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CNN This Morning

Trump Rejected Lawyer's Advice to Strike Deal with DOJ; Grand Jury Votes to Indict Man Accused of Deadly Chokehold on Subway; 4 Older Men with Mob Ties Charged in Jewel Heists; Children and Young Adults Dying from Homicide, Suicide at Highest Rates in Decades. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired June 15, 2023 - 06:00   ET

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

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR/CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: That's Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina.

And No. 3.

[06:00:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: -- ever again before we go to the cops.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Shiny, happy images is the sugar, and we're all high on it. They were just deceiving us all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The real story is a much bigger one.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: The docuseries "Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets." No. 3.

All right. Thanks for joining me. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. And just like that, it is 6 a.m. here on the East Coast. We hope you're having a good morning and glad you're with us. I'm here with Erica Hill.

Good morning.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, my friend.

HARLOW: You're in my favorite color.

HILL: You're like a bright ray of sunshine.

HARLOW: And you.

HILL: In Poppy red.

HARLOW: That's what she texted me this morning: I'm wearing Poppy red for you. And I appreciate you. There's a lot to talk about this morning. We're joined by our CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig and CNN political commentator Errol Louis at the table to break down the biggest stories today.

So let's get started with "Five Things to Know" for this Thursday, June 15.

"Washington Post" reports that Donald Trump rejected efforts by his lawyers to cut a deal with the Justice Department. "The Post" writes that the former president was not interested in negotiations to avoid his second arrest in just ten weeks.

HILL: The Manhattan district attorney expected to formally announce the indictment of Daniel Penny in a matter of hours. The retired Marine is charged with holding a homeless man in a fatal chokehold last month on a New York City subway.

HARLOW: Another Republican from Florida running for president. The mayor of Miami, Francis Suarez, officially filing his 2024 paperwork.

HILL: And will we finally see all those sneaky fees the next time you buy a concert ticket? Will they show you the fees up front? This, a promise from President Biden. He's been making it for months. Well, he's expected to deliver on it today.

HARLOW: And from driving Ubers to driving golf balls, 43-year-old Barry Henson is set for a first major appearance today after qualifying for the U.S. Open. He taxied 3,000 riders around Southern California, earning a 4.99 rating, almost perfect. And today he gets to tee off in his back yard, at the Los Angeles Country Club.

I love that story. CNN THIS MORNING starts right now.

But here's where we begin, with really striking reporting from "The Washington Post." Apparently, former President Donald Trump's lawyer, one of them, Chris Kise, wanted to strike a deal with the Justice Department to try to avoid charges, to try to avoid getting to this point in the classified documents case.

"The Post" reports that the former president refused, and now he's in the legal fight of his political life, facing potential prison time if convicted.

Here's what "The "Post" found that Trump's lawyer, Chris Kise, wanted to quietly reach out to the Justice Department and negotiate a settlement back in the Fall. This is, of course, after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August and found more than 100 classified documents.

Kise apparently wanted to, quote, "take down the temperature" and to try to make a promise to the federal government that Trump would return all the documents that he might have.

HILL: The issue, though: the former president reportedly wasn't interested. CNN spoke to sources close to Trump's legal team, who are casting doubt that this was actually a real opportunity to prevent an indictment.

Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, weighed in on "The Washington Post" reporting last night, right here on CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: Donald's position is never to settle, ever. Because he thinks it's a sign of weakness.

Unfortunately, he didn't have anybody around him to guide him properly. He's like a petulant child that just keeps sticking their finger into an electric socket, and then you keep saying, "Don't do it. You don't want to do it. You don't want to do it." But nevertheless, he's going to do it anyway, because in his mind, he knows better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: We are also hearing from Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking out for the first time since Donald Trump's indictment.

CNN political correspondent Sara Moray [SIC] -- Sara Murray -- sorry, Sara -- joining us now. So Garland in speaking out, defending, perhaps not surprisingly, the special counsel here, Jack Smith.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, not surprising to hear Merrick Garland defending Jack Smith. But frankly, a little surprising to hear from Merrick Garland at all. We really have not heard him very much at all weighing in on this investigation.

And of course, that's by design. The Justice Department has made very clear that this is Jack Smith's case. We know that there are regulations that are guiding this. He is still accountable to the attorney general.

But the attorney general, now that Joe Biden is a candidate for president, Donald Trump is a candidate for president, wants to take himself out of this and leave the decisions to Jack Smith. Here is what Merrick Garland had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: As I said when I appointed Mr. Smith, I did so because it underscores the Justice Department's commitment to both independence and accountability. Mr. Smith is a veteran career prosecutor. He has assembled a group of experienced and talented prosecutors and agents who share his commitment to integrity and the rule of law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:05:10]

MURRAY: Now Garland also said the Justice Department is committed to ensuring there are no acts of violence surrounding this Trump classified documents case. Obviously, we saw in the run-up to Miami, a lot of concern that there could have been some kind of unrest outside of that courthouse. We know that mostly didn't materialize, other than that one gentleman who made a run for the motorcade, guys.

HARLOW: Yes. So Jim Jordan, Congressman Jim Jordan, has been threatening to subpoena Jack Smith for a long time. I just wonder, Sara, what would that look like. Do you think it's really going to happen?

MURRAY: You know, I think that Jim Jordan could certainly go that route. We have seen him be very aggressive with his subpoena power to date. So I don't necessarily know that he would hesitate.

But I also don't know that it would get him very far. I mean, Jack Smith has a very credible case to make, that he's in the middle of an ongoing investigation, and the Justice Department has very clear guidelines that they're not going to share information about ongoing criminal investigations. I mean, that's the case with classified documents. That's the case when it comes to January 6.

And as we've seen from Garland and Jack Smith, these are both men who are trying to make their case through the court filings, not through their public comments.

So I think, even if Jim Jordan did decide to move forward with a subpoena, it's unlikely he would be able to get the material he's seeking, at least anytime soon.

HARLOW: Sara, thanks very much for the reporting. We miss you. She was at the table with us for a while.

HILL: I know. She moved to New York for part of the week.

HARLOW: I miss -- I miss you.

MURRAY: In your thoughts.

HARLOW: Thanks, Sara.

Let's bring in Elie Honig and Errol Louis. Good morning, guys.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

HARLOW: So let's actually start with this "Washington Post" reporting, because I'm totally fascinated by it, of course. Josh Dawsey and Jacqueline did a great job reporting, as they always do.

My question to you, Elie, given your experience as federal prosecutor, would DOJ have agreed to something like that? Because this reporting is that Chris Kise wanted to convince the president do it.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Right.

HARLOW: That doesn't mean that the Justice Department would say yes. And by the way, if they said yes, would it have to include an admission of wrongdoing? HONIG: Right. I agree. So I think the timing is really crucial here. I think, had this been done early enough in the process, clearly, DOJ and the Archives would have been fine.

HARLOW: You mean, before the search?

HONIG: Before the search; well before the search. Early on in the process. We know, actually, DOJ would have been fine with a non- criminal resolution where you don't even have to take a guilty plea, because nothing is charged in here up until the point of the subpoena, which is about a year and a half into the negotiations.

The documents that Trump and his team turned over, which was those 15 boxes before things got really bad, none of those documents are charged in this indictment.

So I do think if a good lawyer had gotten to Donald Trump early, and if Donald Trump was receptive to the advice, which is a whole separate question, and gone to Archives and said, Look, he has these documents. We're going to deal with you. We're going to show you all of them. You take what you need. We'll work this out."

I think we absolutely would have avoided this indictment.

But I do agree with you. When you get to last summer. We've had the subpoena. We have the search warrant. By then, I think DOJ would have appreciated an approach, but I'm not sure they would have accepted "we'll just take the documents."

I think at a certain point, you say, fine, OK. We can work out a resolution. But this has to involve a guilty plea.

And I do agree with Michael Cohen. No way Donald Trump's ever taking a guilty plea.

HILL: I think that's the bottom line, right?

HONIG: Yes.

HILL: It's perhaps not -- interesting, fantastic reporting, but not at all surprising that Donald Trump would maybe not want to go that route, because that is certainly not what he's done in the past.

LOUIS: That is not his style. This is -- started in his commercial life. He certainly carried it over into his political life. He does not settle.

On the other hand, I think we also might start to see a little bit of the motive behind a lot of this stuff. Because people have been asking pretty consistently, why didn't he just give the documents back?

HILL: Yes.

LOUIS: He's in all of this hot water. It's clear that the walls were closing in. He had the documents. He knew he had the documents. Why not just give them back? And in at least one of the interviews with somebody on another

network, he talked something about in the Nixon era, saying that, well, Nixon got $18 million from the federal government for his papers.

And all of this is before the modern regime. This is before the passage of the Presidential Records Act, which was specifically passed in response to the questions that were raised by the Nixon White House about who owned the tapes, who owned the papers and so forth.

And so I think he might have been trying to hang onto this stuff and refusing to settle as just kind of treating it like one more deal. I'll hang on longer than anybody thinks. I'll exasperate everybody, and then I'll put a number on the table.

HONIG: There was just so many off-ramps to avoid this indictment. There were so many moments in time. You can go back and almost graph them out and say if he had just come to his senses and just taken the easy way out, and done what good lawyers would have told him to do, we never would have had this.

HARLOW: Elie, is this -- is this the end of Jack -- in this probe, not in the January 6th probe -- is this the end of Jack Smith's charges or not? Because I thought -- I thought the piece in "The Atlantic" by two folks, one of them Andrew Weissmann, who served as special counsel to Robert Mueller --

HILL: And Ryan Goodman.

HONIG: And Ryan Goodman.

HARLOW: -- was so interesting. Because they say, well, this -- this indictment doesn't include dissemination of information.

HONIG: Right.

[06:10:04]

HARLOW: Which is what's alleged that he did at Bedminster, New Jersey, with the classified document about Iran, et cetera.

HONIG: Yes.

HARLOW: Do you -- do you think Jack Smith would have put it all together in this? Or do you think more could be to come? I guess you'd have to convene -- there's venue, maybe, issues --

HONIG: Yes.

HARLOW: -- with that New Jersey. But what do you think?

HONIG: I think it's an interesting and smart piece and hypothesis by Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann.

I see a couple of reasons that make me doubt that it's actually true. We don't know. No. 1, it's not entirely clear from this indictment that Donald Trump

actually did possess classified documents in Bedminster. Yes, he's talking about them. He's sort of referring. He's rustling papers --

HARLOW: We haven't seen the -- no one has said they can't find it.

HONIG: Not only have we not seen the document. DOJ hasn't seen the document.

HARLOW: That's what I mean.

HONIG: Right. So unless they have it or find it, I don't see a way to charge dissemination.

The other thing is just traditionally, there's no written rule on this, but it's good practice as a prosecutor, fair practice, bring your charges when you have them. You don't -- we don't play games. You don't say, well, we have a more serious charge. Let's hold it back.

And this is sort of one of the theories of the article. It's gamesmanship. They're waiting to see if something bad happens in Florida. Then they're going to drop the -- that's not how you're taught to do things if you're prosecuting the right way.

HILL: And especially in today's day and age. Wouldn't that make it even worse?

HONIG: Yes.

HILL: As much as Merrick Garland saying, hey, look, this shows our independence. You know, this shows our commitment to accountability, the reality is this is being seen as politicized in this country. Whether it has been or not.

And if you wait and then bring another charge in New Jersey, that's not going to sit well.

LOUIS: And look, let's keep in mind. Jack Smith has got a whole ton of January 6 work to done. You know? And he's got a whole other set of facts and witnesses and evidence and information that he's going to have to churn through.

I don't think he's going to, like, you know, sort of hold one back and, you know, think about a change of venue and -- you know. That would assume -- and I don't know what the authors' motives were. I think it was an interesting kind of speculation.

But, you know, if the idea is that, you know, this is like Captain Ahab going after Moby Dick, that we're going to -- we're going to do whatever it takes to bring down Trump, which is of course, what the defendant keeps saying, then you might get something along those lines. But I don't get that vibe from Jack Smith. He seems very straight ahead.

HARLOW: One of their arguments was that you might have a better -- a more favorable jury pool to a conviction in New Jersey -- HONIG: I don't know. Those Jersey folks are unpredictable. I don't

know.

HARLOW: -- than in Florida. But that isn't why you should go after something. You have to go after something --

HONIG: Exactly right.

HARLOW: -- because of, you know, the merits.

HONIG: (Inaudible).

HARLOW: Thanks, guys.

HILL: Well, a grand jury has indicted a Marine veteran who held a homeless man in a deadly chokehold on the New York City subway. We're going to take a look at the potential case against him.

HARLOW: And a group of men in their 60s with alleged ties to the mob and a history of bank robbing, killings and jailbreaks are now accused of a jewelry heist right here in New York City. The details of this wild case and how it all unfolded.

By the way, 60 is not old. Everyone's saying this is old. Sixty is not old.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:16:26]

HARLOW: A grand jury in New York has indicted a Marine veteran who put a homeless man in a choke hold, pinned him on the ground until he died on a New York City subway train.

A source tells CNN Daniel Penny has been indicted on second-degree manslaughter charges. He's accused of killing Jordan Neely early last month.

Witnesses say Neely got on the subway train and started acted erratically and screamed that he was ready to die. They say that Penny them went behind Neely, put him in this chokehold.

CNN, of course, has reached out to Penny's attorneys about the indictment. The retired Marine previously said that he felt Neely was a threat and a danger. And he has said since that he would do the same if put in a similar situation.

Back with us, Elie Honig and Errol Louis.

Errol, I have to start with you. Your perspective on this, I think, has been so important. I mean, we'll get to the charges in a moment, Errol -- Elie.

LOUIS: Yes.

HARLOW: But the -- the fact that this happened in New York City shows a failure on so many levels to treat and help Jordan Neely.

LOUIS: That's right. Jordan Neely had been in and out of the system. There had been multiple attempts to get him the treatment that he so desperately needed. And the net had big holes in it. In some ways, the net didn't quite exist.

HARLOW: Yes.

LOUIS: But he was on a list of the top 50 people. Now, in a city of 8 million, these 50 people have serious multiple problems. And we have to --

HARLOW: Need our help.

LOUIS: Right, we have to -- we have to help them. Somehow, it didn't happen.

And so now there's -- there's that story. And then laid on top of it, of course, is this sort of criminal justice story about, is the city so disorderly? Is crime -- you know, crime running out of control to the point where you have vigilantes and so forth? And some people are really seeing it through that lens.

It's really, really unfortunate, because you know, the kid clearly deserved better than what this city did for him and did to him. It's now a compounded tragedy. And there's a lot of political energy now winding up, behind the idea that Daniel Penny is either a hero or a political victim, or someone to be emulated.

It's really -- it kind of compounds the tragedy in a lot of ways.

HILL: How much does that conversation that's being had and these very clear camps that have strung up, not just in New York City, but beyond --

HARLOW: Yes.

HILL: -- how does it complicate things for this case, Elie?

HONIG: Well, it's such a tragic story. It's a New York story, in a lot of ways. And I think it -- what it's really going to complicate is your jury pool. Because you're going to be picking a pool of jurors who probably take the subway --

HARLOW: Totally.

HONIG: -- may even take the subway to the courthouse that day.

Legally, this is going to be really tricky. I have no idea how this one will come out, if and when it's every tried, because there's two issues. One is did Mr. Penny act in self-defense? Or defense of another? We always think of defense of oneself, but if someone's attacking Errol, I have the right to stop them.

But you have to perceive reasonably that the person poses a threat to the other -- to the other person or your own life or limb, basically. HARLOW: Right. And he didn't have a weapon.

HONIG: No weapon. Right.

HARLOW: Didn't punch anyone.

HONIG: And that's why the testimony from the bystanders, what exactly was he doing, and saying how much of a threat was he?

And then the second part of it is this manslaughter charge. Prosecutors have to prove that he acted recklessly, that Penny acted recklessly. And that's going to get into the nuance of how long did he hold him in that choke hold? How long was -- was Mr. Neely non- responsive? How long was he quiet? Could other --- did others say anything to him?

So it's going to be a difficult, wrenching trial, I think, for all involved.

HILL: Yes, it absolutely is.

We're going to set that one aside for a minute. Another story, this one feels a little bit more like a Hollywood movie.

Prosecutors charging four men in their 60s in two brazen jewel heists. This also happening in New York City. So the robberies together amount to about $2 million worth of jewelry. "The New York Times" is reporting the men have mob ties, extensive criminal histories.

[06:20:07]

In fact, the feds say the robberies, which happened in January and May of this year. The suspects, as you see in these pictures here, accused of dressing up as construction workers to blend in, perhaps, on those busy New York City streets. Images from the indictment show them. And you see there, as we mentioned. Those bright-orange yellow construction jackets, also waving a gun.

There's another image to show you here. You see a suspect there wearing a hard hat.

They say the men held employees at these jewelry -- jewelry stores that they were robbing at gunpoint and then ran off with the jewelry. Among the stolen jewels -- this one's hard to hide, by the way -- a 73-carat diamond necklace. You're not just wearing that to coffee.

So there's a lot in here. A lot of the discussion amongst the show team was -- and in the article, in which one Elie Honig is quoted, I might add --

HONIG: Ooh-la-la.

HILL: -- was sort of about the age and that this was still happening. You made some really interesting points about how things work with the alleged mob. HONIG: So the reporter on this piece, Ed Shanahan for "The New York

Times," called me, because he knew I used to be a mob prosecutor, and said, well, how have these guys, these mobsters gotten so old?

And I said, Ed, they've always been old. And here's why. First of all, there's no retirement for the mob. They don't have a mob pension plan. You're in it --

HILL: No 401(k)?

HONIG: No, you're in it till you die. I -- there's guys doing life in prison. They're still counted as members of the mob. And you can't, by the way, replace them until they die.

The other thing is there's no such thing as a mob prodigy. Right? There's no such thing as LeBron James. You see him play in high school, you go, Oh, my God. He's going to be in the NBA next year.

You can't get made in the mob until you're -- I mean, the youngest I ever saw was maybe 45, 50 -- there are -- there are a couple nepo babies, sons of powerful mobsters. John Gotti Jr., who got made much earlier. But other than that -- they have nepo babies in the mob. Other than that, you have to be 45 or 50.

And I did a case, the first mob case I was ever on, where 20 or so members of the Genovese family -- I think we may have the -- the write-up on it -- where the average age was 70, 75 years old. There you go. This is the coverage from "The New York Daily News."

HARLOW: "Senior Moment."

HONIG: They had fun with it: "Senior Moment." And then below that, it says "Oldfellas." Of course they've got to make the pun.

HARLOW: Right.

HONIG: And this -- the scene at this arraignment and the booking was you can see on the right there is the "Matty the Horse" Ianniello carrying a cane. He was mid-80s at the time. Boss of the Genovese family, the guy next to him, is Julius "Spike" Bernstein, also in his 80s at the time.

So these guys do not age out of the mafia. It truly is until death.

LOUIS: I love these kind of stories, actually. For the same reason I like "Goodfellas," is that, you know, in contrast to sort of the Hollywood kind of romantic, you know, version of the mob that you'd see with the first two "Godfathers" and all of this kind of stuff.

It's like, no, it's really a pretty crummy life.

HONIG: Yes.

LOUIS: It's -- you know, you're dealing with people who are not honest, who are not bright, who are telling you to do all kinds of things that are going to get you in a lot of trouble. And what's waiting at the end of all of this stuff? You don't retire

on some beach --

HARLOW: Yes.

LOUIS: -- you know, surrounded by models and, you know, a bunch of piles of money. You are, like, trying to sort of, you know, pull off some kind of two-bit heist in the middle of midtown, hoping that you can run out with a 73-carat, you know --

HILL: Yes.

LOUIS: -- piece of jewelry. I mean, smash-and-grab stuff, as if you were 19 years old. It's unbelievable.

HONIG: It's a life.

HARLOW: It's a life.

HONIG: It's a choosing.

HARLOW: I didn't know what nepo babies was until our millennial producers told me, like six months ago.

HONIG: It's everywhere.

HARLOW: I know.

HONIG: It's even in the mob.

HARLOW: I didn't know what it was.

Elie, thank you.

Thanks, Errol.

The Federal Reserve pausing interest rates in terms of the hikes for the first time in 15 months, for now. Details on the Central Bank's plan to continue, though, its aggressive fight on inflation.

That's more my kind of story.

HONIG: Yes, that's where I'm out.

HILL: See what you can do with that story. How about that story?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:27:59]

HARLOW: A very disturbing new report out this morning from the CDC. It finds that young people are dying by suicide and homicide at rates that we haven't seen in decades.

Our medical correspondent Meg Tirrell joins us now.

We've known that this is such a problem, and the numbers bear it out.

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they really do. I mean, in both of these cases, if you look at homicides and suicides, the CDC looked at data for kids between ages 10 and young adults, 24, through 2021.

And trends really bear out what we have been seeing in the data more broadly.

For homicides, the rates are now the highest we've seen since 1997. For suicides, the rates are the highest we've seen since the data go back to 1968 for this overall group.

And what you see there is that the numbers have actually come together. And homicides took a big jump during the pandemic, 2019 to 2020. That's something that we saw more broadly. Up more than 30 percent, the rate.

For suicides, we really saw an increase over the last decade, kind of rising steadily, 62 percent for the group overall. So this is something that mental health experts are extremely concerned about; public health experts, more broadly.

HILL: And it's also, too, as we look at this and we see the numbers, the questions about, so how do we do something here? I mean, is there -- is there a way to stop this, to bring those numbers down?

TIRRELL: Yes, I mean, so there are kind of two different issues. When you look at the suicide rates, of course, there's a huge focus on children's mental health right now.

This is something the American Medical Association just this week came out and said is a top priority to increasing access to care. Because not enough kids actually get mental healthcare. Same with adults. There aren't enough people in the work force to even treat everybody. So this is something they're really focused on.

In terms of homicides, I mean, it's a lot of gun homicides in this country, particularly for the older kids in this population; particularly for young black boys. That's what they see the majority of kids here.

HARLOW: That's the No. 1 killer of children in America now.

TIRRELL: Yes.

HARLOW: Regardless.

TIRRELL: And so these are issues that are being focused on.

HARLOW: That, coupled with the mental health.

TIRRELL: But seeing these numbers, I mean, really solidifies how big of a problem this is in the U.S.

HILL: Yes, it absolutely does. And to Poppy's point, one in five -- nearly one in five childhood deaths in 2021 had to do with firearms.

[06:30:00]