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New Day

How Tuesday's Primaries Have Shaken Up Midterm Races; Trump Had 700 Plus Pages of Classified Docs at Mar-a-Lago; Ukraine Braces for Russian Attacks on Its Independence Day. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 24, 2022 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00]

BRUNHUBER: And as "NEW DAY" starts right now.

ROMANS: That's disgusting.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Fresh election results in this morning and some hints of Democratic optimism.

I'm John Berman. Brianna is off. CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins here this morning.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: A lot to see in these races from last night.

BERMAN: There really is. And when you look closely, again, hints, whiffs, scents.

COLLINS: Bur everyone is wanting to pick up on those to know what to say come November.

BERMAN: That's absolutely right. So there were some big names on the ballots in several states but it's the special elections here in New York that could point to some national trends.

CNN projects that Democrat Pat Ryan will win the battleground 19th District. This is a district that Joe Biden narrowly carried in 2020 and that Republicans really had hopes of flipping. Democrats worked to make abortion rights the central issue in this race. Much more on this in just a moment.

Also here in New York powerful committee chair Jerry Nadler easily defeated powerful committee chair Carolyn Maloney in a bitter race between incumbents which illustrated redistricting struggles for Democrats.

COLLINS: In Florida, Democrat Congresswoman Val Demings, the former police chief in Orlando, will challenge Senator Marco Rubio for his seat, and Governor Ron DeSantis is going to be facing former Republican governor and now Democratic congressman, Charlie Crist in a race that Crist says is about much more than the governorship. It's about stopping DeSantis' national rise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. CHARLIE CRIST (D), FLORIDA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: Make no mistake about it, because this guy wants to be president of the United States of America and everybody knows it. However, when we defeat him on November 8th that show is over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Joining me now CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten.

Harry, we led with this idea of hints of Democratic optimism based on these special elections we've seen in New York and actually going back for a few weeks. What exactly are we seeing?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR DATA CORRESPONDENT: Yes, all right. So let's talk about New York 19, we just spoke about a little bit in that intro. We see Pat Ryan here in a little bit of a surprise, beating Marc Molinaro. What's key about this district was that Joe Biden won it by 1.5 points in 2020 which means that Pat Ryan actually slightly outperformed Joe Biden in the district which is quite a surprise in a special election, especially when there is a Democratic president.

But that's not the only special. That's not the only special. Here we're going to go to New York 23rd, that's on the southern tier. This district is getting redrawn just like 19 is. But take a look here. Yes, the Republican wins here but this was a district that Donald Trump won by 11.2 points, and look at the margin. Well less than 10 points, much closer to five points. So we see an outperformance for the Democrat in New York 19 and an outperformance over Joe Biden's baseline in New York 23, not the thing you'd expect in a midterm election.

BERMAN: Democrats are doing better than you might expect heading into a midterm election, particularly since a certain thing happened.

ENTEN: That's exactly right. So obviously Roe v. Wade was overturned in late June. Before Roe v. Wade was overturned the Democratic margin in the special House elections, they were doing six points worse than Biden. Then in the four specials since that point, that includes New York 19th, the 23rd, Minnesota 1 and Nebraska 1, look at this, Democrats are outperforming Joe Biden's margin by five points.

So it wasn't just last night. This is a trend that we've been seeing. Now look, the sample size is only four. But compared to the pre-Dobbs baseline, there is a clear change.

BERMAN: And in this race right here in New York 19, just to make a point, the Democrat Pat Ryan really did try to make this the central issue of the campaign from the moment that Roe was overturned. Let's go through some of the other big races that we saw overnight here.

ENTEN: Yes. You know, we'll go -- we spoke about in the intro, this was not too much of a surprise, but these were two powerful committee chair people going up against each other. This was in Manhattan district, Jerry Nadler, over Carolyn Maloney. Look at this. The margin not even close. It was, look at that, 30 points. My goodness gracious, Nadler ran away with this race.

BERMAN: All right. New York 10.

ENTEN: New York 10, we -- you'll notice there is no check mark here, there is no check mark here, but there is an estimated 98 percent of the vote in. Dan Goldman who obviously was part of the first majority counsel during the first Trump impeachment trial is ahead, right here he's ahead by two points. My guess is based upon the fact that most of the votes that are still out are absentee ballots and Dan Goldman has been doing particularly well, at least in the pre-election polling, among older voters. And those are the voters who tend to cast absentee ballots. My guess is this margin will hold, but still we haven't called it yet.

BERMAN: Let's wait and see when those votes come in. But if you look at this with Dan Goldman leading and look at New York 17, you're seeing maybe a trend towards more mainstream Democrats, not so much the progressives?

ENTEN: Yes, so, you know, in New York 10 what we saw was, you know, basically the progressives splitting the vote here, where there is even another candidate Rivera who is not on the board and Goldman was able just to win with 26 percent of the vote. If we look at New York 17, Alessandra Biaggi was essentially challenging Sean Patrick Maloney, who runs the DCCC from the left, backed by Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez.

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This is, again, not a particularly close margin. Look at this. Oh, my goodness, 67 percent of the vote.

BERMAN: And Florida we just talked about.

ENTEN: And Florida. You know, this was not too much of a surprise. Charlie Crist, the former Republican governor, now a Democrat beating the only statewide Democratic elected official at this point, Nikki Fried. But this will be big come the fall, and Charlie Crist knocked off Ron DeSantis ahead of 2024? We'll have to wait and see, John.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, great to see you this morning. Thank you.

ENTEN: Thank you, John.

COLLINS: All right. So for more on all those numbers, let's bring in CNN's senior political analyst, John Avlon.

John, what did you see last night that stood out to you?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Look, I mean, first of all, we just saw Harry made the case that Democrats are outperforming, and this is not typically what you expect in a midterm election where typically the opposition party has got the wind at its back. Roe does seemed to have changed the momentum in this. And so the story of big elections we're heading into could very well be that red wave hitting a blue wall. And that's one of the reasons these special elections were so telling.

BERMAN: Yes, look, redistricting did not go as well for Democrats as they hoped.

AVLON: Yes.

BERMAN: So they're heading into a difficult situation. However -- however, between Dobbs, the overturning of Roe versus Wade and gas prices going down for 71 straight days, as we sit here near Labor Day, things aren't as bad for Democrats as they thought they'd be.

AVLON: Things are not as bad as they typically would be for the out- party with a president who is well under 50 percent approval. I'm glad you mentioned redistricting, right, because you know this is something I've been hammering on, with the rigged system of redistricting. And in New York and Florida, the two big states last night, you've got a tale of two redistrictings that are very different.

In New York Democrats got greedy and they got smacked down hard by a judge who imposed a more fair representative district that benefited Republicans by comparison. In Florida Ron DeSantis actually challenging his Republican legislature to put forward a much more lopsided map in his favor, 22-8 in a state that still is purple, and guess what, the court said it all happened too late for us to intervene this cycle.

So Republicans got a really partisan lopsided map in their favor this cycle in Florida, whereas in New York Democrats overreached and Republicans benefited from that.

COLLINS: And in New York, Pat Ryan is not this well-known household name by any stance, but the question of course of how the message that he used trying to reframe the debate, how do other Democrats capitalized.

AVLON: All about Roe. All about abortion. Now, look, what's significant about that race is you've got two county executives, Ulster and Duchess. You've got Marc Molinaro ran for governor, right, so the Republican is responsible, sane and had a very high name ID. So the fact that in this genuine swing district, that rarest of things with competitive general elections, that Democrat in this environment would pull ahead is pretty significant.

BERMAN: Republicans thought they could win there. I don't know if they thought they would win. They certainly thought they could win.

AVLON: On paper they should have had an edge.

BERMAN: So how do Democrats exploit this going forward? Are there limits to how well they can do running on Dobbs?

AVLON: Of course there are. Look, I mean, this is about energy, it's about broadening the gender gap, but also you have the economy. It's always the economy, stupid, and even the polling that shows concern about defending democracy, being surprisingly the number one issue, inflation, jobs, the economy is right there behind it. Also you have the president's approval rating. You know, it is rising slightly on the basis -- on the back of some significant legislative accomplishments but it is still well below 50 percent.

So everything typically would tell you that this would be the kind of pendulum swing election where the opposition party gains, but the energy from Roe, the fact that there have been some big wins for Democrats legislatively, indicates that the energy is not so obviously on the opposition side. So this is going to be a fascinating midterm election, not typical at all.

COLLINS: Especially when the turnout is higher, it will be so interesting.

AVLON: That's right. That's the key. Because low turnouts, a lot of these low turnout things, this is a ridiculous way to pick up on members of Congress.

COLLINS: It's hard to know what the rate in turnout. John Avlon, thank you for that.

AVLON: Thanks, guys.

BERMAN: Some big new developments this morning on the investigation into sensitive documents held at Mar-a-Lago. More than 100 classified documents comprising more than 700 pages, some with the highest level of classification, were retrieved back in January and the National Archives told the Trump legal team it wanted intelligence agencies to do a damage assessment.

CNN's Katelyn Polantz live in Washington. All this new information came to light just yesterday, Katelyn. What did we learn?

KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN SENIOR CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, John, what we're learning comes from a newly released letter that the National Archives sent to Donald Trump's lawyers back in May. So May 10th the Archives had these initial 15 boxes of documents back from Mar-a-Lago and they were going through them and they realized there was a significant amount of classified records in that collection.

More than 100 classified documents that totaled more than 700 pages and some of those materials were marked with highly sensitive designations, SCI, SAP, that's sensitive compartmented information, special access programs, and that's really controlling who can actually access these records. But because these records had these designations on them, the FBI and the intelligence community needed to go through them both for the ongoing criminal investigation as well as looking at a damage assessment, how damaging this could be to national security.

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So the Archives was writing to Trump's lawyers at that time to work out that access. The agencies ultimately did get access, but this letter, if you look at it, it really just fills out the timeline a little bit and illustrates how concerning this Mar-a-Lago situation was for the federal government as they were leading up to the search, and that negotiation that was happening with Trump's team, of course those 15 boxes weren't all that was collected. More documents marked as classified were ultimately removed from Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago.

COLLINS: Yes. When the FBI agents had to actually go down there and physically get them themselves.

Katelyn, we also know that this judge has set a deadline on this Friday for Trump's legal team to basically refine this request that they filed on Monday for a special master. So what exactly is the judge asking Trump's counsel to do here?

POLANTZ: Well, this essentially is a do-over in a lot of ways. The Trump team when they asked for that special master in court they had a lot of deficiencies procedurally. They didn't really argue exactly why the judge could be doing this, and so the judge is coming in and saying, can you explain exactly what you want the court to do here? Do you want an emergency action? They didn't ask for that exactly.

And can you also explain why I, as the federal district judge, can help you in this situation? So they have to come in, they have to file a supplement by Friday. We're going to be watching for that. And of course the other thing this week that is a possibility we could see more court feelings on is the Justice Department filing their legal arguments and their proposed redactions. We believe that's going to be filed under seal, confidentially, and we might not see anything right away but of course there's a lot to watch in court so we're watching the docket pretty closely.

BERMAN: A lot going on. A lot to see or at least to look for, maybe not see as you say.

Katelyn Polantz, thank you very much.

So just how sensitive are some of the documents that were taken from Mar-a-Lago and in how much legal jeopardy does this place the former president? That's ahead.

Plus, we are awaiting a big announcement from the White House for millions of Americans dealing with student loan debt.

COLLINS: And Ukraine is bracing for an onslaught potentially of Russian attacks as it celebrates its Independence Day, a very meaningful day in Ukraine. CNN is live on the ground in Kyiv next.

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[06:16:36]

BERMAN: Seven hundred pages of classified documents, some of which were so sensitive they must be viewed in secure government facilities, that was what was being held at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago beach resort and that was just in the first batch of 15 boxes retrieved back in January.

Here now CNN's senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig.

Elie, Katelyn just laid out, Katelyn Polantz just laid out some of the new information that came to light in this letter. It's really about this timeline.

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, John. This letter is a really big deal, most importantly it gives us a lot of information about the timeline.

Now let's start with the letter itself. This letter was sent back in May of 2022 so about three months ago, well before Mar-a-Lago was searched. It was sent to Donald Trump's legal team from the National Archives. Now people may say why the National Archives? Isn't that the museum where the Constitution is under glass? It's actually more than that. They're legally responsible for gathering and keeping presidential records. They actually have their own investigators. There's basically Archives cops so to speak.

Now here's what we learned about the timeline. This goes back to 2021 we learned. Archives says in the letter we've been negotiating you throughout 2021 to try to get back those documents that were taken from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. Finally, January of 2022 Trump's team provides 15 boxes to the Archives. Not everything, but 15 boxes. That brings us to the letter that we just found out about yesterday.

Now this happens in May and essentially Archives says got your boxes, went through them, guess what, highly classified information. We need to get the FBI involved. Trump's team says please don't, because we object on executive privilege. Archives says we disagree. Now DOJ gets involved, now we're into June, this past summer where DOJ and investigators start going down to Mar-a-Lago.

They're meeting with Trump's teams and they finally served a subpoena which is the easy way to do things. Hey, give us the rest of the documents. They get more documents but still not all and only then, two and a half weeks ago, does the FBI go in and do the search. So there's been some criticism why did they do this search, it was so sudden, it was such an escalation. I think if anything there's a criticism of DOJ, why did you wait this long?

BERMAN: What did we learn about the level of classification of the documents? How secret were these?

HONIG: So this letter tells us that in those first 15 boxes and we're really only talking about the first 15 boxes, not all this other stuff the FBI and DOJ found. Over 100 documents with classification markings comprising more than 700 pages total. Here's what they found. This is the different levels of classification. They found documents that were classified at the highest level, SCI, sensitive compartmented information, SAP, special access programs. That is the tippy top of the top secret pyramid.

BERMAN: That's a legal term, tippy top.

HONIG: Tippy top. Yes. Technical legal term. And in the letter Archives says there's two things that we have to do now. First, conduct an assessment, meaning FBI has to go through these documents, figure out, is there any source who's exposed? Is anyone now put in danger? And the second thing, ongoing criminal investigation. We've known there is a criminal investigation but this tells us that Donald Trump's team has known that since at least May.

BERMAN: So you can tell the Archives is very worried here. What does all this mean about a potential prosecution?

HONIG: Well, John, we've all been very focused on Donald Trump's shifting and at times internally contradictory defenses but you have to keep in mind, it's always the burden of the prosecutor to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. And crucial to that is knowledge and intent. You have to show that Donald Trump or any person who you may charge knew what was going on, essentially knew what was in those boxes, and had intent to violate the law.

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We know the three laws that DOJ listed to get its search warrant, mishandling defense information, destruction of government documents and obstruction. And so this letter, I would argue as a prosecutor, shows that we told Trump's team, hey, you have these boxes, they have classified information, now you are on notice.

BERMAN: One last question, because you and I have been going back and forth on this. The Trump team argued that these documents at one point may be covered by executive privilege. How exactly would that impact -- how does that overlay against these possible charges?

HONIG: Yes, so this is why Donald Trump's team has asked for what's called a special master. They said we want to pause DOJ from going through these documents because we want an outside third party to review these and decide if there's executive privilege. Now Trump's a former president. Not impossible for a former president to invoke executive privilege. But legally it is a very serious uphill climb.

BERMAN: All right. Elie Honig, thank you very much for that.

HONIG: New overnight, President Biden orders air strikes on Iranian- backed groups in Syria. We have new details ahead.

COLLINS: And six months into Russia's bloody unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, we will have the latest from the frontlines.

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BERMAN: This morning an urgent warning from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the threat of heightened Russian attacks as his country, as Ukraine, marks 31 years of independence today. Today also marks six months from the beginning of Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Let's go to CNN's senior international correspondent David McKenzie who's live for us this morning in Kyiv. David, what are you seeing on the streets today?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, they are sent to keep away because of that threat from Russian missiles but people have come in their numbers to look at this extraordinary line of tanks and artillery pieces here. It's a parade in a way, a parade of Russian forces that were pushed away from Kyiv. This has been a brutal conflict and it shows no sign of stopping.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCKENZIE, (voice-over): Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowing Ukraine will prevail against Russia.

PRES. VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINE (through translator): Every new day is a new reason not to give up because having gone for so much we have no right not to reach the end. What is the end of the war for us? We used to say peace, now we say victory.

MCKENZIE: Zelenskyy's continued resolve comes as the country's defense intelligence says there are threats of Russian missile strikes coinciding with Ukraine's Independence Day. These comes as the country marks six months since the Russian invasion began, when bombs were first heard in the Ukrainian capital in the middle of the night.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are big explosions taking place in Kyiv right now.

MCKENZIE: The following day Russian soldiers were seen near the city firing, Ukrainians vowed to fight and defend their ground. On Snake Island Ukrainian troops' response to incoming Russia soldiers was seen as a patriotic moment for the country and has become a symbol of hope for Ukrainian forces.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): I am a Russian military ship. Propose to put down arms or you will be hit. Acknowledge.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): (EXPLETIVE DELETED) it as well.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through text translation): Just in case.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through text translation): Russian warship, go (EXPLETIVE DELETED) yourself.

MCKENZIE: In the early weeks of the war Russian troops were concentrated on taking Kyiv, occupying and bombing neighboring communities to get close to the capital. Millions of Ukrainians were forced to flee, walking through rubble and fallen bridges to safety.

The carnage left behind has been devastating. In Irpin northwest of Kyiv, bodies filled the streets, homes and buildings left in rubble. And in Bucha evidence of war crimes quickly emerged as mass graves were dug to bury the dead. Russian soldiers retreated from Kyiv in defeat and refocused their efforts in the south and east. Russian forces were determined to occupy major sea ports, putting

towns such as Mariupol in the crosshairs. This maternity hospital in Mariupol was bombed in March. Women were evacuated on stretchers to safety. This woman, a day before going into labor, walked down flights of stairs in the destroyed hospital to get to safety. And this theater serving as a shelter for children was bombed, despite a warning seen from above in large Russian letters that children were in the building.

The fighting in Mariupol would continue for months, coming to a head at the Azovstal steel plant, the soldiers and the remaining civilians were seeking shelter, the situation was dire.

MAJ. SERHIY VOLYNA, COMMANDER, UKRAINE'S 36TH SEPARATE ARINE BRIGADE (through translator): It's a very difficult situation. We have very little water, very little food left. The situation is critical, it's beyond a humanitarian catastrophe.

MCKENZIE: In May civilians were finally evacuated from the plant, but many Ukrainian troops fighting to protect the plant were taken prisoner.

In recent months fighting has been concentrated in the eastern region of the country. The site of an eight-year battle between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists. CNN visited the region and met many suffering through the shelling, including 86-year-old Lydia who was stranded and unable to evacuate.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: She tells us she recites prayers to get through the night. "I never imagined that my end would be like this."

MCKENZIE: And now the most pressing situation lies at the nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia where renewed shelling has occurred in recent weeks. The largest nuclear plant in Europe has posed a threat of nuclear calamity for months. Russia took control of the plant in March. A new video shows they are using the plant to store Russian military vehicles.

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