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CNN This Morning

Today, Jan. 6 Grand Jury Set to Meet as Trump Faces Potential Indictment for Trying to Overturn Election; Report Shows Heat Waves Virtually Impossible Without Climate Change; Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) to Donors, Don't Fund a Trump Plurality. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 25, 2023 - 07:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What they can get worked out.

[07:00:01]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: What does Coach want?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I want the name that fits this team to be the best.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Appreciate the time with him. We're going to have a lot more of our sit-down interview. We talked about a whole lot. That's coming up soon.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: I'm looking forward to more of that. There's so much interest and has been in this team for so many different reasons, but also really exciting to see them move into this new -- I guess this new chapter with these new owners, what that could mean for the team.

HARLOW: Yes. He's a remarkable leader. So, we'll have more for you coming up.

HILL: CNN This Morning continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Another Oval Office meeting. This time, Donald Trump bragged about election security months before attacking election security.

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: The special counsel was given thousands of pages of documents related to Giuliani.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Winning the election is his legal defense. The campaign is the defense.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's a justifiable case, a righteous case, but it's not an easy case. ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Experts for the International Atomic Energy Agency say they've discovered mines at the site of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: These are directional anti-personnel mines which are designed to maim, to hurt, to kill people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This one nuclear power plant is being drawn into the heart of the conflict.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The DOJ is suing the state over the floating border wall that's made of buoys in the Rio Grande River.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The Texas attorney general says that it's ready for this legal fight in federal court.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Texas is defending its sovereignty and its constitutional right.

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He's not moving forward in good faith. Political stunts in an inhumane way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Protests in Israel turning violent. Israeli lawmakers by the slimmest of margins voted to overhaul the justice, a move critics say is pushing Israel towards dictatorship.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One designed to restore a measure of balance between the authorities.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They believe it's so important for them to stay out here right now and voice their anger.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's not good for Israel, it's not good for the United States, and, frankly, it's not good for the Middle East.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A new world weather report says the recent extreme heat would have been, quote, virtually impossible without human-induced climate change.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: By the end of this week, 125 or more record highs will be broken.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's now almost certain that July will be the warmest month that this planet has seen in recorded history.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Wow. We're going to get to the heat, the historic, deadly, dangerous heat in a moment. We have a lot to get to. We're glad you're with us on this Tuesday morning.

HILL: A lot of focus on Washington D.C. this morning. That's because the federal grand jury investigating Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election is set to meet just hours from now. And anticipation is building as the former president faces another potential indictment.

We're also learning some exclusive details about another Oval Office meeting that has become a focus for Special Counsel Jack Smith in this investigation. Sources telling CNN witnesses are being asked about that meeting. It happened in February of 2020, where the former President praised election security improvements, even going so far as to suggest doing a news conference so that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security could take credit and tout just how secure things would be.

HARLOW: Right, so what changed? Just weeks after celebrating election security behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Trump started spreading baseless claims about voter fraud.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: The mail ballots, they cheat, okay? People cheat. Mail ballots are very dangerous thing for this country.

This election will be the most rigged election in history.

The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged. Remember that.

This is being done on purpose. They know it's no good. They know it's going to be fraudulent. It's going to be fraud all over the place. Who's getting the ballots? Who's sending the ballots?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Let's bring in CNN Senior Crime and Justice Reporter Katelyn Polantz. Katelyn, good morning to you. This is the latest indication the special counsel is seeking testimony about Trump's state of mind, what he knew when he said those things. How big a deal is that meeting?

KATE POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, right now, we don't know exactly how it would fit into what the grand jury is weighing. We do expect that federal grand jury that's been looking at January 6 in the case that Special Counsel Jack Smith is bringing together, where Donald Trump is a target, we do expect them to meet today. We won't know if they actually are convening or what they're doing until they do it, because grand jury proceedings are extremely confidential until there is an indictment that would emerge.

But in this story that last night was broken by Sean Lyngaas and others here at CNN, it essentially is capturing just an aspect of what happened even before the election, even just a month or two before Donald Trump was out there saying that people may be cheating in the 2020 election. He was being told by senior intelligence, national security officials that the election was going to be very secure, that they were very confident in that.

The confidence kept up among the intel community, among homeland security through the election. [07:05:00]

It was ultimately a very secure election with no widespread fraud. But Donald Trump was briefed on this in February of 2020. It is something the special counsel understands that this briefing happened, that Donald Trump was receptive to this information, that he was encouraging of the officials. But then there are other questions that the special counsel has asked, not just about what happened at this meeting.

But also there is a piece of this investigation about how Trump retaliated apparently against some of the officials that were telling him that the election was secure. There were people that were fired in the administration, people who resigned in protest near the end. And so all of that and how it fits into what the grand jury is looking at, we don't exactly know yet. But it is another aspect that the special counsel's office has pulled in as they build a case.

HILL: More crumbs to follow here. The special counsel also, we've learned, obtained key documents from Rudy Giuliani's team, just got them a couple of days ago, from that team that was trying to find election fraud. What's in those documents?

POLANTZ: A lot of documents, actually, Erica and Poppy. There's hundreds of pages and some of them are reports that the team around Rudy Giuliani were circulating about officials at Dominion Voting Systems, the group that they were accusing of switching votes with no evidence of that. They also had communications, many communications on the Giuliani squad.

So, Rudy Giuliani was working for the Trump campaign after the election trying to undermine the vote. And there were people working with him. One of them was Bernie Kerik, a close old friend of Giuliani's. Kerik is the person that was holding back these documents from everybody who had been seeking them, not just the special counsel's office, but also House investigators. No one had gotten access to them. And then Kerik now is saying that they can have access to them.

We'll see how that factors in if there's even more investigation to be done now that the special counsel's office has indicated they're near the end of what they're looking at.

HILL: All right. Katelyn, I appreciate the reporting, as always. Thank you.

HARLOW: All right. Let's begin CNN Legal Analyst, former Federal Prosecutor Elliot Williams for morning.

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Good morning.

HARLOW: This is so interesting because your mind can change. And if you're a -- I know you're a federal prosecutor, but if you're Trump's defense counsel, you're saying, okay, he thought that then, that was February, by September, October, November, he changed his mind. WILLIAMS: Right. So, let's back up and talk about why intent matters in the first place. And in any criminal case, prosecutors are going to establish what was in the defendant's head at the time that he committed the thing that he's accused of doing. And here, it appears that Jack Smith of the special counsel's office is investigating the former president's conspiracy to defraud the United States. That's that requires using an act of deceit to impede a government process, right? So, if he knew that he'd lost the election but still was pushing these claims, they're more likely to get evidence against him. And you really have to prove his intent and meetings like this can sort of get to that.

HILL: Right. And to Poppy's point, though, couldn't this also -- right, they could also point to maybe there was that intent there. But that's because, listen, my client had been given all of these facts, in quotes, right? He had been told that it was true. So, it's not really his fault. He believed it.

WILLIAMS: Sure. This is a pretty easy claim to rebut, I think, from the part of the former president, which is I'm the president of the United States, I get briefings all the time. It is my job to take in a lot of information from all sides. And between February when this briefing came and April when I hit the campaign trail and started saying more actively that the election was stolen, my mind change. And I received more information suggesting that there was fraud. That's his argument. And I think just as a matter of what a defense attorney would do, which is just poke holes in an argument, that would be not a bad way to do it.

HARLOW: Trump says this target letter came to him from the special counsel nine days ago. Many people expected if he was going to be indicted, it was going to happen soon. It's been nine days. And the grand jury is meeting again and seeing more witnesses today, more witnesses scheduled in a few weeks from now. What does that mean?

WILLIAMS: If I had a mustache, I'd be twirling it now because the plot thickens. No, but we also remember that Trump had until last Thursday to appear before the grand jury. So, they weren't going to charge him with a crime in that intervening Monday to Thursday. It's only been three or four days since then. In prosecutor terms, this is really not a long amount of time and he could -- even if he's charged within weeks, that's still imminent, at least to prosecutors.

HILL: Okay. We'd love to get your take two on what's happening in Texas. So -- oh, I sense the excitement here, which is good. So, you know, the governor said, I'm not giving up. Go ahead, file your lawsuit. The DOJ did. Yes. Where does this all stand now? Governor Abbott said, I'm going to fight this all the way up to the Supreme Court if I have to. Interestingly, the lawsuit from the Department of Justice is not specifically about immigration. That's important.

WILLIAMS: Yes. And like Freud would say, sometimes a lawsuit about immigration isn't a lawsuit about immigration. What the Justice Department was very careful to do was file this lawsuit on environmental grounds, because of the fact that American law gives the federal government sole discretion over waterways of the United States.

[07:10:06]

There are treaties with Mexico governing how the Rio Grande is to be managed. When you put big buoys up in the middle of the Rio Grande, you're violating national waters law.

So, it allowed the Justice Department to stay out of the immigration scrum and say, no, we're not picking that fight. This is merely for violating the sovereignty of the United States. And that's why they're still --

HARLOW: Fascinating.

HILL: Will it be successful?

WILLIAMS: I mean, I do think they have a pretty strong argument there. If you don't make it about the moral immigration stuff, absolutely.

HILL: There's a big if.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

HILL: Elliot, I appreciate it. Thank you.

HARLOW: A truck driver who attacked a police officer during the January 6th Capitol riots has been sentenced to 52 months behind bars. 44-year-old Peter Stager of Arkansas was captured on video beating Officer Blake Miller with the flagpole after he was dragged by the mob and left lying face down.

Stager is one of nine men charged with assaulting Miller and two other officers. Prosecutors said he was caught on video pointing to the Capitol building and saying, quote, every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy.

HILL: This morning, a new report says the extreme heat waves being felt around the world would be virtually impossible without human- induced climate change. Now, right now, wildfires are raging out of control across the globe. But you see some images here from Italy, Greece, Algeria, Record-breaking temperatures, also destroying crops and livestock and helping to trigger those wildfires and ultimately deaths, as we know.

CNN Meteorologist Derek Van Dam joining us now with more. So, couldn't have happened, right, without everything that we have done as humans. I guess the question is, what can we do now, if anything, to reverse some of this damage?

DEREK VAN DAM, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, let me put it this way, Erica. If we don't stop burning fossil fuels rapidly, our summer of heat hell that we're experiencing now will be considered a cool summer in the future.

Now, scientists for decades have been able to attribute weather events like coastal flooding, heavy rain events, as well as these extreme heat events, to climate change. But now, the World Weather Attribution Initiative, the report we're talking about, has the ability to compare our current climate, which is 1.2 degrees Celsius above post industrial averages to that of the past. And what it's finding is that the role of climate change is absolutely overwhelming.

Take, for instance, the current heat wave this month of July across North America with manmade climate change is actually two degrees Celsius warmer than what it would be without these heat trapping gases that we release into the atmosphere. And they're becoming more frequent every 5 to 15 years. And if we continue to burn fossil fuels, we'll see that frequency become every two to three years for these extreme heat events.

And what you and I used to consider as extreme heat, 95 degrees, is becoming easily more achievable. So, not only is it becoming more frequent, but we're seeing these extremes become even more extreme yet. Take, for instance, the entire globe, the average temperature we have set records since July 3rd. So, we're on a 20-day or 20-something day streak of breaking this global average temperature record across the entire planet.

And we're recording temperatures that we've never seen before. Take, for instance, China, as these heat domes continue to propagate across the northern hemisphere throughout our summer months, it is making these heat waves, like I said, and what this report states, virtually impossible without the effects of manmade climate change. Erica?

HILL: Sobering indeed. Derek, I really appreciate it. Thank you.

HARLOW: Well, Senator Mitt Romney in a Wall Street Journal op-ed calling on long shot Republican presidential candidates to drop out if the path forward doesn't look viable, all to help prevent Trump from winning the nomination. Chris Christie, one of the contenders in the race, will join us live.

HILL: And we'll also speak with one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closest allies, as the government there faces immense fallout over stripping power from the Supreme Court.

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[07:15:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. Well, Senator Mitt Romney is out with a clear message to Republican MAGA donors and influencers, quote, don't fund a Trump plurality. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Romney, who was, of course, the party's nominee in 2012, acknowledges the, quote, apparent inevitability of Donald Trump's nomination, but also suggests all hope is not lost for a potential alternative. That is, he says, if the Republican field narrows to a two-person race before Trump's nomination is locked in.

And that's where donors come in. Their job, according to Romney, get candidates what he calls a slim chance of winning to, quote, agree to withdraw if and when their path to nominations are effectively closed, and to do it by February 26th of next year.

According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll of Republican and Republican-leaning voters, Trump is way ahead with 54 percent. DeSantis comes in at 25 percent, remaining candidates in the single digits. That includes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who told New Hampshire voters last night he's not worried.

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CHRIS CHRISTIE, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I will never be in front in one poll in this race until election night.

And then when election night happens and I win, all of a sudden, you're going to become the smartest people in the world. And the momentum that New Hampshire will give me will make me the Republican nominee.

And I will guarantee you, if I am the Republican nominee, Joe Biden doesn't stand a chance to get re-elected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining us now is former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. Governor, good morning. Welcome to CNN This Morning. We're so happy to have you.

Is Mitt Romney right?

CHRISTIE: Yes. Look, I don't disagree with Mitt, I think especially given the date that he put on it. I think there will be a lot of narrowing even before Iowa. I think there will be narrowing that will be created by the debates and people's performances in the debates that start in less than a month.

And then if you get through those first four contests and you haven't made real progress and look like the person that's ready to take on whoever the frontrunner is at the time, whether it's Donald Trump or somebody else, well, then it makes sense for you to go home.

[07:20:10]

Look, after I lost in New Hampshire eight years ago, Poppy, I got out. And I think I wouldn't feel comfortable asking donors for more money or voters for their vote if I didn't see a realistic path to victory. So, I don't disagree with Mitt.

HARLOW: You're betting a lot on New Hampshire. That's clear. Looking at the most recent New Hampshire polling, you're behind Trump, DeSantis, but you're also behind Senator Tim Scott. You're at 6 percent, he's at 8 percent. And he's got a really high favorability rating, and you're fighting the highest unfavorability rating in the state. Why should people vote for you, Governor, and not just against Trump? Why you?

CHRISTIE: Well, first off, Poppy, it's every different poll that you look at. We're at 10 percent in another poll in New Hampshire and ahead of Tim Scott and two other ones. So, whichever one you use, you're going to see a bit of a different result.

But, look, the reason is because when we had the problems in this country that we had back in the late 70s, it looks very much like today, energy crisis, problems overseas that are not being dealt with appropriately, runaway inflation.

And what the country did, and our party and the Republican Party did, was turn to a conservative governor from a blue state named Ronald Reagan who understood how to get things done.

The Trump agenda is not worth anything to Republicans if Trump's the one trying to execute it because he's proven he didn't know how to get things done, he didn't know how to build the wall, he didn't repeal and replace Obamacare. He added $6 trillion to the national debt after he said he was going to balance the budget in four years. I balanced the budget in New Jersey every year for eight years. I got things done with a Democratic legislature.

I think the American people are so down on politics because they look at Washington and see nothing getting done. I know how to do it because I did it with a Democratic legislature in New Jersey and preserved the values I believe in.

HARLOW: One point, just on the economy. Inflation has been cooling for 12 straight months, a dramatic cooling, as you know, last month. So, there has been some improvement there.

What about Tim Scott's gaining of momentum, Governor? Are you worried about that? Are you going to start going after him?

CHRISTIE: I don't worry about anybody, Poppy, except for the person who is in front. And if you want to win this primary, you're going to have to prove to Republican primary voters why Donald Trump should not be re nominated. And he shouldn't be re nominated for a whole variety of reasons, but most importantly, because he can't beat Joe Biden, and he's already proven that.

Look, I like Tim Scott. I think he's a good guy. We've known each other for a decade and we see eye-to-eye on a lot of different things. But the point is that I'm someone who's had the experience of getting things done at the executive level in government in one of the hardest states to govern in this country.

HARLOW: You clearly think Donald Trump is a danger to this country. Do you think he's more dangerous to this country with a second term than a Joe Biden second term?

CHRISTIE: Look, I think they're both wrong for the country. And, by the way, that 70 percent of the country agrees with me, Poppy. They don't want a Trump versus Biden race.

HARLOW: Who is worse?

CHRISTIE: Poppy, that's like flipping a coin. They're both bad for this country hall.

HARLOW: You said that in your town hall. What do you think, Governor? You're so candid when you're talking about Trump.

CHRISTIE: I did so. I am answering the question, Poppy, I think they're both awful. And you're trying to get me to pick between two awful alternatives.

Here's something I'm completely committed to. I intend to beat both of them. I intend to beat Donald Trump. And I intend to beat Joe Biden after I beat Donald Trump.

And, by the way, what people know about inflation, Poppy, is that prices are 17 percent higher now than they were when Joe Biden took the oath of office and wages have only gotten up 6 percent.

HARLOW: I'm not arguing it's not a problem. It's a huge problem. Trust me. We asked the Biden administration about it every single time we have him on. I'm just saying we're seeing an improvement. And Morgan Stanley just came out and credited Biden and their economic strategy for a big boost in economic growth ahead.

Let me ask you about what you would do, though, as president. You were governor. You were executive of the state of New Jersey. You were also a federal prosecutor. And right now, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is going head-to-head in court. He says he'll go to the Supreme Court with the Department of Justice, who says he is clearly breaking a federal statute with these buoys in the water and the barriers in the Rio Grande.

You're a federal former prosecutor. Do you think Texas has the authority to do what they are doing, and would you do it if you were governor of that state?

CHRISTIE: I think they do have the authority to do it. I think this is another overreach by the Biden administration. They've been smacked down by federal courts and most particularly the Supreme Court on a number of overreaches of authority. And I think they do have the authority to do it in Texas.

And if I were Greg Abbott, the governor of our largest border state, I'd be doing everything within reason that I could to be able to slow down what's going at the border.

[07:25:10]

HARLOW: Where is that authority when Title 3 of U.S. Code Section 403 reads, the creation of any obstruction not affirmatively authorized by Congress to the navigable capacity of the waters of the United States is prohibited? I mean, the text is very clear, and you have supremacy clause of the Constitution.

CHRISTIE: And the text is very clear, Poppy, in Texas state law that they have the absolute right to protect their borders, and there's no question.

HARLOW: They do, but not while breaking federal laws. I mean, could you have built a dam in the Hudson?

CHRISTIE: There were days that I really wanted to, Poppy.

HARLOW: But you didn't.

CHRISTIE: I have to tell you the truth --

HARLOW: Could you have, really?

CHRISTIE: -- getting some of the stuff that was going on in New York. A dam in the Hudson River was not something that was going to be regarding the sanctity of New Jersey's borders. This is different.

And, by the way, the supremacy clause does apply, but not when the federal government has absolutely disappeared from doing what needs to be done to secure the border. You can't regulate something but then vacate the field and not do your job. If you're not doing the job, the states have the right to do it. And he has the right to do it not only under state law -- Poppy, let me finish. Not only under state law, but also because the argument I guarantee you will be made in federal court that the Biden administration has abandoned their role in securing the border and the states had no alternative.

HARLOW: And the Biden administration will --

CHRISTIE: And that's going to be a key factual argument.

HARLOW: Sorry for stepping on you. There's a little delay. We'll move on. But the Biden administration will argue, as they did yesterday from the White House, look, illegal border crossings at the southern border are down since we've implemented these changes, 42 percent in the last month.

I want to move on to the issue of Israel and the protests, the biggest protests we've seen in the history of the country right now, given the law that passed, supported by Netanyahu, that the Supreme Court now can't be the ultimate check on the government there. Again, I wonder if you agree with Netanyahu, who calls that, Governor, the essence of democracy. Is it?

CHRISTIE: It's not the essence of American democracy. I'll tell you that, Poppy. Our founders set this up so that all of those branches would be in conflict with each other, being a check and a balance on the other. And I think that's why we're the most sustained democracy in the history of the world, is because of all those branches, the legislative branch, the executive branch and the judicial branch being a check and a balance on each other.

And I think that people are protesting in Israel because they want to make sure that no one has unchecked power in a democracy, in a republic like ours, or like Israel's. Unchecked power is not good for anyone. And I think those are the biggest reasons why people are expressing this concern in Israel. And I think it's appropriate to express that concern.

HARLOW: It sounds like you agree with the Biden administration on that. Let's move on to Trump. As a former prosecutor, you know all about intent and how that is a key factor in proving a crime. Did former President Trump know -- I know you've seen our recent reporting overnight about that February 2020 Oval Office meeting. Did former President Trump know he lost the election? Did he say to you, ever acknowledge to you that he lost?

CHRISTIE: He never acknowledged to me after the fact that he lost, but he certainly expressed to me during the campaign and during preparations for the debates that he was very concerned about losing.

I have no doubt in my mind, Poppy, that in his heart, Donald Trump knows he lost to Joe Biden in November of 2020. But he has convinced himself by trying to convince others that the truth is otherwise, despite the fact that there is no evidence that the election was stolen in 2020.

And I've been saying that since election night, 2020. I've been demanding to see the evidence, and there is none. So, he never looked me in the eye and said to me, I know I lost, but he was very concerned beforehand about losing.

And so it doesn't surprise me at all the reporting that you gave overnight. But even more so, this is a guy who put his own self- interest ahead of the country's interest. And, to me, that's disqualifying for someone who has served as president and who wants to be president again.

HARLOW: Governor, what do you think your greatest weakness is as a leader?

CHRISTIE: I think, for me, at least, it is at times, placing too much trust in others. At times, it is relying on people and trusting them a little bit too much. And that's happened to me in the past. I think I've learned from that. But I am a delegator of authority. I like to empower people that I put in charge of things to be able to make decisions that they should be able to make.

And there have been a couple of instances in my career where that's created some harm.

[07:30:02]

But I think I've learned from it.

HARLOW: Was trusting Trump your biggest mistake in that arena?

CHRISTIE: No.