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Kremlin Blames Ukraine For Cafe Blast; Chinese Spy Balloon Investigation; Trump Arrives in New York For Tuesday's Arraignment. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 03, 2023 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Heading to -- heading up in the air and heading back to his home state of New York, certainly not the kind of homecoming that he had ever imagined when he went back from Florida to New York.

But he is heading back on a historic flight, again, not necessarily a part of history that Donald Trump or any former president would want to make, but, nonetheless, that is exactly what he is doing and one that he is trying to make the most of, going back to face justice and to face a prosecutor who will formally unseal an indictment that has already been voted on and filed against him in the state of New York.

Phil Mattingly?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN HOST: And to face history.

This is the first time a current or former president has ever been indicted. He will now go back to face that. And while, as you noted, this certainly isn't something that perhaps he wanted or was ever thinking about when he moved down to Mar-a-Lago full time, it is certainly something that he seems to be embracing in every way that the former president often does, both for political benefit -- he is a 2024 election candidate already -- but also for his supporters, as he tries to work whatever is happening right now in this moment, history and certainly something that wasn't necessarily expected by he and his team, to his benefit.

We are also, at this point, kind of toss it to our pal who's in New York City, where the president is on his way, former president is on his way at the moment, Kaitlan Collins.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a historic first, of course, of the president coming here to be arraigned tomorrow.

But there are going to be many other first as well, because, of course, Trump is going to come here. He is going to be booked. We are told he will then be fingerprinted. We don't yet know if he's going to actually have his mug shot taken. That is reporting that even his own attorneys say the details are still being figured out as of this moment. We do know that, after the arraignment tomorrow, the former president

is going to return to where he just took off from, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he is going to be speaking tomorrow night.

So we are waiting to see what all of those details actually look like once he is here on the ground in New York.

We're tracking this with our CNN senior crime and justice correspondent, Shimon Prokupecz and CNN's Kara Scannell, who are both live outside that Manhattan courthouse where Trump will be tomorrow, where we will we will see, does the judge unseal this indictment?

Kara, of course, that is the big question, because we know it could be unsealed as soon as today, potentially. What do we know so far?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Kaitlan, well, there's a 1:00 p.m. deadline right now for the district attorney's office and for Trump lawyers to weigh in on this media request.

CNN and other news organizations have asked the judge to unseal this indictment ahead of tomorrow's arraignment. They also asked the judge to broadcast this arena, given the huge public interest, the historical significance, and the momentousness of this occasion.

Now, we are also learning, Kaitlan, reporting from you and I and others on our team, that Trump has added a new lawyer to his legal team, Todd Blanche. He's a high-powered criminal defense lawyers lawyer. He was a longtime prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. That was the same office that brought the case against Michael Cohen connected to the hush money payments.

Now, he is going to add significant legal weight to this. He's represented some other people in the Trump orbit. He represented Paul Manafort in the state case here. You remember Manafort was prosecuted by Mueller's team. But he also was prosecuted after he was sentenced and convicted and pled out to some of the Mueller charges.

Manafort was also charged by the Manhattan DA's office. Now, Blanche represented him in that. He got the charges thrown out under a double jeopardy principle. It's not the same issue at play here, but obviously a big win for one of Trump's allies, certainly something that is appealing (AUDIO GAP). He's also represented others in this orbit.

You may remember, in the Ukrainian saga, there was Igor Fruman. He was one of Giuliani's associates. He represented -- Todd Blanche represented Fruman in that case. He pled out and served less than a year in prison. So, Blanche certainly is bringing a different legal strategy here, certainly to beef up the legal team.

We understand that the other two attorneys on it, Susan Necheles and Joe Tacopina, are still part of the team, but certainly adding additional firepower here as we're heading into an indictment, and as this case is really going to get under way, as the battle lines will be drawn by the lawyers and the different legal challenges they will take once we get through tomorrow's arraignment -- Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Yes, he is certainly known as a top attorney.

We have a lot more questions on adding that new attorney just the day before Trump is going to be arraigned. We will have more on that in a moment, Kara.

But, for now, I want to go to CNN's Shimon Prokupecz.

Shimon, obviously, we're here in New York. And you can see the ramped- up security. There are New York Police Department buses parked outside of Trump Tower at this moment. In terms of security, not just here outside of Trump Tower, where we are, but also outside the courthouse, what is that looking like, and what are officials here are bracing for?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, certainly, Kaitlan, I can tell you, having been here on Friday and now today, the energy here has certainly picked up.

[13:05:00]

This is Hogan Place. This is the street that we expect Donald Trump to drive up. He's going to drive here, and he's going to pull up just here ahead of us and surrender. This is where he's going to walk through these doors here at the Manhattan district attorney's office.

And once he is inside those doors, Kaitlan, he is under arrest. He is no longer free to leave. He surrenders. And then, obviously, the process begins. So, that process will begin here tomorrow, some time either early afternoon or late morning.

But, as you can see around, we are seeing more officers here today than we have seen in the past several days. These barriers are lined up all across the courthouse here, here to the corner, and then it stretches down Centre Street to basically surround this courthouse.

Obviously, the NYPD, the court officers here that are providing security are all anticipating a large group of people. So what they have done is, they have set up these barriers here. And, tomorrow, we will see even more of them laid out as many of the streets around the courthouse here will be closed.

So, this entire area will be closed. They will put out more barriers. Obviously, the -- one of the concerns are protesters, people in support of the former president and those that are obviously against the former president. So they're all just preparing today.

They're running through some last-minute drills, some last-minute things that they need to do, that law enforcement needs to do for tomorrow. Now, once he's inside the district attorney's office, we don't expect him to be there for very long. It's an expedited process here. They will do all the paperwork.

He will then be brought into the courthouse here behind me up to the 15th floor, where the arraignment will occur. And then we will see what the defense attorneys have to say. We will see what the prosecutors have to say. And then we expect him to leave. We expect him to leave and come out this way and then head to the airport and go home back to Mar-a-Lago -- Kaitlan.

COLLINS: Yes, a quick trip, but certainly a significant one.

Shimon, Kara, thank you both.

And as we wait for Trump to arrive here in New York, of course, we are looking at all of the threads of this today, the bigger picture here.

So, joining me now here on set outside of Trump Tower is CNN political director David Chalian and CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig.

Thank you both for being here. It's quite the commotion going on.

But, Elie, I want to start with you on this brand-new reporting that CNN has confirmed from Politico that Trump has added a new attorney to his defense team, Todd Blanche. This is specifically for the Manhattan district attorney's probe into these hush money payments.

What is -- you know him well, so tell me what you know about him and what it means potentially for Joe Tacopina and someone else who had been leading this defense.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So, Todd Blanche is really an outstanding lawyer. He's the real deal. I worked with him at the federal prosecutor's office, the Southern District of New York. We overlapped for about six years.

He was in charge of the Violent Crime and Gangs Unit, and then he moved up to be one of the leaders of our White Plains unit, where he would have handled everything, including financial crimes, corporate crimes, like we have here.

I should add, one other person who was there with us at the same time was Alvin Bragg, the DA, so they know each other too. So let's keep that in mind.

What does this mean for Joe Tacopina. I'm not sure. But, usually, in a case like this, you only want one quarterback at a time in football. And I think the same would go here for criminal defense. So they're both alphas. They're both quarterbacks. So, in my view, it's going to be hard for Tacopina to be the sort of second seater here.

COLLINS: Yes.

And we should note, Tacopina is still on the legal team. We are being told that by sources. They say it's not being sidelined. But I think they how some internally view it.

David, just something to what Phil and Dana were noting there about how historic this is going to be and what we're looking at. Yes, it's actually is going to be a pretty quick trip for Trump into New York tonight, out by tomorrow night.

But the idea that I former president is getting booked tomorrow, turning himself over to authorities is so significant.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It is, Kaitlan.

And just to give our audience a sense of place of where we are, since this case is dealing with a hush money agreement, an alleged hush money arrangement that occurred just before the 2016 election, to our left, we are just half-a-block where Hillary Clinton was holed up with her advisers on election night 2016 learning her fate, that she would not be president.

And a half-a-block to our right is Donald Trump's Trump Tower, where his campaign in 2016 was headquartered. To think that this is now where we are these some seven years later, six-and-a-half years later, to this moment of the first ever former president facing an indictment, it's just a historic trajectory I think nobody could have fully anticipated.

COLLINS: I think the big question is how the country is reacting to this. You have some polling on how people are responding to this.

What is their sense of it?

CHALIAN: Yes, a brand-new CNN poll that we quickly wanted to assess the reaction to the indictment.

And you see that a majority of Americans, 60 percent, according to our new poll, approve of this indictment. Now, when you look at that number by party, you see, obviously, overwhelmingly Democrats are in -- approving of the indictment, but 62 percent of independent voters also approve of the indictment of Donald Trump.

[13:10:03]

COLLINS: That's significant there, because I think when we talk about what the Republican primary is going to look like, the general is obviously what's important as well, when independent voters are thinking that.

Elie, the logistics of this. Can we talk through what that's going to look like? Because you heard it -- Kara was noting there, as Trump's adding this new attorney to his legal team. We do still have questions, though, about whether or not there is going to be a mug shot,what specifically tomorrow is going to look like.

And it sounds like Trump's own attorney said that they would still be figuring that out as of today.

HONIG: Yes, I think there's going to have to be a lot of improvisation, really, because this is unprecedented.

I mean, if you think this is a scene, wait until we see what happens tomorrow. And I think there's also a sort of effort by the authorities here, the Manhattan DA, the cops, the Secret Service, to make this as normal as humanly possible.

Now, in an ordinary case, any criminal defendant would be fingerprinted. And I think that's very likely to happen here. You would have your mug shot taken. We're not sure if that's going to happen. It's not like he's not recognizable.

COLLINS: Yes.

HONIG: And you would -- you would then go in front of the judge.

And what happens in front of the judge -- and this will happen tomorrow. The judge will advise Trump of the 34 counts against him. Now, the judge typically would not read them all. You would say to a defendant like Donald Trump, have you had a chance to go through this with your attorney? He would have gone through it.

And then the attorney says, we have seen it, Judge. We waive the public reading. You don't have to go through all however many pages. And then Donald Trump, standing at the defendant's table, the same defendant's table where thousands upon thousands of criminal accused have stood, will enter his first plea, which most assuredly will be not guilty.

And then the judge will set bail, mostly a formality here. He's not going to get held on any kind of bail. He will be what we call release on his own recognizance, meaning: We trust you. Go home. Come back for your next appearance.

COLLINS: Yes.

HONIG: And then the judge will set a schedule moving forward. And we will start to get a sense of when we're going to get into motions, and maybe eventually trial.

COLLINS: Yes.

All right, Elie, David both are going to stay here with me for this hour as we are tracking all of these live developments.

Phil and Dana, obviously, that is significant of itself, to know that the former president is going to be in a courtroom tomorrow entering that plea. Of course, it remains to be seen a lot of the other details of what that looks like and what it means not only for his 2024 run, but also for all the other Republicans who are now being asked to weigh in on this matter.

BASH: Yes, such a good point. And they're so much connected.

So let's break all of this down with our experts here in Washington, former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams, Audie Cornish, host of the CNN podcast "The Assignment With Audie Cornish," our senior political analyst, Gloria Borger.

And so we want to discuss so much of what's going on. But I do want to start with the news that we just learned, and with you, Elliot, since you're the attorney at the table.

What does it say to you that the former president just signed on a pretty high-powered new lawyer out of New York? ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, they're taking it very

seriously. And they ought to.

The new attorney comes from one of the true white shoe -- for lack of a better term -- white-collar law firms in New York City. And it's not sort of someone who, by virtue of just being a Trump buddy or Trump friend, is being brought in.

This is somebody with the sort of the kinds of elite credentials that you see at the major law firms in America. So it's a sign that it's not -- they're moving forward and are really taking this seriously. It's not just a political witch-hunt, or at least it's how they're seeing it now.

MATTINGLY: Gloria, I think one of the things, we're watching kind of the O.J.-like convoy to the airport, to some degree, the plane taking off.

It's worth taking a step back for a minute and saying, this is -- there is no precedent. I think, sometimes, over the course of the last six years, we have had so much of that, that maybe you get a little numb to it. But the sense of this moment and what kind of these next couple of days, and then the scale of this trial actually represents for the country.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, it's more breaking of the norms that we have seen during the Trump presidency.

Those of us in Washington, we saw the institutional norms being broken time and time again. Now we're looking at legal norms being broken. You have a former president, as you point out, about to face indictment, whether you think that the indictment is too creative, not worth it, whatever. I think that you're seeing a president, a former president, go into this proudly, which is also something that's out of the norms that we are -- that we are used to.

And a former president saying, well, this could work to my advantage, which may not be the case, but it's what -- it's what he's going to believe proudly going into this.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: I don't know if he's doing it proudly.

I mean, it's obviously a sobering moment, right?

BORGER: Yes.

CORNISH: And not just any lawyer is going to sign up even with the Trump sort of orbit at this point, because you don't know if you will get paid.

You don't know, like, a lot of things. There's not a great track record there, right?

BORGER: Yes. CORNISH: So even for this firm to sign on and say, OK, we're going to

do this, we're going to do this with you, and for him to seek them out, I think, shows the seriousness of the moment.

And it's one thing to kind of throw out propaganda at political rivals. It's another thing to deal with the law and to deal with a jury of your peers, which is how we got here. A grand jury voted and said, yes, there's sufficient evidence to have this conversation.

[13:15:04]

BORGER: Remember, during impeachment, he had a lawyer that he hired that never made it to impeachment, because, for some reason, they didn't get along. And that is the history.

BASH: And I believe that Todd Blanche, who we're speaking about, our reporting is that he left this big firm in order to do that, which is very telling about what you were discussing.

BORGER: Right.

BASH: But does it also say something about this particular case, vs. the other investigations, the three other investigations that are ongoing against Donald Trump, meaning that perhaps those in the legal community, all of your brethren, might see this as something that is more winnable and maybe even more palatable?

WILLIAMS: It's not even that it's more winnable or more palatable. It's the one that's ready to go to trial. It's the one that has been indicted.

And, frankly, the former president would be well-served to get better lawyers if he's indicted in Georgia or if he's indicted in the federal suit or so on.

BASH: But I guess my question is...

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BASH: ... when it comes to something like this...

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BASH: ... knowing sort of the zeitgeist of the legal community...

WILLIAMS: Sure.

BASH: ... defending a former president in payment -- a hush money payment is one thing. Defending him when it comes to overturning an American election, which is what two of the other three investigations are about, are different.

WILLIAMS: Sure.

I mean, this -- it's hard to say whether this is winnable, because we just haven't seen the evidence yet. And that's -- and that's part of the problem here.

Now, look, to be clear, the misdemeanor portion of the case, where it's just for falsifying business records, is actually quite straightforward. They have the checks, and they probably have testimony to support them. It gets a little more complicated when you start talking about adding in a felony charge and so on.

Now, look, in any other universe, in any other moment in history, representing a former president would have been the mark that catapulted an attorney into the stratosphere of the American legal pantheon. The problem is that many have regarded the former president as legally or sort of reputationally toxic.

And it's very -- and I'm sure there are other law firms that turned down the opportunity to represent the former president because of the sort of circus that follows him.

BORGER: Well, I was talking to an attorney who used to work for the...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: There's like a half-dozen...

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Yes, there are a lot. It's a kind of a growing -- a growing group.

And this was before this occurred. He said to me: Look, attorneys quit. It's hard to get an attorney. Not only doesn't he pay his bills, but he's a terrible client, because he doesn't listen to you. And, also, your firm doesn't want you to represent the president -- the former president, because it's harder for them to attract younger talent.

So, they are -- he said, look that's why they have kind of had to go to lesser and lesser known attorney.

WILLIAMS: And I think when you have got a client...

BORGER: This is different.

WILLIAMS: Well, you have got a client that's out blasting judges and prosecutors and the system, it is bad for a major New York City or Washington, D.C., law firm to have that.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: Yes.

BASH: On that note, I interviewed Joe Tacopina, his other attorney, on "STATE OF THE UNION" yesterday, and he had to say multiple times that he personally, as an attorney, does not believe that the judge is biased, even though his client, the president, said exactly that.

So that sort of looks at the difficulty.

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: To your point earlier, we have to be careful not to conflate political questions with legal ones.

This is not an impeachment. This is not a bunch of people sitting around where they don't have special powers in any way, saying, what should we do? What could work? What could not work? Each prosecutor -- they're not coordinating -- has to sit down and look at their case and figure out whether they can move forward.

And, to your point, given what happened to Michael Cohen, it's not like there's not evidence floating around in New York. So when people talk about whether or not it's ideal or not ideal, that's from a political standpoint, and specifically a Democrat or kind of liberal standpoint.

What we're witnessing now is, what will it be like for Donald Trump to actually deal with legal proceedings, like demands with power, really having to answer for the things you have done? And are some of the games he played politically going to work when you're actually standing in front of a judge?

BASH: Now, that's such a good point. He, as president, dealt with two proceedings, but they were, by the Constitution...

CORNISH: Yes. You can trash-talk a judge on social when it's just, like, one of your executive orders. It's not when you're standing when.

(CROSSTALK)

BASH: Trash-talk the United States Senate, the impeachment team. But it's very different...

(CROSSTALK)

CORNISH: Exactly. But when you have stand up, it's a different thing.

BASH: But he has made his name on conflating legal and political strategies, and, certainly, he's doing that right now.

OK, we have a lot more to talk about, much more this hour. We have more news ahead, including new developments in Trump's classified documents case. "The Washington Post" is reporting the special counsel may have more evidence of obstruction.

Plus, an update on Chinese spy balloon that sparked a new rift between Washington and Beijing. It turns out it was able to capture sensitive images of U.S. military sites.

[13:20:00]

And a pro-Russian blogger is killed in a bombing inside a Russian cafe. Why Moscow is blaming Ukraine. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MATTINGLY: We're also learning new developments on the Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. earlier this year.

A source tells CNN the balloon was able to capture images and collect intelligence from U.S. military sites. It was then able to send that intelligence back to Beijing in real time.

CNN national security reporter Natasha Bertrand is following this story.

Natasha, what more are you learning? This has been a huge outstanding question. You have got details now.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: That's right, Phil.

So, what we're learning is that, when this Chinese spy balloon was kind of transiting across the United States back in February, it was able to capture some images, as well as collect some signals intelligence from some sensitive U.S. military installations.

Now, U.S. intelligence officials are not overly concerned because they say that this was not much more than what a regular Chinese satellite that is constantly orbiting above these same sites could potentially collect.

[13:25:07]

But, at the same time, we are learning that this Chinese spy balloon actually was able to transmit this data back in real time to the Chinese government and that the Chinese government had the capability to remotely erase the data that the Chinese spy balloon was collecting.

So, that raises questions about whether the U.S. government actually knows the full extent of what the balloon was able to gather, because, obviously, now the U.S. government has been analyzing it in an FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, and they have some sense of what the balloon was able to gather.

But the possibility remains that there is much more that it was able to collect that the U.S. simply doesn't know about because Beijing was able to remotely erase it.

BASH: Natasha Bertrand, thank you so much for that reporting. Really fascinating.

Also, today, Russia is blaming Ukraine for orchestrating Sunday's bombing at a St. Petersburg cafe. The attack killed a prominent military blogger who supported the Ukraine conflict and injured 30 others. The late blogger was leading a discussion at the cafe when the bomb exploded, Russian police arrested anti-war activist Daria Trepova, who they suspect was part of the plot that delivered the bomb to the blogger in a statue.

CNN's Matthew Chance is in Moscow.

So, Matthew, has Russia released any evidence?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, not evidence yet.

I mean, we're still too early on for that. But they have definitely, for instance, released a video of Daria Trepova, this suspect who is accused of taking the statue to the cafe in St. Petersburg which later exploded, killing that prominent Russian military blogger.

They have released a sort of on-air admission by her, saying that she did indeed take that statue. You can see the video there. That's her walking into the cafe carrying a large box.

I mean, her defense seems to have been that she didn't know that the statue had a bomb inside it. And it could well be true. But this is to be determined, I suppose, by Russian investigators.

What they're saying is that this is terrorism, it was organized by the -- by the Ukrainian security services, alongside -- and this is astonishing -- alongside the anti-corruption campaign of Alexey Navalny, the poisoned, jailed critic of the Kremlin. Of course, both the Ukrainians and the Navalny organization have categorically denied any involvement.

Some latest news I can give -- bring to you. The anti-corruption -- sorry -- the anti -- the pro-war blogger who was killed in this attack, Vladlen Tatarsky, he has just been awarded a Medal of Bravery by Vladimir Putin, the Russian president.

And the main suspect in this case, Daria Trepova, she's now been moved to Moscow for further questioning from St. Petersburg.

MATTINGLY: Matthew Chance for us in Moscow, thanks so much.

And still ahead: Former President Trump is in the air right now. You have seen it. You saw the takeoff -- there it is again -- making his way from Florida to New York City ahead of tomorrow's arraignment. But there are new developments in the classified documents case. Remember that one? There's a lot of them going on.

We're going to have more coming up next.

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