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Trump's Pick of Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) as Attorney General Stuns Congress; Trump Places High Price on Loyalty in Cabinet Picks; Trump Picks Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired November 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: Audible gasps, intense shock, no good comment. Those are just some of the reactions, some of the exact quotes we are getting to President-elect Donald Trump picking Matt Gaetz as his Attorney General. It confirmed Gaetz would lead a department he has spent years smearing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): We try to convince ourselves that the Department of Justice is different, that they're somehow exempt from the rules of Washington that say, help my friends and punish my enemies. They aren't. They're probably the worst.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: Plus, big changes coming for the battle against climate change. Trump's pick to lead the EPA has repeatedly voted against climate crisis legislation. New reporting on Lee Zeldin's plan for the agency.

Good morning. You are live in the CNN Newsroom. I'm Jim Acosta in Washington.

We start the hour with a question, who, or perhaps another question, what? That reaction, just part of the shock happening up on Capitol Hill this morning and across Washington for that matter, as Congress is digesting the Matt Gaetz news.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I was shocked that he has been nominated.

SEN. ROGER WICKER (R-MS): I'm having trouble.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What about Matt Gaetz?

Do you support him?

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): We're in a confirmation process.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I don't know yet what I think about that one.

RAJU: Do you have any concerns about it?

GRAHAM: We'll see.

RAJU: Do you think Matt Gaetz is confirmable?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): We'll find out, won't we.

RAJU: Senator Kennedy, what do you think of Matt Gaetz as attorney general?

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): Happy Thanksgiving.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure is going to be an interesting confirmation hearing, as I think most members' predictions.

He was not in anybody's, top 5, 10, or even 50 list of the folks who I was speaking to.

REPORTER: Do you think he'll be confirmed by the Senate?

REP. THOMAS MASSIE (R-KY): He doesn't need to. It'll be recessed. He's the attorney general. Suck it up.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): I like Matt a lot. I know him very well, and I'm confident that if the Senate confirms him, he would do a good job.

SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Just kind of like a God tier kind of trolling just to trigger a meltdown.

The good ones are going to come by my colleagues on the other side, the GOP, on how they can justify voting for that jerk off.

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): You could literally hear the jaws dropping to the floor of Republican senators who are now going to be in a position to stand up to Donald Trump in a way that they have been unwilling to.

Matt Gaetz is dangerously unqualified.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is a gonzo agent of chaos.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: It's quite the montage. Joining us now is former U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman. Harry, I mean, I guess you could laugh if it wasn't so sad. You've been very vocal about your thoughts on the Gaetz nomination. You posted this quote saying, count this as the day where the DOJ is concerned that the suggestion, hope that Trump might install extreme but not crazy Republicans who are mortal threats to the rule of law was extinguished. Gaetz would absolutely win a parlor game contest of named the worst possible A.G. nominee. Care to expand on those thoughts?

HARRY LITMAN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: Sure. Look, he's not only an awful choice. He's a perverse one. I don't have to amplify everything you heard from Congress. He's designed not to further the essential duties of the DOJ, not even to reform them, but to deliver a kick in the teeth. He is chosen exactly for that reason to be a provocateur.

I just want to say that within the Department of Justice, within the ranks, former members of the Department of Justice, Democrat, Republican, very wide, there is absolute distress and horror at the selection and real doubt, about whether the Department of Justice can withstand what will obviously be an assault delivered by Gaetz.

And, look, Trump wants to be sure of loyalty for the slim possibility of being indicted or gone after himself. That is 0.01 percent of what the Department of Justice does. And the other 99.99 percent is essential to the Constitution, essential to the rule of law. It's a body blow, not just to DOJ, but to our democracy.

ACOSTA: Yes. I mean, and the bipartisan reaction was pretty fierce, I mean, almost across the board.

[10:05:03]

And we heard from one Republican lawmaker though, who said, Gaetz does not need to be confirmed because, it may be a recess appointment. Can Trump get away with that? I mean, I thought recess appointments were supposed to be rare.

LITMAN: They are supposed to be rare and they also have to follow specific rules. It has to be a bona fide recess and the like. But the last nine years have been a lesson, and all the things Trump can get away with because he'll do it brazenly.

The legal answer here, Jim, is it's a gray area, and he may not be able to do it. But just the fact that with 53 people in the Senate, his A.G. nominee is someone whom he may have to bypass the Senate for to keep the American people from airing the dirty laundry and the great unpopularity that Gaetz has on the Hill tells you volumes about the nature of the choice. Stand by to see if he can make it happen with a recess appointment.

ACOSTA: And does this help Trump go after his enemies? I mean, is that essentially why he's putting Matt Gaetz at Department of Justice, it sort of creates sort of a glide path for going after his enemies?

LITMAN: Yes. And, again, we are on such a narrow sliver of what the DOJ does. I think that's half of it. And the other half is to be totally sure that no one will go after him from there, that he has his Roy Cohn, that the entire Department of Justice is the Donald Trump law firm rather than the law firm of the people. That's the insurance policy that Matt Gaetz gives them.

Remember, Gaetz himself came within an eyelash of being indicted and his conduct is still being investigated and is still potentially live. It's a disaster all around.

ACOSTA: All right. Harry Litman, thanks very much for your time and your thoughts. We appreciate it.

Let's bring in CNN Senior Crime and Justice Reporter Katelyn Polantz and CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig.

Elie, let me start with you first. You write that Trump's nomination of Gaetz is a sign of dark intentions. Gaetz as United States attorney general is almost an oxymoron. What do you mean by that?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: It's, first of all, unfathomable. I think to anyone who's worked in the Justice Department to have somebody of Matt Gaetz's background, just his legal background in the office. I saw our graphic before said limited legal experience. We're being kind with that chyron. I mean --

ACOSTA: There are a lot of people in D.C. who didn't know he was a lawyer. I've been talking to people yesterday in politics and media just didn't know.

HONIG: He practiced for a couple years on a very local basis in Florida. If that's your practice, God bless. But you're not equipped to become the United States attorney general. He's certainly never been a prosecutor.

Now, as to the dark intentions part of it, one of the biggest questions as we sit here 60-some, 70-ish days away from Donald Trump's second swearing in his will he truly weaponized DOJ in the way that he has promised too? He has a long history of saying he was going to prosecute people and then it not happening, but is that different now? And I think the nomination of Gaetz is a dark indicator that he is serious about it because that's the guy you would nominate to go after your political enemies. That's exactly the guy.

ACOSTA: Yes. I mean, for folks who were saying, oh, it's not going to be that bad, and, you know, maybe Trump has learned from the first administration and he won't make the same mistake, I mean, this is a sign that what he has learned is by having people like Matt Gaetz in there, he can get what he wants.

And, Katelyn Polantz, I mean, what are you hearing from people at the Justice Department? Because what Harry Litman was saying a few moments ago is it sounds like this is sending shockwaves through the department.

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Total shock, total shock. People that I was talking to yesterday were on very quickly on large text chains with attorneys at the Justice Department that they knew and saying it was absolute disbelief in the ranks.

This is a department that functions in courts across the country. More than 90 U.S. attorney's offices have career prosecutors going into court every day prosecuting regular Americans for federal crimes. And this is something that with Gaetz having so little experience as a lawyer, not just that, no experience as a prosecutor, no experience trying cases.

There are judges and there are ethics that lawyers have to follow. And we have seen in the past when prosecutors lose faith in what their political leadership is doing at the Justice Department, people refuse to do what they're told. They go into court and will resign from cases. We saw that at the end of the bar years. And judges do get mad at the Justice Department. They have to be able to have legitimate arguments and facts that they're presenting in court.

ACOSTA: And Gaetz has long been a critic of the DOJ and other government agencies. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): We either get this government back on our side or we defund and get rid of, abolish the FBI, CDC, ATF, DOJ, every last one of them if they do not come to heel.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[10:10:05]

ACOSTA: And, Elie, just yesterday, Matt Gaetz was still the focus of a House Ethics investigation over allegations of sex crimes. What happens now that he has resigned from Congress and will the ethics report ever be made public?

HONIG: So, the technical answer is that the House no longer has jurisdiction over him once he resigns. Whether it will be made public, it could leak. The House can always sort of vote to release it. But I think that quote from Matt Gaetz sort of points up his fundamental unfitness, his fundamental lack of familiarity with what DOJ is. He says we're going to defund the FBI and ATF. I'm not sure even knows what those -- I assume he knows that the FBI is, but I don't know that he even knows what the ATF is. You're going to defund these agencies?

And another important thing when people think of the attorney general of the United States, they think of the guy or woman sitting over all of what I was, all the federal prosecutors. There's so much more to it. You are in charge of all those law enforcement agencies, DEA, ATF, FBI, the marshals, the prison system, the solicitor general who decides what the government does in the Supreme Court. It is a position of astonishing power. And Matt Gaetz, I don't think, is in any position to actually exercise that responsibly.

ACOSTA: And, Katelyn, I want to look back at something that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN earlier this year.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): If there's anybody who should go to trial, I mean, Gaetz is one who should be convicted in a trial.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ACOSTA: I mean, Katelyn, I mean, there have been Republican leaders who have been making very serious allegations about Matt Gaetz. And I guess one of the questions is whether or not we're going to find out what's in this House Ethics Committee report. Are we going to find out what this committee has uncovered as it pertains to Matt Gaetz's behavior?

POLANTZ: I mean, that's really up to the House, but to put a point on what Kevin McCarthy is saying, they're clearly not friends.

ACOSTA: They're not friends, yes.

POLANTZ: But what he was saying is, what the House looked at and had been looking at in their ethics report is what the Justice Department and the FBI believed they had a reason to investigate criminally before a grand jury for some time. There were witnesses, there were cooperating witnesses that testified against Gaetz. There were young women in this alleged sexual misconduct, sex trafficking investigation.

He was not ultimately charged, but if he is the attorney general, he would have access to that portfolio of his theoretical people he may perceive as his enemies, the witnesses against him and all of the investigative files that the FBI would have, maybe not the grand jury records. It's a question of how much the Justice Department could actually look at those are in the court system. But this is just an astonishing turn to have somebody that would have been investigated like that nominated for this position.

ACOSTA: Yes. Elie, if you want to go after your enemies or your perceived enemies, I mean, having control of the Justice Department, you would have basically access to the mother load of information.

HONIG: For sure. And here's the thing.

ACOSTA: This is J. Edgar Hoover stuff.

HONIG: Yes, I mean, there are safeguards in place, but those don't really kick in until after there's been an indictment, right? Then you get -- I mean, grand juries -- look, I've said this before. Prosecutors can get grand juries to indict almost anything. But then you have judges and juries and appeals courts and defense lawyers.

But up until that point, when it's investigative, prosecutors of almost unfettered unilateral power. You can make someone's life miserable. Talk to anyone who's been investigated. Matt Gaetz should understand this. He was investigated, not charged. It's a miserable experience, and that's where I think a lot of the danger lies.

ACOSTA: All right. Katelyn, Elie, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Coming up, it's another pick that has many in Washington scratching their heads. Tulsi Gabbard has been selected as the director of National Intelligence. I'll be joined by Democratic Congressman Adam Smith to get his take. That is next.

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ACOSTA: Today, there's bipartisan backlash up on Capitol Hill following some controversial cabinet picks by President-elect Donald Trump, including Democrat turned Trump supporter Tulsi Gabbard as his director of National Intelligence.

Joining me now, Washington Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, he's the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee.

Congressman, your response to the Tulsi Gabbard pick, what do you think?

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Well, to all the different picks here, and I have a specific response on that, but I listened to your previous segment. The only thing that surprises me about this is the surprise. Donald Trump has told us for four years just exactly what he was going to do.

And it really comes down to two things. Number one, he was going to set fire to every aspect of the government. He didn't believe in any of it. What we've built in this country over almost 250 years now, you know, top to bottom, he didn't care about any of it. He was going to tear it all down as quickly and as effectively as he possibly could, number one. And number two, he was going to rebuild it so that it served his ego and his interests, period, full stop. He told us that for like four years and now everyone's like, oh my god, Matt Gaetz and, you know, Tulsi Gabbard and Peter Hegseth, who are these people? What is he thinking?

He told you what he was thinking. He does not believe in the institutions of this country. He doesn't believe that we've done anything worthwhile, apparently, during the course of those 250 years. He wants to rip it all apart so that he can serve his ego.

Now, if you want to get into a parallel universe conversation, where you and I are talking pre-Trump, and we're having an analysis of, oh gosh, what would you look for in a DNI? You know, sure, we can point out that Tulsi Gabbard has no intelligence experience, whatsoever, but that's not the point, okay? She isn't being put in this job to do the job, or to be good at it. She's being put there to serve Donald Trump's interests, which again, sorry, I will emphasize, he told us he was going to do.

[10:20:06]

ACOSTA: And so why do people vote for it then?

SMITH: Well, I'm very troubled by that. You know, I don't know. I mean, I think part of the problem and one of my complaints in September and October, there were -- a lot of people certainly believe -- a lot of people are upset about where our country is going, and I get that. And they were looking for whatever most -- the biggest different thing they could find, and that was Trump, okay? But there were a lot of other people who saw everything that I just said and still spent September and October picking knits with Kamala Harris. Is Kamala Harris the perfect candidate? No, it's like, well, okay, Donald Trump's doing all this stuff, but, you know, I'm just not 100 percent sure on all of the details of Kamala Harris's economic plan.

I think at the end of the day, despite what Trump did, too many people just didn't really understand the stakes. And it's not that I didn't have my problems with Kamala Harris, sure, but I understood that life is a choice. And this was the choice that we had, and in my humble opinion, we made the wrong one.

ACOSTA: Well, and, Congressman, I mean, choices, elections, they come with consequences. Now, Tulsi Gabbard has been tapped to be the director of National Intelligence, and she has been accused of being soft on Bashar al-Assad, the dictator in Syria. She has been accused of being soft on Vladimir Putin. She was repeating Kremlin talking points after Russia invaded Ukraine. What does that mean to have somebody like Tulsi Gabbard running the nation's intelligence community?

SMITH: Look, it's incredibly dangerous. Let me just say, you know, I served with Tulsi. I was chairman of the Armed Services Committee when she served on the Armed Services Committee. I still text with her from time to time. She's a perfectly nice person, but two things, one, as I said, no experience, and, two, all the stuff that you just said is kind of troubling the degree to which she seems to have sympathy for people who should be U.S. adversaries. And now she's in charge of all of our secrets. It is a deeply, deeply troubling situation.

ACOSTA: And Trump's pick for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth of Fox, has said women should not serve in combat roles. He has said that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs should be fired for being, quote, too woke. You're the ranking member of the Armed Services Committee. What's your response to all that?

SMITH: Yes, I'll go with deeply troubling again, and you've seen the quote where he explains that, you know, what Putin's doing in Ukraine, and I swore on MSNBC last night just quoting him, so I won't say exactly what said, hey, Putin's just looking to get his stuff back. You know, Ukraine used to be his and he's just looking to get it back, okay?

So, yes, it's all troubling from a policy perspective. If you assume that the United States government is a serious entity that's trying to do good in the world, then, yes, it's going to be a problematic pick. But, again, reference my rant from the start of this, that's not why Trump picked him. Trump didn't pick him to be a good secretary of defense. Trump picked him to make sure that he does Trump's bidding. And it's really, really dangerous given where we're at in the world right now and given the need just to run the Defense Department. I mean, just to make those decisions on personnel, on procurement, you know, meeting with allies, to have no experience in those areas is incredibly dangerous.

ACOSTA: And, Congressman, is there anything Democrats up on Capitol Hill can do about this? I know you can't vote on the Senate confirmation process, but can House Democrats do anything to stop this Trump agenda from steamrolling, all of you? SMITH: Well, there's a couple things we can do, and certainly we can fight back. But the other thing, and I don't have time, I know I'm going over here, the Democratic Party also needs to sort of fix itself. Our brand has been deeply damaged. It was deeply damaged by things like defund the police and abolish ICE, you know, and we ought to have open borders. There's a movement in my community in the Seattle-King County area to abolish the criminal justice system. We need to let the American people know that we as Democrats, we're not for that, we're against it.

We have a branding problem, to answer your earlier question of how Trump won in spite of all of this, in spite of all of this, people just look at the Democratic Party and they see something that is out of touch with the majority of people. A big part of that is because of some of these extreme left policies that while people like Kamala Harris didn't necessarily embrace, they didn't make it clear to the American people that they were going to stand up against them. That put us in this position.

Now, again, all of that pales in comparison to what Donald Trump is doing to our country. We as Democrats can present a better alternative for the American people. It's the most important thing we have to do.

ACOSTA: All right. Congressman Adam Smith, thanks very much for your time. Thanks for the candid comments. We appreciate it.

SMITH: Thanks, Jim.

ACOSTA: All right. Still to come, President-elect Trump's pick for attorney general has a history of whitewashing January 6th.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GAETZ: We know this, January 6th last year wasn't an insurrection, but it very well may have been a fedsurrection.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[10:25:07]

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ACOSTA: President-elect Donald Trump's election of Congressman Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is setting shockwaves across Washington. Following Trump's announcement, Gaetz immediately resigned from the House just before a House Ethics Committee would vote on the release of a report investigating his alleged sexual misconduct and drug use.

Let's discuss more now with former adviser to Vice President Mike Pence. Pence, Olivia Troye, CNN Political Commentator and former Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, and former Director of Strategic Communications for Trump's 2020 Campaign Marc Lotter.

[10:30:04]

I think I got all of that right.

Olivia, let me start with you first.