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Hunter Biden Offers To Change Plea To Avoid Trail In Tax Case; Trump Says He'll Impose Tariffs On All Imported Goods; Trump Giving Economic Speech In New York; Trump Claims U.S. Facing "Economic Disaster" Under Biden; Trump Touts Strength Of U.S Economy During His First Term; Fact-Checking Trump's Economic Speech. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 05, 2024 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash. And we are following breaking news on multiple fronts. 61 days from election day. A crucial hearing just wrapped up in the federal case against Donald Trump for trying to overturn the last election.

The judge says, she's not ready to set a trial date, but that the election will not factor into her decision making. And any moment now, the former president will unveil a new economic policy. We're going to bring that to you live.

But first, major news in Hunter Biden's federal tax evasion case. CNN's Evan Perez has the details from Los Angeles. Evan, what do we know?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, this was a bit of a surprise gambit that we had in court here just about 20 minutes ago here in Los Angeles, Dana. Hunter Biden's attorneys asked for him to enter an unusual plea. It's called an Alford plea, where Hunter Biden would accept whatever punishment the judge dose out. But he maintains his innocence.

Instead of pleading guilty, he's maintaining his or is attempting to maintain his innocence. Of course, as expected, the Justice Department does not -- does not agree with this. They objected in court to this request from Hunter Biden's attorneys. And now, the judge has called for a break for a couple of hours while he considers what steps to take next.

Now, this is unusual as you pointed out. As I pointed out today obviously, was the first day of juror selection on this trial. This is a Hunter Biden's second time going on trial. Earlier this year, he was found guilty on gun charges in Delaware, and these charges have to do with tax evasion.

And he's facing three felony counts for tax evasion, six misdemeanor counts for failing to file and pay his taxes on time. And of course, this was -- that he's facing a very difficult situation because Hunter Biden had previously agreed to plead guilty to all of these charges in a deal that fell apart last year in federal court there in Delaware. So, we don't know what the judge is going to do next. But I can tell you that, you know, Alfred plea is obviously very, very unusual. Certainly, in the federal system, the Justice Department has a policy against them. They would argue, and they would -- today in court, they're pushing for Hunter Biden to plead guilty to everything.

If he wants to resolve this case, he needs to plead guilty to all of these charges. That is the position of the government. So, we will see what Judge Mark Scarsi does when he gets back. Obviously, Dana, big -- a lot of consequences are here for Hunter Biden. He's facing 17 years if he's convicted.

We know President Biden has said that he's not going to pardon his son. However, that's back when Hunter -- the president was the candidate for reelection. That is no longer the case. We'll see whether that answer stays the same.

BASH: So interesting. Thank you so much for explaining that, especially that detail of the Justice Department policy being not to accept such rare pleas. Thank. Keep us posted if you hear anything from what the judge actually says in that hearing behind you, Evan.

I want to in the meantime bring in senior legal analyst, Elie Honig. So, Elie, can you just dive deeper into this, so-called Alford plea, which was not on my bingo card for Inside Politics today. But, you know, we're all about learning new things, and this is a new one for me. You've obviously got experience with this being a former federal prosecutor. Explain?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yeah, Dana. This is a surprise development. So ordinarily, when a defendant pleads guilty, he goes in front of the judge in court and says, I'm guilty as charge. I did it, and here's what I did. That makes me guilty. Now, this is what's technically called an Alford plea. People may be more familiar with the term you sometimes see on TV of a no-contest, or no low contend, if you want to use the line.

Where essentially what Hunter Biden is asking to do is to go into the federal court and say, I'm not admitting my guilt. I'm not admitting that I'm guilty of these charges. Instead, I acknowledge that the prosecution thinks they have the proof. And I'm willing to take your sentence, Judge, based on the indictment as is. It's very, very rare to see this type of plea happen or even an attempt to have this type of plea happen in federal court.

BASH: And Elie, do prosecutors talk about sort of the history of -- if you know, broadly whether or not prosecutors usually accept this type of plea. I mean, I don't want to put you on the spot here, but if you were the prosecutor in this case, is this something that you think that you would consider?

So, especially given, and as you answer that, I just want to add a little bit of context to this. Hunter Biden has paid back those taxes. It's not as if those taxes are outstanding, even though he did owe more than one year and owed a lot of money. HONIG: So, it is official Justice Department policy, and this is a DOJ federal case that you do not as a prosecutor accept an Alford plea except for in extraordinary circumstances. You asked about my experience. I was a prosecutor for 14 years, never accepted an Alford plea.

Once in a while, a defense lawyer would call and say, hey, my guy's willing to take an Alford plea. And frankly, we'd laugh at them. We'd say, no way. We don't do that. That's a joke. However, what Hunter Biden certainly can do, and perhaps this is his next step if this doesn't work, is nobody can stop him from just pleading guilty to the indictment as is.

[12:05:00]

Now he's charged with various tax crimes, so nobody can stop him. It doesn't matter if the prosecutor likes it or not. Hunter Biden can always go into that court and say, I'm guilty as charged. But on this issue of the Alford plea, the no contest plea not at all surprising that Evan just reported that DOJ the prosecutors are against it.

BASH: Elie, thank you so much. Always good to see you and to have you instantly explain things that we are just learning. And you already know because you've already practiced law for so long.

Now to the big apple. You are looking at live pictures of the Economic Club of New York, where Donald Trump will speak momentarily about his plans for the economy. Should he win another term in office? We're expecting to hear about some new ideas. A day after Vice President Harris announced some of her own new economic policies.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is there. Kristen, I know you've been talking to your sources and the Trump campaign. We do expect some new ideas that people who listen intently, that Elon Musk might found -- might find familiar.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right. Elon Musk has become such a close adviser of Donald Trump, and we'll see that today on display when he announces some of these new economic proposals.

And just to give a little bit of background here, Donald Trump in the last several weeks, particularly since Kamala Harris has been at the top of the ticket, has given these kind of smaller speeches that are supposed to focus on specific issues, like the economy, like immigration.

But however, they often veer off and go into attacks on Kamala Harris, on her policies, on her personally. We are told that this is going to be much more specific, not just vague proposals, like no tax on tips or no tax on social security but get into somewhat of the nitty gritty.

So here is what is on the agenda from senior advisers. They say this will all be unveiled today in various economic proposals. He's going to talk about tackling government regulation, creating government efficiency commission. That was something that was originally proposed by Elon Musk.

It's something that would do essentially a comprehensive look at the government, at fraud, at waste, withdrawing unspent funds from the Biden administration, adding, sweeping tariffs on imports. Obviously, something we've heard Donald Trump talk extensively about, as well as embracing cryptocurrency, which is something he has done in recent months.

Now how detailed he gets, that remains to be seen often with these kind of speeches. Donald Trump gives a big blanket but doesn't go into those specifics. But we are told that this is his opportunity to get out there and unveil some of these new policies.

As you mentioned, this is coming a day after Kamala Harris unveiled some of her economic policies. And we also know that the economy is a key issue for Donald Trump's campaign. They still believe that they can make Harris the incumbent candidate, that people are still very unhappy with the economy.

And as long as Donald Trump continues to stay focused and on message, particularly when it comes to inflation, the prices of groceries, the prices of housing, that they can win this election in November. But of course, Dana, the question is as always, whether or not Donald Trump can stay on message.

BASH: Yes, it is. And we will be watching, and we will be taking his speech live to hear the policy proposals that he says and his campaign says that they're going to unveil. Any minute now, we will bring that to you. Thank you. In the meantime, for your great reporting, Kristin, I have other terrific reporters right here with me at the table.

CNN's David Chalian, CNN's Alayna Treene, and Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, formally with CNN. Nice to see you all. David Chalian yesterday Kamala Harris gives a speech that talks about the economy bit more moderate, separates herself for the first time really from Joe Biden on one of the key tax issues that people who are paying attention to that, pay attention to. And today we have Donald Trump.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yeah. I mean, it's issue number one for voters obviously. And so, both of these candidates want to speak to where voters are, which is a concern about the economy. I also think it's an opportunity to practice some policy lines before the debate in Philadelphia next week.

So, I think what you hear today from Donald Trump, if he does indeed read off the prompter as planned, uh, what you heard from Kamala Harris yesterday, I'll be shocked if we don't hear some of that same language on the debate stage next week.

It's interesting that you noted on the Harris side, Dana, a little bit of separation from Biden, which is noteworthy and interesting in and of itself from the sitting vice president. But actually, the fact that like she's separated from Biden to put him in a more left progressive area by raising taxes by a larger amount, than she's saying. I don't want to go that far. [12:10:00]

You know, it was just five years ago, she was running on the left of Joe Biden. So, it was a very, a big switcheroo there to hear her try and do that. We should also be clear. She's still proposing to raise taxes on these capital gains on high wealthy earners. She's just going to raise taxes by less than Joe Biden is proposing.

And here, what I thought was interesting in that graphic that you saw with Kristen, with all the policy proposals that were about to hear from the musk idea of sort of reorganizing government as also a way of potential savings, echoes back to Al Gore, if that's a government.

BASH: We go.

CHALIAN: Yeah, we go.

(CROSSTALK)

CHALIAN: I don't think that is -- while they -- the Harris campaign may go after the association with Musk, who traffic sometimes conspiracy theories. I don't think that's what they're going to go after. It was that down towards the bottom of that list, his call for tariffs nearly 20 percent, watch the Harris campaign jump on that. Because they will try and paint that purely as cost increase, as the Trump inflation of a potential second Trump term.

BASH: Yeah. I mean, and I don't want to get too far down in the weeds in policy. But you remember when Trump was president, the trade war, the tariffs that he put on really did hurt farmers, particularly in states like Iowa and the government had to come in and spend a lot of money to help them.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: No, absolutely. I think this is one of the big questions I've had for the Trump campaign for several months now, is that Donald Trump has proposed all of these sweeping policies. I think we're going to actually hear the specifics today. I know the goal for the Trump campaign is to put a sharper focus on it, not talk about it broadly, but really get into what exactly he wants to do.

But one of my questions for them, particularly when it comes to no tax on tips, no tax on social security, you know, no changes to entitlement benefits at the same time. How are you going to pay for this? And that is a question I've asked Donald Trump this directly at some of his events that they have yet to answer for.

And even today, when I've been asking them about all of these policies, they still have not answered for that. I think one time, when I asked Donald Trump, he said, through growth, through great growth, and that was about the sum of his answer or so.

BASH: And just like that, he's at the microphone. Let's listen.

DONALD TRUMP (R), FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT AND 2024 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You can speak for an hour and a half. It is something 30 minutes. He didn't like the way I looked, I guess. But we do have a lot to say, and I want to thank you, Bob. I also want to thank friends and respected business leaders who are welcoming me back to the story New York Economic Club story, indeed.

A very special thanks to Barbara Van Allen. Barbara, thank you very much. And former director of the National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Kevin Hassett. Robert Lighthizer, a terrific person, former Secretary Wilbur Ross, former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton, Ambassador Woody Johnson, Senior Adviser Stephen Miller.

My friends and respected business leaders all; John Paulson, Jamie Dimon, Steve Witkoff, Steve Schwarzman, Scott Bessent, Jeff Sprecher, Richard Kurtz, former head of the World Bank, David Malpass, and the two co-chairs of my presidential transition team that are being inundated with phone calls and requests, Linda McMahon and Howard Lutnick. Thank you. Thank you very much.

As we gather today, we have an economic disaster on our hands. We have an economy in crisis, a failing nation, a nation in serious decline under the radical policies of my former opponent, Joe Biden, and my new opponent, Kamala Harris.

1.3 million workers have become unemployed in the past 12 months. I don't know if anybody knows that. The typical American family has lost over $28,000 due to rampant and record setting inflation. Credit card debt has reached the highest in history, with more than one in three Americans reporting. They have maxed out their credit cards. They've maxed out.

Families now need to earn an estimated $110,000 a year to afford a typical home, meaning 65 percent of households are locked out of buying, just an ordinary house. Gasoline prices, grocery prices, electricity prices, mortgage rates and virtual everything else, are up 30 to 100 percent since I left office.

[12:15:00]

8.4 million Americans are now working second jobs, the highest in more than 30 years. The real wages of African American workers are down by over 6 percent short period of time. The real incomes from Hispanic men are down 6.6 percent or $3,600 per year.

And on top of that, African Americans and Hispanic American jobs are under massive threat from the invasion taking place at our border. They're taking the jobs of Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and nobody talks about it, but I won't let it happen.

Yet, after presiding over the border the worst in history for any country, there's never been a border like this. 21 million people, we project this total economic catastrophe. The borders are Kamala Harris has now been slotted in by the Democrats to be reelected. She wants four more years to enforce a radical left agenda that poses a fundamental threat to the prosperity of every American family and America itself. We're talking about America itself. She wants to defund the police, have totally open borders, ban fracking in Pennsylvania and everywhere else, take away your private health insurance. And perhaps most pertinent to the very brilliant people in this room, raise your business and corporate taxes, and unbelievably, she will seek a tax on unrealized capital gains.

Most people don't even know what that means. What does it mean? She has been after all of this for years, and as everyone knows, she is a Marxist who destroyed almost single handedly, San Francisco. And when she was the AG, California itself, not the same place people are leaving. They're fleeing like they are in New York.

She'll seek out, and she will try and get those things if she's elected, and she may very well succeed in getting them. She recently said her values have not changed, and these have really been her values for her entire career. Her values haven't changed. That's what she wants.

So, she told the truth, we're not going to let this happen. Communism is the past. Freedom is the future. And it is time to send comrade Kamala Harris back home to California, where crime is rampant, and fleeing is the number one occupation.

I'm here today to lay out my plan to rescue our country from this nightmare and to bring back to its citizens the American dream bigger, better and stronger than ever before. Eight years ago, I came before you as a candidate for president and shared my vision to end this stagnation and return to rapid growth. That's what we did.

As president, I am very proud to say that we accomplished something that nobody thought that was even possible. Before the pandemic, real median household income rose by $7,684, and even after the pandemic, annual incomes were up $6,400. The average American household saw a $197,000 increase in real net worth in 48 months.

For the bottom 50 percent of households average wealth more than doubled, increasing by 121 percent lowest income, people benefited the most. After 12 years of decline, we added nearly 7 million new homeowners, never happened before. And in three years, we created 7 million new jobs, 260 percent more than projected when I took office.

When I took office, they said you couldn't hit those projections, and we were 260 percent higher than what we said we could do. From the day I won to the day I left, the S&P 500 increased by 80 percent and we did it all with virtually no inflation. We had virtually no inflation. Think of that, who could believe that.

[12:20:00]

I delivered the largest tax cuts in reform in American history, by far, slashing rates for working families and cutting the business tax from the highest in the world. We had the highest in the world. 35 percent, and actually, when you add local and state numbers that were close -- getting close to 50, but much, much higher nobody has ever seen, we brought it all the way down to 21 percent, which everybody said was impossible to do.

And I heard it from everyone. They said, you'll never be able to do that. And I got it down to 21 percent. I cut a record number of job billing regulations. In four years, we cut more regulation than any president in the history of our country, by far. I'm proud to be the only president in modern history to achieve a net regulatory reduction during my term, and it was a substantial reduction.

And for every regulation we added, we cut more than 5.5 regulations. We unleashed American energy, and within three years, we had increased domestic oil production by 47 percent, and we were just getting started. The price of gasoline was $1.87 a gallon. Doesn't that sound good right now?

We negotiated and renegotiated more than 50 trade agreements with other countries that were taking advantage of us. As they all do to protect the American worker and to open foreign markets, and we did a great job. I ended NAFTA, the worst trade deal ever made in the history of our country, and replaced it with the USMCA, perhaps the best trade deal we ever made in history. That's Mexico and Canada.

I stood up to China, like no one else before me, no one came even close. And I saved the U.S. auto industry from obliteration with a 27.5 percent tariff on all Chinese cars that remains in place to this day. They want to take it off, but they can't, because number one, it's too much money. And number two, we would be invaded by Chinese cars on top of the other invasions that are taking place.

Without it, our auto industry would be dead. And now I am going further. We will bring our auto making industry to the record levels of 37 years ago and will be able to do it very quickly through tariffs and other smart use of certain things that we have that other countries don't.

For four straight years, I fought for American workers like I would fight for my own family. I took care of our economy, like I would take care of my own company. In every decision, I asked, will I create jobs here, or will I be sending jobs overseas? Will it make America richer and stronger, or will it make our country weaker and poorer?

I always put America first every single time. And when our country was hit by the China virus, we saved the economy. We rescued tens of millions of jobs. And after COVID, I handed Kamala and Joe the fastest and strongest recovery ever recorded, nothing even close with 1.4 percent inflation. The 30-year mortgage rate was at 2.4 percent, and the highest stock market in history. This is despite the pandemic.

To date, I handed them back the highest stock market to date after having just suffered with the rest of the world, a pandemic the likes of which nobody had ever seen before. We did an incredible job. And remember, far more people died of COVID under Biden, Harris than under President Trump, many, many more people.

We delivered an economic miracle, which Kamala and Joe turned into an economic disaster, just like they turned the border and indeed, the whole world into a catastrophic surrender. Starting on day one, Kamala launched a war on American energy and orchestrated a nation wrecking border invasion with illegal aliens, pouring in from countries all over the world.

They came in from countries that nobody ever heard the name of that country. Those countries from their prisons and jails, there is a difference from mental institutions and insane asylums, as well as record numbers of terrorists, human traffickers and sex traffickers, numbers that we've never seen before, taking place over the last three and a half years.

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Then Kamala cast the deciding votes on trillions of dollars in wasteful spending, which together with their terrible energy policies, gave us the worst inflation perhaps in the history of our country. Nearly two thirds of the jobs created under the Harris, Biden administration were bounce back jobs, bounce back. They were bounce back jobs that I handed them from before the pandemic. This happens with pandemics. You have bounced back jobs. The pandemic comes and it goes, and those people go back to their jobs.

And just last week, Joe Biden admitted that on social media. I don't know if he knew what he admitted, but that's what it said. I wonder who drew it? Perhaps that person is no longer employed by the Democrats. But right now, it's even worse than that under Kamala Harris's policies.

BASH: OK. We've been listening to Donald Trump at the New York Economic Club. This was slated to be an unveiling of what he would do as president. So far, he has spent a lot of time, really all of his time talking about what he believes Kamala Harris and Joe Biden have done wrong. When he starts talking about his own plans, we will get back to it as soon as we can.

In the meantime, I want to go to Matt Egan, because what we've heard so far requires a lot of fact checking and maybe course correcting for our viewers, when it comes to the real history and context as to what has happened during the Biden administration with regard to the economy.

I want to first just ask you a general question, Matt, because you're the expert here. What stands out most to you about what we should be fact checking.

MATT EGAN, CNN REPORTER: Well, Dana, he's clearly painting a very, very dark picture about the current state of affairs in this economy. And no doubt, this economy has some major issues, particularly when it comes to affordability. But he certainly sounds like he's exaggerating the extent of the current situation. For example, just a few moments ago, former President Trump said, this is the worst inflation, perhaps in the history of our country.

Now, inflation is nowhere near as high as it was just two years ago, right? We had a much higher inflation than the sub 3 percent, right now it was higher in the 70s and in the 80s. So that one just doesn't add up. He also was championing his 2017 tax cuts, which no doubt were massive, but he described them as the largest tax cuts in American history by far.

That is something that former President Trump has repeatedly said, that is not accurate. It's not the biggest tax cut in history, either as a percentage of GDP or on an inflation, inflation adjusted basis.

Another point here, though, is what he's saying about the current state of the jobs market. It's really important to remember that unemployment remains relatively low. It has come up recently. But look at this, 4.3 percent unemployment as of July. That's the most recent month we have. That is significantly lower than in January 2021, the former -- the final month that Trump was in office.

Of course, the unemployment rate at that point was high because of the COVID crisis, which is a crisis that Trump's critics would argue that he mismanaged. But even if we look at job growth before COVID, right, we just look at the first three months -- three years under Trump. We can see the U.S. economy added a lot of jobs. 6.5 million jobs during the first three years that Trump was in office.

But look at that, much more, more than twice as many under Joe Biden as the economy was recovering from COVID. So, you know, again and again in the opening few minutes of this speech, Dana, Trump is painting a much darker picture than what really lives up with reality.

BASH: And I want to ask you about part of his plan, and hopefully, he will get to that when he gives his speech, and we'll go back to it. But can you talk about terrorists -- before you get to that, started to ask you a two-pronged question here.

We were sitting here listening, and he was talking about the bounce back job that he was responsible for with regard to some of the Biden era jobs. Is that -- is that a thing? And if it is, can you explain what that is?

EGAN: Well, I think what he alluding to is the fact that, of course, the economy was adding jobs when Biden came into office in 2021 because the COVID crisis was beginning to fade and eventually the pandemic ended. And so, as the economy reopened, of course, jobs were going to be rapidly increasing.