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Soon: Sen. Menendez, Wife Arraigned On New Obstruction Charges; Sen. Katie Britt Acknowledges Anecdote Used To Criticize Biden's Border Policies Didn't Happen During His Presidency. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired March 11, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:41]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Any moment, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is expected to be arraigned on a dozen new charges. We're live outside the federal courthouse.

Plus, a CNN exclusive, Russia is producing three times more artillery shells than the United States and Europe as funding for Ukraine stalls in the U.S. Congress.

And passengers say people, quote, flew through the cabin, what we know about a terrifying moment on a flight to New Zealand.

Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. And you're in the CNN Newsroom.

Any moment now, embattled Senator Bob Menendez is due to appear before a judge in federal court. This is video of him arriving just a few moments ago. The New Jersey Democrat once chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee is accused of trying to obstruct an investigation into bribery.

Menendez and his wife are about to be arraigned on these new charges. The senator remains defiant calling it and I'm quoting him now, a flagrant abuse of power, end quote. CNN's Jason Carroll is outside the courthouse in New York for us. Jason, Menendez and his wife expected to enter pleas this hour.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that is the question. The senator and his wife arrived here at Federal Court just a short while ago. As they arrived hand in hand, reporters shattered out questions. How will you plea? He did not answer neither did his wife as they entered Federal Court.

But if history, Wolf, is any guidance, they have already pleaded not guilty to former barber -- bribery charges. He is now facing, according to this new superseding indictment, 18 additional counts, including conspiracy acting as a foreign agent, bribery, extortion and wire fraud.

Again, he has pleaded not guilty to bribery charges in the past. In the superseding indictment, prosecutors allege that Menendez and his wife are trying to cover up the bribes that they received saying that they weren't bribes, saying that they were loans, loans for money that they had received to buy a brand new Mercedes, to pay off Nadine Menendez's mortgage.

Prosecutors saying that that is not true that they were not loans. They're saying that they were bribes. In addition to that, they're also saying that they lied to their former attorneys, and that their former attorneys then in turn gave false information to the U.S. Attorney's Office when they had meetings with them last year.

Now, as you say, Senator Menendez has remained defiant throughout all of this, saying that prosecutors are simply out to get him. He has released a statement about these new charges in the superseding indictment saying the following. It says that the prosecutors are afraid of the facts, scared to subject their charges to the fair minded scrutiny of a jury. It says once and for all that they will stop at nothing in their zeal to get me.

Again, the arraignment is scheduled to begin just about now. We'll hear what he says when he has a chance to enter his plea. Wolf?

BLITZER: Jason, I take it, Senator Menendez at least so far has shown absolutely no signs of backing down and resigning his Senate seat has he?

CARROLL: Right, that is correct. And Wolf, you know, when you go out to New Jersey and speak to voters there, as we have in the past, they've made it very clear, many of them saying that the senator should in fact step down, that this is a distraction. But the Senator has not said if he will seek another term.

He did step down from Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but again, remaining defiant as ever, saying that this is just an effort by the government to go after him, to go after his wife again and waiting to see what he will plea.

But again in the past, Senator Menendez and his wife have pleaded not guilty and said that they are not guilty of any of these allegations. Wolf?

BLITZER: All right, Jason Carroll outside the Federal Courthouse in New York for us. Jason, we'll stay in close touch with you. Thank you very much.

I want to continue this discussion right now. Joining me, CNN legal and national security analyst Carrie Cordero and CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen. Norm, how a significant is it that one of the Menendez alleged co-conspirators has actually changed his plea to guilty and has now agreed to cooperate with the federal authorities?

[11:05:11]

NORM EISEN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: It's very significant, Wolf. This is Mr. Uribe who was one of those alleged to have been engaged in this scheme. This is as serious set of allegations as you can make against a sitting United States Senator, while he's innocent until proven guilty. There appears to be a mountain of evidence, including of allegedly acting as a foreign agent. And what prosecutors need is a tour guide within that conspiracy. Somebody will describe exactly what happened. Now they have it with Mr. Uribe.

BLITZER: And Carrie, the other two alleged co-conspirators in this particular case have -- I have -- we don't know yet if they're going to be flipping and cooperating in order to try to get some sort of reduced sentence doing?

CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL & NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the government is certainly going to want as many witnesses as they can. It sounds like they already have one individual who has agreed to cooperate, they're going to want to get as many other individuals who have knowledge of the facts have to cooperate against both Senator Menendez and his wife, who was also a co-conspirator in these particular facts.

And, you know, what's notable about this is the indictment itself contains so many details, so much information. Senator Menendez was previously charged and was not found guilty. He was subjected to a mistrial in 2018. And then the Justice Department ended up having to drop the rest of his charges. So he has a reason to think that in another scenario that he can prevail again, and continue to remain in the Senate.

And so I think what Justice Department has done in this case is they have thrown every possible charge that they have evidence for, and they have articulated those facts and the results of the investigation in the indictment itself.

BLITZER: And we'll see if these other alleged co-conspirators go ahead and flip and cooperate, plead guilty and hope that they can get some sort of reduced sentence. In the meantime, as all this is going on, he remains a U.S. senator. He still is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even though he no longer chairman, he gave up the chairmanship. But he is getting classified briefings, highly intelligence related briefings. Is there any way to remove him from that, reduce his security credentials?

CORDERO: So it's very difficult to this scenario. He had to step down from the chairmanship. But it is in this case, I would imagine that the Justice Department and the Intelligence Committee community would feel very strongly that he should not have access to classified information. He is alleged to have been acting as a foreign agent for both the governments of Egypt and Qatar. So two different governments that the Justice Department says he engaged in actions on behalf of those foreign governments in his official capacity as a senator and as the chairman of the committee.

So I would expect that the -- it is a difficult position, the Justice Department can't force a senator not to have access to information if he is in the committee. But it puts the intelligence community and the Justice Department in an incredibly difficult national security position.

BLITZER: Certainly does. And I suspect that they'll be withholding certain information, if they know he's going to be receiving that information just out of an abundance of caution. You know, Norm, it's interesting, and while I have you, I want to get your thoughts and another major illegal development this week. There's a hearing to try to throw out the classified documents case against Trump on Thursday. What should we expect?

EISEN: Well, Wolf, we've seen a pattern of partiality from Judge Cannon who's sitting in that Mar-a-Lago documents case. She's scheduled a full day of hearing on legal arguments. And it's a bit puzzling to commentators why that would be the case. One set of arguments are that the former president had power under the Presidential Records Act, to possess these documents. That's nonsense. That was one of my jobs when I was in the White House Counsel's Office to administer the Presidential Records Act. And I worked on the associated classification law.

There's nothing to that argument. And the other one is an argument about whether the charges are too vague. These would be make weights that would take an hour or two at the most and another court. She's scheduled the whole day. She's entertaining arguments that, frankly, are puzzling to many of us and we'll be watching if she continues to exhibit that favoritism to President Trump that has characterized some of her previous rulings and early in the case led the 11th Circuit to reverse her twice.

[11:10:15]

BLITZER: Interesting. Norm Eisen, thank you very much. Carrie Cordero thanks to you as well.

We're just getting this in here into the CNN Newsroom. We're learning that both Menendez and his wife have just pleaded not guilty at federal court in New York. The hearing is still going on. Norm Eisen, Carrie Cordero once again, thank you very much for all of that excellent analysis.

Still to come, the rift between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is getting wider as the number of deaths in Gaza climbs higher. How Netanyahu is responding to Biden's so called Red Line.

Plus, the backlash after Senator Katie Britt use the sex trafficking victim story in her rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address. The woman at the center of the story is now responding.

And later, a CNN exclusive, Russia on track to put Ukraine at a serious disadvantage when it comes to firepower. We have new information. Stay with us. You're in the CNN Newsroom.

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[11:15:53]

BLITZER: Now the latest of the backlash facing Alabama Senator Katie Britt and her Republican rebuttal to the President's State of the Union speech last week. Senator Britt used the sex trafficking victim story as she criticized President Biden's border policies. But the story appears to have taken place in Mexico nearly 20 years ago. Now Senator Britt is acknowledging that it didn't happen on Biden's watch.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To be clear, the story that you relayed is not something that's happened under the Biden administration, that particular person.

SEN. KATIE BRITT (R-AL): Well, I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12. So I didn't say a teenager. I didn't say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12.

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BLITZER: CNN's Rafael Romo profile Karla Jacinto, the woman at the center of the story back in 2017. Rafael, you spoke with Karla once again yesterday. How did she feel about her story being used in the Republican rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, she's upset, she's concerned and she's also worried about her story being used once again, because it's happened in Mexico too, without her permission for political purposes. This is someone I have known since 2014. CNN profile her story as part of CNN Freedom Project, which seeks to raise awareness about modern day slavery.

Jacinto says she's very careful about who she gives her testimony to, and how and when she does it. So she was very surprised, Wolf, she told me, when she found out yesterday that she was involuntarily put in the middle of a social media storm. This storm was prompted by what appears to be the use of her story during the Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union address by Alabama Senator Katie Britt.

I reached out to Karla Jacinto in Mexico City for her reaction, and this is part of what she told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KARLA JACINTO, ADVOCATE AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING (through translator): I was a victim, it seems to me starting in 2004. I arrived in Mexico City in 2008 when I was already a survivor.

ROMO: Were you ever trafficked in the United States?

JACINTO (through translator): Not at all. No. I was a victim here in Mexico. In Mexico, I was a victim of human trafficking.

ROMO: What would you like to tell Senator Britt about what happened?

JACINTO (through translator): Well, at this moment, I would like her to get informed a little more about the topic and that. At some point, if she wants to contact me to talk about the topic, she can do so. She can also contact people who have really gone through what she says. I would love to have a pleasant chat with her instead of using it in a political way to gain a position.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMO: And Wolf, CNN has confirmed much of what has seemed to have said in prior reporting, and her story hasn't changed since we first spoke. Jacinto told me, no one reached out to her to ask for her permission to use her story as part of a political speech. Someone using my story and distorting it for political purposes, she told me, is not fair at all. Wolf?

BLITZER: Rafael Romo reporting for us. Excellent reporting Rafael. Thank you very much.

Let's discuss this and more with CNN political reporter Alayna Treene. And CNN congressional correspondent Jessica Dean. Alayna, let me start with you. Well, what do you make of Senator Britt's attempts to clean up what she said the other night?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, look, Katie Britt has faced a lot of heat for her response, and specifically for sharing this anecdote about Karla. And I think, you know, given the facts that have come out about this and that interview, the excellent interview that Rafael did with her, it's clear that it wasn't the right anecdote for the purposes of what she was trying to underscore, which is that Biden's, the border under Biden administration is dangerous. That's what Katie Britt is claiming.

But clearly, I mean, this woman was not, you know, trafficked in the United States. She said it was -- didn't happen under Biden's administration. And so, I think Katie Britt was given an opportunity to try and clean this up. Instead, she deflected. She was very defensive. And I think that she's going to continue to get criticized for it. And we're seeing that play out today.

BLITZER: What do you think?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, I think Alayna is exactly right. And suburban women, the people that they were trying to target, the Republicans were trying to tell target with Senator Britt giving that response, really trying to be, you know, a suburban mom and connect with female voters, that's what -- they're going to need those women in those key swing states.

[11:20:12]

Remember, in Georgia, for example, Biden won Georgia by some 12,000 votes. It's just these tiny margins. And so they need these swing voters. A lot of times these suburban women, perhaps voted Republican in the past, were turned off by Donald Trump, voted for Biden, but kind of held their noses. Can they convince them to come back to the Republicans, come back to Trump this time? And that is something that I think they were trying to get at with Senator Britt. And now it's just cause more problems for them than anything else.

BLITZER: Yes, it's interesting, Alayna. Speaking of suburban women, I wonder what reaction you're getting to former President Trump continuing to rail against E. Jean Carroll, who's already won this major multimillion dollar defamation suit against him?

TREENE: Right, the rhetoric that Donald Trump is using and continuing to use, I mean we just saw him today continue to criticize E. Jean Carroll, is the exact type of rhetoric that turns off the suburban women that Jessica is talking about. These are a demographic, a group of voters that Donald Trump has always struggled with. He's always had trouble, you know, appealing to suburban women.

It's something his campaign is very aware that he needs to try and work on ahead of a general election rematch with Joe Biden. And yet the rhetoric he's continuing to use against her against other women. That is the type of thing that is completely backfiring with these groups. And it's something I know from my conversations with the Trump campaign that they are trying to have the former president reign in.

But of course, as we know, with Donald Trump, he's going to continue to be Donald Trump. He's going to post on Truth Social or on social media, whatever he wants. But again, it's something that I think suburban when women are continued to be turned off by.

BLITZER: What does it tell you, Jessica, that this weekend, Congresswoman Nancy Mace who herself is a sexual assault survivor endorsed Trump. What does that tell you about Trump's grip on the Republican Party right now?

DEAN: Well, since Super Tuesday we've just seen so many people falling in line behind Donald Trump, right? We saw Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been a critic of Trump's, endorse him. We saw a Governor Chris Sununu from New Hampshire, who has been very vocal in his criticism against Trump say that he would be supporting Trump as the nominee. And now you have somebody like Nancy Mace.

And, you know, there's a little history there where he endorsed her opponent in this last round, then she kind of came back to Trump. She had been critical of him. But, Wolf, overall, what we're seeing is exactly kind of what we thought would play out, which is that everyone or most people within the party are going to fall in line behind Trump because he is their nominee, and they want to win.

And so that is an -- and he wields a tremendous amount of power for so many elected people up on the hill, right? If he wants to primary them or if he wants to come out against them, that really puts a risk if their political future and they know that. And so I just expect we will continue to see that. There is certainly that part of the party that is Never Trump, that is never going to support him. But it is a very small minority.

BLITZER: You know, it's interesting today on CNBC, Alayna, as you know, Trump called TikTok a national security threat, an enemy of the people, he said. What do you make of this? Because so many tens of millions of Americans are on TikTok right now. But there's an effort in Congress to try to ban TikTok.

TREENE: Right. Well, it's interesting because he also was harshly criticizing Facebook in this. And he's actually shown more skepticism to this TikTok though we heard that in his comments on CNBC this morning. But also on Truth Social, and he was posting about it last week.

And, you know, his skepticism is kind of bizarre, because we know that when Donald Trump was president, he was very much pushing for either the sale of TikTok, or for the ban of TikTok if it wasn't sold from ByteDance. And now he's kind of reversing a little bit on that. And it's actually I think, you know, Donald Trump, when it comes to TikTok, I think it's also a political move, because he recognizes that so many people in this country, particularly young voters, a group as well, that his campaign is very much eager to turn over to Trump and peel away from Biden are fans of the app. And so I think that's where you're seeing Donald Trump show some skepticism of this bill.

BLITZER: Yes. I just want to be precise. He called TikTok a national security threat, Trump, but he called Facebook, the enemy of the people and enemy of the people, didn't call TikTok, an enemy of the people he called Facebook. He's clearly concern that if TikTok goes away, it helps Facebook which he also hates.

DEAN: Which he also hate. It's just like who the enemy of the enemy is my friend, right? And we see him kind of continuing, as Alayna has pointed out, to just adjust and turn to a new strategy. And I think that's exactly it. There are millions of people on TikTok in America, who really probably wouldn't count themselves as political but are young voters who are going to be very upset about this.

And if he can kind of grab that. great. But to see that bill, that TikTok bill get a unanimous vote out of committee and bring it to the floor and that Republican-held House and that Biden has said he wants to sign it. I mean that's pretty broad consensus, you know, in a time we don't get that. And so for Trump to come out on the other side of it is very Trump I would say.

[11:25:16]

TREENE: And I do just want to -- just quickly I just spoke with a senior Trump advisor about some of this morning. And he was saying that the thing about Facebook is, and he's what he's afraid what would happen if TikTok were sold or banned, is that those users would go to Facebook. And we know that Donald Trump has had a long standing issue with Facebook around what he argues is censorship or how they're going to potentially handle the election ahead of 2024. And so that's where some of this is stemming from as well.

BLITZER: He also suggested that this pretty significant, he's open to cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

DEAN: Right. And this is a -- this is -- when he was president and before he said he's not going to touch that. And he's been pretty adamant about that. And yet, this morning, in an interview this morning, he started to speak as if he would be open, that there were some things that couldn't be done. He kind of talked around it, not specifically, but that is a change in tone and tenor. And, you know, from his GOP rivals on the -- during the primary, you know, they were talking about, he will raised the entitlement age, what, you know, what do you -- the retirement age, what do you -- what changes could you make to kind of shore that up?

So to hear them to him say this is significant, especially at a time when just last week we heard President Biden say very explicitly in his State of the Union, I will not touch Social Security or Medicare.

BLITZER: Interesting. Ladies, thank you very, very much, Alayna Treene and Jessica Dean.

And stay with us here in the CNN Newsroom. Coming up, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firing back at President Biden, as the two leaders clash over the situation in Gaza.