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CNN This Morning

Washington Post Reports, Trump Rejected His Lawyer's Advice to Strike a Deal with DOJ and Avoid Charges in Classified Documents Case; Wall Street Journal Reports, Russian Soldier Surrenders to Drone on Battlefield; Southern Baptists Ban Churches with Female Pastors. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 15, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

DANNY FREEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And it's not over yet.

[07:00:01]

As you said, closing arguments expected to start in just a few moments. And after that, the trial goes to the jury. Poppy?

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And, Danny, very quickly, Danny, will be the jury that also decide on the death penalty or is that judge-bench decision?

FREEMAN: No. It will also be decided by the jury. They are going to stay on. They've already been doing this case for a number of weeks and they're going to continue through the summer.

HARLOW: We appreciate, Danny Freeman, for your coverage throughout this trial. Thank you very much.

CNN This Morning continues now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Donald Trump rejected efforts by his lawyers to cut a deal with the Justice Department.

MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Donald's position is never to settle, ever.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Attorney General Merrick Garland is weighing in, defending the man who was running it.

MERRICK GARLAND, ATTORNEY GENERAL: He has assembled a group who shared his to commitment to integrity and the rule of law.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A Manhattan grand jury indictment announced as Marine Veteran Daniel Penny on second-degree manslaughter charges.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was it reasonable for him to believe that this man was going to cause harm to himself or to someone else?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you put Daniel Penny on the stand? What was in his mind?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: New video from Ukraine's frontlines as the country's military engages in extremely fierce fighting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most of these Russian soldiers don't want to be there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ukrainians are saying they believe they can be successful but they do also acknowledge it's going to be a really tough battle.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yet another Republican from Florida is running for president, the mayor of Miami officially filing his 2024 paperwork.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A future that confronts our enemies and doesn't project weakness and incompetence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to get behind those issues again and stop letting Donald Trump dictate what our message is going to be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can't get down on yourself coming up in that situation. I was so glad that I could get the opportunity to come through.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. We are so glad you are with us on this Thursday. It is 7:00 A.M. here on the East Coast. And we begin.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Nice to be with you this morning.

A lot happening, including -- this really caught our eye, a new reporting from The Washington Post that Donald Trump rejected his lawyer's advice to strike a deal with the Justice Department to avoid charges in the classified documents case. So, The Post is reporting here that Trump Attorney Chris Kise wanted to negotiate a settlement with the DOJ back in the fall.

Keep in mind, as you're looking at the timeline here, this is after the FBI had searched Mar-a-Lago, found a trove of highly sensitive documents, including nuclear secrets.

Trump, apparently, though, was not interested. CNN spoke to sources close to the former president's legal team who are casting doubt that there was actually a real opportunity to make a deal and prevent an indictment.

HARLOW: And instead of listening to his lawyers, CNN and The Post report that Trump has been following advice from Tom Fitton. He is the head of the conservative group, Judicial Watch. Since early last year, he has been talking to the former president about documents, urging him not to return them. He has been citing the so-called Clinton Socks Drawer case. That is the 2012 case. It's more than a decade ago. It was brought by his own group, Judicial Watch. And Fitton tweets about it a lot. His group sued to get access to the audiotapes that Bill Clinton did with a historian that he reportedly stashed in his sock drawer. Much different set of facts but Trump is still pushing it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: I had every right to have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on this subject known as the Clinton Socks case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining us now, CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis and former Republican Congressman of Texas Will Hurd. It's good to have you with us still, Errol, good to welcome you to the table. Good morning.

You read this Washington Post reporting. I thought it was really remarkable reporting. My question, though, is do you believe that if the president had listened to Chris Kise, his lawyer, and they had gone to the Justice Department and said, look, let's settle this out, DOJ would have agreed to that. And also would they have ever agreed to something without an admission of wrongdoing at least?

FMR. REP. WILL HURD (R-TX): Well, let's take it a step further before this. When NARA, the National Administration for -- I forgot what the R stands for.

HARLOW: It's so funny a word like NARA, PRA, FRA --

HURD: Sure. When they ask for the documents, just give them back and we wouldn't be in this position, right? If Donald Trump would have followed had law, we wouldn't be here. And, yes, maybe there would have been an opportunity. DOJ probably didn't want to prosecute this case because they knew the drama it was going to come into. But we're not shocked that Donald Trump would rather a fight than follow the law.

And, to me, this is crazy that so many people are defending him for doing this and we wouldn't be in this position if he would have turned them back.

[07:05:00]

We know that because when Mike Pence was found that he had documents, he turned them all back, it was fine. The DOJ is not persecuting Donald Trump on any of the documents that he actually did return. So --

HARLOW: All those 31 counts are from the August search.

HURD: -- the stuff that he hid.

Now, my question is, why is he trying to keep track of them? He could still have access to them. The question is how they were being stored. And when is Donald Trump going to tell us all the steps he took to prevent people from coming into his hotel and accessing those documents? It's very clear that Donald Trump knew he had classified information. He knew he had information that was so sensitive that the classification is classified. There were several of those documents that had where it said that in the classification line, they're marked out, they're redacted because the classification itself is classified.

So, he knew he had this stuff. He knew that they were in places that were accessible by his members and by his staff. And when is Donald Trump going to tell us, these are the steps I took to prevent the Chinese government, to prevent the Russians from trying to come in and bribing my members or bribing my staff in order to get access to us. Like those are the questions Donald Trump should be doing. And guess what? We wouldn't be in this position if he just gave the documents back.

HILL: So, what's interesting, though, is those are not the questions. Clearly, they're being addressed, right, to your point. I don't know if we'll ever hear those answers. They're also not the questions that are being raised by those who are supporting the president and saying, this is ridiculous, this is nothing but politicized. Does this change anything? As we move forward, we got a little bit of time that we're going to be talking about this.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, there's a real misinformation factor here. I watched the former president ranting and raving from the front steps at Bedminster. And it was really disappointing to hear him talk about this Socks case. Because you go back and look at it, first, a lot of us were like, wait, he's talking about this thing? It's ten years old.

Judicial Watch, which is an advocacy organization, tried to intervene and make the case that when President Clinton spoke with a historian and then got a copy of the tapes, as if any of us as journalists talked with a public figure and then gave him a copy of the tape that somehow became a public record that would be subject to all kinds of disclosure.

It went to court, it was a dead loser, and they lost. And yet here they are still telling the former president this, and he's now propagating it out there. And you saw it spread all across social media. So, now there are lots and lots of people, possibly thousands, dare we say even millions, who now somehow believe that a president, a former president, can take any record they want --

HILL: But that's the point, right?

LOUIS: -- as their personal property.

HILL: That's exactly the point to putting that out there.

LOUIS: It really is striking because it is such a dead loser. It is dead on arrival when it makes it to court. And, unfortunately, sort of confusion and falsehood are now being used, deployed as a political and legal strategy. I would not advise anybody to get on that train. That's going nowhere.

HARLOW: I want you to listen to some of your fellow Republicans, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, making their case on Fox.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIKKI HALEY, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If this indictment is true, if what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.

MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: I had hoped the Department of Justice would see its way clear to resolve these issues with the former president without moving forward with charges.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): This is a rogue agency that is thoroughly politicized, it is thoroughly weaponized. And I believe to indict a former president or a sitting president, the threshold should be very, very high. If you're going to indict someone for having classified documents, how about Joe Biden and the classified documents he had stuck in just about every orifice of his body, had stuck in a garage next to his old Corvette?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Ted Cruz went to Harvard Law School. Ted Cruz knows what obstruction is. He knows the difference between what's going on right now with the special counsel investigating Joe Biden's documents still ongoing going, Robert Hur, and what Jack Smith's team has brought here. But this is politics, no?

HURD: It's absolutely politics, right? And we can separate all of these issues. We can have a conversation about whether or not DOJ should be doing something or not be doing something. That's a valid conversation. As a former CIA guy, right, the CIA and the FBI is has always gotten loggerheads on issues, right?

So, we can talk about the role of federal law enforcement. All that stuff is valid. But we know these facts. We have audio. We know what the president was doing.

[07:10:00]

Yes, you're innocent until proven guilty. And that's what's going to transpire down in Miami over the next couple of months.

But let's be honest. If the GOP is supposed to be the party of law and order, then we need to be the party of law and order when it comes to our own folks. We should actually hold our side more accountable to a higher ethical standard than not. And so this is the part that's frustrating.

And instead of talking about the problems with the Joe Biden administration and why his numbers are so low and one of the lowest approval ratings of a president at this time, instead of talking about that, we're having these debates about Donald Trump's baggage and continued drama. That's not good for the GOP. That's not good for us to potentially win elections. And, ultimately, it's not good for the country. So, why start defending someone who only cares about one thing? And Donald Trump doesn't care about the future of America. He cares about preventing himself and from going to prison and potentially dying in prison.

HARLOW: It was so interesting, because to that point, Errol, when he spoke at Bedminster after the arraignment, he essentially said, this is about you guys. This is about -- he talks about Christians, pro- life groups. He talked about much of America saying, if they go after me like this, they're going to go after you like this.

LOUIS: That's exactly right. I mean, that is the Trump brand at this point. It's the political argument that he's making, which is that the people that you hate, I hate, your enemies are my enemies. Let's go have a fight, which is very different than talking about tax policy or what to do about education or how to wrap up the pandemic and have a more robust public health system or anything really more important that people actually care about.

Why? Well, because it gets him a rise. He's 40, 50 points ahead of his nearest competitor in the polls. It seems to work. As the congressman points out, there's going to be a bill that comes due when the independents get into it, when possible swing voters get into it. When you get to the general election phase, you'll end up where he ended up in 2020, which is in the loser's column.

HURD: And can I just on that, right? Only 23 percent of the country votes in primaries, okay? And so we always talk about what's going to happen to primary. Why does only 23 percent of the country vote in primaries? It's because 77 percent thinks all the things people are talking about is absolute nonsense. They're not interested in some of these things.

Look, the places I've been the last couple of days, nobody is asking me about Donald Trump keeping classified documents next to the crapper? Pardon my language.

HARLOW: It's 7:12 A.M.

LOUIS: Easy does it.

HURD: -- job getting worked out, you know --

HARLOW: But what are they asking you?

HURD: You know what they're worried about? 65 percent of Americans are afraid that artificial intelligence and robots are going to take their jobs. They're worried about whether their kids are going to be able to have a good paying job when they graduate from college. Recent graduates are concerned that why is their ability to make a starting salary less than their parents?

These are the questions people care about. People are worried about why can't I have my kids and grandkids playing in parks in some of our big cities because these cities, entities and mayors can't figure out how to address homelessness in a compassionate or deal with crime? These are the questions that people that folks that are worried about putting food on the table, roof over their head, and make sure that people are healthy, happy, and safe. Those are the things that we should be talking about.

And, again, as a politician, as a member of the GOP, if we start talking about those things, we have an opportunity to take it -- to deal with the frustration that independents are feeling. The number of Democrats that don't want to see -- seven out of ten Americans do not want to see Joe Biden on the election, on the ballot next year. That's the opportunity.

HARLOW: (INAUDIBLE) want to see Trump on the ballot --

HURD: Amen to that. Look, I've said it.

HILL: And you have to cut through the loudest voice here, right? I mean, that's the other issue. Why are those things not being talked about? Because Donald Trump is sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

We have one more, though, Republican about to throw their hat in the ring. So, you've got Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, right, filing paperwork. We're expecting that announcement to come. I guess the question is, this is getting increasingly busy here, this Republican field. The pool is quite full at this point, but, apparently, the water is very nice. Does that make it harder to have those conversations conversation?

HURD: So, I actually don't think so, right? And I recognize my perspective is unique for most people. Options are always better, okay? Options are always better.

[07:15:00]

Let's have a diversity of thought and ideas. Let's have a competition of ideas within the party.

Now, that requires there being a competition. And, unfortunately, too many people only talking about defending Donald Trump and wanting to say they're going to pardon him if something happens. That's insane to me. But we should never be afraid of competition, right? And so what happens is, can somebody you articulate a vision for the country that inspires people to come out and make a decision on a particular day. I think that is what is ultimately missing.

And the thing that I've learned in my decade or so in politics, what I call the professional political class, right, these are the pollsters, the people that run races, they always tell you to do the same thing over and over, right? And guess what? We get the same boring results every time.

And so let's do something different, because the reality is we live in complicated times. I love that in the lead up to this, you were talking about this drone, right, and how the Ukrainians are being able to use new technology and warfare. This is game changer. What does this mean for conflict between China and Taiwan and us? These are all kinds of the questions that we should be having.

HARLOW: What's so interesting -- are you running, by the way?

HURD: I haven't made a decision, but I --

HARLOW: You sound like a candidate.

HURD: Well, I got to make a decision soon.

HARLOW: When will the decision come?

HURD: Soon.

HARLOW: Come on. What is soon?

HURD: Here's the thing.

HILL: Before Labor Day?

HURD: You care so much about these issues.

HURD: No, I do. Look, my beautiful wife is with me today, and you can tell her I do things on my own time. Yes. I do things on my own time. And when we're ready to make a decision, we'll make a decision.

HARLOW: The point before we go that I wanted to make is I'm so glad you brought up A.I. I was at a dinner with some CEOs last night, and this is what is number one on their mind, like some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies. They're thinking about that. They're thinking about the impact on jobs, the good, the bad, the ugly. But I think Congressman Hurd makes a great point, Errol. That is not what any of those Republican contenders or Joe Biden are talking most about.

LOUIS: Yes. I mean, look, let's give a little bit of credit to the political class, these pollsters and the consultants who take so much money from candidates year after year. They do stuff not because it doesn't work. They do it because it does work. And if working means winning that next primary, getting a bump in the polls, putting out a message that will get a lot of donors to give small amounts to you, all of the different things that candidates have to do.

There may be something fundamentally broken with our system because we incentivize a lot of the wrong things, like saying whatever nonsense will get somebody to click on your email and give you $24 or whatever it is you're asking for. But that's where we are.

HARLOW: So, it's our fault?

LOUIS: Well, we have some responsibility.

HILL: We're not donating, so it's not our fault.

LOUIS: We have some responsibility. I mean -- and, look, it's something -- look, we all know this just from the news business. Year after year, you go through the polls, what's the most important thing. People will say, education, they'll say the economy and so forth. And then the minute you try to activate that and say, well, are you willing now to actually pay a couple of pennies more for your school's education? And people go and grab their pitchforks and their torches, and they say, hell no.

So, we've got to -- now is exactly the right time. We've got to tell these presidential candidates of whatever party exactly what it is we want. We have to insist that they pay attention to what it is we want and not what some pollster has told them is going to activate us. And then I think we have to adapt some of the same defensiveness that we take with television commercials or anything else.

HILL: And hold them to account, right? That's the other thing, right? Hold you to account in terms of what you ran on, what you talked about, what was the action? We were in big trouble because we went way over there. But stay with us. More to come.

HARLOW: As the congressman just mentioned, there's stunning video from The Wall Street Journal, and what it shows is a Russian soldier pleading with a Ukrainian drone to spare his life on the battlefield. This happened in Bakhmut. You can see him being chased by the drone, dropping small bombs before he finally surrenders, begging for the bombardment to stop.

We should state, The Wall Street Journal interviewed and interviewed the captured soldier on May 19th in the presence of a guard, but we do not know whether he was speaking under duress. It's an important point.

CNN also got an exclusive look at the front lines of the war with a special ops team of Ukrainian soldiers whose main focus is breaking Russian morale in Bakhmut.

Our CNN's Sam Kiley is live in Kyiv, Ukraine, with more of his reporting this morning. Can you tell us, Sam, what the special ops team showed you?

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, one of the campaigns that the Ukrainians have been waging very effectively in The Wall Street Journal, Daily Mail also ran that story back in May, is propaganda. They are operating in the cyber realm on the minds of Russians and undermining the Russian will to fight on top of the ability of the Russians to have leaders that are alive long enough to give orders that maintain that will is something that they're combining with that cyber realm into the realm of the shadows.

[07:20:03]

And this is what it looks like.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KILEY (voice over): A Special Forces night operation, the objective, to bring a special kind of misery to Russian troops. As they arrived alongside Ukrainian regulars, the Russians attacked. A night vision recording of a routine assault that the Special Forces needed to shrug off. How long did you spend under fire like this before you could move?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

KILEY: And then what did you do?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

KILEY: Electronic surveillance pinpointed their victims. First, they killed two paratroopers approaching on their left flank to get to the group's main targets, Russian commanders near Bakhmut. A sterile record of an all too gritty event in March. First, one officer is shot, then another down.

He says, Radio intercepts revealed that the Russians lost two officers and five others to their sniper team that night.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE).

KILEY: Formed when Russia invaded Ukraine last year, this team of experienced veterans works in a secret realm under the intelligence services. They're tasked with tactical work seeking strategic effect as Ukraine's counteroffensive takes shape.

Here, using a modified heavy machine gun in a hidden bunker last month close to Bakhmut. Drone operators more than a mile away are directing Brabbus (ph) onto Russian troops.

How many Russians have you killed in this war?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A lot of -- a lot of -- for example, here's, a lot of Russians.

KILEY: This is when you're on with this gun? How many more or less there?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know. We didn't calculate in this time.

KILEY: It's the Russians they want to do the counting because Ukraine's best hope is that Russian troops run rather than fight.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KILEY (on camera): Now, Poppy, very intense fighting, the Ukrainians are saying, is going on now on that southern front and in what we're calling the Zaporizhzhia, that is the approach for the Ukrainians towards the great prize of Crimea. And, again, that is a bloody old- fashioned war there.

HARLOW: Sam, we appreciate your reporting. Thank you.

HILL: The nation's largest protestant denomination voting overwhelmingly to expel churches with female pastors. What it means for the future of the Southern Baptist Convention, that's next.

HARLOW: Also, 78 people are dead in a shipwreck off the coast of Greece. What officials say caused this migrant boat to capsize.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You may lower them. If you are opposed, please raise your ballots. You may lower them. Those in favor, have it. And the motions are referred.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Churches with women as pastors are no longer welcome in the Southern Baptist Convention, the influential Christian organization, the largest protestant denomination in this country, initially disfellowshipped five women-led churches in February. But two of the five appealed that decision, including Saddleback Church, one of the largest and most powerful churches in the country. It's, of course, led by a name you might know, Rick Warren. Well, yesterday, that appeal failed.

The other church that fought against this expulsion is Fern Creek Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. It's led by Pastor Linda Barnes Popham. And she joins us now. Good morning, Pastor.

LINDA BARNES POPHAM, PASTOR, FERN CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH: Good morning to you.

HARLOW: What does it feel like waking up this morning knowing that this fight that you and so many in the church feel so passionately about ultimately failed?

POPHAM: On one hand, it feels like being kicked out of the family. And perhaps even like a divorce, as one of my friends said. But on the other hand, there's something liberating and freeing, being no more bound, bound no more to the traditions and opinions and the power of those in leadership in the Southern Baptist Convention.

HILL: You had said that you -- ultimately, you said in your speech that your church that you fully affirm the Baptist faith and message before it was changed. This is one from 1963. It was changed in 2000, if I'm correct. And that's when it was changed to say that pastors could only be men.

POPHAM: You are correct in that. But it's also known that the Baptist faith and message is a confessional and not a creed. And we have been free all this time to adhere to any of those confessionals, the 1925, the 1963, the 2000, and we have been those who have adhered to the 1963.

HARLOW: I was reading -- some New York Times reporters were down there at this convention and did a really excellent job documenting. You probably ran into them documenting the feelings of not only you, women leaders, but also members of the church. And this is what, you know, one of them said and just talking about their sadness and they also quoted you saying this is a signal of decline for Southern Baptist. I believe they're going to discourage so many women from ministry that women and their families will find other places to serve.

[07:30:02]

POPHAM: Yes. And one of the most poignant memories of the last two days.