hadn't been revealed, she thought it could lead to instability even on the street because it was a recipe for the massive widening of inequality in Britain and it just was not the way to go right now.

So - and, as you know, the IMF has intervened with several comments that usually would be reserved for emerging democracies and not one of the G7 democracies. So, you know, it's a problem.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

AMANPOUR: And we don't even know how it's going to go forward, what this election is going to look like. The opposition chief has called for a general election, but that's not what looks like to be planned by Liz Truss anyway.

GOLODRYGA: And so, Bianca, what is the next step? I know that you're hearing - you're currently hearing from MPs right now.

NOBILO: I am. And actually one of them sent a fairly devastating message, she's had a long career in parliament, and said, this is just so depressing, it's hard to explain. I feel like my time in government, my time with the party, has now amounted to nothing.

There's a deep sense of existential crisis and humiliation in some quarters of the conservative party. And as Christiane was just saying, what happens now?

So, one of the reasons that the party is in such deep -- deeply divided - such a deeply divided situations is because of the leadership with Boris Johnson and also Lis Truss. There was this move to expel members of the party that wouldn't tow the government line. So, inevitably, what that's done is amplified some of the more fringe voices in conservative politics at the expense of the more moderate majority in the center of the party. So that will make it very challenging to try and find a successor to Truss, which can unite the different wings of the conservative party. That's why she's been so deeply divisive as well.

And that's why, Bianna, in recent days there's been so many discussions about having to have the big beasts of the cabinet, so that's the defense secretary, Ben Wallace, the health - the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, as well as Penny Mordaunt and Rishi Sunak, who were challengers against Liz Truss to become prime minister in the last recent leadership election. The fact that you'd need four of them potentially combed either working together or to get behind a unity candidate to try and lead the party forward. That just speaks to the fact that it is so divided and so factious that there isn't a clear path ahead. It's unclear who would be able to unite the conservative party. But MPs that I've just been speaking to over WhatsApp do acknowledge that if they can't find that candidate and they can't get the party discipline in place to unite behind them, then they will need to go to a general election and the perceived wisdom on that is that if that happened, the conservative party would face electoral annihilation.

GOLODRYGA: Wow.

And Truss, we should note, is the third conservative party leader to step down in as many years. Christiane, a reminder that this is coming on the heels of a Brexit. And you talked about this controversial economic plan that she put forward and the meltdown afterwards. I mean it really roiled markets around the world. And it really frightened, according to reports now, even some here in the United States, in the Treasury. And there's a stress test that was ordered by President Biden of sorts to see what would happen if something like that occurred here in the United States as well. I'm just curious, what does this do to England and the United Kingdom's standing on the economic global stage right now?

AMANPOUR: Well, it's pretty lamentable, actually, and particularly the conservatives, the tory party, have always put themselves forward as those who are responsible and excellent stewards of the economy. This really, really, really turns that upside down, on its face and in ever other direction.

And, Bianna, you're right, three in three years. But actually, since 2016, since the Brexit referendum, we've had four different conservative prime ministers step down, you know, from Cameron, to Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and now Truss.

[09:10:07]

And this is just a psychological disaster for this country, not to mention the party. But you know what's been so offensive to so many people over this last few weeks of this internal turmoil is that the debate in public, certainly from Liz Truss and her allies, was, how does she survive. Not how does the country survive. Not how do the people survive? How does she survive? How does the party stay in office? There are a lot of people in this country right now who are quite

upset that actually the deep anxiety from the people have almost been put to the one side in the service of trying to save somebody's own premiership. Well, obviously, that all came to an end today. But you're absolutely right, what happens next?

And the other, you know, commentary, ii suppose, that we're picking up a lot and that we've reported on from here since Brexit is that there have been a success since Brexit of cabinet ministers and people in high prices who really don't know a huge amount about governing, and who are really ideologs. And as John Avlon said earlier on CNN, these are people who have been chosen by the various prime ministers for their ideological obedience to Brexit and obedience to whoever was in power as prime minister.

And there's only so far you can go with people who are not absolutely clear and experienced in governance to which (ph) Theresa - sorry, Liz Truss' first - but I mean her first act as leader and prime minister was to sack a highly respected civil servant in the Treasury, the second in command in the Treasury. You know, and to stop the experts from actually putting the detailed data and analysis of what their mini budget would entail and what it would look like. I mean, you know, they just flouted every convention because they knew best. And now here we are. And it's not about them, it's about this country and about the people of this country.

GOLODRYGA: Right. And yet you could accuse them of not seeing the forest through the trees. And throughout all of this craziness, in these 44 days, there had been a sense of being out of touch with the public there and tone death.

So, Bianca, what happens next? Truss says she's going to stay in office until a successor is chosen. We remember Boris Johnson doing the same. Truss was announced shortly thereafter. How long can this decision go on for?

NOBILO: Well, another addition to the cocktail of instability is the fact that the process is unclear. So, typically, a prime minister would be safe in their position for one year until they can be challenged if more than 15 percent of the conservative parliamentary party writes letters of no confidence. That's what we saw with Boris Johnson. We saw that with his predecessor, Theresa May, as well.

But because this prime minister has served such an unsuccessful and unusually short tenure, that is not the process. So then what follows that is a leadership contest. But we've so recently had one, it only finished six weeks ago, which was generally considered to be unedifying for the conservative party. And most lawmakers I speak to are just desperate to avoid that again.

They want the least disruption possible. So there's been discussion about a coronation of a new prime minister, one that can command the confidence of the parliamentary party and hopefully, they say, by extension, the country.

The problem is, is right now nobody knows how that happens. There's discussions with members of that influential committee that we've been referring to that I'm speaking to at the moment, that they want this all wrapped up in about a week. The problem is, who will unite them? Because what fundamentally is true that we can say about this, Bianna, is the fact that something in British politics has obviously broken, because to have a prime minister serve this short a tenure, to have so many prime ministers, this will be our fifth, the one coming, in six years. To have the party undisciplined and fractured and unable to focus on governing, all of this does point to something really shifting in what was once the mother of parliaments.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, a huge crisis for the party and for the country at that. You say coronation. I just have to note that Liz Truss was the first prime minister in 71 years to resign to a king. She resigned to King Charles, we were told.

And, Christine, we remember those pictures just days before Queen Elizabeth died where she welcomed her as well. And yet, here we are, so much has indeed changed since then.

I want to thank you both, Christiane, Bianca, thank you.

And we're going to continue to follow this and bring you updates as we get them throughout the morning.

And still ahead, a CNN exclusive. Lawyers for former President Trump may allow the fed's to search Mar-a-Lago a second time.

Plus, new this morning, a Russian fighter jet releases a missile while flying near a British plane.

[09:15:04]

And now, a warning from the U.K.'s defense secretary.

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GOLODRYGA: Now to a CNN exclusive regarding the investigation surrounding former President Trump. Sources say lawyers for former President Donald Trump are now considering allowing federal agents to conduct a supervised search of Mar-a-Lago. We'll have more on that in just a moment.

But this comes as a federal judge orders Trump's former lawyer, John Eastman, to release emails that he claimed were protected by attorney/client privilege.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz joins me now from Washington, but let's begin with CNN's Gabby Orr with our exclusive reporting on a potential second Mar-a-Lago search.

So, Gabby, talk us through the Trump legal team's thinking now.

GABBY ORR, CNN REPORTER: Well, Bianna, no firm decision has been made on whether or not Trump's attorneys would let DOJ investigators return to Mar-a-Lago for a supervised search.

[09:20:00]

Now, that would look similar to that June meeting that took place between FBI agents and Trump attorneys where they were able to go down to a storage room on the property while accompanied by Trump attorneys, but they weren't - they did not just have free-wheeling access to the former president's residence. It would not look like the August search that was conducted by FBI agents.

Of course, this is one strategy that's being discussed by Trump's team as they look to sort of pare down their aggressive approach to the DOJ and try to cooperate, to resolve this records matter. Sources have told us over the past few days that Trump is really feeling the pressure of all of these ongoing investigations that he's dealing with, and he wants to be able to focus on his political future, on the midterms, on 2024. So, one thing that his team has talked about doing is finding ways to resolve the records issue, to cooperate with investigators to accommodate them.

And one of the topics that has been discussed among his attorneys is potentially letting investigators back to Mar-a-Lago. Federal investigators have signaled, in both court filings and private conversations with Trump's attorneys, that they do believe that there are still documents in the former president's possession at Mar-a- Lago, which is one of the reasons why they would like to get those documents back.

Now, Trump's team clams that they really have nothing to hide. And that's one of the reasons why this is even on the discussion board for them. But we have not reached a firm decision yet. Trump's attorney telling us that this is just one of many things that they are discussing. But definitely moving from - less from an adversarial approach to accommodating DOJ at this point.

GOLODRYGA: It will be interesting if they do come to this decision, how the DOJ would respond to it.

But, Katelyn, let's turn now to these emails between Trump and his former attorney, John Eastman, regarding efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He was really the mastermind of those efforts. Why does a federal judge think that they should be reviewed?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, this judge is saying that John Eastman doesn't have good enough reasons to protect the emails. Eastman had been arguing that they were attorney/client communications for him, working for Donald Trump, working with other lawyers after the election. He was trying to keep them from the House Select Committee.

But the judge really zeroed in on eight emails in particular that he found were -- essentially could be evidence of a crime and spoke to the schemes that the Trump lawyers were working on to put into lawsuits, claims that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. That, obviously, wasn't the case.

Here's what the judge wrote, because he specifies why these eight emails in particular should be going to the House and other investigators. He wrote, there are four documents in which Dr. Eastman and other attorneys suggest that irrespective of the merits, the primary goal of filing lawsuits is to delay or otherwise disrupt the January 6th vote. He also writes, four other emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers, both in court and to the public.

So, Bianna, that's a double-barrel finding from this judge. On one hand he's saying that these emails really could show that there was the engagement of - in a conspiracy of Trump lawyers trying to block Congress from certifying the vote on January 6th. And then that second part, that there was this intention to defraud even a federal court.

Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Gabby Orr and Katelyn Polantz, thank you.

Well, joining me now is Tara Palmeri, a senior political correspondent at "Puck," and Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney and former deputy assistant attorney general. He's also a legal affairs column for "The L.A. Times."

Thank you both so much for joining us.

So, Harry, let me begin with you and read further into the writing of Federal Judge David Carter. Here's what else he wrote. The emails show that President Trump knew that the specific numbers of voter fraud were wrong but continued to tout those numbers -- and here's the point I'd like to highlight and get your thoughts on, Harry -- both in court and to the public. The court finds that these emails are sufficiently related to and in furtherance of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

How consequential are these words and findings by this judge, and specifically that it was not just Trump's comments in the public, but in court?

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY AND FORMER DEPUTY ASST. ATTORNEY GENERAL: You zero in on it exactly, Bianna. We know, of course, he's - you know, it's no news that Trump would be lying in the public. But in the court, that is a crime. And a straightforward one.

So, in March, when he made this finding that kind of brought the world, you know, in this case, it was much more amorphous and about an overall fraud that he might have been a party to. This says flat out he signed because for this lawsuit there were a couple of times where he, even though he's the party, had to actually sign something that he knew was false. Not just a crime, but a very sort of simple one. So, it's the sort of thing that DOJ would - was - will definitely sit up and take notice of immediately.

[09:25:01]

And, you know, it's part of the whole welder of complicated considerations here, but they would, otherwise, be considering a freestanding charge of lying to the court.

GOLODRYGA: So this is something that DOJ would potentially consider. How about the prosecutors in the Georgia election fraud case there as well, assuming that they haven't seen this filing just yet? Would they be able to use this as well to help their investigation?

LITMAN: As I understand it, yes, because what this attestation had to do with was going from state to federal court. So, presumably he did it twice.

And just to be clear, we're talking -- there were hundreds of documents, and just these four, the judge - it's straight black letter law, you can't use the attorney/client privilege if there's evidence of a crime. That's why he's fining (ph) him (ph). And because it's the back and forth with the Georgia case, it may well also sound there where they are really far down the line by reports in actually charging him.

GOLODRYGA: So, Tara, we talk about the potential legal ramifications that this presents for the former president. What about any political implications?

TARA PALMERI, SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "PUCK": I don't think that there are political implications for Trump because he will always present himself as someone who is being persecuted by the deep state, by the political opposition, the Biden administration. And this is something that just helps him win a Republican nomination where he has this fervent base, about 30 percent of these voters who will come out and probably elect him a the Republican nominee regardless of who else is on the stage with him because he has such a grip on them.

And a big part of that story is, I'm being silenced, I'm being persecuted, just like you are. I will stand up for you. And all of these legal battles that he faces, they don't seem to have any impact. In fact, they only further this argument that he makes to them that he is the one who is being targeted and he's a true fighter for them because he feels like his supporters also feel like they're being targeted as well.

GOLODRYGA: So, he has yet to publicly decide whether he will run again in 2024, but that hasn't stopped many of us from asking that question.

PALMERI: Right.

GOLODRYGA: And just last night, his former vice president, Mike Pence, was asked this very question in terms of who he would support. Take a listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Pence, if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, will you vote for him?

MIKE PENCE (R), FORMER VICE PRESIDENT: Well, there might be somebody else I prefer more. What I can tell you is I'm -- I have every confidence that the

Republican Party is going to sort out leadership. All my focus has been on the midterm elections. And it will stay that way for the next 20 days. But after that we'll be thinking about the future, ours and the nations, and I'll keep you posted, OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: So, Tara, what do you read into that? Is he - is he running?

PALMERI: Yes, absolutely. Mike Pence is doing all the things that you do when you want to get on the debate stage, on the primary stage. He's, you know, meeting with donors. He's going to primary states - he's going to battleground states, primary states. He is shaking hands. He's fighting for -- trying to get allies. He's endorsing candidates.

He and a bunch of other candidates who have long said, oh, we won't run if Trump is running, are now deciding, hey, we're going to try it out. We're going to, you know, get in the ring. I just don't know how he separates himself from Trump, especially when he has long called it the Trump/Pence administration. He's been his loyal sidekick for so long and now he's starting to separate himself from Trump, saying that he was unprincipled in his populism. And I think you're going to hear even stronger language that separates Pence from Trump. But I think it's difficult because so many of these candidates, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and others who - who want to run for president in 2024, they want to be on the debate stage next to Trump, they were made by him. They embraced him for so long. Their political future - their political pasts are tied to him. So how do they disconnect themselves from him for their political future. Even Ron DeSantis himself used Trump's endorsement to win in Florida as governor and has long tied himself to Trump and now they have to try to separate themselves. It's a really difficult dance, especially when Trump has such a grip on this percentage of the Republican Party that can help him be the nominee. These people don't want to offend those voters as well.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Which is why so many of them are waiting to see what Trump decides to do ultimately.

PALMERI: Right.

GOLODRYGA: Tara Palmeri, Harry Litman, thank you so much.

PALMERI: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, still ahead, as martial law goes into effect in Russia's four illegally claimed regions of Ukraine, a close call in the Black Sea leaves the U.K. to send Russia a serious warning.

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