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Trump Heads to Florida Ahead of Hearing. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired June 12, 2023 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR/CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, everyone. Poppy is off today. I'm Phil Mattingly, here with Erica Hill. It's Monday, June 12.

[06:00:29]

We are at the beginning of a huge historic week. Former President Trump expected to travel to Miami today, ahead of his federal court appearance tomorrow. He's set to be arraigned on 37 felony counts, related to his handling of classified information.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Local and federal officials say they are ramping up security ahead of the appearance. Sources tell CNN the far- right group, the Proud Boys, are discussing traveling to Florida to show their support for the former president.

MATTINGLY: And hours after the former president's scheduled court appearance, Trump is planning to hold a fundraiser at his golf club in New Jersey. We're also expecting him to speak there before that event.

HILL: His first public comments about the indictment, though, coming over the weekend at rallies in Georgia and North Carolina. Trump also telling Politico he has no plans to drop out of the 2024 race, if convicted, saying, quote, "I'll never leave."

MATTINGLY: And Americans are weighing in. They are split about how they feel about the indictment. Nearly half think Trump should have been charged in the half, while almost the same number think the indictment was politically motivated.

CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

You know those weeks that start where you just kind of take a deep breath and say, this is going to be a week.

HILL: It is going to be a week. The weeks that almost feel like they have been a week before they have started. There's a lot of anticipation. There are a lot of questions about what will happen in the next 24, 36 hours.

It's going to be a week.

MATTINGLY: It will be a week. And we have the best team in the business. HILL: Indeed, we do.

MATTINGLY: We'll cover every moment of it.

HILL: Our team of reporters and analysts are ready for you, ready for us this morning to break down all of these angles for you.

Alayna Treene is in Bedminster, New Jersey. Katelyn Polantz is outside the federal courthouse in Miami. That, of course, is where the former president is set to appear. Audie Cornish and Sara Murray here with us in the studio all morning, as well as Elie Honig. We'll break down the biggest takeaways for us from this indictment.

A lot to cover, understandably, this morning. Sara, if we begin with you, when we look ahead to this high-stakes court appearance slated for tomorrow, 3 p.m., in Miami. What can we expect?

SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, look, we are expecting Donald Trump to make this initial appearance. And he was pretty candid over the weekend with one reporter, saying, Look, nobody wants to be indicted. This is perhaps an honest admission from Donald Trump, but he certainly isn't taking the news of his indictment quietly.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY (voice-over): Former President Donald Trump on the campaign trail, slamming the 37-count indictment against him that was unsealed Friday.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration's weaponized department of injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country.

MURRAY (voice-over): Trump, speaking before crowds of supporters in Georgia and North Carolina, railed against the Justice Department and called the investigation into his mishandling of classified documents a witch hunt.

TRUMP: Witch hunt. Witch hunt. Scam, hoax. It's called election interference, and they're doing the best they can with it.

MURRAY (voice-over): Something his former attorney general disputes.

BILL BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: This idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous. Yes, he's been a victim in the past, but this is much different. He's not a victim here. He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents. Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has.

MURRAY (voice-over): But Trump's staunchest allies are rallying to his defense.

REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): They're indicting President Trump on Tuesday for having material that he declassified, that was protected by the Secret Service. And the people who are doing it is the administration and the Justice Department from his opponent in the upcoming presidential election. I mean, this is as political as it gets.

MURRAY (voice-over): The indictment paints a damning picture of a former president who allegedly kept some of the country's most sensitive secrets in unsecure locations throughout his Mar-a-Lago resort, including a ballroom, a bathroom, and a storage room. A far cry from the stance he took as a presidential candidate in 2016.

TRUMP: We can't have someone in the Oval Office who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "confidential" or "classified."

MURRAY (voice-over): The documents Trump had in his possession were concerning United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack."

In an interview with Politico aboard his plane, Trump told a reporter he does not believe he'll be convicted; and he doesn't plan on taking a plea deal, though he left open the possibility of doing so "if they pay me some damages."

[06:05:11]

Trump is set to travel to Miami later today and appear in federal court there on Tuesday. In anticipation, local and federal officials are ramping up security, and the FBI is monitoring potential threats of violence.

MAYOR FRANCIS SUAREZ (R), MIAMI: We want to make sure that all our citizens know that they're going to be able to express their First Amendment rights and at the same time, we're going to keep them safe, and we're going to make sure that there is no disorder.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY (on camera): Now Donald Trump has some logistics to sort out before he shows up at court on Tuesday. He is headed to Miami later today, where he is going to meet with some of the remaining members of his legal team. He parted ways with two of his lawyers last week. He's going to sort out his Florida-based legal team. So a lot to do before he shows up in federal court, guys.

MATTINGLY: And more of that when he leaves. Stick around, Murray, because we're also expecting Donald Trump to plead not guilty. Making very clear that's the case, after he surrenders himself tomorrow in Miami.

CNN senior crime and justice reporter, Katelyn Polantz, is live outside the federal courthouse, where he's expected to appear.

And Katelyn, what are we actually expecting over the course of the next 36 hours?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Phil, Donald Trump needs to prepare. He's going to be in federal court for the first time. And so he's going to need to talk to his lawyers a little bit about what to expect, how that proceeding will work and how federal court itself works.

It's different than the state court in New York, where he was arraigned in a separate criminal case. And so what he's doing today is he traveling to Miami. He is going to be meeting with his lawyers when he stays overnight here at a resort he has.

And then tomorrow, he's going to be coming into court alongside the other man charged in this case, Walt Nauta, his body man. A man who was with him over the weekend. We're going to have to wait and see whether the judge will allow them to continue being in the same place, communicating with one another as they await trial. It's actually not very typical to allow them to keep talking, but they both will be appearing in court.

It might be quite a short proceeding, but we expect them both to plead not guilty tomorrow.

And then, once the legal part of the day is done, Phil, Donald Trump travels back to Bedminster, New Jersey, where he plans to give a political speech.

MATTINGLY: Katelyn, you are probably the keenest observer of courts and how this all works at her organization. There's speculation this could take years. This could take months and then years. Walk us through how and when this trial, any type of verdict would actually play out.

POLANTZ: Well, we might not know the answer to that right away, Phil. Because tomorrow, whenever Donald Trump comes into court, we do expect, based on the court record, that he's going to be in front of a magistrate judge. So just sort of some of the initial things will be taken care of there.

But then, when he gets in front of the federal district judge, the lifetime appointee, Aileen Cannon, who Donald Trump himself appointed, she's going to be able to determine exactly what the timing might be, how long it might take for trial.

And Jack Smith, the special counsel, when he spoke the other day after this indictment, he -- he said immediately, we do want to seek a speedy trial. So there can be a quick trial, a speedy trial, a right that every American has, or it can be a complex trial.

Now it's one thing that's unclear here, is how much the classified part of this is going to play into it and how much it drags out. Donald Trump certainly might want to make that happen -- Phil.

MATTINGLY: Yes. No question. We're going to get more into the judge, Aileen Cannon, in a little bit. Katelyn Polantz, stick with us. We'll check back in.

HILL: CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig joining us from the Magic Wall this morning. So the indictment itself, Elie, tells a story. Walk us through some the takeaways here. ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Erica, there's so much of

interest in this indictment. Really a remarkable document.

The first thing that jumped out to me is just how significant and sensitive these documents are. The indictment tells us that these are documents created for and by agencies like the CIA, the Department of Defense, National Security Agency and the Department of Energy.

And the indictment actually gives us a real sense of what's in these documents. These documents include information about our defense and weapons capabilities; our potential vulnerabilities to attack; United States nuclear programs; and plans for possible retaliation by the United States against other countries. It doesn't get much more sensitive than that.

And that matters legally, because the first law that Donald Trump is charged under requires that the documents contain national defense information. That's why this is so important.

MATTINGLY: It's tough to rank what's the most jarring elements of this indictment, but one of them has to be the photos related to how these documents were actually kept at Mar-a-Lago. Walk people through that.

HONIG: These documents took a wild ride through Mar-a-Lago. At first when they were brought down, they were stored here. Yes, that is a stage in a ballroom, the white and gold ballroom where events were still being held at the time.

They were then moved out of the white-and-gold ballroom into the business center briefly. And then their next stop on the Mar-a-Lago tour was -- this is a bathroom, a shower and a bathroom in what they call the Lake Room. They were stored there for some time.

[06:10:09]

And then finally, they were moved to this area, the storage room, which becomes an important part of the story.

And at one point one of Donald Trump's handlers goes in and sees these documents spilled out on the ground, including -- they've been sort of obscured in the indictment. But including sensitive classified information. So these documents were moved all around in a clearly unsecure environment.

HILL: So as they're moving all around Mar-a-Lago, do we have an idea of how they were being used, how they were being looked at, how the former president was perhaps using or accessing the documents?

MATTINGLY: So this is one of the most important questions that the indictment answers. What was he doing with these documents? We now know that there were two incidents where Donald Trump used these documents up at Bedminster, his club in New Jersey. This is what our team, Paula Reid and team, reported before the indictment came out.

This is the most important one. In July of 2021, Trump's meeting with two writers who were working on a book. And he wants to convince them that a certain story that appeared in the media is wrong. And so he is brandishing what appears to be a document, and he says to them -- and this is a quote from an audio recording, "Secret. This is secret information. Look at this. See, as president I could have declassified. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."

That to me is one of the most important pieces of evidence in the case.

And then the indictment tells us there's another incident about a month later where Trump shows a classified map to a member of a political action committee, also at Bedminster.

So he's using these documents. He's showing them to other people who do not have security clearance. He's using them to try to shape favorable coverage for himself.

MATTINGLY: So Elie, there's the national defense information, Espionage Act, elements of the indictment. But there's also obstruction in this indictment. What more can you tell us about that?

HONIG: Yes. So the key moment here happens in May of 2022. DOJ serves a subpoena. They say, you have to give us all of your classified or sensitive documents at Mar-a-Lago.

Trump goes out and puts together a legal team, including this lawyer, Evan Corcoran, and he basically says to Evan Corcoran, I'm going to have you search this area of the storage room. That's where the documents are. Corcoran does that, and he goes through the storage room, and he comes out with 38 classified documents. Corcoran and the team put together a certification, saying, We've done a diligent search. These are the documents we've found.

Of course, we know, though, that months later there were over a hundred more classified documents found when the FBI went in to do its search warrant. How could that be? The indictment answers that question. There were, as I said before, documents kept in this storage room.

And the indictment tells us that before Evan Corcoran went in -- he wouldn't have any way to know this -- 64 documents -- excuse me, 64 boxes of documents were taken out of the storage room, and then right before Corcoran came in, 30 why taken back.

Now, we can do the math there: 34 boxes were left out of, removed from and left out of that storage closet before Evan Corcoran went in. And that's why Donald Trump and Walt Nauta are charged with obstruction, because they misled the lawyer, knowing that the lawyer, intentionally or not -- it appears not -- would mislead DOJ.

HILL: So also, Elie, there were questions about why these charges were filed, why we're talking about Florida at this point. Most of it because of what you just laid out.

HONIG: There's so much in the what of the indictment but the where if really important, too. DOJ did choose to charge this case in Florida. The right decision legally, but it certainly gives Donald Trump a favorable venue. His jury pool will be much more favorably inclined towards Donald Trump, just looking at voting numbers.

And the judge in this case is Aileen Cannon. We're going to talk about her more later in the shot, if I can tease that. She's been the subject of a bit of controversy, because she made a ruling earlier in this case on the special master in favor of Donald Trump that was then reversed by the court of appeals.

So at the moment, she is the judge; and I think Donald Trump's team is going to be happy about that.

MATTINGLY: All right, Elie. Stay with us.

I want to turn now to Audie Cornish, who is here.

And outside of the interior design opinions related to bathrooms, when you went through this indictment, what kind of grabbed your attention? What stood out to you?

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think, actually, I looked at it more holistically in that the entire system a little bit stronger. I think Jack Smith's indictment kind of reflects -- it has a thoroughness, I think, that people can appreciate after what they saw with Alvin Bragg in New York and even the Mueller report.

The FBI and law enforcement, they're going to be looking for chatter, in case people might want to gather or go down to Florida. And people should keep in mind after the January 6th riots, many people were arrested. Many people were convicted, in some cases for seditious conspiracy.

So the entire system, while it seems like it's under siege narratively from the former president, it is stronger. And I think that's reflected in the just sheer thoroughness and the evidence presented in this indictment. They didn't have to put the level of detail in it that they did.

But they did because that detail went before Americans and a grand jury who helped make the decision to move this forward.

[06:15:03]

MATTINGLY: Yes. Broadening it out if important here, particularly given the systemic -- I don't want to say threats, but --

CORNISH: And there's a lot of stuff flying around about this is bad; this is tainted; this is spoiled. I think if we keep looking at the facts, what's on paper and why, it will help guide you through the week.

MATTINGLY: Audie Cornish, stick with us. We've got a lot more to come.

We have new details on the former president's plans right after he surrenders himself on federal charges and his plans to build a new legal team. We're live in Bedminster ahead.

HILL: We'll also take a look at the complicated and unprecedented road for his White House run as he is facing two different criminal trials. Our team coverage continues. Stay with us.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: As far as the joke of an indictment, it's a horrible thing. It's a horrible thing for this country. I mean, the only good thing about it is it's driven my poll numbers way up. Can you believe that? Oh, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Donald Trump vowing to stay in the presidential race over the weekend, even if he's convicted in this classified documents case. Right now, he's at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. But in a matter of hours, he is set to fly to South Florida, where he is expected to huddle with his legal team before surrendering himself tomorrow in Miami.

CNN's Alayna Treene is in Bedminster this morning.

So what more do we know about what is on the schedule for the former president?

[06:20:05]

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Erica.

Donald Trump will be leaving his Bedminster golf club soon, and he's expected to pass just right by here. And then he'll be heading to Florida ahead of his appearance at a federal court tomorrow at 3 p.m.

Now, his team does tell us that he's expected to meet with his Florida-based legal team to discuss a new strategy after he abruptly removed two of his attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, on Friday, just hours after learning of his indictment.

Now, this evening, he will stay at his Doral resort in Miami, we're told. And then immediately after his appearance tomorrow, he's going to be flying back to New Jersey. He'll host a fund-raiser at his golf club and also deliver live remarks.

And Erica, we've seen this playbook before. After he was indicted in April at Manhattan, he -- after his arraignment, he got back on his plane. He flew back to Mar-a-Lago, took to the stage before a crowd of his supporters and railed against the charges.

And I'm told we should expect a similar speech tomorrow night, where Donald Trump will appear defiant, criticize the special counsel, Jack Smith, and argue that he's a victim of political persecution, Erica.

HILL: Yes. We know that playbook well. As we wait for that, it would -- I would imagine also, because we know the playbook so well, this is going to be a lot of what we did here over the weekend. Not just in those comments that were made in the interview with Politico, but also will be sought at those rallies as we wait for that tomorrow, Alayna.

It is also a fund-raiser, we need to point out. This is not just an airing of grievances. It's one that's expected to bring in money.

TREENE: Exactly. Exactly. And you're right, I do think the rhetoric that we'll see tomorrow night will mimic what we saw on Saturday where he criticized these charges and, again, labeled them as political.

But I should note that behind the scenes, the mood is quite different. I've been speaking with several of Donald Trump's aides and allies over the past several days, and they told me that concern has begun to settle in regarding the legal implications of this indictment.

And Donald Trump himself told Politico, in an interview aboard his plane on Saturday, that he is worried about being indicted. He said, quote, "Nobody wants to be indicted. I don't care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don't want to be indicted. I've never been indicted. I went through my whole life. Now I get indicted every two months. It's been political." That's what Donald Trump said to Politico over the weekend.

And that is what we've heard, as well, from my conversations with his team. They've repeatedly told me he doesn't want to be indicted. And it's similar to what what he saw when he was impeached. He didn't want to be impeached when he was in office.

And so even though he's publicly, you know, using bravado when he's giving these speeches, privately, he is concerned about this.

MATTINGLY: All right. Alayna Treene, thanks so much. We have Elie Honig, Audie Cornish, and Sara Murray back with us. Also with us, senior contributor at Axios Margaret Talev. Margaret, welcome --

MARGARET TALEV, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Thank you.

MATTINGLY: -- to the team. We are not moving for literally the next five days, or even next six or seven months.

I want to get into something that I think both Erica and Alayna were alluding to. There's a playbook here. We know this. Every time he's had issues, the former president has kind of deployed the same exact airing of grievances and outrage and riling up of his people.

But I want you to --

CORNISH: Profitable airing of grievances, though. That's important to know.

MATTINGLY: The fact that they --

CORNISH: Not only do you suck up all the air in the room, and get earned media, which is all of us covering it, it means other candidates are effectively boxed out from saying anything that will be meaningfully noted. And you'll be able to pad your coffers in terms of your legal battle, which he needs. And finally, campaigns are about narrative and story. And we were

hearing the first -- we're hearing official story going into 2024. His pronouns are you, me and they. And it's a constant narrative of I am a proxy for you, and they are out to get us. And I think he's going to be very consistent in that message over the next few months.

MATTINGLY: Can I ask you, though. And I think you alluded to this a little bit earlier. This feels different. Like, there's a playbook, yes. This is different than any issue the playbook has ever tried to confront. Do you agree? Or does this end up becoming just the same thing we've seen repeatedly over the course of the last seven years?

CORNISH: I mean, the stakes get higher and higher. Like when he says, I'll never leave, take him seriously. And you can -- That's what he said, right, after the election that he lost. That's what he was doing more or less heading into January 6th.

And now here he is saying again. I suspect it would be the same if he was elected. Right? I mean, he says what he means, and there's no need for us to do what we did six years ago, which is to say, is it figurative? Is it literal? I don't know. It's like, what does it all mean?

We now know what it means. And I think more people will be inclined to take it seriously. The question is, is he successful in making people feel like he himself is their proxy, and the only litmus test they need going forward.

HONIG: To Audie's point, when he says, I'll never leave, yes, absolutely take him literally.

[06:25:03]

And if anyone's thinking these indictments are going to knock him out of the race, oh, no, they are not, legally. There is -- People, I think reasonably think, well, you can't run for office if you're indicted, if you're convicted? Yes, you can.

HILL: Yes.

HONIG: The only way to stop him is to have impeached him, which they had a chance to do in Congress and decided not to, which could have disqualified her. But an indictment does not prevent someone from running. A conviction does not prevent someone from running. Even a sentence of imprisonment, technically, does not keep someone from running.

So if he's going to be stopped, it's going to be a political question, not a legal question.

MURRAY: This is a hard, though, for voters, you know, to sort of digest at this moment, though. Because we still don't know a lot about the time line, of how this is going to work out. Right?

Like you can -- if you're someone who who's immediately appalled by the behavior of Donald Trump, and you look to this indictment like -- he's already lost you. But if you're someone who's sort of wondering what does this mean practically, when could this actually go to trial? When will we know if he's going to be convicted?

MATTINGLY: Yes.

MURRAY: What if that doesn't happen until he potentially becomes the Republican nominee? What if that doesn't happen until after the vote in 2024? That's a tough thing to sort of put on voters and say, OK, decide how you feel about it with all these unknowns?

TALEV: This is really up right now to the Republican field to counter. And that is sort of democracy's first line of defense, if you want to put it that way.

And you've got an increasingly crowded field. He's far and away the front-runner, according to all the polling. And this, at least for the moment, has only empowered him and created more of a buffer.

But it is not 2016. All of these candidates have the benefit of history. He chose to learn from the lessons of history and the problem for the Republican field is they're split right now. Half are trying to figure out whether to say, this is so terrible, he's being politically prosecuted.

And the other half are like, Um, he stuck a bunch of documents in the bathroom and pretended he didn't.

So I think as long as the GOP primary field is divided about what the story is, it's going to be very easy for him to maintain, using this to his political advantage, even if he's in legal jeopardy.

HILL: Well, there's that division. There's also, right, the messaging that we knew started, based on the excellent reporting from our CNN teams. The messaging that really started in earnest in reaching out to allies in Washington before the indictment. We even had official confirmation of this indictment.

We saw that play out, perhaps not surprisingly, over the weekend. Jim Jordan sitting down with Dana Bash. I just want to play part of that exchange from "STATE OF THE UNION."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JORDAN: -- he did it.

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: There are classified documents in the bathroom, in a ballroom stage, and classified information that he -- that -- we're talking about information that the United States shares with its allies, critical information strewn on the floor. Does that look secure to you?

JORDAN: Again, Dana, the standard is the standard. The president of the United States -- he can classify and he can control access to national security information however he wants. That's the standard. That's the Constitution. That's what the court said in Navy versus Egan in a 1998 case. I don't know how many more times I can say it. BASH: He -- OK.

JORDAN: If he wants to store -- if he wants to store material in a box in a bathroom, if he wants to store it in a box on a stage, he can do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: There are both legal and political questions about that. So Elie, let's start with the legal. How firm is Jim Jordan's legal footing here?

HONIG: Not firm. First of all, Donald Trump is not the president. He's the ex-president. It makes a huge difference.

Yes, when you're president, you can do virtually anything you want with these documents. Not when you're the ex-president. And notably, the indictment picks up on that. Because every -- the time frame starts in this indictment 12:01 p.m. on January 20, 2021.

None of what he did when he was president is in play here.

The other thing is, DOJ charged this case. And I think what is an interesting and, I think, smart way. There are about a half dozen federal statutes that govern mishandling of sensitive or classified information. But they chose only one, and they charged it 31 times for each of 31 different documents.

That does not say classified or declassified. It says national defense. So whether those documents were ever classified or ever declassified is technically beside the point here.

CORNISH: The phone call to Jim Jordan is also significant. I've interviewed him many times, obviously. He's very combative. He's very much a good avatar for the, like, punch-back MAGA energy.

He also is heading efforts to investigate government overreach and weaponization of law enforcement in Congress. I think the fact that they made that phone call to him is actually a sign of concern. Because it essentially is saying, hey, get out there. Help me. Start saying stuff.

And it's going to be some irony that, in a way, they'll be weaponizing government to investigate the weaponizing of government. Right?

HILL: Yes.

CORNISH: They're going to ask --

HIL: And yet it almost feels perfectly normal, not in a good way, but in some respects, not surprising, right, that they would be this sort of odd loop.

MATTINGLY: Margaret, can I ask you -- you made a point that I've been fixated on in the last week, or at least the last five days. Every week feels like a month at this point. The people he's running against, the candidates he's running against,

unable or unwilling to try and utilize this moment to try and knock off the guy who's leading in the polls by 25 or 30 points.

[06:30:00]