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Special Counsel Appeals Dismissal Of Trump Classified Docs Case; Trump Lawyers Accuse DA Fani Willis Of Having "Racial Animus"; New Harris Ad Focuses On Her Plan To Bring Down Housing Costs; Poll: 41 Percent Of Independents Say Prices Will Go Down If Trump Wins; Only 17 Percent Say Same About Harris; Kash Patel Is "The Man Who Will Do Anything For Trump." Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 27, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: -- a significant authority and occupies a continuing office. So big ideas here that the appeals court's going to have to look at months from now.

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: And do you think that has merit, Elie? And also if the appeals court sides with Jack Smith, how quickly will this go to trial?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: So I do think Jack Smith's ultimately going to win here. As of this moment, as we sit here, the case is dead. It is -- this is the classified documents case. It's been dismissed, but I think it's going to be revitalized. I think it's going to be put back on track by the court of appeals. And here's why.

Donald Trump's not the first person to make this argument. Plenty of people who've been the subject of special counsel investigations and prosecutions have argued before this whole scheme is unconstitutional because Congress never specifically said, OK, DOJ, you now have a position called special counsel.

But that argument has been rejected. It was rejected in Mueller. It was rejected in one of the Hunter Biden cases. It's been rejected by appeals courts. Judge Ken is actually the first one to accept it. And the reason that it has passed constitutional musters because there are various laws passed by Congress that say the AG can delegate his power, his authority, basically however necessary to carry out his goal.

So I think the 11th Circuit will probably reverse this, and if not, it could well go to the Supreme Court. I don't know --

RAJU: Got it (ph).

HONIG: Either way it could go to the Supreme Court. I don't even think the Supreme Court is going to go with Trump on this one.

RAJU: Yes. In the meantime, of course, there are several legal cases involving the former president, one in Georgia, the election subversion racketeering case. This has been just mired in all sorts of problems for the prosecution.

Fani Willis is facing a lot of pressure here to be dismissed from this case, including the Trump legal team that made this case just yesterday. What is their argument to try to get her off the case?

POLANTZ: Yes, they're really digging in to say that she just has not been a fair prosecutor. And they're in this appeal to try and get that case, essentially, it's on ice right now, but to get it frozen for years if even if we come back.

RAJU: Definitely.

POLANTZ: And definitely right. And so what they're digging into specifically is Fani Willis having given a speech at a historically black church in Georgia, where she spoke about being a prosecutor who was black, and the Trump team is saying that she's injecting racism into a high profile trial, and that should not have happened.

That's not what the judge at the trial level said. He said that she could stay on the case but it is going to be before an appeals court.

RAJU: What is the likelihood she gets dismissed?

HONIG: I think there's a big problem here for Fani Willis. And I think the problem's bigger than her being dismissed. I think the whole case could get thrown out because what Trump's arguing in the brief he filed yesterday is my fundamental constitutional rights were violated.

Here we have an elected DA. A person who had already been warned, by the way, by a judge about her extra judicial outside of court statements that they could be prejudicial to the defendants. And she goes in a church in her county, where the jury will be drawn from, and makes this wildly inflammatory, inappropriate speech, essentially blaming the defendants, calling them racist.

That is outrageous, and that could well get this case dismiss. So I think there's a real problem here for the DA. And I think I think we may have seen the end of this case. I think there's a chance that Court of Appeals just says prosecutorial misconduct, it's done.

RAJU: So meantime, there's another case, of course --

POLANTZ: What?

RAJU: But, yes, (INAUDIBLE) we were not --

POLANTZ: God.

RAJU: -- breaking this, no.

Federal election subversion case, of course, has been on ice as this battle over immunity took place before the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court sided with Donald Trump or just a reminder of the viewers just to look at the charges against Donald Trump in that election interference case still pending.

And there's a big hearing next week. Elie --

HONIG: Yes.

RAJU: -- what do you expect from this hearing? And this is really about Jack Smith really trying to reconcile the Supreme Court ruling with these charges against Trump.

HONIG: This is the biggest of all the cases. This is the Washington, D.C. federal case brought by Jack Smith relating to January 6th and 2020 election subversion. This is the case that the U.S. Supreme Court back in July, essentially gutted with their immunity ruling. And they weren't super specific, but they said a lot of this case is going to be immune and needs to be pulled out of it.

And now we begin the very complicated, really first time it's ever been done process of Jack Smith and Trump's defense team and the judge having to sift through this indictment and decide, OK, what's immune? What's out of this case and what can stay in?

And look Friday, Jack Smith has to put in a written submission where he suggests what they do. The thing I'm looking for is, does Jack Smith ask for an evidentiary hearing? Because if he does, that could happen pretty quickly, pre-election, and we could see some pretty explosive testimony.

POLANTZ: And while the appeals court's cases and the other cases are going to go on for months and months, we'll hear little things in filings Friday, and then into next week, it's on again.

RAJU: Yes.

POLANTZ: We're going to be talking a lot about --

RAJU: Interesting.

POLANTZ: -- the January 6th case against Donald Trump in federal court in Washington.

RAJU: At the wrong political time for Trump. Interesting that the evidentiary could take place before November. Not a trial, not a verdict, but evidentiary --

HONIG: There's not going to be a trial.

RAJU: -- which will --

HONIG: Yes.

RAJU: -- which will also be potentially politically problematic for the former president.

POLANTZ: Like to come.

RAJU: Yes. All right, Elie and Katelyn, thank you so much for joining me. And up next for us, your paycheck may depend on it. Tax cuts, tax hikes, housing, grocery and gas prices. The presidential candidate's economic ideas, they're all over the map. We'll try to give you some directions. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:39:39]

RAJU: Inflation may be falling, but for many Americans, prices remain far too high, especially when it comes to housing. When people talk about high prices, the cost of buying or renting a house is often what they're talking about. The Harris campaign today releasing a new ad, Battleground States focused on that issue specifically.

My panel is back. So is part of this ad, they say, Harris says, is that we will end America's housing shortage by building 3 million new homes and rentals.

[12:40:07]

Clearly, they recognize this is a vulnerability as the head of the election polls have said that Trump is doing better than, at least in the eyes of voters, than Harris. And they see this as a key issue to hit on.

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: That's right. Even as the polls have tightened since Harris became the nominee, Trump still polls better in a lot of cases on the economy, and people trust him more in the economy. And so they are looking particularly at prices and at housing.

And this ad is really targeted at people in some of those battleground states that are really hurting in terms of housing prices and rent prices. And she is proposing a couple of different things. This is a hard one to move the ball on as you know. Just policy wise, there's only so much a prize that it can do to impact, you know, housing prices are affected by market forces, interest rates --

RAJU: Yes.

LUCEY: -- housing supply, you know --

RAJU: There'll be a rate cut in September --

LUCEY: Yes.

RAJU: -- but will impact people by November.

LUCEY: I mean, one of the things she's trying to do, obviously, is one of the issues is there's a real shortage of housing stock. And so she is trying to find ways to incentivize more housing units, more, you know, more availability of housing. So, how well it will work, I think is an open question, but she is very directly trying to address what they see as a key issue with voters. RAJU: And the question is how do voters view how she has dealt with it the economy, her role in the economy right now, this is among independent voters that a CBS News poll tested, asking them about how much did Harris's decision as VP impact the economy? A lot or some, that's about a 50 percent there, and about 50 percent say not much or none.

So about half and half of the electorate say, you know, she didn't have, you know, some say she had a lot of role, big role, others said she didn't have a role. If you head, the Harris campaign, do you want to say that you had a big role? Or do you want to say that the president had a big role?

DANIEL STRAUSS, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Harris's entire campaign is about being forward looking and --

RAJU: Being a change candidate.

STRAUSS: Well, to talk about the future and that's in contrast to her predecessor as the democratic nominee where Biden really wanted to depend on his record in the past. Now, Republicans -- we're at that point in the cycle where it's not the Biden administration, it's the Biden-Harris administration, right?

And Republicans, true or not, are -- will jump on any opportunity to say Harris was involved in this. Harris said she was the last person in the room, so she definitely made that decision. And that's what we're going to hear for the next hundred days, less than a hundred days.

RAJU: I suspect when it's good news, Harris will say, the Harris administration or Biden-Harris, otherwise it's the Biden administration, or it's not so good news, it's just my cynical view of the world here. But nonetheless, how do voters also view Harris versus Trump about their handling of some of these key issues, food and grocery prices? What will happen if they go -- if they win?

Among independent voters, again, 50 percent of independent voters in this poll say they will go up under Harris, 36 percent Trump. That is a big issue if you are Harris. Just 17 percent of that same poll say it'll go down under Harris, 41 percent say for Trump.

She's got to reverse that. I mean, look for all the issues, two things. One, this is why Republicans want to make this an issue debate about policy --

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.

RAJU: -- and Trump keeps trying to, you know, not having a hard time doing that. But also the Harris campaign needs to reverse that.

HOLMES: So that poll is probably the most alarming poll if I'm the Harris campaign to see grocery prices they believe that they would go up, because the -- thinks people care about the most voters on the ground. If you're talking to them are the price of groceries, the price of gas and the price of housing. And if voters that you care about, particularly in the middle, 50 percent think that grocery prices will go up. That means that voters who already feel, because we know that a majority of voters feel like there's a tightening on their pocketbook, think it's going to get worse under Harris. And that's likely going to impact them when they go to the polls.

So if I was Harris, I'd be very concerned about that. But just to go back to one of the things that Daniel was saying overall, the best strategy for Donald Trump's team, they believe, is to try and make Harris an incumbent candidate. So far, it's proven very hard.

She has had this bounce over the last several weeks that they have had a hard time infiltrating, but their goal is, by the end of this, to make it the Biden-Harris administration, to make her the incumbent, and that all of these policies be linked to her, whether or not they can do it. It's a short amount of time, and she's a different candidate.

RAJU: Yes, no question about it. So, what are their economic plans stock up? The Harris plan versus the Trump tag plan on taxes. So viewers have a sense of it. She wants to extend the Trump tax cuts for households under $400,000. She's also talking about raising rates among the wealthiest tax households to 44.6 percent and then there's a difference here on the higher corporate tax rate, which Harris wants, unlike Trump, who is looking for another tax cut.

He wants to also extend. Trump does all the tax cuts, including for the wealthiest tax -- wealthiest households. They do agree on no taxes on tips. Of course, that was Trump came out first and, you know, Nevada is a big state and Harris is now endorsing that as well. So, but still there are significant differences on these two candidates' economic policies.

[12:45:06]

TAMARA KEITH, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Yes. And there's another difference, which is that Harris believes in the independence of the Federal Reserve. Trump has said that he wants to have influence over how interest rate decisions are made by the Fed. It's pretty wonky, but it can actually -- that's one area where you could actually affect the economy.

And what is good for the president may not be good for consumers more broadly or prices. Yes?

LUCEY: Yes. And I think the thing you see with Harris is that she wants to continue bringing in all the same amount -- of similar amount of tax revenue, but from a different sources, right? So she's trying to shift more of the tax burden to corporations and the most wealthy and in order to pay for some of our policies.

And so that's, I think, the big picture thing that we're seeing from her. You know, Trump has thrown out a lot of things. He wants to extend those tax cuts. He is also very interested in greater tariffs on goods. And that's, I think, the other big -- RAJU: Yes.

LUCEY: -- another big lever that he's been talking about.

RAJU: Yes, no question about it.

STRAUSS: You know, there's a big competition right now not -- to not get too wonky and to tell and have an economic pitch that voters really will respond to in a way. I mean, Bill Clinton was very good at this and the Harris campaign has been pretty cautious so far in all of its policy positions on the economy.

But, you know, it's that Carville saying, it's the economy, stupid. And whichever campaign in these next 70 days makes that pitch effectively is probably going to gain in the polls.

RAJU: Yes, I mean, it's always the case. The economy, number one issue. That will probably be again come November.

All right, coming up. A useful tool, that's how Donald Trump reportedly describes the man who's expected to have a big job in a second Trump term. We'll tell you why former White House officials are especially worried about this Trump lawyer (ph). Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:51:15]

RAJU: Donald Trump demands loyalty. He always has. And if he wins in November, he'll likely stock the federal government with as many loyalists as possible. Like Kash Patel, who Elaina Plott Calabro describes in her new piece for The Atlantic as quote, "The man who will do anything for Trump."

Elaina, she joins me now here along with Kristen Holmes. Thank you for being here this afternoon.

ELAINA PLOTT CALABRO, STAFF WRITER, THE ATLANTIC: Thank you so much for having me.

RAJU: It's great to see you. So this is a -- what you write in your piece for The Atlantic. You write, "Even in an administration full of loyalties -- loyalists, Patel was exceptional in his devotion. This is what seemed to disturb many of his colleagues the most. Patel was dangerous, several of them told me, not because of a certain plan he would be poised to carry out if given control of the CIA or FBI, but because he appeared to have no plan at all. His priorities today always subject to a mercurial president's wishes tomorrow."

What's your takeaway?

PLOTT CALABRO: One thing that I learned as I spoke with former Trump administration officials about the fact that in -- about a year and eight months, Kash Patel had sort of skyrocketed from National Security Council Stafford to suddenly you have Trump pushing for him to be the deputy FBI director, which Attorney General Bill Barr said over my dead body.

Next step, he wanted him as deputy CIA director and direct -- the director at the time of the CIA, Gina Haspel threatened to resign over this. And as I was talking to these former officials saying, what was it that you were so scared he was going to do? And all of them to what he said it's -- it wasn't about a specific plan necessarily. It was that whatever Trump's whims were that day, his ideology in some ways was just centered around carrying them out.

And so, as one person put it to me, it was like, who knows what he told Trump he would do, which I found an interesting contrast with someone like Stephen Miller, who, you know, despite being a somewhat of a Trump loyalist himself, does have a very specifically defined ideology when it comes to immigration.

You understand the contours of the agenda he wants to advance. With Kash Patel, anything could change depending on what Trump wants that day or the next.

RAJU: And Trump -- what Trump wants one day to the next, obviously changes.

PLOTT CALABRO: Exactly.

RAJU: So that is an interesting point -- piece of reporting that you learned. Just he's been, Kash Patel, has been actually a frequent guest, and Steve Bannon, of course a Trump loyalist himself, Bannon and his podcast, talking about their political enemies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE BANNON, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF STRATEGIST: Kash, I know you're probably going to be head of the CIA, but do you believe that you can deliver the goods on this in a pretty short order the first couple of months so we can get rolling on prosecutions?

KASH PATEL, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Yes, we got the bench for it, Bannon. We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you, whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But, yes, we're putting you all on notice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, you talk to the Trump campaign all the time. Do you expect him to get -- what role, I guess, do you expect him to get in a Trump administration?

HOLMES: Well, so --

RAJU: Getting confirmed by the Senate, maybe --

HOLMES: Right. A whole --

RAJU: But there are other roles you can put him in.

HOLMES: So first of all, the Trump team was livid about that interview in particular. They have, some of them, tried to distance Kash Patel from the former president because they are trying to keep, or at least for some time, tried to keep President Trump or former President Trump isolated from some of these people who they were worried about would influence what he would say out loud.

And they were very angry with those comments in particular because they obviously got a lot of attention and in a negative way. Now, Patel would argue that that's not exactly what he was saying. If you read the constitution, that he was saying people who lied specifically in the media, not, but it doesn't help the cause of the Trump campaign, which specifically at that time, when he made those comments were back in December, was trying to present as a much more organized --

RAJU: Yes.

HOLMES: -- and effective operation than what we had seen before.

[12:55:13]

Now in terms of what he might get in a SEC administration, that is all going to depend on the next several months --

RAJU: Yes.

HOLMES: -- and who is actually running the transition.

RAJU: Yes.

HOLMES: Today we're reporting RFK and Tulsi Gabbard are being joined to that. Well, they have a role in actually who gets personnel jobs. It's very up in the air right now who's going to be in that role of putting people out.

RAJU: And in the meantime, he's been a bit of a cult figure on the right. He's raising money, selling merchandise on trying to -- for January 6 defendants as well.

PLOTT CALABRO: Yes. And I want to add to the great point that Kristen just made. What's so interesting to me about Kash Patel is he's in this sort of unique position where despite the fact that a lot of people around Trump in some ways kind of detest Kash Patel and do wish that he would have distance from the former president.

Trump himself really likes him. And he does have that direct line to Donald Trump.

RAJU: Yes. And we'll -- yes, well, such great reporting. Thank you guys. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for sharing with us our reporting.

Thank you for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)