Return to Transcripts main page
CNN's The Arena with Kasie Hunt
Vance Acknowledges "Mistakes" In Minneapolis, Tries To Calm Tensions; Jack Smith Defends Trump Cases In High Stakes House Hearing. Aired 4-5p ET
Aired January 22, 2026 - 16:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:00:02]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
KASIE HUNT, CNN HOST: Hi, everyone. I'm Kasie Hunt. Welcome to THE ARENA. It's good to have you with us on this Thursday.
As we come on the air, we're following an unfolding story in Minnesota, a stunning shift in tone from the Trump administration and its ongoing federal immigration operations in the state. Vice President J.D. Vance on the ground in Minneapolis in just the last few minutes.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Whenever you have a law enforcement operation, even if 99.99 percent of the guys do everything perfectly, you're going to have people that make mistakes. That is the nature of law enforcement.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The vice president there, after meeting with ICE agents, admitting for the second time today that federal agents have made mistakes during recent operations. We have, of course, all seen the dozens of videos that show clashes between protesters and officers all sparked, of course, by the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an ICE agent earlier this month. And of course, our usual reminder this footage is disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RENEE GOOD, MINNEAPOLIS RESIDENT: That's fine dude. I'm not mad at you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Show your face.
GOOD: I'm not mad at you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That's okay. We don't change our plates every morning. Just so you know, it'll be the same plate when you come talk to us later. That's fine. U.S. citizen, former (INAUDIBLE). Do you want to come at us? Do you want to come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.
ICE AGENT: Out of the car. Get out of the car! Get out of the car.
ICE AGENT: Ooh! Fucking bitch.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Today, the vice president underscoring that the administration is investigating.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I didn't say, and I don't think any other official within the Trump administration said that officers who engaged in wrongdoing would enjoy immunity. That's absurd. What I did say is that when federal law enforcement officers violate the law, that is typically something that federal officials would look into.
We don't want these guys to have kangaroo courts. We want them to actually have real due process, real investigation, because, again, sometimes they're accused of wrongdoing. And it turns out when you learn the context, they didn't actually do anything wrong. But, of course, we're going to investigate these things. Of course, we're investigating the Renee Good shooting.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So today, calling for a real investigation into that shooting that was caught on camera, pretty different than what we heard just two weeks ago.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I can believe that her death is a tragedy while also recognizing that it's a tragedy of her own making and a tragedy of the far left who has marshaled an entire movement, a lunatic fringe against our law enforcement officers.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right, Let's get off the sidelines. Head into THE ARENA. My panel is here, and we're also joined by CNN anchor Sara Sidner. She is live on the ground for us in Minnesota.
Sara, walk us through a little bit more of what we heard from the vice president, kind of the reasoning behind his being there today. And, of course, at the center of all of this story today, the story of a five- year-old child who was detained.
SARA SIDNER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Everyone in the city talking about that incident that happened, Vice President J.D. Vance came to Minneapolis with the idea of, as he put it, trying to calm tensions here, coming to talk to folks here to try to calm things down, calm the chaos, as he put it, and admitting that ICE did make some mistakes, although he says 99.9 percent of the time they do the right thing. And then when one thing goes wrong, that, of course, sometimes mistakes are made.
But when he got here, he spent more time blaming local and state officials and standing up for ICE than he did talking about some of the issues that people are seeing, both on their phones and in person, that ICE is creating here. So you're hearing from him a kind of a -- almost a little bit of double speak because he is saying, look. It is the blame lands on the local and state officials for not cooperating with ICE when you have people here saying, look, you've got so many ICE officers here, they are causing the chaos. This is not to be blamed just on local and state officials for not cooperating.
What you're also hearing from people is if he came here to calm things down, what he did didn't do a thing towards that effort. People here, I think, will be calm because of what is happening above us. The weather, things are going to get so, so cold.
We're in the negative degrees as we speak now and it's only going to get worse. And there is a planned protest that will happen tomorrow, which is not out in the streets. It's actually to do nothing to not go shopping, to not engage, to stay away from helping the economy, for example, to stop and to make their voices heard in the most quiet way possible by not engaging in anything.
[16:05:02]
But then you have this issue of the five-year-old. You have a school district saying that several students were detained by ICE, including a five-year-old. They're saying that some of the students were used as bait to get the families to open the door for ICE in order for them to arrest someone inside, and that has really riled folks here and stirred emotions.
But J.D. Vance responded to a question about that when a reporter asks him about that incident concerning the five-year-old and why ICE would detain a five-year-old child.
Listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: A father of a five-year-old, actually, a five-year-old little boy. And I think to myself, oh my god, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five-year-old? Well, I do a little bit more follow up research, and what I find is that the five-year-old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien. And then they went -- when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran.
So, the story is that ICE detained a five-year-old. What are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five-year-old child freeze to death?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SIDNER: A lot of the response that we're hearing is, well, they could have tried to call the child's mother or any other family members, but there is a lot of concern about whether or not children are being used as bait. And we are going to hear from that school district and an attorney that is representing the families in just about an hour. So, we will see what their response is to J.D. Vance.
But he also said something I thought was quite curious. He says, look, why is there so much chaos here in Minneapolis when it comes to ICE enforcement? He mentioned other cities where enforcement happened, including Los Angeles, where he tried to say there wasn't as much chaos, and Chicago, but there was a lot of chaos in both Los Angeles and Chicago.
Even in Chicago, a judge slapping an injunction on ICE for its tactics against clergy and journalists. And so, you have to wonder, okay, is he looking and comparing these things and saying, look, things are much worse here. And one of the things why there may be things that seem much more ratcheted up here is because there are about three times more ICE agents here than there are local police.
And so, there is a lot of consternation and fear still in this city about the tactics being used and the number, the sheer number of ICE agents that were surged into Minneapolis.
HUNT: And what happened with this child is certainly not going to calm questions about tactics for these operations.
Sara Sidner, thanks very much for that report.
My panel is here in THE ARENA. Former ABC News journalist, host of "The Real Patriotism" Substack and podcast, Terry Moran; CNN legal and national security analyst Carrie Cordero; CNN political commentator, former DOJ official, Xochitl Hinojosa; former policy director for Mitt Romney, Lanhee Chen.
Thank you all very much for being here. Really appreciate it.
Carrie, I want to start with you just in terms of these -- there's honestly two competing narratives here around what happened with this five-year-old child there. The one narrative is that ICE used him as, quote/unquote, "bait". That's what those who were surrounding him at the time are saying about what happened, that he went and knocked on the door and that caused the door to open. That allowed ICE agents to detain his father.
But what they're -- and what they're also saying is that the father was not subject to a deportation order. He was in the United States filing an asylum claim and was following the rules to try to see that claim through the system. And can you, from a legal perspective, tell us what was done right and done wrong in this situation?
CARRIE CORDERO, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So I think there's a few different things. So first of all, as Sara was reporting, we're going to have to learn more about the specific circumstances of this particular child and how ICE is using potentially children. But I will tell you is that in the first Trump administration, I spent a lot of time looking at the family separation policy and the legal contours of that, and did a lot of writing on it. And what I found in that is that it was a deliberate policy done by the Department of Homeland Security and was intended to be punitive.
So, it was -- that was the goal behind it, because it was intended to be a disincentive. And so, I am very curious, based on that experience, when we learn more about how they are approaching children, in this current enforcement action, whether or not we will find the same sort of policy, whether formal or informal, behind it in the department.
Similarly, there is a lot of questions, I think, about how this whole thing de-escalates and there is currently in Congress, a bill pending for DHS funding that needs to be taken up. And so, the question is, are members going to really reauthorize a budget for a department that is not explaining how they are treating children, how they are treating U.S. citizens? When we talk about the investigation into Renee Good's killing and how they're complying with the Fourth Amendment in terms of these other issues entering houses, trying to obtain people pursuant to immigration orders.
[16:10:06]
HUNT: I want to talk about that in a second. But, Terry Moran, can we talk big picture about the politics of this? I mean, the fact that J.D. Vance felt he needed to go to Minneapolis here, we even heard, in fact, let me let me play this. This is from earlier this week. The president even sort of sounded a different note in talking about Renee Good than we heard in the initial aftermath.
Let's watch what President Trump said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I felt horribly when I was told that the young woman who was, had the tragedy. It's a tragedy. It's a horrible thing. Everybody would say ICE would say the same thing. But when I learned her -- her parents and her father in particular is like, I hope he still is. But I don't know, was a tremendous Trump fan. He was all for Trump, loved Trump.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: When you take these together, the acknowledgment from Vance that mistakes have been made and the president's tone there, which was very different from the immediate aftermath of the shooting. What does it tell you about how they are interpreting the politics of this for them?
TERRY MORAN, FORMER ABC NEWS JOURNALIST: Yeah, they can read the polls, right? The president came into office riding high on immigration. The American people had a verdict on Joe Biden's presidency about the border. They wanted him to fix it.
And it seems that his numbers have fallen to a point where while that's still his biggest issue, people don't support this kind. They didn't sign up for this. And I think that's pretty clear.
And I also think that one of the things you're hearing there is a realization that the optics of this are terrible for them. Americans understand their Constitution, and that there's no more explicit part of the Constitution, the Fourth Amendment, right? The right of the people shall not be violated in their houses, right?
That -- if they -- if they are using kids as bait, it's a confession that they know that. And these administrative warrants, I mean, J.D. Vance said a couple of very radical things in there. One, well, you can use these administrative warrants. You don't need a judge to sign a warrant that is flatly contradictory with 60-year-old Supreme Court precedent. He's kind of -- they're waving something around.
And, you know, this notion that they can do this because it was appealing to the American public to get this job done, they've gone too far.
HUNT: So, what Terry is talking about here, and this is some reporting we have on this, it's an ICE memo, right? So the government entity puts this out and it was signed by the acting director of ICE. He's named Todd Lyons. It's dated May of last year.
And it says this, although the Department of Homeland Security, DHS, has not historically relied on administrative warrants alone to arrest aliens, subject to final orders of removal in their place of residence, the DHS office of the general counsel has recently determined that the U.S. Constitution, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and immigration regulations do not prohibit relying on administrative warrants for this purpose.
Again, raising these Fourth Amendment questions. But, Xochitl, I want to bring the conversation back for a moment to -- Liam is his name.
XOCHITL HINOJOSA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.
HUNT: He's a five-year-old child. We have what appears to be a photo of him from school. I mean, any parent has this on their refrigerator, right? How does this play into kind of the overall conversation that were having here about -- I mean, taking someone like Liam and detaining him is not what the president ran on, right? He ran on finding and deporting criminals and securing the border.
And those two things the American public were absolutely with him for, right? And he is now president of the United States. But did Americans vote for this?
HINOJOSA: They didn't vote for this. And I will say we had a very -- just strong conversation the other day with Bryan Lanza here who was talked about, talked about on your panel, how he was --
HUNT: A former Trump advisor.
HINOJOSA: Former Trump adviser who is worried about someone who is Latino and worried about ICE potentially pulling him over. So he carries his passport. When I see what ICE is doing, not only to children, but and here, Bryan Lanza's story, you have to wonder, are they going to start using racial profiling to go into the homes of Americans? And that is what is scary. It's scary when they're going after our children. It is scary when
they are going in our churches. It is scary when -- scary when they're outside of our schools, when they are potentially going into the homes of our neighbors. All of those things is far beyond what Trump promised, which was to secure our border, which our border is shut down. It is secure, and to arrest violent criminals.
Bryan Lanza, not a violent criminal. This child, not a violent criminal. And so, I think this is why you see the polling where it is at the moment because people -- this is not what people signed up for.
HUNT: Lanhee, you worked for Mitt Romney. I know you've had your differences over the years with Donald Trump, but you were fundamentally conservative. I mean, is it a conservative thing to say the government should be able to walk into any door and take away any person inside their own home?
[16:15:03]
LANHEE CHEN, FELLOW AT THE HOOVER INSTITUTION AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY: If that's the assertion, probably not. I mean, we'd have to look at what exactly -- you know, the exact authorities are relying on. They cite the INA. They cite the Constitution.
I mean, we have to see fundamentally, I think the challenge is actually, President Trump did run on forcible deportation. That was part of his platform, in addition to border security and other elements of it. So, I think in some ways this is --
HUNT: When he was asked, I mean, he was pressed repeatedly during the campaign, like when you run out of the criminals, what are you going to do? And he dodged that question pretty reliably.
CHEN: Because as it turns out, it's a politically unpopular place to go, as we're seeing now. Right? And that's the reality of this, that there are elements of immigration policy that you'll probably get 90 percent agreement on, like securing the border, using technology, et cetera. When you start to get to domestic operations like this, it does become very politically divided. And we're seeing that in a midterm election year.
These images are happening with a midterm election. Bear this in mind, ten months away. Primaries are coming two or three months from now. So, it is quite staggering to see how this is going to impact the politics of 2026. I do think it's kind of a crass question when there's humanity involved, I understand that.
But at the end of the day, that's what people in Washington care about, right? It's politics.
HUNT: And its what's motivating -- I mean, if you want to understand why people like J.D. Vance and Donald Trump do what they do, you got to understand the political dimension.
All right. Coming up next here in THE ARENA, we're going to get reaction from lawmakers to today's testimony from former special counsel Jack Smith, someone who questioned him. Democrat Eric Swalwell will be here.
We're also going to talk to a member of the Oversight Committee, Republican Pete Sessions, as the president of the United States just now, responding to this moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BECCA BALINTT (D-VT): Do you believe that President Trump's Department of Justice will find some way to indict you?
JACK SMITH, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL: I believe they will do everything in their power to do that, because they've been ordered to by the president.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:21:14]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: If we don't call people to account when they commit crimes in this context, it can endanger our election process. It can endanger election workers, and ultimately, our democracy. The attack on this Capitol on January 6th was and the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. said this -- it was an attack on the structure of our democracy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: The former special counsel, Jack Smith, warning about what he sees as the potential consequences of not holding Donald Trump accountable for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The president, clearly watching on Air Force One posting in just the past few minutes that Smith should, quote, "be prosecuted for his actions," claiming that he has committed what the president calls, quote, "large scale perjury".
Smith testified under oath for hours today before the House Judiciary Committee, defending his investigations into Donald Trump.
Both of the attempts to overturn the 2020 election, and also for his handling of classified documents. Both cases were dropped after Trump was reelected last year.
Today, Smith asserted that the cases he built were ironclad.
Joining me now is crime and justice correspondent, Katelyn Polantz.
Katelyn, do we learn anything today that we didn't know before about these investigations? And what about the president's insistence there that Smith committed perjury?
KATELYN POLANTZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kasie, it didn't appear that Smith broke any new ground as far as what he said about his findings, the evidence he had gathered and the conclusions he drew. What he said today was that he believed that his office had developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that Donald Trump would be found guilty at trial for trying to obstruct Congress on January 6th or leading up to January 6th, 2021, because he wanted to maintain his position in the presidency.
That is what he would have said the day that he indicted Donald Trump in August of 2023. So, there wasn't much new there, though, this was a revisiting largely of the evidence in that January 6th case. They talked about the phone logs that Smith's team did use, that he said at one point could be used potentially in a trial because they were tracing Trump's calls to an alleged coconspirator, Rudy Giuliani, who was being asked to call members of Congress and put pressure on them to stop the certification of Joe Biden in the presidency.
There also was discussion about witness testimony, something that Trump has already stepped up and said the witnesses that that Smith had are corrupt. But some of those witnesses were people like Trump's own lawyers in the White House and in private practice, and then also the vice president at the time, Mike Pence -- Kasie.
HUNT: All right. Katelyn Polantz for us -- Katelyn, thank you very much for that reporting.
Former Donald Trump attorney Bill Brennan is joining our panel now.
And, Bill, you know, I'll start with you. The president obviously has not been shy about instructing his Justice Department in public to go after people like Letitia James, like James Comey. And we've seen him put it out on Truth Social, and we've seen the system indict those people.
Now, of course, he ran into the system in the meantime, but now he's telling the system to go after Jack Smith for this.
Is that the next thing here do you think?
BILL BRENNAN, FORMER TRUMP ATTORNEY: Well, Kasie, thanks for having me, as always.
Again, we have to remember the different branches and departments of the government and the Department of Justice, led by the attorney general, makes their decisions.
[16:25:02]
They prosecute cases. In this case, there was a special prosecutor. You mentioned the Comey matter. That case kind of fizzled out on technical issues, statutes of limitations and whether or not the person who bought the indictment was legitimately seated. We never got to the facts.
And you can make that argument, too, with the Smith matters. You know, he bought these cases and then he, basically put them to sleep. So, he still -- it's not surprising that he feels that he has strong cases. I'm in the middle of a federal case in my district now. I'm sure the prosecutors would say the same things about the case. The case that we're trying. But his feelings are kind of irrelevant.
HUNT: Sure. But him putting those cases together, how is that --
BRENNAN: Everybody presumed innocent and the case --
HUNT: I mean, how is that something to go after him for? And, you know, the president obviously leveled this perjury charge at him today with no evidence.
BRENNAN: Well, I mean, the president wears his emotions on his sleeve, but the president made a lot of statements about a lot of people. The DOJ hasn't run with each little breadcrumb. He's dropped. I'm sure the president isn't happy with Mr. Smith.
I'm sure Mr. Smith isn't happy with the president, but personal animus and ad hominem attacks aren't the issue here. The issue is whether or not --
HUNT: But isn't the president making that an issue like personal attacks --
BRENNAN: -- died on the vine?
HUNT: He -- right. But like the president has these personal grievances with these people. He tries to get the system to do it. And the system has actually held, right? I mean, they tried to -- they couldn't find a prosecutor to go after Comey and James. They put somebody in.
And then the system was like, well, actually, she was appointed illegally, and now she's out.
BRENNAN: That's -- Kasie, that's the beauty of our system. Whether or not we have a president who is very judicious in his statements, or a president who wears his emotions on his sleeves.
HUNT: I'm not sure judicious is a word I would use for Trump.
BRENNAN: That's 99 times out of 100 writes itself. The system works. I believe the system works.
HUNT: Terry Moran, what did -- what stood out to you today about -- I mean, Jack Smith was clearly trying to be very careful in how he was answering questions to avoid stepping into some sort of trap that the president would then eventually use against him later. He also seemed to think this was coming.
MORAN: Yeah, he knew this was coming. I don't think people's minds are going to be changed by what we saw today on either side. And that makes me think about January 7th, 2021, when vast majority of Republicans in Congress and beyond knew what happened in front of them. They understood it, and they wanted -- they don't want to talk about that anymore.
My own feeling is that Jack Smith was handed a terrible assignment, which is that here is this essentially the kind of crime that the framers of the constitution envisioned? Not a criminal offense, but an offense against the democracy itself. And that's why they put the impeachment clause in there. They couldn't get the impeachment. And so, Jack Smith was told, find something in the U.S. Code that fits what Donald Trump did.
And he came up with interference with an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States, which doesn't seem to square with the gravity of what happened, that almost everyone in this country understood, on the 7th of January.
HUNT: We saw on the day that it happened. Let's hear a little bit more of what Jack Smith had to say today before the House Judiciary Committee. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you have any evidence that President Trump's statements about the cases against him intimidated witnesses or prevented them from coming forward?
SMITH: I had evidence that he said, if you come after me, I'm coming after you. He asked. He suggested a witness should be put to death.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't you think it's a pretty low bar to clear if you're trying to silence a candidate for president? I mean, if you can't identify a single witness who's intimidated that maybe you should reconsider the gag order
SMITH: Both courts upheld the orders, and it is not incumbent on a prosecutor to wait until someone gets killed before they move for an order to protect the proceedings.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: Carrie, a little bit of a taste there of what he was up against with some of the Republicans who questioned him. But -- I mean, what does this -- what does this say to you? And how would the Justice Department actually go about prosecuting Jack Smith, considering what's happened with Comey and James?
CORDERO: I can't even speculate how they would prosecute him, because it doesn't seem to me like there's anything to prosecute. I think that's just sort of political talk. And I think he did. As far as the hearing today, I think he did a fine job in terms of defending the integrity of his investigation. And he obviously in that clip in particular, he's trying to be very careful to protect his investigation and not to reveal too much in the hearing.
But I have to say, Kasie, after following, this investigation through and Jack Smith's -- the special counsels investigations prior special counsel investigations, I've really come around to the view that I hope Jack Smith is the last special counsel, because I think the role of special counsel has evolved into something that is simply unmanageable.
His cases. And if we look back at the Mueller investigation, the cases never end up really working out. And the number one reason why attorney generals go to a special counsel is to protect them, the investigation from political interference and the appearance of politicization. And that's exactly what ends up happening, because no matter what the special counsel does in their investigation, it ends up in a political theater.
HINOJOSA: Well, and the reason -- the only reason I would disagree with that -- I mean, Merrick garland would be the first person to say that he hated special counsels. He had to work when, you know, he has seen a number of special counsels through his time.
But the reason why Jack Smith had to be there was because Donald Trump -- the government believes Donald Trump committed serious crimes, both unclassified. The classified case, which he didn't talk a lot about because he's under an order not to. And when it comes to the crimes on January 6th.
Those two cases are beasts of investigations that both the Justice Department, they could normally handle. Merrick Garland handling those cases. Yes. You're right. There would have been talk about politicization. He is a career professional. That the only way that you would be able to get to the bottom of that case is by having a special counsel.
And I will say, yes, the presidents, former presidents commit crimes at times. And that doesn't mean that our justice system, in our justice system, that they should not be held accountable. And the only way to do that was a special counsel. There is no alternative.
HUNT: Lanhee?
CHEN: Yeah, I mean, we're talking about things that happened six years ago, and I think the reality is people have their minds made up. They had their minds made up. Maybe they changed their minds, but now they've made their minds up. And it all has to do with one's political lens and the political hat you wear.
If you are a Republican, you thought that this investigation was flawed from the start. If you're a Democrat, you think there's a smoking gun.
HUNT: And Merrick Garland for delaying it.
CHEN: Well, yeah. I mean -- and look --
(CROSSTALK)
CHEN: Reality is that that's -- that's the problem we have in America right now is that every single thing we see, whether its policy or legal, is viewed through the lens of politics. And that, in my mind, is the worst development of these last several years is that we can no longer evaluate things on their face. We can't look at the evidence and say, well, that's interesting.
You know, maybe that says something. No, it doesn't matter. You have to have your mind made up before the person even speaks. And that's the reality we live in.
HINOJOSA: Well, we're also not -- we're also not asking serious questions about Donald Trump and his current handling of classified information, given his long history of it, which I think is also a problem and a current problem in our country.
HUNT: Added to the list, Xochitl, maybe.
Bill Brennan, thank you very much for being with us. Always appreciate your insights. The rest of our panel is going to stick around.
Coming up here, more on the new messages from the vice president in Minneapolis today, blaming local officials for a lack of cooperation on the federal immigration operation, but also saying this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: I actually think that there's some hope, some reason to think that there's going to be better cooperation in the weeks and months to come.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:37:33]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in criminal activity.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. More now on Jack Smith's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
Joining us now in THE ARENA to discuss, Democratic congressman from California, Eric Swalwell.
He was there today --
REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: -- questioning Smith as a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Congressman, thanks very much for being here.
I just want to start with what we've been talking about here on the panel, which is that the president has said that Jack Smith committed perjury today and should be prosecuted for it. Your reaction?
SWALWELL: Try it. Go ahead and prosecute him. It will probably work out the same way it did with James Comey and Tish James and all the indictments that have been thrown out by this clown show, Department of Justice that he has running right now. What people saw today from Jack Smith is what they saw with their own
eyes, which is Donald Trump was responsible for what happened on January 6th, beyond a shadow of a doubt. And we have to take that as a cautionary tale that he's even more empowered today. And were going to need some Republicans to join us if we're going to stop this.
HUNT: Congressman, one of the things that the that jack smith was pressed on today was this question about phone records that were obtained as part of his investigation. It was Republicans, because the president, of course, was reaching out to Republicans.
This is obviously something that you are personally familiar with. Do you have -- do you understand why Republicans might be upset about that? I mean, what would you say to them?
SWALWELL: I would say you were talking to the lead aggressor, the person Jack Smith said convened and aimed the mob at the Capitol within 24 hours of that attack on our democracy and the violence against police officers when it occurred.
So, of course, they're going to look at your phone records. They didn't look at the content of the call. They didn't listen to the call. They were just trying to understand who the president was talking to. Nobody had, you know, cases brought against him.
So, when the context is explained, it makes a lot of sense to me.
HUNT: And do you have any concerns, or do you think that members of Congress should have protections that other Americans don't have in situations like this one?
SWALWELL: Nope, not -- not at all. We're not above the law. The president is not above the law.
And again, the system here works. They -- it looks like they didn't have anything to do with what the president was cooking up for January 6th. And so, it didn't go anywhere. They -- they're just, as I said, showing themselves to be completely, you know, sycophantic toward the president and unwilling to understand the greater issue here, which is he ordered essentially an attack against the Capitol.
[16:40:14]
HUNT: Congressman, you have said that impeachment should be on the table if Democrats win back the House in the midterm elections looking like an increasingly likely possibility.
What is the president done so far that you think is an impeachable offense?
SWALWELL: Well, let me just say this. I think we should impeach the tariffs. That has to be the day one priority.
The president said he was going to lower costs on day one. He's zero for 370, and we have to as Democrats make sure the country understands that this guy costs too much, literally, he costs too much and what we're paying for groceries, and figuratively, he costs too much in the rights were losing when women are being shot three times in the face by his ICE agents, and women no longer can make decisions about that.
HUNT: Right. But you guys can write policy, right? That's not impeachment.
SWALWELL: Yeah.
HUNT: What I'm saying is, like the president says, if you guys win in the midterms, you will go after -- you will go after him. You will try to impeach him. Is that what's going to happen? And if so, for what?
SWALWELL: Yeah. What I'm saying is when we have the power of subpoena and we have oversight ability, we have to bring in everybody in this administration, you know, who has led the terrorizing of immigrants, who has cashed in on this president who has made over $1 billion in his first year. He and his family, while working as president, who is ordering unlawful attacks on people, you know, across the globe.
So -- I -- we will do our job. But right now, impeach the tariffs. That's got to be the first focus.
HUNT: Congressman, you are also, of course, running for governor of California. And in such a role, you would have to face down some of these really difficult questions, like what Governor Walz is facing in Minnesota, for example. The vice president was in Minneapolis today. He acknowledged that ICE has likely made some mistakes, that mistakes have happened.
Do you have an understanding of what they may be acknowledging there or saying? I mean, why come out and say that today, after what we've heard from them in the past, where they insisted that the ICE officer that shot Renee Good should have absolute immunity?
SWALWELL: Yeah, well, it's what you just said earlier about what happened on January 6th. We are watching this with our own eyes. We're watching what ICE is doing with our own eyes. We saw that woman be shot with her own eyes.
And what I've said is governors, I will use the powers of the office. If you're going to wear a mask as an ICE agent in your state, I will take away your driver's license. If you work for ICE, you will be unhireable in the state. If you're going to work for fascists, forget about working in the state.
So, we are not weak. We have to go on offense. Otherwise, the most vulnerable in our communities are on defense and I urge every governor to start protecting their people and their state that way.
HUNT: Do you think every ICE agent on the streets is a fascist?
SWALWELL: I think that if you continue to work for them now, seeing what they're doing, dragging women by their hair through the streets, deporting a four year old battering, battling stage four cancer, shooting a mother in the face three times, if you still work for them, that's a choice. No one is forcing you to do that. I don't want you working in the state.
HUNT: But aren't some of these guys just trying to provide for their families?
SWALWELL: Well, there's a lot of jobs out there that don't have you terrorizing women masked, unidentified --
HUNT: Do you think every person, every person in the street for ICE is terrorizing women?
SWALWELL: I think anyone wearing a mask, unidentified and going after, again, the overwhelming majority of people that are detaining are nonviolent, non-criminal. That is terror in our communities.
And Californians are saying enough, and they want somebody who's going to be a fighter and protector for them. And that's why I think you have to be on offense against these guys. Otherwise, we're reacting to them and were on our heels, and there's too many good people running through the fields and the factories where they work in California to put up this for another second.
HUNT: Do you think that ICE would be well served to continue to have people who, inside the organization who look at what's happening and don't agree with some of the tactics, you're saying that people should quit now if they don't like those tactics? How does that --
SWALWELL: That's right.
HUNT: -- make the organization better, though?
SWALWELL: I don't think anyone likes or wants what ICE is doing right now. We were told the most violent individuals would be deported. Again, a child U.S. citizen battling stage four cancer, deported. Once you shoot a mom in the face three times, she has stuffies in her glove compartment and cheerios, not a weapon. Not a knife. You shot her in the face three times and you claim that you were justified -- forget it.
No one asked for this. And ICE, as it exists today, needs to be completely dismantled.
HUNT: So, ICE should be abolished.
SWALWELL: ICE, as it exists today should be dismantled. And Democrats, I think, should reshape it to make sure only violent individuals are the ones who are removed.
[16:45:01]
HUNT: All right. California Congressman, California gubernatorial candidate Eric Swalwell, thank you very much for being with us, sir. I appreciate your time.
SWALWELL: Thanks, Kasie.
HUNT: All right. We'll be right back. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: We don't want these guys to have kangaroo courts. We want them to actually have real due process, real investigation. Because again, sometimes they're accused of wrongdoing. And it turns out when you learn the context, they didn't actually do anything wrong.
But of course, we're going to investigate these things. Of course, we're investigating the Renee Good shooting, but we're investigating them in a way that respects people's rights.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: All right. More on the breaking news, Vice President J.D. Vance saying today that authorities will, quote, "of course, investigate the fatal shooting of Renee Good and that the federal government is committed to exploring incidents in which agents are accused of wrongdoing."
[16:50:09]
The investigation into that January shooting, of course, a point of contention after local agencies say they were shut out of the federal inquiry and after federal prosecutors quit after saying they were pressured by the administration to look into the conduct of good and those around her. CNN security correspondent Josh Campbell is joining our panel now.
Josh, one of the other things that the vice president addressed was this ICE memo on what kind of a warrant agents need to enter someone's home. I want to play that moment, and we'll talk about it on the other side. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: There are very narrow exceptions to the warrant requirement, where law enforcement officers don't need, you know, a warrant if, for example, they're an imminent threat of their lives. But what we've said and what ICE has proposed, what the Department of Homeland Security really has proposed in the Department of Justice, is that we can get administrative warrants to enforce administrative immigration law.
Now, it's possible, I guess, that the courts will say no. And, of course, if the courts say, no, we would follow that law. But nobody is talking about doing immigration enforcement without a warrant. We're talking about different types of warrants that exist in our system.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HUNT: So, Josh, can you explain what is right here? What is wrong here? Why? This is a question.
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, as the vice president said, this is expected to be tested by the courts. I think he's absolutely right, because what this "Associated Press" reporting essentially says is that ICE is now moving for a sweeping new area of authority where, you know, the Constitution protects someone from unreasonable search and seizure. A law enforcement officer, before they go onto private property, unless there's some emergent situation, they have to go to an independent judge and get a warrant to actually go into that property.
What this memo now is outlining is something totally different, and that is using what's called an administrative warrant. This is something that's not signed off on by a judge. It's used in the immigration space to forcibly enter someone's property and then go and arrest them if they have a -- what's called a final order of removal under the immigration law.
And so that will certainly be tested. We've already heard from numerous legal experts coming out saying that this appears to fly in the face of the Constitution. As the vice president said there, if the courts knock it down, then you know, they'll -- they'll move on and do something else. Interestingly, I was hearing from someone familiar with all of this who said that the Trump administration was toying with the idea of testing this out in more Trump friendly judicial districts.
This will be interesting to watch, specifically in Minnesota, whether a court there would, you know, would allow something like this to continue.
HUNT: Josh, you've, of course, worked in law enforcement for our viewers who may not be familiar with that background. What did you make of? Did you sense a shift in tone from the vice president on the ground today when he said that mistakes have been made? There will be investigations or not?
CAMPBELL: You know, I don't -- I don't get the sense there was a change in tone. I mean, I think his very presence there, you know, we've heard from some of the activists that that in and of itself, in their view, you know, inflame the situation. I think, you know, coming out as the administration has done so often in this kind of full throated defense of essentially every action that these agents have and officers have done is something that has caused a lot of controversy there, including, you know, the killing of Renee Good, which, by the way, I should note that, you know, as a former law enforcement officer and looking at that video, you know, countless times, you know, it's clear to me that that agent was likely within policy to try to stop a threat coming at him.
But there's a question about judgment. Should he have actually acted that way? That is why this has been quite controversial.
One thing I also note, Kasie, is that we heard the officials say that including the vice president, that they expect that they may be working closely with local officials in the days and weeks to come. That will be interesting to watch.
We're told that local law enforcement, they weren't even invited to, you know, this visit when the attorney general showed up, was it last week or earlier in the week? And the FBI director showed up before then when they traveled the country, they'll typically meet -- with their law enforcement counterparts here. We're told they -- they didn't with local city officials.
So, you continue to see that cleavage between the local and federal level.
HUNT: Terry, we've got about a minute left here. But, you know, in thinking about this question about administrative warrants, it's very easy to get bogged down in the technicalities. I think for people who are feeling afraid as they watch this ICE activity play out on their screens, the idea that they can't just keep the door shut -- I mean, that has been something that has made people feel safe.
I know that if I stay in my house and I keep my door shut. No one is coming through it. This adds another layer of fear.
MORAN: Well, that's bedrock American law for centuries, right? Searches conducted without a judicial warrant are per se unreasonable, unconstitutional. 1964 Supreme Court case. You can get a lawyer in the administration to say that the sky is green and the grass is blue, but that doesn't make it so. That's what they're trying to do. They decide the kind of aggression they want.
[16:55:02]
Then they cook up some legal theory to staple on it. And that's where we are.
HUNT: And of course, the idea that they might test this in an area where they might get a more favorable decision is another tactic that we have seen groups start to use in recent years.
All right. Josh Campbell, thank you very much for being with us. Really appreciate it.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HUNT: All right. Thanks to my panel. Really appreciate you guys being here today. Thanks to you at home as well.
Don't forget, you can now stream THE ARENA live, catch up whenever you want in the CNN app. You can scan the QR code below to find it. You can also catch up by listening to THE ARENAs podcast. Theres QR code for that too. You can follow along on X and Instagram @TheArenaCNN.
But, of course, do not go anywhere. Jake Tapper is standing by for "THE LEAD".
