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How Tuesday's Primaries Have Shaken Up Midterm Races; National Archives Says, Trump Had 700-Plus Pages of Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago; Judge Sets Friday Deadline for Trump to Clarify Special Master Request. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 24, 2022 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN MCENROE, SEVEN-TIME MEN'S SINGLES GRAND SLAM CHAMPION: We didn't realize the negative effect, or to the extent it was. I'm not going to say, we thought, hey, this is going to really help us, but we thought we could burn the candle in both ends a little bit better and it was sort of -- it's become sort of much more professional and it's become much more serious. Obviously, the money is, you know, 10, 20 times what it was.

So, the long and short answer is I would have won more. I believe I would have won a lot more but I wouldn't be sitting here with you, I would be more boring. You know, you sort of have to live like a monk and you don't have -- you know, you really have to just give everything to it and you have to have the right people around you that allow you to, you know, be your best.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: John McEnroe, great to see you in-person, thank you so much. Barney Douglas, thank you for being with us.

McEnroe is available On Demand beginning Friday, September 2nd. It airs on Showtime on Sunday September 4th at 8:00 P.M.

So, election results in this morning and Democrats feeling that maybe, maybe they have some wind at their backs.

I'm John Berman, Brianna is off. CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins here this morning.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Wind at their backs, we will see come November, I guess.

BERMAN: A little. They're hoping wind at their back this morning. What Democrats are looking at the reason they might feel this way is based on the results of special elections right here in New York. CNN projects that Democrat Pat Ryan will win the battleground 19th district, this is a district that Joe Biden narrowly carried in 2020.

But Republicans felt very good heading into this special. They were hoping they could flip this. Abortion rights became the central issue in this race, Democrats made it so, much more on this in just a moment. Also in New York Congressman Jerry Nadler easily defeated -- he is a powerful committee chair -- he easily defeated powerful Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney in a bitter race that really got to the redistricting struggles the Democrats had in New York.

COLLINS: In Florida, Democratic congresswoman and former Orlando Police Chief Val Demings is going to be challenging Marco Rubio for his Senate seat. And former Republican governor and now turned current Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist is going to try to unseat the powerful incumbent Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. Crist will join us live on New Day in just a moment.

But, first, we are going to go to CNN's Jason Carroll who is live in New York with more on the results from last night, Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And when you were talking about the 19th, I don't think that went as many people, Kaitlan, were thinking it was going to go. Just to set the lay of the land, this is a district upstate, I think many might describe it as being somewhat conservative-leaning as of late. This was a district and a campaign where, really, national issues took center stage during that campaign.

You had the Republican, Marc Molinaro, who wanted this to be a campaign about the economy, about rising inflation, rising crime. On the flipside of that you had the Democrat, Pat Ryan, who said this is a campaign about a woman's right to choose. And once all the votes were counted, surprisingly to some, Ryan ended up -- the Democrat ended up coming out on top.

He tweeted the following, choice was on the ballot, freedom was on the ballot, and tonight choice and freedom won. We voted like our democracy was on the line because it was. We upended everything we thought we knew about politics and we did it together.

So, a big surprise somewhat going on in terms of what happened up there in the 19th, not so much of a surprise in terms of what happened here at the 12th where last night here at Nadler headquarters, they were celebrating after he was the one who ended up out on top, handily beating his longtime colleague in Congress for some 30 years, Carolyn Maloney.

The two facing off, as you said, after their district was redrawn. This was a campaign that at times turned ugly. At one point, you had Carolyn Maloney suggesting that Nadler was senile.

Nadler, in the end of the day, was the one who ended up having the endorsements of people like Chuck Schumer, people like Elizabeth Warren. He had the support, the endorsement of The New York Times as well. He says he was the one who just ran the better campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CAROLYN B. MALONEY (D-NY): I have called Congressman Nadler to congratulate him on his victory. He is a distinguished member of Congress. I share his progressive values and I wish him every success. REP. JERRY NADLER (D-NY): Carolyn Maloney and I have spent much of our adult lives working together to better both New York and our nation. I speak for everyone in this room tonight when I thank her for her decades of service to our city.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: So, again, not so much of a surprise in terms of what happened here at the 12th. Big surprise in terms of what happened up there in the 19th district. Democrats, of course, hoping that it could be a sign of what may be to come in November. Guys, back to you.

COLLINS: Yes.

[07:05:00]

Still remarkable to see a powerful Democratic chairwoman lose that spot. Jason Carroll, thanks for that update.

BERMAN: All right. It is a special morning. Here with us, Nia-Malika Henderson, CNN Senior Political Analyst, and Kasie Hunt, CNN Anchor and Chief National Affairs Analyst.

Let's start with why Democrats are sort of smiling a little bit this morning.

KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: They're not crying. Let's put it that way.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: And they had been crying.

BERMAN: Continue.

HENDERSON: No, it's true. I mean, you talk to Democrats a month, two months ago, they were fearing just the slaughter in November and the winds have changed. You see it in the polling, you see enthusiasm in a lot of the Democratic voters because of what happened with Dobbs, because of what also has happened with Joe Biden, some good news with his record, which you've covered marvelously. And so they feel good.

You had said the wind is at their back, I don't know if it's the wind. It might be sort of a slight breeze, exactly. So, yes, they're feeling good in a way that they hadn't been.

HUNT: Yes. I mean, look, I think that this race in Upstate New York is basically the last data point that we're going to have before the midterm elections that tells us about where things stand. And the reality is what you want in this kind of an environment is for things to be trending your direction and you want that trend to continue and basically peak on Election Day, right?

So, for Democrats right now, I mean, things are changing in their direction. We know that, we've got enough data to be able to see that. This is a piece of evidence that points to that. That said, you know, three months is kind of a lifetime in politics, two months or however much time we have until November. So, I mean, there are still twists and turns that could happen. I mean, I think one of the most critical pieces of this is that gas prices are down, there are some signs that inflation is not necessarily the dominant conversation around the kitchen table as much as it may have been earlier this summer. That is extraordinarily good news for the White House and Democrats.

COLLINS: And, Nia, in this 19th district in New York, this congressional district, in 2012, it went for Obama, in 2016, it went for Trump, and in 2020, it went for Biden. But last night, Pat Ryan actually outperformed Biden just a little bit, but what does that tell you about what that could be signaling?

HENDERSON: Listen, I think he had a winning message for that district. It was mainly about choice, right, that choice is on the ballot. The thinking for Republicans has been, listen, it's going to be all about gas prices, it's going to be all about inflation, it's even going to be about maybe COVID hangover and sort of the culture war issues that they have stoked to great effect in past elections.

But here, he had a very simple message, it worked, and it also, I think, reflects some of these Democrats in these swing districts have been outperforming Joe Biden in some of the polling and this is what happened in this race. And I think, you know, the fact that Biden has put together a string of victories, bipartisan victories, is certainly good for those moderates in swing districts.

HUNT: Yes. I mean, look, we've seen evidence, we saw this in 2020 with Trump as well, that voters are willing to, if not, split their tickets then at least make a differentiation in their minds between a Republican -- I mean, Trump is such a unique figure that it's a little hard to extrapolate but we saw a lot of voters willing to send Republicans to Congress who weren't willing to send Trump back to the White House, right, like we know that from the data.

So, it's interesting to me that this outperforming of Joe Biden suggests -- I mean, that would be great news for Democrats if people are willing to say, sure, I'm not really happy with the president but I'm more interested in Democrats controlling Congress.

And the culture war issue is such an interesting part of this, because COVID in particular really turned off -- I mean, think about suburban moms who have been struggling with remote schooling. Republicans were really by the end -- we are not at the end of the pandemic but as the pandemic wore on, Republicans were really winning on that issue. And I think that this is some evidence that Dobbs has really shifted that, and that's a problem for Republicans.

HENDERSON: And it also doesn't help that Donald Trump is in the news, right, in such a terrible way. His beach home was raided by the FBI. There was all this conventional wisdom that somehow that would be good for Donald Trump, maybe.

COLLINS: Conventional wisdom in Washington. HUNT: Yes, in '24, right? 2024 is a very different convo from 2022.

HENDERSON: I think that's exactly right.

BERMAN: So, you guys mentioned Donald Trump. Hang on for a minute here, if you will, because there is news this morning on that front, new developments in the investigation into the sensitive documents held at Mar-a-Lago. More than 100 classified documents, making it more than 700 pages, some with the highest level of classification, they were retrieved back in January. This was just the January retrieval.

The National Archives told the Trump legal team it wanted intelligence agencies to do a damage assessment on this.

So, joining us now is CNN Legal Analyst and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Elliot Williams to join in this conversation.

And, Elliot, this all came from a letter that we saw for the first time from the National Archives yesterday to Trump's legal team and it really revealed the series of data points that we hadn't seen in their ongoing conversation, like months' long conversation about this. What jumped out to you?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Well, a couple things. So, first, thanks to my friend, Nia, for the smoothest segue ever into talking about Donald Trump, number one.

[07:10:02]

Number two, what you pointed out, John, is the extent to which the National Archives and the FBI gave the Trump team ample opportunities to comply through going back and forth via letters suggesting that the National Archives wanted to bring the FBI in to start looking at the documents, just waiting several weeks for the president's team to respond. So, it debunks this idea that the search of Mar-a-Lago came out of nowhere. It had been percolating for months and months and months.

Number two, you have the second now indication that there were very, very serious documents held at Mar-a-Lago. And just to be clear, there's documents that are just sort of classified or even confidential, which is sort of if your social security number is on a document, that's a form of classification.

We are not talking about that here. You are talking about very sensitive national security documents, that even for a former president of the United States simply should never be out of a secure facility under the eye of a guardian or a custodian, and that's not a former president.

And regardless of what the president might say about the entitlement of a former president to have access to his own papers, these were the kinds of documents that actually could quite seriously jeopardize American public safety and should not have been there.

COLLINS: Well, Elliot, that's also what stood out to me was that they had initially released this letter to a Trump ally, that's who published it and then the National Archives made this letter public. But what was revealing was that there was this argument, very clearly stated from the letter from the National Archives to Trump's counsel saying they had consulted with top Justice Department officials and rejected this idea that Trump had executive privilege over these documents, that he could assert that, saying the former president can't stop the incumbent president from obtaining these documents that are the property of the federal government. But that's still an argument that you see Trump's legal team making months later in court, as they did on Monday.

WILLIAMS: Yes. So, I think the executive privilege is really right now manifesting as the Trump team saying a term again and again and again that the public simply doesn't just understand, because, you know, the point you're making about the National Archives, that's accurate as well.

What they are also attempting -- there is a letter that Trump had sent to the Justice Department, I believe, earlier this week in which -- pardon me -- to the court earlier this week, in which they had suggest that they were asserting executive privilege to prevent the Justice Department from seeing these documents.

The Justice Department is in the executive branch. It literally -- you can't exert -- that's sort of like if you and I, Kaitlan, were partners in a law firm representing John for one of his many misdeeds that one of our law partners couldn't talk to us about it. That's simply not how privileges work, the federal government and the Justice Department, as the sort of prosecuting arm of the federal government acts at the direction of the White House. It's just a misstatement of how privileges work and I think, you know, they are sort of confusing the public and their supporters over it. And to some extent, it's working.

BERMAN: And it wouldn't be the kind of representation I need and, frankly, deserve either.

We are going to talk much more about the legal implications in a second on this, but, Nia and Kasie, you guys were talking about the political aspects of this in a way that I don't think -- maybe a little counterintuitive, based on all the noise about how this is galvanizing Republicans, are we seeing that maybe not yet?

HENDERSON: Yes. I mean, I never believed this anyway. This was Donald Trump trying to, I think, set the narrative. It worked for a bit. Listen, Donald Trump is wildly popular among his fans, among the base of the Republican Party. He doesn't sort of need anything else to be more popular. He's likely the frontrunner for the 2024 nomination for his party. Should he run? There is all this talk, oh, this is going to push him into the race earlier than he was going to get in originally, and it just hasn't happened.

I think we sort of know it isn't working in his favor because of all of the twists and turns and excuses he's making, right? He's trying to throw stuff on the wall to make an argument that sticks but it hasn't worked for him. And it's likely that the more we find out, the more damaging it will be for him.

HUNT: So, I'm going to play devil's advocate here a little bit. I mean, look, I think what this really did was tamp down the talk about people challenging Trump in a Republican primary. It made it that much harder because if you listen to the way Republican officials responded, they almost all asked questions about this. They all said, wait, what is the justification here, right? You weren't hearing people saying, oh, the FBI should have done this necessarily. I mean, the debate has evolved. But I do think that this whole episode has galvanized supporters in a way that has made it harder for other Republicans to challenge Donald Trump.

Now, we still have twists and turns. I mean, obviously this is a lot of -- you know, as Elliot walked us through, like this is very important, these are national security secrets, et cetera, et cetera.

[07:15:02]

But at the end of the day, I don't really think voters are going to remember that there were 700 pages and 100 -- I mean, like these numbers are just going to fly in and out of the media environment that we live in now, it's completely irrelevant from a political perspective. So, I just -- I mean, maybe I would be proven wrong.

HENDERSON: We're talking about this 2022, right? It's 2022 now and we are sort of talking about 2024.

HUNT: Yes, we are talking about 2024. Yes. But, I mean, this was just another way for him to be able to say all of the things that he has been running on for his entire political career that you have covered day in and day out for how many years. I mean, it just sort of handed him this way of looking at it.

I mean, there are many twists and turns left, obviously. Who knows what else we are going to learn about what happened here. But I still think there is a political sort of disconnect between what the DOJ has been doing on this front and, you know, the ultimate intent.

BERMAN: No one even talks about 2023, right? It's this poor year that gets no coverage at all.

COLLINS: Well, we will see how the legal landscape shapes up potentially surpass 2024.

BERMAN: Nia, Kasie, Elliot, we have much more to discuss with you, so please stay right where you are.

Plus, this morning, an urgent warning from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy six months into the Russian invasion.

COLLINS: And the race for the Florida governor is on. Democratic Congressman Charlie Crist who is going to be taking on Ron DeSantis in November is live joining me on New Day, next.

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BERMAN: All right, back with our panel this morning.

Elliott, I want to start with you on this interesting communication from the judge. The Trump legal team filed this lawsuit with the judge asking for all these things in the investigation into the search of Mar-a-Lago and the judge basically came back to them and said, do some better lawyering. Come back to me with some better lawyering by Friday. I'm sorry, I'm not even trying to be glib here. Is that what the judge said? And how unusual is something like that? WILLIAMS: It's really not unusual. And I actually clerked on that

very court, the Southern District of Florida. It's not unusual when sometimes party's filings are just deficient either in the form of not -- how sloppy they make them or not adequately briefing out their arguments or whatever else might be there. There are countless reasons why a judge would.

But the judge clearly was unsatisfied with what they had put forward and simply said -- and what the ruling said dismissed without prejudice, which means that they had an opportunity to come back and file the same document again, just a better one and a cleaner one, so not uncommon.

COLLINS: Yes. And I think part of that was the judge was -- wanted to know what they were asking for because they didn't ask for some kind of emergency injunction or emergency measure here. What does that tell the two of you about the legal strategy here? Because I think that has been a big question, it's always a big question with Trump and his teams previously, but with this, it did take them two weeks before they took their first actual legal step on Monday and now the judge is asking them to refine it because they weren't really asking for anything specific when it came in terms of timing.

HENDERSON: Yes. I mean, their legal strategy has mostly been a P.R. strategy, right? There hasn't really been a legal strategy from -- I'm not a lawyer, even though sometimes people confuse me with Laura Coates, but it seems like his lawyers aren't top flight lawyers, you know, from what I can tell, and not only this filing but some of the comments they have made on television about the case, about what's happening.

So, I don't know. I mean, it seems the sort of what's leading is how can they make this good for Trump, how can they put as many theories out there to sort of confusion the waters.

HUNT: I mean, so, couple things. First of all, I think it's been a minute since the nation's top lawyers have been willing to work on behalf of Donald Trump, okay? It's been a minute since the courts have sided on them as well, all those owe election challenges through 2020 that he consistently lost with the lawyers who were doing that, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and others.

Now, we're here in obviously a very different situation, but like the playbook he's running is the same one he's been running literally his entire life, right, before politics. It's distract and delay, right? It's drag it out. Because the more that this does get dragged out, I think that they, to a certain extent, see a benefit in it being dragged out for a multitude of reasons.

I mean, first, it allows them an opportunity to get more of their supporters ginned up and more aggressively on their side, but second of all, it potentially puts off intense consequences perhaps long enough for him to announce a presidential run, which they are pretty convinced it's going to change the game.

Now, whether it does, I'm not convinced of that, yet, I mean, if they're doing this. I think the Department of Justice is very well aware that the man seems to be planning to run for president. It's not like they're operating in a vacuum but I think for the Trump team, the simple act of delay amounts to a strategy.

BERMAN: It's interesting, Maggie Haberman and team at the NEW York Times had an article which addressed this very point, that this is what Trump has always done legally. And, Elliott, though, The Times posited that this time may be different in that you're not president anymore. So, it may work differently. He doesn't have the rights and privileges that come with being president anymore so things don't land quite like they would, he doesn't have the lawyers that he had before, and in this one case, the legal jeopardy might be higher. What do you think of that?

WILLIAMS: I think all of the above. Number one, the legal jeopardy is higher. There is a severity here. And, look, some of the crimes that you are talking about merely having the documents in your possession, it doesn't matter what you thought of them, that can be criminal. Look, I had a top secret clearance for almost 15 years, and I've handled similar information, nothing like this, but there may have been crimes committed here, number one.

Number two, he's not president, also not a candidate for office. Now, that may change, but at the end of the day, this is a private citizen, a very high profile one, a very consequential one in American history, for lack of a better way to put it, but he is still a private citizen and does not have a lot of the things that prevent the Justice Department from investigating a president or indicting a president, like the fact that, number one, there is only one president. It's not like the chief justice or even speaker of the House where someone else can fill the role, there is only one president in the Constitution.

[07:25:00]

So, that affects how the Justice Department can take actions against that individual. You can't just take them out of their office without creating a constitutional crisis. The vice president can't just jump in for some things, right? That doesn't happen here.

And so, yes, there are consideration toss what this does more broadly to the American political landscape, but at the end of the day, they can still go after him. It's just a question of do they have the facts and the evidence and what would happen if they did.

COLLINS: I think another thing that stood out, though, from this letter yesterday was also you saw the struggle that the National Archives had. They could not do basically a damage control assessment back in the spring of what was taken to Mar-a-Lago, whether or not it did compromise sources and methods of the U.S. intelligence community because of the arguments that were under way about executive privilege.

BERMAN: You saw how worried they were there. Elliott Williams, Nia- Malika Henderson, Kasie Hunt, thank you all. Great to see all this morning. Thanks so much for being here.

So, fresh off of his primary win in Florida, Democratic Candidate for Governor Charlie Crist will join us live.

COLLINS: And President Biden is set to make a long awaited announcement on student loans today. We will tell you what that plan could look like.

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