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Trump in Court for Hearing on Classified Documents Case; Biden Heads to Michigan to Rebuild Fraying 2020 Coalition. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired March 14, 2024 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

Donald Trump is off the campaign trail and back in the courtroom. Just minutes ago, he arrived at the federal courthouse in South Florida for a hearing in his classified documents case. Trump and his attorneys will ask the judge to dismiss the charges or at least grant them a delay in the trial.

A delay could also be looming in Trump's election subversion case down in Fulton County, Georgia. At any time now, the presiding judge there could announce if District Attorney Fani Willis is disqualified from the case, and a decision that could derail the trail from starting in August.

Let's begin with the classified documents hearing today in Florida. CNN's Katelyn Polantz is outside the courthouse. Katelyn how likely is it that Judge Aileen Cannon will dismiss the case there?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Jim that is going to be entirely up to her and we're watching to see exactly how she reacts to the arguments today that are taking place in the courtroom. They should be starting any minute now. Donald Trump and his two co-defendants are there as well as all of their lawyers as well, as the special counsel's office.

This is a critical hearing, not one that's going to result in a ruling today. There will be a rolling on it eventually. Very unlikely that ruling would happen today, but it's a critical hearing because it is the first and very likely a series where Donald Trump's team is going argue he shouldn't go to trial at all, he should not be charged because of things that he had or did whenever he was president.

In this particular hearing, his team wants to argue that those documents that took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency and then held on to them for several months, more than a year, those were personal records because Donald Trump said so. He wanted to keep them, and thus, because he was president, he should be able to. The Justice Department has made very clear they do not believe that is the law or the situation at all. They think that Trump is obstructing their ability to get back not just any documents, not records that he might want to keep, but records are so sensitive that it would jeopardize national security for them to be out of the hands of the federal government or the rightful owner of them at the time.

In this case, they say these records are defense secrets. They are secrets that strike at the heart of U.S. nuclear capabilities and how the United States would respond to foreign attackers, the sort of things about weapons and other defense strategies that are very important at a national security level. Jim?

ACOSTA: And we still don't have a trial date yet.

POLANTZ: We do not have trial date. It was just two weeks ago that we were here in court and there were arguments from both sides about when this trial should take place. We still don't have calendar from Judge Aileen Cannon. All she has done since that date really is put this hearing on the calendar and wanting it to go forward before Trump's criminal case in New York City starts in two week from now.

But there is this question up in the air. How long is it going to take Judge Aileen Cannon to resolve not just questions like the arguments that are being presented to her today, but how long will it even take for her to decide when this trial should take place? Will it happen before the election? Everybody on both sides, Trump's team, his co- defendants and the Justice Department, they've all proposed dates for before the election. Whether Judge Cannon believes she can do it before then, that is still up in the air.

ACOSTA: All right. Katelyn Polantz, thank you very much, down reporting live from a very busy roadway in front of the courthouse there. Thanks, Katelyn, for hanging in there for us. We appreciate.

Joining me now, CNN Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid, CNN National Correspondent Kristen Holmes, and former Federal Prosecutor and Defense Attorney Shan Wu.

Paula, I mean, you and I, we've all been outside those courthouses in those, when all the cars and trucks are going by. I mean, we can kudos to Katelyn for hanging in there during that live shot there.

PAULA REID, CNN CHIEF LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That was on the court for not giving us a safer place to report. Because when you come out with the news you have to go down the stairs and across four lanes of traffic.

ACOSTA: Wow, yes.

[10:05:00]

Okay, note to the judges down there, you could do better.

All right, Paula, let's start -- let's dig into this. The Trump team will likely argue that Trump could literally keep any document that he wanted. And here's what he said last night on Newsmax. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT, 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I took them very legally, and I wasn't hiding them. We had boxes on the front of the, and a lot of those boxes had clothing and a lot, we're moving out, okay? Unfortunately, we're moving out of the White House. And because we're moving out of the White House, our country is going to hell. But we weren't hiding anything.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Yes. I mean, Paul, I mean, he's sort of -- his legal team is saying we can keep any document that that we want. But at the same time, Trump is trying to make the case. It sounds like, oh, well, it was a messy process. We were in a rush. We were packing boxes. It's sort of two different things.

REID: Yes, let's use his own words. The story that we broke, right? He's on tape saying, you know, I couldn't declassify things after I left office and insinuating that he has something that is classified and he knows he shouldn't have it, right? And the argument that you can just take classified documents with you, that your personal property that is not something that is going to succeed in a court of law.

Even if Aileen Cannon, who has surprised us before, agrees with this, a court of appeals is going to reject that argument. That that is false on its face. Even his description of what happened is contradicted in the indictment itself, I mean, even him saying, we're not hiding anything. Well, if you weren't hiding anything, why didn't you give all these documents back when you were first asked? Why were boxes moving around? I mean, put one of the charges here is obstruction. So, what he said there on Newsmax just does not match the facts of the case.

ACOSTA: Yes. And I'm also thinking about Shan, you know, looking back to the Robert Hur hearing that we heard up on Capitol Hill the other day, the Republicans going after Joe Biden for documents he kept, I mean, I guess under the Trump legal team's thinking here, I guess President Biden shouldn't have been in any hot water over the documents that were next to the Corvette in his garage.

I mean, tell us, what does the law say? The law says you can't take any document that you want. And it also says when we want some of these documents back, you got to give them over.

SHAN WU, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: Oh, absolutely. And starting with the first point, I mean, Trump's argument that these were somehow personal or under the Presidential Records Act, by definition, just doesn't pass the laugh test. I mean, these are sensitive documents, some of them pertaining to nuclear secrets. These are not personal in the sense of, oh, I have a memento, a letter I exchanged with someone. It doesn't make any sense to treat them under that category at all.

And it's a problem here with the way Judge Cannon treats this, because by not setting the trial date, she really wants to give us like a full kind of airing out of it and may even allow for appeal. You know, that may come up as well. She could have set the trial date. This kind of thing has so little legal merit. She could have just taken care of this right on the papers.

I mean, it's really his trial defense he's trying to mount. He's trying to make it like a pure immunity defense, like I don't even have to go to trial to present the defense. But the way she's approaching it really chews up the time.

ACOSTA: Yes. It sounds like the absolute immunity defense that they're trying to use in the Jack Smith case.

Kristen, I mean, the other thing we should point out, Donald Trump is at this courthouse today. He doesn't need to be.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: He doesn't need to be. He could be on the campaign trail if he wanted to. One of the things he loves to say is, I have to be in this courtroom. I could be campaigning. That's stopping me from doing that. He could be on the campaign trail. He is choosing to be there.

Now, the one thing to note is that this is not going to be your traditional Donald Trump in court campaign stop because there just aren't any cameras. You're not going to see him. He's not planning for any remarks. But we do know that he wants to partake in his defense. He wants to be there.

And we were told that about New York too, because remember in New York, he's going to have to be there for that case at the end of the month, that trial. They are talking about how that's going to look. He's going to be there every day. How is he going to run a general election campaign in between going to court every single day, except for Wednesdays?

So, you can imagine Wednesdays, Fridays or Wednesdays, Saturdays are likely to be the actual day that you are on the campaign trail. But he wants to do this.

The other part of this that we've heard is that he wants to show the judge and show the jury eventually in New York that he is a willing participant in this, that he's a willing defendant and he wants to participate in the case.

ACOSTA: Well, and he also -- I mean, this is all about, we saw this during the primary process, he wants to keep ginning up that base. This is so integral to that strategy for his campaign.

HOLMES: It is. And also one of the things we talk about a lot is what's going to happen in terms of turnout in a general election. There's not a lot of excitement around Biden and Donald Trump. They hope that ginning up that base, that means those people will turn out and vote. Can they depress the vote enough on the Biden side so that that base shows up and he can win that way as well? That's part of the strategy.

ACOSTA: Yes, it's important. I mean, this -- the courthouse is the campaign trail, the campaign trail is the court.

Paula, one of the things we should get into is let's go back and look at this witness in the documents case known as Trump employee number 5 talking about moving the boxes and everything. Because, you know, when we get into this conflation of the Biden case and the Trump documents case and so on, there are clear differences and this witness talks to some of that. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: You noticed that he had boxes?

BRIAN BUTLER, TRUMP EMPLOYEE 5: Well, yes. These were the boxes that were in the indictment, the white banker's boxes. That's what I remember loading.

COLLINS: And did you have any time, any idea at the time that there was potentially U.S. national security secrets in those boxes?

[10:10:04]

BUTLER: No clue. I had no clue.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Paula, a big part of this document's case is, what was going on with these boxes? Why were they being moved from here to there? Why were they being stored in certain parts of Mar-a-Lago? And so, I mean, it's the actions that were taken when the federal government was asking for these boxes back that it's going to be key to a lot of this.

REID: Yes, absolutely. This goes to obstruction. I mean, there's also questions about mishandling, right? If you have random people holding boxes that have some of the nation's most sensitive secrets, but this goes to obstruction and efforts to move these around and completely contradicts what you just heard Trump say on Newsmax, which is we weren't trying to hide anything. Well, if you weren't trying to hide anything, why were you moving these boxes?

The three key differences between the Biden case and the Trump case, right, when Biden realized that he had these documents, he immediately returned them. He allowed for full searches of multiple properties. And then he sat for a voluntary interview. And this witness is really key just to talk about that obstruction and efforts, again, to prevent a fulsome search.

ACOSTA: Yes. And, I mean, Shan, that gets to the heart of why so many legal experts have said, and I think George Conway has said this, that the fastest way for Donald Trump to end up in an orange jumpsuit is this document's case. I mean, it's the obstruction aspect of this that really could put him in a lot of hot water.

WU: Absolutely. Those sorts of actions, like what Paula was saying, that's really gold in terms of showing your bad intent in what you're doing. And that's why it's really so important. On the comparison to Biden, I mean, one thing that troubles me some is the timing and the language of the Hur report. While Hur is making these distinctions, it also gives Judge Cannon sort of a little agenda that she could walk through and ask them to make those distinctions.

Politically, Trump may like that. But, again, time-wise, forcing the special counsel to talk more about these distinctions continues to run out the clock.

ACOSTA: And, Shan, I did want to ask you about the Fulton County case because we saw a couple of these charges sort of get tossed out yesterday by the judge. What's your sense of that? I know there was a lot of talk yesterday that, well, you know, maybe Fani Willis has messed up here, but this may speak to how the judge is handling this as well, do you think?

WU: To me, it shows a little bit of his inexperience. He's a very smart judge, but he's super concerned, you know, with the kind of high-profile case this is.

Experienced judges with a case with this amount of detail involved, I don't think would find, oh, you need more particulars here. I mean, it's pretty clear what the allegations are. And so that may reflect some of his inexperience, as does his handling of the actual disqualification hearing, which I felt really kind of just veered and went outside the rails.

ACOSTA: Yes. And at any time, I mean, we're hearing the judge could announce if he's disqualifying Fani Willis from being an attorney in this case.

I mean, Kristen, the Trump team, not only the legal team, but the campaign team must be waiting with bated breath to see what happens here. I mean, this is the case where he had the mug shot. Can you imagine if she gets tossed off this case?

HOLMES: Remember, this is the case where he's been kind of talking smack about Fani Willis for months and now she's the one in the hot seat and this is exactly where they want to be. You know, I got a lot of questions yesterday about how does Donald Trump's team feel about the fact that they dropped some of these charges. It's like they're very happy obviously but he's still being charged. What they want is for District Attorney Fani Willis to be thrown off the case. And that's what they're really looking for and waiting for that decision to be made.

REID: And even if she's not, you know, he wins either way here. If she's disqualified, the case survives, but it's handed off to another prosecutor's office. They'll have to decide if they want to add charges, fix these issues that McAfee flagged, or dismiss it all together. The one thing we know is there's no way the case would go before the election.

But even if she's not disqualified, this is a gift for Trump because this is about optics. This is about trust in the judicial system. And here, he can continue to remind people about this romantic relationship, about the hundreds of thousands of dollars Nathan Wade has been paid to investigate him.

Intelligent minds can disagree about whether that's the market rate. But to the average voter, this does raise questions about the integrity of the judicial system and not for Trump. Again, either way, disqualified or not, it's a gift.

ACOSTA: Yes. And as Fani Willis has said, I mean, it's not -- she's not the one on trial here. It's Trump and these other co-defendants. But, all right, we're going to be watching all of that.

Guys, thank you very much for getting us started this morning. We appreciate it.

President Biden, we should note, he's back on the campaign trail. He's heading to the battleground state of Michigan, while Donald Trump is spending the day in court. Biden's message to voters after that uncommitted primary protest, that's next. You're live in the CNN Newsroom.

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ACOSTA: President Biden will be in the battleground state of Michigan later today. It's part of a swing through the Midwest where his campaign needs to win states he picked up in the 2020 election.

The trip marks Biden's first visit to Michigan since more than 100,000 voters chose uncommitted in the Democratic primary over his handling of the Israel-Hamas War. And just yesterday, protestors, once again, called for an end to that conflict at Biden's campaign event in Milwaukee.

Let's discuss all of this with CNN Senior Political Commentator Scott Jennings and CNN Political Commentator Bakari Sellers. Guys, great to see you this morning.

Scott, let me go to you first. I do want to talk about Biden in the Midwest in just a moment, but let me just ask you about some comments the former president made about how he's been treated. This was last night, I believe, on Newsmax. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I study history, and I was always told that Andrew Jackson, as a president, was treated the absolute worst.

Nobody has been treated like Trump in terms of badly. Russia, Russia, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, everything was a scam, and it literally starts the new one. As you win one, you start the other, impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two, all hoaxes and scams.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[10:20:02] ACOSTA: Yes. He goes on to say nobody's been treated like him, quote, in terms of badly.

But, Scott, I wanted to ask you, I mean, campaigns are supposed to be about looking forward. I think you and I've talked about this before. It's just -- it all seems like in the rearview mirror for Trump.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Interestingly, I think both he and Biden have a similar tick in this way. Trump wants to re-litigate his term. He wants to re-litigate how badly he was treated and everything that happened to him. Biden wants the credit for everything that he did over the last three years in his mind.

And so you have two campaigns that actually are often trapped in this backwards-looking feedback loop when, as you point out, I think the correct strategy is for both of them to look forward. And to me, it will be a big upper hand for either one of them if they can focus on the future and not on the perceived sleights or on the perceived lack of credit they're getting. It's a much better idea to try to tell people what you will do than to start complaining about what hasn't been done for you or what has been done to you.

ACOSTA: Yes. Bakari, I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, one of the things that is going to come down in terms of being a huge issue in this race is going to be Social Security. I mean, it may seem like a settled issue because of what's happened over the course of so many campaigns. But Trump, the other day, I was talking about cuts to Social Security. Now he's backtracking on that, saying he would, quote, never do anything that would jeopardize or hurt Social Security or Medicare. This week he suggested he was open to cuts during an interview with CNBC. What do you think?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first, just mark it down. I guess we're at about 10:20 Eastern Time that Bakari Sellers agrees with Scott Jennings. That's first. I think that the campaigns have to be forward-looking. I think that campaigns have to be able to articulate what they're going to do for individuals today, particularly around kitchen table issues.

When you come to things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, this president has a unique ability to talk about preserving those institutions whereby Donald Trump does not have the ability to talk about policy with any depth. And that's what you run into. That's why he gets himself twisted in these pretzels.

And this is also why the Republican Party and Donald Trump almost have to talk about culture issues and wage into culture wars because this president does not have the depth in a one-on-one interview, a one-on- one debate to talk about these issues of substance. And that's that is probably the biggest problem that we'll see going forward in the dichotomy between the two.

ACOSTA: Scott, I did want to ask you about something that's taking place over the RNC and get your take on what's happening over there. An attorney for Donald Trump will join the RNC as senior counsel for election integrity, Christina Bobb. I'm just wondering what you think of that. I mean, this is a name that came up during the 2020 campaign cycle. She's an election denier. I mean, really, when you're an election denier, you're a reality denier. But is that going to be helpful at all to have election deniers at the RNC? I can't imagine you're happy with this.

JENNINGS: Yes, I don't know her personally, so I can't speak to her qualifications or credentials for this job. I do have great amount of belief that Chris LaCivita, who is effectively taking over the RNC for Trump, knows what he's doing. So, I believe in Chris and I believe in his ability to manage it.

It's not unusual for political parties to hire a bunch of lawyers, the Democrats will as well, in preparation for, you know, a close election. This particular person, I mean, yes, I mean, let's be honest, she said some things and got way out there in the last election.

You know, my general view is if you're going to go to work for a political party or a campaign, the question really is, are you the best person for this job? Do you have the credentials to execute on a plan that helps my campaign win? And, you know, that would be what I'd be asking.

ACOSTA: The thing, though, is that when they say, well, we want to have lawyers focused on election fraud. I mean, it was Donald Trump and a slew of alleged co-conspirators who allegedly tried to pull a fraud on the American people, sending in alternate slates of electors, claiming that there was election fraud in all these states where there was an election fraud. And then one of the persons who was instrumental in that effort back in 2020 is put over at the RNC. Isn't that a troubling sign?

JENNINGS: Well, again, it's not unusual for parties to hire lawyers. This particular person, I mean -- I will say this. I've never been involved in a presidential election. I've been involved in a bunch of them in which the national party wasn't able to attract the best and brightest lawyers from all throughout the conservative movement to help on its election integrity efforts. The same will be true of the Democrats. My question would be, does this person fit into that group? Is this the best possible person you could get for this? I've asked this about Trump's legal team before.

I mean, you know, I think he's had some not so great lawyers representing him in court and it's led to some losses before. If I were in their shoes, I would just say, are these the best people we can get?

[10:25:01]

Because we're going to need the best people if the election is going to be as close as we think it is.

ACOSTA: And, Bakari, do you want the president focusing on this? I mean, and talking about the -- I mean, he's in the Midwest. He's got issues there in the Midwest. We saw what took place in Michigan. He's got to win all these Midwestern states, like Michigan, like Wisconsin, if he has any hope of being re-elected.

Where does this election integrity issue fit into where the president and his campaign should be? Or should they just let the RNC and have these self-inflicted wounds over there and sort of work on the issues they need to work with?

SELLERS: Nobody care about who the RNC hires as a lawyer that is probably seventh and in charge over election integrity. I mean, in Michigan, in particular, you have people who have real issues. I mean, they're talking about wages. They're talking about health care. They're talking about access to quality care. They're talking about schools. They're talking about lead pipes.

I mean, so this, if we had to rank it, would probably come to somewhere around 937,000th on the list of things that Joe Biden can talk about. They're not focused on this at all.

Look, this is for the chattering class. This is for us. This is for D.C. Because at the end of the day, real American people aren't necessarily worried about this and those self-inflicted wounds, just cut by cut by cut, are just indicative of who the Republican Party is.

I do think Chris LaCivita can do a great job at the RNC. I think he's a formidable foe. I think Jason Miller is a formidable for foe. The problem is it ain't many of them over there and that's the biggest problem they have. They don't have much talent on their bench because nobody wants the stain of Donald Trump.

And so those self inflicted wounds will take care of themselves. The president of the United States and the vice president of the United States must stay on task and stay on the message.

ACOSTA: All right, guys, thank you very much, Scott Jennings, Bakari Sellers, good to see you. Thanks so much.

In the meantime, we are 24 hours away from Election Day in Russia. Why the election still matters despite the fact that Vladimir Putin is poised to be president for life. That's next.

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