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New Day

Biden Urges Congress to Expand Government's Role with $4 Trillion Plan; FBI Raids Giuliani's Home and Office, Escalating Criminal Probe. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired April 29, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

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[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Overnight, fistfuls of hail in Texas leaving cars damaged and home windows shattered, severe weather slamming the south. Let's to Meteorologist Chad Myers for much more on that. Chad?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Big-time hail, John. Tennis ball-sized hail in big towns, Norman, Oklahoma, Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, all waking up this morning with significant damage, even some spots where the hail went through the roofs of the house.

This weather is brought to you by Carvana, the new way to buy a car.

So, today settles down a little bit. We're not going to have that type of hail, three to four-inch hail, unheard of here. We are going to see wind damage, we are going to see some thunder and lightning, and we're going to see some flooding. There's a lot of humidity in the air. Walk outside right now anymore across the south, it feels like the middle of summer in the south. It's just muggy out there. Those muggies will make the rain, those muggies will make the storms and even a little bit of potential for some wind later on today.

By 5:00, a few storms around, maybe even approaching New York City later on tonight. We will see that continue for tomorrow morning. An awful lot of rain fall around Texas, some spots four to six more on top of what you already saw.

New Day continues right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: Hello, I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this New Day.

One conservative compares President Biden's spending proposal to a 15- year-old with a credit card, but can America afford it?

BERMAN: Plus, the lawyer who oversaw the first impeachment of Donald Trump, which included Giuliani's efforts to dig up Joe Biden, responds to the FBI raid on Giuliani's home and office.

KEILAR: And a new twist in the kidnapping plot against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. She's actually going to join us to respond as the suspects are facing new charges.

BERMAN: And a Republican lawmaker says children should be taught, quote, the good side of slavery. See the response in the room where it happened.

KEILAR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. It is Thursday. Here we are to Thursday.

BERMAN: Thursday in Washington.

KEILAR: That's right. The worst part about Friday is finding out that it is Thursday, which it is indeed here on April 29th.

President Biden planning to hit the road on his 100th day in office, he'll hold a rally in Georgia where he'll sell his vision for America, which is a vision for a big hand from big government for the middle class.

BERMAN: The president spent his address to Congress last night talking about that and also touting his administration's response in the pandemic and urging everyone to get vaccinated.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I'll not impose extra taxes on anyone making less than $400,000, but it's time for corporate America and the wealthiest 1 percent of America to begin to pay their fair share.

It's time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.

After I promised we'd get 100 million COVID-19 vaccine shots into people's arms in 100 days, we will have provided over $220 million COVID shots in those 100 days.

Today, 90 percent of Americans now live within five miles of a vaccination site. Everyone over the age of 16, everyone is now eligible to get vaccinated right now, right away. Go get vaccinated, America.

I spent a lot of time with President Xi. He's deadly earnest about becoming the most significant consequential nation in the world. He and others, autocrats, think that democracy can't compete in the 21st century with autocracies. It takes too long to get consensus. I made it known that America is back. You know what they say? The comment I hear most of all from them? So, they say, we see America's back, but for how long, but for how long?

My fellow Americans, we have to show not just that we're back, but that we're back to stay. We have to come together to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the people they serve, to root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system and enact police reform of George Floyd's name. We have a giant opportunity to bend the arc of moral opportunity for justice, real justice.

And with the plans outlined tonight, we have a real chance to root out systemic racism that plagues America and American lives in other ways. (END VIDEOTAPE)

[07:05:05]

KEILAR: White House Correspondent John Harwood is with us now. It is so lovely to see you and --

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Great to be on set and with the new team.

KEILAR: Yes, it's great to have you here. So it seemed like this was President Biden trying to go for the part of the electorate, the part of the country that Democrats here in recent years may receded a little bit to Republicans, which is the middle class.

HARWOOD: That's right. And what you saw in that style from the president, that clip was a conservational style, a very direct style, plain spoken, trying to take political language out of it, ideological language out of it, and talking in concrete ways about here's who I'm going to help, single moms should not be thrown out of their apartments, veterans need help, people need help with child care, people need help with training and education to adapt to the modern economy. The more tangible and granular Joe Biden could make it, the better for him.

He had parts of his speech, especially toward the end, that were more of the state-of-the-union laundry list of the policy objectives, but that bread and butter Joe Biden is the strongest Joe Biden and that's what he wants to emphasize the most.

BERMAN: It's interesting to me. He framed it, as you said, and this is what I'm going to do or the administration will do for you. But also all over the speech was, as we are doing this for you, this is what it does in our competition with China.

China was sort of everywhere within this. Why?

HARWOOD: Well, because -- a couple of reasons. First of all, he's making this case, as we heard in the clip, that democracy has to show that it can compete with top-down autocracies, where they're going to say, we're going build that road and it happens. You don't have to get consensus. That is a challenge because democracy has become our democracy, and others around the world become more polarized, more fragmented.

It's also against the backdrop of that insurrection on January 6th, that you had a Republican president and much of the Republican Party that were backing a challenge to the election results. So when he says, I'm standing up for democracy, that's really on two levels. It's, one, democracy versus autocracy and the rest of the world, but standing up for democracy within the United States.

And that ultimately, I think, is the endgame argument for the president when he tries to get this plan. If he doesn't get Republican buy-in, he has to go to Democrats to say, here's why we need to stick together, and the argument to stand up for democracy could be a big part of that.

KEILAR: It's always interesting to see who the opposing party picks for the rebuttal and they chose Senator Tim Scott, and this is part of what he said about race in America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): Today, humans are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again. And if you look in a certain, they're an oppressor. From colleges to corporations, to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't had any progress at all by doubling down on the divisions, we've worked so hard to heal.

You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly. America is not a racist country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What did you think about that?

HARWOOD: Well, I think it showed, first of all, why it was smart for Republicans to elevate Tim Scott to give the response, but also the difficulty Republicans are having in getting a handle on Joe Biden, getting a strong attack line against Joe Biden, because you saw this on issues over and over where he would concede.

Yes, Joe Biden seems like a good guy, but he's pulling the country apart. He promised to lower the temperature. Well, obviously he has lowered the temperature from Donald Trump. And if you look at the polling, the most significant thing he's done on COVID, he's getting very broad support from the American people.

On race, Tim Scott, African-American senator from South Carolina, was making case that, yes, I understand what racism feels like. I understand what discrimination feels like, but then pivot to the argument that is pretty widespread within the Republican Party right now that it's white people who are being discriminated against.

So he's saying, kids are being taught, if you're white, you're an oppressor. He didn't say white, but that's what he meant. And that is an argument that many Republicans believe, but when you look at the context of American society and the history of America as we've evolved to this point, that's a pretty hard argument to sustain that it's really white people who are the victims here.

BERMAN: John Harwood, great to see you in person.

HARWOOD: You bet.

BERMAN: Even more attractive in person than you are on T.V.

FBI agents raided Rudy Giuliani's apartment and office, seizing electronic devices. Giuliani has been under investigation by the Justice Department for more than two years for his dealings with Ukraine while working as former President Trump's personal attorney. [07:10:00]

Giuliani denies any wrongdoing and says he's the victim of a, quote, corrupt double standard. His son made a wildly political statement outside of his father's apartment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREW GIULIANI, SON OF RUDY GIULIANI: Anybody, any American, whether you're red or blue, should be extremely disturbed by what happened here today, by the continued politicization of the Justice Department. This is disgusting. This is absolutely absurd. And it's the continued polarization of the Justice Department that we have seen, and it has to stop. If this can happen to the former president's lawyer, this can happen to any American. Enough is enough.

The only piece of evidence that they did not take up there today was the only piece of incriminating evidence that is in there, and it does not belong to my father. It belongs to the current president's son.

That's all I have to say. Any questions, you can refer to his lawyer. All I will say is this. To all Americans out there, our Justice Department should be independent of politics. Enough is enough, ladies and gentlemen. We cannot stand for this anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now is CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel. Jamie, notwithstanding the vitriol we heard there from Andrew Giuliani, notwithstanding the fact there does seem to be -- if there was politics, it was politics blocking the investigation when Donald Trump was president. Put that aside. We know this is a big deal. How big of a deal?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: It's huge. This gives you a sense of where the Justice Department is willing to go. It would have to be a very high threshold for them to do something like this.

I have to say also, though, that it's been a while since we've heard statements like that. We had four or five years of that, and I think we're going to hear a lot more. But the question, I think, really is where does this go from here? We just have a small piece of the puzzle.

KEILAR: What do you think of the explanation coming from Giuliani's legal team?

GANGEL: So the statement is really worth reading. It's actually not from his lawyer. It was -- the wording is quite odd. This is not a normal statement. It's that he was given permission. And I would say we're back to Four Seasons landscaping days, guys. There are lines in it like that the Justice Department, parentheses, came in at dawn. It's very melodramatic, but there's something also that I think we're going to see a lot more of. He's attacking the Bidens. He's attacking the Clintons. This is less about defending himself and more about where he's willing to go. There's one reference in there. You just sort of have to read between it. He's referred to as former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I don't think you can separate out the politics of how he's going to try to portray himself. He's still going back to America's mayor.

BERMAN: It's been a long time. It's been a long time since he was doing that, and a lot else has happened since then that he's been in the middle of. What does this mean for Trump world and the former president? Do you have a sense of how nervous they are this morning?

GANGEL: I think it's real concerning. First of all, guess what, we have not heard from Donald Trump, crickets. But I think that Donald Trump and the people around him have to be saying to themselves, if the Justice Department is willing to do this -- and let's just say we have no evidence that Donald Trump is in any way connected in this particular case -- but to go back to the Justice Department threshold, Trump has to be wondering where else is this Justice Department willing to go.

And he's been keeping a pretty low profile. He's made two speeches but he's played a lot of golf. And where is this media platform he has said he's going to launch? I think he's being advised to keep very quiet. Thus far, you know -- let's see if later today we hear anything, but they have to worry about this.

BERMAN: Jamie Gangel, very interesting, thank you very much.

Joining me now is Daniel Goldman. He was the lead counsel for Donald Trump's first impeachment trial. Daniel says he saw evidence of Giuliani's financial ties with Ukraine during that investigation, then he's also the former deputy chief of the Organized Crimes Unit for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, so qualified on many different levels to discuss this.

So, Dan, the fact of the raid here is not proof of guilt, but you note that it is proof they met a very high bar here.

[07:15:07]

How high? Explain that. What does it tell you?

DANIEL GOLDMAN, FORMER LEAD COUNSEL TO HOUSE IMPEACHMENT MANAGERS: Well, basically, they presented evidence to a judge that a crime -- there's probable cause that a crime is being committed and that there's evidence of that crime in the locations that they searched, and that's his apartment and his home. So you don't do a search warrant along these lines particularly against a lawyer if there are other ways that they feel like they can get the evidence.

And clearly they felt like a subpoena was insufficient to get it, that he wouldn't voluntarily turn it over. An, ordinarily, when that is the case, there's some indication if they were to put him off, that they want this information, they don't think they would get everything, either because he's not been cooperative, or perhaps -- and this is speculative -- he has either destroyed or disposed of materials in the past. BERMAN: Well, to that point, Dan, look, I mean, Giuliani has known that this is percolating for more than a year. Wouldn't a reasonable person just go erase everything?

GOLDMAN: Certainly, many would. We know from all of the pocket dials and issues that Rudy Giuliani has with telephones that he's probably not the most tech-savvy person. The real reason why you try to get the phones and electronic devices is because you want to see what was left on there, perhaps encrypted communications, WhatsApp signals, he's dealing with foreigners and many people dealing cross-countries, cross-border use encrypted apps to do that.

My suspicion, John, is that this is probably not the first search warrant they've obtained. They likely would have tried to preserve his emails. And then once they got permission from the Justice Department, they would have obtained a search warrant for those emails, and they could have used the emails as the probable cause to get additional documents and information and his electronic devices.

BERMAN: I think it's a really good point. It's very possible they have emails already from the service providers. This was a step further from that.

Look, you say you saw evidence of Giuliani's financial ties to Ukraine during the impeachment investigation. In laymen's terms so we could understand, what exactly did you see and what did you think of it then?

GOLDMAN: Well, we saw some retainer agreements between Victoria Toensing and some of the corrupt Ukrainian politicians. Giuliani was asked about that. He said he had an offer to be paid and he turned it down. But in many situations, individuals like Giuliani may funnel the money through others to get it back to himself. We know he was paid significantly by Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, who were working in conjunction with the Ukrainian for their own purposes.

This is really the flipside of the impeachment coin, John. The impeachment investigation looked at the political efforts that Giuliani was making to dig up dirt on Biden. This is how and whether he was getting given any kind of benefit for capitalizing on his relationship with Donald Trump and trying to hide it from the U.S. government that he was actually being paid by Ukraine to try to influence the U.S. government.

BERMAN: Dan, Rudy Giuliani already is trying to claim he was President Trump's lawyer and hide behind attorney/client privilege here. How much will that protect him?

GOLDMAN: Very little. And that's one other reason to go for a search warrant. Because now what will happen is that there will be a separate team of agents and prosecutors reviewing the materials to make sure that anything that would fall under attorney/client privilege is pushed to the side and that the only issues -- the only documents or materials that they are using are not subject to attorney/client privilege. But remember, he over-exaggerated what he was doing as representing Donald Trump. If he is getting paid by others to try to influence Donald Trump, there's no claim of attorney/client privilege that he can make.

BERMAN: Daniel Goldman, really interesting, really important stuff, thanks so much for joining us.

GOLDMAN: Thanks for having me.

KEILAR: From America's mayor to FBI raids, a closer look at the rise and fall of Rudy Giuliani from his biographer, plus this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you're having a discussion on whatever the case may be on slavery, then you could talk about everything dealing with slavery, the good, the bad, the ugly.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's no good to slavery though.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, whatever the case may be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:20:01]

BERMAN: Good side of slavery. We're going to speak to a local lawmaker who snapped back at a fellow Republican over that eyebrow- raising comment.

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KEILAR: Developing overnight, FBI agents raiding the home and office of Rudy Giuliani, the former personal attorney to former President Trump. Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.

Let's talk about this now with Andrew Kirtzman, who is the author of, Rudy Giuliani, Emperor of the City, as well as the author of an upcoming biography about Rudy Giuliani, which is due out next year. Andrew, thank you so much for being with us.

As you are very well aware, Giuliani is writing this off, he's writing of the investigation as politically motivated. What's your reaction to what's happened?

ANDREW KIRTZMAN, AUTHOR, RUDY GIULIANI, EMPEROR OF THE CITY: Well, I've been covering Rudy Giuliani for the better part of 20 years. And the arc of this story just borders on the tragic. The essence of Rudy Giuliani's fame as United States attorney back in the 1980s was that he was incorruptible, that he was kind of the last honest man standing in New York who was prosecuting mafia bosses and Wall Street titans.

[07:25:10]

And if you would have ask a New Yorker back then in the 80s, whether he would ever believe that Giuliani was facing indicted by the same office that he was leading at that time, they wouldn't believe you. I mean, he was the opposite of corrupt. He was as clean as you could imagine.

KEILAR: Are you surprised that former President Trump hasn't really said anything? He hasn't made a statement of support or really anything about Giuliani.

KIRTZMAN: You know, if I had to guess, I would think that Trump would at some point come out in support of Giuliani. I mean, the bond between those two in many ways has been inexplicable. I mean, Giuliani got Trump into a lot of trouble with Ukraine and then the election issue. I mean, Trump has this kind of visceral attachment to Giuliani. You know, he cut loose a lot of aides who got him into trouble, but never Rudy Giuliani. There's a bond between them that seems to be inextricable.

So I don't see Trump cutting him loose.

KEILAR: So you don't see him cutting him loose. How do you see this relationship evolving, if at all, in the wake of this raid?

KIRTZMAN: Well, I mean, Trump doesn't -- obviously doesn't want to get too close to this investigation and Trump's number one interest is always Trump, right? But you get to a point where somebody who gets in trouble who's so close to you and, you know, fingers begin to point towards you. I mean, there's no evidence that I've seen that Trump participated in anything illegal having to do with what Giuliani is accused of.

But Giuliani -- I was looking at Giuliani's client list last night. His list of clients with foreign dictators into foreign countries, it's a mile long. And it's the reason that Trump did not name him secretary of state. They were just completely scared of all of his foreign clients. And it created a muddle in which people like Pompeo and John Bolton just refused to deal with Giuliani, because they never knew whether they were dealing with the president's attorney or an attorney or representative of other clients, and that's why Giuliani is in trouble right now.

KEILAR: Andrew Kirtzman, thank you so much for lending your decades- long perspective on this.

KIRTZMAN: Sure, thank you.

BERMAN: Radioactive to say at this point.

Meanwhile hospitals and crematoriums overwhelmed as a COVID explosion slams India. We'll speak with someone experiencing the horror first hand, next.

KEILAR: Plus, police investigating the Capitol insurrection are getting a lot of help, sometimes from the suspects themselves.

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