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New Texas Immigration Law on Hold; House Holds Public Hearing in Biden Impeachment Probe; New York Attorney General Responds to Trump Motion. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired March 20, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:01:13]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: And you are in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

We begin with the breaking news, a response to Donald Trump's claim that it's impossible for him to get a $464 million bond as the appeal plays out. The New York attorney general's office is telling the appeals court to ignore that argument.

CNN's Kara Scannell is joining us from New York right now.

So, Kara, what exactly did the New York attorney general say?

KARA SCANNELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So, Wolf, as Trump made this filing on Monday, making these new claims that they were unable to get a bond, that they approached 30 insurance brokers, well, the New York attorney general's office is telling the appeals court that it's too late for Trump to come to the table with this information, and so it should be ignored.

But they also say, if you are going to accept it, the New York attorney general's office is saying that the appeals court should discount the testimony in their filing. That is the sworn statements by an insurance broker and Trump's top legal officer saying that they both have their own vested interest in this and that their testimony should be discounted.

They're also saying that Trump had said that they approached 30 insurers, no one would do it, no one would do it based on using real estate to support the over half-a-billion-dollar bond that they'd have to put up. So, the attorney general's office is saying, well, maybe they should try to get a couple of insurance companies to come together or provide more information to the court about what the terms are.

Just -- they're trying to get under the hood to understand if Trump just doesn't want to take the terms that are being offered or if they really can't get a deal. Now, the A.G.'s office also saying that what Trump could do is that he could post his own property to the court.

He could turn over real estate to the court as the -- to satisfy this judgment as that goes forward. It's not clear if that's something that Trump's side would be interested in. I have reached out to them this morning, haven't heard back.

But this all comes as the deadline is ticking. Trump's grace period in which he would have to post this bond is on Monday. They are hoping the appeals court will grant their motion to say he doesn't have to post the full amount or doesn't have to post money at all until the appeal is finalized.

We are still waiting to hear from the appeals court what they are going to do in that case. And, if not, the attorney general's office has been pretty clear that they are ready to move forward to try to seize some of his assets and possibly properties as soon as Monday Wolf.

BLITZER: Significant development, indeed. Kara Scannell, thank you very much.

Let's discuss this and more joining us. CNN national correspondent, Kristen Holmes, former adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence Olivia Troye, and CNN senior political commentator Ana Navarro.

Kristen, how concerned is Trump over next week's deadline?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very concerned.

So I talked to a number of people who are in Trump's orbit, allies of Donald Trump's, asked yesterday, what's everyone working on in the campaign, inching towards this actual presidential campaign? They said nothing because right now everybody is really fixated, really upset about how to do this bond, that Trump has been complaining about it.

He has said he is frustrated that they do not have any solutions yet, that they are trying to work on it. But in terms of being fearful, that I am being told that this is something that they are very panicked about.

BLITZER: And amidst all of this, it's clear, Kristen -- and you have been doing a lot of reporting on this -- Trump is inching closer and closer to clarifying his position on a key issue in the 2024 election, the former president suggesting last night he might back a 15-week federal abortion ban.

What can you tell us?

HOLMES: I'm just not sure how close we are to actually clarifying a position.

When it comes to a national abortion ban or abortion at all, Donald Trump tends to use this vague language. Now, what we heard last night was certainly the furthest he's gone. So let's take a listen to that first.

[11:05:03]

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT

U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The number of weeks now, people are agreeing on 15. And I'm thinking in terms of that, and it'll come out to something that's very reasonable.

But people are really -- even hard-liners are agreeing. Seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at. But I will make that announcement at the appropriate time.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HOLMES: And I have asked, what is the appropriate time? What does this actually look like?

And I am told by campaign advisers that there's nothing on their plate to actually unveil a national abortion ban. And, remember, Donald Trump has said both privately and publicly he doesn't believe that abortion is politically a winning issue.

So this would be very surprising for him to do. But, as we know, Donald Trump listens to whoever he's talking to at the moment. And, clearly, I'm told that he has the ear of people who support this kind of national abortion ban.

BLITZER: Yes, he has been blunt, very, very public in saying he's not sure that an abortion ban would help Republicans.

OLIVIA TROYE, FORMER U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL: Yes. And I think he knows that this is a very delicate issue, especially as we get closer to November. So I think Kristen is absolutely correct.

I think you're going to see him waffle on it. I think you're going to see mixed messaging on it. You will see him speak to certain audiences and message it in a certain way. But I think he knows that he cannot win without courting suburban women voters. And, look, he's also got to look at Latino voters.

And, Latinos, sometimes, they are very conservative on issue -- on the issue. Some of them vote more conservative. They're Catholic. So I think he's trying to figure out what's the fine line here on how to push this messaging where he doesn't ostracize a very significant voting population.

BLITZER: I'm anxious to get Ana's thoughts on this as well.

What do you think, Ana?

ANA NAVARRO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, look, even Latinos use birth control. Even Latinos, Catholic Latinos use IVF.

So I think that, regardless of your partisanship, regardless of your religion, this is something that is affecting all of us. Regardless of whether you live in a red state or a blue state, this is affecting all of us. And it's not what Republicans are supposed to do, right? A federal abortion ban? Part of the logic of overturning Roe v. Wade, the Dobbs decision, was that it was supposed to be a state decision. And I think that, regardless of what Donald Trump says and how much he waffles and mixes the messages, he's still going to have to answer for the fact that it was the judges he appointed who led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

And I think that's something that, while he may be having mixed messages, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not going to be mixing their messages and are going to be having him accountable for the decisions he made, the judges he appointed and what they have done and the -- and what it has wreaked on America.

BLITZER: Ana, I want to also get your thoughts on this. Trump says, if the United States Supreme Court does not recognize his claim of total immunity, that would -- quote -- "be the end of the presidency as we know it," his words. What do you make of that?

NAVARRO: I think it's completely the opposite.

I think that if the Supreme Court recognizes the immunity, as he argues it, it would be devastating to the presidency and to our democracy. We are a country where one of our tenets is that nobody is above the law, even if you are president, even if you are a billionaire, regardless of who you are.

And I think that would go very much against that bastion and pillar of American Constitution, American democracy.

BLITZER: It's interesting, Kristen, on another related development. Trump had a pretty good night last night. His candidate for the Senate primary, the Republican primary in Ohio, won. And also exit polls in Ohio indicate that more than 70 percent said it was at least somewhat important that the next senator in Ohio back Trump.

So what does that say to you?

HOLMES: Well, one, it says what we have been saying, which is, Donald Trump is leading the current, modern-day Republican Party, very clearly.

But the other part of this is that Donald Trump didn't just have a kind of good night last night. He had a very good night. There was a little bit of concern as to how exactly Bernie Moreno would pull it out. There was a little bit of late surging from other candidates.

And you have to remember that 2022 is still very much at the front of everyone's mind. There is a reason that Donald Trump hasn't endorsed more candidates moving forward, because he had a bad run in 2022. He was blamed for a lot of the losses because he picked candidates who would win in the primary and lose in the general.

They didn't want to endorse somebody who was going to also possibly lose in the primary, particularly if he got behind them in a state like Ohio, which has gone consistently to Trump by huge margins. So there was a lot of waiting to see how exactly this was going to play out. They were very happy last night when they saw these results come in.

BLITZER: Yes, his candidate won. Winning is what it's all about, I guess.

Olivia, Trump is also now saying he thinks Democrats have been -- and I'm quoting him now -- "very opposed to the Jewish people" after he said Jewish people who vote for Democrats -- quote -- "hate Israel."

Republicans are dodging commenting on Trump's rather alarming statements. Listen to this.

[11:10:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS (R-NY): I don't necessarily agree with the statement, but I do question why individuals who are Jewish would not support Israel.

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): I would disagree with that approach. We should be doing everything we can to build the number of people supporting us, and that means our Jewish friends as well.

REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): I haven't even seen the tape, so let me actually see the tape of what he said.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: And what's clear so far is a lot of Republicans are not coming out and criticizing or condemning Trump's words.

TROYE: Yes, and they should be, because what he is doing is sowing division across our country once again. He knows exactly the type of messaging he's using. It's going to create a significant -- more rise in antisemitism, which we're seeing across the country.

And I think he chooses his words carefully because he knows the impact of them. So he knows that he's going to get a rise out of his voters on this, and he's going to kind of conflict the messaging on this issue. But the reality is, like, I was there when we have talked to him about why his words matter when shootings at the synagogues have happened.

I have been there. He has been specifically told about how to use language that doesn't in -- fuel this rise of this hatred. And so I think, when you see him make statements like this, it's to ostracize the Jewish people.

But I don't understand the get here. You're going into an election. You need to be building a broader coalition. So why do you continue to kind of like push these groups and create division that pushes these people away?

BLITZER: Why do you think he does that?

HOLMES: I don't know why he uses this messaging, but I will say, to that point, what I find so fascinating about this is that Donald Trump has been told by his campaign that they see an opening among liberal Democratic Jewish voters who are unhappy with the way that Biden has handled the Israel-Hamas war.

So they have told him that. And yet this is the rhetoric that he chooses to use when messaging to the Jewish people, which is where there's really a conflict here in terms of what they're trying to do in a general election and what kind of messaging he's actually putting out there.

BLITZER: Yes, it's really an awful situation, indeed.

Ana, President Biden, meanwhile, is out there campaigning in the West once again today as he tries to make his case specifically right now to Latino voters. And he's saying, Trump -- and I'm quoting the president now -- "despises Latinos."

Do you think this is an effective strategy?

NAVARRO: Trump has and the Republican Party has definitely made inroads here where I am, in places like Miami-Dade with Cuban Americans, with Venezuelan Americans, talking about socialism, saying -- for decades, they have been building the case, Republicans, that Democrats are -- sympathize with communists, with socialists and such.

I think it's very smart of Joe Biden to make the contrast and talk about what he brings to the Latino community. I think it's very smart for him to be doing it this early. One of the things that I think any community hates is when, in the last two months of a campaign, somebody shows up to seek the vote.

And, look, on the issue you were talking about before, which is the Jewish vote and the claims that Trump is making regarding Democrats and Jewish support, how do you take this guy seriously when he is literally, not figuratively, using Hitler rhetoric to describe Latinos, to describe immigrants, when he is talking about poisoning the blood of America.

That is not coming out of context. That is not coming in a vacuum. Those are Hitler words. Those are -- it's the same type of rhetoric that Adolf Hitler used. So I have a very hard time understanding how Trump could be making this argument about Israel and -- when he is at the same time quoting the man who killed six million Jews in the Holocaust.

BLITZER: Yes, and he's saying that these Latino migrants trying to come into the United States are animals, his word. He called them animals.

All right, Ana, thank you very much. Kristen and Olivia, thanks to you as well.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: Also what Hitler did.

BLITZER: Yes, I'm just emphasizing your basic point, Ana. Thank you very much.

Right now, there's other important news we're following as well. The House Oversight Committee is holding a very public hearing in the impeachment inquiry of President Biden. It's the second hearing of its kind since Republicans launched their investigation into the Biden family some six months ago.

The president's son Hunter Biden was invited to testify this morning, but declined. Republicans do have an empty chair with his name on it, a dramatic gesture for what could be a rather spectacle of a hearing.

CNN's Melanie Zanona is up on Capitol Hill, watching all of this unfold.

What are we -- what are the Republicans hoping to accomplish, Melanie?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, Wolf, this is only the second public hearing that Republicans have had related to their impeachment inquiry, and they have yet to prove that President Biden profited off of his son's foreign business deals.

[11:15:00]

So there is immense pressure on Republicans to prove why this inquiry was worth pursuing in the first place. And in the absence of Hunter, they have turned to other individuals who have claimed without evidence that Biden has been more involved in his sons foreign business deals than he has let on. And

earlier today, at the start of the hearing, House Oversight Chair Jim Comer offered a possible new explanation for why Biden was involved. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): There are only two explanations for this. The first is that Joe Biden knows exactly what he's doing and knows a handshake, a wink and a smile is enough for him to maintain, as Jim Biden famously calls it, plausible deniability.

Or Joe Biden is being led around by his family and has no idea who he's meeting with or what message he is sending and is truly an elderly man with a poor memory. There's no other explanation.

Either Joe Biden is complicit or Joe Biden is incompetent.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZANONA: So, Comer trying to make this as politically damaging as possible for Biden, even if their core claims about the president don't pan out to be true.

And, meanwhile, there are major questions about whether they're going to have the votes to impeach Biden. That is looking increasingly less likely. There could be criminal referrals and a final report. For now, though, Comer focused on trying to focus on this hearing that has yet to prove any of their claims -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Melanie, you will keep us informed on what's going on. Thank you very much.

Melanie Zanona up on Capitol Hill.

Still ahead this hour: A rather contentious Texas immigration law that raised fears of racial profiling is on hold again after an 11th- hour court decision. We're live in El Paso.

And Israel is pressing on with an operation against Hamas at Gaza's largest hospital. We will have a live report coming up from Jerusalem.

Plus, another P.R. nightmare for Britain's royal family, a report that a hospital employee tried to access the princess of Wales' private medical records.

Stay with us. You're live here in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:21:44]

BLITZER: Right now, a federal appeals court is hearing new arguments about a controversial immigration law in Texas. The law lets state and local law enforcement arrest and deport people suspected of entering the country illegally.

Late last night, that appeals court put the law back on hold just hours after the United States Supreme Court said that Texas can begin enforcing it.

We have got more on the story from CNN senior national correspondent Ed Lavandera. He's on the scene for us in El Paso, Texas. And CNN senior Supreme Court analyst Joan Biskupic, she's here with me in Washington.

Ed, lots of back-and-forth going on over the past 24 hours. It's getting a bit confusing. First of all, what are law enforcement agencies along the border where you are actually saying?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have spoken with a number of sheriffs and police chiefs across the state who are closely watching this legal roller coaster continue to play out today.

But what many of these law enforcement agencies, Wolf, are preparing for is trying to get a sense of how this law, Senate Bill 4, S.B.4, as it's known here in Texas, how it would be implemented on the ground day to day if it is allowed to go into effect.

And one of the things that we're hearing, the common theme that we're hearing from law enforcement organizations all across the state right now is that it doesn't appear that there is a great deal of an appetite or a desire to go out and have law enforcement officers solely enforcing this law and asking people for documentation, immigration documentation that proves their legal status here in the country.

They are saying that, if it does come up in the course of investigating other crimes that it would then be enforced. But the idea of sending out law enforcement officers to go around and start asking people if they have entered the country illegally does not sound like something that sheriffs and police chiefs are going to be ordering their agents to do here on the ground.

Listen to the police chief in Laredo, who talks about the uncertainty that his department is facing as they wait to find out the legal future of this law here in Texas.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIGUEL RODRIGUEZ, LAREDO, TEXAS, POLICE CHIEF: Let me be very clear that this law can be applied during a lawful detention or an arrest. It can't be just by seeing somebody and thinking, the officer thinking that he's not from here and then asking for documents. It doesn't work like that.

It also has to be where -- of course, you see somebody crossing the river, automatically, you know that he's violating that law. So that applies there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And, Wolf, one of the reasons in -- that we hear over and over from these law enforcement departments across the state is that there's a manpower issue.

There's a concern about jail space and then there's others who are saying that, look, this is simply the job of Border Patrol and federal immigration officials; it should not be the job of local law enforcement departments across the state -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Very interesting.

Ed on the scene for us in El Paso, thank you very much.

Joan Biskupic, you're an expert on the Supreme Court. Here's what a lot of people are confused about. The United States Supreme Court says that the Texas law can be implemented, despite all the controversy. But then a lower appeals court says it's got to be put on hold once again.

[11:25:00]

I thought the Supreme Court was supreme.

(LAUGHTER)

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SENIOR SUPREME COURT ANALYST: It is. And it won't let you forget that.

But the order that they were responding to by the Fifth Circuit was effectively usurped by the Fifth Circuit last night with its new order. These are all temporary preliminary orders, and what's going on right now, Wolf, is a hearing that could lead to a more formal order.

I know all this legal zigzagging is a bit complicated, but the bottom line is, right now, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit is hearing arguments from the state of Texas and from the Biden administration and from immigrant rights groups about whether the law should take effect while appeals play out. Which side would be harmed?

And let me just read something from Justice Sotomayor yesterday when the Supreme Court acted that I think tells you kind of the stakes. She dissented. She was one of three liberals who dissented. And she said: "The court invites further chaos and crisis in immigration enforcement. Texas upends the federal state balance of power that has existed for over a century in which the national government has had exclusive authority over entry and removal of non-citizens."

Now, what the three judges who are hearing this case right now, Wolf, as we speak, are trying to decide is, while we wait to have the merits of this issue over whether the state of Texas or the federal government has final authority over what's happening at the border, should the law take effect? Which side would actually be harmed?

So it's a question of harm. And, right now, the Texas solicitor general, a man by the name of Aaron Nielson, is trying to convince this panel that, if this law does not take effect, Texas as a state would be harmed.

The Biden administration, Department of Justice lawyer, will then come up next and say, no, it will actually be the administration and its supremacy over immigration and people at the border, the rights of migrants, they will be harmed if this takes effect.

April 3 then will be a hearing in the Fifth Circuit on actually the constitutionality of this law. But, right now, we're at this very critical stage of, can this law be enforced?

BLITZER: And we will see what happens in the coming days.

BISKUPIC: Yes.

BLITZER: Joan Biskupic, thank you very, very much.

There's more news we're following, Secretary of State Antony Blinken getting ready to head to Israel on Friday, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, prepares to speak virtually to Republican lawmakers here in Washington later this afternoon.

We have details just ahead.

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