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New Day Saturday
Affidavit Reveals New Details about Mar-a-Lago Search; Stocks Plummet after Fed Chair Promises Action to Tame Inflation; Uvalde Parents to Participate in March for Our Lives Rally at Texas Capitol; L.A. to Vote on Requiring Hotels to House Homeless Population. Aired 6-7a ET
Aired August 27, 2022 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[06:00:29]
AMARA WALKER, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning and welcome to your New Day. I'm Amara Walker.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Amara. I'm Boris Sanchez.
Former President Trump again calling for a special master to intervene after a judge unsealed documents about the search of his Mar-a-Lago home. Latest in his legal battle and what we're learning about those classified government secrets.
WALKER: Stock plummets after Fed Chair Jerome Powell promises, "forceful and rapid action to tame inflation," why he is warning of more pain ahead for all of us.
SANCHEZ: Plus, after months of crying out for accountability, the police chief who led that botched response to a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas is firing, hear directly from parents naming other officials they want removed.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Would you check into a hotel knowing that the chance of your neighbor to the left or right is a homeless individual?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WALKER: The plan that could soon force hotels in Los Angeles to house homeless people and of course that fierce debate surrounding it.
SANCHEZ: It is Saturday, August 27. We're so grateful that you're starting your weekend with us. Good morning, Amara.
WALKER: Good morning. Up first, the new details in the documents. We are learning more information from the affidavit authorizing the search of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residents. The heavily redacted affidavit revealing that classified documents found at the residence includes some of the country's most sensitive secrets. SANCHEZ: According to the filing, authorities had probable cause to believe that classified national security materials were improperly taken to unauthorized locations at the former president state. It also says the search at Mar-a-Lago would likely find evidence of obstruction and that the documents contained sensitive secrets material about human sources are spies that often work with the CIA.
A legal brief explaining the redactions in the affidavit also raises concerns about possible threats to potential witnesses. Meantime, the former President responded last night to a judge's request for more information on his call for a special master to review evidence from the Mar-a-Lago search, though he didn't exactly say what role a special master would play.
WALKER: And as for that affidavit, CNN Senior Washington Correspondent Pamela Brown has more now on what we are learning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Now public I heavily redacted version of the affidavit that led to the FBI search at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. In it shocking new details, the FBI telling a judge that there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified NDI or that our presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the premises. There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises. The affidavit also revealing startling details about improperly handled documents that were marked with the highest levels of security clearance.
STEVE HALL, FORMER CIA CHIEF OF OPERATIONS: As a former CIA guy, it says chills up and down my spine when I hear that there's HCS information in somebody's basement in not secured as a properly should. It's just -- it's really, really bad.
BROWN: HCS standing for Human Intelligence Control System, which is a classification designed to protect people working around the world for the U.S. government and 14 of the 15 boxes retrieved in January by the National Archives 184 documents had unique classification markings, 67 marked as confidential, 92 marked as secret, and 25 marked top secret.
HARRY LITMAN, FORMER U.S. ATTORNEY: The top secret stuff and compartmental can get people killed. It is completely alarming. Nobody down there except -- well, not even trump any longer, even has a clearance at all.
BROWN: According to DOJ, the document is heavily redacted to protect witness information and other key details from the ongoing criminal investigation. Prosecutors explaining and their legal memo to the judge, information the affidavit could be used to identify many if not all these witnesses. If witnesses identities are exposed they could be subjected to harms including retaliation intimidation or harassment and even threats to their physical safety.
[06:05:11] We're also learning new insights as to what led to the investigation in the first place. The National Archives made a criminal referral to the DOJ in February, saying there was significant concern after finding the boxes retrieved by the archive contains highly classified records and are mixed with other records and not properly identified. This leading the DOJ and FBI to launch their own investigation, issuing a subpoena in June for classified material and ultimately the search at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.
Trump reacted on his social media platform leaning into the fact that the affidavit is, "heavily redacted, and calling it a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI and DOJ.
(On camera): And the FBI said in one of the court finds that it has interviewed a significant number of civilian witnesses as part of its investigation. And sources tell me that the FBI has interviewed former and current Trump aides, which helps explain why the FBI believed there was probable cause that there was still classified information at Mar-a-Lago, which is why it took that extraordinary step to execute a search warrant and indeed we know the FBI took away 11 sets of documents marked as classified after that search warrant was executed. Pamela Brown, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALKER: All right, a lot to talk about here. Joining me now is David Aronberg, State Attorney in Palm Beach County, Florida and Shawn Turner, former Director of Communications for U.S. National Intelligence and a CNN National Security Analyst. Welcome to you both.
David, let's start with you. So, as Pamela was mentioning there, more than half of this 32-page affidavit has been heavily blacked out. That was expected. But what do you see in those lines that we can read? What do you see there that stands out to you?
DAVE ARONBERG, STATE ATTORNEY, PALM BEACH COUNTY: Well, good morning. For me, the most important part was that the affidavit shows that this is an ongoing criminal investigation. This is not just about retrieving the documents from Mar-a-Lago and calling it a day. DOJ is not going to hang the mission accomplished banner yet. It's pretty clear that Trump is in the DOJ's crosshairs.
Also in the affidavit, it's detailed how Trump previously took top secret documents in those 15 boxes that they previously retrieved. That also included the HCS documents. And as the report said, that's really important because that involves human sources that can be put at risk. And some of the documents that were retrieved, had Trump's handwriting on them. So it's getting tougher and tougher for Trump to just say this is all the coffee boy who did this. And the last thing that's important, I think, is that the affidavit even though it was redacted, still seem to take great pains to debunk Trump's argument that he declassified everything. So this makes it look like DOJ is indeed gearing up for a criminal case.
WALKER: OK, so it sounds like to you, you feel like the public interest was served if there was some transparency even though this document, this affidavit related to the search warrant was heavily redacted.
So Shawn, a lot of things to kind of parse out here. And first, you know, what was really stunning is that federal officials found "184 unique documents" bearing classification markings, right? Including 92, marked as secret, 25 as top secret. And it was also noted in that affidavit that some of those markings would signal they were national defense documents. I mean, how much effort does it take? I mean, you're aware of this to gather these kinds of classified documents over a month? I mean, it doesn't seem like this is something that could happen, mistakenly or inadvertently.
SHAWN TURNER, FORMER DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS FOR U.S. NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Yeah, Amara, good morning. First of all, I'll tell you, that number really stood out to me when I saw it, you know, I've been saying from the start that everyone's going to look at this affidavit through a different lens.
When I read this, what I read what was available, 184 documents, here's what I thought about, you know, I spent most of my career with a security clearance. And I was surrounded by classified information. But I cannot think of a single time, a single instance, in which in my office, or in the office of the people around me who had access to top secret information, where I had dozens and dozens of classified documents just laying around available to be boxed up and taken off site.
So what that tells me, you know, typically, it was the case that, you know, you'd have a document, you use that document and once that document didn't have any utility anymore, you put it in a burn bag, and it was disposed of properly. So when I saw 184, what that tells me is that one of two things happened, either the President or people around the President were taking documents over a period of time and we're putting those documents aside because they had anticipated that they would take them or do something with them at some point or at some point in time prior to January 20 or January 18th, 2020 when that truck pulled up at Mar-a-Lago someone sat down on one of our classified systems and they printed documents out for the purpose of taking those documents. It had to be one of those cases because you don't have 184 documents just sitting around in an office to take.
[06:10:17]
So we don't know which of those scenarios happened. But I think that's the investigation needs to look into that because that gets too intense. Like gets to whether or not these documents were taken with a purpose. And we really need to understand that because as I've said, from the start, this comes down to one question. That's why these documents were taken.
WALKER: Exactly, that's the overarching question, right? And I do want to clarify that these are not the documents that were seized during the August 8, search warrant. This is the evidence for that search warrant. And this goes back many months to January when these 15 boxes of documents were turned over to the National Archives after months and months of the National Archives officials are reaching out to the Trump team and negotiating to get these documents back. I want to mention just quickly, Shawn, because David mentioned this, these markings, it's really an alphabet soup of acronyms that many of us lay people are not familiar with. HCS, I don't even know if I'm supposed to say no FORN, no F-O-R-N, which means materials that can't be shared with any foreign entities. Talk us through some of these markings and why they're so significant and sensitive?
TURNER: Sure, well, as David mentioned, HCS, that really got my attention. That's a reference to Human Intelligence Control System. And what that tells us is that that document or those documents have information related to a source that is a human source, that is to say that is a person on the other end of that information, who may be in a foreign country who is providing information back to the United States, that could be a person in the United States who's helping the United States. So that that really got my attention, because we're talking about a real person on the other end.
Anytime you have a classification doc or marking on a document, there are additional handling instructions. So no foreign tells us that only a U.S. persons can see that document, or can tells us that there's an originating agency that's responsible for that document. All of these markings, tell us how that document is to be handled, and who's allowed to see that information. And so when we see this sort of hodgepodge of markings in the documents that were at Mar-a-Lago, what that tells us is that it's certainly not the case that all of the people there had access to all of these documents, and there were certainly documents there that no one at Mar-a-Lago would have had a right to see, just based on the nature of those markings.
WALKER: And David, so legally, what's important here, is it about the former president's posture and potential intent, you know, because of course, we saw, you know, that he believed that these federal records belong to him. There were these protracted negotiations to even get these documents back. Is it just the fact that these documents were gathered and were in possession of outside a secure facility or does intent have to be proved?
ARONBERG: Well, intent matters to prosecutors a whole lot, and Shawn is right. See, although the statutes involved here, and there are three of them do not require the documents to be classified. So prosecutors want to show that they were classified, they want to show that Trump so called declassification order was bogus, because these cases generally are not brought unless the documents are classified.
Plus, when you're bringing unprecedented charges against a former president, you want to make sure you've got an airtight case where there's no room for any reasonable doubt. So yes, you want to show their classified. You want to show the documents are vital and urgent to national security, not just love letters from Kim Jong-un, and you want to show Trump's intent. You want to show that this is more than just hiding it in a scrapbook for his own purposes that he was distributing it to others, showing it to others or even had more nefarious intentions than that.
WALKER: Yeah, a lot of questions as to as well who had access to these documents while they were stored in Mar-a-Lago. I appreciate you both gentlemen, David Aronberg, Shawn Turner, thank you very much.
SANCHEZ: Still ahead, a Friday's freefall stocks plunging after Fed Chair Jerome Powell says Americans can expect more economic pain as the government works to tamp down inflation. His blunt message to investors coming up.
Plus, the White House defending the cost of President Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Plan, and calling out Republicans in the process of feisty Joe Biden, when New Day returns.
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[06:19:00]
SANCHEZ: U.S. stocks ended the week in the red, the Dow Jones closing down more than 1000 points.
WALKER: After investors got a warning about inflation from the Federal Reserve Chairman, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ sank as well falling 3% and almost 4% respectively. CNN's Rahel Solomon has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Jerome Powell delivering a blunt no nonsense message during his much anticipated policy speech in Jackson Hole Wyoming on Friday. The Fed Chair warning that the U.S. Central Bank is nowhere near the point where it can begin slowing the pace and severity of interest rate hikes as it attempts to get inflation under control.
The Fed Chair clearly trying to tamp down speculation and financial markets that the central bank might be nearing a more market friendly, less aggressive interest rate policy after we got some encouraging inflation reports recently. Powell saying instead that the Fed will need to see sustained drops in inflation before easing up on rate hikes, warning that higher interest rates will be needed for some time until the central bank is, "confident the job is done." Powell admitting, however, that his get tough policy could cause hardship for many Americans.
[06:20:19]
JEROME POWELL, CHAIR, FEDERAL RESERVE: While higher interest rates slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses. These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.
SOLOMON: Powell warning a pain in the form of higher borrowing costs which could slow both consumer spending and business investment, which in turn could lead to a less robust jobs market. The big fear though is that the Fed could inflict so much pain that the U.S. economy will fall into a recession. We're not there yet but Friday's action on Wall Street clearly shows that investors are worried. Powell was message putting pressure both on Wall Street and Main Street.
Rahel Solomon, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALKER: President Biden announced this week that his administration will forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans.
SANCHEZ: And now the administration is working through the details, including exactly when borrowers are going to start to see that relief and how much it's going to cost. Let's listen to what White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierr told CNN this week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: It's going to be about $24 billion per year. Now, just to give you a little bit of context, that $24 billion a year, that is about 3% of what we spent on the military. That's just a tiny, tiny fraction.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SANCHEZ: We want to take you now to Wilmington Delaware, where President Biden is spending the weekend. And CNN's Jasmine Wright is there. Jasmine, how's the White House responding to concerns about the cost of the loan forgiveness?
JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, Boris, largely pushing back on these concerns. And specifically, they're pushing back on a Penn Wharton Budget analysis estimate that came out on Friday that said it could cost up to a trillion dollars, the White House on Friday was really forceful, they called it somewhat speculative incident that would be at the top of the range, again, citing that $24 billion figure that we just heard from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierr, but it speaks to the larger problem that the White House is kind of facing right now, which is having to defend this decision to forgive them out of student loans, really, amid these rising prices and high inflation of concern that we know President Biden had when making this decision.
Now, another question that has been asked to the White House is when borrowers could start to see some of these student loans being forgiveness, the implementation of it, and this is what Karine Jean- Pierr had to say, on Friday. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEAN-PIERR: I don't have a timeline for you. That is something that the Department of Education is going to work on. We will see who takes advantage of this. But this is supposed to going to help 43 million people. And just think about it if people are saving a little bit of money, right? They are going to go buy that house. They're going to start a family. This matters in so many ways.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WRIGHT: So there we see the White House making the real reasoning for forgiving the student loan saying just how many Americans will be able to do more with their money because of it. Boris, Amara?
WALKER: Yeah. And Jasmine, take us through, you know, what took the President as some would ask so long to finally make this decision. What do we know about the process? And you know why he was so indecisive?
WRIGHT: Yeah, well, one Democrat described the process as tortured, really, as the President went back and forth really in this drawn out decision. Now, we know a part of that relied on his concerns about the cost and the impact that it would have on inflation. One of the issues really dogging this White House as we head to the midterms, but also he wanted to make sure that it did not look like a payout for the wealthy. So there were questions on the legality of it from the President on the moral, the moral case, the fairness of it, and of course, on those prices.
Now, we also know that a lot of advocates and naysayers really went to the White House into the president, trying to advocate for. One of those people were Vice President Kamala Harris, a source told me over the course of the week, really she was a routine advocate for debt forgiveness, making her case directly to the President. It wasn't a secret. The source told me, within the White House that was Harris' position. Other Democrats both inside and outside the White House, including Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, also appealed directly to the President really trying to make the moral case that he should be doing this. And so of course, we now know his decision. Boris, Amara?
SANCHEZ: Jasmine Wright traveling with the President in Wilmington, Delaware. Jasmine, thank you so much.
[06:25:00]
Let's discuss student loan forgiveness and more now with CNN Political Commentator and Spectrum News Political Anchor, Errol Louis. Good morning, Errol. Bright and early as always. I want to ask you about something we saw soon after the White House announced this plan. They went on Twitter and called out Republicans who criticize the idea. But they themselves received federal loans for their businesses during the COVID pandemic. I hadn't seen the White House go after critics so aggressively like this before. What do you make of it?
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Boris. I thought it was playing a little bit of hardball. And it was the right thing to do. They pointed out members of Congress who not only took out loans during the pandemic, but had those loans forgiven. So and they put the exact dollar amounts in for the loans that had been forgiven. In some cases, it was hundreds of 1000s of dollars in one or two cases, it was over a million dollars. And it points out the absolute hypocrisy of this.
There are lots of Americans who get a need help from the federal government for lots of different reasons. You can't unravel an entire nation by having people suddenly say, well, why should you get something? You know, why should your disaster relief come through when I didn't get any of that money? Because I didn't have a disaster in my region of the country. It just doesn't even make sense. So the White House is saying they're not going to be pushed around on this. And they're going to call out the hypocrisy of the Republicans who are complaining.
SANCHEZ: It wasn't just Republicans that were critical of this move. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who's running for Senate in Ohio, like several other Democrats running in battleground races said, "It sends the wrong message to the millions of Ohioans without a degree working just as hard to make ends meet." How do you weigh that pushback coming from within Biden's own party?
LOUIS: Well, there has there has to be a bit of a fat check here. First of all, something like a third of the people who go into student debt, never get a degree. So this is going to help a lot of people. In fact, those are the folks who were in the worst position.
I think of the White House and Democrats are going to have to be very clear about who did and did not end up with problems because of this student debt. A lot of them are mechanics cosmetologist, you know, nursing assistants, it's really not simply something that helps the upper middle class. And of course, this has been income tested as well. So that if you're making over $125,000, none of this would apply in the first place. This is a very select, very targeted group of people that happens to be a large group of people that any way you look at it are going to be better off not only for their families, but for the local economy. I hope that everybody, Republican or Democrat, can realize that.
SANCHEZ: Getting back to that response from the White House, it seems like there's been a shift because recently President Biden compared a right wing Republican philosophy to "semi fascism." You know, it's one thing for a pundit or a columnist to equate Trumpism with a version of fascism. But this is a sitting president, did you expect that from President Biden?
LOUIS: I thought at some point it was going to come up. The reality is you cannot look at the footage and the findings from the January 6 committee and not realize that democracy is in fact on the ballot that whether or not our system is going to survive in a healthy form in the next election, both the midterms and the 2024 presidential election is really up in the air. And people are going to have to understand that and make a decision about it.
This last wave of elections and other maneuvers that put a lot of election deniers into key positions as secretaries of state in some case at the county level election administrators who are saying openly that they are not going to simply certify elections, that they're going to put their own opinion or put their own preferences into it. This is not good. The violence that we saw January 6, also an attack on democracy. So I think the President is laying out the terms of the debate, in very stark terms a little harsher than maybe some of us expected. But that happens to be the truth. That happens to be what's at stake here. Boris.
SANCHEZ: And Errol, speaking of the upcoming midterm elections, President Biden digging in on the issue of abortion this week, saying again, that the only way to codify Roe versus Wade is for Americans to make it happen in November. Polling has indicated that Democrats are actually in a better position now than they were before the Supreme Court overturned roe. How big is abortion going to be an animating issue going into November?
LOUIS: Well, it always remains to be seen. But there are some indicators just as you suggest, that the enthusiasm gap, that's one of the numbers you really want to watch where Democrats are more enthusiastic than before, certainly and in some cases more enthusiastic than the Republic neighbors about going to the polls and voting.
[06:30:00]
That's what you want going into a Midterm election for sure, that they understand that the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe versus Wade means that they're going to have to go elsewhere to try and make something happen, and that elsewhere is Congress, right in time for the Midterm.
So they've got about 10 weeks to really see how this is going to work, every indication is that Democrats have the wind at their back or at least an organizing tool which they're energetic and creative about it, they can really make use of.
SANCHEZ: And they will be facing historic headwinds, obviously, the party in power often hemorrhages support during Midterm elections. Errol Louis, appreciate your perspective as always. Thanks so much.
LOUIS: Thank you.
WALKER: Parents are demanding more accountability in the wake of the deadly shooting -- school shooting in Uvalde. And they say the firing of the school district police chief is not enough. More on that story, next.
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[06:35:00]
WALKER: Parents, community members and survivors from Uvalde, Texas, will arrive at the state capitol in just a few hours. They're in Austin to ask Governor Greg Abbott to call a special legislative session to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 assault rifle to 21 years old.
Organizers for the March for Our Lives rally say hundreds are expected to join today's gun control protest. On May 24th, a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. The shooter purchased the AR-15 he used just days after turning 18.
SANCHEZ: The embattled police chief at the center of the response to that massacre is now out of a job. On Wednesday, the Uvalde School Board voted unanimously to fire Pete Arredondo whose response at the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School has been widely criticized.
WALKER: But some outraged family say accountability for the massacre still hasn't gone far enough. CNN's Shimon Prokupecz with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ADAM MARTINEZ, CHILD ATTENDED ROBB ELEMENTARY: This is a step in the right direction, but there's a lot more things that need to happen.
SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME & JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a moment of accountability that many in Uvalde had been waiting for, but many say, isn't enough.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All in favor. Motion passed unanimously.
PROKUPECZ: The Uvalde School Board voting unanimously Wednesday night to terminate the employment of Pete Arredondo, the school district's police chief criticized for his role in the response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're going to continue our fight.
(CROWD CHANTING)
PROKUPECZ: Many in Uvalde are also calling for the school board, the superintendent and the entire school district police department to be replaced. All in their eyes, partially responsible for failing to prevent the deaths of 19 students and two teachers three months ago.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are not going to sweep this under the rug! Three main failures! Number one, school administration. Right there!
PROKUPECZ: Before yesterday's meeting, Arredondo's lawyer released a statement with a request it be read aloud, calling the proceedings an unconstitutional public lynching, and saying that Arredondo would not attend the board meeting over safety concerns.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, for him to not be here and actually to face the consequences to his actions --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's because he's a coward.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Exactly.
CROWD: Coward!
PROKUPECZ: Arredondo had said he did not consider himself in charge during the May 24th shooting, but state officials identified him as the on-scene commander. The gunman was in two-adjoined classrooms for more than an hour before officers entered and killed him. That time marked with chaos as no one took command.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Decide who it's going to be to call the shots.
PROKUPECZ: Arredondo at one point trying to communicate with the shooter, contradicting law enforcement active shooter protocol to eliminate the threat.
PETE ARREDONDO, FORMER UVALDE SCHOOL POLICE CHIEF: Please put your firearm down, sir, we don't want anybody else hurt.
PROKUPECZ: Families now receiving some accountability for that delay.
MARTINEZ: Does he expect to be in a small community and hold his head up high and say that he's going to protect and serve? That's simply just ridiculous.
PROKUPECZ: Shimon Prokupecz, CNN, Uvalde, Texas.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SANCHEZ: Shimon, thank you for that report. Coming up, a look at a proposal to put up the un-housed in empty hotel rooms in Los Angeles. Why some say that could do more harm than good.
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[06:40:00]
SANCHEZ: So, the Los Angeles City Council is weighing whether to require hotels to open vacant rooms to the city's homeless population.
WALKER: Of course, there are two sides to this, right? Supporters say it's a bold solution, but critics in the hotel industry say absolutely not. Now, the city will face an ordinance vote. CNN's Nick Watt has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In Los Angeles County, more than 60,000 people are homeless on the average night, and more than 20,000 hotel rooms lie empty on the average night. See where this might be going?
STUART WALDMAN, PRESIDENT, VALLEY INDUSTRY & COMMERCE ASSOCIATION: It's just -- it's insane. It isn't going to solve the problem.
KURT PETERSEN, CO-PRESIDENT, UNITE HERE LOCAL 11: We think this is one part of the solution. By no means do we think this solves the homelessness crisis. But do hotels have a role to play? Of course, they do.
WATT: So, the union he leads which reps hotel workers gathered enough signatures and Angelinas will vote on a bill that would force every hotel in town to report vacancies at 2:00 p.m. every day, then welcome homeless people into those vacant rooms.
MANOJ PATEL, MANAGER, MOTEL 6: Honestly, would you check into a hotel, knowing that the chance of your neighbor to the left or right, is a homeless individual?
WATT: Manoj Patel voluntarily rents some rooms to homeless people who are vetted and paid for by a local church, but he's against this bill that would make that mandatory.
PATEL: We barely are surviving, number one. Number two, we have to think of the safety of our staff.
[06:45:00]
And number three, we're not professionally or any otherwise equipped with any of the supporting mechanism that the homeless guest would require.
WATT: What services would be provided remains unclear. Also unclear, the funding. And hotels would be paid fair market rate.
PETERSEN: It's up to the city. I mean, they did it during Project Roomkey.
WATT: The pandemic-era program now winding down that inspired this bill by placing more than 10,000 people in hotels that volunteered. Shawn Bigdeli among them.
SHAWN BIGDELI, RECIPIENT, PROJECT ROOMKEY: Well, first of all, it's a blessing. It's a great room, the technology is not up to par, but you know, with technology, you have to attend?
WATT: This bill would also force developers to replace housing demolished to make way for new hotels and hotel permits would be introduced as well as making every hotel from a super 8 to the Biltmore accept homeless people as guests.
BIGDELI: I don't think that's a good idea.
WATT (on camera): Why not?
BIGDELI: Maybe for some, but you know, there's a lot of people with untreated mental health, and some people do some damage to these poor buildings, man.
WATT (voice-over): This happened in Manoj Patel's motel.
PATEL: And she marked all walls, curtain, she burnt, thank God there was no fire, even marked the ceiling.
WATT: Opponents of housing the homeless in hotels fear this and fear tourists could be put off from even coming to L.A.
WALDMAN: I wouldn't want my kids around people that I'm not sure about. I wouldn't want to be in an elevator with somebody who's clearly having a mental break. The idea that you can inter-mingle homeless folks with paying normal guests, it just doesn't work out.
PETERSEN: We don't want to head backwards into the segregated south. That's kind of the language that they're talking about. There's a certain class of people, less than humans, animals, they almost describe them as to be honest with you, they don't seem to understand who the un-housed are. We're talking about seniors, students, working people, that's who the voucher program would benefit them most.
WATT (on camera): So, it's about 18 months before this will be on the ballot here in Los Angeles. And expect plenty of mudslinging between now and then. Some opponents to this bill, well, they claim that the union is only pushing as a negotiating tactic, as leverage.
The union tells us that is false, that they just want to hold the hotels accountable and make sure that they're playing their part in trying to solve this problem here in Los Angeles which appears to only be getting worse. Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALKER: What a story. Clearly, there's no easy solution. Thanks to Nick Watt for that. Just ahead on the next hour of NEW DAY, the latest on the highly classified documents believed to be at Mar-a-Lago. What a redacted affidavit tells us about why the FBI searched Donald Trump's Florida home? That's coming up at the top of the hour.
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[06:50:00]
WALKER: A civil lawsuit has been filed against Buffalo Bills rookie Matt Araiza, accusing him and two of his former college teammates of gang-raping an underage girl.
SANCHEZ: Now, CNN's Carolyn Manno joins us now with more details. Good morning, Carolyn.
CAROLYN MANNO, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you both. The alleged attack happened at a Halloween Party last year when Araiza was a senior at San Diego state, before he was drafted by Buffalo. And according to court documents, the accuser who was 17 at the time claims that Araiza could tell that she was heavily intoxicated.
She also claims she told Araiza she was still in high school. In the lawsuit, the woman says she reported the attack to police and underwent an examination the next day. It also says that Araiza confirmed the sexual encounter during a phone call a couple of days later. The district attorney's office says it is currently reviewing the details of the case.
No charges have been filed. Both officials with San Diego State and the NFL say that they're aware of the investigation. In a statement, the Bills punter says "the facts of the incident are not what they are portrayed in the lawsuit or the press. I look forward to quickly setting the record straight." And Bills coach Sean McDermott addressed the allegations last night.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEAN MCDERMOTT, HEAD COACH, BUFFALO BILLS: It's not a situation we take lightly. I'm hurt. I understand they're hurt. And it's emotional. It's not easy to hear about some of the things that I've heard about over the last several hours, say. And, you know, haven't slept a lot, to be honest with you because this is -- this is a game. But there are other things that are more important than this.
(END VIDEO CLIP) MANNO: Araiza did not play in the Bills' pre-season finale last night.
Elsewhere in sports this morning, the PGA Tour season comes down to this weekend in Atlanta. Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm are atop the leader board. But it was a pair of Georgia teenagers, Haven Ward and Ethan Quitman who hit the first drives of the tour championship, a tournament staple since 2018.
The hope tee shot is symbolic of the difference that hope can make in a community.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ETHAN QUITMAN, JUNIOR AT SOUTHWEST DEKALB HIGH SCHOOL: Golfing is everything. It's what I do every day.
(APPLAUSE)
(CHEERS)
HAVEN WARD, SENIOR AT HOLY INNOCENTS' EPISCOPAL SCHOOL: Golf is pretty much my everything. It's kind of all I do, it dictates a lot of my life and my family's life. So, right now, especially, it's kind of everything.
(CHEERS)
(APPLAUSE)
QUITMAN: First tee has allowed me to have opportunities, especially like this, to really put myself out there and show the world who I am.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.
WARD: I've learnt a lot about perseverance, always pushing through hard times. Because golf and life, they're not easy. But you always have to get over the next mountain.
[06:55:00]
And so, perseverance, which is one of the nine core values has really gotten me through life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You guys have been honored, both of you are receiving a $5,000 scholarship, first tee hope scholarship right here, each of them, 5,000 bucks.
WARD: I'm going into my senior year, and, so, you know, college is kind of on the horizon. And looking forward to it, but you know, college is not going to pay for itself, so this money, I'm really grateful for it.
QUITMAN: It means a lot to me because they're not just more money that I can set aside towards college. When I'm in that moment, I'm saying to myself, wow, like, I'm in the same position that they're supposedly going to be in, I'm hitting from the same tees right now, and I'm hitting nine right in the fairways. So it's honestly a good moment to remember.
So, honestly, I'll just try to soak it in, but then also, try to leave that to when I win the Tour Championship in the future.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MANNO: Haven is taking her SATs today and starts visiting colleges tomorrow. And Ethan has pro-aspirations, as he said. And no pressure hitting in front of golfers that you idolize, but both did --
WALKER: All right --
MANNO: Phenomenally well. Nice work.
SANCHEZ: No pressure --
WALKER: Amazing --
SANCHEZ: Congrats to them. Good luck on the SATs, too. Carolyn Manno, thanks so much --
WALKER: Don't miss those days at all.
SANCHEZ: Nope, don't. NEW DAY continues after a quick break.
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