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Inside Politics
Trump Indicted On 37 Counts In Documents Case; Trump Vows To Stay In Race Despite Indictment; Trump: DOJ Is Politically Targeting Me; Trump's Indictment Looms Over 2024 GOP Field; Republicans Make Comparisons To Hillary Clinton; Biden Avoids Commenting On Trump Indictment. Aired 11a-12p ET
Aired June 11, 2023 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[11:00:34]
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN HOST: A stunning indictment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JACK SMITH, SPECIAL COUNSEL FOR THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.
PHILLIP: Donald Trump is in the fight of his life, not just for the White House, but for his freedom now too.
DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Biden is trying to jail his leading political opponent.
PHILLIP: Plus, Trump's top 2024 rival lets him off the hook and attacks the Justice Department instead.
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): You can't have one faction of society weaponizing the power of the state against factions that it doesn't like.
PHILLIP: While other challengers hope the details might finally force his supporters to question their allegiance.
CHRIS CHRISTIE, FORMER GOVERNOR OF NEW JERSEY: Is this the type of conduct that we want from someone who wants to be president of the United States?
PHILLIP: And making history. Has the United States of America ever faced a moment like this?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. Thank you for joining us. I'm Abby Philip.
It has been another remarkable week in the history of our nation, a former president and a leading presidential candidate indicted now for hoarding classified documents, sharing them with others and then conspiring to hide them from the government. The 37 count indictment includes reams of evidence including tape, recordings, text messages, and eyewitness testimony. But a campaign speech yesterday in North Carolina, Donald Trump accused the Justice Department of attacking him for political reasons.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: The baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration's weaponized department of injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country.
This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice. You're watching Joe Biden tried to jail his leading political opponent. Think of it. This is like third world country stuff.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: The indictment includes photos that show how cavalierly Trump handled those documents that he took to Mar-a-Lago, including this one, boxes and boxes of documents, they're stored inside of a bathroom. And this one, highly sensitive information mixed in with newspapers literally spilling out onto the ground.
Special Counsel Jack Smith speaking for the very first time since his appointment last year, said the charges could not be more serious.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: The laws that protect National Defense Information are critical to the safety and security of the United States and they must be enforced. Violations of those laws put our country at risk.
Our nation's commitment to the rule of law sets an example for the world. We have one set of laws in this country and they apply to everyone.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And Trump's own attorney general this morning said he should be worried.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL BARR, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: If even half of it is true, then he's toast. I mean, it's a -- it's a pretty -- it's a very detailed indictment. And it's very, very damning. And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Trump will formally be arraigned in this case on Tuesday in Miami.
Let's discuss all of this and more with our panel: CNN senior justice correspondent, Evan Perez, CNN legal analyst, Carrie Cordero, and CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams. All three of you have had a very long week, a very consequential week for this country as well.
And of course, Trump is innocent until proven guilty, as everybody has said, but you cannot get around the fact that the details provided in the indictment are really, really damning. And that includes some from his own attorney, which in and of itself is extraordinary.
Just to give you one example. This is an example of Trump, according to Evan Corcoran, and some of the notes that he took at that time, making a motion about plucking something out, plucking the classified documents out of a trove that had been found at Mar-a-Lago.
And here's what Evan Corcoran said, he said, why don't you take them with you to your hotel room? And if there's anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out. What does that tell you?
ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. It's a colorful anecdote. And I think people will talk about it a bunch over the course of the week, but it's legally quite significant for a number of reasons. What prosecutors always have to establish is the intent that a defendant has in carrying out an action.
[11:05:10]
And what that little paragraph indicates is, number one, he knows he's being investigated. Number two, he knows he is in possession of sensitive documents. Number three, he knows the documents are commingled with things that are -- that are not sensitive. Number four, he knows that some things are themselves marked. And number five, it's an intent to obstruct an investigation, and he's forming a conspiracy there by speaking to other people and directing them to get in the way of an investigation.
All of those things that I laid out there are legally relevant to a number of charges to possessing documents unlawfully to possessing nationals -- information that could hurt the national defense and obstruction of justice. In one paragraph there, it's all sort of all in one.
PHILLIP: Can I ask you, Carrie, about another example? This is also from Evan Corcoran's testimonies, his notes. He is relaying what Trump told him in the course of a conversation about how to interact with the government here. And he says, according to Corcoran, Trump says, "Well, what if we, what happens if we just don't respond at all? Or don't play ball with them? Wouldn't it be better if we just told them that we don't have anything here? Well, look, isn't it better if there are no documents?"
I actually want to ask you about the devil's advocate version of this. Couldn't Trump say, well, I'm just asking questions, what's wrong with that?
CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, so on one hand, a person can ask advice of their lawyer. And so normally, that would be an attorney-client privilege communication. What's different here is that because those notes will be able to be provided to investigators, that privilege was already pierced. And what that shows is that there's potential evidence of a crime there.
The key here is that he knew that he wasn't supposed to have the documents. And so the charge that he was 31 counts was on willful retention of National Defense Information. It's that willful point that is so important. And that's I think, part of what Elliot is getting at as well, which is that he knew he wasn't supposed to get them. He obstructed is alleged to have obstructed the investigation.
I don't think we would even be here, the former president would be in any of this legal Jeopardy, had he not obstructed the investigation --
EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: He's only charged --
CORDERO: -- and not intentionally directed other people to obstruct the investigation.
PEREZ: He's only charged with these 31 documents. And he's also -- all the documents that are at issue here are ones that he kept after he returned the initial 15 boxes to the National Archives. So that tells you something, right? It tells you that if the former president, any moment, at any time, even after that conversation with Evan Corcoran, it just said, just give everything back, that we would not be here today. But because he did that is why we're here.
WILLIAMS: You know, to pick up on the just asking questions point, it's a really important one, because yes, as Carrie says, someone is allowed to seek advice from their attorneys and just -- and bounce ideas around as to what were allowed and not allowed to do.
What hurts the former president is that people actually carried out some of the directives there in moving boxes, and in sort of trying to conceal as the Justice Department was trying to come and carry out an investigation.
It was anything he said, or a number of these statements were understood to be directions to obstruct the investigation. So the idea of simply saying, well, you know, we were just bouncing ideas around. That's ludicrous.
PHILLIP: Yes. And it also flies in the face of the -- one of the arguments that Trump folks say is that he went to them and he said, I'm an open book, but you can't just say you're an open book, and then also be concealing --
WILLIAMS: Right.
PHILLIP: -- be concealing the evidence in this case.
CORDERO: Right. Also the key here is the conduct that's an issue. What did he actually do? And the story that the indictment tell so far, and that the Justice Department will actually prove --
PEREZ: It shows [inaudible]
CORDERO: -- if this -- if this gets to a trial, is that the conduct he engaged in with obstructive, intentionally withholding the documents, intentionally stemming the Justice Department's investigation, causing others to lie to the Department of Justice and to the government about whether all the documents had been returned.
PHILLIP: And the damage to national security is perhaps unknown. Just look at where these documents were found.
PEREZ: Right.
PHILLIP: I mean, iconic already this bathroom photo of the documents just stacked up right there next to the toilet and --
PEREZ: With the chandelier.
PHILLIP: With the chandelier, the Five Eyes documents spilled all across the floor. I mean, Carrie, I mean, you've worked in these national security spaces. I mean, what is -- what are people thinking right now?
CORDERO: So one thing that stands out from the indictment is just the different levels of classification of all these documents, top secret documents, documents that weren't are ever supposed to be provided to foreign governments. Documents that were only supposed to be shared with our closest allies. Documents about military plans and military capabilities of other countries. So stuff that really is defined as causing exceptionally grave damage to the United States if it were to be revealed.
[11:10:06]
And so that's why two of the anecdotes that are provided in the indictment were the former president is alleged to have shown documents or communicated the contents of documents to people who weren't authorized to receive them. In one case of reporter, in one case, a political operative. Those are examples that I think also were factors that would have pushed the Justice Department to have to bring this case.
PHILLIP: Evan, I want to ask you, though, about the judge in this case. The DOJ made a choice, it seems, to move to a grand jury in the Southern District of Florida.
PEREZ: Right.
PHILLIP: And by the luck of the draw, got Judge Aileen Cannon who gave the Trump team a pretty favorable ruling earlier in this process. What do you make of that? And are people fit -- is it fair to even question her fairness?
PEREZ: Well, I mean, I think it is fair because of the -- we've seen some of her work product. And the 11th circuit, which is a fairly conservative leaning court in Atlanta, which oversaw and reviewed some of what she did, really strongly criticized her and questioned exactly where she was coming from with some of those favorable rulings that she gave the former president.
I'll say this though. Look, Donald Trump has been testing and stress testing our institutions, our systems since he came on the scene, right, during the time he was president. And he is now putting it through perhaps one of the toughest tests and that is, you know, our system is now going to have to show that it can -- it can -- it can handle him fairly, right, in partially, he is already calling it the department of injustice, attacking the prosecutors.
Now, though --
PHILLIP: Calling Jack Smith a thug.
PEREZ: Right. He is now going to be judged by a jury, from his backyard in West Palm Beach, in that part of the division of West Palm Beach, which is that part -- that part of the of the Southern District of Florida.
He's going to be, again, overseen by a judge he literally picked. He picked her. So you can't get more fair than that, right? I mean, your complaints that you're being railroaded really are going to fall flat when this is the issue.
And I'll say this, they did get -- it wasn't luck of the draw, but the Justice Department chose, they checked the box that said, we want this heard in the West Palm Beach district or the division.
PHILLIP: Which increase the likelihood you --
PEREZ: Which increase the likelihood. It was basically a one in four chance. None in a one in 20.
PHILLIP: OK. That is an interesting point. Yes.
WILLIAMS: No. I mean, I think let's stay on the devil's advocate game for just a moment and with respect to Judge Cannon getting her off the case, which I think a number of people are raising that prospect, is that her objectivity is so tainted in the eyes of the public that a fair trial can't be had.
I think the argument will be, look, she ruled against the Justice Department. It happens all the time, judges rule against a party and they get overturned, it's part of the game, it's part of a process. That doesn't mean that a judge is completely impartial. It just means that they wrote a clunker of an opinion and it got overturned.
Now, she has a number of rulings over the course of the case that with respect to scheduling and timing, and could have delayed the civil case at the beginning of this for months that maybe the Justice Department could point to and say, look, she's just got a bias against the Justice Department here.
But I've appeared in front of judges that consistently ruled a certain way, and you have a tough road to say that that judge can't legally be fair. It's just going to be [inaudible]
PHILLIP: Yes. And it may -- we may look back on this as the Justice Department's trying to deal with some of the political sensitivities of this. PEREZ: I think so, right.
PHILLIP: And saying, we're going to -- we're going to make this theoretically kind of almost as favorable as possible --
PEREZ: Right.
PHILLIP: -- for this particular defendant and see --
PEREZ: We're playing in your ballpark.
PHILLIP: -- and see where the chips fall in the court of law. All of you -- yes.
PEREZ: And that may be the best thing for the system, right?
PHILLIP: Yes.
PEREZ: If in the end, that may be the best thing for our country, for Donald Trump to be seen by a judge who he picked --
PHILLIP: Yes.
PEREZ: -- and a jury from his backyard.
PHILLIP: From -- in his actual neighborhood.
Perez: Right.
PHILLIP: Evan, Carrie, and Elliot, thank you all very much.
And coming up next for us, the politics of this indictment. What is Trump's plan to fight back in the court of public opinion?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:15:10]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Witch-hunt, witch-hunt, scam, hoax. It's called election interference and they're doing the best they can with it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Less than 24 hours after the release of that indictment, Donald Trump was back on the campaign trail yesterday using some of his favorite words to defend himself against the charges against him. And he's been busy on social media as well as you can expect firing off dozens of posts on Truth Social at all hours of the day and night attacking President Biden and the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Special Counsel. He was even confronted, but even confronted with Trump's own words. His allies are still defending him.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DANA BASH, CNN HOST: He says point blank on tape, as president, I could have declassified it. Now, I can't. He says in his own words. It's on tape as part of this indictment that he did not declassify the material. Therefore, it is classified.
REP. JIM JORDAN (R-OH): Dana, saying he -- saying he could have -- saying he could have is not the same as saying he didn't.
BASH: He said, now, I can't.
JORDAN: He said that he has declassified this material. He said that -- now, he can't, right, because he's not president now. But when he was president --
BASH: Which means that it's classified.
JORDAN: -- he did declassify. He said that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Let's discuss all of this and more with Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch, CNN's Kristen Holmes, Zolan Kanno-Youngs of The New York Times. And Politico's Alex Eisenstaedt, who traveled with Trump yesterday on the plane in Georgia and North Carolina. One of just two reporters, right?
ALEX ISENSTADT, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Correct.
PHILLIP: With Him. And so I'm going to read from your story, your -- his remarks. He said to you about this case, "I'll never leave." He's never leaving the race. He said, "Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable. Trump predicted that he would not be convicted and said he did not end anticipate taking a plea deal, though he loved the possibility of doing so where they pay me some damages." So his mindset.
[11:20:08]
ISENSTADT: His mindset, you know, it's interesting throughout the day, he actually seemed to be in a fairly good mood, brought in Jimmy John's sandwiches for lunch. Lots of big quarter pounders McDonald's for dinner.
PHILLIP: A favorite, always.
ISENSTADT: His favorite. He's playing Pavarotti, James Brown.
But there was actually a very interesting moment in the interview where he said, look, I don't want -- no one wants to be indicted.
PHILLIP: Yes, let me read that part.
ISENSTADT: Yes.
PHILLIP: Since you're bringing it up. He says, "Nobody wants to be indicted. I don't care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don't want to be indicted. I've never been indicted. I went through my whole life. Now I get indicted every two months. It's been political."
So I mean, as we've all been saying, this is not good. And even Trump knows that it's not good.
ISENSTADT: It was striking because it appeared to be almost a reflective moment for him, right? I mean, the conventional wisdom is that it has been -- these indictments have been a political boost for him and they have, right? I mean, they've helped his poll numbers. They've helped his fundraising. But on some level, he seems to understand that being indicted presents some serious challenges at the same time.
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And I do want to note one thing about the interview, and I talked to Alex about this morning, that is the first time that he's publicly admitted that he didn't want to be indicted. We've reported it. We know he's told his closest aides that he did not want to be indicted, that he was unhappy with this.
But our -- even Georgia right before he spoke to Alex, he was saying, I don't care that I was indicted. It's going to help my poll numbers. I've been told that it's going to help my fundraising as well. Then he got on the plane and said this. And it was just really striking to actually see that he was communicating this outside of a very small group of people.
PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, I just -- it's just kind of basic stuff. This is, on a human level, I think he feels a sense of shame, but it's almost as if among his allies. There's no such similar feeling. People are just kind of reflexively -- you saw that in the Jim Jordan in exchange with Dana Bash. He says on tape, it's not declassified. And Jim Jordan is just sort of almost robotically repeating the talking points that he planned to come in with.
JONAH GOLDBERG, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE DISPATCH: Yes. I mean, I got to say, bless your heart for thinking that Donald Trump has a sense of shame. That's really sweet. I think he's a little embarrassed by it. And I think, look, it's obvious, he spent his entire life the way, you know, tearing up pieces of paper, not using e-mail, speaking in euphemisms, because he's always had this sort of mobster wannabe kind of attitude. Roy Cohn was his big mentor. He's always done things that gave him plausible deniability. And he spent his entire life trying to avoid essentially get indicted. So of course, he doesn't want to be indicted.
And but I think that, you know, the problem the Republicans have in this situation is that if you watched Lindsey Graham on ABC this morning, two seconds after the conversation starts, the first words out of his mouth are Hillary Clinton.
And at least Jim Jordan, in a weird way, is actually trying to defend Trump on the merits of the indictment, on the merits of the accusation. The problem is, is that, as we saw Bill Barr say this morning, the indictments are really solid. And so ultimately, the only place they can go is to politics. PHILLIP: But partisanship is a hell of a drug. And at the ABC News/Ipsos poll, just out this morning, they were in the field right after the indictment happened on Friday and on Saturday. This is -- do you think the charges in this indictment are serious? All Americans say 61 percent, yes. Republicans, 38 percent. Those are the numbers that Donald Trump -- I mean, he doesn't even have to look at them. He knows them because he knows his base.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Two things can exist at the same time. One being that this indictment paints a damning portrayal of the former president and what you did with those documents.
And then also that his Republican allies are not interested in engaging with it, or are not interested in being moved by it in a way. There's also another strategy that you've seen already, since this was released and your propaganda see in the weeks to come of filling sort of the void of voices, you're filling this void of information with attacks against the Justice Department to paint it as partisan, to paint this investigation as partisan as well.
Even though you're seeing Republicans not move to criticize Trump here, you are going to see them continue to talk about this and paint the Justice Department as one [inaudible]
PHILLIP: And to that point, there are the threats of violence. Here's Andy Biggs saying, we've now reached a war phase, eye for an eye. Ronny Jackson, he is attacking the DOJ. He says the DOJ and FBI are nothing more than traitors and enemies of the state at this point.
I mean, in some ways, it's ridiculous, but the problem is that January 6 happened. Violence did result from rhetoric like this.
GOLDBERG: Yes. And there was a shootout of FBI headquarters in --
KANNO-YOUNGS: Cincinnati. It's isolated.
GOLDBERG: In Cincinnati.
PHILLIP: When the search was conducted last year.
ISENSTADT: I mean, this is the problem with a lot of these things. I think a lot -- most people listen to these clowns say this clownish stuff, and then partisan nonsense, whatever. Maybe they -- I agree with they're angry but they think -- they listen to it metaphorically or figuratively. All you need is one in 10,000, one in 100,000 people to hear it differently to take it literally not figuratively. And you can have real problems.
[11:25:12]
PHILLIP: You only need one person. Really.
KANNON-YOUNGS: Right.
GOLDBERG: No, that's my point. Yes, it says, like, it can be a tiny percentage or -- at some single individual that can lead to some really bad stuff.
PHILLIP: And the vibe at the rally yesterday, how was that?
ISENSTADT: They're all Trump diehards. I mean, the first stop was in Georgia, it was at the state party convention, and it was just MAGA hat after MAGA hat after MAGA hat. And in North Carolina, it was much the same thing.
One very notable thing that you saw yesterday is Trump actually racked up a bunch of endorsements yesterday, both in Georgia and he was traveling with a member of the House GOP in addition to Marjorie Taylor Greene, a member of the House GOP leadership, Richard Hudson, who's overseeing the House GOP campaign arm.
And I thought that was really notable because it just shows what a lock he has on the congressional party leadership even amid all this.
PHILLIP: Yes, absolutely.
HOLMES: And one note just on the rallies really quickly. I thought was interesting is that not only did he have his supporters there, but he hacked the house.
ISENSTADT: Yes.
HOLMES: And we had a lot of questions because I had spoken to a lot of Republican advisors, operatives who are very concerned about this indictment that could not have been farther from what we saw yesterday. These were people who are going to vote for Donald Trump, they cheered for him when he insulted the DOJ, Jack Smith, Hillary Clinton. They were there for him. And I thought that was, you know, get kind of gave us a little bit of insight into what this looks like.
PHILLIP: It very much does and gives us an insight into how this primary will go, which is coming up for us. The former president indictment throws the GOP race into some arch uncharted territories. We'll talk about that, coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[11:30:58]
PHILLIP: Donald Trump's indictment instantly became the top issue for the race for the Republican nomination. What his 2024 rivals are saying and well, not saying, reveal how they're grappling with the chaos of it all. And rather than defend Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blasted the Justice Department.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RON DESANTIS, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president? I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let's enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And former Vice President Mike Pence has been in the race for less than a week and is already walking a very, very tightrope.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The American people deserve to know the reasons for this unprecedented action and we also we also need to hear the former president's defense. Then each of us can make our own judgment on whether this is the latest example of a Justice Department working in injustice or otherwise.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: There's that. And then there's Chris Christie, who, on the other hand, didn't mince any words.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The bigger issue for our country is, is this the type of conduct that we want from someone who wants to be President of the United States? The facts that are laid out here are damning in terms of Donald Trump's conduct. And that's what I think we as a party should be looking at.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: And Jonah, as you said, this is literally manna from heaven, or it would be in another world, but these Republicans who are running against Trump don't want to touch it with a ten-foot pole?
JONAH GOLDBERG, THE DISPATCH EDITOR IN CHIEF: Yeah. I mean, the dilemma for a lot of these people is they think they can time all of this, right? And they've been waiting. It's like waiting for Godot, right? They've been waiting for this moment where they can turn on Donald Trump and exploit his vulnerabilities. And the problem is that the more you wait for that, in the meantime, you have to be defending him. You have to attack his enemies, you have to delegitimize criticism. And among the problems with that is it makes you look kind of beta. It makes you look like you're not the alpha dog, and that you're deferring all leadership to Donald Trump, which is what you'd want if you were 30 points ahead as a front runner to begin with.
PHILLIP: Yeah. And if you're Donald Trump who's made a sort of cottage industry of making other people seem weak, that's a real problem. Also a real problem a new CBS poll also out after the indictment. Maybe this is Donald Trump's largest lead yet. He's at 61%. DeSantis is at 23. Everybody else is in the very low single digits. There is a risk here, even though we are very early in the process that Trump could try to run away with this thing.
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, NEW YORK TIMES WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I feel like throughout already, this sort of campaign season. We've seen the different Republican candidates try to kind of walk this balancing act here, right? You've had DeSantis and even Pence sort of try to differentiate between the man and the administration, the person of Donald Trump and Trumpism.
Well, now you have a really difficult balancing act of actually trying to basically talk about this indictment while still not alienating the Trump base, criticizing the Justice Department while also, at the same time, trying to not divert all attention to Donald Trump, which he currently has right now and is maintaining. I don't know how they're going to be able to continue to kind of walk that fine line.
PHILLIP: Yeah. And Trump, meanwhile, is really kind of expecting this kind of loyalty from people, not just on Capitol Hill, but even his own rivals in this race.
ALEX ISENSTADT, POLITICO NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Right. One of the things he actually said yesterday was that he would like to see House Republicans bring Jack Smith in to testify. And I think that's going to be something that you could see a lot more of in terms of, look, you're either with Donald Trump or you're against Donald Trump. It's a very binary thing, and it's been that way for a long time on a lot of different fronts with Trump, right? And so a lot of these candidates.
You know, it's interesting because this race, everyone's reacting to what Trump is doing, right? He is shaping the dimensions and the contours of this race, and he's really driving everything.
[11:35:11]
And so this week, it's going to be really hard for other candidates to get asked about anything other than what transpires in that Miami courtroom.
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's not just that they're only reacting to Trump. They're reacting to people reacting to them, reacting to Trump. So what we saw at the beginning, after the Manhattan indictment, was that DeSantis came out here and made a flip joke about it, how he would never know about paying a porn star or hush money. He got excoriated for that. People hated the fact that he was attacking Trump. And these are people that he wants to vote for him. Now he's talking about, you know, the deep state and the FBI and the DOJ he has completely tailored his response to this indictment based on the criticism that he got from the first indictment.
And it just goes to show you that all of the oxygen in this race is taken up by Donald Trump. Even when you have another candidate who is pulling double digits, and we've seen him rise and fall, people consider him an alternative to Donald Trump. It still does not take away from the fact that Donald Trump is the one who this race is essentially completely centered around.
PHILLIP: Yeah.
GOLDBERG: There are three kinds of criticism. They're coming from his opponents. One is the Chris Christie and to a lesser extent, Asa Hutchinson, which is the whole man, right? This, Trump is non-fit, shouldn't have the job. The second one is Mike Pence, which is like, super narrow. January 6
was bad, but everything else within the administration was super terrific awesome. And then the third bucket is what DeSantis is trying to do, which is to say, everything that Trump wanted to do was great, but he didn't deliver. So he wants go after his actual record as president and say, I can give you the wall. I can do all of these different kinds of things. The problem is that in moments like this, these kinds of fine distinctions just evaporate, and everyone wants you to just rally to the man. And I think DeSantis is making a mistake. I think the way DeSantis should go after Trump is to say. Look, yes, the deep state's after us. The deep state is unfair. The Justice Department has been weaponized. But look how easy Donald Trump makes it. He puts classified documents by the toilet. I won't make the left's job easier. I'll make it harder.
PHILLIP: That would be a very good line. It was very similar to what Chris Christie said. But there's also the Hillary Clinton of it all. Just listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DESANTIS: I remember, you know, Hillary had the emails with the classified, and my view was, well, gee, you know, as a naval officer, if I would have taken classified to my apartment, I would have been court martialed in a New York minute.
PENCE: After years of politicization at the Department of Justice that I lived through when I was your Vice President, we watched the Department of Justice announce there would be no charges against Hillary Clinton.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: It's almost like just a buzzword. I mean, it's more than a buzzword. It's like a Pavlovian thing like Hillary Clinton, and it just triggers something in people's minds. We forget, though, that the chant was lock her up. But this is one of the reasons why I think Republicans can't turn on Trump in this case, because as long as he says Hillary Clinton, voters are going to be like, this is unfair.
KANNO-YOUNGS: Right. And also, let's remember, it's ironic that Trump came into office also talking about the importance of protecting classified information, citing all of the talk that he had about Hillary Clinton and her emails during the campaign. Quite ironic now where he finds himself here.
But, you know, one might also ask, when you hear comments and speeches like we're seeing from the Republican candidates and members of Congress, where is the White House on this? Where's the Justice Department in terms of combating some of that noise. That think is a really interesting complication moving forward, because you can't easily talk about this case if you're the White House. You're going to feed into some of those accusations. And I know that officials there are very aware and it's very intentional that when the current president gives a no comment when asked about these. It's because of the accusations of partisanship and trying to distance the White House from the Justice Department. That's going to allow, though, in a way, Republicans to continue to control the narrative and fill the void of information with all this.
PHILLIP: And then, of course, you know, President Biden has his own case.
KANNO-YOUNGS: That's right, yeah.
PHILLIP: A classified document case. And then there's the Hunter Biden case. Both of those are going to be on the table.
ISENSTADT: Right. You know, if there's one thing that Trump is really good at, it is repeating a talking point and saying it over and over and over again. And he is going to talk about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and Mike Pence's classified documents over and over and over again. And that's a line he's going to be able to use very repeatedly.
PHILLIP: Yeah, he will use that line. But as we've been discussing all morning and all week, the facts in this indictment are pretty straightforward and actually pretty easy to understand. So we will see whether spin wins out in this case.
But coming up next for us, though, how looking back at another crisis in American history can help us navigate today's political moment.
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[11:44:00]
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JOHN DEAN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL FOR PRES. RICHARD NIXON: I began by telling the President that there was a cancer growing on the presidency, and if the cancer was not removed, the President himself would be killed by it. I also told him that it was important that this cancer be removed immediately because it was growing more deadly every day.
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PHILLIP: That was 50 years ago. This month, White House Counsel John Dean testifying before the Wall Watergate Committee and in front of millions of stunned Americans who are watching on television against his boss, President Richard Nixon.
Dean's testimony helped bring down the most powerful man in the world. And now, as the nation faces another unprecedented political crisis, history may very well be repeating itself. Donald Trump's former lawyer, Evan Corcoran, could be a key witness for the prosecution. He was ordered to testify to the grand jury despite attorney client privilege.
And joining me now to offer some perspective on this moment is presidential historian Doug Brinkley. Doug, it's really hard to miss some of the parallels here. Another lawyer testifying against his boss, the president. [11:45:06]
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Absolute parallels and what they share in common, John Dean and Evan Corcoran, is that they're really professionals at what they're doing as lawyers. Dean may have been a Nixon Republican, Corcoran might be a Trump Republican at heart, but when push comes to shove, they stand up for the Department of Justice.
And, you know, I always think of Corcoran as being a kind of almost an adjunct figure to a former Attorney General, Barr. And to hear Barr talk about what deep trouble President Trump's in right now, it's, to me, really, the weekend story, because Dean didn't want to turn on Nixon. And Corcoran and certainly Barr don't feel like turning on Trump. They're hitched to those figures in history. But when the pressure came on, they did the right thing. We think, with Corcoran, and certainly Dean did.
PHILLIP: And one of the differences, though, between the Nixon case and now is that there seemed to be no figures, as there were at the time, telling Trump that what he did was wrong, that he should behave in a certain way. But then there's also the issue of Nixon's pardon and the precedent that that sets even for this moment. Just listen to Nixon explain -- or I'm sorry Gerald Ford explaining this.
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GERALD FORD, FORMER PRESIDENT: There are no historic or legal precedents to which I can turn in this matter. But it is not the ultimate fate of Richard Nixon that most concerns me, though surely it deeply troubles every decent and every compassionate person. My concern is the immediate future of this great country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIP: Given that we are now in this moment where so many people running for president are talking about preemptively pardoning. Trump in this case, was that the right move on Ford's part?
BRINKLEY: I used to think so. I wrote a book on Gerald Ford. I interviewed him a lot. But we're seeing the danger. You know, what's not played in that clip of Ford is he said he suffered enough, my friend, longtime friend Richard Nixon, that we're going to put him out of his misery.
And it is true, Nixon served our U.S. armed forces. He was an incredible foreign policy. President with detent with the Soviet Union in the 1972 visit to China. And so I always thought he did the right thing for it, because, as Ford's memoirs called it, time to heal, that due to Watergate, Vietnam, he had to heal the country.
But alas, we see a president like Donald Trump got the wrong lesson, that you can get away with it. And that combo of Nixon not doing any jail time marries in Donald Trump, Roy Cohn. You know, people haven't talked about on the press a lot, but Nixon's fat at the time of Watergate. The guy that Donald Trump admired the most in America is Roy Cohn, who had four indictment charges. He ended up beating three of the four raps. You know, one was a mistrial. Trump learned everything from Roy Cohn, which is to delay, stall, obfuscate.
Roy Cohn denounced the IRS as being like a Soviet SWAT team or like a Nazi operation. And you see Trump and his followers demonizing the FBI, the Department of Justice, in a similar fashion. So in retrospect, probably, if Nixon had to at least go through the court system, it would have once and for all proven that nobody is beyond the law.
PHILLIP: And Trump himself is, in some ways, an acolyte of Richard Nixon, too, admires Nixon.. People around him are great admirers of Nixon and viewed even the Watergate scandal as not being legitimate. But I want to ask you about President Biden here because he is also in a historically unprecedented position in some ways. What should he take away, if anything, from history in how he should behave now?
BRINKLEY: I think that Biden now, anytime somebody's in deep legal jeopardy like Donald Trump is, stay away. I mean, it is true Merrick Garland was the appointee of Biden, but you don't want to be seen together. If you're Biden now, the less photo-ops with Garland you get I use the term in The Washington Post keep a moat between the White House and the Justice Department. You don't want to seem to be turning into a huddle with Biden in deep discussions about Trump's legal woes.
So Biden has to do what he's doing and just let the what happens in Miami on Tuesday start unfolding and then see where this leaves us. Because the big rap, as you pointed out, Abby, is about Hillary Clinton coming up first. But the other one is what Donald Trump said over the weekend. Here I am, the chief opponent of the President, and he's trying to put me in jail. That's a banana republic. And Biden wants to make sure he doesn't feed into that narrative any more than it's already fed into.
[11:50:14]
PHILLIP: Yeah, we will be hearing, I'm sure, a lot about that. Douglas Brinkley, thank you very much for all of that perspective, as always.
BRINKLEY: Thank you, Abby.
PHILLIP: And coming up next for us, a big surprise win for Democrats in the Supreme Court that could reshape the battle for control of the House of Representatives.
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PHILLIP: Before we go, we want to tell you about a story that you may have missed this week but could literally determine who wins control of the House of Representatives next year. The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama violated the Voting Rights Act with a congressional map that dilutes the power of black voters, and that means that Alabama will have to redraw its districts before the next election.
[11:55:03] The decision was a surprise, with conservatives John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joining the court's three liberals to form an unlikely majority. And here is what makes this such a big deal. For the 2024 election it will likely force other states to redraw their maps as well. Seats in North Carolina, in Louisiana, in Georgia, in South Carolina, they could all be in play. And with Republicans clinging to just a five-seat majority, those races could make the difference between a Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries come 2025.
But that's it for us on INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY. Don't forget that tomorrow is the premiere of INSIDE POLITICS with Dana Bash. You will want to tune in there for the latest political news from the best political reporters every weekday from 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time.
And thank you again for sharing your Sunday morning with us. Have a great rest of your day.
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