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House CMTE Meeting On Whether To Release Trump's Tax Return; Mayor: Border Patrol Will Release Migrants To Yuma Streets Today; 2nd Asylum Seeker Dies By Suicide At NYC Shelter This Year. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 20, 2022 - 15:00   ET

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

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: For example, the HIMARS precision guided rockets as well as Excalibur precision artillery rounds. It is very much in that mold.

Also of roughly the same range, the standard JDAM kits have a range of about 15 miles although there are extended range options that can push that out to 40 miles or beyond. It's unclear exactly which kind they'll be getting. The key here, Victor, is they'll have to launch these from their own aircraft that will require its own way of trying to interface with the bomb from Ukrainian fighters.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Oren Liebermann at the Pentagon. Thank you, Oren.

Top of the hour now on CNN NEWSROOM. It is good to have you. I'm Victor Blackwell.

Happening right now, a House committee is gathering to decide what to do with Donald Trump's taxes, live look here, after years of delays in legal battles. Today the House Ways and Means Committee will vote on whether to release details of Trump's tax returns to the public.

Now, the committee just got access to the Trump tax documents last month. Unlike his predecessors, Trump never released his tax information as a candidate or while in office.

Let's get straight now to CNN's Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill. So Lauren, tell us what we should expect from this meeting, what we're going to see and what we will not see as they continue to discuss?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Yes. I mean, that's an important point, Victor. We are standing in the hallway right outside the House Ways and Means room, where members have just filed in to begin this special meeting at three o'clock. Now, we expect that reporters and cameras will be kicked out of the room in just a few minutes, our colleague Daniella Diaz in there now saying that members are sitting down and they are getting ready to begin this meeting.

Now, once they gavel in, they'll go into executive session, which is a closed door meeting. Then they will deliberate for several hours to decide what to do about the President's tax returns the former President's tax returns, are they going to reveal any of the information, are they going to reveal some kind of report, are they going to reveal the raw returns that we do not know at this moment.

Once they are done deliberating, they will invite press back into the room, cameras back into the room and they will have a vote to decide what steps they are going to take. Obviously, this is a momentous day, years in the making, the court fight happening for several years after House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal requested the former President's tax returns.

They are clearing the room right now, Victor. And I think that that's important, because this is exactly what we expected to happen. We will keep you posted and updated as we get more information.

BLACKWELL: All right. Lauren Fox, stay with us. We want you as part of this conversation and bring in now Michael D'Antonio, Donald Trump biographer, Elie Honig, CNN Senior Analyst and former U.S. Assistant Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Gloria Borger, CNN Chief Political Correspondent. Good to have you all.

Gloria, I'm going to start with you and big picture here. Donald Trump has been promising to release his tax returns for a decade now. First, he linked them to former President Obama's birth certificate and he said if he releases that, I'll release my tax returns and, of course, the candidacies. He's a candidate again, significance now of seeing these returns potentially.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's usually significant, particularly for Donald Trump. I mean, he has been saying that he has been under what he calls a routine audit by the IRS now for years and years. Then he said, well, these are very complex, it would take a long time to compile them. I'm sure they are complex.

We've also seen his longtime accountant just testify in the case against the Trump organization and say that, look, this is a person who has claimed losses from the years 2011 to 2018, very significant losses I might add, and he is someone who has also said, look, I'm really rich, and that has been a part of his whole brand, which is that he's a very wealthy guy. And when the New York Times reported that he paid $750 in taxes for a couple of years, his answer was when raising a debate, I'm smart, essentially he knows how to game the system and he was applauded by supporters for that.

So this is a big moment for Donald Trump and his own sort of self identity, who he is, what he's about, which is how rich he is.

BLACKWELL: Yes. I assume what we're seeing here, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, are those the actual returns that were just rolled in the video? Okay. So we had that as they're rolling into that meeting.

Elie, you're up next. Lauren kind of laid up the options here if they're going to release the returns, if they're going to release a summary, if they're going to release some other format, what are the legal distinctions of how they release these. We talked last hour of potential legal recourse that the former president might have based on what's released.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. So I fully understand the need and the desire by the public to see these returns, especially back when Donald Trump as a candidate and I guess he's a candidate again.

BLACKWELL: Again, yes.

[15:05:02]

HONIG: However, I cannot foresee what the legal justification this committee would offer in order to release these tax returns. There's a couple of things behind that.

First of all, the committee only has these tax returns as the result of a prolonged fight in the federal courts. The committee, I think, correctly pointed to a federal law that says, we get the - we get an individual's tax returns from the IRS upon request, they shall furnish it to us, went all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court agreed with the Ways and Means Committee. Yes, you can get individual returns.

However, that very same law says you have to maintain them confidentially. You can only deal with them in closed session. The other thing is during that court fight, that committee repeatedly said in their briefs to the Supreme Court and other federal courts, the reason we want these returns is not because we're trying to investigate Donald Trump or expose him, but because we need to legislate. They've not legislated in the (inaudible) and here we are on the eve of this committee's time as the majority, Democratic majority running out and now they're talking about just turning it over to the world.

So if they are going to release these, I'm really curious to see what their legal justification is.

BLACKWELL: All right. Michael, you're up next. And you obviously as the Trump biographer, you know how important a potential release of these returns or the details would be to him. We've got the criminal referrals that happened just yesterday, you've got so many lawsuits and investigations, place this on the scale of urgency and severity for Trump if this information would have become public?

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, DONALD TRUMP BIOGRAPHER: Well, obviously, it's the first item up on the agenda. So it's a vital importance right now and I expect that it's, as Gloria said, really essential - an essential attack on his identity.

I don't know if he's prepared for that. A regular person would be prepared for that. But he kind of wings everything, so he may act very wounded, I think he will be very wounded. This, in my mind, goes back to about 2005 or '06 when he responded in a deposition about his net worth and he said it all dependent on how he feels.

So, so much about him depends on this emotional investment in this identity of great wealth. I think that it is shocking that this is being revealed. And if it is revealed in its entirety, as Elie said, that will be a very unusual event. And that may be the core of his response is that, once again I'm being persecuted, once again those awful Democrats don't know when to stop and that could rally his base and rally his fundraising, so it will be a total loss for him.

BLACKWELL: We're going to hear from - I'm going to play it again what we played last hour from the chairman of this committee, Richard Neal, in just a moment. But Lauren, tell me what the Republicans are saying. We heard from the ranking member, Kevin Brady, just a few minutes ago, what is their defense of the former president and is it a unified united defense on this committee?

FOX: Yes. What you saw just a few minutes before this meeting, Victor, was Republicans, including the leading Republican, Kevin Brady, going to the mics and arguing that this isn't even about former President Donald Trump anymore, but what they believe is that this is about protecting taxpayers across the country and the privacy of their information.

They're sort of making this slippery slope argument that if this is the decision the committee makes today, what is to stop them in the future of releasing tax information of other potential political foes. So that is certainly something that Republicans are arguing, again, not making this about former President Donald Trump, but making this about taxpayers at large, Victor?

BLACKWELL: Let's listen to Kevin Brady here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN BRADY (R-TX): Our concern is that if taken, this committee action will set a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president and overturns decades of privacy protections for average Americans that have existed since the Watergate reforms.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Now Republicans, Gloria, have used this line before in defense of the former president, if they're coming for me with this search at Mar-A-Lago, they can come to you next. If they come from my tax returns they can come for yours. What is the potential fallout once Republicans take control of the House in two weeks from now?

BORGER: Katie bar the door. I think that they're going to use this weapon against other political leaders. I think the difference between Donald Trump and other former presidential candidates and as a precedent is that he refused to do what presidential candidates do.

[15:10:10]

They're not required to do it. They do it because the country should know whether they have ties to foreign governments, whether they had potential conflicts of interest, financially, in their in their tax returns, Donald Trump decided he couldn't do it, because he said he was being audited routinely and so you've never seen that from Donald Trump.

On the other hand, I see what Elie is saying, which is that Congress is saying that they're trying to look at the effectiveness of a rule that requires presidents to release - that requires them to look at presidential tax returns for these conflicts and maybe the rule hasn't been enforced, et cetera, et cetera.

So the question is whether they wanted his tax returns and they use this an - as an excuse, but this did take years and he was a president and a presidential candidate and I think that's what's at the bottom of this, I really do. I think they believe that presidential candidates and presidents ought to be very transparent about how they're making their money and where they're making their money or where they made their money.

BLACKWELL: Yes. So there's no policy that's going to come out of this. I want to play as promised, this is Richard Neal, Chairman of House Ways and Means, this is April of 2019 talking about what is now come to fruition, let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RICHARD NEAL (D-MA): You cannot summarily or arbitrarily just released the tax forms if one were to receive them. That is a clear violation of federal law. So that's why I think it would be a good idea to have professionals who are nonpartisan to review the forms and then the Ways and Means Committee would have the opportunity at that point to decide through an up or down vote with full transparency as to whether or not the forms ought to be released to the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Does that make sense?

HONIG: Well, he's correct in saying that the law says we the Ways and Means Committee have to maintain them confidentially, then he offers up this, I guess, creative solution not contained anywhere in the law of let's bring in some outsiders to give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

And I think the point is this, even if you take it as a given that Donald Trump should have disclosed his tax returns when he was a president, the fact is the law does not require that if Congress wanted to pass such a law, god bless, go ahead. But that was not the law.

And so the law says that only under very narrow circumstances can Ways and Means get these tax returns. They are very valuable, private, confidential documents and you can only get them if you're going to legislate. And for the Ways and Means Committee now to go into court and say we want these because we're going to legislate, no legislation.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

HONIG: We're not looking to expose Donald Trump and then hypothetically, if they put them out there and disregarding the law that says if Ways and Means get these, you have to keep them confidential. They're essentially creating this end run around the law and I think I think it's a legitimate point, we heard from the ranking member there that the precedent here is going to be really problematic. What's to stop any majority in the House, Republican or Democrat, from doing the same going to House Ways and Means, going to IRS saying we'd like these returns of these five individuals and then putting them out there.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

HONIG: And you can just say, well, Donald Trump's really bad, a principal is a principal, a law has got to be a law.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And it really is the same sentence. The beginning says that the Treasury shall provide, shall furnish, the end of the sentence says that you can't hand them out without the consent of the person who is referenced in those returns.

All right. Elie, Michael, Lauren, Gloria, thank you all.

There's a limbo at the border after Chief Justice Roberts decided to temporarily keep a migrant restriction policy in place. The Biden administration has until five o'clock today to respond. How officials in Texas and beyond are preparing for a potential surge in migrants.

Also, Twitter users voted and they said that Elon Musk should step down as the head of Twitter. Will he abide by the results as he promised he would?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:18:30]

BLACKWELL: In Arizona, U.S. Border Patrol has started releasing migrants into the streets of Yuma. They said this could become a daily occurrence. The Biden administration is up against a deadline to respond to the Supreme Court about Title 42. This is the Trump era policy that was a mechanism to quickly expel migrants who enter the country illegally citing pandemic concerns.

It was scheduled to expire tomorrow, but Chief Justice John Roberts filed in order to keep the policy in place.

We also learned today that President Biden will soon travel to Mexico City for the North American Leaders Summit. He'll meet to discuss ways to jointly respond to irregular migration.

CNN Correspondent Rosa Flores is live in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. What are you seeing there?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, I think what's important to note is that all along the U.S. Mexico border, the response is going to look different, the scene is going to look different. So I want to show you around because this is the border wall. As you mentioned, I'm in Brownsville, Texas, this border wall meets the port of entry which meets Matamoros, Mexico, which is right here behind me.

Now, we have eyes in the sky in Mexico thanks to our CNN drone pilot Al Mesberg (ph). I want you to - I want to show you these pictures, because there are thousands of migrants who are camped out in Matamoros, Mexico. Now these are mostly migrants from Venezuela and Haiti. I've been talking to them by phone and they tell me that they're actually happy, they're joyous the Title 42 was lifting which is counterintuitive because when you think about it, Title 42 allows Border Patrol to swiftly return migrants back to Mexico.

[15:20:04]

But they say that the U.S. government has been offering so many exceptions to Title 42, they rather wait in camps for an exception to Title 42. Because they want to enter the U.S. legally, so where would they do that? Let me show you. If you walk with me and you look through these - the border wall, you'll be able to see the international crossing.

Now, if we could take a live picture from our CNN engineer, Michael Humphrey (ph), he has a mass (ph) camera. We can get eyes in the sky here as well. This is where the migrants that I've been talking to say that's where they want to go and seek asylum legally.

They want to be able to walk up to this port of entry and ask a border agent for asylum. They want to enter legally. Now, their concern was that if Title 42 does lift and the United States does not allow them to do that exactly to go to the port of entry, they weren't preparing, this is according to migrants that I've been talking to on the Mexican side, they were preparing inflatable mattresses, life jackets, ropes to cross the river illegally, because they say that they don't want to do that, but they felt that they were going to be forced to do that if they weren't allowed to enter the U.S. legally.

Now, that's what the scene looks like here where I am in Brownsville, Texas. It looks very different in El Paso, Texas where overnight, hundreds of National Guard members were also deployed to that area. And so the scene looks very different than I am here. But the point that I want to make is that it does look different all along the border.

And back in 2020, when Gov. Greg Abbott launched his operation Lone Star, which in essence was to fortify resources along the U.S.-Mexico border, that's what we've been seeing ever since. So even though you don't see National Guard members behind where I am, there are National Guard members that are deployed here in the Rio Grande Valley and all along the border as Gov. Greg Abbott has invested about $4 billion in border security, and also has sent hundreds of boots on the ground.

And Victor, that's not just National Guard members, it's also Texas State Troopers. You will see them all along the border and he has done that during other surges. And the final point that I want to make, Victor, is that the reason why that's important is because when there are migrants surges in one portion of the border and border patrol is busy processing them, the National Guard members, what they do is they fill in the gaps of national security to make sure that the southern border is safe, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Important context for us. Rosa Flores right there in Brownsville along the border. Thank you.

The uncertainty of Title 42 is having impacts beyond the southern border. New York City mayor, Eric Adams says he expected more than a thousand migrants to arrive this week. And a source tells CNN that the city is expected to get a substantial chunk of the $800 million. This is the federal aid for sanctuary cities in the new spending bill.

CNN's Polo Sandoval is following this piece of the story for us.

The mayor has said that, listen, if this continues, there will have to be a cut of some services to New Yorkers. This of course top of mind as people continue to come in.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So funding will be key and we'll get to that in just a second. But it's important remind viewers, too, that Title 42 says public health authority that's almost at band aid, that sooner or later it is bound to come off. We all thought that was going to come off tomorrow, but obviously we saw the developments to the Supreme Court, we have to see what happens after five o'clock and we have to see what the Biden administration says.

So there's still a lot of, as you pointed out, a lot of uncertainty, Victor. But at the end of the day, you have cities all across the country, and New York City is one of them, that are still proceeding with planning on how you best bolster the abilities to receive an increase in numbers. Eric Adams, the mayor here in New York City recognizes that a surge there where Rosa and the rest of her colleagues are along the border almost guarantees that we'll see a surge here as we saw earlier this summer.

So that's why you've been seeing these calls for increased funding, for example. Extra funding, we've learned, will be included - is likely to be included in that omnibus bill that's currently in the hands of lawmakers in Washington. A source close to Chuck Schumer telling my colleague, Mark Morales (ph), at the New York senator even managed to negotiate an increase in the total funding that's usually afforded to cities that bring in some of these asylum seekers from - about $150 million to close to $800 million.

And we've learned that New York City would likely receive a large portion of that to assist in the city's efforts which, again, we hear time and time again since we began to see this increased number of Venezuelan migrants that the need is great to fund these kinds of programs because - you use such a key word, Victor, uncertainty. That's almost - the word of not just the day, but of this week when we're talking about Title 42. There's so much uncertainty not just in the border regions there, the camps that's I've had an opportunity to visit, the camps that our colleagues are bringing some amazing reporting from.

But also here in New York City, I learned during a city commission meeting yesterday or a hearing that another Venezuelan asylum seeker took their own life on Monday at a city shelter.

[15:25:01] Clearly, there is a sense of frustration among many of these families that have already made it here and they don't have the ability to work legally right now.

But sadly, that is also reminding a lot of folks that it's more than just funding, you need to increase shelter capacity, which the city hopes to do for a post Title 42 climate and also an increased need in social workers as well to hear the concerns of many of these men, women and children as well about what they've seen on their way here and the uncertainty that they still face there.

BLACKWELL: That's the second migrant death by suicide in four months.

SANDOVAL: Right.

BLACKWELL: Let's bring that to the conversation. Polo, thank you very much.

We're having now with Mark Levine. He's the Manhattan Borough President here in New York. I want to save some time to talk about social services, but what we've learned about a big chunk of this $800 million coming to New York, does money solve it? Does that - is that enough? And does that do what New York needs to be done?

MARK LEVINE, MANHATTAN BOROUGH PRESIDENT: Well, Victor, I'm really proud of how New York has stepped up to welcome these migrants with open arms, city government, also regular New Yorkers who have volunteered and donated just to an incredible degree.

But we need help. We need federal financial assistance and news that that may be coming in the omnibus bill is welcome. We need more than financial assistance, though, Victor. We need really a national plan here on how to redistribute migrants who are here seeking asylum through cities and states across the country that has capacity.

Right now, we've outsourced that to Gov. Abbott whose motives are purely political, and cynical and xenophobic. We need to have a national plan to distribute these arrivals based on capacity, based on family networks and finally we need these migrants to get work permits. They're qualified for that as asylum seekers. I've met so many of them, the first question they have is how can I work.

So we need a lot of support from the federal government for this wave, which has already started to arrive in New York City.

BLACKWELL: So the money, the big chunk, which is the clearest description we have of how much New York we'll get. It's in this bill that hasn't even been voted on yet, so it will take a little time to come to New York. But right now, give us an idea of the capacity to accept more who are coming as the mayor says he expects a thousand this week. There was the Randalls Island facility for 500 single men. Is that full? Do you have places to put these people in Manhattan?

LEVINE: Well, we've over 30,000 asylum seekers arrive, 20,000 are still in our shelter system and even to accommodate that number has required some emergency measures like contracting with empty hotels. There's almost no capacity left in that system, so we're going to have to take additional emergency measures such as contracting with further hotels.

The facility you referenced on Randalls Island was closed after the wave died down last month. We hope that won't be necessary because hotels are preferable, but we just don't know how many will arrive. We actually already have seen an increase.

Yesterday, we got four buses, over 200 individuals. It could be a thousand a day arriving and that's going to require really dramatic measures that we're going to need federal support for. We're going to need federal funding. And FEMA has a program, it's the Emergency Food and Shelter Program. States like Texas have been benefiting from that for years. New York needs reimbursement immediately for housing, food, medical care, social services and much else. That's the only way we can manage this crisis.

BLACKWELL: Polo and I just discussed the second migrant death by suicide that was announced just yesterday. In four months, talk more about the social services that are offered, because as our reporters have shared these traumatic stories about how some of these people who are trying to get away from the threat of death and they arrived here in the U.S. the things they've gone through what's offered once they arrive in New York?

LEVINE: Well, these are human beings who are fleeing horrible conditions and have been through a very difficult journey often on foot through half a dozen countries. Polo has done incredible reporting on the human stories here and families are arriving with real needs. Over 70 of the arrivals on buses to New York had needed immediate transport to emergency rooms because of medical crisis.

Many, many more are dealing with mental health challenges. Of course, there's two horrific cases of people who have died by suicide. But many more and especially young people who have been through almost unspeakable trauma on their journey here, we have over 5,000 in our schools and so we have to provide all sorts of social work and guidance counselors.

[15:30:09]