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CNN This Morning

Today, Trump Heads to Florida Ahead of Hearing; Local and Federal Officials Ramp Up Security Ahead of Trump Court Appearance Tomorrow; Former Trump Attorney General Bill Barr Says, Indictment Very Damning. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 12, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

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REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): If he wants to store materials in a box, in a bathroom, he wants to store it on a box on a stage, he can do that.

WILLIAM BARR, FORMER ATTORNEY GENERAL: If even half of them is true, then he's toast.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): You can't with one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn't like.

BARR: I think there's no evidence that the Federal Department of Justice has been weaponized.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): President Trump will have his day in court but espionage charges are absolutely ridiculous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the counts under the Espionage Act are solid counts.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Our people are angry and they just keep doing it.

ALINA HABBA, TRUMP ATTORNEY: This is completely politically motivated. It's election interference at its best.

BARR: This idea of presenting Trump as a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is as devastating and specific of an indictment that I think I've ever seen.

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ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning. Poppy Harlow is off today. I'm Erica Hill alongside Phil Mattingly. Quite a Monday, quite a week we are starting off.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. And the question about that, I think, the most fascinating part of the week ahead started Friday after we were done with this show. The indictment came out and we realized, oh, wow, this is about as lengthy, detailed, and to some degree, simple and elegant kind of way, and there's a lot to dig in to.

HILL: There is a lot to dig into. We're going to do a lot of that throughout the morning.

MATTINGLY: Yes. Well, this morning, former President Trump is set to fly to South Florida as he prepares to turn himself in on those federal criminal charges. Right now, he's at his golf club Bedminster, New Jersey, gearing up for a historic and unprecedented legal battle. And we're expecting him to huddle with his lawyers today at his resort near Miami before he surrenders tomorrow at a federal courthouse.

Now, remember, he's facing 37 counts over his handling of classified documents.

HILL: Federal prosecutors say Trump illegally kept a stash of some of the nation's most closely guarded secrets and tried to hide them as well from the FBI and even his own attorney. The former president allegedly he kept the boxes of highly sensitive documents in plates around the Mar-a-Lago resort, including a bathroom, a shower and his bedroom.

Just hours from now, officials in Miami set to hold a news conference. They're going to be talking more about what they're doing in terms of ramping up security ahead of that court appearance on Tuesday afternoon. Sources telling CNN the FBI is tracking potential threats as violent rhetoric surges online.

We're also told the far right group, the Proud Boys, are discussing traveling to Florida show their support for the former president.

A lot to cover this morning and, of course, we have all of those angles covered with our team here at CNN, Audie Cornish, Sara Murray, John Miller, Elie Honig here with us in the studio. Let's begin with CNN's Senior Crime and Justice Reporter Katelyn Polantz, who is outside the federal courthouse in Miami.

So, how are we expecting this to play out, Kate?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Erica and Phil, it is going to be a pretty quick trip to the state of Florida by Donald Trump. So, he's going to be traveling into Miami and then going to his resort nearby. And, essentially, he's got to prepare for what's to come on Tuesday afternoon. So, we expect him to be talking with his lawyers.

His co-defendant, Walt Nauta, had been traveling with him over the weekend and he is also expected to come to court over the summons from the Justice Department to make their initial appearance on Tuesday afternoon. So, what that means is, on Tuesday, they're going to be brought into this courthouse. We might not see them walk in at all and they'll go up to the federal courtroom and they'll meet with a magistrate judge where they will face the charges in the indictment. They'll be told exactly what they're charged with, obstruction for both of them, for the former president, 31 counts representing documents of national security, national defense importance that he is alleged to have retained knowingly outside of the protection of the federal government. And then they'll have a chance to enter their pleas. At this time, that's totally expected that they will say not guilty even if they could entertain plea deals down the road. And then we're going to get a little bit of a sense of how this moves forward after that in court, although the hearing could be pretty short.

And then Donald Trump, he is out of town pretty quickly after that. He's going to be flying back up to New Jersey to give a speech at his resort there in Bedminster. Phil and Erica?

MATTINGLY: That's the next kind of 36 hours, Katelyn. I'm going to be like one of our bosses here and ask you the question that you can't possibly answer but I still want a definitive answer. What's the timeline here? We've heard months. We've heard potentially years. What's the timeline for when this could all play out toward a verdict?

POLANTZ: That's a great question, because judges do what judges are going to do and the court can be very, very unpredictable. But in this circumstance, so we're heading in before a magistrate judge. The judge that's going to shepherd this case to trial, Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump-appointee herself, she doesn't come in until a later date. And that's whenever we're going to get more of a sense of the full trial timeline, when a date for a trial could be set and how close that actually might be to the election next year.

Sometimes cases take a full year or more.

[07:05:02]

They can go into appeals, although not always, with a criminal case. It's a lot harder to appeal in the middle of things. But on this circumstance, we already know that the Justice Department wants to move pretty fast. They say that they're going to ask for a speedy trial. So, that's like something that the clock starts ticking and the clock only lasts for about three months, give or take a little bit. We'll see, though, how the judge responds to that, whether or not she's going to allow things to stretch out more, especially because there's classified material involved in this case. Phil and Erica?

MATTINGLY: All right, thanks. Katelyn Polantz. We're going to be sticking with you throughout the course of this morning. Erica?

HILL: All right. So, when we are talking about these documents, what exactly were these documents? How did they get from the White House to Mar-a-lago? How did they get into the hands of investigators? Well, we learned a lot about that from this indictment.

CNN Senior Legal Analyst, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig is with us now. So, Elie, walk us through what we've learned from the indictments about specifically the documents that were taken to Mar-a- Lago. ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Erica, it's been a long, strange trip for these documents, and it starts back when Donald Trump was still president in Washington, D.C.

Now this, of course, we recognize that guy, Donald Trump, but get to know this man. That is Walt Nauta. He's the second defendant in this case. He was Donald Trump's valet. And in the weeks and days before Donald Trump left office in January of 2021, the indictment alleges that Trump and Nauta, but Trump himself was directly involved in the packaging up of these documents and sending them down to Mar-a-Lago. There was some speculation. What would Trump know about packing up? The indictment says he was involved and he knew what was being sent down there.

And the indictment gives us really important information about what's in those documents. Yes, there are some things that are souvenirs, trinkets, newspaper articles, but this is what matters for the legal case. There are documents created by and for the CIA, Department of Defense, NSA that relate to our defense and weapons capabilities, our nuclear programs, our potential vulnerabilities, and our plans for a possible retaliation. That's how serious those documents were that got sent down to Florida.

HILL: Once they got there, too. The indictment is very specific about what happened to them, the journey, if you will, that they were taking at the resort.

HONIG: Yes. Let's try to track this, because the indictment actually lays it out quite clearly. The first place they land, that's a stage, Erica, in a ballroom, in the White and Gold Ballroom in Mar-a-Lago. That's where they're first put. And, by the way, the key guy moving these and orchestrating the moves is Walt Nauta acting at Donald Trump's instruction. The documents --

HILL: And that's key.

HONIG: Yes, and that's key. And let me make that point right here. There's a piece of the indictment that quotes a text that Walt Nauta sends to another worker saying he, meaning Donald Trump, he's tracking the boxes, more to follow today on whether he wants to go through more of those boxes today or tomorrow. That's a crucial text that's in the indictment.

So, the documents start off in the ballroom. They then move to a business center, and then they're moved to the lake room.

Now, this you're not seeing things, folks. That's a shower curtain, and, yes, that is a toilet. This is the first time I've ever telestrated a toilet. That is where the --

HILL: It may not be the last. The day is young.

HONIG: We'll see where it goes. But, yes, these documents were kept in the bathroom of the lake room. And then, finally, they were moved to a very important location here, the storage room. And an important part of the story is, at one point, Nauta goes into the storage room and sees these documents spilled on the ground. And he's sort of panicking, what do we do? So, that's how they end up in the storage room.

HILL: And it's also important, as we note here, this picture that's in the indictment, the fact that it was taken by Nauta when he noticed it over concerns.

HONIG: It's a crucial piece of evidence, and it plays into the obstruction of justice part of this, too, because DOJ serves a subpoena in May of 2022. Trump gets his lawyer, Evan Corcoran, says, all the documents you're going to go through to respond to that subpoena, they're in the storage room. Corcoran goes through those documents. He finds 38 documents he gives to DOJ. He says, we did a diligent search. This is what we got. Of course, there was many more.

So, how did that happen? Well, the deception happened by Trump and Nauta because they took 64 documents out of there in the days before Corcoran and just put 30 of them back. We can do the math there. That means 34 boxes were intentionally kept away from Walt Nauta and DOJ, and that's where the obstruction count comes from.

HILL: A lot happening in there and a lot of detail, important detail.

MATTINGLY: Well, with us now in studio back like they never left, Audie Cornish and Sara Murray, also joining us, CNN Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence Analyst John Miller.

And, John, I want to start with you because you're so good internally about walking us through kind of what's actually happening behind the scenes. The stakes are enormous. Obviously, there's a lot of concern what's actually happening in these security preparations leading up to tomorrow?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: It's a big machine. There's a lot of wheels turning. Secret Service's job is literally going to be to protect former President Trump, get him in, get him out, and make sure he's safe. The U.S. Marshals, their job is to protect the inside and perimeter of that courthouse. But the Miami P.D., Miami-Dade County Police, Florida State Police, they're going to be doing the wider picture around that building.

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Are there going to be crowds? Are they going to be large crowds? Are they going to be small crowds that create an issue?

So, right now, you're going to be looking at Josh Campbell's reporting from Friday, that the FBI has already put out a notice to 56 field offices saying, scan for intelligence about anything that may involve violence as a reaction to this. Today, you'll see the major city police chiefs of the big cities and their intelligence commander put together a conference call where they will literally poll each other. What are you hearing? What do you have to get, a national picture of what cities are facing?

But Miami is ground zero for tomorrow. You've got groups like the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, Patriot Front. Some of these are very damaged because their leadership from these recent cases have been put in federal prison. For the Oath Keepers, that's serious damage. They're a military chain of command group. For the Proud Boys, it doesn't really matter. They become very decentralized. They work from chapter to chapter, state to state, but they also don't generate large numbers. So, all of this is being factored into the security for tomorrow.

HILL: I also want to play some comments from Kari Lake, former Arizona gubernatorial candidate. I want to get your take, actually multiple takes on what these comments mean and how closely they're being monitored. Take a listen.

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KARI LAKE, FORMER REPUBLICAN GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: We're at war, people.

If you want to get to President Trump, you're going to have to go through me, and you're going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me.

And I'm going to tell you, yes, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.

That's not a threat. That's a public service announcement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: She says it's not a threat. How does law enforcement look at comments like that? Are they a threat?

MILLER: So, law enforcement looks at comments like that as protected by the First Amendment. What they're looking for is the reaction to those comments on the other side, which is in the chat rooms, in the message boards. Are people talking about, let's get our guns, let's do something. Remember in Cincinnati, just days after the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, a guy with an AR-15 rifle came in and opened fire on the FBI's office there until he was killed in a shootout with police. So, you've got the group thing, you've got the crowd thing, but you've got the lone wolf thing to consider in these factors.

And Florida is a funny place. Under Governor DeSantis, they made it easier to carry guns. You don't need a permit, you can have concealed weapons, but it's not an open carry state. So, you can't show up with your AR-15 rifles in full uniform or your pistols on your hip and fully exposed. But there's a trick, which is if you're a hunter is on the way to a hunting thing, or if you're a fisherman going fishing, or if you're a sportsman on your way to target practice, then you can.

So, you've seen Second Amendment groups do these gatherings where they carry their weapons in the open, basically challenging law enforcement. They're thinking about all that.

MATTINGLY: I was fascinated where you were going to go after Florida is a funny place. AUDIE CORNISH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This kind of follows on what I was saying earlier about the ways we have all changed in the last five years. I talked about the courts and the justice system, how it is a little more fortified, a little more understanding of what it's dealing with when Trump or Trump case comes knocking on its door. It's the same thing with law enforcement and the FBI. Wow, have they learned a lesson over the last couple of years to listen to chatter, to pass that chatter on, to really take these kinds of comments and specifically what's going on on social media very seriously, where they can. Obviously, there're Discord channels and things like that that are more low key and harder to penetrate.

But we know they've been doing more work in this area because earlier they talked about extremist groups, Merrick Garland, et cetera. And I think this is going to be another example of where our system has been stress tested and we might see the reflection of that over the next couple of days.

HONIG: And to Audie's point, I think and hope that the sentences -- the convictions and sentences of some of the January 6th rioters have sent a message. I mean, one of the purposes of our criminal justice system and sentencing is deterrence. You want to deter the person who's being sentenced, but others, too. And you look at these sentences. As John mentioned, the leader of the Oath Keepers got 18 years, Stewart Rhodes. We've seen other sentences, 11 years, 7 years. These are real sentences. And I hope that anyone who's thinking of doing anything takes note of that.

CORNISH: Well, Trump has spoken out on behalf rioters who have been convicted. At one point, he tweeted an image of them singing in jail. Do you want to be singing in prison for Trump? I mean, that's a cool tweet, but I don't know if people want to lay things down on the line.

MILLER: And we can't forget on our own town hall meeting. He was asked, would you pardon all these people if you were re-elected? And he said, sure. They came with love.

CORNISH: Yes.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I don't know if that's what resonates with people counting on whether Donald Trump is going to get elected again, going to end up in the White House again, he's going to potentially pardon you, or if they are looking at what happened in the wake of January 6, if that does serve as a deterrent.

One thing that has been striking to me is how many of the sort of the same players are popping up again. We're talking about the Proud Boys again.

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I was listening to an interview Roger Stone did with Donald Trump yesterday, again, another player talking about the supporters that are going to be there in Miami to stand for Donald Trump. And then Roger Stone is quick to say, but we're assembling peacefully. People are going to be assembling peacefully. So, we'll see if that resonates. MATTINGLY: Murray, can I ask you about this? This is the cover of The New York Post. And it will be familiar for those of us who live in Washington because we've been kind of living in this world throughout the course of any investigation of former President Trump since President Biden took office. It says, what about the Bidens, talking about Hunter Biden, talking about Joe Biden. You followed a lot of congressional investigations very closely. Is that a fair analog?

MURRAY: I don't think we are talking about an apples to apples comparison here. So, no, it's not a fair analog in that nobody in these cases has been stashing hundreds of documents with classified markings in a bathroom and then refusing to return them to the federal government when prosecutors say, return this, we're subpoenaing you, we're searching you, we're serious, return this.

I do think it is a fair question to say, what are you guys going to do about the Hunter Biden investigation? This has been going on for a while. We still don't have a charging decision in this case. Again, we're getting to be in the full swing of a presidential election year. Are you going to charge it? Are you going to move on?

I think with Joe Biden and his retention of classified documents, again, he returned them much more willingly than we saw with Donald Trump. The question is, okay, what's going to happen with this? Is there going to be an end to this investigation? And if so, when are we going to hear about that?

HONIG: Sara makes a great point about the Hunter Biden investigation at DOJ. This is preposterous. This has been pending, according to our reporting at CNN, since 2018, five years.

And this -- by the way, this investigation is not the laptop. This investigation is a tax issue. Did Hunter Biden declare his income and a sort of obscure gun law? Did he possess a gun while he was addicted to drugs, which you're not allowed to do under federal law? Did he lie about that? But five years, I mean, that's a five week investigation. And this spans the Trump administration and the Biden administration. Someone has got to make a call on this case. I don't know what is going on, but it's beyond anything I've seen before.

MATTINGLY: And the U.S. attorney was kept on from the Trump administration in that case. And, again, there's no parallel -- nobody is saying there's a parallel to anything that we saw in the 37 charges. But to your point, it's not a question that just Republicans or kind of operatives have, like Democrats are also kind of shaking --

HONIG: Make a call, yes.

MATTINGLY: -- what's actually going on here.

All right, guys, stick with us. More good stuff to come. Bill Barr now predicting trouble for Donald Trump over his federal indictment. Now, Trump, of course, is weighing in, what he's saying about his former attorney general.

HILL: Plus, the indictment is also drawing a line through the GOP primary field. How those other White House hopefuls are becoming even more divided as they try to find a right way to respond.

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ALINA HABBA, TRUMP ATTORNEY: There was nothing wrong with declassifying documents, taking documents with you, negotiating with NARA. The only thing that was wrong was the raid on his home and the complete dual tier system of justice.

BARR: If even half of it is true, then he's toast. I mean, it's a very detailed indictment and it's very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt, is ridiculous.

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HILL: Two very different takes there this morning. Former President Trump's current attorney at odds with his former attorney general, who says Trump is not being treated unfairly in this classified documents case.

Let's take a closer look now with Donald Ayer, the deputy attorney general under President George H. W. Bush, who's also worked with Bill Barr. It's good to have you with us this morning.

We hear those comments from Bill Barr, I mean, very clear in what he sees in this indictment, how detailed it was, what this means for the former president. I wonder, how much weight do you think his words carry?

DAVID AYER, FORMER DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL UNDER PRESIDENT GEORGE H.W. BUSH: Well, I think what really carries weight is what the indictment alleges and the ability, if they have it, which I'm sure they do, to prove the events in the indictment. It's a very damning indictment. And if you read the whole thing, you actually see there's a long statement in there by the Donald Trump himself talking about how important it is to protect national security secrets and how he's going to do something about it.

Bill Barr is the worst attorney general in the history of the United States. He did everything he could to help Donald Trump secure the position he wanted as an autocratic president. He did favors for his friends. He misused the Department of Justice, including using an investigation in order to get Donald Trump re-elected.

So, at the end of the day, what Bill Barr has to say is of no weight in my mind. I do think, however, that the fact that this person who was such a scoundrel as the attorney general for Donald Trump, even he sees the force of this indictment and sees how clear it is that Donald Trump has done terrible things for which he deserves to be punished. So, I think a lot of people will give it weight. HILL: Quite a picture that you paint of your assessment there of the former attorney general and your opinion of him, that some will give it weight. It's interesting, though, because so much of what we hear, it seems that the opinions are already baked in for many Americans. Even -- we're going to share some of this reporting later in the hour, but even some of our own reporters, in talking to Trump supporters over the weekend, asking specifically about had they read the indictment, there wasn't a desire to even read it.

Do you think those comments from a Bill Barr or even Alan Dershowitz, who was writing in an op-ed about how strong the case is in here, those could actually begin to have some sway or at least encourage people read the indictment for themselves?

AYER: Well, I am not myself that intimately familiar with the psychology of all of the Trump supporters, but it's really hard for me to believe that among his most loyal supporters, there are not a number -- I don't know what it is, 15, 20, 25, 30 percent who can be appealed to by reason.

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And the idea that it seems to me a lot of them were very supportive of Bill Barr precisely because Bill Barr did the worst things in the world in order to support Donald Trump. Well, here's this person who did those things and who was practically the hero of the Trump supporters for many, many months as attorney general. Here he is standing up and condemning Donald Trump for the acts that were done here.

Hard for me to believe that there aren't some marginal number, I don't know again what the percentage is, but it will be significant if 10 or 15 or 20 percent of Trump supporters are influenced by this.

HILL: We have heard consistently from the former president railing against the Justice Department, railing against government institutions, talking about what he would do if re-elected to gut them. How important, when it comes to the rule of law in this country are these charges and is this pending trial?

AYER: Well, I think they're very important. And I think, frankly, the rest of the charges, which I believe will be coming for January 6th, they're even more important. And, of course, they stand for the proposition that when a high official, like anyone else, does terrible things, does things that are obviously not only crimes, but very serious crimes that really go to the heart of our national interest, they have to pay the price.

So, accountability here is absolutely critical for the public's respect for the law. And that's really what's at stake now, is whether the public is -- the United States citizens are going to believe that we have a country where the law matters.

HILL: And whether that respect is still there.

I want to get you quickly on two things. You just mentioned January 6th charges. So, you believe there will be charges filed in relation to Donald Trump's role in January 6th?

AYER: I do. I absolutely do.

HILL: Against Donald Trump?

AYER: I think so. I mean, again, I am not privy to all the evidence that they have, and there's always the possibility, although I think it's a small one, but somehow there are things that make it impossible to do that.

But I think the attorney general, who has been unfairly attacked all manner of times by many people on the left and the right, I think the attorney general is forthright and solid on the need to hold people accountable. And I believe he's going to play it absolutely straight. And playing it straight, I think, here is going to mean that Donald Trump is all the things in the hearings on the Hill showed Donald Trump was at the center of the entire movement for January 6th. He's the one that drove that whole process. You cannot fail to hold that person accountable and have a system of justice that deserves to be respected. It simply isn't possible.

HILL: As we wait to see how that investigation plays out, before I let you go, I wonder, what do you think the possibility here would be in the documents case, the classified documents case here, of some sort of a plea deal?

AYER: Well, I don't know. I mean, I think the government would take a plea to a whole bunch of the charges. I haven't been any doubt about that. It's really about Donald Trump, and he's forever playing every situation to his own P.R. advantage. And what is he going to perceive to be that?

It's hard for me to imagine that he would agree to go to jail, and it's hard for me to imagine that the government would plea the case without having him go to jail. So, it seems unlikely to me.

HILL: Donald Ayer, I really appreciate your perspective. Thank you for joining us this morning.

MATTINGLY: And right now, officials are setting up alternate routes for morning commuters after a section of I-95 collapse in Philadelphia. We'll take you live near that overpass. We're also continuing our ongoing and breaking coverage into the indictment of former President Donald Trump. Stay with us.

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