Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Soon: Gaetz Wingman To Plead Guilty, Cooperate With Feds; Gaetz Equates Allegations With Earmarks: "Naughty Favors"; Axios: Trump Made 11Th House Bid To Pull Troops From Around The World; Steph Curry Wins Second Career NBA Scoring Title; LeBron James Leaves Game After Rolling Ankle; Anti-Olympic Protests Underway As Covid Outbreak Worsens. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 17, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:02]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: In just a few hours, Joel Greenberg, a former close confidant of Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, plans to plead guilty to six federal charges including account of sex trafficking of a child. That's according to a court filing released today. The source tells CNN as part of the deal, Greenberg will cooperate with a sweeping probe that includes whether Matt Gaetz also broke federal sex trafficking laws and if he paid for sex with an underage girl. Now, Gaetz has not been charged and denies any wrongdoing.

Let's discuss with CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, he's a former state and federal prosecutor. Elie, this is a remarkable cooperation agreement. First, give us the outlines of it.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, John 86 pages filled with important information. But really the deal between the parties comes down to three key points.

First of all, Joel Greenberg has to plead guilty. He'll be doing that in a few hours in federal court down in Florida. Now he'll be pleading guilty to six counts. We'll talk about those in a moment. But remember, he was originally charged with 33 counts, that's going to be fodder for cross examination. If and when the day comes when Joel Greenberg ever testifies. They'll say, you got a pretty sweet deal here from the prosecutor didn't you?

Second, Joel Greenberg has to provide what we call substantial assistance. And that means that he has to cooperate fully with the United States, meaning prosecutors in the investigation and prosecution of other persons. You don't cooperate Joe Greenberg, unless you're going to use this information against other persons.

And finally, if Joe Greenberg does those things, the government, the prosecutors will make known to the court and other relevant authorities the nature and extent of cooperation. That's what we call a 5K letter. I've written many of those that will result in an enormous sentencing benefit for Joel Greenberg.

BERMAN: Like you don't go from 33 to six, unless there is substantial expectations of information about other persons.

HONIG: Absolutely.

BERMAN: This document, what does it tell us about the nature of the crimes I guess we could say committed now.

HONIG: Yes.

BERMAN: Not allegedly anymore by Greenberg, but also allegedly committed by others.

HONIG: There's a remarkable amount of detail in this document. I've done many of these documents, I've never put anywhere near this level of detail about the charged crimes. First of all, sex trafficking of a minor, the lead charge here, the most serious charge. The document alleges that Greenberg and the minor met at hotels, often with others, often with others, important language, at which Greenberg and the minor engaged in commercial sex acts. And Greenberg also introduced the minor to other adult men who engaged in commercial sex act.

Now, Gaetz's representatives have said, hey, document doesn't say anything about Matt Gaetz, big win for us, nonsense. I've done more of these documents that I can count you would never name the other people you're looking at. What's important to me is that it specifies other adult men. Also, the document continually reminds us. Prosecutors are letting us know we have the goods here. They talk about these texts that they have on all these dates. They have those texts --

BERMAN: Look at those dates.

HONIG: They have every one of them, right? And this happens throughout the document, throughout the plea agreement. They talk about financial records, hotel records, credit card records. So what the prosecutors are doing is saying, we have stuff to backup Joe Greenberg you better have that for a guy like Joe Greenberg.

[06:35:09]

BERMAN: I have to say, I'm so glad you highlighted the other here, because that jumps out at you and just this list here. So, if you're Matt Gaetz this morning, how worried are you? And if they aren't going to charge we talking months at this point? Or is the timeline shrinking on him?

HONIG: I'd be worried and the timeline is shrinking John. Look, you simply do not cooperate somebody as bad as Joe Greenberg, who's committed as serious as crimes as he's committed, he's going to plead not just a sex trafficking of a minor, identity theft, he's going to plead to wire fraud and engage in cryptocurrency, he's going to plead guilty to stalking. He made false accusations that a political rival was a pedophile. He's even going to plead guilty to ripping off a COVID Relief Fund. It's brand new, he's already ripped it off. So, he has committed really, really bad acts. You don't give a cooperation agreement as a prosecutor to someone like Joe Greenberg, unless you are going to use this information against an important target.

BERMAN: And just they're very aware prosecutors are they're talking about a member of Congress here. How does that shape how they're behaving?

HONIG: You have to be aware of that. You have a sitting member of Congress here. If you believe you have the goods to charge him, you need to move that as quickly as humanly possible.

BERMAN: Elie Honig, this was fascinating.

HONIG: Thanks John.

BERMAN: Thank you for laying it all out here. I appreciate it. Brianna?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: John. Thank you, Elie.

Despite the investigation, Congressman Matt Gaetz is not laying low. In fact, over the weekend, he pled his case at a Republican summit in Ohio.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): Just imagine the irony here. I need falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors. Yet Congress has reinstituted a process that legalizes the corrupt act of exchanging money for favors through her books (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Very much, not the same thing. Let's talk about this with CNN political analyst, David Gregory.

I guess I wonder, considering who his base might be. How long can he get away with this? This is someone who is like QAnon revered, of course, those are folks who the whole crux of their belief and political beliefs has to do with a conspiracy theory about sex trafficking of children. And here he is accused of trafficking and accused of paying for sex with a minor. How long can he get away with this?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I don't know. I mean, maybe until unless he's charged. I mean, I think what he's doing is something to me that's very much out of the Donald Trump playbook, which is even when you're facing legal peril, and certainly no lawyer worth their salt would be pleased with him out there making these kinds of remarks. But the idea is to minimize charges against him as completely ridiculous and focus on corruption in the government. I think there's another part of his base that applauds, you know, that kind of boldness, saying I'm not going to be worried about what I'm being investigated for. But as Elie just pointed out in that previous segment, there's a lot of legal jeopardy for him here. And certainly prosecutors who are looking at cases like this don't take kindly to particularly an elected official blowing off the idea of what their investigation actually is. But to a political audience, what he's saying is, you know, forget what's being -- what I'm being accused of, which, you know, which he's denied any contact with a minor sexually.

But to be in an investigation like that, and to compare it to earmarks and Congress is obviously completely off.

KEILAR: Yes. The outlook is grim, we should say right now, when you look at what Elie spelled out for us.

Liz Cheney, let's listen to what she said --

GREGORY: Yes.

KEILAR: -- over the weekend about Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you talk about him being dangerous, and the way he's leading the party, and I asked this about both McCarthy and, and Elise Stefanik. Are they being complicit in what you consider the Trump lies?

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): They are and I'm not willing to do that. You know, I think that that there are some things that have to be bigger than party, that have to be bigger than partisanship are owes to the constitution is one of those.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Are 80% of Republicans agree with her been ousted from House Republican leadership. So I mean, he Trump is where the party is, Elise Stefanik is where the party is, we know what this says about the party. How long does this go on this cult of personality having a stranglehold on the GOP?

GREGORY: Well, I mean, I think we're going to have to look at some electoral tests. I think the midterms will be a test and obviously the next presidential contest if Donald Trump is in it or not. I mean, I look at all of this, and I don't know what to make of it. I think Liz Cheney is making a stand on behalf of conservatives. I'm not sure the conservatives of her stripe that go back to the Bush-Cheney administration are in favor in today's Republican Party and I don't just mean the Trump wing of it. I think there's a lot of people who maybe aren't so hot on Trump who think that establishment piece of the Republican Party hasn't represented the country well.

[06:40:05]

But, you know, the other part of me says look that Donald Trump did not win reelection, despite what the people who deny those results say he did not win reelection. He's lost key parts of those Republican voters. That group that showed up for him in 2016. So I don't know how big this Trump base is, that makes a lot of noise. There's certainly plenty of people who are scared from Kevin McCarthy to Lindsey Graham who say he is the future of the party, that's going to have to be put to the test. But, that number that you just showed is pretty shocking to me about how many people support her ouster.

KEILAR: And that's why he has the backup --

GREGORY: Right.

KEILAR: -- of Kevin McCarthy and others. President Trump full on still with the big lie, he put out a statement in which he says our country's been destroyed both inside and out. He said the presidential election of 2020 will go down as the crime of the century. So the big lie is it for him, the big lie is it for Republicans. Why wouldn't he run again? Why wouldn't he?

GREGORY: You know, I don't see a reason not to, if you're him with that mindset, and it's really frightening that this idea of the big lie is something that still has currency. And, you know, I think appropriately we and others, whenever this comes up, call it what it is, which is a lie without any evidence whatsoever. But we should also remember that any of these political figures, and Donald Trump is more than a former president, a political figure, he is a reality TV person. I don't know that he was a star. And that part of him has not changed. And when you're a figure like this, who crosses the line from politics to entertainment, you know the way to get attention is to keep talking about running for president.

So will he ultimately do it? Look, we'll see. But to your point, why wouldn't he claimed to be because as long as he does, then he has major leaders in the party saying, well, no, he's the driver. He is the Republican Party. You know, for a guy who just lost, that's a pretty surprising statement, and not really a statement, a winner's statement about how the party gets his mojo back.

KEILAR: But as long as they're selling his product, the big lie, which they are --

GREGORY: Yes.

KEILAR: -- who is the best person to carry that forward. I would say it's him. Of course --

GREGORY: Yes.

KEILAR: -- we're going to know for a little while.

GREGORY: Right.

KEILAR: David Gregory, it's great to see this morning.

GREGORY: Good to see you.

KEILAR: Coming up, brand new reporting on the final weeks of Trump's presidency, and this includes foreign policy plans scribbled by aides on paper. What our next guest calls one of the tensest moments between a president and the military in modern history. You need to hear this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:39]

BERMAN: Developing this morning, new reporting from Axios about former President Trump's final weeks in office including an 11th hour push to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Germany and the entire continent of Africa.

Jonathan Swan is with us now. He's a national political reporter for Axios who broke the story.

Jonathan, this is amazing. You begin this remarkable reporting by telling the story of John McEntee, 31 years old, not connected to the military all presenting this typewritten order on a piece of paper that basically says withdraw U.S. troops from, gosh, half the world. What went on here?

JONATHAN SWAN, NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: Yes. So, this reporting, which we first broke last night on Axios on HBO is really documenting what was one of the tensest periods between a president and the United States military in modern history. And just to give your viewers context, this is November the 9th. This is six days after Donald Trump lost the election to Joe Biden. So he is a caretaker lame duck president. And on November the 9th, a retired Army Colonel highly controversial, retired Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor gets a phone call from john McEntee who's one of President Trump's most favored aide, you said it right 31-year-old former body man to the president, who the President had installed to run the powerful presidential personnel office.

He calls MacGregor into his office in the EOB sits him down. And he's just come from the Oval Office. And he hands in his handwritten notes from that meeting. And he says this is what the President wants you to do. And it's what you just outlined. And, you know, we've talked about Afghanistan, we've talked about, you know, to some extent Iraq and Syria, but he asked him also to complete an entire U.S. troop withdrawal from Germany before January 20. And that would have completely reshaped America's role in the world, its alliances, its relationship to NATO. And it's not some fantastical notion the President had already ordered a significant troop drawdown from Germany, so something he was already on the path of doing.

So, anyway, this is what was presented to MacGregor, which setting chain a process of pushback which went right to the top of the U.S. military.

KEILAR: And Jonathan, this must have been something to report. I mean, this is the kind of storyline that the three of us would look at if it was a screenplay, and say, this is a poorly researched screenplay. This is not how things work at all, people would not, you know, do these kinds of things and ignore those kinds of people.

I mean, it this -- you describe how the National Security Adviser after this order goes to the Pentagon, the White House counsel and even the staff secretary, you know, who would be in charge of all of these kinds of paper products usually, they had no idea that this was happening.

SWAN: Right. So this piece of paper to even Douglas MacGregor who has, you know, gone on Fox many times and called for total U.S. withdrawal from Germany -- oh (INAUDIBLE) from Germany from Afghanistan, Iraq (INAUDIBLE), even he says to McEntee I didn't know that we could do all of this before January 20.

[06:50:04]

So, he basically calls talks to one of McEntee's subordinates in the presidential personnel office who doesn't -- who's never written an order to withdraw from war before. Remember, this is a functionary inside the presidential personnel office, types is -- I don't know how to do this. And MacGregor says go to a file drawer, pull out a presidential memorandum, it'll have the orders and the writing. Anyway, types up this order.

And so, on November the 11th in the afternoon, Christopher Miller, who is the new on his third day in the job as the Acting Secretary of Defense he receives by courier this printed formal order signed by the President of the United States, calling for a total withdrawal from Afghanistan by January 15th, total withdrawal from Somalia by December 31. And he says, you know, what in God's name is this?

And as you said correctly, they basically start doing detective work. And they figure out that none of the usual people who would have seen or worked on such an order, were aware of it. And it was then that dawned on them that this was an off the books operation by the commander in chief himself.

BERMAN: It really is stunning to think about the implications, how many troops what it would have meant for U.S. foreign policy around the world in such a short period of time.

So even beyond that report, which aired last night, you're breaking more news, like every 10 minutes, Jonathan, there's more of this coming out of you here. We just saw Axios cross something. You talked to the former president, and you talked about the former defense secretary Mark Esper and their relationship. And in the discussion you had basically the former president talked about the tension, and he thought Esper was overly woke at times. What do you mean by that?

SWAN: So, the President, basically what I did was I approached him for comment for this story, and he agreed to talk on the telephone. And one thing he said was that when he came to Mark Esper, the former defense secretary, one of the reasons he fired him was because he was quote, unquote, he wrote a quote, unquote, very woke letter to the military. Took me a while to realize what this was. Turns out, it was a memo, that Esper put out, basically talking about improving diversity and commitment to diversity in the military.

So, that gives you an indication of how President Trump thought about the Pentagon. He had this -- the thing about Trump which is kind of bizarre is for someone who came into office with a completely a nuanced view of U.S. military power, who thought that all of these foreign engagements basically were worthless, wants to pull them out. He surrounds himself by with generals, who were committed to these engagements, who had histories in U.S. Central Command. And he thought that these -- mistakenly thought that these figures like James Mattis, the former defense secretary, General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who's still the Chairman of Joint Chiefs. Trump sort of thought they were these unreconstructed 1940s generals, who would agree with him that torture is great. And, you know, we should send troops onto the streets to quell protests and riots.

And actually, these people couldn't have more fundamentally disagreed with his worldview. And that's where you got this really intense pushback from the top levels of the military to the President of the United States.

BERMAN: Jonathan Swan. Well done. Really interesting, important reporting. Thank you for joining us this morning.

SWAN: Thanks so much for having me.

BERMAN (voice-over): So are the Olympics in jeopardy? We are live on the scene of new protests in Tokyo as demonstrators call for the games to be canceled.

KEILAR (voice-over): Plus, Americans are ditching their masks as businesses wrestle with the new CDC guidance. Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:58:08]

KEILAR: After a thrilling finish to the regular season, the NBA plan tournament is now set. And Andy Scholes has this morning's Bleacher Report.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Hey Brianna, you know when they came up with the plan and tournament before this season. I don't think anybody thought we were going to get LeBron versus Steph Curry but that's exactly what we got. And Steph has gone bonkers yesterday against the Grizzlies in the season finale. He's scored nine straight points in the closing minutes to put the game away stepping 46 securing the second NBA scoring title for his career. LeBron saying last night Steph to be this year's MVP.

Now, LeBron while looking great, his season finale score to game at 25 in the wind over the Pelican before checking out after stepping on an opponent's foot after the game, but LeBron said, he'll be fine.

So this was the plan tournament looks like. In the West, the seven seed Lakers are going to play the eight seed Warriors. Winner of that game claimed the seven seed, plays Phoenix in the first round, loser then has to play the winner between the Grizzlies and the Spurs, the winner of that one play in the eight seed and play the Jazz in the first round in the East. We got the Celtics and Wizards playing in that seven and eight match up. Pacers and Hornets in nine, 10. Those games tomorrow night on TNT. New York Yankees, meanwhile, say eight nine member of the organization has tested positive for COVID-19. Manager Aaron Boone said the latest staffer feels good. That makes it three coaches, five staffers and shortstop Gleyber Torres have all tested positive in the last week. All nine were vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine making these breakthrough cases. But Brianna, eight of the nine have been asymptomatic the entire time.

KEILAR: Yes, it's a really interesting case study not just for sports, but for the vaccine in general. Andy, thank you so much. John.

BERMAN: Happening now in Tokyo, Protesters taking to the streets demanding the Tokyo Olympic Games this summer be canceled. It comes as there was a rise in coronavirus cases in that country. CNN's Selina Wang live at the protests in Tokyo. What do you think (INAUDIBLE)?

[07:00:05]

SELINA WANG, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, the protest is actually just wrapping up, but if you look over to my side, there's still a small group of people.