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Soon: Opening Statements In Hunter Biden Gun Trial; Today: Garland To Testify At Congressional Hearing; Netanyahu Facing Mounting Pressure Over Ceasefire Proposal. Aired 5:30-6a ET

Aired June 04, 2024 - 05:30   ET

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

[05:30:00]

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Joining me now from Wilmington, Delaware is Axios national political -- politics reporter, excuse me, Alex Thompson. Alex, good morning.

It's wonderful to have you joining us because you were inside the courtroom yesterday and, of course, you can't help but miss that this trial is taking place while Biden's campaign staffers are going to work very nearby in the same city.

But bring us inside the room. What was jury selection like? What was it like to see Hunter Biden in that courtroom?

ALEX THOMPSON, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, AXIOS (via Webex by Cisco): You know, there were a few really striking things. One is the contrast with just a year ago.

Now, in the same courtroom, it's where the plea deal that almost resolved this all a year ago took place. And back then Hunter came solo, essentially. This time he was surrounded by family and friends. You obviously had the first lady. You had his son-in-law, Peter Neal. You had his sister, Ashley. You had his wife, Melissa. You had friends, including even a documentary filmmaker that's been following him around the last -- the last two years.

The other thing with jury selection -- the thing that really stood out to me that you just mentioned before is the shear number of people that mentioned it. They had a loved one, a friend, a family member who had suffered from addiction. In some cases, people had personally had problems with alcohol.

I haven't done the exact numbers, but I believe almost every single juror had said yes to that potential juror question. And part of the reason for that is because Delaware is sort of ground zero for some of these -- especially the opioid crisis. And it was just really striking that when you're talking about a case that's really going to delve into what is an addict -- when does someone stop being an addict -- you know, when -- in terms of Hunter Biden at this time was in and out of rehabs. They're going to have an audience that is going to have an intimate understanding of that system.

HUNT: Yeah. You know, that's -- it's really fascinating because -- and again, for those who haven't been paying super close attention to this trial before it started, the question at hand is whether or not Hunter Biden effect -- essentially lied on a form that allowed him to buy a gun by saying he was not addicted to drugs at the time.

And you report in Axios, "Hunter's -- Hunter Biden's lawyers have signaled they will contest that he knew he was an addict at the time, given he had just finished a short stint in a rehab program, and they will allege potential tampering with the gun form that he signed."

How confident do they feel about trying to argue this considering that there also is a lot of public material about his addiction challenges that he put out there into the public record himself in his book and elsewhere?

THOMPSON: Absolutely. Now -- and no lawyer is going to go in there and say we don't think we're going to win. So, Abbe Lowell, his -- which is Hunter Biden's high-powered attorney, has expressed confidence and you could tell by the jury questions that he was really focused on well, if Hunter Biden believed he had beaten his addiction at the time he signed the gun form, that is going to be a key timing note.

Now, part of the problem is that, as you noted -- that there is a lot of evidence to the contrary of him basically going in and out of rehabs.

And unfortunately for the entire Biden family, the -- a lot of the witnesses they're going to call in are family members. You are going to see Hallie Biden, the president -- and also Kathleen Buhle. Now, those are Hunter's ex-wife and his ex-partner. Both are daughters-in- law to the Bidens. You also probably are going to see Lunden Roberts, the Arkansas woman who Hunter had a child with and was in a relationship with at the time. And the reason they're being called is to confirm that he was in frequent drug use at this time.

So it's going to become incredibly messy and it's going to be sort of family melodrama. And that's really the real effect on this case because the president is probably going to be affected in his mood by all these revelations.

HUNT: Right. Alex, I mean, The New York Times actually reports this. "President Biden wakes up every day to a list of concerns he must address as commander in chief. But at the top of that list, people who know him say, is a concern that nags him as a father: the legal problems of his son, Hunter Biden."

And, you know, I -- let's -- we can also show everyone. This was President Biden back in May of 2023. And, of course, these travails have gone on. You reference the plea deal that fell apart. We're kind of in that period of time when the president is making these comments.

But here's what he said about his son.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: First of all, my son has done nothing wrong. I trust him. I have faith in him. And it affects my presidency by making me feel proud of him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[05:35:00]

HUNT: So that, of course, Alex, is his direct way of talking about his son and what his son means.

But expand a little bit on what you mean in terms of how this is going to weigh on -- I mean, he is not just President of the United States; he's also a candidate for reelection less than six months out from that Election Day -- just a couple of weeks away from his first debate with Donald Trump in this election cycle.

THOMPSON: Yeah, and this would affect any father. But I think one thing about this relationship that Joe Biden has the son that you have to sort of understand is that Hunter Biden is the last living person from the accident that killed his wife and daughter in 1972. Beau Biden had also survived that but then he died in 2015. And, you know, Joe Biden has taken calling Hunter my only surviving son. So it's a -- it's a little bit of an extra oomph and him holding onto his son.

The other thing that you have to understand is Joe Biden has expressed guilt for Hunter being in this situation because he feels that if he had not run for president, Hunter would not be facing these legal challenges, which carry a significant amount of jail time if he's found guilty.

Now, you have to look at the timeline of this case. When Hunter Biden is in and out of rehabs, addicted to crack cocaine, and was buying a gun, this was October of 2018. This is when Joe Biden was planning to get in the presidential race. Joe Biden enters the presidential race just a few months later when Hunter is sort of in this spiral.

And so, you have to sort of understand the context of when these events occurred in the political timeline, which is why it weighs to heavily on Joe Biden.

HUNT: Really, really interesting.

All right, Alex Thompson for us. Alex, very grateful for your time this morning. I hope you'll come back soon.

All right, now this. In just a few hours, Attorney General Merrick Garland heads to Capitol Hill for what we expect to be a tense hours long hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. According to prepared remarks shared with CNN, Garland is ready to take on Republican attacks that the DOJ has been politicalized and weaponized on his watch.

Garland writing, "I will not be intimated. And the Justice Department will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy."

Joining me now to discuss is Farnoush Amiri. She's congressional reporter for the Associated Press. Farnoush, good morning to you.

FARNOUSH AMIRI, CONGRESSINAL REPORTER, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Good morning.

HUNT: This is a very high-stakes moment for the attorney general. He also has been more aggressive in recent weeks in taking these steps out trying to defend the department after, quite frankly, the early years of the Biden administration. He -- there wasn't a lot of public grumbling, necessarily, about him -- but privately, there were Democrats that were unhappy with how he seemed to be unwilling to kind of engage in this sort of a fight in the interest of trying to protect the Justice Department.

It does seem to me like he's changed strategies.

AMIRI: For sure. He's definitely changed strategies. Obviously, in the early years, there was a lot of criticism from Democrats, like you said, but more specifically on not taking action against former President Donald Trump earlier. There's a lot of angst about how long it took to bring in the January 6 case. Obviously, similarly, with the classified documents.

But Merrick Garland was doing that, in his view, all in a manner that he felt was accurate and took his time because he knew of the stakes that it would take to charge and to bring a case -- you know, to have a special counsel bring a case against the former president.

What you're seeing now is the direct response to what has been months of threats of contempt, which eventually ended up -- contempt moving out of the same committee that he is going to be appearing before today.

And Speaker Mike Johnson has said that contempt will come to the floor very soon. I mean, when that will be -- the votes are still -- it's unclear if Republicans have the votes to hold the attorney general in contempt of Congress. It is not a thing that many people do lightly. He would be only the third attorney general and cabinet official in the last decade to be held in contempt.

But a lot of this is in direct response to the threats that he says is not only facing him and his family but s many of the people that work under him in the Justice Department.

HUNT: Right -- something that we've seen really kind of explode as the rhetoric has grown more and more heated.

So let's talk, Farnoush, a little bit about what happened yesterday on the Hill with the hearing that Dr. Fauci attended. He, of course, started out a sort of national hero to all at the beginning of the COVID pandemic and has morphed into a villain for half of the country it seems.

Marjorie Taylor Greene probably embodied the far right of that in the course of this hearing and had to be sort of reprimanded and instructed to stop calling Fauci Mr. Fauci because she was refusing to do it. He is, of course, Dr. Fauci. Let's watch that exchange. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Do you represent science, Mr. Fauci? Yes or no?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, FORMER DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: No, that's not a yes or no answer.

GREENE: Yes, it's a yes -- but this is science.

[05:40:00]

FAUCI: What do dogs have to do with anything that we're talking about today?

GREENE: These are -- these are scientific experiments. You're not doctor; you're Mr. Fauci in my few minutes.

He belongs in prison.

REP. BRAD WENSTRUP (R-0H): The gentlelady will suspend. I have instructed her to address him as doctor. You shall continue.

GREENE: I'm not addressing him as doctor.

We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: All right. So, first of all, props to that C-SPAN camera operator right there for that little whip around that was required to cover this hearing accurately.

Farnoush, this is -- I mean, this is what she -- this is what she does -- Marjorie Taylor Greene. But it is instances like that -- things like that that have led to -- you know, Dr. Fauci was up there talking about how -- and we were just saying that the Justice Department judges have been getting threats. He, similarly, has faced threats even in his retirement. His family has faced threats. This is a pretty remarkable statement about where we are.

AMIRI: Yeah -- no -- definitely. And again, I want to be very clear. I know -- to me, this seems like a normal oversight hearing but not everyone has to watch these types --

HUNT: Right.

AMIRI: -- of hearings, and I do not want to normalize any sort of behavior. But, I mean, this is what you come to expect and we're going to see this again in a few hours with the attorney general.

But what Dr. Fauci mentioned over and over again. And at one point in the hearing he got emotional and had to turn off his mic was this has become beyond him becoming a Republican boogeyman and a political prop for many people. But him, his wife, and his three daughters have been personally attacked. He has protective services with him at all times now.

He has been retired for several years now. And he worked in the public life for so long and never received the vitriol that he has over the last several years. And a lot of that is due to Republicans' spreading of conspiracy theories about him.

HUNT: Yeah. I mean -- and I think it's worth -- I mean, that kind of thing really does change your life, you know -- the way -- if you have to be followed by security all the time.

AMIRI: Not everyone signs up for it -- yeah, right? Fauci signed up for it, but not his family.

HUNT: Right.

All right, Farnoush Amiri. Thank you very much for your time today.

AMIRI: Thank you.

HUNT: I really appreciate it.

All right. Just ahead here, the White House increasing pressure on Israel's prime minister to end the violence in Gaza. Plus, a 15-year- old about to make history by debuting on the PGA Tour.

(COMMERCIAL)

[05:46:50]

HUNT: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu facing mounting pressure to embrace a ceasefire proposal. The State Department says it's "completely confident" that Israel will pursue the deal that President Biden announced last week. But a spokesperson for Netanyahu says the plan Biden laid out was only a partial outline of the agreement.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We are working in countless ways to return our hostages. I think about them all the time. During this action, we have maintained the goals of war and primarily, the elimination of Hamas. We insist that we complete both.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: That vow to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed appears to be undermining a ceasefire proposal that Netanyahu's own government put forward.

Joining me now, CNN political and national security analyst, David Sanger. David, thank you so much for being here.

And, you know, you write this in the Times about that call for complete elimination of Hamas, and you say that "The call for total defeat of Hamas sounds like a rationale for perpetual war. And, in fact, Israeli officials have publicly declared the war in Gaza will likely continue to the end of the year, if not longer."

What are the dynamics here?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST, AUTHOR, "NEW COLD WARS" (via Webex by Cisco): Well, Kasie, good morning.

And the dynamics are complex but just think about this for a moment. It's very understandable, particularly after the horror of the October 7 attacks that Israel would call for the complete destruction of Hamas just as the United States called for the complete destruction of al Qaeda and wiping out the Taliban, which supported it, after 9/11.

But the practical reality of this is that you're not really sure that you can ever truly destroy a terror organization. Obviously, new elements come up. They may have different names. They certainly have some different people. But you are not going to wipe out the Hamas instinct fully, particularly in Gaza.

And so then, the question is do you go the route that President Biden chose when he gave his speech last Friday, which is to say Hamas cannot again launch an October 7-style attack? It's not capable of it. So it's time for this war to end and to move on to the next phase. To think of the day after -- of how you rebuild Gaza and what governance there would look like -- or do you pursue forever the goal that you may never achieve -- a full destruction?

HUNT: So, David, what are the pressures on Netanyahu internally, and what are the stakes? I mean, is this a situation where he potentially has to choose between the ceasefire and his own political survival?

[05:50:00]

SANGER: He may well. Look, these two right-wing parties that have been part of his coalition could well leave the government, as they have threatened, if he goes ahead with the plan that Israel itself -- or Israel's war cabinet turned out.

But it's fascinating, Kasie, that here you have the President of the United States come out and describe the Israeli plan. Usually, what would happen in most diplomatic situations is that you wait for another country to announce its own plan and then you'd embrace it. And then together, Israel and the United States, and Europeans and others who might embrace that as well, would then say OK, the only one in the way of this right now is Hamas.

So what President Biden did was try to put simultaneous pressure on Israel over its own plan, at least as described by the U.S., and on Hamas knowing that Prime Minister Netanyahu would never come out and describe this plan by himself.

HUNT: And, David, what is the ultimate outlook for governing Gaza in the wake of this? Because, I mean, I absolutely take your point about a terror organization and that seems very understandable. The challenge seems to be Hamas is also the government.

SANGER: That's right. And, you know, Israel pulled out of Gaza, oh, 15 years ago and Hamas then got elected -- and you can argue about the nature of the election. And then after that time, use that victory to then basically have complete and somewhat totalitarian rule over the entire region -- or the region of Gaza.

So now the question is what's the alternative? We're all in agreement that no one wants to see Hamas running Gaza again. That the Israelis have rejected the idea of the Palestinian Authority, which can barely govern its own territories on the West Bank, should be the one.

But here we are seven months later and the Israelis have not come up with an idea about who it is that should. And there's supposed to be some magical group that appears somehow that is more competent than the Palestinian Authority but does not have the terror component of Hamas. And we just don't know who --

HUNT: Yeah.

SANGER: -- that is.

And in that absence, it's going to be the Israelis or -- so we're hearing from the prime minister.

HUNT: All right, David Sanger for us this morning. David, so grateful to have you. Thank you so much.

SANGER: Great to be with you.

HUNT: All right, time now for sports. A San Diego Padres player facing a potential lifetime ban for allegedly betting on baseball.

Carolyn Manno has this morning's Bleacher Report. Carolyn, good morning.

CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

Major League Baseball investigating shortstop Tucupita Marcano over allegations that he wagered on games involving the Pirates when he was with the team last season. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report this story. He's 24 years old. He's from Venezuela. He has not played for the Padres this season.

He went down with a right ACL injury last July when he was with the Pirates, and he's been recovering ever since. But according to the report, Marcano bet on Pirates games only after he went down with the injury.

In a statement, the Padres said, "We are aware of an active investigation by Major League Baseball regarding a mater that occurred when the player in question was a member of another organization and not affiliated with the San Diego Padres. We will not have any further comment until the investigative process has been completed."

CNN has reached out to Marcano's representatives for comment. Four other players facing possible discipline for gambling on baseball

games while in the Minor Leagues, according to The Wall Street Journal report citing unnamed sources for that.

And after being fined for refusing to speak with the media over the weekend, the Chicago Sky's Angel Reese addressing a viral incident involving her teammate and Indiana's Caitlin Clark. Reese was seen cheering from the bench after Chennedy Carter took this cheap shot at Clark in the third quarter on Saturday.

Physical plays like this have led to a very heated debate over the kind of reception that the superstar is getting in the WNBA from fellow players and whether or not it's crossing a line from the status quo.

Reese says that she is OK with the notion that she might be perceived as a "bad guy" in her now professional rivalry with Caitlin Clark. She says it's a role she feels like she was assigned over the course of her final two years in college.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANGEL REESE, GUARD, CHICAGO SKY: It all started from the National Championship game, and I've been dealing with this for two years now. And understanding, like, yeah, negative things have probably been said about me but honestly, I'll take that because look where women's basketball is. People are talking about women's basketball that you never would think would be talking about women's basketball. People are pulling up to games. We've got celebrities coming to games, sold- out arenas. Like, just because of one single game.

[05:55:00]

And just looking at that -- like, I'll take that role. I'll take the bad guy role and I'll continue to take that on and be that for my teammates. And if I want to be that, I know I'll go down in history. I'll look back in 20 years and be like, yeah, the reason why we're watching women's basketball is not just because of one person. It's because of me, too. And I want you all to realize that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MANNO: And, Kasie, Miles Russell is set to make his PGA Tour debut later this month but he's going to need a ride to the course in Detroit, and that's because he's only 15 years old. Russell became the youngest player to ever make the cut on the Korn Ferry Tour earlier this year. And now, he's going to get a sponsor exemption to play in the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

The high school freshman from Jacksonville, Florida -- the reigning American Junior Golf Association's Player of the Year, and he won the Junior PGA Championship last year by seven shots. The only other male golfer to do that at age 15 was Tiger Woods. So you could be looking at one of the next superstars of golf.

I just always look at these young athletes -- 15 years old -- and I think what was I doing at that time? I mean, nothing, though. It's just -- maybe working at a pizza place, you know? It's like it's incredible what they do.

HUNT: I personally was -- yeah -- teaching tennis lessons and learning how to drive a car.

Tiger Woods, man -- that's some big company. That's some big company.

MANNO: True.

HUNT: Carolyn, thank you. Appreciate it.

Coming up next here, President Biden poised to issue a sweeping executive order to turn back asylum seekers at the southern border.

Plus --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FIRST RESPONDER: You're OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh!

FIRST RESPONDER: You're OK, ma'am. We've got to go back. Just breathe, ma'am -- just breathe. Just breathe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUNT: The moments after a deadly bank explosion in Ohio caught on body camera. It's one of the five things you have to see this morning.

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