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CNN This Morning

Wall Street Journal Reports, Trump Target Letter Cites Three Statutes, Deprivation of Rights, Conspiracy to Defraud U.S., Witness Tampering; Judge Signals She May Push Back the Start Date of Trump's Classified Documents Trial; Michigan Attorney General Charges 16 People in Fake Elector Plot Aimed at Helping Trump Win 2020 Election. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 19, 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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KRISTA GARVIN, PASSENGER: There was a woman walking up the aisle. She looked like she was about to just pass out. They ended up putting an oxygen mask on her.

People had thrown up. People had fainted, gone to the bathroom.

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ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: But she said many people got sick from the heat, including the flight crew. And the flight to Atlanta was ultimately canceled. The airline has apologized and released this statement. Delta teams are looking into the circumstances that led to uncomfortable temperatures inside of that cabin. And uncomfortable is an understatement.

CNN This Morning continues right now.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump facing a barrage of developments in multiple federal criminal investigations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These are significant charges, potentially with serious jail time, and he knows this.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: The DOJ has become a weapon for the Democrats.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is trying to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the entire justice system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The case could be indicted by the end of the week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In some ways, it kind of looks like a publicity stunt.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): I hope he doesn't get charged. I don't think it will be good for the country.

MIKE PENCE, FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: History will hold him to account for his actions that day.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: The Michigan attorney general announcing charges against 16 people in the fake electorate scheme.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To reject the will of the voters was fraudulent and legally baseless.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If convicted, they could face decades in prison here.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This was knowingly trying to break the law, to overturn the will of the people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Judge Aileen Cannon is pushing back on prosecutors' proposed mid-December trial date.

TRUMP: I'm protected by Presidential Records Act.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We can't keep dealing with this drama. We can't keep dealing with the negativity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think this is a golden opportunity for somebody in this field to step up.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Every time President Trump goes up in the polls, they come after him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Legally, pretty bad day. Politically, just another day in Trump world.

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, good Tuesday morning, everyone. Poppy is off this week. Abby Phillip is back here with me.

And we should know, legally, it was a very bad day and also a day that underscored just how much is surrounding the former president when it comes to potential criminal charges, including potential third and maybe even fourth indictments looming ahead.

This one tied specifically to a target letter that was sent to the former president regarding efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The Wall Street Journal and other sources now report that according to a source familiar with that letter, it cites at least three laws, including deprivation of rights, conspiracy to commit an offense against or defraud the United States, and tampering with a witness.

Trump was defiant in a Fox News town hall last night. He accused the Justice Department of being a political weapon.

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TRUMP: We have a man, the only way he can get elected is to weaponize the Justice Department, which he's gone around doing. I didn't know practically what a subpoena was and grand juries and all of this. Now, I'm like becoming an expert. I have no choice, because we have to -- it's a disgrace. If you say something about an election, they want to put you in jail for the rest of your life.

We have prosecutors that are evil people. These are evil people, deranged. I call them deranged.

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PHILLIP: Meanwhile, in Michigan, the state's attorney general has brought felony charges against 16 fake electors who signed certificates falsely claiming that Trump had won the election. And in Florida, a federal judge is signaling that she may push back the start date of Trump's criminal trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents. She suggested that mid-December is actually too soon.

We have full team coverage on all of these angles and these big developments, starting with Paula Reid, who is live outside of the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida, Elie Honig and David Axelrod, also Alyssa Farah Griffin are standing by for the legal and political analysis of all of this.

But, Ellie, I do want you to tell us what you are learning about these statutes from the target letter.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. So, first of all, we're hearing that potential charges here could include conspiracy to defraud the United States. So, that's not a surprise. And that tells us that Jack Smith is taking a very broad view of this. There also could be a charge relating to deprivation of civil rights. What civil right could that be? Well, that would be the right to a free and fair election, the right for everyone to have their votes counted. And, finally, we're learning that there could be a witness tampering charge. That's a bit of a surprise, although Donald Trump does have also a bit of a history relating to witness tampering.

What's also notable here, Abby, is what's not apparently going to be part of the charges, or at least what's not been listed in the target letter. There's no listing of an insurrection charge or an incitement of insurrection charge.

So, that's significant both for what's in there and what's not in there. It tells us, Phil, that Jack Smith is taking a very broad view of this, and he's looking at this as a conspiracy.

MATTINGLY: Right. What conduct is the special prosecutor most likely focused on at this point?

HONIG: Yes. So, it's clear that Jack Smith is taking a very broad view here. He is looking at this as really a seven-state strategy focused on these seven states, all of which went for Joe Biden, but Donald Trump and people around him decided to try to steal at any cost.

[07:05:007] They started by pressuring state officials. Most famously, Donald Trump made that famous phone call to Brad Raffensperger, the secretary of state of Georgia, where he urged him, I just want to find 11,780 votes.

We also know that as part of this effort, Donald Trump and others were involved in the creation of these false elector certificates. This is the one from Michigan. As you just talked about, there have now been state level charges lodged against the actual people who signed and claimed to be the rightly elected electors for Donald Trump. Of course, Donald Trump did not win Michigan or those other states.

We also know that when that failed, Donald Trump and others engaged in a pressure campaign aimed at the vice president, Mike Pence. He, of course, resisted. We know he's a witness in this case now, a very important witness. And then we know that when Donald Trump ultimately was frustrated that Mike Pence would not do the unconstitutional things Donald Trump wanted him to do, Donald Trump sent an inflammatory tweet while the riot was happening, saying Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done. And that further inflamed the rioters.

So, that's the focus up until the actual date of January 6. And we also know the final chapter here is when Donald Trump goes out on The Ellipse, makes his speech to the rally, and then people storm the Capitol. Though, again, according to the reporting, incitement of an insurrection is not among the charges that have been listed.

MATTINGLY: Well, that's what I was going to ask you. We've all been trying to figure out what potential charges would be, or at least talking to lawyers to figure out what potential charges could be, based on what we saw in what we've seen from the reporting from The Wall Street Journal and others related to the three statutes listed in the target letter. I'm interested the complexity of the potential case, if those are the potential charges pursued.

HONIG: Yes. So, if you look at deprivation of civil rights and conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States, those are going to cover largely the same ground. We're going to talk about the whole scheme that we just laid out. I think Jack Smith is doing this intentionally because he wants to be able to show that this is, in fact, a coordinated effort that went across the country, and that hit at the state, local and federal levels.

I think also, if we look at tampering with a witness, that's really important, because, first of all, who will this witness be? Donald Trump does have a history from the Mueller investigation on of trying to influence what witnesses say, and that could be really damaging. That's a crime on its own, and it shows corrupt intent as to the broader picture here.

So, again, those, I think, are not surprising. It shows that Jack Smith is trying to view this as a whole and not getting into the more complicated, perhaps more inflammatory charges related to insurrection.

MATTINGLY: Okay. Elie Honig, thank you. Abby, you got the panel.

PHILLIP: Let's go now to Paula Reid live outside of the federal courthouse in Fort Pierce, Florida. So, Paula, lots of developments right now on multiple fronts. You have some new reporting on the time crunch here that Jack Smith is facing with both of these investigations that he's in charge of.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Abby. We know one of the few things that Special Counsel Jack Smith has ever said publicly is that he wants a, quote, speedy trial in the Mar-a-Lago documents case. And it's expected that if the former president is charged in the January 6 investigation, that they would also want a speedy trial. They would want to prosecute this case before the election. And if that is the goal, they need to move it along pretty quickly.

But we know even if the former president is charged in the coming weeks that the special counsel's work will continue, because we've learned that they have reached out to multiple new witnesses in recent weeks. One of those witness interviews isn't scheduled until August, another one not even on the calendar, and we expect them to hear from additional witnesses as soon as tomorrow.

So, we know, even if Trump is charged, the special counsel's work is going to continue. So, it does not appear that they're going to wait until they get to the end of the entire investigation to send former President Trump a target letter and likely charge him.

Now, we know, of course, the likely strategy from the Trump Team will be to delay, delay, delay. That's the strategy he has used for decades. And yesterday here in Fort Pierce, for the first time, we got to see just how receptive the federal judge overseeing the Mar-a-Lago documents case would be to these efforts to try to push this trial back.

And, Abby, it's interesting, she was open definitely to pushing this back. She said that the special counsel's suggestion of doing this in December, that that was a, quote, compressed timeline. She said, look, cases like this, they just take more time.

Now, she was not willing, though, to leave it open indefinitely. She was really focused on getting the lawyers to give her more information about how much time they need to do the work necessary to prepare for trial. She didn't want to get into arguments about his status as a candidate. She wants to know how long it's going to take them to at least get to the place where they can maybe put a date on the calendar. And it's unclear if that will be next year before the election or after.

PHILLIP: That is a very, very significant question that we'll all be looking for an answer for. Paula Reid, thank you very much.

MATTINGLY: And now we're going to talk to the panel. I was so excited to see David Axelrod's smiling at 7:00 A.M. in the morning, and I just wanted to rush over here.

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I would never intentionally skip Paula and her great reporting. David Axelrod is here. Alyssa Fair Griffin is here.

Alyssa, when you kind of look at the former president's response to the target letter yesterday, the fact he was the one who broke the news, he's done that a couple of times now with these target letters, but then his response yesterday, what he said last night in Iowa, how do you think he's taking this specific potential indictment?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, listen, he clung to some of the same lines he's been using. I'm being indicted for you, trying to say we have a weaponized Department of Justice.

But for a while, the Trump Team has said that they're most legally worried about the documents case, the Mar-a-Lago documents, classified documents, because it's much more of a straightforward case. But the politics of re-litigating January 6 is something they're very worried about, because this means for weeks, if not months on end, we are going to be talking about his worst day in office.

People are going to relive that footage. They're going to see people like Officer Fanone talk about what happened that day. So, he's going to project that he's not upset about it, but I guarantee that he is worried, especially as there is a primary underway. He's running actively for president right now.

So, listen, he's going to keep using the same lines, but this is a factor for him.

PHILLIP: It's such an interesting point because it strikes me that, David, this is kind of like a trapdoor, not just for Trump, but for the entire Republican Party. When you hear Ron DeSantis' reaction to Jake Tapper to this question, he is twisting himself into a pretzel. But at the end of the day, it seems likely that where he and others are going to end up is actually having to kind of defend the actions leading up to January 6th, defend January 6th?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Well, that's the game of Twister they're playing because the Republican elect electorate is where the Republican electorate is. I saw a poll this week, and 55 percent of Republicans said they thought Donald Trump would be their strongest candidate. Even after all of this, there is devotion to him.

And you say the lines that he's been using, they're not just lines. They're fundamental to his strategy. His strategy now is built around these indictments. He has made himself the victim on behalf of his constituents. And I keep saying I don't know whether these bricks that are added to his load with each of these indictments are kryptonite or energy packs in the Republican race. And that's what remains to be seen.

Is there too much at some point? Do they add up to the point where people know I love them, but it's just too much trouble? And that's what we don't know. GRIFFIN: And what's kind of stunning, as you know, to Elie's reporting and others, is there's no guarantee that any of these cases are going to be litigated ahead of the election. So, the fact that the Republicans in the field running against Donald Trump in a primary seem to not be taking him on directly, not criticizing him, not using these indictments to challenge him, it's a flawed strategy. It's like they're waiting in the wings for him to be locked up. But we don't know that that's ever going to happen, or at least not ahead of the election.

AXELROD: Can I just make a larger point? Because I think the trapdoor is not just for the Republican Party, it's for the country. The strategy that they have employed and that Trump has insisted on is to denigrate the whole process, to call the FBI corrupt, to call the Department of Justice corrupt. This has a corrosive impact. It's not just an effect on one election. It's an effect on our democracy. And I think there are going to be longstanding implications of that.

MATTINGLY: I think that's actually a really good point. I think we view things in a day-by-day basis or what does this mean for poll numbers. I think we have the answer, by the way, of what this is going to do to Trump's numbers inside the primary. I don't think there's ever going to be a tipping point. People have been thinking there's going to be a tipping point for, what, seven, seven or eight years now.

But when Speaker Kevin McCarthy comes out and says they saw Trump's poll numbers were going up and he was now leading Joe Biden, and, therefore, that is why they brought -- like that's -- I mean, A, there's no evidence, B, it's based on absolutely nothing at all, and, C, he knows that's completely absurd. And I think that's the issue that I have.

To your point there are long-term implications of doing things like that that are much bigger than whether or not your frontrunner --

AXELROD: And I want to make this point. People can interpret it as a partisan point. It is not I would feel the same way under any circumstance. What Kevin McCarthy is doing really is a betrayal of his responsibilities as one of the leading officers in the United States government. He does know better. He's doing it for political reasons. And it has real impact on the quality of our democracy.

GRIFFIN: And we know that because we know Kevin McCarthy's words after January 6, I'm done with this guy, he bears responsibility, yet he's still undermining this.

PHILLIP: Most of these people said different things right after January 6th, and it's interesting to see them really backtracking now. But, David and Alyssa, don't go anywhere. We have some new reporting on what's been going on behind the scenes with the Trump Team and the legal strategy that they're planning to fight back against other possible indictments.

MATTINGLY: And the Michigan secretary of state will join us live after felony charges were brought against fake electors who falsely claimed Trump won the 2020 election in her state.

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That's next?

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PHILLIP: For the very first time, suspects have been charged in a 2020 fake elector scheme. 16 Republicans in Michigan are charged with trying to help President Trump overturn the election results.

The group met in Lansing back in December of 2020 and they signed certificates falsely claiming that Trump won the state and that they were the rightful electors.

They were turned away from the Michigan Statehouse while the actual group of Democratic electors was meeting inside.

And an audio recording obtained by CNN early last year captured one of the fake electors boasting that the Trump campaign had directed the entire operation.

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MESHAWN MADDOCK, CO-CHAIR, MICHIGAN REPUBLICAN PARTY: We fought to see the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that, and under a lot scrutiny for that today.

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PHILLIP: This is the first time any of the fake electors have been charged with a crime related to that election scheme, which is, of course, also being investigated by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

And joining us now on all of this is Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

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She's the state's highest ranking election official and someone who has also spoken to Jack Smith in the January 6th probe. Secretary Benson, thank you for joining us this morning.

I do want to ask you about what you just heard there, what we've just played, a fake elector saying the Trump campaign asked us to do that. But I wonder, is there a case here that they could make that they were misled or that these were just provisional just in case they won other legal challenges? Do you see them making those arguments and that there's evidence to back that up?

JOCELYN BENSON (D-MI), SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, certainly, a lot of arguments are going to be made, but I think the evidence really shows that this was an actionable, well-thought out plan. The affidavit suggests that individuals were led into the basement of the party headquarters and some chose, including a former secretary of state, Terri Lynn Land, chose not to be a part of it, which should have been a sign that something was awry. She had to then be replaced.

And so there's a number of pieces to suggest that these individuals were very aware of what they were trying to do and attempting to do and then submitting the documents to the National Archives, through which they came to my office also indicates that this wasn't just a ceremony. This was actually an attempt to lie to the government about where the Michigan electoral votes should be allocated.

And there simply has to be culpability for anyone involved, from those who actually committed the acts, to, in my view, anyone who helped organize them.

PHILLIP: And to that end, there were probably other people involved if the Trump campaign was involved, people like Rudy Giuliani, even the RNC chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. Are you surprised that more people at higher levels weren't also part of the charges here?

BENSON: The attorney general in Michigan has said this is part of an ongoing investigation. So, I think this is the first step, perhaps the first in an ongoing effort to not just seek justice for those who are actively involved at the front end of this scheme, but everyone involved.

And so there may be additional charges filed in the future. We'll see how the case progresses. My office is going to fully cooperate with all legal efforts to bring everyone who ran afoul of the law and tried to subvert a legitimate presidential election, bring them to justice.

PHILLIP: One of those 16 fake electors, Meshawn Maddock, went on to become the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party. She accused the state's A.G., Dana Nessel, of a personal vendetta and she added that this was part of a coordinated effort to stop Trump. What's your response to those accusations?

BENSON: Well, first, there was a coordinated effort. It was a coordinated effort to overturn the will of the voters, not just in Michigan but in many other states. And that's a coordinated effort we've been consistently not just shedding a light on but fighting over the last several years.

I mean, secondly, when, as the affidavit suggests, there's overwhelming evidence that the law was violated, particularly with regards to elections, the attorney general, and she said this yesterday, has a responsibility to bring charges. It would be a political act to not bring charges in the face of overwhelming evidence.

And so I think what you have here is the facts and the law driving the case forward. And any individuals who are part of an effort to overturn an election should, in my view, face justice so that we ensure it doesn't happen again.

PHILLIP: So, Special Counsel Jack Smith is also, as everyone knows, actively investigating January 6th, the fake electors plot as well. You spoke to federal prosecutors back in March. I wonder, did they ask you about the fake elector plot and did they ask you about anything that has not yet been made public?

BENSON: Well, there was a lot that was discussed and I don't want to compromise the investigation itself. But I will say, just as my testimony before the January 6th congressional committee really emphasized, there's a need for the federal government to look at the way in which the instances we experienced in Michigan happened in other states and get to the bottom of the facts in every state.

But in addition to that, these actions to overturn an election, to lie to legislators and voters about the accuracy of the presidential election in Michigan and elsewhere led to actual threats and violence not just at the Capitol on January 6th but in other parts of the country as well, including outside my home.

And so that, I think, also is -- there's a focus there and should be, in my view, about the way in which this effort was not simply on its own an effort to overturn an election but an effort that generated violence, threats and in the tragedy at our U.S. Capitol a detrimental effect on our democracy and the law enforcement officers who were defending it that day.

PHILLIP: You've said in the past that there has been no real accountability for former President Trump spreading misinformation about the election. And you added that without that accountability, we must expect to see it continue.

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Do you think that a likely indictment for Trump here would send a message and have an impact?

BENSON: I think anytime there are consequences for breaking the law, it has an impact on those considering doing it in the future.

And so we need to consider not just that, but what the path is. If there are no consequences, if there despite overwhelming evidence that the law was violated, if there are not indictments brought, that also sends a signal that you can get away with trying to overturn a legitimate presidential election.

And I believe that that's not what our democracy is about. And I believe that's the wrong signal to send as we go into what, by all accounts, is going to be another contentious presidential election.

PHILLIP: Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, thank you for your time this morning.

BENSON: Thanks for having me.

MATTINGLY: We want to bring back in the panel Alyssa Farah, David Axelrod, Elie Honig are back with us.

Elie, this is probably a simplistic question for lawyers like yourself, but can you explain to me state charges versus what the special counsel is doing? Do these things not run into one another? Is there a separation here? How does this all work? HONIG: I think the charges that we're seeing out of Michigan here are going to be a subset of what we will see from Jack Smith. I think Jack Smith will charge. Given what we've just discussed about what we've learned about what the likely federal charges are, I think all of the fake electors from all of the seven states will become part of Jack Smith's case.

I don't mean to suggest Jack Smith will criminally charge those fake electors, but the scheme itself will become part of Jack Smith's case.

And I think it's worth noting how quickly things change, because as of 24 hours ago right now, nobody had been charged for anything relating to January 6 and the coup attempt other than the people who physically stormed the Capitol or who directly supervised that, directly were involved in the physical storming of the Capitol. Now, we have these fake electors charged with fraud crimes, and it seems quite clear that Donald Trump is on the road to catching a charge of his own from the federal system.

PHILLIP: Yes. And, Alyssa, the secretary of state brought up something, I think, maybe gets overlooked here, which is that she faced real threats. And there was an anecdote where Trump allegedly said that she should be tried for treason. And in a White House meeting around the time that they were discussing these lies around the election, there were real consequences and threats of violence even beyond the Capitol.

GRIFFIN: And I think people forget that. I think if Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified before the January 6th committee and cooperated with DOJ, she got many threats to her life. She had to have security around her for a period of time. A number of people who spoke out all got the messages and the things that you would expect to.

But she also hit on something very important that we can't lose sight of in all this. This could happen again. Donald Trump very well may be the Republican nominee. He very well may lose to Joe Biden or whoever the Democratic nominee is again. And then what happens? There have been efforts underway to try to get loyalists to him into secretary of state jobs, to try to get people elected at the statehouse level so that they can challenge election results in the future. And I don't think that our democracy has necessarily healed or prepared from this day, January 6, 2021.

AXELROD: There's a more serious question, which is, what if he wins? Because it's very clear that if he wins, he's going to try and vacate all of these charges, and then there will be no accountability for all of these schemes. So, there are big worries here.

But you asked a question that I think was really important. These people who executed this alleged scheme in Michigan, as well as the people who stormed the Capitol, some percentage of them did it because they were told and they testified this, the president of the United States said there was fraud here, we were cheated, democracy was -- and they act did on what they were told. And that goes to the fundamental point we were making before. What is the effect of all of this on the nature of our democracy, the quality of our democracy, the ability of it to carry forward?

MATTINGLY: Yes. All right, everybody, stay with us. We've got a lot more on this.

We've also learned that Donald Trump's advisers spent yesterday morning trying to see if anyone else had received a target letter from the special counsel. So, what is their strategy now? We're going to get into that, next.

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