Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

Sources: Bolton To Plead Guilty Over Mishandling Sensitive Info; GOP Immigration Bill Stalls Amid Backlash To "Anti- Weaponization" Fund; Biography Looks At Events That Shaped Conservative Justice Alito; Sneak Peak Of Obama's $850 Million Presidential Center. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 04, 2026 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: -- put up on the screen, all of the President's perceived enemies that the Justice Department either indicts or goes after or investigates. This is a different case.

LAURA COATES, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: It is. And the phrases like selective prosecution, vindictive prosecution, begin to roll off the tongue when you think about Letitia James and her assertions or James Comey and his allegations against him and his -- that he returned to the government as well.

This is important because this was actually brought, as I understand, by a career prosecutor before a grand jury. Why is that important? Because political appointees were not the ones to spearhead under either of the administrations up to date.

But it's important to think about there is plenty of fodder to note that there are going to be continued accusations of a political motivation towards John Bolton, who we know his book played very, very significantly in the impeachment trial of Trump and beyond, but also the continued animosity between the two individuals.

But this case has had much more legally substantive material, as we understand it, the investigations and the indictments, very distinct from the other cases that have been brought by other perceived political enemies. And that's very important here for the judge to consider, because the DOJ's credibility, it has been waning as cases have gone on based on perceptions of a prioritizing of the President's lists of enemies as opposed to what is legally sound.

But given the trajectory and the past of this case, and of course, a plea that would have him what's called allocute, admitting to certain things, it will be very important.

BASH: And real quick, this judge, like any judge, as you mentioned, has discretion. How does that play into what happens when this hearing goes on? I mean, you've, I'm sure, been in many --

COATES: Yes.

BASH: -- courtrooms and a prosecutor for many cases where you've had to sort of hold your breath and wait for the judge to decide.

COATES: Yes. And of course, you can under a plea agreement as a prosecutor, you can negotiate with counsel as to what the sentencing range might be. It could be I'm not going to ask you to serve any time. I'm going to ask you to serve up to several months in prison or I'm going to ask for the maximum penalty, but not have you actually served time in prison, just kind of have probation over your head, any combination of things.

And that can be agreed upon when you decide to plead guilty. But the judge is who has the discretion to decide what the ultimate sentence will be. And there's going to be a whole lot of context coming into place, not the least of which will be what John Bolton himself says in admitting to the crimes specifically that he will admit to and about remorse, the potential for what could have happened if the sensitive information had gotten out and beyond. That's all going to be part of the decision.

BASH: Laura, thank you. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it.

COATES: Of course.

BASH: And up next, as we speak, the Senate is at a standstill. I know you might say like, OK, that's just the Senate on a Thursday. But in this particular case, it's about a really important issue in a series of issues. A handful of Republicans are actually holding up a really important piece of legislation. We'll explain it after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:37:41]

BASH: Right now, the Republican bill to fund ICE and Border Patrol is in doubt. Here's what's happening. Democrats introduced an amendment to officially kill the President's anti-weaponization fund. A handful of Republicans haven't voted yet.

I want to get straight to CNN's Manu Raju on Capitol Hill. Drama.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, drama and also the fate of President Trump's $70 billion bill to fund his immigration priorities now in the hands of a handful of senators who are really struggling at this key moment, all because of President Trump's decision to keep open the option of this weaponization fund that he dropped on their laps as they're trying to pass this bill.

There is an amendment right now on the Senate floor that would essentially scuttle this bill together, send it back to committee and force them to write in language to kill the weaponization fund. Republican leaders have been scrambling and lobbying their members to vote against it.

But the three Republicans who are holding out right now, if they vote with Democrats, that would be enough to sink this whole bill altogether. Those three Republicans, Senator Bill Cassidy, he is at the center of this. He is, of course, one of the Republicans who Trump defeated by endorsing his primary challenger in his campaign.

He has now come back and essentially been said a bit of a wild card to take it to the President and is doing it on just that. He just engaged, I saw in a very tense conversation on the Senate floor with Senate Republican Leader John Thune, who said to him, where are we, Bill? And Bill Cassidy and him got in a back and forth and looks like there's no resolution yet.

But two other key players, Jon Husted of Ohio, in a difficult race. A new poll out has him down eight in his election bid against the former Senator Sherrod Brown. And also Dan Sullivan, the Alaska Republican locked in his own tight reelection race. Another tough Republican senator who's battling her reelection, Susan Collins, has voted no, showing you the politics of this weaponization fund at this key moment.

Now, one key senator to watch at the back end of this vote is Senator Thom Tillis, who I talked to earlier today. He said there is no language in this bill to kill that weaponization. But he's going to be a no on final passage.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Even the AG has said that it's done, so I don't know why we just don't codify it so Democrats are not raising the speculation that it come come back at some point. But instead, we should be able to codify that, be done with it.

SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R), LOUISIANA: I want to make sure it's not mostly dead. I want to make sure it's completely dead.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[12:40:00]

RAJU: So you heard the two senators there now. Tillis has voted against this first Democratic amendment, but even if they get past this, Dana, the problems may continue to build as they go through this very cumbersome marathon voting session by the end of the day on final passage.

If there is not language targeting the President's fund, you heard Thom Tillis is a no there. But what about these other senators who are holding out? Because here, the President can only afford to lose three Republican votes. And right now, there are more than three who have concerns with the President's DOJ fund.

BASH: Absolutely --

RAJU: Dana?

BASH: Absolutely fascinating.

Manu, thank you so much. Obviously, let us know if something moves, if any of those three Republicans vote in the next, you know, 20 minutes or so. Manu, thanks.

Back here at the table. I mean, that, Seung Min, is so telling. We were just a few minutes ago talking about Senator Husted, who is the appointed Republican senator in in Ohio. He was, of course, put there after JD Vance became Vice President. And this poll is just out.

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.

BASH: He is now losing big time to his Democratic challenger. And he is one of the three Republicans who is not sure how to vote on this weaponization fund, which is not popular even among the President's own base.

KIM: Right. It's as if, you know, they're case in point.

BASH: Right.

KIM: I mean, these are how toxic the politics can be. And another one of the current holdouts, Senator Dan Sullivan. I mean, if there is a path for Democrats to take the Senate and we will emphasize that it has always been a difficult map and it remains a difficult map now. Alaska is on that list because they do have a very good recruit there.

The Democrats have a very good recruit there in Mary Peltola and Dan Sullivan has been kind of, you know -- Dan Sullivan certainly worried about the race. And certainly Republican resources are being poured into that race to protect Dan Sullivan's seat.

So the politics here are fascinating. But notice who is taking the lead there in those floor deliberations.

BASH: Yes.

KIM: Bill Cassidy, part of that YOLO caucus we discussed earlier.

BASH: Yes. And just a reminder, as these Senate Republicans were gearing up for what they knew was going to be this massive funding bill and this particular vote inside that, this is what the President said about that weaponization fund.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The weaponization fund, as far as I'm concerned, was a beautiful thing. It was something I was -- I didn't make it, but I was -- I heard that I thought that was the greatest thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: I believe Senator Tillis called it stupid on stilts at a certain point. And we're back there. Look, this is -- the Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche had closed this. He had said it wasn't going to happen. President Trump just opened it back up again. And I was talking earlier about the midterm elections. These people, I mean, Thom Tillis said, if we've got the acting AG saying it's done, then let's just stick a fork in it. That's what they want to do.

ANDREW DESIDERIO, SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, PUNCHBOWL NEWS: Yes, absolutely. I mean, look, Senator Tillis and Senator Cassidy are in different situations here because they're, you know, either not running for reelection or in the case of Senator Cassidy lost his primary.

But you see Senator Sullivan, right, for example, from Alaska, when they vote like they're vulnerable, they know they're vulnerable.

BASH: Yes.

DESIDERIO: Senator Sullivan has voted for Democratic amendments in past vote-o-ramas as well on health care, on affordability. He voted for Democrats --

BASH: Yes.

DESIDERIO: -- plan on the Obamacare subsidies, for example.

BASH: Real quick.

PATRICK SVITEK, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: And I was going to say, going back to the Ohio poll, the most important issue to voters in that poll in the Senate race was inflation, the economy by far. It was not this weaponization fund. It wasn't even immigration, which is the broader bill here. And so that's what some of these vulnerable incumbents want to be talking about.

BASH: All right, everybody, don't go anywhere. Coming up, from abortion to religion to presidential power, what shaped the worldview of Justice Samuel Alito? That's the focus of the next title in our IP summer reading list.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:48:27]

BASH: Supreme Court. Justices hold immense power. And it's always interesting to find out what makes them tick. Our next book on the IP summer reading list seeks to answer that question for a man who wrote the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. And he has been one of President Trump's most reliable votes on the court.

The book is "Revenge for the Sixties: Sam Alito and the Triumph of the Conservative Legal Movement." And the author is Peter Canellos. And you join me now. And I know, Peter, that what you do is try to dig into Alito's life and the impact of some of the things in his childhood and when he was a student.

The provocative title, "Revenge for the Sixties," what did he want revenge for? PETER CANELLOS, AUTHOR, "REVENGE FOR THE SIXTIES": Well, he wanted revenge for the entire lifestyle. I think he felt he had grown up with the kind of conservative religious values that he and his Italian immigrant family shared in the Trenton area and that he felt were deeply affronted at Princeton when he went there and was in the last all male class and faced all kinds of social pressures when women started arriving in his sophomore year.

And then also confronted the anti-war protests and a student strike in his sophomore year that I think especially inflamed him and offended him because he was in ROTC and literally the ROTC headquarters was bombed.

BASH: And so those are some of the things that sort of made him who he was personally and professionally, ideologically. Fast forward to, you know, recently and the most important decision of his career, which was the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

[12:50:16]

You dig into the conservative movement's anti-abortion, you know, push for decades and how the movement of conservatives and sort of the anti-abortion ideology -- people who have that ideology, how they failed to get Robert Bork on the court and how that impacted Alito.

CANELLOS: Absolutely, I mean, that's an important point because, you know, the book really tries to be a history of the conservative legal movement with Sam Alito providing some of the social and sort of cultural context and the background of him and his life, which is mirrored in some of the other Supreme Court justices and other leaders of the movement.

When Robert Bork was defeated, it was a blow to conservative legal scholars because they felt that they -- that Bork was advocating for neutral principles, that he was not advocating for political issues. It was Ted Kennedy that was saying Robert Bork is going to destroy abortion rights and Robert Bork is going to put Black people back at the wrong end of the lunch counter and things like that.

I think that they felt very -- Republicans felt very sandbagged by Kennedy. But after 1987, they did something they had been resistant to doing before, which is embrace the pro-life movement, embrace the anti-abortion movement. And there was a merge between the conservative legal strategy, which was talking about an originalist constitution and the political impetus to defeat abortion rights.

BASH: So fascinating. The personal connection that Alito has to the Trump family is also interesting. The President's sister, Mary Anne Trump, also a prosecutor, also a judge, was Alito's mentor.

CANELLOS: Absolutely. It was his first job in government working in the U.S. attorney's office in Newark and his boss was the sister of the President of the United States. It's quite a thing. Now, people who know the Trumps know that Mary Anne Trump was a very different figure than her brother. She was not nearly as flamboyant. She was sort of a quiet, studious person, but she definitely took an interest in Alito. And the two of them not only served together in the U.S. attorney's office, where she was his mentor, but then they served together as judges on the circuit court.

And she was one of the circuit court judges who spoke up at his confirmation hearing and strongly endorsed him for the Supreme Court. So there's definitely a loyalty to the family through Mary Anne in Sam Alito's makeup.

BASH: He is 76 years old. He's served on the court for more than 20 years. There's a lot of speculation about whether he's going to retire this year. What factors do you think he is weighing? Aside from the obvious, there's a Republican President and right now a Republican Senate.

CANELLOS: I think that he's weighing the people probably are telling him like the Dobbs decision was your legacy. You know, you've achieved something major here. You will always be remembered.

I think he's also shown a tendency lately to want to speak out. He has broken with some Supreme Court protocols to try to give interviews and get his -- get himself understood, I think, in his mind. So that's one thing he's considering.

On the other hand, he has fought for years to try to advance the free exercise of religion and push the Constitution in a more conservative direction. And he probably thinks he'll lose an opportunity to do that if he leaves the court, even if he succeeded by a conservative, because he uniquely has been able to bring together five votes on such contentious issues. So I think it's probably weighing heavily on him right now.

BASH: Peter, what a fascinating book. It was great to talk to you. Your book is "Revenge for the Sities. And I hope people check it out.

CANELLOS: Thanks so much, Dana.

BASH: Thank you.

And up next, after years of construction, the Obama Center is about to open to the public. You're going to get a sneak peek of the former president's very pricey project after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:58:58]

BASH: Barack Obama's presidency ended nearly a decade ago, but this month his legacy gets a permanent home. This is the $850 million Obama Center in Chicago, the most expensive presidential legacy project in U.S. history. The 19 acre campus includes basketball courts, gardens, ballfields, a playground and a Chicago Public Library branch.

And this 225 foot granite museum towering over it all. Architects say the shape is meant to evoke four hands coming together, but it's earned a few nicknames from the Obama-lisk to the Death Star, which is why the former President teamed up with Luke Skywalker on May 4th to release this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, 44TH U.S. PRESIDENT: Happy Star Wars Day from the Obama Presidential Center.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have a very good feeling about this.

OBAMA: This isn't a monument to my legacy, it's a gateway to yours. A place to come together, get inspired and become a force for change.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: As you can see, the museum's exterior is wrapped in a quotation, it's from President Obama's 2015 Selma address, beginning with the words, You Are America. Inside exhibits trace the Obama's rise as well as the civil rights and women's suffrage movements that helped shape them.

The project didn't come without controversy. It's cost, location and concerns about gentrification on Chicago's south side fueled years of debate and court battles. The Obama Center officially opens in two weeks.

Thank you so much for joining Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts right now.