Return to Transcripts main page

CNN This Morning

Aide For Former President Trump Walt Nauta To Plead Not Guilty In Classified Documents Case; Reporting Indicates Special Counsel Jack Smith Subpoenaed Arizona Secretary Of State's Office Seeking Information On Trump Campaign; Belarusian President Says Wagner Group Leader Yevgeny Prigozhin Is Not In Belarus. Today: Biden Travel To South Carolina To Promote "Bidenomics"; 20+ Mass Shootings Reported During Holiday Weekend; Survey: Most OB/GYNS Are Concerned About The Negative Effects The Dobbs Ruling Has Had On Care. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 06, 2023 - 08:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:00:09]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: It is the top of the hour, 8:00 a.m. here on the east coast, 5:00 a.m. out west. Good morning, everyone. Happy to have Victor, my friend, by my side. Thanks for coming out.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Good to be with you this morning, thank you.

HARLOW: Appreciate it.

Here's where we begin. The fate of Russia's mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in serious question this morning. Russian police have raided his home and the president of Belarus tells Matthew Chance that Prigozhin is in Russia and not in exile in Belarus.

BLACKWELL: And you're looking live now at the federal courthouse in Miami. Just a few hours from now Donald Trump's alleged co-conspirator is set to plead not guilty in the classified documents case as new details about surveillance video that apparently shows him moving boxes at Mar-a-Lago.

HARLOW: In 2020, South Carolina helped Joe Biden win the Democratic presidential nomination, really propelled him there. Now he is making a return visit as he runs for reelection. South Carolina Congressman and Biden campaign co-chair Jim Clyburn with us live this hour.

CNN THIS MORNING begins right now.

And this is where we start. Just hours from now Donald Trump's personal aide and alleged co-conspirator Walt Nauta is set to plead not guilty in the classified documents probe. This all comes after a judge unsealed more details in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant that's shedding new light on Nauta's role in allegedly hiding boxes of highly classified documents from federal agents. We're also now learning the FBI obtained surveillance video of Nauta moving dozens of boxes in and out of a storage room before the Justice Department showed up for that planned visit to retrieve any and all classified documents that Trump still had.

Carlos Suarez start us off live outside the courthouse. So what's going to happen today?

CARLOS SUAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor and Poppy, good morning. So this is the third court hearing for 40-year-old Walt Nauta. The first time around he had trouble finding an attorney here in Miami that would represent him. The second time around bad weather kept him from traveling to south Florida.

Now, we expect his appearance in court at his arraignment later this morning to be brief. He is expected to plead not guilty to obstruction charges and to lying to federal investigators. Now, prosecutors say was Nauta who moved dozens of boxes that contained classified documents from a storage room at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort to other parts of the property, and that he lied about the entire thing. Prosecutors say that this was all in an effort to keep one of Trump's attorneys from finding these classified documents that been subpoenaed by a grand jury.

Now, the federal government says that they have surveillance video, as you mentioned, of Nauta moving these boxes around the property before the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago for those classified documents. Nauta, who served as Trump's military valet, is his personal aide, and we're told he is expected in federal court in downtown Miami at his arraignment later this morning. In fact, Poppy and Victor, the two of them, the former president Trump as well as Nauta, have been together since essentially Trump's arraignment here in south Florida last month. Last week the two of them spotted in Philadelphia where the former president had a political appearance. Guys?

HARLOW: Carlos Suarez live for us in Miami, thanks very much. Victor?

BLACKWELL: The special counsel's investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has been ramping up. We have known Georgia has been a key focus. But we have not heard as much about Arizona, at least until now. Last night former Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who rejected pressure from Donald Trump and allies, spoke to Kaitlan Collins and said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: We talked about your call with Trump and Giuliani, as you just mentioned there. They were both on that phone call. Have you been subpoenaed by the special counsel?

RUSTY BOWERS, (R) ARIZONA STATE HOUSE SPEAKER: I -- that's a great question. I -- I'm hesitant to talk about any subpoenas, et cetera, but I have been interviewed by the FBI.

COLLINS: In the January 6th investigation? Excuse me. In the effort to overturn the election results?

BOWERS: Correct. It was four hours of a discussion that they had with me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: According to a new report in the "Arizona Republic," the special counsel subpoenaed the Arizona secretary of state's office in May and sought information on two lawsuits, one from the Trump campaign, another from former Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward that alleged fraud and errors in the election results. And this comes on the heels of reporting that Donald Trump pressured former Arizona Governor Doug Ducey to overturn the results with Ducey later telling a donor that he was surprised that Jack Smith had not called him.

[08:05:10]

HARLOW: A dramatic turn of events for the Russian mercenary leader accused of launching that rebellion. The president of Belarus tells our very own colleague Matthew Chance that Yevgeny Prigozhin is in Russia, in Saint Petersburg to be exact, instead of living in exile in Belarus. Remember that agreement? Meanwhile, Russian state media report police raided Prigozhin's home and office in Saint Petersburg. Just last week the Russian government had claimed that it was dropping charges against him. During the raids, Russian police say they uncovered stashes of gold, money, guns, wigs, and several passports allegedly belonging to the mercenary leader under different aliases.

Let's go to Matthew Chance. He joins us live in Minsk where, Matthew, you just spoke directly with and posed to questions to the Belarusian President Lukashenko. What did you learn?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you don't get much opportunity, Poppy, to speak to the leader of Belarus. It's quite a difficult autocratic country to access. You have to be specially invited. So we did this for this incredible scene here. You can see the Palace of Independence, it's called. It's marble-clad, it's sumptuous. It's where the presidential office is. It's where we met Alexander Lukashenko.

He said we could talk about anything, but the main topic, of course, that we all wanted to know about is what of that deal that he supposedly brokered to the end the rebellion in Russia last month and to bring Prigozhin and his Wagner fighters here. Take a listen to what Alexander Lukashenko had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

CHANCE: I wonder if you could provide us all with a bit of an update on the whereabouts of the Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Is he in Belarus or not?

ALEXANDER LUKASHENKO, BELARUSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): in terms of Yevgeny Prigozhin, he is in Saint Petersburg, or maybe this morning he would travel to Moscow or elsewhere. But he is not on the territory of Belarus now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHANCE: Extraordinary, not in the territory of Belarus, because just a week or so ago, Alexander Lukashenko said that he was on the territory of Belarus. So he has contradicted, the positions changed. And when you couple that with the video we're seeing coming out of Russian state television of Yevgeny Prigozhin's hacks, or one of them being raided in Saint Petersburg, gold being seized, cash, wigs, photographs, passports, arms, things like that, it implies that this deal that was supposedly negotiated is now being renegotiated by the Kremlin, and that may not end well for Wagner leader. Poppy?

BLACKWELL: I'll take it. Matthew Chance for us there from Minsk, thank you so much.

CNN senior global affairs analyst Bianna Golodryga joins us now. Big surprise this morning from President Lukashenko. What's your take.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SECURITY GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: It's all fascinating. And it's all about speculating as much as you guys are. Everyone that's watching this space, there have been for the past few days people online trying to decide whether some sightings of a man who may or may not be Prigozhin are, in fact true, whether it was in Saint Petersburg or Moscow. There are some Internet sleuths that suggested they spotted a bodyguard that liked like the man who had always been with Prigozhin up until this mutiny.

Listen, I still believe, I would not take out life insurance on this man is something that I said last week, and I stand by that. I don't believe he is long for this world. That doesn't mean he is in imminent danger in the next week or two or month. I think Vladimir Putin still doesn't know what to do with him. He was a huge value, an asset for him with Wagner for all of these years.

Now it does seem to appear -- and listen, it doesn't matter whether he is in Belarus or Russia. These two are one and the same and he can extradite to Russia anytime he wanted to. So that wasn't something that I really paid much attention to in terms of where he was geographically. I think for Vladimir Putin, perhaps now is a time where he wants to focus on making Prigozhin irrelevant to the Russian people. What happened last week was a big shock to the system where you saw Russians greeting him and cheering him on as he was leaving Rostov. You saw for a short time his popularity, Prigozhin's actually go up.

Since then, since the public speeches that we've heard from Vladimir Putin it has gone back down. And I think what you are seeing with these raids of his buildings and his homes and his office space is all meant to sort of emasculate him and to make him look smaller. They have taken control of Wagner away from him. So maybe now is an opportunity for Russians to perhaps not view him as the hero of war as he was presenting himself to be.

HARLOW: Jill Dougherty last hour said something interesting. There is what to do with Prigozhin and what to do with Wagner, with his former mercenary troops, if you will. How do you distinguish that and the impact of it currently on the war in Ukraine? Like, are they just bringing those forces back into Russia trying to put them back into Russian armed forces? GOLODRYGA: Many of them, they say, according to Russians, have

already signed up for the Russian military, which is an option that Vladimir Putin gave them.

[08:10:06]

They were a huge value for Vladimir Putin for so many years to sort of be these private mercenary group that they then had plausible deniability in terms of any international rules that they were --

HARLOW: By the way, not just in Ukraine. Africa, Syria, exactly.

GOLODRYGA: No, around the world, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue. What Vladimir Putin was acknowledged what most of us suspected, and that was that this organization, though it might have seemed private, was actually funded by the Russian state. And so all of the money that he says that Prigozhin had said all along that he was bringing in and the revenue that they were generating, Putin said, no, no, that wasn't something you did. It was something we gave you.

Now it's a matter of time to see where these fighters go, if in fact the offers that Putin gave them, that he stands by them. Did some of these men go home? It doesn't look like many went to Belarus, and we did see some return to bases in Ukraine and eastern Ukraine as well. So time will tell.

BLACKWELL: Let's fold in some of the other reporting. This bombing of a residential area in Lviv, of course, right next door to the Polish border there, NATO ally. And the flight, or the plane, the Russian jet that clipped a drone over Syria, do you think there is some overlap here of the last two weeks of Putin and Prigozhin and trying to reassert, trying to, I guess, egg on the west? Is there some connection here, or am I drawing that unduly?

GOLODRYGA: I think perhaps anybody that thought that what we saw take place with this mutiny would bring this war to an end any time soon, sadly, that's not going to happen. And that's what continues to happen on the battlefield and why we see these illegal acts of war targeting civilians and going as far as Lviv in western Ukraine. Obviously, Russians are aware of the meeting in Lithuania next week, NATO members.

And so I think all of this is sort of Russia again showing its muscle and saying what you have been seeing and what has happened with this Prigozhin mutiny might have been a blight and an embarrassment for us, but our mission for this war continues, and notable that the head of the war, the minister of defense, Shoigu, still in place, and General Gerasimov still there as well.

BLACKWELL: Let me be more precise. There was a missile that hit that residential area in Kyiv. I used the word bombing. But let's be clear about that. Yes, -- in Lviv. My apologies. Bianna, thanks.

HARLOW: OK, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has arrived in Beijing. She will be meeting with her Chinese counterpart and senior officials today working trying to deepen communications between the U.S. and her Chinese counterparts on a range of issues, including, obviously, these two dueling economies of superpowers. Yellen is not expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. This visit also is aimed at cooling tension between Washington around Beijing after President Biden called Xi a dictator last month, you'll remember, right after Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned from his trip to China. Yellen will be there until Sunday.

BLACKWELL: President Biden is heading to South Carolina today. He plans to tout his record on the economy. We'll talk to the co-chair of Biden's re-election campaign, South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:00]

HARLOW: Today as President Biden seeks re-election, he is travelling to the State that helped put him in the Oval Office in the first place South Carolina. His focus will be on what is now being called Bidenomics. And according to the White House, he will hone in on how his policies are spurring manufacturing investments and well-paying jobs across the country.

According to recent A.P. Poll, Biden's got his work cut out from 64 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of the economy. And today, marks the President's first trip to South Carolina since 2021. Also, his first time there since the DNC designated, it the first Primary State for 2024. With us now is Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn. He's also the co-chair of the President's 2024 reelection campaign. Congressman, good morning, it's great to have you.

That's not really welcome Polling for a campaign that is really betting on Bidenomics, as the President heads to your State. When you also look at the Polling, it shows 35 percent of people, only 35 percent of voters have a great deal of confidence, or a fair amount of confidence in President Biden on the economy. He has a lot of ground to make up, does he not?

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, thank you very much for having me. You know, I think that what we are witnessing in the country today is that people lost out on almost everything. And I think that is for good reason. We have not spent enough time accentuating the positives that exist today. I am, as a co-chair, or the chair of the COVID-19 committee. And people really got in a pretty solid mood during that tough pandemic.

And we're trying to (AUDIO GAP). We came out of the administration that talked about infrastructure every other day, and never spent a dime on infrastructure. Joe Biden has put an infrastructure program in place, and people are just beginning to experience it. And I think that as we go on, people will see the connection. That's why he's (AUDIO GAP) today to talk about what his infrastructure program has done for this country, and what it has done for South Carolina. I do believe that in the coming months, people are going to see the impact.

BLACKWELL: All right, we're having some audio issues. Guys, are we going to try to fix this audio and then come back to the Congressman or are we going to just bear through? All right, we got one more question for you, Congressman. Sometimes the gremlins in the system mess up a good conversation. But you say that he's got -- he's got some work to do and then people are sour on everything.

Let's go specifically to a new Winthrop University Poll that specifically on South Carolina. Where 44 percent of the people there say that their finances are worse off now, far more than those who say that they're better or about the same. But what does he have to do? Is it all rhetoric or is there a new policy that's necessary to bring South Carolinians along?

CLYBURN: One thing that we have to make a connection between on the groundbreaking that's going on here in Joe Biden. We got the new -- Volkswagen is bringing the new (INAUDIBLE) program here. We've got to show that is a result of the CHIPS and Science bill.

[08:20:13]

We see malfunction junction here in Columbia, South Carolina that's been a problem for years, it is now being fixed. They've got to see that it's because of Joe Biden's infrastructure program. The Inflation Reduction Act, seniors are now paying the $35.00 a month for each insulin and they've been paying, seven -- $800 a month. They got to know that is Joe Biden's in debt Inflation Reduction Act. That's what we've got to do. We've just got to get people to see that these things are happening. And it's a reason, the reason for it, is Joe Biden.

BLACKWELL: All right, Congressman Clyburn, thank you so much for your time. And of course, we'll be watching the President today in South Carolina.

CLYBURN: Well, thank you very much for having me.

BLACKWELL: Sure.

HARLOW: The July 4th holiday, overshadowed by a series of mass shootings, over just the last four days. What will a Republican President do to stop the bloodshed? We will ask former Congressman and 2024 Presidential candidate. We'll hear about that and a lot more next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:25:15]

HARLOW: Welcome back. This long fourth of July holiday ended in tragedy for so many communities across the country. A series of mass shootings over the four-day period has left at least 16 people dead, 94 injured, that's according to the gun violence archive. The deadliest of these mass shootings in just the past few days in Philadelphia, where a shooter appeared to fire randomly killing five people. The D.A. there Larry Krasner, lashed out of politicians who he says stand in the way of reasonable gun reform. Here's what he told us yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LARRY KRASNER, PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY: It's time for people who are running for office to swear off NRA money, to swear off gun lobby money, to swear off this absurd interpretation of the Second Amendment that has been put out there by militias.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining us now is Republican Presidential candidate, former Texas Congressman Will Hurd. Congressman, good morning, it's good to have you here. First time having you on this program since you announced your running. Look, you have had an A rating from the NRA. You've also pushed for universal background checks. If you were President, would you sign a federal ban on assault weapons?

WILL HURD (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I don't think first off of federal ban on assault weapons is going to get to the President's desk. And too, I don't think that is the solution that's going to solve all of our problems. Some of the solutions that would solve the current problem, is things like universal background checks on 80 percent of Americans agree on that. 80 percent of Americans agree that a high caliber, high-capacity long gun you should be the same age to purchase that as you are to purchase a handgun, which is -- which is 21.

And then also, the issue around of providing support to on mental health. Everybody wants to talk about mental health when these things happen. But in between these terrible events, we're not doing anything to ensure that people have access to mental health that we know who to call if we're aware of something that is potentially happening. And then when you look at the events of the last weekend further support to law enforcement, so that they have the resources the bodies, the manpower in order to patrol their put control their streets.

HARLOW: So. OK, I'm going to take that as a no on an assault weapons ban. We've had one in this country as you know it expired. Let's move on to the issue of abortion, because you've expressed support for a 15-week ban on abortion. You voted twice for a 20-week ban on abortion. I thought it was notable that one year after Roe vs. Wade was overturned. Just a few weeks ago, a new survey came out from OB/GYN.

So, they found real concern for maternal health. They found that since the ruling OB/GYN nationwide say the 2/3 of them have found it is worse than their ability to respond to pregnancy related emergencies and exacerbated pregnancy related mortality. I asked this because you tweeted in May of last year. I believe we shouldn't continue to fail women before during and after pregnancy. Do those statistics show that we are failing women now, pregnant women now?

HURD: Of course, they do. And look, if a 15-week abortion ban came to my desk, I would sign it. But also, I think the States that are restricting this need to be making sure that they have the best maternal health care, the best neonatal care. When you look at the numbers of black women having birth, it's the number of deaths is worse in many countries in the developing world. That's just absolutely outrageous. That you shouldn't in the United States of America, if you're an expectant mom, there shouldn't be a fear that you could potentially die in childbirth. And so, yes, we are failing women by not making sure they have access to the resources that they need before and after pregnancies.

HARLOW: One of the requirements to get on the debate stage and now on the ballot in Florida is to sign a loyalty pledge to whoever the Republican nominee is. You told my colleague and friend, Dana Bash, a few days ago, I can't lie to get access to a microphone. I'm not going to support Donald Trump. Even if it costs you a shot at the presidency, even if it cost you getting on a ballot in Florida, even if it cost you getting on the debate stage.

HURD: I can't lie, Poppy. And here's the thing, the issue is not with me supporting the Republican nominee. The issue is I'm not going to support Donald Trump. And here's why, Donald Trump is a proven loser. He hasn't won since 2016. We know all the numbers. He lost the House in 2018. He lost the Senate and the White House in 2020. He prevented a red wave where we thought that Kevin McCarthy is going to have a 35 to 40 Seat majority in the House and ended up being five. He's someone who's not even willing to sign the pledge and doesn't want to -- want to debate.